Predators Seeking Support
Rapists email me requesting advice on how to stop. I refuse to help them. Here’s why.
Rapists email me requesting advice on how to stop. I refuse to help them. Here’s why.
TW: Sexual Assault, Abuse
I am a sexual assault, domestic abuse, and stalking survivor, and I write about it on the internet.
I don’t do it because I have a moral obligation to. I don’t share what has happened to me because I believe it will change hearts and minds. Writing publicly about such topics is not strategic. It’s not borne of a feeling of responsibility. I definitely do not believe any other victim or survivor needs to share the way that I share.
I write about assault, stalking, and abuse because it helps me, and because I enjoy it. I find it cathartic. I don’t always know how I feel until I have structured an essay around it. I struggle to verbalize upsetting things. It’s immensely challenging for me to have hard conversations in person. Writing makes it a lot easier to be heartfelt. It allows me to make meaning of a convoluted tangle of memories, thoughts, and feelings. When I’m lucky, sharing my writing helps me to connect with, and even provide support for, other survivors.
That is the most I can realistically hope to accomplish with my work. I have run out of persuasive things to say about rape, and I don’t think broadcasting my pain is going to change any closed-off hearts and minds at this point. I certainly don’t think I should harm myself rehashing what has happened to me, in the hopes of changing the pervasiveness of rape culture in the world. The rapid backlash to the #MeToo movement has made it plain that a lot of people would rather remain comfortable than confront the ugliness and entitlement of their heroes (or themselves).
I’m not a martyr. The only person I can save is myself. If a few already-decent people are comforted and buffeted by my own self-saving, that is wonderful. If a random would-be predator does learn from my writing and becomes a less pushy, entitled, and toxic person, that’s great. But none of it is my job.
…
Whenever I write about rape, I get long and opinionated emails. Some of them are filled with vitriol and hate. Those are easy to deal with — delete, block, report. Done.
Some emails come from victims, and those are challenging to read and process. I often find myself deleting those, too. I can’t read every person’s assault story in vibrant detail. I certainly don’t have the time or emotional wherewithal to pen a helpful, inspiring response to each survivor who contacts me. Some days it takes all my available willpower to keep myself going. On those days, I remind myself that my public writing has already done a lot to help survivors, and that it’s not my job to do anything that is going to hurt me. Then I delete the emails and move on.
There is a third category of rape-related emails I receive, and it is by far the most haunting. These emails come from people who have already committed sexual assault in the past, and feel badly about it. These emails tend to recount the assaults that the writer has committed in great detail, and include paragraphs of hand-wringing and self-shaming, followed by a request for my advice.
Here’s an example of how such emails start out:
Ryan Salsman <chucksalsman97@gmail.com>Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 8:28 PM
To: erikadprice@gmail.com
TW: abuse, predatory behavior, depression, anxiety, graphic description of sex act
Dear Erika,
I am a reader from Medium. I have read many of your articles and all of the ones I have read have opened up and articulated many of my feelings about my experiences and (as a white man in his early twenties) have educated me beyond comprehension. I am writing because I am seeking advice. I understand you are not obligated to respond to this.
To put it bluntly, I am a perpetrator of predatory behavior is varying situations. I have stopped this behavior years ago, I have opened a dialogue with people I have effected and I need help to figure out ways of turning my shame and guilt into a force to help prevent these situations from happening to others, to educate people and to feel like despite what I have done, I can still help make the world a better place.
Starting when I was 16 until I was about 20-early 21 I would catfish people (my own age) on tinder in an effort to engage in sexual conversation and in earlier instances, to receive nude photographs. As I got older this lessened until I reached a point of realization of how disgusting, unforgivable and heinous this was. I do not know how take accountability for this as I do not even remember the names of these people and they are most likely unaware that I was a fake account.
When I was 19 I would have sexual conversations with a girl who was 16 (I will refer to them as Sam) over snapchat, she would sometimes pose for me sexually but never nude. I do not know how to articulate this further other than I feel ashamed that I overly sexualize someone younger than me and although this age gap may or may not appear drastic to some, I feel like I was doing something immoral. This person stopped talking to me when I made a comment about their appearance and they blocked me online. I tried to reach out twice to apologize, the second time I sent a long winded and thought out apology admitting to what I think I have done wrong and taking accountability, I did not get a response and I am unsure of what this person thinks of me but I know I am not entitled to any sort of forgiveness.
When I was 20 I engaged in a sexual encounter with a 16 year old(I will refer to them as Jess. This age difference is legal where I live but I understand why it is potentially wrong) We had oral sex that ended up causing her to vomit slightly, which has never happened to me. I apologized to her roughly 8 months later and we had a thoughtful discussion about everything. She reiterated that what transpired was 100% consensual. I reached out to her again 6 months later and she told me that she does not think about the experience anymore and she believes that I am a good person and that I have not caused her any long term harm. I plan on reaching out again soon to reiterate that if her thoughts change overtime the dialogue is still open. I think about this everyday, while it appears this person does not think about it.
Notice that this letter writer, Ryan, knew enough to use trigger warnings in his email to me. He was aware that sharing the details of his sexual predation with me might be disturbing — yet he still felt entitled enough to my attention and assistance that he sent the email anyway. Every single “guilty rapist” email I have received exhibits the same cluster of attributes: shame, long-windedness, apologetic fumbling, and beneath it all, entitlement to a vast quantity of my attention and time.
Sometimes, letter writers couch their requests for assistance in the language of emotional labor. One writer, Sam, even offered to pay me for my time! He wanted me to listen to his rape stories and provide detailed professional psychological advice for $20 whole dollars! Here’s the first part of his email:
Sam Vines <white.day.black.river@gmail.com>Wed, May 30, 2018 at 2:05 PM
To: erikadprice@gmail.com
Dear Mx. Price,
Emotional labour being a thing — please do not feel obliged to read or reply to this email if you do not wish, or else I am more than happy to pay $20 for your time as a social psychologist doc.
I read your very good Ansari piece having read a lot of very bad takes, so thank you for that and sorry that those shitty experiences happened to you, but cheers for your perceptive and clear-sighted writing in the wake of them.
I have talked to some online feminists about this in the past (such as Jamie Utt) but not since #MeToo, which I think has changed the conversation a lot and helped focus my own thinking… so I am reaching out, but it may be misguided IDK.
**content warning for discussionsof sexual assault/ rape**
In short, 10 years ago when I was 21, I had a relationship with a 16/17-year-old kid 4-and-a-half years younger than me. At first the relationship was enthusiastic, though in retrospect I believe I should have demurred when J expressed a sexual interest in me. It was a long-distance relationship (we’d been online friends for about 5 years beforehand, with J having previously disguised her true age to appear older than she was online). For the first week or so of us being together things seemed to be working out, with J instigating many of the sexual interactions. Then after about a week together she suddenly seemed a lot more withdrawn and ambivalent around me. Discussing our relationship a few years ago now, J said that this fit the pattern of all of the relationships she had in her teens with older people both before and after myself (generally in her email she didn’t write specifically about our relationship but in terms of these relationships as a whole). In her own words:
‘… with every person, I’d get too close, feel extremely uncomfortable but not know how to get out of the situation (and also, I’d feel too prideful to ever admit that I was too young for this), and then some altercation would happen and we’d all end up getting hurt.
When I was younger, what would happen when I got uncomfortable would be that I’d look at the guy and think, “You are disgusting for wanting me, for meeting a teenage girl on the internet and getting so close to her, how dare you”.’
In retrospect this makes perfect sense, but at the time I was really confused since it felt as though I’d done something to upset/hurt her but didn’t know what it was. I also — and this seems awful and even grotesque in retrospect — believed I loved her, convincing myself she wasn’t a child since 16 is the age of consent here in Britain, while she was American.
Notice, too, that Sam was socially astute enough to address me with a gender-neutral honorific, Mx, rather than Ms or Miss. Like Ryan, he knows the language and signifiers of progressive, “good guy” values. He is aware of concepts like triggers and emotional labor. But he never internalized such values deeply enough to stop being a rapist.
Men who email me to confess about their rapes also tend to be very intense and performative in their expressions of guilt. They tend to portray themselves as tortured by their own actions, consumed with grief over them.
Here’s another snippet from Sam’s email, in which he details the various things he has done to punish himself for being a predator:
After this I went through a period of years doing voluntary work with elderly patients in hospital, on a helpline (not for rape support) and a sex education charity, as well as handing out leaflets in the street to men on ‘Learning Good Consent’. However, I stopped doing these things when I learned/feared that many people would see these actions as hypocritical and tainted by my prior behaviour (as with Savile’s charitable work, say). I have informed all subsequent partners (of which there have been three) and most friends/acquaintances about my behaviour. However, I feel like none of this is accountability without true punishment, which must come from outside not from within.
I paid to see a clinical therapist who works exclusively with sex criminals (who generally are legally obliged to see her) but when I completed a very lengthy assessment w/r my danger of re-offending my risk was found to be very slow. [I answered all the questions truthfully but to be honest it seemed like it would have been a very easy test to cheat.] She said she could “trick me” into getting better, but that phrasing really troubled me so I declined.
I haven’t had much luck with subsequent therapists, even though I have found ones who have worked with sex offenders. Generally therapists have not taken what I did as “rape” and even get frustrated if I refer to myself as a “rapist” and say ‘they don’t see me like that’. I even had one therapist describe my ex- as a ‘little minx’ who got ‘over her head’, to give you some impression of how dubious some of this therapeutic rhetoric has been.
Ryan’s email veered into a very similar territory:
I am not writing to relieve guilt, I am not writing in self pity, I trust your professional opinion and criticism. I understand that I have been, throughout a portion of my adolescence, a creep, a predator and potential abuser and rapist. But according to Jess, I am a good person. I want to be a good person, I feel like I am making the steps to be a better human, to not be totally despicable. I have friends who have their own experiences of abuse tell me I am making the correct changes by taking accountability.
I 100% know I did not ruin Jess’s life, I do not know how I effect the person from the second story, and I do not know that these women from tinder even remember their interactions with my fake persona. I do know that everyday I think about these experiences, I feel miserable knowing I am capable of such heinous things and have done heinous things. I am writing because although you may find me deplorable, I hope you can acknowledge that I do want to do whatever it takes to reform and become a good person.
I know I will not repeat these offenses but I want to be able to move on from them. From the point I am currently at, I do not know what to do and where to go from here. I am finishing college in a year, and will be on into the workforce in the film industry.
I want to be a positive force, I want to be an ally against injustice. I have spent the last year reading and researching about victim’s experiences, about consent education, about gender. I have been observing the metoo movement. I have not only identified these experiences but I have identified the “societal norms” men perpetuate. I have never told anyone my experiences and have been hated. I have also never told them to a total stranger. I understand if your perception of me is negative, but I am looking for guidance, which I am unaware I do not deserve.
The self-loathing and shame expressed by both men is undercut by their own willingness to ask a survivor and a stranger for free (or cheap) advice and support. And boy do they ask for a lot of it. Here’s Ryan’s litany of questions:
What I am asking:
What else should i be doing?
How do I talk to a therapist about these experiences?
What kind of therapist should I see?
If someone I effected does not want to speak to me (Sam) when I want to take accountability for my actions what should I do? Or am I overthinking this situation to a fault?
Do I deserve a sound mind?
Do I deserve to achieve professional goals? I want to work in cinematography, I have no interest in becoming famous but I understand excelling in a workplace community will make my name known to other people in my profession. Should I be allowed to excel? I know I will not abuse any power in any workplace, I know if I do have such power I will use to boost a platform for underprivileged groups in the industry I want to work in.
Do you think my actions are a type of moral stain, where I will never be a great person because of them? Am I right to think this way?
Am I defined by these actions that I did at this young of a age or will I be defined by what I do with the rest of my life?
Lastly, what other questions should I be asking?
For reference, 21 year old going on 22. Having conflicting feelings about my own gender identity but for now I am okay being referred to as a male.
I hope you do read this. I want to read your response in order to grow and be better,
Ryan
And here is Sam’s:
So, I know you’re only a person, but you seem to have more insight than most people — I recognise that fundamentally I have to reach these answers on my own, also — however if you have an answer for any of the following, it would be appreciated and, of course, I am more than happy to pay (indeed, even if you don’t, but you have bothered reading this far!!)
1.) Is it wrong/right for me to call myself a child rapist or child molester when J has refuted this phrasing? If I am a child rapist under some legal and moral systems and not others (which seems to be the case) what am I? Abuser seems too broad, but I have also found that when I refer to myself as a “child rapist” and then detail when I did, some people angrily refute it, perhaps because I am British and even though 16/17-year-olds *are* children here, they are legally allowed to have sex, so they’re not really thought of as children.
2.) Is there any way for me to face legal punishment without involving J?
3.) Is there a place for me in the world as someone who is tainted/cancelled? Do any of my subsequent good acts have value or are they always already tainted?
4.) While I don’t consider this **nearly** as serious as what I did, when I was 14, I had a teacher who made the class play ‘Spin the Bottle’ and I had to kiss this girl who was rather troubled/ spoke openly about having been abused by her uncle. I don’t know if this was before or after the teacher made us do this, but around the same time, she walked up to my desk and just squeezed my testicles out of the blue, to memory. I doubted the Spin the Bottle memory for years but then a classmate on FB confirmed it. I don’t feel like the teacher was a paedophile, but I made it clear that I didn’t want to take part… so in retrospect i feel like this also makes me a victim of abuse. But is it wrong for me to ever use this label to describe myself since I am a perpetrator? I’ve also had quite a lot of guys squeeze my nipples or grab my butt in the street and when I used to wear a kilt would find that some men and women would attempt to lift it up to see underneath.
In a way I am happier/ more stable now than I was 4 years ago, say, because at least now everyone is talking about consent and abuse and I’m not just talking online into a vacuum. This is kind of grotesque since the point of the #metoo movement is absolutely not to make perpetrators feel less alienated… It feels like anything I do to try to make amends for what I did just cements my irredeemably. I have tried to make my peace with being irredeemable (or cancelled, to use the online terminology) but I also essentially want to stay alive as I have younger siblings who would struggle if I didn’t.
Thank you for reading the above. Sorry if it is whatsoever melodramatic or slightly aspie. I hope you are not getting any more shitty comments and your own research in academia is going well.
Any questions or — indeed — payment details, please say.
Cheers,
Sam (not my real time as I know it is my obligation to protect J’s identity as far as possible, though writing about the above potentially endangers this)
Look at the complexity of these questions. Look how much detailed, emotionally involved, taxing advice and support these rapists are asking for! Can you imagine being a predator and reaching out to a victim for this amount of assistance and energy?
Sadly, I am not the only person these two men have harassed with performative guilt. Both men detail contacting their victims, repeatedly and incessantly, offering apologies that they clearly do not want. Here’s Sam’s account of that:
A few years after the relationship ended — so, 2012 — I emailed J to apologise for not paying her back a sum of money I had stupidly disputed whether I owed her and for making her do anything she didn’t want to do. I said that she was, of course, free to use any terminology she wanted in referring to our relationship and my behaviour and somewhat pushed towards a framing of child molestation. I also offered to turn myself into the police. She acknowledged that I had ‘pushed [her] boundaries’ and that she had felt ‘really uncomfortable’ and replied:
“It’s nice of you to offer, but you’re taking this way, way, waaaaaay too seriously. Don’t spend your time dwelling on this or feeling like you owe me anything. Move forward, redirect the negative energy from worrying about this, turn it into positive energy and put it towards something productive. There’s nothing left to feel bad about, time has taken care of everything.”
And here’s Ryan’s passage on the same subject:
This person stopped talking to me when I made a comment about their appearance and they blocked me online. I tried to reach out twice to apologize, the second time I sent a long winded and thought out apology admitting to what I think I have done wrong and taking accountability, I did not get a response and I am unsure of what this person thinks of me but I know I am not entitled to any sort of forgiveness.
When I was 20 I engaged in a sexual encounter with a 16 year old(I will refer to them as Jess. This age difference is legal where I live but I understand why it is potentially wrong) We had oral sex that ended up causing her to vomit slightly, which has never happened to me. I apologized to her roughly 8 months later and we had a thoughtful discussion about everything. She reiterated that what transpired was 100% consensual.
I reached out to her again 6 months later and she told me that she does not think about the experience anymore and she believes that I am a good person and that I have not caused her any long term harm. I plan on reaching out again soon to reiterate that if her thoughts change overtime the dialogue is still open. I think about this everyday, while it appears this person does not think about it.
Shocking that someone who doesn’t know how to respect another person’s bodily autonomy and consent also doesn’t know when to leave them the hell alone, isn’t it?
And it’s these passages, about harassing their former victims with repeated, unwanted apologies, that really sends home for me just how toxic, demanding, selfish, and predatory these people truly are. These are not basically decent men who made mistakes and are haunted by them. No. These are self-centered, manipulative, uncontrolled perpetrators, who will continue to encroach on the boundaries of innocent people time and time again, seeking succor, comfort, sexual gratification, and most of all, attention. I feel violated just by reading their rambling, focus-pulling claptrap.
I have essentially zero hope that either of these guys will be redeemed, because their attempts at redemption so far have been just as bad as their initial offenses.
…
My own abuser was very much the same type of dude as Ryan and Sam. To this day, he runs in progressive social circles, using social justice buzzwords to lure future victims into a false sense of safety. When I broke up with him, he became outlandishly performative and attention-seeking in his grief. He’d cry outside my office, curl up in a distraught ball below my apartment window. He wrote sad songs about me, and short stories, and sent them to me. He even convinced a few mutual friends to feel sorry for him, for a time. And when none of that worked, he turned to violence.
Of course, using a person’s eyes and ears and heart for personal gratification can be as violent as taking unconsenting hold of their body. Entitlement to a person’s time, empathy, and thoughts may not look as disturbing as entitlement to their sexuality, but it can communicate the same chilling message: you are not in control of yourself. You are for me to use. I don’t care what you want.
That attitude can be found all around us — in men who claim multiple seats on the train, forcing others to stand. In inconsiderate conversationalists who never let a friend get a word in edgewise. In the lurid looks and perverse jokes of people oblivious to co-workers’ discomfort. In the long, rambling, unasked-for emails of predators, who feel that victims owe them not only their bodies, but their forgiveness.
I have chosen to devote my life to fighting against this attitude. Not by trying to persuade the unpersuadable, but by taking care of myself. I am not a thing to please or placate any other person. I do the things I want to do, and I do them for me. I attempt to improve the world, but on terms that allow me safety and agency. Because of that, I refuse to help these rapists to improve themselves or feel better about the things they’ve done. Their desire for redemption is insincere, and it is rooted in impulses as vile as the ones that moved them to rape somebody in the first place.