Condemnation, Justice, and Reparation: An interview with a victim’s advocate and a back alley dumpster fire
Updated: April 15, 2024
“Condemnation, justice and reparation: these are the first conditions for the perpetrator’s restraint and redemption (Grand, 2000, pg. 158).”
After having the unfortunate experience of reporting rape to my local prosecutor’s office, it became very clear to me there are profound inadequacies found in human constructions such as laws, definitions, justifications, language, and ideologies. And culture can severely interfere with them all.
“Crime must be met by a psychoanalytic culture of object-related hatred. Such a culture insists on the perpetrator’s knowledge of [her] crimes … [because] it strives toward intersubjective recognition (see Benjamin, 1988).” (from Grand, 2000, pg. 158)
I also had the unfortunate experience of having a detective, whom I believed to be a most angelic looking young man with delicate soft feminine features with the type of beauty professed by imperial male rulers in China regarding their homosexual male lovers. His attempt to break down my erected walls of protection guarding my soul, worked and he got me to “talk.” Eventually, I confessed to him what happened to me. At which point he told me it wasn’t rape, but rather another type of violent crime. I also confessed to him how beautiful I thought he was and how “he’s beauty was like poetry and prose, a symphony and a song, like the muted pastel paintings of an impressionist’s painting, like an impressionist’s work of art like Monet’s “Water Lilies.” In retrospect, I thought him more of a Renoir although at the time of the interview I couldn’t remember Renoir’s name. I propositioned him and my language turned sexual, exotic, and deviant. I think something along the lines, “Show me what your momma gave you.” I told him how beautiful I thought he was again and told him how I wanted to worship him in the bedroom like a King. Literally, planting little kisses all over his bare naked bottom. I promised exotic sexual relations with him. All, I can say is that he must have done a good job at getting me to “relax and feel comfortable to speak.” Because I spoke.
I am not a prostitute but my language surely indicated this possibility. I am was not lying about how I felt about his beauty either. It was just really bad timing. A most unfortunate experience.
Then, at some point, I was wirelessly electromagnetically assaulted (tortured) during the interview (deposition) with wireless signals that inflicted pain and suffering onto my body. Presumably because of my language. I really don’t know why I was assaulted?
I was offered an opportunity to talk with the victim’s advocate following the interview and following this deposition I scheduled an appointment to discuss the case.
Upon arriving at the prosecutor’s office, I was led into a room with several chairs and three women. One of the women was the victim’s advocate, who turned out to be the detective’s lawyer mother, and two other women, whom I didn’t know. After a few minutes, the detective entered. I acknowledged him and made reference to the fact his eyes looked better because they had previously had dark circles underneath them. I had told him those dark circles were unhealthy and that my brother had them too before having a heart attack while in his 30s and working as an analyst for the NSA. I remembered using an “inappropriate” sexual reference, upon which point his mother started yelling at me, “YOU CAN’T TALK TO HIM THAT WAY!”
Then, he motioned to a very beautiful young blonde woman standing over in the corner and she came and sat next to me. She looked me right in the eyes as he said, “That’s my girl.” I immediately turned to him and said, “She’s beautiful!” And I immediately apologized and felt full of remorse because I didn’t mean to offend or hurt anyone. If I had offended anyone, I explained, it wasn’t my intention.
This was all orchestrated with the detective lawyer’s mother who is, I believe, also a public defender. Her condemnation of my sexualized language and question, “Do you know what kind of effect you have on people?” seemed to indicate profound disapproval and a wish to inflict pain or at least the feeling of discomfort. For without her condemnation of my identity, reparation could not be made to the Object-Other who was in the room. The detective’s girlfriend and his betrothed now presumably his wife; refined, demur and respectful. Upon leaving the interview he told me, “Don’t walk away.” I walked away.
Condemnation, justice, and reparation, redemption: these potentiate a subject-to-subject dialogue. Vengeance, humiliation, violation, cruelty: these reproduce evil. Presumably my sexualized behavior indicated a level of evil to state official culture that demonstrated depravity.
In a just culture, where the perpetrator is contained as a depraved human subject, the perpetrator may come to long for redemption. To find redemption, a perpetrator must despair of absolution. Relinquishing all claims to forgiveness, faithful to guilt and to memory, she must turn away from herself toward the other, committing herself to a life of restitution and reparation. This is the depressive position in recovery that allows for mourning. Forgiveness is not the perpetrator’s entitlement. When it occurs, it is a gift of extraordinary humanity: it is a recognition of transformation, of authenticity of remorse, of the desire to make reparation. And where it cannot occur, this too is a perverse gift of human communion: here the perpetrator’s crime is met and known as irredeemable. A transgression that could never be forgiven.
Thus, the “female prostitute” who find herself raped is vilified and victim blamed as depraved by a culture that exults themselves “to higher standards of conduct.” In this culture, manners matter and speech must be refined. I obviously did not fit there culture.
I believe this was a social game, like other human social games, to induce guilt and remorse, to make amends for inappropriate social transgressions. To inflict loss so the subject — patient could be allowed to mourn. This is part of “cure” in psychoanalysis.
State officials love playing games. In the psycho-therapeutic situation of analysis, these games are played, unbeknownst to the analsand in an attempt to move the person into “cure.” And they’re played all the time in state official business and court by people who are aware of the knowledge of social interaction and outcomes: Game Theory.
Source Reading:
Benjamin, Jessica. (1988). “The Bonds of Love.” New York. Pantheon Books.
Grand, Sue. (2000) “The Reproduction of Evil: A clinical and cultural perspective.” Hillsdale, NJ. The Analytic Press. Chapter 8. The Problem of Redemption. (pg. 147–170)
