Three women were rescued this week from a captivity that spanned more than a decade. They were kidnapped at different times, and from disparate locations, but they have been chained up in a house in a lower income neighborhood in Cleveland for many years, undetected by neighbors. Their captor was known to the neighbors who thought nothing of him. He was uninteresting. Except that he imprisoned and raped these women over many years, resulting in children who have never known anything but captivity.
They were rescued by a man who did what so many do not--he rushed into a situation that he thought was a domestic violence scenario. Charles Rawlings has matter-of-factly described his rescue of one of the women, but in truth, it was brave of him to aid in her escape. He said with great humor that he knew something was quite wrong 'when a pretty little white girl rushed into the arms of an unknown black man'. He knew something was up with that. The woman he rescued was miraculously clear about who she was, what she had been through, and that she needed the police--immediately.
So that is all good news. But what comes next? The book 'The Room' by Emma Donaghue was published in 2010 and nominated for the Man Booker prize. It is a work of fiction, but it is a similar scenario--one woman, not three, but a child born into a room, raised by his captive mother. When they escape, it is not the end of a nightmare. Surviving unimaginable evil does not prepare you to re-enter the world. Especially not a world that has you in it's spotlight. The psychological road to recovery and safety is a long and arduous one, for the women themselves and their offspring. Mothers and children born of rape have overwhelming attachment issues--imagine how this compounds that. We should all just go away and leave them to their years of therapy in peace. Wish them well, but pay no attention to them so they can get on with the impossible task of peicing their lives together again.
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