The role of forgiveness in healing from sexual assault is complicated and deeply individual: There is no “right” way to react to or process sexual assault and no formula for how anyone should relate to their assaulter. Thordis Elva, who was raped in 1996 at 16 years old, and Tom Stranger, the man who raped her, know this: They’re careful to say that they’re sharing their journey of reconciliation not as an example for others to follow but to demonstrate that healing after assault is possible. Elva and Stranger are co-authors of the forthcoming book South of Forgiveness, an exploration of the attack they both call “the darkest moment of their lives” and its ripple effects on both of their lives over the two decades since. Today, TED posted their joint TED Talk, which they gave at TEDWomen2016 in San Francisco in October of last year. In the talk, they describe their years-long collaborative process of reckoning with Stranger’s actions and jointly transferring blame for the rape from Elva to Stranger.
At the time of the assault, Stranger was an exchange student in Elva’s native Iceland, there for just one year of high school. Elva recounts the night that Stranger, her boyfriend at the time, forced himself on her one night when she was drunk and unable to fight back: “In order to stay sane, I silently counted the seconds on my alarm clock, and ever since that night I have known that there are 7,200 seconds in two hours,” she says. “Despite limping for days and crying for weeks, this incident didn’t fit my ideas about rape like I’d seen on TV. Tom wasn’t an armed lunatic, he was my boyfriend, and it didn’t happen in a seedy alleyway, it happened in my own room.” Afterward, Elva and Stranger, both sensing the irreparable damage to their relationship, saw each other only a handful of times before Stranger returned home to Australia.