When a rape survivor and the rapist shared a stage to narrate their story after 20 years of incident

Thordis Elva was 16 when she was physically violated by Tom Stranger who was 18 and was in Iceland on a student exchange programme. Stranger and Elva were dating for about a month when one day after school’s Christmas ball, she was quite tipsy and felt out of control. Taking advantage of the situation and being drunk himself, Stranger raped her.

Elva had tried rum for the first time, and she described “it was like a fairy tale, his strong arms around me, laying me in the safety of my bed”. Only to realise later that Stranger was taking off her clothes and forcing himself on her.

“My head had cleared up, but my body was still too weak to fight back, and the pain was blinding. I thought I’d been severed in two. In order to stay sane, I silently counted the seconds on my alarm clock. And ever since that night, I’ve known that there are 7,200 seconds in two hours,” she said.

Watch their full speech here

The duo tried their best to get past the incident only to make things worse. While Elva admitted that it took her a long time to accept that it was a rape and she was violated without her consent, Stranger tried to suppress his guilt tagging the incident as sex. But both could not remain in peace.

Finally after almost nine years, on a verge of nervous breakdown, she wrote a letter to Stranger, not for anything but peace and did not expect a reply from him. But his letter changed everything and the duo began an “honest” correspondence that lasted for about eight years. Finally, they met in person to listen to each other some 16 years later that Christmas ball.

They have now co-authored a book titled ‘South of Forgiveness’ and came together to share a stage on a TED Talk. Their video of recounting the 20 years of experience have now gone viral, with thousands getting inspired that rape is not the end, neither for the ‘victim’ nor the attacker.

Through the video, Elva draws attention to many key factors as the terms used in rape are often the root of the problem and restricts one to overcome it, also that their approach may not be an ideal one. She agrees that it’s a liberty that she can speak about it being shamed or even “killed”. Elva also concluded her evocative tale on the thought, “It’s about time that we stopped treating sexual violence as a women’s issue”.

While it’s only natural to empathise and understand Elva’s point of view, people have appreciated Stranger’s side too and many agreed with him on one idea. “Something you’ve done doesn’t have to constitute the sum of who you are,” Stranger said. Not undermining the event and taking full responsibility for the act, he said, “Don’t underestimate the power of words. Saying to Thordis that I raped her changed my accord with myself, as well as with her. But most importantly, the blame transferred from Thordis to me. Far too often, the responsibility is attributed to female survivors of sexual violence, and not to the males who enact it.”

The duo addressed the multiple issues on rape and its struggle in the TED talk and it is only expected that the book, to be released in March, would delve into intricacies further.