Psychopaths rape the soul

By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

I was reading an article the other day that talked about “justice” for victims. It said that a rape victim is “made whole” after his or her attack when the perp is put in prison. How can a victim of violent rape be “made whole,” no matter what justice is meted out to their attacker? It can’t be done.

There are some things that can never be “fixed” like they were before the damage, and I believe the “soul rape” by the psychopaths is one of those things. Some of you who have been physically raped may ask, “What do you know about rape?” Well, my bona fides are that my psychopathic sperm donor beat and raped me when I was 19, so I have been both physically raped and soul raped, and I can’t tell that one is any less “painful” or damaging than the other. Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again like he was before the rape. I will never again be a “virgin.” That doesn’t mean, though, that I can’t heal.

Shame

At the time of my physical rape I had no concept of what a “psychopath” was, but I longed for validation for my pain. Yet I felt shame that it happened to me, and a friend took me to the police in the little town where my sperm donor lived in and the event happened, where I was beaten to hell and back. I talked to the cop about the beating and he suspected what really happened and asked me point blank if he had raped me. I said, “no” because I was ashamed.

I held that shame for a long time. Through other encounters with psychopaths that raped my soul, through the summer of chaos almost 40 years after that summer I was physically beaten and raped. My sperm donor died that summer of chaos and his estate contacted me to tell me I was not going to get any inheritance from his large estate. Surprise! Though I had been NC with him for 40 years, still I was stressed by thinking about that painful summer many years before.

Beginning of healing

In that summer of chaos, 2007, my whole world fell apart and I was sitting in an RV trailer at a friend’s property at a lake in hiding from the stalker my son Patrick had sent to kill me. Reading on the Internet about psychopaths, I came across Lovefraud and my healing began ”¦ from that long ago psychical and emotional rape by an evil man, to the emotional rape my son Patrick had done to me, as well as the final realization that my “mother didn’t love me.”

The healing that I have done in the five years since that summer of 2007 has been sort of like peeling the thin layers of an onion. As I peel each one off I get closer and closer to the core. As I get deeper and deeper inside the onion, I find new layers of dysfunction and wounds that are decades old and work on healing them.

Psychopaths are all about control and what they will do (anything!) to maintain or reestablish control over their chosen victim. The “smear campaign” has been something that has frequently been mentioned by other victims. My sperm donor smeared me to every family member he and I had. Fortunately his cousins, who are now in their 80s and 90s and wonderful and supportive people, didn’t believe a word he said. First, they knew him. Second, they knew me. My half sibs, though, were children when all this happened and I do not have relationships because of his smear campaign. The men we worked with in Africa also knew him, and knew me, and none of them believed a word he said. I was fortunate there and one of those men, 20 years after the rape, became my husband. His belief in me, and support of me, was so important in my healing from the physical and emotional rape of those many years ago.

Validation

My egg donor (maternal DNA donor) had always said about my P sperm donor, “He would tell a lie when the truth would fit better.” Yet, when I told her about the rape, she said with a sneer in her voice, “Well, he said you got an abortion and that you’d yell rape.” I’m not sure why exactly it was so important to me that she believed me, but it was. I kept wanting to believe she loved me.

Reaching out for validation is important to us all. Now I am learning to validate myself. Just because someone else doesn’t believe me doesn’t mean my truth is not true. Or that my fact is not fact. I’ve said before, that just because “everyone in the world” except Columbus thought the world was flat, didn’t change the shape of the world. Facts are facts. Truth is truth. My validation of my truth, the facts I know to be true, is enough now. I don’t have to have someone else validate what I know to be true. Sure, it is nice to come here to Lovefraud and be validated, but it isn’t necessary for my healing if I accept my own validation.

The pain that we suffer—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and financially—is equivalent to the rape of our souls. We can’t ever put ourselves back together like we were before the rape; we will never again be “virgins.” Yet we can heal, we can recover, we can grow and mature and find peace. Even if the perp goes free without any visible consequences, we don’t have to let that ruin the rest of our lives, however short or long they may be.

We can learn and grow, heal and prosper. Living a good life is the best revenge.