He was A Rapist?

When you do not have anyone’s consent for a physical relationship and still go on with it, it’s a rape. But what do you say it when you have the consent and yet you’re called a rapist. With the frequent news of rapes that are happening every hour in this country, can we believe in a man who has been falsely accused of being a rapist? Who do we choose to believe? Who becomes the victim here? The man or the woman?

Relationships go wrong in many ways. One of them might be when we fail to communicate. They had begun with a fling. She was crazy about him. He fell in love with her. I was the third party, an audience to the entire thing. More than often she messaged me letting me know how great he is as a person. Not once did he tell me about his relationship or the girl he was in love with. Eventually she told me she wanted to marry him irrespective of belonging to different states, castes and religion. She asked me to change him. She asked me to tell him to stop talking to other women, I denied. I knew he didn’t really flirt with anyone; he was just good with people. And more often than not girls took his sweetness for flirting.

I met him after a couple of years. He was a changed man. I asked him about his girlfriend again. He said nothing, again. I let it be. He wasn’t really the person to flaunt his personal life. It wasn’t till his break up after six months that he opened up to me. She had accused him of being a rapist. One day when her roommate saw them coming out of the washroom after making out, she confronted her. To which his girl friend said that he forced her to be sexual with him when she didn’t want to. She then called him a rapist irrespective of the fact that she had consented for the fling and he had asked her permission with every step that he took.

If I say that he forced himself on her. I would be wrong. If I say that he wasn’t affected by the accusation. I would be wrong. He moved into a different city, a different institution. But he never approached another girl. The stigma of the past couple of years shadowed him everywhere he went. Pissed by his denial to make a fresh start, I finally decided to confront his ex girl friend.

What she told me left me dumbstruck. I asked her the reason behind her accusation, had he ever forced himself on her. Instead of answering my question, all she said was that he was lusty. He was not normal. Normal people do not have lust. Only a rapist can have such lust. I repeated my question. ‘Did he force himself on you? Did he do anything against your consent?’ He is a rapist is what I got as an answer. I was furious. I told her possessing lust doesn’t make him a rapist unless he did anything to you without your consent. She didn’t have to tag him a rapist for that. Any person can become a rapist, educated or not, frustrated or not, lusty or not. You can’t predict who might become a rapist the very next instant.

But the tag was already out there. A tag that was spread among the people. A tag which made him a victim of disgusted looks and eventually loneliness. A tag which he did not deserve in the first place.

24 hours later, she called me. She told me she thought the physical relationship was temporary. She had agreed to it. She thought she will explain him later what she felt and that she did not want one. I did not know what to say to her. Had she not agreed in the first place, had she said no when she no longer wanted a physical relationship, then things probably wouldn’t have gone so far. Because in the end she finally said that he never forced himself on her but people saw what was going on between them. Everyone knew about their sexual relationship. Everyone saw her with disgust. She did not want that. And even if she didn’t mention it, accusing him was the best thing she could have done to save her reputation. As far as I know, she wasn’t even aware of what she had done in her immaturity. After talking to her I knew very well that she had no idea who a rapist is.

So who is the victim in the end? Is it the girl who gets everyone’s sympathy for having a bad relationship and a rapist as a boyfriend? Is it the boy who is still fighting against the tag of being a rapist mentally and emotionally? It is easy to believe in the girl’s story but can we be open to hear the guy’s story. And with all the crimes happening around us, do we ever care to dig out the entire story? Once tagged, the tag remains there when it shouldn’t be. Most of us just flow with what we hear and we make sure that something is added to it when we pass it on. If we look around we might find many such stories around us, but do we care enough to go that far?

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