Note: This post contains graphic details of a sexual assault.
In November 2015, Amber Amour claimed she was raped in South Africa.
Rape is shockingly common-place in South Africa (it has the highest incidence of sexual assault in the world) – but Amber’s rape story was different. Not because of the context or the violence involved.
It’s different because she told her story on the internet, just moments after the alleged attack occurred.
Amber, a New Yorker who was travelling in South Africa at the time, had been raped at least twice before – including as a 12-year-old-child – which lead to her becoming a campaigner against sexual violence. She was taking her anti-violence campaign around the world when she says she experienced another brutal attack.
Her first instinct was to record her experience. She told Marie Claire, “It was almost an intuitive thing. I was still in the bathroom – in the crime scene. I don’t even think I’d stood up. I just typed and typed.”
Her accounts of the rape appeared with images on Facebook and Instagram:
Amber wrote her story on Facebook in graphic detail:
And then posted about the process of gathering any DNA evidence that may have been left in and on her body (referred to as a ‘rape kit’):
The reaction to Amber’s story was swift and filled with condemnation: she was naked, she agreed to a shower, she had kissed him, he was drunk.
On January 4, she posted about her post-traumatic stress she was feeling:
“PTSD is real. I have been in Cape Town for 3 days and have had insomnia and a lack of appetite every single day here. I suppose it’s normal to be on edge when you know your rapist could walk past you in the street at any time.”
Amber, a committed vegansexual and life-long activist, wrote in Marie Claire that she believes speaking out about rape could end the culture that allows it to continue:
“No man out there wants the reputation of being a rapist. And when we start telling each other about what has happened to us – be it face-to-face, over the phone or on social media – it creates a sense of shame. But this time, it’s placed on those who are actually at fault. And that’s the way it should be.”
She encourages other women to speak out: “Opening up about rape or sexual assault isn’t as scary as you think.”
Top Comments
Of course it isn't her fault. She didn't give him consent and he is responsible for his own actions. But I hope my daughters grow up to have more common sense than to get in a shower, naked, with a bloke whose advances she's already rejected that night.
I appreciate that some advice on not putting yourself in a dangerous situation can come across as victim blaming but I don't think 'don't get naked into a shower with a drunk man you've just rejected' is more obnoxious advice than the Mayor of Cologne's advice to the raped women in Germany which is to keep “more than an arm’s length away” from strangers and for "women to “stick together in groups” during the forthcoming carnival season in Germany. I suspect in forthcoming weeks we'll find this particular incident is not exactly a hoax but a 'social media experiment' to see where people feel the boundaries of consent are (my take, if it happened as described very clearly rape but likely to be hard to prosecute even if she hadn't destroyed any physical evidence).