A System That Protects Perpetrators

There are moments when living through trauma changes the way you see every institution around you.

For many survivors of violence, the hardest truth is not what happened during the assault itself. The hardest truth is what comes afterward. It is the realization that reporting a crime does not guarantee justice, that telling the truth does not guarantee protection, and that surviving does not guarantee support.

Many people grow up believing there is a justice system. They believe that if someone commits a serious act of violence, evidence will matter, truth will matter, and accountability will follow.

Yet countless survivors encounter a different reality.

They discover a process that moves slowly, demands endless paperwork, requires repeated retellings of traumatic events, and often leaves victims feeling as though they are the ones being investigated. They watch perpetrators continue with their lives while survivors struggle with fear, financial hardship, insomnia, anxiety, and the long-term consequences of violence.

When this happens often enough, people begin to ask difficult questions.

Who is the system truly protecting?

Why are survivors expected to carry the burden of proof, emotional labour, and recovery while perpetrators benefit from procedural delays, legal technicalities, and institutional indifference?

History shows us that violence, conquest, and domination have shaped civilizations for thousands of years. The abuse of power is not new. Whether through war, exploitation, or sexual violence, those with power have often used it against those with less power.

Sexual violence remains one of the most devastating forms of that abuse.

To someone who has never experienced it, an assault may appear to be a single event that occurred in the past. For survivors, it is rarely confined to a moment in time. The consequences can echo through relationships, careers, finances, health, spirituality, and a person’s sense of safety in the world.

The violation does not simply disappear because a court date ends, a file is closed, or society grows tired of hearing about it.

This is why empathy matters.

Every judge, police officer, lawyer, prosecutor, politician, and public official who deals with survivors should understand that they are not handling paperwork. They are handling human lives.

Authority without empathy becomes bureaucracy.

Power without humanity becomes cruelty.

A society should be judged not by how comfortably it treats the powerful, but by how seriously it protects the vulnerable.

Those who commit rape deserve condemnation for the harm they have caused. Survivors deserve dignity, support, and the opportunity to rebuild their lives without being retraumatized by the very institutions that claim to protect them.

My anger is not born from hatred. It is born from witnessing suffering that should never have happened and from watching survivors fight battles they should not have to fight alone.

I pray for justice.

I pray for accountability.

I pray for a world where survivors are believed, protected, and supported.

And I pray that every person who has inflicted sexual violence, enabled it, ignored it, or minimized it comes to fully understand the magnitude of the harm they have caused.

Most of all, I pray for survivors.

May they find safety.

May they find healing.

May they find strength.

And may they one day encounter people of genuine honour, integrity, and compassion.

A final question remains:

If trust is the foundation of every healthy relationship, what does it say about a society that so often asks survivors to move on, while expecting them to ignore the profound betrayal that sexual violence represents?