I write letters

From RTE

Martin Cullen has described his treatment by some sections of the media following false allegations that he had an affair with a married woman as akin to 'being raped'.

Dear Minister Cullen,

You felt raped did you? I've been raped. Twice. I've been vilified before as well, in public and in a dangerous situation. Those two things are not the same.

One in four children is raped in this state. One in every three Irish women will be raped before the age of 40. How dare you appropriate this pain - physical, psychological and emotional.

Did you taste blood in your mouth when your face was knocked into the dirty floor? Did you feel your flesh tearing? Did you feel the pain? Did you have to clean yourself up afterwards trembling and scared? Were you disbelieved? Were you told that you were a slut? Were you told deserve it? Did you have to rub your skin raw to feel clean but it never worked? Did you have to wait six months to find out if you were HIV+? Did you have to wait three weeks to see if you were pregnant knowing that this country has almost no reproductive rights for women? Did you see if you could scrape enough money to get the plane to the UK just in case? Did you get any sexual transmitted diseases?

Do you wake up with flashbacks in the middle of the night? Do you suffer panic attacks in broad daylight when you hear a sound or see someone who looks like your rapist? Do you have to take anti depressants because you are too depressed to get up, too depressed to even kill yourself? Do you relive the pain every time you hear a rape joke, a bitch joke or every time you hear a politician appropriate your pain to say that he was hurt? Do you die a little inside every time you hear someone compare their sorrow to rape?

Fuck you Minister Cullen. Fuck you.

Mór Rígan