When You Long for Justice

My longing for justice in sexual assault

As I walked out of the video recording room in the police station, so many thoughts assailed my weary mind that it felt like radio static. My oppressor could get jail time t-boned thoughts like They probably think you’re a stupid, weak, silly woman while What have I done? collided front-on while There’s no going back rear-ended them. 

I felt numb, as if not even inhabiting my body, as I followed the officer back to the interview room where my support person waited for us. I sat down next to her, holding my expression blank as I stared at the officer across from me. I told myself to prepare for the worst.

The officer looked into my eyes from behind his square glasses. Dark curls lay on his forehead, somehow utterly dry unlike my own despite being in summer attire. I wiped my face. 

“I didn’t want to say anything while you were giving your statement,” he began. 

My heart sank. A vice crushed it. I looked away.

“But I can charge him with two accounts of sexual assault.”

Woman Holding a Balance, a Baroque oil on canvas painting created by Johannes Vermeer from 1662 to 1663.

I looked up. I covered my mouth as a sob wrenched out of me. My support person squeezed my shoulder and quickly passed me a box of tissues. I bent over the table and wept. When I finally looked up, the officer nodded, a small smile tugging his lips. “And that there tells me just how relieved you are—and all that you have gone through is real.”

A cord that was pulled taut within me snapped and released what I didn’t know existed so long within me: A deep, deep longing to receive justice against my oppressor. In the midst of so few people knowing what had happened to me and some claiming they wouldn’t believe anything they hadn’t seen, I had heard from the mouth of a police officer that he not only believed me but would seek to get justice for me. 

What I didn’t know is that with this powerful affirmation and relief of being believed unleashed a whole new set of emotions inside me: wrath, rage, and anger. Now I knew someone had, for certain, severely harmed me—and that meant I must receive justice against him.

Julie Lowes explains that it’s natural for the oppressed to experience deep anger once someone affirms and believes their story, especially in cases of sexual assault. Before the affirmation, the victim lives in constant anxiety: Who will believe me? Will anyone believe me? But once someone says, “I believe you,” and agrees that what was done to them was heinous, they are given space to feel rage at the injustice done to them.¹

I left the police station empowered, but the internet soon knocked me to my knees again. “For every 1,000 sexual assaults, only 33 are reported to the police. 12 of those 33 result in charges against the suspect. Only half of those will end up being prosecuted and only half of those six will end up in convictions.”² “Canada’s system fails to prosecute 997 out of 1,000 sexual assault cases, leaving a minuscule fraction of offenders held accountable.”³ I trembled as I held my iPhone. God, what of justice?

I avoided Scripture. It enraged me to read about God’s justice and the saints he had saved throughout the centuries knowing that I would likely be found in the vast majority of sexual assault victims who watches her oppressor walk free. I screamed at God within the soundproof walls of my skull and shook my fist at him where it couldn’t be seen. How could he declare himself as our deliverer?

These questions ran through my head as I lay on the damp grass while my children climbed the slide beside me. The heavy mist clung to my eyelashes and left little clear spheres on the blades of grass at my eye level. The boys squealed and laughed, their sticky, bare feet first mounting the slick slide and then flying down after.  

I feared for my faith if my oppressor be found not guilty. God says he delivers and saves the victim, the needy, and the oppressed—but I also knew that wasn’t always true. I knew the stories of murdered missionaries and Christians living in prisons for false accusations. We all have heard the stories of criminals walking from the prison cell into the bright light of freedom early due to “good behavior.”

I looked at the percentages again. God, if you don’t bring earthly justice for me, how will I hold onto my faith?

Raged filled me at the thought of leaving the court after giving my wrenching testimony of sexual assault yet hearing the words, “I find the defendant not guilty.” It sickened me to imagine the smiles and hugs from his family after such a pronouncement. God, how will I keep living knowing he paid no price for his violent, ruthless crimes against me? You say you are a God of justice, but what about now? How can you turn a blind eye?

With my hands in soap suds or folding towels, I imagine how I could pry my own justice from the hands of fate if it refused to give it to me. I consider taking my power with words and blackening his name in every way possible yet in such a coy way as to never blacken my own. I plotted plastering every bit of evidence I have of his abuse, written in his own words, upon every bulletin board and social media platform. I researched every legal way I could take him down if the justice system would not. 

As I did, bubbles often squeezed between my fingers and my jaw hurt more than it did before. 

At the time of these inner battles, my son was going through an obsessive phase of listening to The Jungle Book. In The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, is about a boy named Mowgli who was raised by wolves after they saved him the tiger Sheer Khan as an infant. Once older, he is faced with leaving his wolf pack family and returning to the humans because Sheer Khan has turned many of the wolves not only against Mowgli but his friend Akela, the wolf leader, as well. As Sheer Khan prepares to take down the elderly Akela, Mowgli decides he will not stand by and watch injustice take place. He gets his revenge and saves Akela with the thing wolves fear most: fire.

The fire was burning furiously at the end of the branch, and Mowgli struck right and left round the circle, and the wolves ran howling with the sparks burning their fur. At last there were only Akela, Bagheera, and perhaps ten wolves that had taken Mowgli’s part. Then something began to hurt Mowgli inside him, as he had never been hurt in his life before, and he caught his breath and sobbed, and the tears ran down his face. “What is it? What is it?” he said. “I do not wish to leave the jungle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dying, Bagheera?” “No, Little Brother. That is only tears such as men use,” said Bagheera. “Now I know thou art a man, and a man’s cub no longer. The jungle is shut indeed to thee henceforward. Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears.” So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his life before.⁴

Mowgli got his revenge on those who banished him and sought to hand him over to the tiger. He showed himself to be the master and had them right where he wanted them. He forced them to submit and feel the pain of banishment they put on him. 

Yet as he stood in the quiet, having chased off his enemies and oppressors with the flame, he did not experience exuberant joy. The power of revenge didn’t eat up that feeling inside him. Instead, tears he had never felt before coursed down his cheeks and the grief he had never known grew so poignant that he believed he was dying. 

If revenge and justice didn’t heal Mowgli, if forcing his oppressors to feel the grief he himself felt, could it truly heal me? 

In the midst of my pain, I read The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. It’s a children’s novel about a mouse who loves a human princess and wants to be her knight in shining armor. It’s also about a rat in the dungeon who loves light and wants to get revenge on the princess for sentencing him to darkness. Both the rat and the mouse adore the light and all that is beautiful, and both have broken hearts in need of mending. Yet one mends crooked and the other mends right.

In the final pages of the story, the rat has kidnapped the princess and brought her to the labyrinth of the dungeon where he wants to watch her die. Yet Despereaux, despite his great fears of the dungeon (after spending some frightful time there), goes to rescue the princess. There he catches the rat at a fateful moment and holds his sewing needle sword to the rat’s heart. 

The rat had chosen darkness to get the light he wanted, which never truly works. In this moment, Despereaux chooses mercy. He lowers his needle—and looks at the princess to decide the rat’s fate. 

The princess had every reason to hate that rat, and hate him she did. Not only had he trapped her in this dungeon to die, but it had been him falling into her mother’s soup that had killed her mother and forever changed her father. And yet, “Pea was aware suddenly of how fragile her heart was, how much darkness was inside it, fighting, always, with the light. She did not like the rat. She would never like the rat, but she knew what she must do to save her own heart. And so, here are the words she spoke to her enemy. She said, ‘Roscuro, would you like some soup?’”⁵

The princess chose light, knowing how easily her own broken heart could mend crookedly too. 

That night, despite my reluctance towards Scripture as of late, I read and prayed Psalm 10. 

Rise up, Lord God! Lift up your hand.
Do not forget the oppressed.
Why has the wicked person despised God?
He says to himself, “You will not demand an account.”
But you yourself have seen trouble and grief,
observing it in order to take the matter into your hands.
The helpless one entrusts himself to you;
you are a helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked, evil person,
until you look for his wickedness,
but it can’t be found. 
Psalm 10:12–15 CSB

As I read that Psalm, the Spirit imprinted these words upon my heart: “But you yourself have seen trouble and grief, observing it in order to take the matter into your hands. The helpless one entrusts himself to you; you are a helper of the fatherless.” God sees. God knows. He promises justice and deliverance, one way or another. This world is not just, but he always is. I can trust him because he knows the truth—even if the justice system, the community, or my in-laws don’t. He knows and, when I pray to him, he sees a violated victim that he longs to deliver. 

The Spirit reminded me that deliverance isn’t always what we expect. God has already delivered me in many ways: Giving me the voice to end the violence; banding professionals and resources around me for free that have equipped me to move forward; a police officer who saw me as a broken human; a church that became a shield and net to me; friends and family who have sought to support me in any way they are able. 

God caught me as I tumbled down a dark pit and he is still drawing me closer to the light. That is deliverance.

Kate DiCamillo finishes Despereaux’s story with this:

Do you remember when Despereaux was in the dungeon, cupped in Gregory the jailer’s hand, whispering a story in the old man’s ear? I would like it very much if you thought of me as a mouse telling you a story, this story, with the whole of my heart, whispering it in your ear in order to save myself from the darkness, and to save you from the darkness, too. “Stories are light,” Gregory the jailer told Despereaux. Reader, I hope you have found some light here.⁶

My heart has been broken, and it’s in the slow process of mending—every disparate piece being pulled and sewn back together. It will never be the same, but it does not need to be crooked. I can feel rage at the injustice done to me; I can lament to God, declaring that it is a fractured and evil reality of living in a world torn asunder by sin. But I do not need to wish or seek the vilest upon my oppressor. In his brokenness, that is what he chose; but I do not need to. I can choose light, and God is delivering me from the darkness that seeks to consume my heart—and he is using both stories and Scripture.

Reflection Questions:

1. Do you feel confident in receiving earthly justice for your oppression or the harm done to you? Or do you fear injustice? Or have you already received a verdict and are left to resolve your feelings? Whatever may be your particular situation, reflect on how you currently feel. 

2. Do you find it hard to take comfort in God being just? Why? How has today’s devotional changed or not changed that? 

3. Did you know your anger over your injustice is righteous?

1. Sexual Assault (A. Groves & J. Lowes, Interviewers). (2019, February 13). Christian Counseling Education Foundation. Retrieved November 18, 2024, from https://www.ccef.org/podcast/sexual-assault

2. “How Compensation Works for Victims,” Prezler Injury Lawyers, February 26, 2021, accessed October 25, 2024, https://www.preszlerlaw-ns.com/blog/how-compensation-works-for-victims-of-sexual-assault/.

3. “Compensation for Sexual Assault Victims in Nova Scotia,” Nova Injury Law, October 7, 2023, accessed October 25, 2024, https://novainjurylaw.com/compensation-for-sexual-assault-victims-in-nova-scotia/.

4. Rudyard Kipling, “The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling,” The Project Gutenberg, March 1995, accessed October 25, 2024, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/236/236-h/236-h.htm.

5. Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread (Candlewick, 2015), 264.

6. DiCamillo, 270.