a.  Old testament: Amnon en Tamar    Samuël, II - 13

In the course of time, Amnon son of David fell in love with Tamar, the beautiful sister of Absalom, son of David.

Amnon had a friend named Jonadab, a very shrewd man. He asked Amnon, "Why do you, the king's son, look so haggard morning after morning? Amnon said to him, "I'm in love with Tamar."

"Go to bed and pretend to be ill," Jonadab said. "When your father comes to see you, say to him, 'I would like my sister Tamar to come and give me something to eat. Let her prepare the food in my sight so I may watch her and then eat it from her hand."

So Amnon lay down and pretended to be ill. When the king came to see him, Amnon said to him, "I would like my sister Tamar to come and make some special bread in my sight, so I may eat from her hand.” David sent word to Tamar: "Go to your brother Amnon and prepare some food for him." So Tamar went to the house of her brother and made bread in his sight. But when she took it to him to eat, he grabbed her and said, "Come to bed with me, my sister."  

"Don't, my brother!" she said to him. "Don't force me. Such a thing should not be done in Israel! Don't do this wicked thing. What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace? And what about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools in Israel.” But he refused to listen to her, he overpowered and raped her.

 Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her. Amnon said to her, "Get up and get out!" "No!" she said to him. "Sending me away would be worse than the other wrong you did to me”. But he refused to listen to her. He called his personal servant and said, "Get this woman out of here and bolt the door after her."

b. From: The men who killed me. Rwandan survivors of sexual violence

Anne-Marie de Brouwer & Sandra Ka Hon Chu (Editors). Douglas & McIntire, Vancouver/Toronto/Berkeley, 2009

 In the one hundred days of genocide that ravaged the small Central African nation of Rwanda from April until July 1994, about one million Tutsi and Hutu people were killed, and an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women and girls were raped. Rape was the rule, its absence the exception. Many women were murdered following rape.

“I want to share my testimonial with you for two reasons: I want the world to know what happened here in Rwanda and what we had to endure, and I want to heal myself by unburdening my heart. When more people learn the truth, I hope that their voices will add to the chorus of those ensuring such crimes never happen again.”

 “Going to my older sister’s house I came across a roadblock and Hutu militia interrogated me about where I was going. I denied that I was Tutsi. But they said they knew that my older sister was a Tutsi, and that I must be one too. One of the Hutus said he knew where my sister’s house was and would take me there. Instead he took me to a narrow ditch, where he took my baby from my back. He threw me in the ditch and raped me. He abandoned me there and I spent two days in that ditch. During that time my daughter rolled into the ditch beside me, so I was able to hold her next to me and breastfeed her.”

“Eventually French soldiers loaded us into a vehicle to take us to a camp in Cyangugu. The UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) brought us food. But we also needed firewood and went out to collect some. Suddenly a French soldier appeared out of nowhere, grabbed me by the arm, took me into a trench, took my baby of my back, slapped me, pushed me into the trench and raped me while five other French soldiers watched. He behaved like a wild animal. When he finished raping me, the others raped me too, one by one until all six had their fill. They did to me whatever perversion came to their minds.

After they were finished they threw my baby on top of me in the trench.”

“When I reflect on my lost childhood, I have a feeling of such extreme sadness. I lament whenever I remember all the dreams that I once cherished and that are now forever lost. I lament when I remember all those men who repeatedly raped me during the genocide, those same men who broke and destroyed me and every single aspect of my life. Those same men who killed me, slowly but effectively.”

c. Neel Doff: Jours de famine et de détresse     

Neel Doff, better known as Keetje Tippel in the Netherlands, grew up in the slums of Amsterdam by the end of the 19th century. Determined to fight her way up she started serving as a model for several renowned Belgian painters and sculptors. Years later, when looking at youngsters through the window of her stately home in Antwerp, the hurtful memories of her past come to life. She pours out her heart and soul in her first book Jours de Famine et de Détresse (Days of Hunger and Distress).

“Once again we were without food. The children sat scattered in the room, all of them faint with hunger. Mother’s face was burning with fever and the blinking of her eyes showed how bad she was; I was shivering and shaking too. My eldest sister had left us and we were waiting for father, who had gone out looking for some earnings early that morning. He came home drunk and asked for food. 

I looked around and understood something terrible was going to happen if we did not find a way out soon. Then I took a decision. I fastened a train to my skirt, combed my hair over my forehead, made myself presentable as well as I could (feeling sorry for not having any powder or rouge as I had seen whores wear) and told my mother

that I went out. She wanted to come with me to carry the food home as fast as she could. 

Once in the middle of the town I asked her to stay at a little distance. After only a few moments I heard someone behind me whisper in my ear: “Sweetie, hi sweetie, come with me.” A giant of a man followed me and took me to a house of ill repute. He treated me with a lot of caution as if afraid he would break me. He could not help laughing about my black face and my thinness and he had a lot of fun about my scraggy body. 

Back in the street again I ran to my mother. We bought some meager food and from the bottom of the stairs we yelled to the children upstairs: “We’ve got bread, we’ve got bread!” After a few days our household ran as smooth as ever. The children ate in time, were bathed and went to school; mother kept herself busy with her chores; father had stopped drinking, made coffee in the evening and peeled the potatoes. Only I lay curved on the old couch I used for a bed, shaking with tears.”

d.  From: The Magdalene sisters. Marita Conlon-McKenna

When Esther Doyle, a simple Irish girl, is betrayed by her lover and left unmarried and pregnant, the sea and the sky are both lost to her. She is sent by her family to the Holy Saint Convent in Dublin, where, trapped behind high granite walls, she works in the infamous Magdalen laundry while she waits for the birth of her baby. It is the home for wayward girls and fallen women.

 Sister Vincent requested her to sit in a chair. “You’ve lovely hair,” she murmured, fingering it. “Then don’t cut it sister, please!” Esther pleaded. “I’ll tie it up, promise.” “Long hair can get stuck in the machinery here,” replied the nun and she took the scissors. “Now you can run up and change, then I’ll bring you down to the laundry.” Insulted and angry, Esther didn’t trust herself to reply.

The Maggies worked long and hard, toiling like slaves of old, washing load after load of soiled laundry. The nuns called them “the penitents”. They considered Esther a sinner, a fallen woman. She knew that. She could see the way they averted their gaze from her swelling belly, turning up their noses and curling their lips with disdain.

Her baby was born easily: Roisin, a perfect baby girl! Holding her newborn baby in her arms, Esther tried to forget that she was only another unwed mother, in the care of the nuns of the Magdalen laundry. Where her child was born didn’t matter. For now, nothing mattered, nothing was going to spoil the love and joy that her little daughter had brought into her lonely life.

Away in the mother-and-baby home, Esther felt as if she were marooned on an island, far from the pain of the past nine months. The days were slipping too fast, her time with her baby was running out and sister Bridget told her: “I think you might be able to return to work soon, you know that you can visit Roisin in the evenings and feed her; well, for a while longer anyway...”

Then, one night after work, when she had walked across to the annex as usual, she realised that Roisin was not lying in her cot with the beige-coloured blanket she had knitted her. A newborn lay in her place. Sister Bridget came out of her office: “It was all agreed when you came here Esther. You know babies can’t stay here for ever. We will find a good home and family for your little girl now that you’ve given her up.” She had snipped two pieces of black hair from Roisin’s tiny head two weeks after she was born. It was all she had of her. “I miss my baby. I should never have agreed to giving her up. I didn’t want to give Roisin away! Sometimes I feel like a part of me is dead and it will never come back.”

e. Tehila Lieberman: the holy text of Naeeda Aurangzeb 1

I wonder who I will see, what I will feel. How I will protect myself from the stares and accusations. From the vortex of emotions sure to arise. Because I have insisted on remaining with my uncertainty – my palms open to the world – my life more than once knocked and thrown against the rocks. Still I have refused to climb back into the walled fortress of this world. How will I mingle, for even an evening, among all of these people who choose to see me as lost – who don't understand that I accept the bruises and uncertainty to gain the richness and complexity that is the world?

f. Tehila Lieberman: the holy text of Naeeda Aurangzeb 2

I want to grow aware – not of the chatter around me, or of the prayers being chanted or sung – but of two souls yearning toward each other after an infinite separation. I want to look up and for the briefest moment, see above the bride and groom, an archway, half Jerusalem stone, half light. I want to sieve through the crowd until I can sense, as I could as a child, an anonymous and mysterious presence among the dancers encircling the bride and groom, a frenzy of potential trying to squeeze itself into a vessel of limbs. I want to take myself back. Before I could imagine the cruelty of the tribe, before the threats of excommunication, the silences and the treachery. I want – and the words catch in my throat – to finally forgive myself. Forgive myself my wounds, the places that were amputated, the places that still bleed. Forgive myself for not having taken an easier path. For having grown foreign to those who loved me, for having loved so hard, for having wanted more than what people could give and for still wanting.

g.   Marthe Link: Forgive us our trespasses

I have to leave him behind

the human being who did evil to me

who took away my name

violated my being

degraded me to an untouchable

barred me from the “Source-of-Being”

the Spirit hovering over the waters.

I wasn’t able to breath her in

nor to pass on her flow

to my sister, my brother

            Forgive me?

I locked myself up

in the shell of not-being

            Forgive me

But the ocean of the Being

moves me,

moves me violently to and fro

shall I shatter

against the rocks of guilt?

            Forgive me…

By locking myself in

the well in myself dried up

the light extinguished.

I want to allow the pain of knowing

I will lift my eyes to see

I want to hear the call of my Source

I want to recognize my heart in the beating of the tides

I’ll open my mouth to take in the Spirit of liberation.

In her eternal whirl I will let go of my embitterment and will be reborn.

Then I shall open my shell to the Sun

I will blink my eyes because of the Light

I will take back my name

            I Am

As we forgive those who trespass against us.