This article references rape, torture, and murder.
We start the week in Kenya, where on Monday, Dickson Ndiema reportedly bought a can of petrol, poured it over his girlfriend, Olympic long-distance runner Rebecca Cheptegei, and then set her alight.
Later that day, a trial begins in France. Dominique Pélicot has pleaded guilty to drugging his wife, Gisèle Pélicot, and inviting more than 80 men to rape her over the course of a decade. Gisèle, who waived her right to anonymity to ensure that “no woman suffers this” in the future, has been described by one newspaper as taking “public revenge” on her husband and the men who attacked her.
While another media outlet refers to her as a “gang-raped wife”, Gisèle has been reminded by the judge to use the words “sex scene” rather than rape when describing one of the men who attacked her while she slept, to protect the accused’s presumption of innocence. When describing another man who allegedly attacked her, she said, “One who was HIV-positive came six times. Not once did my husband express any concern about my health.” After learning of the attacks, Gisèle discovered she had four sexually transmitted diseases.
On Thursday, we learned that Rebecca Cheptegei’s organs failed – and that she died in agony.
I want to look away, but I can’t.
I scroll through X, shamefully desperate not to think about Rebecca or Gisèle. I see a video of a woman being lashed in public by a Taliban official in Afghanistan. I see that Christiana Idowu, a 21-year-old student, has reportedly been abducted and killed in Nigeria. I see live updates of the ‘Kolkata rape case’ in India, where lawyers are examining the circumstances surrounding the rape and murder of a 32-year-old trainee doctor at the hospital where she worked. I remember that in the immediate aftermath of her murder, searches for videos of the crime reportedly spiked on pornography sites.
I want to see these stories as isolated incidents, but I can’t.
I wake up thinking about Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, three little girls who were stabbed and killed by a man at a Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance workshop in Southport. Or about Carol Hunt and two of her daughters, Louise and Hannah, who were shot with a crossbow by a man in their home in Hertfordshire. As I write these words, I get a news alert that a man has been arrested on suspicion of killing Khasha Smith, a young woman who hasn’t been seen since October 2023.
The weight of the last few years of reporting on male violence against women hangs over me – and I feel guilty that I’m not able to bear it. My thoughts often return to the male violence I’ve experienced, in particular, the way one man’s curiosity turned to ecstasy as he attacked me. I can’t get the image out of my head.
And then I feel guilty for making other women’s pain and death all about me.