Face To Face With My Rapist

At the age of 16, Thordis Elva was raped by her then-boyfriend, Tom Stranger. Nine years later she emailed him, beginning a raw and painful healing process that confronted the past.

- Tiffany Dunk

HER STORY

When 18-year-old Australian exchange student Tom Stranger fell for 16-year-old Thordis Elva in Iceland in 1996, it was like a chapter from a teenage romance novel … until the night he raped her.

Haunted, Elva spent years wrestling with what had happened. Finally, in 2005, she wrote Stranger an email. This sparked an eight-yearlong correspondence, culminating in the pair deciding to meet face to face. Since then, Elva, 36, a journalist and playwright, and Stranger, a landscape gardener, 38, have collaborated to speak out about violence against women and have co-written a book about their journey, South of Forgiveness (Scribe, $32.99). Here, they share their stories.

For me, falling in love for the first time, Tom seemed like a citizen of the world. There was something refreshing about him that caught my attention; I loved his accent. Everything felt romantic and respectful and was developing at a lovely pace.

That is, until the night of the Christmas dance when everything changed. We’d been seeing each other for about a month. That night I tried rum for the first time and couldn’t handle it. I spent the night in and out of consciousness, vomiting in the toilets.

I remember feeling grateful when Tom came and carried me out. Yet that sense of relief took a sharp turn when we got home. He lay me on my bed, undressed me and started having sex with me.