Inconceivable is the story of one such rape. If Memories of Murder is a retelling of a difficult case from the point of view of the police, Inconceivable is a recollection of the pain and hurt of rape from the point of view of the victim. Perhaps a more accurate description would be that it chronicles the numerous deaths of an 18-year-old girl.
The first death of a teenager – Mary is home alone at the weekend, she stays up late, talking on the phone with a friend until 4am, and finally falls asleep. She had just fallen into a dream state when, in the chaos, she felt what seemed to be someone approaching. She woke up with a start and before she could scream out, she was threatened with a knife to shut her mouth, a pocket knife she kept in the kitchen, held in the hand of a man wearing a hood. “If you scream, I’ll kill you.” Those were the first words they had spoken since they met.
The strange man blindfolded her with fire, gagged her and tied her hands and feet. In a darkness, the assault began. She was only 18 years old, sleeping nicely at home, she didn’t know why a man had appeared out of nowhere, she couldn’t fight back and no one came to her rescue. She was in tears and felt like she was slowly dying. The young girl’s second death – the man was gone. Before leaving, he fished her learner’s licence out of her bag and opened the document and laid it on her stomach. “Click,” said the man, and even with blindfolded eyes he could feel the sudden thrill of the flash coming on. “If you dare tell anyone, I’ll publish the photo.” She heard the man say this, then pack up his things and leave. When there was silence around her, Mary finally dared to move and her first instinct was to go ahead and close the back door where the man had come in. Only then did she cut the rope, find her mobile phone and start calling her family and friends. Before she knew it, the police arrived, many, many strangers appeared in the house, and her foster mother, whom she had not seen for a long time, rushed to comfort her.
Judith’s foster mother, Mary’s nth foster family matriarch, was one of the kinder people to Mary during her long adoption. Mary was placed on the living room sofa, wrapped in a comforting blanket, and watched blankly as the men walked around. Finally, a tall male policeman came over, knelt down and asked Mary, “Can you tell me what happened? All the details you remember.”
The question was like a switch, reopening painful memories that Mary had desperately tried to forget. The memories she had so easily ignored came crashing down on her, wrapped in the panic of being blindfolded, the struggle of being bound, the desperation of being forced. Mary closed her eyes and slowly recounted everything that had happened last night. The time, the place, the strange man, the blindfolded eyes, the familiar knife, the shoelaces that bound her. Mary’s account was as calm as possible and her answers to questioning as detailed as possible, until the police officer interrupted her. “Did he penetrate you with his xx or his fingers?” The question, so blunt as to be offensive, made Mary feel humiliated for a moment. Calmness could no longer be disguised. That suffocating sense of near-death swept over her once more.
The young girl’s third death – Relieved to have survived the young male officer’s detailed interrogation, Mary thought the nightmare was over. Little did she know that this was only the beginning. The male officer handed over the statement to the officer, who turned and said, “I need to ask you a few questions about what happened.” This was prefaced by the kindly addition of “I know this is difficult”. Of course, we all know that the subtext of such a statement from a leader is. It’s hard, but you have to do it. Mary was confused, hadn’t she just finished asking? Why do you want to ask it again? The same question all over again? She is aggrieved, helpless and confused. After calling the police, instead of seeing the murderer caught, she is interrogated and questioned over and over again as if she were a prisoner. The reason for this confusing repetition of interrogation is simply “because I am in charge”. And why did the young male officer just now have to do this? I don’t know.
So Mary had to follow the officer’s questioning, forcing herself once again to review the details of last night and peel back the bloody scabs she had just made. The nightmare had struck once more.
The young girl’s fourth death – Unlike a normal case, the determination of rape is complex. The collection of the offender’s DNA, the extent of the injuries to the body and the treatment of the victim all have to go through the hospital. So, soon after the inquest, Mary was sent to the hospital to preserve the evidence as quickly as possible. Many people may not be aware of this process of evidence preservation: the Full body photographs, urine collection, internal peeping …… follow Mary through one item in silence, as if her own shame was being slowly ravaged. Gradually, Mary’s expression became numb. Having gone through one psychological “death” after another, Mary no longer feels sad or upset about it. She learns to wrap herself in indifference and to be hurt by all kinds of people without expression. Similar scenarios have been shown in other films.
In Carnival, the same rape case, the same physical examination, the young girl Wen lying on her elevated legs in a hospital bed, watching one doctor after another pass her by, observe her and leave her again. At the end of the examination, Xiao Wen is sitting on the edge of the bed with the same expressionless face as Mary. If being stripped naked and hurt when the assault occurred was a sudden and harrowing experience, then after the assault, various strangers coldly forced them to take off the clothes they had just put on again, piece by piece, like a dull knife cutting into flesh. They are no longer recalling the memories of that night, but actually reliving the fear and shame of it.
The numbness and expressionlessness after being killed over and over again, just out of desperation. Once thinking the pain was just a nightmare, they woke up to find that the reality was just as dark as the nightmare. When darkness comes too quickly, one stops expecting light.
The Nth Death of a Teenage Girl – After reading this, I thought I would become invulnerable to the sword after experiencing Mary. Could it be any worse?
It would. It turns out that whenever you think this is the lowest point of your life, God always has a bigger surprise for you. As time went on, the police harvested thicker and thicker statements of questioning and more and more people learned about what had happened to Mary. At first, people comforted her. Gradually, people got fed up with her. Eventually, people began to suspect her. Why was Mary disliked even though she did not wash her face in tears every day and repeat her sufferings when she met people, like Mrs Xianglin? The reason is precisely that she did not wash her face in tears.
As a young victim, she was too calm, one might even say apathetic. A tragedy of this magnitude happening to herself and she doesn’t cry or cry after a few days? It wasn’t right. The seeds of suspicion started to spread from her adoptive mother, and as word spread, everyone thought it was abnormal for her not to cry. See, to be a sister-in-law is to be ridiculed, not to be a sister-in-law is to be suspected. Throughout history, there may never be a ‘perfect victim’ in people’s minds. The police also began to re-examine, comparing the discrepancies in the details of each statement and pressing Mary to see if she was lying. All sorts of baiting questioning, using the power of words to force Mary to admit that she was telling the big lie to get attention. We can’t catch the culprit, but we can make the case not exist!
Mary, who is being tortured in turn, tries at first to explain, to make the police believe her. But one only believes what one wants to believe. If the case is true and the culprit exists, then the police will have to put more effort into catching a criminal they are not sure of catching. But if the case is false, then all the trouble is solved. Sacrifice her alone for the benefit of the whole community. Mary had given in. She gave in, struggled, and finally returned to peace, mourning.
Her friends and family, who had previously comforted her, turned abruptly, cursed her, left her and mocked her.
The court sent her a summons and she was charged for filing a false police report. The media was all over her, everyone called her a “big liar” and her former best friend set up an abusive website just for her. Mary, who had survived the assault, experienced a more complete social death a week after calling the police. A case of not being believed. A girl who was “killed” by everyone. In a reversal of events, ten months later, female police officers in another state solved a serial rape case and found more photographs of the victims in the home of the man they had caught.
Twenty-eight victims, ranging from 65-year-old widows to young girls just coming of age, were pictured, including Mary. It was only ten months after Mary had been discredited as a big liar that she was finally vindicated. Some figures show that in reality only one fifth to one third of rape cases, the victim will choose to go to the police, and of those who do, some victims are reluctant to give testimony, making it very difficult to solve the case. A large part of the reason for this situation is the victims’ mistrust of the police. They do not believe that the police will do their best to catch the culprit, so they prefer not to report to the police or cooperate with the investigation, rather than be victimised again. And this distrust is due to the fact that there are countless Mary’s who have been victimised before. The reason that victims’ testimonies sometimes vary is that people who have experienced severe trauma, or threats to their somatic integrity, can develop a certain mental disorder known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The brain’s self-protective mechanisms automatically avoid situations or people and events related to the traumatic experience, and may even tamper with or erase some of the details of the memory.
Think back to your most traumatic experience. Is it so clear that it seems to be right in front of you, or has it become a blur? How could the victim, who was already on the verge of collapse, withstand such a grooming interrogation when the police kept pressuring Mary during the interrogation? From the moment the police ask Mary to repeat that night over and over again, Mary’s tragedy is already doomed. My favourite part of the story is at the end, when the culprit is arrested and someone interviews Mary and asks her if she regrets calling the police.
Mary says, “No, so that no one will ever be hurt again.”
