A rape victim has revealed in a powerful interview that she has never felt stronger than the moment she put her attacker in jail on Friday.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the man, Thomas Hofer, had used Flatmates.com.au to arrange a meet-up with the 19-year-old woman in regards to a room for rent that he had advertised. They went to dinner then drinks together, then went back to his house and though the young woman had told him she didn’t want to have sex, he flipped her on her stomach and raped her.
However, on Friday, he was sentenced to six and a half years in jail, and the victim spoke to Fairfax Media about how it felt to stand up to her attacker.
“I felt stronger than I ever had in my life to be honest,” she said. “Nobody asks to be raped. If it’s happened, it’s wrong and you need to stand up for yourself.
“Men that are like that don’t stop, you won’t be the last one. It’s really important that we stand up and fight these predators.”
In the case of Thomas Hofer, within 24 hours of the incident, he had raped another victim – a tourist from the US.
“The way he planned it … he did it twice and he told me he was meeting another girl the next night. It would have been three.
“I feel real sorry for him because he has evil in his eyes, there is no empathy. He thought he did nothing wrong. You can’t do that kind of stuff and get away with it. It doesn’t make you powerful, it makes you weak.”
In fact, she also mentioned that when power has been taken away from you in such a humiliating way, sometimes all you can do is fight back to regain the feeling of control.
“[Going to court] put me in back in control,” she said. “I took control of the situation and I made him see that it was wrong. He can’t get away with doing that to people.
“It takes something from you, you are powerless, so you need to start working out ways and regain that control that you lost,” she said. “I really think the best way to do that it is to stand up and fight.”
She hopes that her story will encourage others to ‘trust their instincts’ when it comes to these situations, saying, “if you feel like something is wrong, then it probably is.”
Hofer has been sentenced to six and a half years in jail, and will be eligible for parole in 2021.
