Felix Rojas, 44, arraigned after video showed him performing sexual acts on unresponsive passenger
Authorities in New York have charged a man with attempted rape after surveillance video taken showed him performing sexual acts on an unresponsive passenger who was later determined to have died.
Police have been looking for suspects in the case for weeks, after footage captured two different people robbing the corpse of a man on a train traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan, one of whom allegedly sexually violated him.
Felix Rojas, 44, was arraigned on Tuesday, three weeks after authorities said he abused the male victim inside a subway car. Rojas, who was arrested on Sunday, has also been charged with attempted grand larceny.
This is a really important point and definitely not how I wanted that to be interpreted. I agree 1000% with all of this
I think forcing another person to go through that process, whatever process that might be for them, is the essential thing that makes it the crime that it is, but I definitely don’t mean to say that a survivor needs to have a specific experience. It’s the heinous nature of making someone a survivor and forcing them to go through that personal journey that sets it apart as a particular kind of harm to me.
Apologies my initial statement was clumsy here, and thank you for your reply because I really do think all the points you made are extremely important.
I appreciate your thoughtful response and consideration of how you phrased this originally. I know you are making the point with the best of intentions in trying to ensure that the word “rape” isn’t diluted down.
I struggled for many years to move beyond my experiences of being raped. I’m in a good place now, but it took time. I generally wouldn’t say I’m suffering from it any more (even if there may be moments where I’m triggered), so I think the comment here just hit me hard.
I also know there are other victims who have gone through weird levels of guilt and self-doubt because they haven’t felt the level of suffering that’s “expected.”
We both have the same desire here, but slightly different stances on where that line should be drawn and that’s ok.
Thank you.
Yeah, I’ve struggled a bit to process a really good friend of mine being raped years and years ago, and the “weird levels of guilt and self-doubt” is something I experienced in my own way, because I thought I got traumatized “more” than my friend did (though I know now that’s not how trauma really works) and thought that was selfish of me (which I know now was a silly thing to think), and sorting all of that stuff out was a big part of my own journey. And I guess watching my friend wrestle with that stupid “what is the right way to feel about what happened to me and how should I perform those feelings” aspect of trauma, and watching her have to deal with other people’s feelings about her feelings, and hearing her “joke” multiple times about how being murdered would have been less of an inconvenience for her is all a big part of what makes me feel like I do about what rape is and isn’t.
Thank you a million times over for understanding.
That’s hard to deal with. You are clearly an empathetic person with deep concern and care for this friend.
When dealing with grief, the best practice is to not seek solace/comfort from someone on a more inner circle of the grief (with the circles being like immediate family > close friends > extended family, and so on). Like it would be generally seen as inappropriate if a man’s wife died and her coworker went to him to process their grief.
Your friend’s ‘joke’ about murder summarizes simply how a lot of victims feel like rape is a loss of self, of personhood, in a way that parallels the loss of that in death—except the victim has to live through it and process it. So getting back to the grief circles, with rape those same circles may exist except with the survivor at the center. And it seems like you needed your own space to process the grief but you were trying to respect the circles and so you didn’t have support in that.
I’m just rambling thoughts that all mirror what you’ve said—I think I’m just trying to acknowledge what you experienced in my own words.
I hope you and your friend are more at peace now or at least on your way to it <3