The bedtime story you don’t want to tell your daughter

Little Red Riding Hood is still not safe: There are many wolves who hunt girls and women. So what does it take for men to stop committing violence and rape?

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Lying naked under a man who had strangled me, I thought I was going to die. I didn’t fight back because I had his hands around my neck, it was blacking out for me. When it was done, I was just relieved. I didn’t feel dirty, so I didn’t get in the shower and scratch my skin with my nails, like I’d seen rape victims do on film. I just felt stupid. I had come home with him to have sex with him, and that’s how it ended. It was my own fault, I thought, and I felt ashamed.

But that was because I didn’t know that in so many bedrooms all over Norway there was, right then, a little red riding hood who experienced the same thing as me. 22 percent of Norwegian women are raped during their lifetime. 10 per cent have experienced it on several occasions, and 10 per cent have experienced being raped before the age of 18. One of the most dangerous things a woman can do is to become romantically involved with a man – assault rape is the exception.