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Skeptic
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 Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 9:04 am Post subject: Rachel North feature in G2 |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2123219,00.html
| Quote: | Survival instinct
Rachel North survived a horrific rape attack and the 7/7 London underground train bomb, before becoming the victim of a vicious cyberstalker. As she publishes a book about it all, she tells Julie Ferry why her faith in human nature is stronger than ever
Wednesday July 11, 2007
The Guardian
Rachel North is late - something, she tells me, she detests. However, as she breezes into the central London bar, where we have arranged to meet, it becomes clear she has a good excuse. "They got her," she exclaims. The woman in question is Felicity Lowde, a cyberstalker who has waged a vicious and long-term hate campaign against North and who went on the run in April, when she was convicted in absentia of harassment. A warrant for her arrest was issued, and, on the day I meet North, Lowde has finally been detained by police in East London.
North, 36, is clearly pleased she can shut the book on this chapter of her life. As she talks, though, there are signs that seeing her stalker in court for the first time was more traumatic than she is letting on - she chatters anxiously and orders a glass of wine to "steady her nerves". Nevertheless, there is no negativity, just determination, logic and a friendly openness.
North's outlook is particularly admirable when you consider everything she's been through in the past five years. In July 2002, she survived a horrifically violent rape in her own home and then - just as she was recovering psychologically - she was in the first carriage of the Piccadilly line train that was blown up by a suicide bomber on 7 July 2005.
Today she is telling her story as she prepares to publish her memoir, Out of the Tunnel. It details much of the last few years - the rape, the choking blackness of the tube, every humiliating message posted by her stalker. "The whole writing thing was an accident," she says. "I didn't think, 'I've been raped, I know ... I'll write a book.' However, I found that writing about it helped so I posted on a message board for rape survivors. It was partly to do with the fact that my attacker had told me to be silent. He had said: 'Don't you speak, don't you say a word bitch, ever, or I will kill you,' and I somehow felt that I'd got the power back by putting it down in black and white."
North, who previously worked in advertising and now works full time as a writer and campaigner, speaks in a matter-of-fact voice as she recalls the night of the rape. She was asleep after an evening out with friends when she heard a knock on the front door. Thinking it was her partner, J, a lawyer who often worked late, she went to let him in. She immediately realised that the shadowy figure outside the door wasn't J's, but, when she questioned the man, he replied that he was a neighbour and that there had been an accident. As North opened the door a crack, her ordeal began.
"He must have followed me home and worked out that the house was empty. It was the perfect situation for him, as he could do what he wanted with me then rob the place afterwards," she says. "When he was caught, his version of events was that I had invited him in for sado-masochistic sex, which was demented because I had 40 separate injuries."
North is convinced she only managed to survive the rape because she played dead. After a particularly vicious blow to the head, she held her breath until the attacker eventually left, at which point she passed out. When she woke up, naked with her hands bound behind her back and a wire noose around her neck, she managed to raise the alarm and was taken to hospital by the police.
"Less than 5% of rape trials result in a conviction, and it infuriates me. One of the things I wanted to make clear to people in the book is how horrible and difficult it is to go through that process. You don't just walk into a police station, make up a rape story on a whim, get made a cup of tea and then the man is put in prison - that's not how it works. They poke you and prod you, take blood and scrape under your fingernails. If you have just been raped and someone has to put their fingers inside you and start scratching around, it is really degrading. You have to go through the whole police interview and the rape trial, which is horrendous, and yet still there is this common view that women say they have been raped when really they just didn't like the bloke in the morning."
North's attacker was eventually arrested five days before Christmas 2002, after he had brutally mugged another woman. However, it wasn't until January 2004 that he was sentenced to nine years for raping North, with additional years added on for his attacks on other women. "After the rape it was a horrible struggle to get back to the point where I was OK again. I began looking for books on recovery by rape victims but there wasn't much around. In the end I found four books and I read and re-read them. I learned that the feelings I was having - such as smelling some aftershave and wanting to throw up, and the nightmares I had- didn't mean I was going bonkers. It became clear I had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)."
North decided that she wanted to share her experience with other women and agreed to write an anonymous article for Marie Claire. "The point was to tell women that it was possible to survive a rape, get justice and carry on with your life afterwards," she recalls. It was because of this article that she found herself on the crowded platform waiting to get on the tube on the morning of July 7 2005.
"I knew that the article was due to be published in the August issue, which came out on 7/7. I had started a new job and I was due to give my first big presentation that day. The station was heaving that morning and instead of the trains running every couple of minutes they were running every seven minutes.
"As soon as I started reading the article it completely flipped me. It was the first time I had actually thought about the rape properly since I had gone through it moment by moment in front of the judge and it put me right back there on that night. I read it again, realised I was late and thought, 'I'm going to have to get on this train,' so I went as far up the platform as I could to the first carriage to get away from people. It was packed and I remember the train pulling off and seeing the faces of the people who hadn't got on - they were really annoyed. And then the bomb went off."
North and her fellow passengers were thrown around by the force of the blast and plunged into darkness.
"Those few seconds were as if somebody had got me by the back of the head and thrown me on the floor. People were rolling around on top of me, the train was shuddering, someone was starting to scream and scream and I couldn't breathe - I was fairly sure we were going to die. I was on the floor checking I had my arms and legs and that I could still see and then I thought we were all going to get trampled to death. I started telling people to get up, and as I was pulling this girl to her feet I knew it was a bomb.
"At that point a message started to come through from the driver that he was going to get us out of the train. We desperately needed professional help ... I was one of the last ones to leave and I remember looking back at the carnage - that image has stayed with me."
North was one of the lucky ones - she had perforated eardrums, a big piece of metal lodged in her wrist bone and cuts and bruises - but the shock of the bomb immediately caused her PTSD to flare up again and instead of dreaming about rape, she now began dreaming about bombs.
"When I was in the darkness straight after the bomb I did think, 'Oh God, not again'. However, I was unbelievably calm and had this weird feeling that I was trained for this kind of trauma and that was why I was on the train. Of course, I fell to pieces when I got out on to the street."
Straight after the bombings, North returned to writing to try to deal with how she felt. She posted on a London message board about her experiences and, when BBC News Online saw her account, they asked her to write a survivor's diary. It was the overwhelming response she received from survivors, victims' families and the general public that prompted her to set up her own blog (rachelnorthlondon.blogspot.com) to help victims deal with their PTSD and campaign for a public inquiry into 7/7.
A researcher called Felicity Lowde befriended North online before turning against her and accusing her of "making a living off the backs of the dead". She waged a sustained cyber-campaign against North and also contacted her father, a canon in the Church of England, and made postings falsely accusing him of being involved in child sex abuse. When she went on the run, Lowde continued to stalk North from a string of internet cafes. The tip-off to police as to her whereabouts was prompted by a worldwide campaign by bloggers who attached virtual "wanted" posters of Lowde on their web pages. After my meeting with North, Lowde was finally sentenced: jailed for six months, as well as having a restraining order and a five-year antisocial behaviour order imposed on her.
After all she has been through, I wonder if North has lost faith in human nature. The answer is an emphatic no, she says. In fact she says she feels lucky to actually know how much people can depend on each other.
"I was raped and I immediately received so much love from my family and friends, the police busted their arses trying to get him convicted and my employer was incredibly understanding. With the bomb, one person gets on a tube with a bomb and 900 people stay calm, the emergency services rush to help and Londoners pull together. Finally, with the stalker, when I wrote about what she was doing, the entire blogging community got behind me. There are random bad people in this world but the number of friends and strangers who have looked after me show that most people are decent."
She married her boyfriend J earlier this year. "He is just an amazing bloke and we knew if we could get through the rape then we could get through anything. On my wedding day I was flying with happiness. I didn't think about any of the other stuff - it was just the best day of my life. Now we want to do it every year".
ยท Out of the Tunnel by Rachel North is published by The Friday Project on Friday. |
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Wokeman
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Location: Woking, Surrey, UK
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 9:43 am Post subject: |
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| No more Rachel North, please! |
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londonsound
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Location: London
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 12:19 pm Post subject: |
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sites coming along nicely eh?
Mykal
also checked out the hip hop. me likey
m |
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Skeptic
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 12:41 pm Post subject: |
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Nice one Mykal
We've got a few things to update - a lot of the film links etc go out of date very quickly.
Eventually we hope to get a proper designer to make it all look pretty.
Will you be at the protest later?
All the best
T
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budesonide
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:20 pm Post subject: |
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("It's like the British Prison Planet!" some bloke in the pub)
that is a joke yes?
i had a look and the only thing warranting that kind of desc is the way it nicks headlines from PP. and i dont trust sites that have to pay for incoming links  a real sign of an alternative agenda.
if youre looking for a "british prison planet" but without the obvious sheep mentality you could try bilderberg david icke truthseeker rinf illusions cremation of care and information liberation which are all great and dont need to pay for hits.
it does anoy me when little sites come out of the blue and claim to be the greatest thing since sliced bread but cant deliver. wing tv anyone?  |
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budesonide
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:35 pm Post subject: |
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| i just realised www.propagandamtrix.com is the actual british prison planet since its the very same prison planet webmasters and authors. doh! |
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Skeptic
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:38 pm Post subject: |
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Yes it is a joke.
I don't know what you mean by paying for links as I don't run the site, only submit articles, but I know that we pay out of our own pocket for it so your implication that we have some sort of an 'alternative agenda' is little more than paranoia.
We are simply trying to provide a useful resource for others, not claiming we are the dogs *.
Goodbye.
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budesonide
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Joined: 07 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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| beleive me they pay for text link adds, ask the webmasters about it. shaddy or what. |
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Skeptic
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budesonide
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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| that under the rug site pays for text add placement links. they are paying for hits to their site. |
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Skeptic
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:06 pm Post subject: |
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Well I know the guy who made it and have heard nothing about that.
All I know is that we pay out of our own pockets to maintain the site.
As I said, your implication that there is some other agenda is pure paranoia. It's ok, I'm used to it in these circles.
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budesonide
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Skeptic wrote: | | Well I know the guy who made it and have heard nothing about that. |
he wouldnt want that to get out
| Skeptic wrote: | | All I know is that we pay out of our own pockets to maintain the site. |
best check where your money is going
| Skeptic wrote: | | As I said, your implication that there is some other agenda is pure paranoia. It's ok, I'm used to it in these circles. |
just ask the guy about it. youll see that im not lying, just ask him. |
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Skeptic
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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I'll ask him, but I have known him since we were both nine so I have no doubt that there is nothing dodgy going on.
If you knew how few hits we get each day you'd see that there is really no conspiracy here.
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