Content Advisory: This article describes a violent sexual assault and its aftermath. It is not erotic. It is personal, furious, and I am very much alive to write it and alive by writing it.
The Prologue I Wish I’d Written
I didn’t shoot Mark on sight.
I should’ve. Not because I’m a vigilante, but because my instincts were a chorus screaming wolf while my brain kept auditioning him for ‘maybe-human.’ I had the evidence, threads that didn’t match, timelines that creaked, a ‘friend’ of his named Jules who wanted to hug like a boa and was his female voice of ‘but we’re speaking the truth’. But I’m a reporter. We gather facts, not trophies. We don’t go hunting for heads. We hunt for headlines. We assume there’s a story inside smoking ruins that isn’t just another horror film. But then… the horror film kicked in the door. My own personal ‘Spooky Season’.
Hindsight is cruel and fluorescent. In the bright and harsh light, every ‘coincidence’ was choreography. Every ‘let’s talk’ was reconnaissance. Mark and Jules were not confused, wounded souls looking for a way back to the path; they were a pack. I let proximity dress itself up as proof and assumed a female voice lent credence to reported trauma. I let photos of victims blind me emotionally and I wanted to help make things better. I let the idea of redemption talk over the evidence of predation. And in doing so? I failed myself and past victims.
Never again.
It Happened.
The attack was calculated, degrading, and photographed because in Hathian, some men don’t just violate you, they try to curate it like you’re meant to be in their museum of crime. He wanted leverage for later; he wanted the story to belong to him. He wanted to say ‘But I Can Show Everyone’. In order to buy his silence he told me to delete what would prove him a criminal. The CCTV, texts, and voice recordings.
So I picked the only exit left to me… through the window …because the ground is unforgiving but it does not blackmail. Thus I reasoned I could preserve evidence, even if I might not preserve my life. My office has staff, my computer can’t be hacked by some thug. Even if I had perished, so I thought, his crimes would catch up to him and having him done for murder as well, I could live die with that. People have tried to break me into someone selfish, but from Yuugen games through to this attack, does anyone think my life is so amazing that I’d do anything, or suffer anything, to keep it? We make our calls. We roll the dice. We fall. This time, I got up. And now… I’m mad. He wanted my narrative erased, no. No. NO.
Predators aren’t original. They recycle a playbook: isolate, humiliate, record, threaten distribution, demand silence, repeat. I won’t list the details; I don’t owe anyone a guided tour of my harm and being honest, his escalation path is clear. Try and shame me by releasing what he took. When it happens, you’ll see that there’s nothing special about me. I can be beaten, abused and cry like so many others. What matters… is that you understand the shape of it: the theft of agency, the attempt to make the crime mine to hide. This is how women are abused day after day, after day. Aren’t you angry about it? Aren’t you worried for your mother, sister or daughter?
I crawled out of that night with breaks, the after-effects of the drug he injected me with and cuts and concussion and while I can purge my body of any trace of him, I will not from my mind. I will obsess and pore over it and find an angle. Then I’ll take him down properly. I am not the same girl who didn’t shoot the monster. I’m the woman who will name him and if truth be told, not worry too much when justice is applied to him. I’ll also show you a picture, because doing it first… I am the author of my further ‘shame’, at a time (now) and a place (my newspaper) where I am comfortable. See right. I look the same as most victims and nothing special in Hathian. Just average Daiyu. But it could have been someone you care about. Shouldn’t we stop this?
The Bone and The Marrow
When something like this happens, strangers push pamphlets at you, ‘healing journeys’ in hues of hospital beige. They’re not wrong, just bloodless. Here’s where I drew some comfort and from:
- Judith Herman describes recovery in three braided phases: safety, remembrance and mourning, reconnection. You don’t graduate from one to the next; you loop, lapse, return. Safety is practical (locks, allies, plans) and internal (no more bartering with self-blame). Remembrance is telling the truth without drowning in it, letting grief be grief instead of a gag. Reconnection is the audacity to imagine a future that isn’t designed by the person who hurt you. I have a bloody good imagination and I strive, day-by-day, even moment-to-moment to step forward. Fuck me? It was pathetic. Fear Me? You will.
- Bessel van der Kolk, (a Traumatic Stress Specialist who would find a position in CU very lucrative) reminds us that “the body keeps the score.” Mine does. Startle responses like tripwires. Dreams that smell like him and hurt. But healing isn’t ‘forgetting’; it’s teaching your nervous system that you lived. That you can live again and in my case, that I have agency to do something more than just live. I will grow and he has already shrunk.
- Ruthless practicality (my addition): document everything. Tell someone. Tell more than one someone. Own it. Share it. Take away his power because while I can be humiliated I live in Hathian. You want to see shit like what happened to me? It’s on your doorstep and this, this is a plea to make it stop, through means. Many. Different. Means…
So my dear reader, if you want to know what survival looks like, it’s not a movie monologue. It’s small, stubborn acts: eating when food tastes like sand. Showering when water feels like acid. Going to the HGH again without succumbing to flashbacks. Filing the report with the HPD. Texting a friend at 3 a.m. so the room has another heartbeat in it. Writing this, even though every keypress feels like glass… realising that I kinda like glass. Daiyu Tang, 1… Window 0 right? Joking, gallows-humour, because it’s my control.
If you’re a man reading this and wondering what allyship is by the way… Start here: believe, protect, amplify, and refuse the brotherhood of silence. If you’re a woman, then mostly you already knew. Bring your rage. It is clean fuel, burns fast, long and hot. Burn them. Burn their silence. Burn them out into the open from their dark holes and make them pay with jobs, money and their freedom.
When Silence Should be Challenged
Parts of this orbit touch campus life. Of course, where I was assaulted was on Campus and my belief, due to the student connections involved is that these may be current or former students. I reported to the CUPD, but then because serious business needs serious grunt, the HPD. I also contacted Columtreal University leadership because the pair who orchestrated may well be enrolled.
“Dean, this is Daiyu Tang with the Observer.
You may be aware I was attacked in my Arts Centre a few days ago by two individuals with possible links to the University. I want you to know that as a nearly graduated student, but also as the likely (and finally) non-intern editor of the Town’s paper, that if these two are students, I expect academic expulsion and delivery of them to law enforcement. Once I have recovered, you can expect my legal team personally and professionally to make sure that the Campus and surrounding areas are safer from kidnappers, rapists and thugs. Should their status as students to the University not be proven, then of course, I will be happy to clarify this.”
Response at time of publication: None. Figures.
Silence isn’t neutrality; it’s abdication. If they’re students: interim suspension, no-contact orders, full cooperation with HPD, a threat assessment, and clear communication with students. If they’re not: say so publicly and help anyway, because predation that slinks around campus doesn’t stop at the fence. It creeps into every dorm room. And? The photos Mark showed me of other victims, indicate I was not the first to be attacked. Campus his history. Lots of history. Let’s make it better together.
Moving Forward. Taking Steps. Having Motion.
I won’t surrender my mind because someone trespassed my body. I’ve handed over what I owe the law: statements, timestamps, bruises that tell whole stories. What I owe myself is oxygen and unfinished business, stories to write, crime to report on and a city to shame into being better than its habits.
Healing isn’t linear. Some days I am a cathedral; some days I am a smoke alarm, tripping at every hint of danger. But I am here. The hand in plaster will knit. The windows will be replaced. The part of me that believed people can choose against their worst impulses is not dead; she’s just not accepting applications from wolves (and she carries silver now). I am broken in places. I am unbowed in others. I am, unfortunately for them, a journalist. And I keep receipts.
By: Daiyu Tang – 4th Year Student, Hathian Observer’s Intern Editor, daughter, sister… woman.
