After coffee, he tried to kiss her. She responded with surprise and indignation, having had no idea he was contemplating any such thing. She asked him to leave, but instead he held her down and raped her. When she screamed, he hit her hard in the face with a closed fist. He failed to achieve orgasm and blamed her for this, saying he would tell his friends she was a lousy fuck. Then he left.

She sat in class with him every day for the rest of the year.

“Why didn’t you report him?” the facilitator asked.

She shrugged. “This was the eighties. Girls who made rape accusations on campus were systematically shamed, even by other women. They called it slut’s remorse. They would have said I felt guilty for being easy, so I was ‘crying rape.’ They would have accused me of trying to ruin the poor boy’s life.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s married with three grown-up daughters. He has a successful psychology practice in Maine. He’s even sent me a few friend requests on Facebook. We know a lot of the same people, so he pops up on my timeline all the time.”

The facilitator made sympathetic noises about the secondary victimisation of rape survivors, and how this can go on throughout their lives. I reflected on the fact that my rapists didn’t appear in my social media feeds. We had no mutual acquaintances, no overlapping social circles.

I am that rare creature—a woman who was raped by strangers. This puts me in a tiny minority. Most women are raped by people they know.

As a case in point, the next survivor began to tell her story. It was also set on a university campus—that flashpoint for sexual abuse. This woman was much younger than the academic, but not quite as young as me. I guessed her to be in her early thirties. She was almost transparent with her milk-white skin and gingery-pink hair.

“He was my sister’s ex-boyfriend. They only went out for three months, but I’d seen him at family functions and we had always got on well. I knew he was a cat lover like me and he was also studying Fine Art. I’d always liked him, but obviously he was off-limits. I would never consider hooking up with my sister’s ex.”

The facilitator nodded, and we nodded too.We knew the rules. One’s sister’s ex-boyfriend was off-limits. Naturally.

But sometimes, things happen. In fact, things happen quite frequently.