Hi there,
I am not a victim of rape, nor have I ever been falsely accused. I am posting a message here for advice on something that I have stumbled across that may or, importantly may not be, serial rape. There is another component that I will mention later if you like which, I believe, makes what is going on wrong regardless, and I welcome your comments on all aspects of this though I think the rape aspect is the most relevant here.
Here is the story as I saw, and in the order that it happened to me and I'll tell you what I believe actually happened should you wish to hear. This is a complex story and I will not fit it all in here, so I have merged some events. I'll try and leave out what's not relevant. Please feel free to pick holes and I'll try to plug the gaps if I can.
It all starts in June of last year when I was Internet dating. I was contacted by a Russian woman living in the UK and we arranged to go on a date. We got on well and had three more dates, one with a female friend she wanted me to meet. At this time, she went back to Russia to fetch her daughter to the UK.
She had told me that she had been ill, beaten up by her ex husband and her daughter had gone to stay with her grandparents in Russia and now she was going to get her before the school term started. Everything was fine, she texted and emailed I miss you's from Russia. When she returned, I tried to arrange to meet her, but, although she assured me by phone that there was nothing wrong, I didn't actually meet her again for five weeks after her return. This was with her daughter in tow.
This meeting was odd because she told me that I had to meet her out of sight of the new apartment that she was living at. She stated that her landlord had imposed a women only rule in the place (archaic, I thought). Slightly suspicious, I asked if he was married and she said yes. So I imagined a situation where she had a room in a married couples house which was how she presented it.
To cut a long story short, this continued for some months with gaps of one week to a fortnight between dates, with everything being fine and normal on the actual dates, just with the long gaps between. She told me that she was studying for an English exam and could not spare the time ? I checked and Russians do study far more hours than western students normally do. At this time, she told me that she had taken a job with her landlord doing translation work (I recall her fretting about it) and this involved frequent travel to London too ? so it was even harder to meet.
Another strange thing about this whole relationship was that there was no sex, even after six months, which I put down to her being Russian ? stupid I now know, but I thought they were very strict about that sort of thing though I was willing to live with that.
At Christmas, we had been invited to stay with her best friend and it all went incredibly well ? or so I thought, her daughter started calling me dad and we seemed to be getting much closer. Except she actually disappeared half way through the holiday going back to her apartment and would not let me visit.
This all continued for about another six weeks, with her getting closer and closer, staying weekends etc. Though no sex.
Throughout all of this time, her landlord/boss was always in the background and she seemed to be at his beck and call ? answered his every whim. On more than one occasion, she had told me he was a ?very bad man? but would not be pushed any further about why. And she would never tell me his name.
This actually made me very curious about him, though I trusted her and figured that I would not spy as that would be wrong.
At Russian Christmas (about two weeks after ours), I had agreed to take her and a friend to London to a Russian Orthodox church to celebrate. When I got to the apartment to pick her up (she had actually said that I should drive up there), there was a real commotion going on and she asked me if I would mind driving another lodger from the place to the coach station as her landlord had thrown this woman out. The woman in question got into the back seat of my car and made a call. She was Lithuanian and though I couldn't understand what she was saying, I thought I heard the words Police and Embassy, though I thought nothing more of it. My girlfriend said that she was at the house to be taught English. She explained that is what the company she worked for did, they offered a whole package for people who are trying to get into the country as teachers, doctors and nurses (on the Highly Skilled Migrant Program), what she and her boss did was (for a fee) bring them in to the UK, do all the necessary paperwork, train them in English to the required level (there's an exam immigrants have to pass I believe) and place them in Schools or Hospitals. A complete re-location package.
Early in February, she gave me her business card. By this time, she still hadn't told me her boss's name, so I thought I would find out by looking at the company registration on the Internet. I looked up the company, and rather than finding his name on there listed as a director, I found my girlfriends name, the name of the friend I had met months back and a woman partner who also had a Russian name that I had never heard of.
All of this came as a complete shock as my girlfriend had never mentioned that he had made her a company director. ?He made me sign some papers? is how she explained it. I explained to her how he was probably ripping her off ? a company director has no special financial privileges and is responsible for the good running of a company - as he was not a director, he did not want to be responsible (even though he was in charge). At this point - and this was all done in the form of a blazing row - she told me what had been going on. ?There is a lot of sex going on?. She told me that he was some kind of sex addict and that he was ?importing? women for sex. She said that he brought them into the country and promised them that in return for the services I mentioned above that he required sex from them. Until the completion of their stay with him, he can ask them for sex at any time.
Now this is an important point ? the way this is described to me, he does not force them physically.
If they refuse, he simply throws them out (like the Lithuanian woman).
I asked my girlfriend why she stayed there, and she says that he had her paperwork, passport, visa etc. and that she can not leave him until she gets them back. She assures me she is in control of the situation and please just let her deal with it. It would take about a month. She tells me that there are two ways through the course, one is to pay your way with money (she says this is what she did ? no I didn't believe her) and the other is to pay with sex.
OK, maybe you don't believe me, I think the police didn't. If so treat it as hypothetical. Certainly it is all hearsay and couldn't go near a court.
Is this rape? These women are brought into the country without knowing what is going to happen to them. It is not until they are in the house that he gives them the choice. They are in a strange country with a strange man. The options are to go back to where they came from or consent to sex. Many of these women are desperate to leave the countries they came from. He also does not tell them he is already married and to Russian woman that fact is very important as far as consent is concerned.
I also wonder if they do all consent. If not and they are raped, what are they going to do ? they are from countries where men's attitude to women is completely different and domestic violence is rife, the police are simply there to pay money to and they can't even read the signs or use the phones. They are in the middle of the countryside too. This all happens within one or two days of them getting to this country. If he did rape them, he could almost certainly talk them out of a complaint even if they were going to make one.
I am about one third of my way through this story and it is already too long. I think you'd better say if you want to hear the rest. I have told the police, but to say they didn't do a proper investigation is a major understatement. They have not spoken to any of the women who stayed at the place (I don't know exactly how many, but double figures almost certainly). I worked out what was actually going on with the help of two other women ? the police have not spoken to them despite being given an address. They simply made an appointment to see him, and my (now ex) girlfriend and the original friend I met ? all (I now know) complicit in what went on ? they all denied knowledge and that is the end of it as far as the police are concerned. It hasn't even been recorded as a complaint (they need one of the non-English speaking women they haven't spoken to to make a complaint apparently), so if any further allegations are made, whoever investigates them will know nothing of what I have said. Apparently the police visited the house where all this happened a couple of years ago too, but I am not sure if a complaint was recorded then either.
You may not believe what I have said, at the moment it feels like no-one in authority does, but I know it is the truth and that is what truly terrifies me and still keeps me awake at night four months later. There is more and worse to say, maybe that will stretch your credulity, so maybe you would just like to discuss whether or not this situation, if the woman consents, is rape.
I am not a victim of rape, nor have I ever been falsely accused. I am posting a message here for advice on something that I have stumbled across that may or, importantly may not be, serial rape. There is another component that I will mention later if you like which, I believe, makes what is going on wrong regardless, and I welcome your comments on all aspects of this though I think the rape aspect is the most relevant here.
Here is the story as I saw, and in the order that it happened to me and I'll tell you what I believe actually happened should you wish to hear. This is a complex story and I will not fit it all in here, so I have merged some events. I'll try and leave out what's not relevant. Please feel free to pick holes and I'll try to plug the gaps if I can.
It all starts in June of last year when I was Internet dating. I was contacted by a Russian woman living in the UK and we arranged to go on a date. We got on well and had three more dates, one with a female friend she wanted me to meet. At this time, she went back to Russia to fetch her daughter to the UK.
She had told me that she had been ill, beaten up by her ex husband and her daughter had gone to stay with her grandparents in Russia and now she was going to get her before the school term started. Everything was fine, she texted and emailed I miss you's from Russia. When she returned, I tried to arrange to meet her, but, although she assured me by phone that there was nothing wrong, I didn't actually meet her again for five weeks after her return. This was with her daughter in tow.
This meeting was odd because she told me that I had to meet her out of sight of the new apartment that she was living at. She stated that her landlord had imposed a women only rule in the place (archaic, I thought). Slightly suspicious, I asked if he was married and she said yes. So I imagined a situation where she had a room in a married couples house which was how she presented it.
To cut a long story short, this continued for some months with gaps of one week to a fortnight between dates, with everything being fine and normal on the actual dates, just with the long gaps between. She told me that she was studying for an English exam and could not spare the time ? I checked and Russians do study far more hours than western students normally do. At this time, she told me that she had taken a job with her landlord doing translation work (I recall her fretting about it) and this involved frequent travel to London too ? so it was even harder to meet.
Another strange thing about this whole relationship was that there was no sex, even after six months, which I put down to her being Russian ? stupid I now know, but I thought they were very strict about that sort of thing though I was willing to live with that.
At Christmas, we had been invited to stay with her best friend and it all went incredibly well ? or so I thought, her daughter started calling me dad and we seemed to be getting much closer. Except she actually disappeared half way through the holiday going back to her apartment and would not let me visit.
This all continued for about another six weeks, with her getting closer and closer, staying weekends etc. Though no sex.
Throughout all of this time, her landlord/boss was always in the background and she seemed to be at his beck and call ? answered his every whim. On more than one occasion, she had told me he was a ?very bad man? but would not be pushed any further about why. And she would never tell me his name.
This actually made me very curious about him, though I trusted her and figured that I would not spy as that would be wrong.
At Russian Christmas (about two weeks after ours), I had agreed to take her and a friend to London to a Russian Orthodox church to celebrate. When I got to the apartment to pick her up (she had actually said that I should drive up there), there was a real commotion going on and she asked me if I would mind driving another lodger from the place to the coach station as her landlord had thrown this woman out. The woman in question got into the back seat of my car and made a call. She was Lithuanian and though I couldn't understand what she was saying, I thought I heard the words Police and Embassy, though I thought nothing more of it. My girlfriend said that she was at the house to be taught English. She explained that is what the company she worked for did, they offered a whole package for people who are trying to get into the country as teachers, doctors and nurses (on the Highly Skilled Migrant Program), what she and her boss did was (for a fee) bring them in to the UK, do all the necessary paperwork, train them in English to the required level (there's an exam immigrants have to pass I believe) and place them in Schools or Hospitals. A complete re-location package.
Early in February, she gave me her business card. By this time, she still hadn't told me her boss's name, so I thought I would find out by looking at the company registration on the Internet. I looked up the company, and rather than finding his name on there listed as a director, I found my girlfriends name, the name of the friend I had met months back and a woman partner who also had a Russian name that I had never heard of.
All of this came as a complete shock as my girlfriend had never mentioned that he had made her a company director. ?He made me sign some papers? is how she explained it. I explained to her how he was probably ripping her off ? a company director has no special financial privileges and is responsible for the good running of a company - as he was not a director, he did not want to be responsible (even though he was in charge). At this point - and this was all done in the form of a blazing row - she told me what had been going on. ?There is a lot of sex going on?. She told me that he was some kind of sex addict and that he was ?importing? women for sex. She said that he brought them into the country and promised them that in return for the services I mentioned above that he required sex from them. Until the completion of their stay with him, he can ask them for sex at any time.
Now this is an important point ? the way this is described to me, he does not force them physically.
If they refuse, he simply throws them out (like the Lithuanian woman).
I asked my girlfriend why she stayed there, and she says that he had her paperwork, passport, visa etc. and that she can not leave him until she gets them back. She assures me she is in control of the situation and please just let her deal with it. It would take about a month. She tells me that there are two ways through the course, one is to pay your way with money (she says this is what she did ? no I didn't believe her) and the other is to pay with sex.
OK, maybe you don't believe me, I think the police didn't. If so treat it as hypothetical. Certainly it is all hearsay and couldn't go near a court.
Is this rape? These women are brought into the country without knowing what is going to happen to them. It is not until they are in the house that he gives them the choice. They are in a strange country with a strange man. The options are to go back to where they came from or consent to sex. Many of these women are desperate to leave the countries they came from. He also does not tell them he is already married and to Russian woman that fact is very important as far as consent is concerned.
I also wonder if they do all consent. If not and they are raped, what are they going to do ? they are from countries where men's attitude to women is completely different and domestic violence is rife, the police are simply there to pay money to and they can't even read the signs or use the phones. They are in the middle of the countryside too. This all happens within one or two days of them getting to this country. If he did rape them, he could almost certainly talk them out of a complaint even if they were going to make one.
I am about one third of my way through this story and it is already too long. I think you'd better say if you want to hear the rest. I have told the police, but to say they didn't do a proper investigation is a major understatement. They have not spoken to any of the women who stayed at the place (I don't know exactly how many, but double figures almost certainly). I worked out what was actually going on with the help of two other women ? the police have not spoken to them despite being given an address. They simply made an appointment to see him, and my (now ex) girlfriend and the original friend I met ? all (I now know) complicit in what went on ? they all denied knowledge and that is the end of it as far as the police are concerned. It hasn't even been recorded as a complaint (they need one of the non-English speaking women they haven't spoken to to make a complaint apparently), so if any further allegations are made, whoever investigates them will know nothing of what I have said. Apparently the police visited the house where all this happened a couple of years ago too, but I am not sure if a complaint was recorded then either.
You may not believe what I have said, at the moment it feels like no-one in authority does, but I know it is the truth and that is what truly terrifies me and still keeps me awake at night four months later. There is more and worse to say, maybe that will stretch your credulity, so maybe you would just like to discuss whether or not this situation, if the woman consents, is rape.
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