Sexual Violence and Victim-Blaming

Sexual Violence and Victim-Blaming is a recurring concern in the novel, which links sexual assault not only to the actions of perpetrators but also to the stories victims are pressured to accept about their own responsibility. Sandra Scully’s account exposes the gap between what happened to her and how she later understood it, while Cassie Maddox’s experience shows how disbelief and social punishment can reproduce that harm.

Sandra Scully’s Account

Sandra was sixteen and dating Cathal Mills, who was nineteen, when Cathal proposed that she become involved with his friend Jonathan Devlin. Sandra was confused by the arrangement and eventually tried to put the matter aside. Later, after Shane Waters also became interested, Cathal continued to press her despite her objections. In August, Cathal and Jonathan helped Shane assault her in Knocknaree Wood. The account establishes distinct roles among the three men: Shane was the assailant, while Cathal and Jonathan enabled him.

The assault did not immediately end Sandra’s relationship with Cathal. She continued seeing him for several months, until he broke up with her. That continuation complicates any assumption that a victim’s subsequent conduct can be treated as proof that an assault did not occur. Sandra also did not want to press charges: she believed that having slept with Cathal in the first place made what happened her fault. Her self-blame therefore becomes part of the harm’s aftermath, obscuring the responsibility of the men who acted against her and those who helped them.

Cassie Maddox and Social Punishment

Cassie Maddox’s account shows how the language of sexual violence can itself be turned into a weapon. At university, a male friend alternated warmth with unexplained withdrawal, leaving her to guess what she had done and repeatedly apologize. Small acts of interference, including borrowing her lecture notes and denying that he still had them, kept the friendship unsettled. After nearly two years, he made a pass at her in her flat; she declined and said she wanted to remain friends. The next day, their classmates treated Cassie as the wrongdoer.

The man had told other students that he and Cassie had been secretly involved, that he had ended the relationship, and that she had threatened to accuse him of rape. Cassie’s account describes the consequence of that lie: classmates and mutual acquaintances believed him, while her explanations found no audience. Some accused her of making it harder for genuine victims to be believed; one student said she deserved to be raped. The irony is severe: Cassie was punished through a false story about sexual violence, then made to bear the moral blame associated with the harm she had not inflicted.

The isolation also changed how Cassie understood herself. She wished, briefly, that she had done what he claimed, because then the social punishment might at least have seemed to follow a comprehensible cause. Instead, the absence of any wrongdoing on her part offered no protection. When the man later staged a public appeal for her to stop calling him and privately threatened that a future accusation against him would not succeed, the contrast between his performance before witnesses and his private menace made the manipulation plain. Cassie told Rob Ryan the story years later, but at the time he did not understand that she was trying to disclose something specific about her past. His delayed recognition makes the telling itself part of the account: the harm had been difficult to name, and its significance was not immediately heard.

Jonathan Devlin’s Account and the Limits of Explanation

When Jonathan Devlin is questioned years later, he places the assault in the summer of 1984, during a day spent with Cathal Mills, Shane Waters, and Sandra Scully in Knocknaree wood. He recalls drinking and taking drugs, and describes being disoriented by the heat and by the events as they unfolded. Asked directly whether all three men assaulted Sandra, he distinguishes their actions: Shane was the one who assaulted her, while Jonathan admitted helping to restrain her. The distinction clarifies responsibility without absolving him of his own participation.

Jonathan presents his account as an effort to explain his state of mind, not as a defense. He describes the episode as unreal and frightening, and imagines that he and his friends had become caught in a world of their own. Rob Ryan recognizes the familiar self-exculpatory shape of a suspect’s story, and points to alcohol, drugs, possible heatstroke, and excitement as ordinary explanations for Jonathan’s perceptions. Yet Rob also admits that some small part of him believes Jonathan. That uncertainty matters: the account may illuminate how Jonathan remembers the event, but his altered perceptions cannot change the fact that Sandra was harmed or transfer responsibility away from those who acted against her.

Rob’s conflicted response also exposes the pull of the group’s private mythology. He imagines Jonathan as a young man bound to his friends and desperate to restore a shared world that was coming apart; this makes the confession emotionally legible, but not morally exculpatory. By setting that interpretation beside Jonathan’s admission of participation, the narrative distinguishes understanding a perpetrator’s account from accepting it as justification. The contrast reinforces the entry’s central concern: stories about confusion, loyalty, or personal blame can shape how violence is remembered, while responsibility remains with the people who chose to commit or enable it.

Victim-Blaming as a Strategy of Control

The novel also shows how allegations of harm can be used to secure another person’s loyalty, and why such accounts require careful scrutiny. Damien Donnelly believes Rosalind Devlin has been abused by her father and regards her decision to stay at home to protect Jessica Devlin as proof of extraordinary courage. He says she trusted him with this account, and that she feared her father would kill her if she told anyone. Her reported fear of intimacy, which she attributes to painful associations, helps persuade Damien that she needs his protection. But the story reaches the reader through Damien’s understanding of what Rosalind told him, not through independent confirmation of the alleged abuse. Rob Ryan recognizes that elements of Damien’s account conflict with evidence he has seen: Jessica’s arm was broken in a witnessed playground accident, Rosalind never suffered the described skull fracture, and Katy Devlin died a virgin. The contrast does not erase the possibility of distress; it exposes how a moving story can recruit a listener before its claims have been tested.

Rosalind’s treatment of Katy offers a different, documented pattern of blame and control. She recasts Katy’s dancing and the attention it brings as selfishness, and presents her own efforts to stop it as a response to parental neglect. Katy’s diary records the practical effects: Rosalind links drinking a substance that makes Katy ill with her future success at ballet, invokes Jessica’s supposed distress to make Katy feel responsible, and encourages rifts between Katy and her friends. Katy records her fear and anger, then hides the diary at Simone Cameron’s home after finding it concealed in Rosalind’s wardrobe. These details make the conflict more than a dispute over ambition: Rosalind supplies explanations that cast her control as care, while Katy’s private writing preserves her recognition that something is wrong.

Across these accounts, blame shifts toward the person who has less power: Sandra Scully believes she caused the assault by having been involved with Cathal Mills; Cassie Maddox is socially condemned through a false accusation; and Katy is made to feel responsible for her sister’s distress and for conflict with friends. The stories differ in what can be verified and who tells them, but their consequences converge. Shame and isolation make it harder for those harmed to be believed, while a perpetrator’s or manipulator’s version can pass as concern, protection, or moral judgment. The novel therefore treats listening as necessary but not sufficient: witnessing requires attention both to the suffering being described and to the interests served by the account.