Felix Rojas, 44, arraigned after video showed him performing sexual acts on unresponsive passenger

Felix Rojas, 44, arraigned after video showed him performing sexual acts on unresponsive passenger

Authorities in New York have charged a man with attempted rape after surveillance video taken showed him performing sexual acts on an unresponsive passenger who was later determined to have died.

Police have been looking for suspects in the case for weeks, after footage captured two different people robbing the corpse of a man on a train traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan, one of whom allegedly sexually violated him.

Felix Rojas, 44, was arraigned on Tuesday, three weeks after authorities said he abused the male victim inside a subway car. Rojas, who was arrested on Sunday, has also been charged with attempted grand larceny.

  • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
    2·
    23 hours ago

    This is a really important point and definitely not how I wanted that to be interpreted. I agree 1000% with all of this

    People process things differently. Some will be more and some will be less traumatized by being raped.

    Forcing a particular experience onto a victim, saying they must feel a certain way, is just so incredibly problematic. A victim can feel whatever they feel and process a crime against them however they want. And the way they do so doesn’t change whether a crime was committed against them.

    I think forcing another person to go through that process, whatever process that might be for them, is the essential thing that makes it the crime that it is, but I definitely don’t mean to say that a survivor needs to have a specific experience. It’s the heinous nature of making someone a survivor and forcing them to go through that personal journey that sets it apart as a particular kind of harm to me.

    Apologies my initial statement was clumsy here, and thank you for your reply because I really do think all the points you made are extremely important.

    • Reyali@lemm.ee
      2·
      22 hours ago

      I appreciate your thoughtful response and consideration of how you phrased this originally. I know you are making the point with the best of intentions in trying to ensure that the word “rape” isn’t diluted down.

      I struggled for many years to move beyond my experiences of being raped. I’m in a good place now, but it took time. I generally wouldn’t say I’m suffering from it any more (even if there may be moments where I’m triggered), so I think the comment here just hit me hard.

      I also know there are other victims who have gone through weird levels of guilt and self-doubt because they haven’t felt the level of suffering that’s “expected.”

      We both have the same desire here, but slightly different stances on where that line should be drawn and that’s ok.

      • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
        2·
        21 hours ago

        Thank you.

        Yeah, I’ve struggled a bit to process a really good friend of mine being raped years and years ago, and the “weird levels of guilt and self-doubt” is something I experienced in my own way, because I thought I got traumatized “more” than my friend did (though I know now that’s not how trauma really works) and thought that was selfish of me (which I know now was a silly thing to think), and sorting all of that stuff out was a big part of my own journey. And I guess watching my friend wrestle with that stupid “what is the right way to feel about what happened to me and how should I perform those feelings” aspect of trauma, and watching her have to deal with other people’s feelings about her feelings, and hearing her “joke” multiple times about how being murdered would have been less of an inconvenience for her is all a big part of what makes me feel like I do about what rape is and isn’t.

        We both have the same desire here, but slightly different stances on where that line should be drawn and that’s ok.

        Thank you a million times over for understanding.