The Parisian dream of being a fine arts student in the City of Lights ended in tragedy for former Joburger Claire McFarlane when she was brutally raped in the French capital 16 years ago.
The rape not only robbed her of her dream, but also of her will to live.
“I came close to not wanting to continue to live,” McFarlane told Saturday Star this week.
But there would be more blows.
It would take a decade for the police to arrest her attacker and after he was finally convicted he spent only four years in a Paris jail.
“The fact that my attacker got caught after so many years was punishment in itself, so I clung to that so that I could stay sane. Spending four years in jail wasn’t nearly enough punishment for my attacker, as he was a serial rapist, but I just had to let it go,” she said.
McFarlane, who was born in Joburg, left South Africa when she was in Grade 10 and after high school headed for Paris.
She was a 21-year-old student when she was raped. After the ordeal, she left France and went to Australia.
Last year, after spending “years in denial”, the former Joburger was able to publicly speak about her ordeal for the first time.
Now McFarlane is about to launch a campaign to raise awareness for rape survivors - it’s called ProjectBRA.
“I got to a point in my life where I could no longer hide from what had happened.
When I started to share my story, there was tremendous response and a lot of women started writing to me about their ordeals.
“I could see there was a real impact with my story, so I did more campaigning and began raising funds for non-profit organisations that helped rape survivors,” said the 37-year-old.
McFarlane wants to share details, because she knows it can help save lives.
“My attacker was physically very violent with me. I fought back with physical violence but he got more violent. There was no way my family was going to identify my body in a morgue in Paris. If I kept hitting him I was going to die, so I had to come up with another plan.
“I decided to apply my mind and started talking to my attacker. I told him I had a life-threatening muscle disease and I would die at the end of the year. It changed the dynamic with him, he was still violent but changed his approach. I had to believe my story with every little cell in my body, because if he thought I was lying I was dead.
“I was crying, it went on for a long time, until my attacker said he was going to walk away now. He told me to get dressed and that was the end of it,” she said.
McFarlane has already made meaningful changes for survivors of rape in France, Australia and Switzerland. As a fitness enthusiast, she raised money through cross-fit fundraisers.
But the former Florida Park High School pupil wanted to do more, globally.
On July 18 next year, on the anniversary of her rape attack, McFarlane will begin her ambitious project, ProjectBRA, which will see her run on the beaches of every coastal country in the world to raise awareness for rape victims. She hopes to traverse 186 beaches, running 16km on each, and barefoot where possible, in under three years.
McFarlane’s run will start in South Africa, her birth country, then move to Australia and finish in France in 2019.
“There are three areas that stand out for me. These are the taboo around rape and the fear of judgment; the struggle to heal properly or have access to the right support; and the lack of adequate punishment for perpetrators.
“Rape is still a subject that many women are unable to discuss openly and some prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist, or even worse, they punish women who are raped,” she said.
She is hoping to raise more than R100 000 in each country for a local non-profit organisation.
“The aim is for Project BAR to be a self-sustaining, ongoing campaign, and from 2020 to host an annual global beach run.”
Support ProjectBRA: www.
chuffed.org/project/projectbra
Satuday Star