Chatterbox and Chatterbox's friend
It has to feel like there is a lot of obligation being placed at your feet. At a moment when you possibly already feel brought low by the weight of fear, dread, disbelief and godawful memories and flashbacks.
Here's the thing. Reporting is not an obligation. It's a choice. He didn't give you one. But in this, it is truly a choice you get to take, or not take. And what he does next is no more your fault than the next people killing earthquake will be your fault.
It's a big ask, to go to the police station, re-live what happened, make it into something that you can't try to bury in a deep part of your head, but instead have it potentially intrude on your life for some time to come. You can only take that on if you choose to. It's worth weighing in the enormity of reporting against the hugeness of not reporting in balanced terms. While reporting carries its own price, so too does not reporting. It can be intensely hard to repair the damage done when the aftermath left you no space to take back some of your power. When there has been no price to pay for the person who stole your sense of security and safety. When you have seen your "hard won over the decades" confidence splutter and die like a tea light in a hurricane.
My first husband was Thai. I lived in Bangkok for years with half of former DH's family in entities such as army, medicine, fire brigade and police. So I know the realities of a very different culture within public services. And I am well aware of the particular distain and derision that can be poured on a falang female when it comes to anything to do with her in a context that also contains a sexual element. Where you have been labelled a repository for "free sex", you can find yourself at the lowest end of totem pole when it comes to respectful and sympathetic treatment during one of the worst moments of your life. So I wholly understand any rising panic that reporting would be worse than the assault.
Only one of you needs to report. It might not go very far. I'm not in Britain, so the law may be different, but while both of you two may not be in any doubt as per his intentions, thanks to your powerful fight back and successful, collaborative self defence .... he failed in his attack. Which means there may be only a very minor case for him to answer. Which may never make it to court. You have CPS hurling things out of the court queue. I have a system that times cases out. It might feel like an awful lot of costly effort for potentially very little. But whatever the outcome, his card will be marked. And you wielded the pen. He took so much from you, he deserves to be made to carry a mark that will make his future denials sound very hollow.
Britian is not Thailand. I don't doubt that it's not paradise. I left in 89, I know it's come a long way,p since the but it won't be Utopia. However... it's not Thailand. Neither of you will need to face a demon on a scale of that which wreaked havoc in the past.
The reason why it is worth one of you, or both of you, considering reporting is because in this you have a choice. Knowing you have a choice is important, especially so soon after somebody made it clear they didn't share the view that you get to pick what you do. But knowing you have a choice doesn't make choosing easy. I doubted my sanity after reporting myself, especially once the fucker was in handcuffs and the police expected me to sit in the back of the policecar...right next to him, in order to transport all of us back to the station to process him. They reacted like I was a "hysterical female" when I dug my heels in and refused point blank to be in the same car at all. I felt stupid for having run in a straight line from point of attempted assault to police station, given that it successfully made me so very small and weak twice over in just a few hours. If the event was so minor for everybody else, how come it felt so huge and "squashing me" to me. Ergo, initially reporting made me doubt my ability to realistically judge reality and react appropriately to it.
But later on, reporting it was revealed as an experience defining, positive action for me. Despite his view of me as a disposable, sub-human, the police acting like I was making a big fuss about nothing, certain people locally joking that an "old hen" like myself should be grateful for the attentions of young buck. All that hurt in one way or another. But it can't take away that I feel like I took my power back. I made his life harder. I knocked his confidence with regards to doing this again and getting away with it. I did for other women. But the biggest winner of reporting has been me.
I lost everything I thought I was in an unexpected moment on a rural road. I have a child, and I chose the potential to die under a speeding car rather than being raped. I made a priority of me not wanting to be violated, at the expense of my son's rather pressing need not to be rendered motherless. I don't know how I could have come back from that inside my own head if I hadn't reported him. I needed something to show myself that how I reacted, instinctively in full blown panic, doesn't define me. What defined me was how I reacted when the immediate danger had past. And while the process brought me to my knees sometimes, it gave me the small blocks with which I could cobble together a foundation and rebuild my own vision of who I am.
Fucked up isn't it ? What one vicious man can do to the insides our heads. How much they can create an internal process were we pick apart and find ways to blame ourselves instead of them.
I've rambled. I did have a point. I almost never talk about this and rarely let myself think about it, so I go off kilter with newly released feelings that dance about in my brain fucking up my train of thought when I do. But
Reporting is the single most useful outcome for future victims. But not reporting does not make you responsible for their existence. That's on him.
Reporting is hard and painful. But so is not reporting. He, the bastard, put you in this place. None of your choices include a reset button. They all carry costs for both of you.
Reporting can give you back what look like insignificant, tiny crumbs of power, that come at a considerable cost. But getting whole self back can sometimes need those crumbs more than it needs to avoid the costs.
Report, or do not report. You have a choice. It has to be a wholly free choice. I can share with you why I feel it turned out to be the absolutely best thing I could have done for me. But I have no crystal ball that can translate that into any prophecies for either of you 2.
And that is why it has to be your choice. No judgement. No obligation.
Never forget that when it comes to responsibility for what happened to you, what might happen to somebody else... it's his. Not yours.