Twenty years ago, when she was 16 years old, Thordis Elva was raped by her then-boyfriend, Tom Stranger, who was 18 at the time. Thordis had been drinking rum before their Christmas dance in December of 1996 ― when she was too sick to stay out, Tom took her home, and proceeded to rape her. Tom, an Australian studying abroad in Thordis’s native Iceland, ended their relationship a few days after he assaulted her, and moved back to Australia shortly thereafter. In the years since, Thordis and Tom have committed much of their lives to understanding the “why” of that fateful December night. Their lives have been centered around the traumatic act ― with one of them having committed it, and another having endured it ― and in the years after, they both followed a path of self-destruction and denial for reasons that are, as one can imagine, starkly different.

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