Warning: This article contains mentions of rape and sexual assault. Please read with care.
It’s easy to be discouraged by some of the despicable things we hear and read about on the news and the internet every day, but sometimes, justice does prevail.
TikTok user Trippyspinez shared a very important moment in her life with her 30 thousand followers in February of this year. The young Welsh woman had just come home from court to witness the man who raped her, John Harding, be sent to prison for 15 years with an additional 5 years on “license” (or parole in the U.S.). She emotionally confessed to being “beyond happy and absolutely beyond proud of herself.” The video has since been viewed nearly two million times.
Per the BBC, Harding was found guilty of 10 different offenses, including rape, strangulation, and false imprisonment, against two different victims, namely the content creator and a 16-year-old girl. The man had previous convictions, including an instance of assault against a woman for which he received a 21-month prison sentence in 2021.
Trippyspinez has been open about her experience on her TikTok account in the hopes she can help other survivors come forward. Not only has she shared details of what it is like to be a part of a rape trial, but she has also recorded her journey with healing, PTSD, and recovery both from drug addiction and an eating disorder.
The content creator says she is currently looking and feeling healthier than ever. After struggling with her finances and finally finding a job, she is now moving to a new city in Wales. She reported that Harding had allegedly been sending her letters from prison and that neither the institution nor the police were able to stop it from happening despite her having a restraining order against him.
Rape and assault cases against women are notoriously hard to prosecute. According to a BBC article from 2022, in the previous year over 67 thousand rape offenses had been recorded by English and Welsh police. Only 1,557 resulted in prosecutions, and an even smaller number led to convictions. “Over the past four years, rape prosecutions in England and Wales have fallen by 70%,” the BBC reported.
Faced with those despairing numbers, the value of an outcome like that of the case of Trippyspinez and the 16-year-old girl who was also hurt by Harding cannot be overstated. We’re glad she can now live her life knowing the man who tried to ruin it is behind bars.
If you know someone suffering from sexual violence, contact RAINN or the National Sexual Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.