From Ancient Greece to modern Scotland: Women’s resilience in the face of sexual violence

Inspired by Dust and Pomegranates - a beautiful memoir written by Victoria Whitworth

I have just returned from a week in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city. I took with me my copy of Dust and Pomegranates - a startling, beautiful memoir by Victoria Whitworth. I urge you to read it. You can buy it here.

The White Tower, Thessaloniki. Photo by Leandros Papakarmezis on Unsplash

The past meets the present every day in Greece. A few metres from my holiday apartment in central Thessaloniki stands the Arch of Galerius, dedicated to the Roman emperor after he defeated the Persions in 306 AD. What remains of the monument has survived invasions, fires and earthquakes, its carvings as striking today as they were when they were hewn out of unforgiving marble nearly 2,000 years ago. It sits amid a jumble of apartments built in the decades after the second world war but doesn’t look out of place. This is, after all, Greece.

The stories of Greece’s ancient past, both myth and reality, are also woven through everyday contemporary life. Its citizens are quietly proud that Western civilisation was forged in its islands and mountainous mainland. Every pillar of the 21^st century, from democracy to drama, mathematics to medicine, emerged miraculously, like Galerius’ arch, from the hot, dry landscape of Greece. And the stories of Greek gods and ancient battles we learned as children are as much part of our culture as tales of Robert the Bruce and Mary Queen of Scots. No-one understands the indefinable quality of Greece, ancient and modern, better than Edinburgh writer and academic Victoria Whitworth, whose memoir Dust and Pomegranates is my holiday reading. I tucked the book into my bag just as I was leaving home. I had already read it, but I knew I had to read it again in the land that, as Victoria writes, changed her life forever.

Myth merges with reality

Her haunting work blends Greek mythology with her personal experience of her beloved Greece, from her first visit to Corfu as an eight-year-old child through to the present day. I know Victoria. She is, as another friend said recently, one of the cleverest people she knows. She wears her scholarship lightly, bringing life to Greek gods with intoxicating ease, and her observations of Albania emerging from the shadows of totalitarianism are worthy of any war correspondent. But the heart of the book is her fearless, almost relentless narrative of what it means to be female, whether a goddess like Persephone or a young English language teacher in Corinth. Our obligations as mother, sister, daughter, wife. Our vulnerability, both emotional and physical. But above all, our resilience and strength. Women are survivors. We have to be.

The central passage of the book is shocking. Victoria is raped by an Athenian taxi driver. Her writing is stark, without drama. “My left arm is trapped but I try to shove him away with my right. He ignores me. I start crying. He tries to kiss my mouth, but I press my lips together and turn my head away…He smells of pork and whisky. When he is finished, he says ‘Did you like it? You liked it. I could tell.’ I am silent.”

Stay silent, but never forget

Silence is how many women cope with sexual violence, whether as a child abused by a member of their family, a teenage girl raped by a gang of giggling men, or a young woman rigid with fear, overpowered by a man. Say nothing during the act. Say nothing after it. No-one will believe you, or if they do, they will say you must have been “asking for it”. Say nothing as the years go by and the anger and yes, shame, dissipate. Stay silent, but never forget.

While I was re-reading Victoria’s book, several things happened. During a heated debate on BBC Radio 4, Lucy Powell, a senior government minister, appeared to dismiss child sexual exploitation as nothing more a “dog whistle”. She later said she was challenging the “political point scoring” around the subject of grooming gangs. “As a constituency MP I've dealt with horrendous cases," she said, which begs the all-too obvious question, where was her sisterhood?

On Tuesday, this newspaper revealed that the number of new rape cases being reported to the police had surged in recent years. In the first nine months of 2024/25, Police Scotland received reports of 1,267 ‘recent’ rapes – defined as those reported less than 365 days after the offence was committed – compared to 944 in the first nine months of 2020/21, an increase of 34.2 per cent. A report in 1919, a magazine funded by the Scottish Police Federation, described the rising number of reported rapes as “more of a live threat than previously thought.”

And on BBC 3 next week, campaigner Ellie Wilson will tell the story of how she fought to get her ex-boyfriend tried for raping her while she slept, and how after waiving anonymity she won a complaint against his defence lawyer, who had accused her of having a personality disorder during the original trial.

Rape and sexual assault are far more of a live threat to women than society wants to believe or can even contemplate. Just as sexual violence is an enduring theme in Greek mythology, so today all women and girls must navigate life knowing that they are at risk. Predators come in all shapes and forms, from ‘loving’ relatives to strangers in backstreets.

Remaining silent is of course every woman’s choice. We all heal differently. But as Victoria writes in the final pages of her memoir, “never feel dirty, guilty, shamed, if some bloody man doesn’t listen to your NO.”

Survivors of sexual violence are not dog whistles. We are not statistics. We are not mentally ill. Nor should we be stoical about the physical and emotional harm wrought on our bodies and minds by men. Be angry. Write about it like Victoria. Campaign like Ellie. Seek support from the sisterhood of other women. But above all, as Victoria Whitworth urges in her unforgettable memoir, do not let the experience of having been raped define you.