Writer Stages Her Own Rape...to 'Ease' Her PTSD

Mac McClelland, a civil rights reporter who found herself deeply impacted by stories of rape and torture, decided that she could remedy her developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by...staging her own rape. Her emotional distress allegedly began when she was working in Haiti following the infamous 2010 earthquake.

While in the devastated nation, McClelland met a woman who had been raped and violently brutalized. The Daily Mail has more:

After Ms McClelland, 31, accompanied her to the hospital - where the surgeon who performed reconstructive surgery on her told her she was a slut and deserved what she got - they were on the way back in a taxi when [the woman] saw one of the men who raped her.

Ms McClelland recalls that she went into a 'a full paroxysm - wailing and flailing in terror, screaming with her eyes rolling in abject terror'.

McClelland had seen violence across the globe in her work, but there was something different about this particular incident. Though she has experienced nothing of note herself, before long, McClelland found herself trapped and combatting the horrifying symptoms of PTSD. According to ABC News, these included, "avoidance of feelings, flashbacks and recurrent thoughts that triggered crying spells. There were smells that made her gag."

With these symptoms creating cause for concern, McClelland sought professional help. According to the Daily Mail, during her therapy, the downtrodden reporter explained that, "all she wanted to do was have incredibly violent sex." Thus, her therapist suggested she find someone she trusted to do it with and she complied. ABC News has more:

Her sexual partner mercilessly pinned her, beat her about the head and brutally violated McClelland -- at her request.

"I was not crazy," she told ABCNews.com. "It was a way for me to deal in sort of a simulated, but controlled situation. I could say 'stop' at any time. But it was still awful, and the body doesn't understand when it's in a fight."

McClelland wrote an entire piece for GOOD Magazine (warning: explicit language and sexual content) about the experience entitled, "I'm Gonna Need You to Fight Me on This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD." In the piece, the writer describes, in detail, her struggle with PTSD, and the graphic details of her "rape." She writes:

We hadn't slept together in a while, and although we couldn't get along as a couple, we loved and respected each other, blah blah. So here I was making a date to catch up with him over fancy pizza, and then drinking tequila neat. And there I was asking him if this was a sleepover, right?, and being pretty nervous about what my stupid brain was going to do when he got into my bed.

As soon as we were making out, my violent feelings started welling up. "I'm gonna need you to fight me on this," I said.

...And with that he was on me, forcing my arms to my sides, then pinning them over my head, sliding a hand up under my shirt when I couldn't stop him. The control I'd lost made my torso scream with anxiety; I cried out desperately as I kicked myself free. But it didn't matter how many times I managed to knock him over to the other side of the bed...When I got out from under him and started to scramble away, he simply caught me by a leg or an upper arm or my hair and dragged me back. By the time he pinned me by my neck with one forearm so I was forced to use both hands to free up space between his elbow and my windpipe, I'd largely exhausted myself.

The details go on from there. The reaction has spanned from disgust to praise, as some believe McClelland has taken focus off of Haitian victims and placed it on herself. Others, though, contend that her writings are "heroic." Either way, the writer now claims that she eased her PTSD through the simulated rape.