I stood in the car dealership and listened to the news, Jared Fogle was agreeing to a plea deal for having been involved in child pornography and having sex with minors.
My heart sank. I put my hand up to my eyes to rub out the threat of tears. I thought about those minors and what they’d experienced. He is to pay them $100,000 each. Really? Like that will make the years of confusion, anxiety, insecurity, shouldering his guilt and his shame, and uncertainty of who they are in worth just go away?
Really?
When I made it home I turned on another news channel and listened to the young woman in the St. Paul’s Prep School rape case defend herself in court.
The disguised voice came across confident of her truth with a trade of uncertainty. Will anyone believe me? I know this because I have been that girl. When asked why she would respond to his emails and from all appearances make it seem like she was playing the same game, she claimed it was because she didn’t want him to ‘come after her again’ and she didn’t want to become a target for ridicule at the school she still had three years to attend.
I get it. I never spoke of what happened with the first young man who raped me because we were friends who hung out in the same circle. Would any one believe me?
And with the second rapist in college, I went back to him because he was such a force at the school. Everybody seemed to love him, to praise him, students and school staff alike. How could I ever be credible against him?
Janet Perez Eckles 
Shawn Akers 
Abby Trivett 
