I don’t know any way to introduce this so I’ll just lay it out there.

I finally filed a report against my rapist after almost 20 years. (I was 7-11 years old). The trial is coming up in November. We already had one trial and it ended in a hung jury because obviously there is no physical evidence and he wouldn’t take the stand. I had confronted him multiple times throughout the years and gave him the opportunity to admit his mistakes and apologize. The closest I came to getting an apology was “I’m sorry if I’m the reason you have a drinking problem.” And that was it. So during the trial I was asked “Had he taken responsibility for what he did, would you have pressed charges?” I said I wasn’t sure but probably not. The jury was hung 7 for conviction 5 wanted more evidence but were leaning toward conviction.

A few weeks ago I got a call from the District Attorney who has to inform me of any and all communication from the defense side. She said that the defense would like work out a deal where “If he met with me, sat down, admitted what he did and apologized, would we drop the charges and sign an agreement that anything he said couldn’t be used in a court of law?”

My initial reaction was disgust because that trial was FUCKING brutal. The defense attorney tried to make me out as a liar. I wanted money (even though I didn’t ask for restitution- just want a damn paper trail in case this happened to someone else), and that I wanted to blame my past addiction on my perpetrator. I had to recall and tell a jury of 12 strangers years of sexual abuse and the man who did all of this was sitting 15 feet away the entire time. It was awful. So not only did this man rape me as a child, wouldn’t take responsibility, sat there taking notes while I cried, panicked and struggled to tell the story of what happened and turned my whole family against me but now he wants to “apologize” in exchange for dropping the charges.

SO! That brings me to my current question for anyone who is reading this. What would you do? I’m exhausted. It’s been 19 years since the last time this happened to me, 2 years since I finally filed a complaint and 4 months since the hung jury. 3 months until the next trial. I’m barely sleeping. I just want him held accountable! I can hardly believe I am considering letting him apologize. Am I wrong? He won’t plea to a sex offense- even though it was a seriously good deal imo but he said he would plea to assault only. A misdemeanor and no sex offender registry.

Sorry for the length. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way through.