I’ll start off by saying that I know that the majority of women who report sexual assault are honest, and this post is in no way accusing of sexual assault victims of lying. With that being said, here it goes:

I’m now dating my best friend since middle school, we will call him Z. (We are 19 now), and I have 2 children from a different man.

When we were 16, a new girl moved into town. (Let’s call her B) She said that she was homeschooled and that she didn’t have any friends, so of course we welcomed her with open arms. She grew into our little group of friends, and invited us all to her 16th birthday party. Z and I arrived to her house and met B along with the rest of our clique. It was odd though, her parents weren’t there, nor any relatives, when we asked, she said her parents went out of town and she didn’t have family in the area.

This party was stocked with booze and weed when we arrived, and of course being teenagers, we partook. B wasn’t drinking at all, she didn’t even hit the joint that was being passed around. But Z, he went overboard. Drink after drink, bowl after bowl. I wasn’t a drinker and have never been, so I was a little stoned when all of this went down, but I have good recollection of what happened that night.

B was flirting with Z, and myself and the rest of our high school friends witnessed this. She followed him around, was always touching him, sitting close to him, etc., and she asked him if he wanted to see her new band gear in her room. Poor Z went, and things happened. Obviously nobody was in the room but them, but when they came out, Z was drunk to the point of puking, and B was telling the girls of the group about the great sex & how she was in love with him, etc.

A few days later Z and i were hanging out and he confessed to me that he knew he had sex with her, he just didn’t remember exactly what happened. So I told him was B told me. After he found out what she had been saying to our friends, we went to her house because he said he needed to straighten things up. We got there and asked for B, and when she came out, Z really tried to put it gently when he said that he was drunk and that it didn’t mean anything. She seemed to be understanding, she went inside and we went our separate ways. Z and I parted and went home. When I got to school the next day, Z was being arrested. I figured it was for possession, but I later found out from his mother that he was being accused of rape, and everyone knew what was going on. Me and the majority of the people at the party were at the police station giving our statements, and we witnessed enough to know that the accusations weren’t true. I thought after giving our statements things would be cleared up, but B was not 16, despite her elaborate and effective efforts to make us believe that she was our age. Despite the obvious compulsive lying and insecurity issues, Z was charged with statutory rape. He was 16 and she was 14, and in the state we reside in, Romeo and Juliet laws didn’t apply.

Z has been on the sex offenders registry since all of this happened. Everyone that knows Z and anyone that was at the party knew that it was unjust. Even though he was a minor, our county plastered his face and name on every single newspaper for a month, with no information other than that he was arrested for statutory rape. With that he was hated by anyone that didn’t know him personally, he lost his job, and was forced out of the public school.

I’ve stood by him since then, the hate and the ignorance was unreal. Eventually he moved to the next city over, and things died down over time. A few months later, B was plastered everywhere in the area as “MISSING” A few years later a photo goes viral on Facebook, a man had posted a warning to men, clubs, bars, and strip joints, the caption explained that the girl had a fake ID and lied about her age, and lone behold, the picture is of B, dressed in lingerie, holding a dancing pole. Her location was revealed by the post and she was then detained by police, to which she claimed to have been kidnapped and trafficked, but of course that story didn’t add up either. She was arrested for running away, prostitution, and for having the fake ID.

I was absolutely ECSTATIC to hear this news. But unfortunately, the thousands we put in together on lawyers to reopen the case, went to waste.

Fast forward to now, we grew closer, and we’ve been together for a few months now. I trust him with every fiber of my being, because I know what happened.

DCF showed up at my door Monday morning because they got a call about a sex offender in my apartment. I didn’t lie, I was honest and said that he comes over occasionally but doesn’t stay the night nor is he alone with the kids per his registration agreement. I let her do a walkthrough of my apartment, I’ve always taken safety precautions and kept our house clean, the best I could anyways. She left by saying, “there isn’t an obvious immediate threat to these kids, so I’ll be in touch” I knew that was bad, and of course my kids come first, and although I know he would never hurt them, I had to tell him to step back for awhile, and it really hurt him because now it seemed like I was the one treating him like a monster.

I know how it looks from a legal perspective. And I’m just so frustrated that a good man had his whole life taken away because he made the mistake of believing things that typically wouldn’t have been lied about in the first place. But most of all I’m frustrated because the justice system is a fucking joke.

Anyways, thanks for reading my novel. This is a sensitive topic so I tried to leave as much detail as I could so that it wouldn’t be misinterpreted. My kids are constantly asking when he will be back, and I just don’t know if I want to continue living in a world where a fucked up, demented, compulsive liar is believed over a 4.0 student and MULTIPLE witnesses solely for the fact that she is female.

This is not feminism. This is not politically correct. This just isn’t right. And I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m going to do something.