I Hate Football Players 3 | 18+

Chapter 132: Ellie

Like Mr. Russell feared, Judge Volkman accepted Mrs. Stevens' motion that my testimony hadn't proved Ryder assaulted me without a reasonable doubt and it was struck from the court records. Ryder himself never testified, which put the sole burden of proof on Mr. Russell's prosecution team.

The post-verdict interview Mrs. Stevens gave, with how confident and reassured she felt in 'true justice being served' made me want to throw my laptop out our apartment window. As she spewed more of her disgusting pro-son propaganda, I felt like I'd been physically attacked, stabbed straight through the heart. Mr. Reynolds assured me I shouldn't have taken the legal action or her words personally and I couldn't have testified my story any better than I had, but my reaction hadn't changed from the day I stepped down from the witness stand.

Still feel like a big, fat failure.

My melancholy was wiped out when I watched the local channel's online streaming access to the rest of Ryder's trial. With my sexual assault charges dropped, he still faced eleven counts of sexual assault and rape and all of my personal problems dissolved into pettiness once I heard some of the other victim's testimonies.

"Oh my gawd."

Shocked was an understatement of how I felt when I saw the similarities across victims, both in their testimonies, personalities, and appearance, even through the blurred privacy filters. Every girl was small in stature, soft spoken with eyes averted, with brown or dark brown hair.

"That's disgusting," Logan muttered, clenched his jaw, and held me tighter.

I clenched onto Logan's arm when I recognized the testimony from 'Martha,' which was the alias she'd been given at Mary's House. The small, intimate Santa Cruz charity for abused and attacked women had helped my recovery just as much, if not more, than Dr. Sterns. While I'd never have wanted abuse to be normalized, the reassurance I'd gotten in knowing I wasn't alone but my reactions and nightmares were 'normal' spoke volumes towards my getting over them.

I'd heard Martha's testimony before, two years ago behind closed doors in Mary's office. The poor girl trembled and quivered when she finally revealed the truth of what happened to her at UC-Davis, then collapsed into a heap of understandably broken emotions and raw pain.

The two years that passed since that moment, which I knew I would never forget, had also brought subtly powerful changes in Martha. She stood with her chin lifted, her face directed straight at Judge Volkman and Mr. Russell. Not once during her testimony, during which I broke down into tears on our living room sofa with Logan's arms the only thing that held me upright, did she reward Mrs. Stevens or Ryder with an acknowledgment of their presence.

In 'Jane Doe Four's' case, Ryder stalked her on UC-Davis' campus for six weeks, then transferred into an Economics course that he apparently fell behind in and requested a tutor. As the top student in the class, the professor asked if Martha tutored Ryder, which began their relationship as a romance story for the books until it turned into a complete nightmare for Martha.

Unlike my situation, Ryder raped Martha, and traces of his DNA from hair and skin cells were discovered at the hospital when Martha's roommate rushed her there the next morning. The Stevens' two years' worth of court delays worked against them in Martha's case because eighteen months passed before Santa Cruz County's police department processed her rape kit.

"Hey..." Logan asked me gently, then looked at the courthouse streaming on my laptop. "Are you sure you want to watch this?"

"I am," I rasped out and clutched my laptop tightly with both hands. "I-I have to."

With the tears that blubbered out of my eyes, constant streams of sniffled congestion, and random sobs, I probably looked like I tortured myself. When Dr. Sterns prompted me, I confessed that I felt more than guilty after my testimony was tossed out. But the deeper truth was, I also felt connected to the other victims and even from hundreds of miles away, I sat as a silent cheerleader. My busy college life tugged me in multiple directions but I always came back and checked up on the court process.