37

The video: A bedroom, dim lights, trance music on a Bluetooth speaker. She’s on the bed with the boyfriend she’d just started dating a month ago, and they are undressing each other. She’s a little chubby, voluptuous. You see her breasts as he frees them from her bra. Then he awkwardly slides off her underpants.

They’d been drinking. There’s a loud snort of laughter, the person holding the smart phone, and the man-boy on the bed looks up, focuses on the camera.

“You assholes!” he says, grinning. “I didn’t say you could come in here.”

“What’s going on?” slurs the girl.

“Nothing,” he says, and he does something that makes her gasp, turning to look at the camera as he does. The camera zooms in jerkily. You can see her face clearly. Some news sites published that image as a still, with black bars covering her eyes.

And that’s where the narrative bifurcates. Did it hurt? Was she enjoying it?

“I don’t remember what I was feeling,” Beth Ryder had said during the trial.

A second man-boy enters the frame, already naked, cradling his half-erect cock in one hand.

“That’s pathetic!” says the voice behind the phone, laughing.

The second man-boy turns to the camera and flips him off, stroking his penis, taunting him. He too climbs onto the bed. The girl seems to smile, or maybe grimace. “Is that Harley?” she asks, slurring her words. It’s hard to hear her. Hard to tell what the emotion is in her voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Do you want to change your clothes?” Casey asked.

Sarah seemed to think about it. She shook her head. “No. My good blazer … I don’t have it anymore. I like this T-shirt.”

Casey wasn’t sure what Sarah was talking about, but the Padres shirt wasn’t a bad call. It draped nicely, showing her curves and cut arms, and a little hometown sympathy couldn’t hurt.

“Okay,” she said. “Then let’s get started.”

They sat on the couch, the same basic angles they’d used in her previous interview. Part of the Chat Noir poster intruded into the frame, but with a little bokeh blur it would look good.

“Do you want me to call you Sarah or Beth for this?” Casey asked.

“Sarah. It’s my legal name now.”

“Okay, Sarah. Let’s start with that. What led you to change your name?”

“I was just tired. Tired of the harassment. The jokes. I mean, ‘Beth Ryder.’” Sarah managed a laugh. “You can imagine what that got to be like.”

“But news organizations generally don’t report the names of sexual assault victims.”

“Sure, most of them don’t. But their friends … they knew who I was. Everyone on campus did. And once my name got onto the internet … everyone knew.”

“And when you say ‘harassment,’ you mean something more than jokes.”

“Yeah. Constant phone calls and emails … some vandalism … rape threats. Death threats. There was at least one invasion board coordinating it.”

“Invasion board? Can you explain that?”

“You know, they’re chat boards. And they like to try to ruin people’s lives. Especially women’s lives.” She shrugged. “They pick a target and they go after you. I don’t know why they do it. They just do. For the ‘lulz,’ that’s what they say. They even called a fake police report in so a SWAT team showed up at our house. I’m sure they thought that was hilarious.”

“Why do you think they were doing this, Sarah? What was their motivation, going after a person they didn’t even know?”

“They hate me,” Sarah said. She said it without much emotion. Just a statement of fact. “They thought I ruined these guys’ lives … and I mean, they got off easy. Second-degree sexual assault. Nine months.”

“Even with the video?”

“Especially with the video. They used it to argue that I’d consented. Well, I’d consented to sleeping with the guy I was dating. I was too wasted to consent to the rest of it. But they said I wasn’t ‘incapacitated’”—here she made air quotes—“and to the extent that I was, I’d done it to myself.”

“But what about posting the video? There’s no question they did that without your consent.”

“Their attorney argued intent and mitigating circumstances. Because they’d put it on Snapchat. It was supposed to be private, and then it was going to disappear. Except it didn’t. It got out. He even said that to me. ‘That was just for me and my friends. Not for anyone else. Sorry.’” She mimicked him, a slightly whiny, deep voice, which surprised Casey. She’d never seen Sarah so animated before.

“I had to admit on the stand he’d said that, and then they used it as a defense. That he hadn’t intended it to get out and that he’d shown remorse. Besides … ” She shrugged. “Posting stuff like that is a misdemeanor in most states, if it’s even a crime at all. And it’s funny, if it hadn’t been for the video … I don’t think I would have done anything about what happened. I don’t think I even would have told anybody. It was bad enough what they did, but then they had to brag about it?”

“And the harassment didn’t end after the trial?”

“No. It got worse. Especially after the civil case. I guess I went from being a slut to being a whore.” Another short, bitter chuckle. “I didn’t even want to file it. I figured there was no way I’d get that much money, and why go through it all again? What was the point? But my dad … he was so angry. He wanted some kind of revenge, I guess. I ended up with enough for a college fund, basically. With a little left over so I could move out here and work on the campaign.” She turned to the camera. “Thanks, guys. I appreciate the opportunity.”

Casey could see it in Sarah’s eyes, the tight rein she’d kept on her emotions starting to slip. Keep her on track, Casey thought. She suddenly didn’t want to see Sarah melt down, even though it might make for good television. Sarah couldn’t afford to lose it. Neither of them could. This wasn’t ending anytime soon. Casey was certain of it.

She swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “Sarah, given your past experiences with harassment … given your employment by a Cason campaign that’s seen an attempted assassination and a lot of negativity on social media … what do you think will happen, once the public finds out who you used to be?”

Sarah didn’t say anything for a long moment. Her eyes lost that anger, that tight external focus. She seemed to draw inward, shutting off those feelings once more. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’m pretty worried about it.”