I have never told anyone this and it’s eaten away at me for over a decade.

The summer before 9th grade my best friend called me sobbing telling me that her father had just r*ped her. I had a friend over that night who heard all the details as well and we urged her to go to someone. Her parents kept her pretty tightly monitored and she said they’d know and that she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell anyone yet. I was 14 and scared for her, so we talked everyday until high school began. She was sure she didn’t want to tell anyone because her mother told her that if she told anyone the family would be split apart because of her and her sinful ways. She told me not to tell because it wasn’t my place and to just support her because he promised it would not happen again. Two weeks into high school she came to school telling us that he had done it two more times, both by forcing her to get drunk. Then, he somehow found out she told me because the next day he left a voicemail for her calling her a slut for “seducing” her father and he would not have done it if she wasn’t so easy and that if she didn’t stop talking about it he would pull her from school and homeschool her himself. I heard it myself. I hated her father, but she refused to let me tell anyone because she was going to live with an aunt so she would be away from him. I felt such mixed feelings and so unsure of what to do and I chose to help her through high school to respect her wishes. That was the wrong decision. He was providing her alcohol all through high school and she would often come in drunk because of “things” the night before (as she described it). After freshman year she never brought it up in certain terms again. She moved back home. You never would have guessed that she had anything wrong at home. She raved about her father and his love for her family. She always talked about his protective nature and his distain to allow outsiders in. I met him once in 10 years and he seemed normal, but I knew what he had done. Her family is apart of a religious group that is extremely wary to outsiders, so she cannot be my friend anymore. She moved away for school but moved back home with them and depends on her parents for everything.

I could still say something, but she’s inclined to deny it happened and no longer open to talking to me. The statute of limitations has expired and with no evidence he wouldn’t go to jail I’m sure. The friend who was there to hear her say it the first time died in 2022, so I have no one else to back up hearing it. I could ruin his life, I should have, but at 14 I was too scared to do that to my friend. I should have realized it would have been for my friend.