Page 139 of Wicked Sin

“I made poor choices. And they were choices. I could have done things differently.”

She’s talking about an escalation of destructive sexual relationships that ended up imploding much of her parents’ social circle. Affairs with older men, violating people’s trust. Much of her history is well-known.

“You think that I wouldn’t have done any of those things if I hadn’t been abused,” she says to me after we order lunch.

That’s the angle I pushed for with this piece, absolutely. Clara, like a lot of women in her social circles, was exposed to party lifestyles that would make most parents see red.

Not hers.

At thirteen, Clara spent the weekend with a family friend on his yacht—a floating rape palace off the Florida coast. He was a wealthy billionaire. She was a child.

At fourteen, she seduced a teacher at her private school.

At fifteen, she…

I stop reading there and start skimming. It’s too hard to read my mistakes in black and white. At the end, Melinda circles back to our conversations at the diner. It was in West Hollywood, not Manhattan. She inverted almost everything in the article.

But not the blind item hints at Gerome Lively’s identity.

Those she kept as precise and pointed as possible.

That was my deal with her in the end. She could write my story so long as we gave it an even chance of launching a national conversation about childhood sexual assault.

Other than Melinda, the only people who know that I am Clara are Luke and my boss. After my second interview for the article, I went to her and explained what I was doing.

LAST is launching a new campaign tomorrow to coincide with the article drop. And I’m ready to go with an anonymous Twitter account to use the hashtags #Iwasonlythirteen and #rapechangedmeforever and #rapeisnotsex to tell more of my story.

It’s scary.

It’s unknown.

But it’s also freaking healing.

THE END (for now, because there’s always more with the Horus Group…)