Reuben Williams

And that's when the messages like started flowing in as well.

And, um,

Uh, to the point where like, you know, by the time like it got around to the, the retrial, um, I'd be like, Hey guys, I'm going into court today.

And, um, and, uh, and so, yeah, by this point, like a lot of people had disclosed their own story with me.

Many of them are harrowing.

Um, and I started to become aware that even though I felt embarrassed of like the, the, um, privilege that I had that allowed me to get through this, um, that my voice was useful to some people.

Yeah.

So it, um,

It was very disgracefully overturned.

They deemed it couldn't be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

And for this verdict, I decided I wanted to go there into courtroom and to hear the decision either way.

So rather than, you know, watch it through the Zoom screen, I thought I want to be in the room to feel this because I feel like either way it's going to give me some closure.

And I'm sitting there in this room, my perpetrator's on the other side, I'm listening to the judge kind of read out his verdict.

And I can see the direction, I can hear the direction that it's going until he eventually says like, I dismiss the charge.

And I'm, you know, my blood's boiling, I'm becoming incredibly upset.

My brother, Ben, is with me at this point in time.

And as soon as we leave the room, we go into like a quiet room around the corner.

And I just, you know, gave him a hug and burst into tears and

and just couldn't believe that after six years this is how it ended.

Yeah.