I’m Jasmine. I’m 34 years old and I’m a high school teacher here in Atlanta. For 2 years, two whole years, I thought I had the perfect marriage. I thought I had found my person. You know, that one person who would protect me, cherish me, stand by me through anything. My husband Devon was everything I thought I wanted.

 He was attentive, caring, always making sure I was okay, always checking in on me. He worked from home as a software engineer, so he was always there when I got back from school. He’d have dinner ready sometimes, or we’d cook together. He’d ask about my day, listen to my stories about the students, laugh at my jokes, and every single night, without fail, he’d bring me my vitamins with a glass of water, kiss my forehead so gently, and tell me he loved me.

 He’d say, “Got to keep my baby healthy.” With that smile that used to make my heart melt. I trusted him, God. I trusted him with everything, with my heart, with my life, with my future. I gave him every piece of me, held nothing back. And trust, trust can be the most dangerous thing you give someone.

 Because what I discovered when I stopped swallowing those pills, when I finally opened my eyes to what was really happening in my own home, in my own bedroom, in my own body, it shattered everything. It destroyed every memory, tainted every moment, turned every I love you into a lie. It shattered everything I thought I knew about the man I married, about the life I was living, about who I even was anymore.

 Devon and I got married 3 years ago. We met at a tech conference. I was there with some students for a STEM event, and he was presenting on cyber security.

 Ironic, isn’t it? The man who claimed to protect systems for a living was the biggest threat to my security. But back then, I didn’t know that back then. He was charming and intelligent and kind. We dated for a year before he proposed. And the wedding was beautiful, small, intimate, just our closest friends and family. My mom loved him, my dad loved him, everyone loved Evan.

 The first year of marriage was wonderful. We traveled a little, fixed up our house together, talked about starting a family someday. I was happy, genuinely, deeply happy. And then about 6 months before everything fell apart, Devon started this new thing. He said he’d been reading about health and wellness, about how important vitamins and supplements were, especially for people with stressful jobs like teaching.

 He bought these vitamins, just regularl looking capsules in a bottle from what looked like a health food store. He said they were a special blend. Vitamin D, B complex, magnesium, stuff to help with sleep and stress and energy. He was so enthusiastic about it, so caring. Baby, you work so hard, he’d say. You’re always exhausted.

 Let me take care of you. And I let him. God, I let him take care of me. And that decision, that simple act of trust became my worst nightmare. At first, everything seemed fine. I’d take the vitamins, go to sleep, wake up feeling rested. But then, slowly, things started to change. I started noticing these gaps in my memory.

 Devon would bring up conversations we’d supposedly had, and I’d have no recollection of them. He’d say, “Remember when you told me we should renovate the guest room?” Or, “You said you wanted to visit your sister next month.” And I’d just stare at him confused because I had no memory of saying these things. He’d laugh it off, tell me I was working too hard, that I needed to relax more, get more sleep. But it wasn’t just conversations.

I’d wake up absolutely exhausted despite sleeping 9, sometimes 10 hours a night. I teach high school English and I started struggling to get through my lessons. I’d be standing in front of my classroom and my mind would just go blank. I’d forget what I was teaching, lose my train of thought mid-sentence.

My students started noticing. One of them asked me if I was okay, and I realized I wasn’t, but I didn’t know why. Then there were the pajamas. I’d go to bed wearing one thing and wake up in something completely different.

 I’d fall asleep in my favorite oversized t-shirt and wake up in a night gown I barely remembered owning. When I asked Devon about it, he’d look at me like I was crazy. “Baby, you changed in the middle of the night.” He’d say, “You were half asleep. You probably don’t remember.” And I’d accept that explanation because what else could it be? The bruises started appearing about 2 months in.

Small ones at first on my upper arms, like fingerprints. I noticed them one morning while I was getting dressed for work and my blood ran cold. I asked Devon about them that night, tried to keep my voice calm even though my hands were shaking. He looked concerned, so concerned, and said maybe I was bumping into things without realizing it.

 Maybe I was anemic and bruising easily. He suggested I see a doctor. Even offered to make the appointment for me and he did. He made the appointment, drove me there, sat in the waiting room like the supportive husband he pretended to be. The doctor ran blood work. Everything came back normal. She suggested maybe I was stressed.

 Maybe I should consider anxiety medication. Devon jumped on that idea immediately. Said it made perfect sense that teaching was such a stressful job and I was probably just running myself into the ground. The doctor wrote a prescription and Devon filled it that same day. More pills, more things to swallow, to trust, to let into my body without question.

 But here’s the thing, I never felt anxious. Not before all this started. I loved my job. I loved my life. The anxiety came later. After the memory gaps, after the exhaustion, after the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. My phone became another source of confusion. I’d find text messages I didn’t remember sending.

 Nothing major, just responses to friends, confirmations of plans, random messages to my sister, but they weren’t in my voice. They were close, but not quite right. too short, too formal, missing my usual emojis and exclamation points. When I mentioned it to Devon, he said I was probably texting before I was fully awake, that it happened to him all the time.

 And again, I believed him because why wouldn’t I? He was my husband. He loved me. He had no reason to lie to me. At least that’s what I thought. Things escalated about 4 months in. I was at school during my planning period and my best friend Kesha called me. Kesha and I have been friends since college. She knows me better than almost anyone. She asked me if I was okay.

 Said I’d seemed off lately when we’d hung out the previous weekend. She said I seemed like I was on something, that my eyes looked glazed over and I was moving slowly, speaking slowly like I was sedated. I was horrified. I told her I wasn’t on anything except vitamins and the anxiety medication the doctor prescribed.

 But even as I said it, doubt crept into my mind. That conversation with Kesha stayed with me. I started paying more attention, started questioning things I’d been accepting without thought. And that’s when I noticed the locked drawer in Devon’s home office. Devon’s office was always off limits during work hours. I respected that.

 He said he dealt with sensitive information for his clients and needed privacy. But one afternoon, I got home early from school because of a teacher workday and I went to his office to ask him something. The door was open, which was unusual, and he wasn’t at his desk. He’d probably gone to the bathroom or to get a snack.

 And there in the bottom drawer of his desk, I saw a padlock, a physical padlock on a drawer that had never been locked before in our entire marriage. My heart started racing. I stood there staring at that lock and every instinct in my body screamed that something was wrong. When Devon came back, I asked him about it as casually as I could.

 Hey, when did you start locking that drawer? He barely looked up from his phone. Oh, that new client. super sensitive data. They required extra security measures. His voice was calm, unbothered. He smiled at me and asked what I wanted for dinner. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that lock meant something. It had to. Over the next few weeks, I started watching Devon more carefully.

 Not obviously, I didn’t want him to know I was suspicious, but I paid attention to patterns. He was always insistent about the vitamins, almost anxious about it. If I forgot to take them or if I said I’d take them later, he’d get this look in his eyes just for a second that I’d never seen before. Worry, fear, anger. I couldn’t quite place it, but it unsettled me.

 He’d push the pills toward me, joke about how forgetful I was being, stand there until I took them and swallowed them down. One night about 6 weeks before everything came crashing down, I woke up around midnight, or at least I thought I woke up. My mind was foggy. My body felt like it weighed 1,000 lb, but I was conscious enough to hear Devon on the phone in the hallway.

 His voice was low, hushed, but I heard fragments. Tuesday night. Yeah, same price. She’ll be out cold. Don’t worry. My blood turned to ice. I tried to move, tried to get up and confront him, but my body wouldn’t respond. It was like being trapped in a nightmare where you try to scream, but no sound comes out. I drifted back into unconsciousness before I could hear anything else.

 The next morning, I convinced myself I dreamed it. I had to have dreamed it because the alternative that my husband was talking about me being out cold to someone on the phone was too horrifying to consider. Devon was normal at breakfast, kissing me goodbye before I left for work, telling me he loved me.

 How could someone who looked at me like that, who held me like that, be capable of something sinister? But I couldn’t let it go. That phone call, real or imagined, planted a seed of doubt that grew and grew until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I started testing him in small ways. I’d pretend to take the vitamins and hide them under my tongue, then spit them out when I went to the bathroom.

But Devon started watching me more carefully, making sure I swallowed, asking me to open my mouth afterward like I was a child. Just making sure you’re not forgetting, “Baby,” he’d say with a laugh. But it didn’t feel like a joke. It felt like control. The night everything changed started like any other night.

 Devon brought me my vitamins and a glass of water at 10:30 p.m., right on schedule. He sat on the edge of the bed, watched me take them, kissed my forehead. “Sweet dreams, beautiful,” he whispered. I felt the familiar drowsiness start to creep in within minutes. That heavy pulling sensation that made my eyelids droop and my thoughts scatter, “But something was different that night.

 The pills tasted slightly off. Not bad exactly, just different. like they dissolved faster than usual, left a bitter aftertaste that wasn’t normally there, and for the first time, real fear cut through the fog. What if I wasn’t imagining things? What if Kesha was right? What if something really was wrong with those vitamins? I made a decision in that moment that probably saved my life.

 I was going to fight the drowsiness. I was going to stay awake and see what happened after I was supposed to be unconscious. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The pull towards sleep was overwhelming, like being dragged underwater by a current. My body felt so heavy. My mind kept trying to shut down. But I focused on the fear.

 Let it keep me alert. I thought about that locked drawer, about the phone call I’d overheard, about the bruises and the memory gaps, and the feeling that I was losing myself piece by piece. I dug my fingernails into my palms until it hurt. I bit the inside of my cheek. I counted backward from a thousand. Anything to stay conscious.

 Devon came to check on me about 30 minutes later. I heard the bedroom door open softly. Heard his footsteps approaching the bed. I kept my eyes closed. Kept my breathing deep and even like I was asleep. I felt him lean over me. Felt his breath on my face. He was checking to make sure I was out. After what felt like forever, he straightened up and left the room, closing the door behind him.

 I lay there in the darkness, my heart pounding so hard I thought he might have heard it. I was terrified. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, what I expected to happen, but every nerve in my body was screaming that I needed to stay alert. At 11:47 p.m.

, I’ll never forget the time because I was watching the clock on my nightstand, using it as an anchor to stay conscious. Devon came back into the room. He didn’t turn on the light. He moved quietly, carefully, and through my barely open eyes. I watched him pull something from his pocket. He stood over me for a long moment, and I had to fight every instinct not to flinch, not to react. Then he left again. The house was silent after that.

 I waited, listening to every creek and groan of our home. At 2:13 a.m., I heard Devon’s footsteps in the hallway. But they weren’t going toward the kitchen or the bathroom. They were going downstairs. And not just downstairs, I heard the distinctive sound of the basement door opening. We barely used the basement. It was unfinished, mostly storage.

 Nothing interesting down there. Or so I thought, why would Devon be going down there at 2:00 a.m.? I waited 5 minutes, the longest 5 minutes of my life, and then I slowly sat up. My head spun. My body felt like it was moving through molasses, but I forced myself out of bed. I crept to the bedroom door and opened it inch by inch, terrified it would creek and give me away.

 The hallway was dark. I moved toward the stairs, my bare feet silent on the carpet. As I got closer to the basement door, I heard something that made my blood run cold. Voices, plural. Devon was talking to someone down there. I pressed my ear against the door, barely breathing, straining to hear.

 Should be good for another few hours. That was Devon’s voice. You’re sure she won’t wake up? An unfamiliar male voice. gruff and low. Never has before. Trust me, man. She’s completely out. The dosage I’m giving her, she won’t remember a thing. Even if she does somehow come to Devon laughed. He actually laughed. I felt like I was going to vomit.

 I stumbled backward, my hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound. There was someone in our house. Devon had let someone into our house while he thought I was unconscious. And from the way they were talking, this wasn’t the first time. I should have called the police right then.

 I should have run, grabbed my phone, gotten help, but I was in shock. I couldn’t think straight. The man I loved, the man I trusted with everything, had been drugging me intentionally, regularly, and bringing strangers into our home while I was unconscious. The implications hit me like a physical blow.

 The memory gaps, the different pajamas, the bruises, the feeling that something had happened to me, but I couldn’t remember what. Oh god. Oh god. What had he done? What had he let them do? I somehow made it back to the bedroom. I don’t even remember climbing the stairs or walking down the hall.

 I just remember suddenly being back in bed, shaking so violently I thought I’d fall apart. I pulled the covers up over myself and I waited. Listening to Devon come back upstairs an hour later. He checked on me again and I played dead, played unconscious. While inside I was screaming. The next morning was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

 Devon woke me up with coffee and a smile, kissed my forehead, asked how I slept. I looked into his eyes. These eyes I thought I knew. this face I’d loved and saw a complete stranger, a monster. But I couldn’t let him know that I knew. I had to pretend everything was normal. I had to act like the drugged, compliant wife he expected me to be.

 I slept great, I lied, taking the coffee with shaking hands I hoped he’d attribute to not being fully awake yet. “Thanks, honey.” He smiled. That smile that used to make me feel safe, and headed downstairs to make breakfast. The moment he was gone, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. I stood there gripping the sink, staring at myself in the mirror. My face was pale. My eyes were haunted. And I barely recognized myself.

 Who was this woman? How had I let this happen? How had I been so blind? But I didn’t have time for self-pity or shock. I had to figure out what was going on. I had to get proof because if I went to the police with just my story, just my suspicion that my husband was drugging me, would they believe me? Without evidence, it was just my word against his.

 And Devon was good at lying. So good that he’d been doing it for months, and I’d never suspected a thing. That morning, while Devon was in the shower, I grabbed his laptop from his office. My hands were shaking so badly, I could barely type. I tried to guess his password, our anniversary, his birthday, my birthday. Nothing worked.

 The locked drawer mocked me from across the room, but I didn’t have anything to pick the lock with. Didn’t have time to search for the key. I put the laptop back exactly where I’d found it and got ready for work. At school that day, I was a zombie. I taught my classes on autopilot, barely aware of what I was saying.

 During lunch, I sat in my empty classroom and cried. One of my colleagues found me and asked if I was okay. And I wanted so badly to tell her everything, but the words wouldn’t come. How do you tell someone that your husband is drugging you? That strangers are coming into your house in the middle of the night, that you don’t know what’s being done to your unconscious body. It sounded insane, even in my own head.

 After school, instead of going home, I drove to a Best Buy. I walked through the store in a days until I found what I was looking for. Hidden cameras, tiny ones, the kind you could tuck into a bookshelf or hide in a plant. I bought two of them, paid cash so there’d be no credit card record Devon might see.

 My hands were shaking as I carried them to my car. I sat in the parking lot for 20 minutes, just staring at the shopping bag in my passenger seat. This was it. This was the line I was crossing. Once I planted these cameras, once I collected this evidence, there was no going back. My marriage would be over. My life as I knew it would be over. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t keep living like this. Couldn’t keep letting him drug me.

Couldn’t keep wondering what was happening to me while I was unconscious. I went home and waited for Devon to leave for his evening run. He went every day at 5:30 like clockwork. The moment the door closed behind him, I moved. I planted one camera in our bedroom, hidden in the bookshelf on my side of the bed, angled toward the nightstand where Devon always placed my vitamins.

 I tested it with my phone to make sure it was working, make sure it had a clear view. Then I ran downstairs to the basement. My heart was pounding as I descended those stairs. I’d barely been down there since we moved in. It was just boxes of old stuff, holiday decorations, tools. But now it felt sinister, like evidence of crimes I didn’t yet know about.

 I looked around frantically for a place to hide the second camera. There was an air vent on the far wall, and I managed to pry off the cover with a screwdriver from Devon’s toolbox. I wedged the camera inside, angled it to cover as much of the basement as possible, and replaced the vent cover.

 I made it back upstairs just as I heard Devon’s key in the front door. I was sitting on the couch pretending to grade papers trying to look normal even though my entire body was shaking. He leaned down and kissed the top of my head. Hey baby, how was your day? Good, I managed to say. How was your run? Great. I’m going to grab a shower. I waited until I heard the water running, then pulled out my phone and checked the camera feeds.

 Both cameras were working perfectly, recording to a cloud account I’d set up with an email address Devon didn’t know about. Everything was in place. Now I just had to wait. That night when Devon brought me my vitamins, it took everything in me not to throw them in his face, not to scream at him, demand answers, claw at his eyes, but I couldn’t. Not yet.

 I needed evidence. I needed proof of what he was doing. So, I took the pills from him with a steady hand, put them in my mouth, and pretended to swallow them. The moment he turned away, I tucked them under my tongue. When he came to check on me, I opened my mouth like an obedient patient. The pills were hidden against my cheek.

 He smiled and kissed my forehead. “That’s my good girl,” he said, and the words made my skin crawl. After he left the room, I spit the pills into my hand and flushed them down the toilet. Then I went back to bed and fought the drowsiness. I still felt a psychological response, maybe or residue from months of being drugged. I dug my nails into my palms and waited.

 He came that night. Of course, he did. At 2:15 a.m., I heard the basement door open. But this time, I didn’t follow him. This time, I let the cameras do their work. I stayed in bed, eyes closed, heart racing, while my husband did god knows what in the basement.

 He came back an hour later, checked on me one more time, and went to sleep beside me like nothing had happened. I did this for three nights. Three nights of pretending to take the pills, three nights of fighting to stay conscious, three nights of listening to my husband sneak around our house while he thought I was drugged unconscious.

 On the fourth night, he didn’t go to the basement. Maybe he’d gotten what he wanted for the week. Maybe his clients or whatever the hell they were had been satisfied. I didn’t know. I just knew I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to see what was on those cameras.

 The next morning, Devon told me he was going to run some errands, maybe grab lunch with a buddy from work. He’d be gone most of the day. The moment his car pulled out of the driveway, I grabbed my laptop and pulled up the camera feeds. I want you to understand something. I thought I was prepared. I thought I knew what I was going to see.

 I thought nothing could shock me anymore after everything I’d already discovered. I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. The bedroom camera showed exactly what I’d suspected. Devon bringing me the pills, watching me take them, checking on me after I was supposed to be unconscious. But it was the timestamp data that killed me. The meta data showed that this had been happening for 7 months. 7 months, not six.

 Like I thought he’d started drugging me even before I’d noticed the first symptoms. And the camera showed other things, too. Devon going through my phone while I was unconscious, typing messages, deleting things. Devon changing my clothes, posing me. I watched him move my limp body around like I was a doll.

 And the violation of it, the absolute desecration of my trust made me want to set the world on fire. But that was nothing compared to the basement footage. I watched my husband, the man I’d promised to love forever, bring men into our house. I watched him lead them downstairs to the basement where he’d set up a camera on a tripod. And I realized what was happening.

 He wasn’t just letting people into our house. He was charging them. He was charging them money to come to our home while I was drugged unconscious upstairs. The camera footage showed him accepting cash, showing them photos on his phone, photos of me clearly based on their reactions, and I watched money change hands.

 The camera showed men standing at the top of our stairs, looking up toward where I lay unconscious, and the looks on their faces made me want to vomit. I watched Evan show them something on his laptop in the basement and they’d laugh, they’d nod, they’d hand over money. The footage didn’t show what he was showing them on that laptop, but I could imagine pictures of me, videos of me, content created while I was drugged, unconscious, unable to consent, unable to fight back, unable to even know what was happening.

 I sat there at my kitchen table watching this footage and I couldn’t breathe. The man I loved, the man I trusted with my life, had been trafficking my body. He’d been creating content of me without my knowledge or consent and selling access to it for months. For seven goddamn months, he’d been violating me in ways I couldn’t even fully comprehend. And I’d had no idea.

 I found files on the cloud storage. Hundreds of files with dates going back 7 months. I couldn’t make myself open them. I didn’t want to see what he’d done, what he’d recorded, how he’d pose my unconscious body for his sick customers. The fact that they existed was enough. The fact that he’d done this, my husband, the man who’d stood at an altar and promised to love and cherish me, was enough.

 I couldn’t watch anymore. I slammed my laptop shut and ran to the bathroom where I threw up until there was nothing left. I collapsed on the bathroom floor, sobbing so hard I thought I might break apart. How had this happened? How had I married a monster without knowing it? How had I let this go on for 7 months? But then the grief turned to rage.

 White hot, allconsuming rage that burned through the shock and horror. He’d done this to me. He’d violated me, used me, sold me while I slept. He’d stolen seven months of my life, stolen my sense of safety, stolen my ability to trust, and he was going to pay for it. If it was the last thing I did, I was going to make sure he paid for every single moment of what he’d done.

 I didn’t trust myself to stay in that house. I packed a bag with shaking hands, clothes, toiletries, my important documents, and I backed up all the camera footage to three different cloud services. I saved it to USB drives. I emailed it to myself at multiple email addresses. I was not going to lose this evidence. I was not going to let him get away with this. Then I called Kesha.

 “I need you,” I said when she answered, and my voice broke. “Please, I need you right now. I’m coming,” she said immediately, no questions asked. “Where are you? I’m leaving my house. I can’t be here. Meet me at that coffee shop on Pedmont. I’m already in my car. I threw my bag in the trunk of my car and I left.

 I didn’t leave a note. I didn’t say goodbye. I just walked out of that house of horrors and drove away. And I have never been back. Kesha was at the coffee shop when I arrived. The moment she saw my face, she knew something terrible had happened. We got a corner table away from everyone else and I told her everything.

 Every detail from the vitamins to the memory gaps to the locked drawer to the cameras to what I’d seen on the footage. I watched her face go through shock, horror, rage, and finally determination. We’re calling the police, she said. Right now, we’re not waiting. We’re not thinking about it. We’re doing it right now. What if they don’t believe me? I asked. And I hated how small my voice sounded. Jasmine, you have video evidence.

 You have dates, times, everything. They’re going to believe you. But even if they didn’t, we’d make them believe you. You are not protecting this monster. You’re not going to let him get away with this. She was right. I knew she was right. But making that call was still one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. We went to Kesha’s house.

 I couldn’t face going to a police station yet. Couldn’t handle walking into that building and saying these things out loud to strangers. Kesha called the non-emergency number and explained that her friend needed to report a serious crime. They sent officers to her house within 30 minutes.

 The two officers who came were patient and professional. One was a woman, Detective Sarah Martinez, and I’ll never forget her face when I started telling my story. She didn’t interrupt, didn’t question, just let me talk. I showed them the camera footage on my laptop. Not all of it. I couldn’t bear to watch all of it again, but enough.

 Enough to show Devon drugging me. Enough to show men coming to our house. Enough to show money changing hands. Detective Martinez’s expression went from concerned to furious. Ma’am, she said, what your husband has done is a serious crime. multiple serious crimes. We’re going to need you to come to the station and give a formal statement.

 We’re going to need all this evidence and we’re going to need to get you an emergency protective order. Today, I asked, you can do that today. We’re going to try, she said. This is an active threat to your safety. We need to move fast. We went to the station. It was surreal sitting in an interview room, giving my statement while Detective Martinez recorded everything.

 She asked questions I hadn’t thought of, made me walk through details I’d tried to forget. She was thorough and compassionate, and by the end of it, I felt like maybe, just maybe, I was going to survive this. The protective order was granted that afternoon. Devon was not allowed to contact me, to come near me, to be anywhere I was.

 I stayed with Kesha that night and we sat on her couch in silence because there were no words big enough for what I was feeling. The police executed a search warrant on my house on what used to be my house. The next morning, Detective Martinez called me around noon to let me know they’d found everything.

 The locked drawer in Devon’s office had contained hard drives full of images and videos of me. Some dating back to before we were even married, before he started drugging me regularly. He’d been planning this, building up to this, maybe from the very beginning. They found customer lists, payment records through cryptocurrency, correspondence with dozens of men.

 They found the vitamins he’d been giving me, and lab analysis showed they contained Rohypnol, the date rape drug. Not vitamins at all, just poison wrapped in a lie. Devon was arrested at work that same afternoon.

 I wasn’t there, but Detective Martinez told me he’d actually tried to fight the officers, tried to run. They tackled him in the parking lot of his office building in front of all his co-workers. Everyone he worked with, everyone who thought he was just a normal guy got to see him get arrested for drugging and trafficking his own wife. He called me from jail. I don’t know how he got my number. He wasn’t supposed to contact me, but my phone rang 2 days after his arrest and it was him.

 I almost didn’t answer, but something in me needed to hear his voice. needed to hear what he possibly thought he could say to me after what he’d done. “Jasmine,” he said, and he sounded so normal, so much like the Devon I’d fallen in love with. “Baby, please. This is all a misunderstanding. I can explain everything.” I laughed.

 I actually laughed and it sounded unhinged, even to my own ears. “Explain what, Devon? Explain how you drugged me for 7 months. Explain how you sold access to my body while I was unconscious. Explain which part exactly. It wasn’t like that, he said. And there was desperation in his voice now. I never let anyone touch you. I swear.

 It was just pictures, just videos of you sleeping. Nothing else. I needed the money. We had debt. We didn’t have debt. I screamed into the phone. We were fine. You did this because you’re sick. You did this because you’re a predator and a monster and you saw an opportunity to violate your own wife for profit. Jasmine, please. I hope you rot. I said, and my voice was cold now. Dead.

I hope you spend every day for the rest of your miserable life thinking about what you did. I hope you never know peace. I hope the guilt destroys you. I hung up. He tried to call back, but I blocked the number. That was the last time I ever spoke to Devon. The legal process was grueling.

 I had to testify in front of a grand jury. I had to sit in a room full of strangers and describe in detail what had been done to me, what I discovered, how it had felt to watch that camera footage. Some of them cried. One of the men on the jury had to step out of the room because he was so upset.

 But they indicted Devon on multiple counts. Administering drugs without consent, sexual exploitation, distribution of intimate images without consent, trafficking related offenses. The prosecutor told me it was one of the strongest cases she’d ever seen because I’d been smart enough to get evidence before confronting him. Devon’s lawyer tried every trick in the book.

 He tried to discredit me, saying I was an unreliable witness because of the memory issues I’d been experiencing, the memory issues his client had caused by drugging me. He tried to argue that Devon and I had some kind of arrangement, that I’d consented to being filmed, but the prosecution tore that argument apart.

 They showed that I’d been drugged without my knowledge. They showed the customer lists, the payments, the evidence that this was a business for Devon. and they found some of his customers and offered them immunity in exchange for testimony. Three of them took the deal. Three men came forward and testified that they’d paid Devon for access to photos and videos of me.

 One of them, when asked by the prosecutor why he’d done it, said he made it seem harmless, like she knew, like she was okay with it. He said she was into it, that it was part of their marriage dynamic. The prosecutor showed him the footage of Devon drugging me and the man started crying on the stand. I didn’t know.

 He kept saying, “I swear I didn’t know he was drugging her.” But he did know. They all knew. On some level, you don’t pay money for secret photos of someone’s unconscious wife if you think everything is above board. You don’t sneak into someone’s house at 2:00 a.m. for innocent reasons. They knew and they participated anyway. And I hope they live with that guilt forever. The trial took eight months.

 Eight months of my life consumed by this nightmare of having to relive it over and over again every time there was a hearing or a deposition or a meeting with the prosecutor. 8 months of therapy appointments where I tried to process the violation, the betrayal, the complete destruction of everything I thought my life was.

 Eight months of living with Kesha because I couldn’t bear to be alone. Couldn’t bear to sleep without checking every lock three times. Couldn’t bear to close my eyes without wondering if someone was watching me. My therapist, Dr. Williams, was the only thing that kept me sane during that time. She specialized in trauma, particularly sexual trauma. And she helped me understand that what happened to me wasn’t my fault.

 That I couldn’t have known, couldn’t have prevented it, couldn’t have done anything differently. She helped me work through the guilt, the crushing, suffocating guilt that told me I should have seen the signs, should have questioned the vitamins, should have been smarter or more careful or less trusting.

 Jasmine, she told me during one of our sessions when I was drowning in self-lame. Predators are good at what they do. They’re skilled manipulators. Devon didn’t choose you because you were weak or stupid. He chose you because you were kind and trusting and loving. Those are good qualities. He weaponized them, but that doesn’t make them bad. That doesn’t make you bad.

 It took months for me to even begin to believe her. The therapy wasn’t just about the trauma of what Devon did. It was about rebuilding my entire sense of self because he’d taken that from me, too. I didn’t know who I was anymore. Was I the woman I thought I’d been during those seven months? Or had that person been fake, a drugged construct who didn’t really exist? Who was I before the vitamins? Who was I going to be after? Dr.

Williams helped me see that I was still me. that the core of who I was, the teacher who loved her students, the friend who showed up for people, the woman who valued honesty and kindness hadn’t been destroyed. It had been buried under trauma and violation, but it was still there. I just had to dig it out again.

 The trial finally went to jury in month seven. I had to testify. I had to sit on that stand for 3 days while Devon’s lawyer tried to make me seem unreliable, unstable, vindictive. He suggested I’d made up the whole thing because I was angry about something else in our marriage, that I’d planted the cameras myself and doctorred the footage.

 The prosecutor objected to most of it, and the judge sustained the objections, but the damage was done. I had to sit there and defend myself, defend my memory, defend my reality against a man being paid to destroy me all over again. But then the prosecution brought out the evidence, the hard drives from Devon’s lock drawer, the customer testimonies, the lab results on the vitamins, the cryptocurrency payment records, the metadata on the photos and videos showing they’d been created while I was provably unconscious based on the camera timestamps, the medical expert who testified about the effects of Rohypnol, and how my symptoms matched perfectly with chronic lowd dose

administration. The jury deliberated for 6 hours. 6 hours. That felt like 6 years. While I sat in the courthouse hallway with Kesha on one side and my mom on the other, waiting to find out if the 12 strangers in that room believed me. They came back with a verdict. Guilty on all counts. I collapsed.

 I literally collapsed into Kesha’s arms and sobbed so hard I thought I’d never stop. It was over. The trial was over. They believed me. They’d seen the evidence and heard the testimony and decided that yes, Devon had done these things. Yes, I was telling the truth. Yes, what happened to me was real and terrible and criminal. The sentencing hearing was 3 weeks later. I gave a victim impact statement.

I stood in front of that courtroom and looked Devon in the eye for the first time since his arrest. And I told him exactly what he’d done to me. You took seven months of my life, I said, and my voice didn’t shake. I’d practiced this, rehearsed it with Dr. Williams until I could say it without breaking down.

 You took my sense of safety, my ability to trust, my peace of mind. You turned my own body into a crime scene. You made me afraid to sleep, afraid to eat, afraid to exist in my own home. You looked me in the eye every single day and lied to me while you violated me in the worst possible way.

 You made me doubt my own sanity, my own memory, my own worth. Devon was crying. He had the audacity to sit there and cry like he was the victim. His lawyer had probably told him to look remorseful, to show emotion, but I didn’t care about his tears. They meant nothing. I will never trust the way I used to. I continued. I will never feel completely safe the way I used to.

You took that from me and I can never get it back. But here’s what you didn’t take. You didn’t take my strength. You didn’t take my resilience. You didn’t take my determination to survive this and build a life that’s better than anything I had with you.

 You thought you could break me, control me, use me up, and throw me away. But I’m still here. I’m still standing and you’re the one in chains. The judge sentenced him to 18 years in prison. 18 years with no possibility of parole for at least 12. He also has to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

 When he gets out, if he makes it out, he’ll be in his 50s and everyone will know what he is. Every job application, every apartment rental, every interaction with society will be marked by what he did to me. It’s not enough. 18 years isn’t enough for 7 months of violation, for the lifetime of trauma I’ll carry. But it’s something. It’s justice as close as our legal system can provide.

 The divorce was finalized 6 months after the criminal trial ended. I got everything. The house, though, I sold it immediately because I never wanted to see it again. His retirement accounts, his savings, his lawyer tried to fight it, but it’s hard to negotiate a favorable divorce settlement when your client is a convicted sex offender who drugged and trafficked his wife.

 I donated most of the money to organizations that support survivors of sexual violence. I kept enough to pay off my student loans and start fresh somewhere new because I couldn’t stay in Atlanta. Everywhere I went, I saw ghosts. Our favorite restaurant where he’d taken me on dates while planning my violation.

 The grocery store where we’d shop together while he was drugging me. The gym where he’d pretended to be a devoted husband while selling access to my unconscious body. I couldn’t exist in that space anymore. I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. New city, new teaching job at a different high school, new life.

 Kesha helped me move, helped me set up my new apartment, stayed with me for the first week until I felt steady enough to be alone. My mom wanted me to move back home to Memphis. Wanted to keep me close where she could watch over me. But I needed independence. I needed to prove to myself that I could live alone, sleep alone, exist alone without fear consuming me.

 It was hard at first. God, it was so hard. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, convinced someone was in my apartment. I checked every lock five times before bed. I installed security cameras, real ones this time, ones that I controlled, and I monitored them obsessively. I couldn’t take any medication without having a panic attack, even over-the-counter pain relievers.

 The sight of pills made me physically ill. Dr. Williams connected me with a therapist in Charlotte, Dr. Richardson, and I continued therapy twice a week. We worked on the PTSD, the hypervigilance, the panic attacks. We worked on rebuilding my ability to trust, to let people close to me, to believe that not everyone was a threat. It was slow, painful work.

 There were setbacks. There were days I wanted to give up. wanted to just accept that this broken, terrified version of myself was who I’d be forever. But I didn’t give up. I couldn’t because giving up would mean Devon won. It would mean he’d succeeded in breaking me, in reducing me to nothing but fear and trauma. And I refused to give him that.

 Slowly, so slowly, I barely noticed it happening. I started to heal. I started to have good days mixed in with the bad ones. I started to sleep through the night sometimes. I started to accept dinner invitations for my new colleagues at school, started to build friendships, started to remember what it felt like to laugh without it being tinged with bitterness. About a year after I moved to Charlotte, I met someone.

 His name is Marcus. I know I said I’d avoid that name, but this Marcus, he’s different. He’s a guidance counselor at my school and he asked me to coffee one day after a staff meeting. I almost said no. The thought of dating, of letting someone close to me again, of being vulnerable with another person terrified me.

 But something about Marcus felt safe. Maybe it was the way he respected boundaries, always asking before touching my arm or standing too close. Maybe it was the patience in his eyes when I struggled to answer simple questions about my past. Maybe it was just timing. Maybe I was finally ready to try again. I told him about Devon on our third date.

 We were sitting in his car outside my apartment and he just asked if he could kiss me. The question triggered something in me and before I knew it, I was telling him everything about the vitamins, the cameras, the trial, all of it. I was shaking by the end, convinced he’d run, convinced no one would want someone as broken as me. Marcus was quiet for a long time after I finished.

 Then he said, “Thank you for trusting me with that. I can’t imagine how hard it was to survive what you went through. But Jasmine, you did survive it. You got yourself out. You got justice and you’re still here. That takes incredible strength.

 And if you’ll let me, I’d like to be someone in your life who makes it easier, not harder. But we’ll go at whatever pace you need. No pressure, no expectations, just let me be here for you. I cried. And then I let him hold me while I cried. And it felt like the first safe touch I’d had from a man in years. We’ve been together for 8 months now. It’s not perfect. I still have moments of panic. Still have nightmares.

Still struggle with trust. But Marcus is patient. He reminds me to take my anxiety medication when I forget. He doesn’t push me past my boundaries. He lets me check his phone when the paranoia gets bad. Even though I hate that I need to. He’s helping me learn that not all men are predators. That intimacy can be safe.

 That I deserve love that doesn’t come with hidden costs. It’s been 2 years now since that night I pretended to take the pills and discovered the truth. 2 years since my world imploded and I had to rebuild myself from scratch. Some days I still can’t believe it happened. Some days I still wake up and expect it to have been a nightmare.

 Expect to find myself back in Atlanta in that house with Devon bringing me my morning coffee like always. But it wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. It happened to me and I survived it and I’m still here. I’m still teaching. I love my students in Charlotte just as much as I love the ones in Atlanta. I’m good at my job and it gives me purpose. gives me something to focus on besides my own trauma.

 I’m still in therapy, probably will be for years to come. I’m still healing, still learning how to exist in a world where someone I loved hurt me in ways I didn’t think were possible. Devon tried to appeal his sentence. His new lawyer argued that 18 years was too harsh, that he should be eligible for early parole. The appeal was denied.

 He’s currently in a medium security prison in Georgia. And according to his public record, he’s been written up multiple times for disciplinary issues. Apparently, even among criminals, what he did is considered beyond the pale. Good. I hope every day in there is hell for him. Some of his customers were prosecuted, too.

 The three who testified got reduced sentences, but they still spent time in jail. The others, the ones they could identify from Devon’s records, were charged with various crimes related to purchasing and possessing the images. I testified at some of those trials, too. It was exhausting having to tell my story over and over again, but the prosecutor said my testimony was crucial, that these men needed to face consequences for participating in my victimization.

 One of them tried to apologize to me outside the courthouse after his sentencing. He approached me in the parking lot and I panicked. I had Kesha and Marcus with me and Marcus stepped between us immediately. The man held up his hands, said he just wanted me to know he was sorry, that he’d been sick and was getting help now. I looked at him and felt nothing but contempt.

You’re not sorry you did it, I said. You’re sorry you got caught. There’s a difference. He started to argue, but I walked away. I didn’t owe him forgiveness. I didn’t owe him closure. I owed him nothing. There are warning signs I wish I’d known to look for. I share them now with anyone who will listen.

 Because if my story can help even one person recognize what’s happening to them, then maybe something good can come from this nightmare. If your partner is insistent about you taking medication or supplements they provide, question it. Ask to see the bottle. Research the brand. Consider getting them tested if something feels off. Trust your instincts. If you’re experiencing memory gaps or blackouts you can’t explain, take it seriously.

 See a doctor, your own doctor, not one your partner recommends. Get blood work done. Tell them you’re concerned about being drugged. If you’re waking up feeling drugged, in different clothes with unexplained bruises, do not dismiss it. Do not let anyone convince you it’s normal or you’re imagining it. Something is wrong.

 If your partner is overly controlling about your sleep schedule, about when and what you eat or drink, about your daily routines, pay attention. Control is often the first sign of abuse. If your phone has messages you don’t remember sending, if your social media has activity you don’t recall, if your things are moved or changed without explanation, someone is accessing your life without your permission. Find out who and why. Trust your gut.

 If something feels wrong, it probably is. Your intuition is trying to protect you. Listen to it. I spent months dismissing my instincts, convincing myself I was being paranoid or crazy, and it almost cost me everything.

 And if you’re in a situation where you feel unsafe, where you think you might be being drugged or violated or controlled, please reach out to someone. Tell a friend, a family member, a coworker. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 18007997233. Go to the police. I know it’s terrifying. Believe me, I know. But you deserve safety. You deserve autonomy over your own body. You deserve to live without fear.

 I want to be clear about something. What happened to me is not rare. Sexual assault by intimate partners, drugging, image-based sexual abuse. These things happen more often than people want to believe. We want to think that the people we love, the people we invite into our homes and our beds, would never hurt us. But sometimes they do.

 Sometimes the monster isn’t a stranger in a dark alley. Sometimes it’s the person sleeping next to you. And if you’re someone who’s experienced something like this, please know that it’s not your fault. I spent months drowning in guilt, convinced I should have known, should have seen it coming, should have been smarter or more careful. But Dr. Williams was right. Predators are good at what they do.

 They’re skilled at manipulation, at hiding their true nature, at making you doubt your own reality. You couldn’t have known. You couldn’t have prevented it. It is not your fault. You deserve to heal. You deserve to rebuild your life. You deserve to find safety and peace and maybe even love again if that’s what you want. It won’t be easy.

 God knows it hasn’t been easy for me, but it’s possible. You are stronger than you know. You can survive this. I’m Jasmine. I’m 36 years old now. I’m a high school English teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina. I have a partner who respects me. friends who support me, a therapist who helps me navigate the hard days. I sleep in apartment with good locks and security cameras I control.

 I take no medication I haven’t prescribed for myself by a doctor I trust. I’m healing slowly but surely from the worst violation I can imagine. And I’m here to tell you that if I can survive what Devon did to me, if I can claw my way back from that pit of trauma and violation and betrayal, then you can survive whatever you’re facing, too. You can make it through. You can rebuild.

 You can reclaim your life from the person who tried to destroy it. Devon took seven months from me. He took my sense of safety, my ability to trust easily, my innocence about what people are capable of. But he didn’t take my strength. He didn’t take my resilience. He didn’t take my determination to not just survive, but to thrive despite what he did. I’m still here. I’m still standing.

 And so can you.