Page 221 of Chasing Hope

Until a new one resurfaces and you’re back to square one.

Because that’s the thing no one truly explains about trauma. It isn’t just one mass event you can talk about and then be fine. There are intricate moments and details that your brain holds onto, like a thousand paper cuts. They’re all equally deep and gushing with blood, and they all desperately need time and attention to patch up the one wound, yet you only have so many hands to heal them. At least, that’s how I see it.

All in all, thirty-seven women came forward. I haven’t spoken to any of them, shame and guilt over the fact it was my father who hurt them coating my tongue and heart.

Thirty-seven.

Thirty-seven minds groomed and warped, the youngest being six.

Thirty-seven bodies violated.

Thirty-seven lives destroyed.

Thirty-eight if you count his own daughter.

Because of Marcus Ellington’s perverted mind, thirty-eight women have been affected, and that’s just the number of women who were brave enough to step forward and tell their stories. Just the number of women who remember what happened to them.

He groomed, touched, stalked and violated all of them. Being in the position of power he had as their little league soccer coach, with a new group of girls coming through every year, Marcus abused every ounce of his power.

But the thing that really nailed his coffin shut were the photos.

I’m not sure if you can truly call it luck considering the years of constant abuse I experienced from him in my own home, but I felt lucky the day I was told by the district attorney that Marcus Ellington would be thrown into prison for the rest of his life because they found photo evidence.

I didn’t want to know the details, didn’t want something else my mind could latch onto, but Caleb wanted to know everything. He needed it, needed to confront his mind with the picture-perfect dad he grew up with. So I sat on my brother and boyfriend’s couch hearing about the child pornography they found on our father’s computer.

Some photos were from downloaded sites, from groups he was a part of on the dark web, but the others…

The others were his way of reliving the torture he inflicted.

Photographs of little girls changing in the locker rooms, photos of them in his office…all of them terrified.

Marcus was still pleading innocent, same with my mother, all the way up until those photos. We never saw him give another interview after that. The social media posts slamming my name and mental health into the ground ceased.

Everything went quiet.

I’ve never heard such silence from that man in my entire life, and it was liberating.

We no longer had to stand before him and testify. Marcus Ellington pled guilty to thirty-eight counts of sexual assault of a minor, thirty-eight counts of sexual exploitation of a child, and possession, production, and distribution of child pornography.

The words I thought I would never hear in those grueling three months after everything came out now boom throughout the courtroom as the judge finishes listing off Marcus’s charges.

“The court sentences the defendant, Marcus Ellington, to life imprisonment to the Colorado Department of Corrections without the possibility of parole.”

A collective sigh seems to fill the room and yet I still don’t dare turn around and lock eyes with any of the other women. Especially not the one that has been weighing on my heart the most. The one that, when I was handed the list of names, made my stomach churn with bile.

Marcus will rot in a cell until the day he dies, but it doesn’t change what he did. Doesn’t erase the memories, doesn’t stop the nightmares, doesn’t make my day easier. It’s just relieving to know that, for once, a monster has been put behind bars.

My eyes slide to the side. Kieran Ashford sits beside Caleb with a silver sheen covering his eyes.

His monster may not be behind bars but there is a relief sweeping through him that at least mine has been. Kieran offers me a wobbly smile before sitting back.

There’s just one person who doesn’t sigh with relief, oneperson in this room that was still hoping and praying, holding onto a sliver of delusion that Marcus wasn’t a monster.

Serena Ellington sits behind the defendant’s table, lip and chin quivering.

Matteo follows my line of sight, his body stiffening before he wraps an arm around my shoulder, pulling me in tighter and placing a soft kiss on the top of my head. “It’s over, Dove. It’s over.”

I pull back slightly, peering up at my rock and smiling softly. He knows this won’t fix everything, and he actually made sure that I didn’t put too many expectations on Marcus going to prison to heal me, and he was right. In this moment, I feel such relief and safety but it’s not soothing the deep unending ache in my heart over everything.