Another truism: Never trust a rapist.
A Catholic youth leader who promised a teenager he had raped that he would never rape again if she didn’t report him to police was reported to police by his victim after he sexually assaulted her best friend.
I'm sure the girl involved thought she was doing the right thing. It's hard to resist religious authority. She was forcibly raped though, so some alarm bells should have gone off.
In a complaint filed by Marain Foley against Brandon Eckerson, she claims that Eckerson forcibly raped her two days before Christmas in 2012. However, he convinced her “not to say anything further to anyone about his sexual exploitation of her; in exchange he promised to never again sexually assault anyone. It was understood that if plaintiff discovered he violated this sworn promise she would go to the police.”
Bradon Eckerson went on to rape Marain Foley's best friend. What does this tell us about trust? The saying, Once an addict, always an addict, rings true because we all know people who are addicts. They fail in horrible ways. Rapist are opportunists and liars. Never trust a rapist is something we can all take at face value, even teenage girls.
Brandon Eckerson is a Catholic youth worker working for the Blessed Sacrament Parish in the Phoenix Diocese.
