The guy who raped me is still walking around our dorm. I’m won’t report him because I don’t want my parents finding out what happened to me. I have to leave the room as soon as he arrives.

In short, LAAC didn’t look especially worse than most colleges. It was the same story across the country. Earlier in the year, UMass Boston and Brown researchers had published a study of nearly 2,000 men at an unnamed midsized urban campus and found that, of the 120 who admitted to rape or attempted rape, over half had done it multiple times. Unless this anonymous campus had a particularly sadistic population, the conclusion was chilling: serial rapists prowled American universities. Why? Because the consequences for them had not arrived. Women were afraid to accuse, and if they did, they often suffered in the public eye. Especially if the male student had some campus prominence: basketball player, wrestler, football player. And then there was the issue of alcohol and drug abuse. Intoxication increased the likelihood of sexual assaults. It also blurred memory, creating a he-said, she-said dilemma for adjudicators. Often the victims were blamed.

Brenae did not appear to be intoxicated in Lesson in Red. She looked stone-cold sober, and prepared, as if she’d meant to film everything that happened. To show how she’d caved in to Erik’s coercion, time and again. To trap him as she’d felt trapped.

He comes. He asks me. I say yes. What can I say? What will happen if I say no? Where will I go?

With her video, Brenae was documenting one of the hardest aspects of sexual crimes. What if the stakes of saying no feel too great? What happens to a yes, then?

I wasn’t sure I knew.

Brenae could have refused him, but she didn’t feel she could. So she hadn’t.

Erik’s openness and outrage in the interview with Ray seemed genuine. But then so did the distress on Brenae’s face.

Nelson de Wilde interrupted my research that second afternoon. The moment he entered the gallery, the big open room seemed to flinch. Nelson barely cut his eyes sideways at me, and I sensed that I had a small stain on my collar and that my lips were chapped. The crew paused in their work, as if suddenly uncertain how to proceed.

Nelson passed me without comment. In profile, he had heavy shoulders, carefully diminished by the slim cut of his expensive suit. He moved like a big man, though he wasn’t especially tall, and when he crossed the gallery his footsteps had a low, decisive beat. Layla waited. Erik waited. Nelson ignored them. He nodded to his daughter, Zania.

She tossed down a sneaker. “I hope we didn’t take these from homeless people. Did we?”

“They were slated to go overseas,” Nelson began.

“Oh great, from refugees,” Zania said. “Even better.”