Ashley just had a baby. She's sitting on the couch in a relative's apartment in Clarksdale, Miss., wearing camo-print leggings and fiddling with the plastic hospital bracelets still on her wrists. It's August and pushing 90°F, which means the brown patterned curtains are drawn, the air conditioner is on high, and the room feels like a hiding place. Peanut, the baby boy she delivered two days earlier, is asleep in a car seat at her feet, dressed in a little blue outfit. Ashley is surrounded by family, but nobody is smiling. One relative silently eats lunch in the kitchen, her two siblings stare glumly at their phones, and her mother Regina watches from across the room. Ashley was discharged from the hospital only hours ago, but there are no baby presents or toys in the room, no visible diapers or ointments or bottles. Almost nobody knows that Peanut exists, because almost nobody knew that Ashley was pregnant. She is 13 years old. Soon she'll start seventh grade.
In the fall of 2022, Ashley was raped by a stranger in the yard outside her home, her mother says. For weeks, she didn't tell anybody what had happened, not even her mom. But Regina knew something was wrong. Ashley used to love going outside to make dances for her TikTok, but suddenly she refused to leave her bedroom. When she turned 13 that November, she wasn't in the mood to celebrate. "She just said, 'It hurts,'" Regina remembers. "She was crying in her room. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she didn't want to tell me." (To protect the privacy of a juvenile rape survivor, TIME is using pseudonyms to refer to Ashley and Regina; Peanut is the baby's nickname.)
This story is from the September 25, 2023 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the September 25, 2023 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
A Marriage of Food and Fiction
In the kitchen with Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is reimagining the Olympics
When Paris kicks off the Olympic Games on July 26, it will be with athletes floating on an armada of boats down the Seine River, rather than marching in a stadium as it has always been.
TIME 100 HEALTH-TITANS
Last May, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory about the profound consequences of loneliness and isolation-a departure from the type of standard medical conditions his predecessors prioritized.
TIME 100 HEALTH-CATALYSTS
It's been a long time since there was good news about Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative condition that affects more than 8 million people worldwide.
TIME 100 HEALTH-LEADERS
'Catastrophic.' -BASHAR MURAD ON THE HEALTH SITUATION IN GAZA
TIME 100 HEALTH-PIONEERS
In the wake of the pandemic, a new era emerges-marked by fresh discoveries, novel treatments, and global victories over disease. These are the most influential people in health in 2024
A Man in Full, adapted and redacted
TOM WOLFE'S A MAN IN FULL IS A MASSIVE BOOK, IN MORE ways than one. The 742-page social novel about a swaggering Atlanta real estate mogul, which took Wolfe over a decade to write, sold a jaw-dropping 1.4 million hardcover copies after its publication in 1998. The book's themes-money, power, race, masculinity--are just as grand.
The golden age of Ryan Gosling is upon us
IN DEREK CIANFRANCE'S 2010 LOVE-ON-THErocks heartbreaker Blue Valentine, Ryan Gosling plays a husband and father, Dean, who appears to be nothing but an annoyance to his wife, Michelle Williams' Cindy, a harried nurse.
Greek Revival
PRIME MINISTER KYRIAKOS MITSOTAKIS IS DETERMINED TO MAKE GREECE THE COMEBACK STORY OF THE DECADE
HOLDING COURT
AT 20, DEFENDING U.S. OPEN CHAMPION COCO GAUFF IS MOVING INTO A NEW PHASE OF HER CAREER