Sam’s Journal of Survival

The Prosecutor

012526 This journal is fiction. The voice you’re reading is a character, not the author.


The Prosecutor

I spoke to the prosecutor on my case.

I did not plan to. It just happened. A conversation that felt necessary and pointless at the same time.

He listened while I spoke. He did not interrupt. He did not argue. When I finished, he said, “I knew how upset you would be.”

The words sat between us.

I waited for more. An explanation. A justification. Something that would make that sentence mean less.

Nothing came.

What I wanted to ask was simple.

Then why didn’t you make them keep him in prison?

I did not ask it out loud. I did not need to. The answer was already there, hanging in the space he left empty.

Because it was not his decision.
Because the system had already decided what was acceptable.
Because my fear was understood, but not weighted.

“I knew how upset you would be” is not the same as “we protected you.”

It means my reaction was anticipated. Accounted for. Filed away as collateral.

I realized then how neatly harm gets divided. How responsibility becomes abstract. How everyone involved can feel sympathetic without anyone being accountable.

He did not sound cruel. He did not sound careless.

He sounded resigned.

That may have been the most unsettling part.

It told me that my fear was reasonable, but not actionable. That my safety mattered, but not enough to override policy, numbers, space.

Prison overcrowding. Compliance. Treatment. Probation.

These words carry more weight than the lived knowledge of someone who survived.

I left that conversation understanding something I had not wanted to name before.

The system is not built to prevent what almost happened to me. It is built to respond after something does.

“I knew how upset you would be.”

I hear that sentence now and understand it clearly.

They knew.

And they let it happen anyway.