Alabama Banned Abortions. Then Its Lawmakers Remembered Rapists Can Get Parental Rights.

[Blue_Tires]

1. I'm going to be fuckin' sick...

A few months after Jessica Stallings’ 13th birthday, her uncle raped her for the first time. He was 20 years old, and he lived with Stallings and her mother in their Alabama home. He kept raping her, she claimed in court documents, and by the time she was 19, she had three children from the encounters. They married briefly when she was 20, and she filed for divorce a few months later.

Today Stallings is in her early 30s, but she hasn’t been able to fully escape her rough childhood: After their divorce, a court granted him visitation rights so he could regularly see the kids—forcing her to repeatedly face the man she says tormented her....

...Stallings’ uncle was never convicted of rape or incest, even though she says she was 15 and he was 22 when she first got pregnant with his child. “It went to grand jury twice, and both times they said there was not enough evidence to convict him, even though we had DNA and court documents and birth certificates and medical records,” she told me. “I had every piece of the puzzle I could possibly have, and they kept kicking it out.” Her uncle’s attorney declined to speak with Mother Jones about the case, citing attorney-client privilege.

For now, she says, her uncle is legally allowed to see her children every weekend. For a few years she refused to let him, but a court threatened to jail her if she didn’t comply.