The Sacrificial Bargain: Why I Protected My Rapist for 20 Years

Twenty years ago, I was raped by a man named Jino Vitale. I went to the hospital. I had a rape kit done. I told the man I loved. And nothing happened. No arrest. No justice. No accountability.Not because the system failed me—though it did. But because I left the hospital before the police arrived. Because the man I loved, Chance, didn't believe me. He said I was only saying it happened because I didn't want him to think I cheated. Because I was too afraid to speak his name name.For 20 years, I have carried this silence. I have protected my rapist. I have made the Sacrificial Bargain—absorbing the harm, carrying the trauma, staying silent to protect a Black man who destroyed me. And I've been living my dissertation, analyzing the Sacrificial Bargain in Megan Thee Stallion's story, in Cassie's story, in Beyoncé's story—while refusing to apply that same framework to my own life.But this week, a friend asked me a question I couldn't ignore: "Why have you never called out the person who raped you?" He told me about a friend of his, who recently named the person who sexually abused him as a child. The friend said, "I'm not carrying this anymore. I'm not protecting him anymore. I'm telling my truth."And I realized: it's time.In this episode, I break down the theoretical framework of the Sacrificial Bargain and show you how it operated in my own life. This is not just my story. This is the Sacrificial Bargain in its most devastating form. This is what happens when Black women are expected to absorb harm, stay silent, and protect Black men—even when those men destroy us. And it's time we name it.