Rape and sexual assaultA beautiful wedding and honeymoon, then, a month later, a knock on the door and the news no woman wants to hear…I was writing a thank-you card for a wedding gift when I heard the knock at my hotel room door. It was 8 November 2005. I was away from home, at a conference. When I opened the door, I expected to see my colleagues inviting me to breakfast. Instead, I saw a police uniform.
"Are you Shannon Moroney?" he asked. "I'm here about your husband. Are you Jason Staples's wife?"
His question flustered me. It was our one‑month wedding anniversary and I wasn't used to being called a "wife". But I nodded.
"I'm here about your husband, Jason. He was arrested last night, charged with sexual assault."
I felt my body go numb. The officer continued. "I understand your husband called the police himself."
He handed me a slip of paper with the phone number of the police station and said I should call right away. Then, quietly, he said, "I think you'd better expect that it was full rape."
My stomach flipped. I felt like I was going to be sick. How was this possible? Less than two hours earlier, I had been lying in bed feeling so happy – I'd just had my 30th birthday, then our beautiful wedding and honeymoon. The night before, I had told Jason I thought I might be pregnant. "That would be great," he said. "We'll take a test when you get home." We had planned a celebratory dinner to mark our first month as husband and wife.
My heart pounding, I called the number the officer had given me. "I'm not able to tell you very much right now except that yesterday afternoon, at about 4.30, Jason assaulted two women at the store where he works. After some time, he took them to your home." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was as though he were talking about someone else – someone I didn't know. The sergeant continued, "Shannon, you need to prepare yourself. This is very serious. Your husband is facing many charges."
My mind was racing. "Were the victims the two women who worked there?" I asked.
"No, they were customers. We don't think he knew them."
"Are they all right?"
"They are at the hospital being treated and they are expected to recover fully. I can't really tell you anything else until you get here."
"But how could he take them to our house? He rides his bike to work and…"
"He rented a van around six or seven o'clock… Jason drove back to the store to pick up the women and take them to your house. He called from a pay phone down the street to ask for help at 10.50 last night, and we were able to apprehend him there."
"Where is he now?"
"Here, downstairs in a cell. You need to come directly to the station. You can't go home, Shannon. Your house is going to be searched. Will you be all right to drive?"
"I'm going to call my parents and I'm sure they will come with me."
"We'll be here, waiting."
I hung up the phone and stood for a moment. How could this be true? I'd just been told that the assaults had taken place around 4.30 in the afternoon, and Jason had called the police at 10.50 at night. But I had spoken to him just before that, around 10.20. That's when I'd told him I thought I might be pregnant. The two women must have been there in our house while we were speaking.
As I waited for my parents to arrive, I got changed and noticed I was bleeding. A feeling of tremendous loss welled up inside.
I met Jason volunteering at a local restaurant for low-income customers in February 2003. Jason was the assistant co-ordinator and head cook. He was tall, had an easy smile and everyone liked him. He seemed articulate and well-educated; I was into pottery at the time and he told me he loved to draw. During my second shift, he gave me a little card. Jason had drawn a caricature of himself in blue pen and next to it written his name, phone number, email address and the words, "Available for pottery viewing, tea and chatting."
I was excited and nervous before our first date. We had made small talk for less than five minutes before Jason said, "There's something I need to tell you before we get to know each other more: I was in prison for 10 years. I'm on parole with a life sentence."
Just a few months after his 18th birthday, in January 1988, he had been convicted of second‑degree murder. Still at school, in part‑time employment, Jason had been living with a roommate found by his mother – a friend of a friend. The roommate was a 38-year-old woman. She and Jason developed a sexual relationship, but he described their living situation as stressful. I had a hard time imagining a mother leaving her teenage son to live with an older, single woman he didn't know.
On the day of the murder, Jason had been visiting his grandmother but needed to go home to take a shower before meeting up with friends later that night. When he got back home, his roommate turned down his sexual advances and they got into an argument. Wanting to end the conflict, Jason went into the bathroom to have a shower.
His roommate followed, yelling, "I'm going to tell your mother what's really going on here!"
Jason struggled for the right words to explain to me his overwhelming need to gain control over the situation. "I only remember wanting her to stop screaming at me, struggling to the ground and striking her head against the bathroom floor until she stopped." He said that he wasn't aware of what he was doing until it was over.
I realised that I was holding my breath. Jason looked down and shook his head. When he looked up, his face wore a baffled expression. It was as though he still couldn't believe it.
"I was found criminally responsible, which of course I completely agreed with," Jason added.
"Had you ever been violent before?" I asked.
"No, never. I don't know how I was capable of it. I've never been able to explain it; I only know that I'll never do it again."
I was surprised to find my heart going out to him. What I was hearing was horrible, but I worked as a school guidance counsellor and I pictured some of my 18-year-old students, with their varying levels of insecurity and vastly diverse home lives. I couldn't yet visualise Jason's upbringing, nor could I grasp the contrast between our lives in 1988. I would have been 12 when he'd committed this crime. I was living happily in the suburbs with my supportive, loving family.
Jason was hoping to achieve full parole status in the near future, which would mean the freedom to live completely on his own. His grandmother had died five years into his sentence, and his mother lived on a disability pension and suffered from severe bipolar disorder. Jason made no complaints about his upbringing. "She did the best she could," he said of his mother. His father had died when he was six.
As I got to know Jason, I was struck by how normal he seemed. There was no way that I would have known he'd been institutionalised for a decade, save for the fact that his music knowledge seemed to skip the 90s and he had a terrible sense of direction. I met his parole officer and psychologist, both of whom told me his crime was a one-off incident. He had been a model inmate and they weren't concerned he would ever offend again. Jason made me laugh, listen, think; I could tell him anything that was on my mind and he would understand. We got together for dinner, movies, hikes at a local conservation area. I loved being with him. Over time, I began to feel that I could move toward accepting Jason as he was now, including his past – but could I take on this burden? After several weeks of dating, I told Jason I wanted to take a break. He said he was in love with me, but he understood. It didn't take me long to realise that I was happier with Jason than I'd been in any other relationship. We bought a little house, pulled everything apart and rebuilt it. I got a job as a guidance counsellor at the local school and Jason enrolled in a drawing and painting programme, finishing with straight As. He began working on his portfolio and in the meantime got a part-time job at a health-food store to help pay the bills. We told my parents and closest friends about Jason's past, but they loved him anyway. They respected his honesty and sense of responsibility as I did, and they could see how happy we were with each other. Now my parents had to hear exactly what he had done.
At the police station, a sergeant explained to us that a customer had entered the store where Jason worked. "Jason took her at knifepoint to a back room where he bound her with duct tape and then sexually assaulted her," he said. I started to cry in horror and humiliation. So did my parents.
Another customer came into the store then and Jason held her at knifepoint as well. She struggled until he overpowered her by choking her to unconsciousness. At some point she was also sexually assaulted. Then Jason rented the van, returned to the store and brought the women to our house. Waves of revulsion hit me. I imagined the victims, their pain and terror. My parents and I listened in stunned silence. One of us finally formed the question we were all thinking: "How are the women?"
The sergeant took a breath. "They are alive," he said.
They were alive? Did that mean they had come close to death? I began sobbing inconsolably. The sergeant continued. "The women were very brave. It could easily have become a double murder… My understanding is that they talked with Jason during the assault and tried to reason with him when they were at your house. He was talking about killing himself."
Later that day, a female officer called Nora told me that Jason had confessed to surreptitiously filming people, including me, going to the bathroom in our home on several occasions over an unknown period of time. For reasons yet to be understood, Jason had put the videotapes in the van before calling the police, so now they were in evidence. Soon they would need me to come into the police station to watch the videos and identify the victims.
Nora told me in more detail what had happened that day, and I told her that I'd spoken to Jason on the phone at 10.20. She seemed surprised to hear this. Later, she and several other officers would insist that it was my phone call that prompted him to get help for the women, but I was never sure about that. I believed it was only part of the reason. The women themselves played a huge role in rehumanising him. Maybe our house, too, played a part. There, Jason was surrounded by our life: photos, grocery lists, the walls we had painted together. There must have been some reason why he chose to go home instead of anywhere else.
At one point during the interview, Nora paused and looked at my hand. "Do you and Jason have matching wedding rings?"
I nodded, caught off guard by her observation. What did it matter?
"He wasn't wearing his ring yesterday, you know," she said. Her tone seemed smug, almost defiant.
I didn't know how to respond. Was she thinking he'd taken off his wedding ring yesterday because he planned to go out and rape two women? Jason always took his ring off in the shower, and that is where I later found it. Was the officer insinuating that I was a fool, naively playing my new role as bride while my husband lurked, a pervert looking for his prey? Worse, did she think I had known something in advance – or had even been a part of Jason's deviant life?
Nora's questioning didn't stop there. "Do you know that the average cycle of a sex offender is seven years?" I shook my head blankly while she continued. "Jason has been out in the community for seven years."
Should I have known this? No one had ever mentioned anything like this to me – not Jason's parole officers nor his psychologists. And why would they? Until last night, Jason had never been considered a sex offender. There was nothing in our personal lives together that suggested Jason could be anything other than a caring, kind and fully reformed human being. Still, I thought I could hear blame in Nora's voice, as though I, too, had done something wrong. How could Jason have done this to me? How could he have betrayed our vows and left me here to be scrutinised?
The last thing Nora said was that at the end of Jason's statement, he had told the detective he never wanted to see his wife again. She said he had written me a note.
"What does the note say?" I asked Nora, desperate for any clue about Jason's state of mind.
"I don't know – it's still at your house. It will be taken into evidence during the search and I can tell you then, if you want."
The Jason who'd been presented to me was not a man I'd ever met. He wasn't even the 18-year-old I'd tried to envision so many times and whom I'd come to accept as the correctional system's "best guy", someone who would never again pose a threat of violence. He was now a rapist.
While I was with Nora, my parents had made a number of phone calls, including one to some friends who invited us to stay. These were the same friends who had hosted our wedding, but gathered there with friends and family that night, it felt like a wake – as if Jason had been killed in a sudden accident. I recounted everything that the police had told me. When I finished, my dad responded in a broken voice, "I just know something must have happened to Jason when he was a little boy… I love him like my own son."
Over the following weeks, my body developed a cycle to cope with the shock: 30 minutes of really hard crying, easing off into numbness for an hour or so during which I couldn't really move but my mind would start to gain momentum. Then I would begin talking to a family member or friend, trying to figure things out – until this search for answers reached an almost manic state.
At night, my mind created a film strip of all the violence and it circled continuously. When I managed to fall asleep, those images became violent nightmares. I would often wake up screaming or gasping for air. Sometimes, upon first waking, I would be graced with one split second when I didn't remember, and then it would all hit me again, a crushing wave.
I had a vast network of friends, family and colleagues, and most were trying to get in touch to see how I was. Where was Jason? What state was he in? What had happened? How were the victims? Suddenly, I was a crime reporter instead of a bride. Most people expressed feelings of shock and concern for everyone affected. But soon enough, others began to express anger and rejection, even judging me and my family. They seemed to think that our love for Jason meant we felt nothing for his victims. Yet when I pictured the Jason I knew in his cell, I imagined he must be suffering and I wanted to be with him.
Less than a week after I'd found out, I visited Jason in prison for the first time. He came through the door on the other side of the room – face down, drawn and grim. He looked up, our eyes met and we both began crying uncontrollably. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he kept saying.
"Jason," I said, "the police told me you said that you never wanted to see me again – why did you say that?"
The expression on his face changed from sorrow to confusion, and after a moment he said softly, "No, Shanny. I said, 'My wife never has to see me again.'" I felt a pulse of relief. It was something to hold on to.
Jason went on to confess that he had been gorging himself on pornography over the weekend while I was away, and had gone to see a very violent movie. He said he'd become addicted to pornography while he was in prison, but he'd been too ashamed to tell me. The voyeurism was new in the last few months. He explained that he had always known something was wrong with him, but had convinced himself he was in control of whatever it was, experiencing long periods of time when he was "unplugged" from his demons. Recently, the addictive behaviours had been building again, though he couldn't explain exactly why.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked. I felt repulsed, but also helpless and betrayed.
"I'm sorry. I was so afraid. I wanted to keep you out of it; to protect you from it. I thought it would go away."
Jason had given a full confession that matched the victims' statements. He would plead guilty. The days went by quickly as I completed task after task in the aftermath of his crimes. At night, when I could no longer make phone calls to lawyers or help agencies, I searched for information that would help me understand. I banished my maternity books to my nightstand. Instead, I read psychiatric journal articles about sexual deviance, men who murder and rape, and adult survivors of childhood abuse and neglect, still suspecting something had happened to Jason that might help explain his acts of violence. Later, he told me he had endured physical and sexual violence at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and his late grandfather. And that, at 18, when he was at a detention centre, he had been gang‑raped.
I once asked Jason if he thought his early life experiences were related to what he did to the women that day. He said he didn't know, but they were definitely not an excuse. I had no idea what would happen to my relationship with Jason over time, but as long as I felt right in myself about supporting him and being in touch, I would continue. I visited Jason almost every week for months. I always cried for several minutes in the parking lot before I was able to drive home.
I continued to be plagued by nightmares, insomnia, anxiety and flashbacks. I worried incessantly about the victims, but was helpless to do anything for them. I was easily agitated and had no outlet for my anger when it surfaced. I had lost my job as a result of Jason's actions and I could no longer even afford my TV bill. I was desperately lonely. Seeing people in town would elicit either a warm embrace or a cold stare – many days, I couldn't take the chance.
On 15 May 2008, Jason was declared a dangerous offender and sentenced to an "indeterminate period in a penitentiary". Everyone around me seemed to expect that I would feel relieved that the court process was over, but instead I felt drained and empty. On the one-year anniversary of Jason's sentencing, in May 2009, our divorce was finalised. I'd decided it would be best to lump two sad anniversaries together, rather than tarnish another day on the calendar.
I began speaking out about my experiences and volunteering for Peacebuilders International, making space for victims to tell their stories and have their needs addressed. At a party, on Valentine's Day 2010, I was introduced to a man called Mike and, on my 36th birthday, in September 2011, we learned we were expecting a baby. Two weeks later, we went for an ultrasound. "There are two. I see two heartbeats!" Mike exclaimed. The technician smiled and confirmed: we were expecting twins.
Telling my story has made me feel that what I went through wasn't for nothing. I heard from the mothers, fathers, grandparents, sisters and brothers of people who had committed crimes and were serving time. They had lived with the same shame and loss that I knew; the same disappointment, confusion, sadness and stigma. I have opened myself up to renewed criticism and judgment at times, too. The harshest critiques came from those who could not get past the fact that I had married Jason knowing about his past. But we don't live in a black-and-white world; issues of crime and justice are never simple. I will never condone Jason's violent or harmful acts, nor can I plaster a simple term like "monster" on an individual. Knowing what I know, I don't have that luxury
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