Early on the morning of September 16, 1995, a friend of my dad’s—a 38- year-old writing teacher named Steve Oliver—picked me up for a trip from Eau Claire to Madison, Wisconsin. We were going to oversee the layout of a book of my writings. Although I was only 13 years old and in the seventh grade, Oliver had told my dad that he’d submitted my work to Random House, and they actually wanted to publish it. I packed CDs, a tee shirt, a pair of pants, and a swimsuit. We left at 7 a.m., while my brothers, sisters, and stepmom were still sleeping. I dozed off during the drive, and when I awoke, I was tied up.

That was the beginning of the most horrifying three months of my life. Oliver drove to the Kansas City airport, where he held a concealed knife to my back as we boarded a plane for Houston. There, we stayed in two different seedy hotels before settling into a Days Inn near the airport. That’s where I remained—most of the time locked inside a room— for the next 101 days. And almost every day, my captor forced me to have sex with him.

Credit: Cosmopolitan