Girl, Uncoded

A Memoir of Passion, Betrayal, and Eventual Blessings

Brandi Dredge

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• eBook ISBN:
  9781647428099
• Year: 2024

For fans of true crime memoir comes a gripping tale of one woman’s harrowing and spiritual journey of resilience after she learns that she was a victim of a sex crime—and her husband was the culprit.

At sixteen, Caroline longed to meet the man who owned the apartment she was hanging out at with her teenage friends. The one they said was a stripper, a fact that intrigued her. From the moment she saw Gary Richard, she craved his attention—and once their eyes met, he was all she wanted.

Months later, she was dismayed to discover that she was pregnant. But she had Gary Richard, she reassured herself, and he was all she needed to be okay. A belief that didn’t change even when, holding their week-old son, she sat in court and watched him face charges for stolen property. This was her family, her life; so when Gary Richard’s lawyer suggested a ploy to show the judge he was a changed man, she agreed. At seventeen years old, she became a wife.

Over the next nine years, Caroline’s identity and dreams of a fairy-tale life became twisted by adultery, betrayal, poverty, court cases, and lies. And then, one evening, the reality of her marriage finally became clear to her after a sergeant revealed she was the victim of one of her husband’s crimes—statutory rape—and her son’s DNA was the evidence the prosecution needed to convict him.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• A Note from the Author
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Prologue: The Beginning of the End
• Chapter 1: A Girl Who Met a Man
• Chapter 2: Labeled: Young, Dumb, Pregnant
• Chapter 3: Plans, Pleas, and Diarrhea
• Chapter 4: My Wedding Day, His Ploy
• Chapter 5: Stay
• Chapter 6: Unprotected
• Chapter 7: How Did I Get Here, Again?
• Chapter 8: Driveway
• Chapter 9: Intuition
• Chapter 10: Exit Plan
• Chapter 11: Needed
• Chapter 12: This Little Clown
• Chapter 13: Behind the Glass
• Chapter 14: Memory
• Chapter 15: Evidence
• Chapter 16: Daddy’s Hands
• Chapter 17: The Frame
• Chapter 18: Infected
• Chapter 19: The Rules
• Chapter 20: More Likely
• Chapter 21: Suffocate or Survive
• Chapter 22: Who I Am
• Chapter 23: The Evidence of Blessings
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
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