Her story, she warned, “is not a nice one, but hopefully it will have a happy ending.”ĭuBuc had grown up in Howell, Michigan, a small town of berry and melon farmers. The essay aired details about her past that she’d long tried to suppress by posting it on her class’s server, where anyone who Googled her name could find it, she thought she might be able to quiet the whispers, the threats, and possibly make it easier to find a job. She knew that people like her had been beaten, bombed, shot at, killed. One morning in 2007, Leah DuBuc, a twenty-two-year-old college student in Kalamazoo, began writing an essay for English class that she hoped would save her life. Parents of both the abused and the accused are seeking to reform policy on juveniles who sexually offend.
