Teen survivor speaks out after plea deal in Jesup sex crimes case

JESUP, Ga. (WTOC) - A teenage survivor in a Wayne County sex crime case is speaking out about what happened to her and the plea deal reached in Joshua Graham’s case.

WTOC is not showing the teen’s face or naming her. The survivor and her family have talked extensively to WTOC’s Madalyn Bierster, over the phone and through email, in the last year.

The survivor said she is ready to open up and help someone else who might have experienced the same thing.

In an interview, she talked about how she was groomed, what happened over a two-year span, and what she wants changed when it comes to Georgia’s laws.

How it started

The survivor said she had lived with Graham before, then went two years without living with him, while she stayed with her grandmother temporarily. When she moved back, she was 14.

“We came back, and he was like, ‘Oh, you’ve changed. You’re not the same. You’re beautiful. I’m in love with you,’” she said. “Nobody’s ever told me that...”

She said the relationship became physical when she was 14.

“I was 14 when we had sex. Like, when we first ever did it,” she said.

She said it started with small moments and progressed over time. “It was just like little things, like kisses and all that,” she said.

The survivor said she did not view Graham as a father figure once the relationship changed.

“I felt like I was in love with him. Like, I felt like I didn’t look at him as a dad,” she said. “It felt okay, you know. Knowing now, it’s not okay. But it felt okay at the moment. But knowing now, it was never okay. He was the adult, and I was a child.”

She said the relationship happened when her mother was not home.

“It was always when she wasn’t there,” she said. “She had a job. So it was easier to do things when she wasn’t there because we wouldn’t get caught.”

The plea deal

Graham’s plea deal dropped charges of statutory rape, child molestation and aggravated stalking down to 1 count of cruelty to children. A judge sentenced Graham to six months in jail, followed by probation. The plea also allows Graham to avoid registering as a sex offender.

“That’s not giving anybody any warning of what you are and who you are. That’s not telling anybody what you are, because that’s who you are,” the survivor said.

Grooming and the relationship

The survivor said Graham talked about a future together once she turned 18.

“When I turned 18, we would run away, and we wouldn’t be here no more. We’d get an apartment or a house, and we’d start a family and all that,” she said. “That was literally the whole mindset.”

Looking back, she said she now recognizes it as grooming.

“In the moment, I didn’t realize it was grooming, but now it was grooming because how do you watch your kid, or your girlfriend’s kid, grow up and then pursue that? That’s nasty. That’s not okay,” she said.

She said she has struggled with guilt.

“I feel guilty and I don’t want to feel guilty anymore because I know that it wasn’t my fault, but at the same time, I feel like it was my fault and I don’t want to feel like that anymore, because I was a kid and I didn’t know. I didn’t know better,” she said.

Finding out she was pregnant

The survivor said she noticed she had missed her period at the end of January, right after her 16th birthday. She said she told Graham in February.

“He was like, ‘Well, you probably are pregnant. I’m going to have to take you to the doctor, and we’ll have to go get an abortion,’” she said.

She said her mother noticed she was not having a normal period and gave her a pregnancy test, which was positive. She said her mother took her to the hospital, where a test also came back positive, and asked who the father was.

“She was like, ‘you have to tell me,’” the survivor said. She said her mother called her boyfriend, who denied the baby was his, and then asked again. “I told her it was Josh’s,” she said.

The survivor said she initially told police she was 16 when the relationship began, instead of 14, because she did not want Graham to be arrested.

“I felt that I was in love with him because I didn’t want him to go away. I didn’t want him to get sent away. So I covered up for him,” she said. She said she later told the truth. “I felt that it was right,” she said when she spoke with police in follow up interviews.

Not long after learning she was pregnant, the survivor said she miscarried.

Wanting a trial

The survivor has said previously that she wanted to go to trial. She and her family felt they had no other option than to agree to a plea.

“It just doesn’t feel fair because how do you get to ruin my family, me, my body, everything is just — it’s not fair and then you get to walk away free,” she said. “It’s like there needs to be consequences for actions.”

She said she was told by the prosecutor that the case likely would not succeed at trial.

“She was saying that we weren’t going to win it. It took one juror to say that we were lying and that was it,” the survivor said.

Effect on her family

The survivor said the case has strained her relationship with her mother.

“Me and my mom, we were so close. It was ruined,” she said. “We have to rebuild it.”

She said she has not dated anyone since the relationship with Graham ended. “I’m not going to be that type of person,” she said. “I’m not trying to do that again. I don’t want to be hurt again.”

Calls for legal change

The survivor and her family want Georgia to raise the age of consent from 16 to 18 and make sex offender registration mandatory for all sex-related crimes, regardless of whether charges are reduced.

“If you’re charged with anything sexual with a kid, you should be registered,” she said, “because you’re not a safe person, you’re not a good person, because adults don’t touch kids.”

Graham’s 180-day jail sentence is scheduled to end in November. After that, he will have several years of probation.

If he completes the first 5 years of that probation with no infractions, the remaining 10 years are dropped.