Female runners across the country aren't letting fears of a similar situation stop them. Instead, they are dedicating their runs to the 20-year-old University of Iowa student and sharing hopeful messages on social media tagged #MilesforMollie. "This run is for you Mollie. We are with you. We will not allow fear to stop us from doing the things we love," University of Iowa alumna Sarah Hemann Bishop posted on Twitter. She included a picture of her sneakers, which have "Miles for Mollie" written on the side.
Before dystopian fiction like "The Hunger Games" and "Divergent" reflected an increasingly diverse society, there was Octavia E. Butler, one of few African-American authors to become a prominent name in the white-dominated universe of science fiction. Butler featured people of color in battles for control against aliens and hybrid species, opening a world of possibilities to readers who had been excluded from the genre. Her work helped define the literary cornerstone of Afrofuturism, then an emerging movement that draws from science fiction and fantasy with a socially conscious bend.
Many of the women spoke of the guilt they carried through the years. "I wish I had the courage to come forward (at the time), because maybe all of these other subsequent victims would have never become his later victims," Elizabeth Baechel said. "It was such a gray area for me," Costa said. "If he raped me, I would have known that was wrong, you go tell someone. But he was so manipulative, you didn't think about it another way."