This story starts very badly, but gets better.

A young man raped a girl in 1997. He was 22, a veteran, sleeping on the floor at someone’s house in Calgary, Alberta. So was a 13-year-old girl at a sleepover. He raped her.He kept whispering “It’s okay.” She kept saying “No.”

It wasn’t okay. She didn’t keep it secret. Jamie Raymond Green was charged with sexual assault and sexual touching of a minor, but after a preliminary inquiry, he disappeared.

Much later it was learned he went back to his native province of Newfoundland, thousands of miles from Calgary. A few months later, he was arrested for possessing stolen property, but no one mentioned a warrant.

“I was kind of expecting to hear… ‘You’ve got to be in Calgary such and such a date for trial,’ but my probation officer never said anything. I never knew those charges were outstanding – I didn’t know I was hiding.” He said he assumed the charge had been dropped – maybe the girl changed her mind.

Naturally. Because clerical errors never happen.

Back in Calgary, the girl was horrified that her attacker had skipped without trace. Things weren’t going well for the 13-year-old. “I felt shame, fear, mistrust, where I never knew any of those feelings before that,” she said.

She became depressed. She attempted suicide. She stopped getting good grades. Her religious faith was shattered. “I never felt value, or worth, or anything other than sadness and anger and resentment and blame.” She drank heavily, took drugs, got pregnant and dropped out of high school. Her parents’ marriage broke up.

“I felt I did something wrong and couldn’t stop blaming myself.”

Eventually things seem to have gotten better for her. She married and had a family.

In 2013, Green was arrested in Charlottetown, in the province of Prince Edward Island, and this time someone mentioned the 15-year-old warrant.

On trial at last, in Calgary, Green said he never touched the girl. Didn’t happen. Then why did he go on the lam? He said he had no idea he was “on the lam.”

Now 30, the woman testified in clear detail, frequently starting to cry.

She told the court she looked forward to Green’s conviction. “Finally, there will be some kind of closure and hopefully the haunting… will stop. There is going to be a finality of this chapter in my life.”

When Green was convicted, she burst into tears of relief.

Her mother also told the court about the impact of the crime. She said she watched as her daughter, the straight-A student, turned into a pregnant dropout, haunted by the demons of that night. Staring at Green, she said, “You took, and I lost, a loving, innocent child.”

At the sentencing hearing, Green was given three and a half years (a year off because of military service in Bosnia and Somalia). He apologized in tears.

“I’m sorry. I never meant to harm you, or your family. I’m sorry that it took 17 years for you to get closure.”

The woman asked the prosecutor to tell Green she forgives him.

Outside court she told the Calgary Sun the apology makes things easier for her. “It’s done,” she said, smiling. “I’m really, really happy that he had remorse, that was huge for me. It made the past 17 years a little easier to finally hear an apology. A huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.”

She forgives him. She accepts the apology. (Unknown if her mother does.)

At first read, I was still indignant. Secretly, because she is the one to decide what’s good enough.

He’s sorry, now that he knows the harm he did. Now that he has to know. It’s not difficult to imagine excuses he may have told himself so he didn’t have to know – It was just once. She didn’t scream. She must have dropped the charges. No big deal. That was years ago!

Perhaps he tried to think of it as little as possible. He may never have thought of her family.

But as I thought about it (and as I discussed it with a more compassionate person), I remembered remorse can be real and deep – and valuable – even if it comes late. I suppose we’ve all done things we weren’t sorry about until later. I know I’ve looked back and been shocked at things I said. Or did. Or didn’t say. Or didn’t do. Sometimes I get to go back and apologize and sometimes it’s impossible.

One reason people avoid thinking about bad things they’ve done is that remorse hurts. Green apologized for what he did and for how long it took.

Her forgiveness shows the incredible power apology can have. Even years late, for a horrible offense, and after an initial denial, apology helps.