What happened to Jack in Accused Episode 9?

Accused Season 1, Episode 9 brought us the story of a teacher accused of statutory rape. What happened to Jack? Was he found guilty?

Accused Episode 9 focuses on a couple of topics. The first is the aftermath of overturning Roe V. Wade. With a lack of access to safe abortions, girls and women need to take drastic measures and big steps to deal with unwanted pregnancies. Jack is a teacher who puts his career on the line to make sure one of his students can get a safe abortion when she threatens to take her life.

When Jack learns that the father of the baby wasn’t another student, he realizes that he needs to act. However, the teenage girl acts first, falsely accusing him of statutory rape. This is an irresponsible storyline at this point in time. Being told we’re “making it up” because we “regret something” is one of the biggest reasons women don’t report actual sexual assaults and rape. While there is a small percentage of false claims, the overwhelming majority of them aren’t, but storylines like this will continue to prevent people speaking out when they do happen.

The show would have been better focusing on the fact that Jack drove a minor over state lines to get an abortion. It could have kept the statutory rape and false accusations out of the story completely.

Is Jack found guilty on Accused Episode 9?

Jack had his work cut out for him. Everyone believed that Jack was guilty of the crime he was accused of. It was clear the jury was going to find against him. It was Jack’s (former) fiance who realized that Jack was telling the truth about not having a relationship with the student.

When Clara tells her story of the first time, she mentions that Jack was listening to baseball on the radio in his car. Jack quickly texted Britney, asking her when he ever listened to sports on the radio. It’s clear that is not the type of man he is, and Britney realized that he was telling the truth about the relationship accusations.

Britney wanted Clara to tell the truth about her stepdad, and she turns to Clara’s mom to do that. It took a while, but Clara’s mom realized that her husband had been sexually assaulting and raping her daughter.

The claims against Jack were dropped, although it’s clear that not everything can go back to the way it was. Britney can’t be with Jack when he was willing to take a girl to get an abortion. Jack has also lost his job as a teacher. He doesn’t blame Clara for what she did, though. I’ll go out on a limb and say a lot of women will blame her for being part of the problem in women not being believed right away when a real situation like this comes up.

Accused is available to stream on Hulu.