Slander must be retracted.  If you have lied about another and thereby done him an injury, you are bound in conscience to correct your false statement, to correct it in such a manner as to undeceive all whom you may have misled.  This retraction must really retract, and not do just the contrary, make the last state of things worse than the first, which is sometimes the case.  Prudence and tact should suggest means to do this effectively:  when, how and to what extent it should be done, in order that the best results of reparation may be obtained.  But in one way or another, justice demands that the slanderer contradict his lying imputations and remove by so doing the stain that besmirches the character of his victim.

Of course, if it was by truth and not falsehood, by detraction and not calumny, that you assailed and injured the reputation of another, there is no gainsaying the truth; you are not justified in lying in order to make truth less damaging.  The harm done here is well nigh irreparable.  But there is such a thing as trying to counteract the influence of evil speech by good words, by mentioning qualities that offset defects, by setting merit against demerit; by attenuating as far as truth will allow the circumstances of the case, etc.  This will place your victim in the least unfavorable light, and will, in some measure, repair the evil of detraction.

Scandal must be repaired, a mightily difficult task; to reclaim a soul lost to evil through fatal inducements to sin is paramount, almost, to raising from the dead.  It is hard, desperately hard, to have yourself accepted as an angel of light by those for whom you have long been a demon of iniquity.  Good example!  Yes, that is about the only argument you have.  You are handicapped, but if you wield that argument for good with as much strength and intensity as you did for evil, you will have done all that can be expected of you, and something may come of it.

The wrong of bodily contamination is a deep one.  It is a wrong, and therefore unjust, when it is effected through undue influence that either annuls consent, or wrings it from the victim by cajolery, threat, or false promise.  It becomes immeasurably aggravated when the victim is abandoned to bear alone the shame and burdensome consequences of such injustice.

Matrimony is the ordinary remedy; the civil law will force it; conscience may make it an obligation, and does make it, unless, in rare cases, there be such absolute incompatibility as to make such a contract an ineffective and ridiculous one, an inefficient remedy, or none at all.  When such is the case, a pecuniary compensation is the only alternative.  A career has been blasted, a future black with despair stares the victim in the face, if she must face it unaided; a burden forced upon her that must be borne for years, entailing considerable expense.  The man responsible for such a state of affairs, if he expects pardon for his crime, must shoulder the responsibility in a manner that will repair at least in part the grave injustice under which his victim labors.