TIJUANA, Mexico — “I’m exhausted,” Daphne Fernández told me over the phone on Thursday after a Mexican judge ordered the release of a man accused of sexually abusing her in Veracruz when she was just 17 years old.

Her case has shocked Mexico, and here decision to go public with it has made her a heroine to many, a villain to some. It has unfolded in public view for over a year, since first becoming national news here in late March 2016.

Daphne, now out of the country, has struggled with her own memories of the assault, while hoping for justice ever since that night over New Year’s weekend 2015 when she alleges she was raped by a college-age man in the bathroom of his parents’ home as his twin brother played video games in an adjacent room.