Debbie / Jasmine (Survivors) (6:53)
I thought to myself, I have to be okay. I've made a decision. And I. That decision was to relinquish myself to this man. I may not be alive at the end of this, but that's okay because I knew my family would be safe. And I was terrified. When we walked, he walked me further into the woods and. And I remind him what he had told me. I said, you told me that you were going to let me go. And he said, well, as soon as the guys get here, then I'm going to let you go. He says, I'm not going to hurt you, but I don't know what they're going to want to do to you. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, when is bad enough? What is going to happen now? So he said, I want you to take off your T shirt. I'm going to blindfold you with your T shirt. And I remember just crying and begging him, please don't make me take off my T shirt. He said, just take off your T shirt. So I had to take off my T shirt. And he blindfolded me. And he kept saying, I don't know where the guys are. And then he walked me further into the woods. And I remember trying to listen for sounds of other feet walking on the leaves. And I couldn't hear anything. And then all of a sudden, he says, john, you wait over there. Then he told me to lay down on the ground. And he started to undress me, and he began to rape me. And he kept saying to me, lady, this wasn't supposed to happen like this. I just began to pray. The only prayer that came to mind was the Lord's Prayer. The more I prayed, the angrier he got. Something in me just kept saying, keep saying it. And so I did, and over and over again. And he'd interrupt Me. And I couldn't think of the rest, so I'd go right back to the beginning again. Our Father, who art in heaven. Shut up, lady. And I just start all over again. And then all of a sudden, he just stopped. And he helped me get up, and he helped me to get my jeans back on. He kept saying, I don't mean to be touching you like this, lady. There was almost a compassion for him that was so totally confusing to me because I thought, this man has just raped me, and now I'm feeling sorry for him. Something is wrong here. As I'm thinking that I should run, I'm thinking which direction. I've never. I had never been in those woods before, sighted, much less with a blindfold on. He still had a hold of me, and I could hear him going through my purse. He pulled my wallet out, and he said, I know you've got to have more money than this lady. And I said, I don't. This is all the money I have. And he said, lady, I know living in a house like that, you've got to have more money. I thought that perhaps if I could get him to take me home, that my husband would hear our voices in the hallway and that his training as a police officer would just kick into gear. Knowing that there was a strange voice. And I said, I have $50 in my drawer upstairs. It was the first time through the whole thing that I really thought that I might have a chance to live. And all of a sudden he just said, who's upstairs, lady? Is your husband asleep upstairs? And I said, no, no, no, there's nobody home. There's nobody home. He just grabbed me and he said, he's home asleep, isn't he? And I finally just started crying, and I said, yes. And as soon as I got it out of my mouth, I thought, oh, my God, now I may have cost my husband his life as well. I thought for sure that these men. We're going to go and kill my husband. And I just. I was so upset with myself that I could have given him up that way. But all of a sudden, the mood changed again. And he told me to take the blindfold off. And he kept saying to me the whole time, lady, I'm telling you, don't you tell anybody about this, he said, because if you do, I'm going to come back and I'm going to kill you and I'm going to kill your family. You remember, I know where you live. He said, last week there, you know, me and the guys, there was another lady and she told. And they went back and they killed her. And I just told him, I said, I won't. I promise I won't. I won't tell anybody. He said, you better not turn around because I'm going to shoot you. He said, and you just act like you've been for a stroll in the woods. When you get home, just tell your husband that you fell down or something. He said, if you go straight through there, he said, you'll see your neighbors homes. So I began to walk away from him. I'm thinking, okay, there's no way he's letting me go. And I truly expected to feel a bullet in my back. And all of a sudden I hear him holler, lady. And I stopped and I said, what? And he said, you keep listening to that Christian radio. So I start walking again, and all of a sudden I hear again, and lady. And I stopped and I said, what? And he said, lock your doors. And I just started running and I ran like my life depended on it. When I got to the house, I put my hand on the doorknob and I thought, oh, my God, what if the men are in the house? Is my husband dead? I got to my back door, and as I reached for the handle of the door, I hesitated because I thought, oh, my God, he's only let me go because the guys are in my house, but I've got to go in. Then I could at least call 911. So I went in, and of course nobody was there. I ran upstairs and I woke my husband up with the only words I could get out of my mouth. And I just screamed. He got me, Rob. He got me. When my husband began to call the police, I kept screaming, no, no, no, you can't. You can't tell anybody because he's going to come back and he's going to kill us. He was just kind of holding on to me and telling me it was going to be all right. He says, I. I have to call the police.