I hear the pain in her voice, and I do understand where it’s coming from, but it seems to me that the guilt that haunts her is one more thing her attackers had no right to inflict on her.
“I think my forgiveness … it came after time,” Angeline says. “It’s been almost ten years since it happened. It’s been a process of getting to the point of forgiveness, but my forgiveness has come with being able to turn something horrific into something I could triumph over, something I could stand on, and something that has made me a better person. It definitely has been the catalyst for me to become who I am. I think that is why I have been able to forgive.”
I ask her again, “What about your family?”
“I’ve forgiven my parents, and that was very recent. I was at a support group meeting in California, and someone said that we need to consider that at the time we came out, we had X number of years to come to the recognition and the realization that we are gay. Our parents are only just getting started with the process of being able to accept that. For me, that made sense. It hurts, and I would very much like them to one day get to the point of being able to fully accept me. For now, I’ll give them—let’s say sixteen years. That’s how long I had to work through coming out to myself.”
I glance at the clock and see that we’ve gone over the time she agreed to give me, so I thank Angeline for her willingness to be open about all this, and I nudge her to answer one more question. “Before I let you go, what advice would you share with survivors of sexual violence—particularly anyone in the LGBT community who’s been targeted or abused because of their sexual orientation?”
“I moved some time ago from being a victim to being a survivor, but survival is a daily process. For survivors of sexual violence, I think what I would say is, find that support, people who can rally around you, people who can hold you up when there is nothing under your feet, people who can hold you in moments like those, people who can support you and give you that strength. We find strength in many different places, and I think it’s about identifying where that strength is. For some people, that strength is faith. For other people, faith is the problem. It’s about identifying what works best for your healing yourself and not destroying you. I say that because for me, self-harm was a way of healing, because I was able to physically see my pain, but in doing that, I was still hurting myself. I drank because it was a way to dull the pain, but in drinking, it was damaging my body.”
This sends a cold shiver down my spine, because my mind goes immediately to the darkest moments during my captivity. First, my captors forced alcohol on me so I’d be easier to control, but I learned quickly that the alcohol would make me oblivious for a little while, and oblivion was the only relief I had, so I forced the alcohol on myself, even though it left me vomiting and miserable.
“Who we are will be the great determining factor in what works best for our healing and for our surviving,” says Angeline. “Recognizing that we want to live, always working towards the next day, one step at a time. Sometimes all that can be done is stepping one foot in front of the other. For me, each day is a matter of surviving, of living. What I would want somebody to know about me is that I’m a survivor, and we each have the capacity to survive and to thrive. I’m not yet thriving, but I’m on my way to thriving. Each of us has the capacity—whatever horrific incident we’ve ever faced in our lives—we have a capacity to survive and then thrive.”
Taking in all that Angeline has accomplished in that ten years, not with a “gay agenda” but with the idea that all people are entitled to equal rights and protection from violence, an agenda that goes back to her Christian roots—“Love thy neighbor as thyself”—I realize that sometimes the trickiest part of that is starting with the “love thyself” part: to know and love yourself as you are, to accept and love your family as they are, to take that love out into your community, and empowered by the knowledge that there is something you can do for others, become what Jesus described as “the light of the world.”
In the days following my rescue, I didn’t want anyone to know what had happened to me, especially not any of the sexual abuse that I had endured. I remember sitting with my family one night in my parents’ bedroom and seeing on the TV a sentence that kept repeating itself at the bottom of the screen: “Elizabeth Smart is not pregnant.” I was horrified that anyone could even have thought I might be. Beyond the fact that I didn’t want people to know that could have even been a possibility, I just wanted everyone to leave what had happened to me alone and pretend that I was the same as any other young woman. I felt that all the sexual abuse and violence had somehow set me apart and made me different, and I just wanted to be the same as everyone else.
My parents were very sensitive to how I felt at the time and did all they could to protect me and help me to feel normal. As the years passed and I grew and matured, I began to meet other survivors of sexual violence and abuse, and despite knowing the statistics of how common rape is, I was still dumbfounded every time I had another face to connect with that statistic. After I returned home from serving my LDS mission in Paris, I asked my dad what he thought I could do that would help make a difference, that would be worthwhile. He looked at me and said, “Elizabeth, one thing that you could do is share your story. Try public speaking. Share your story however you feel comfortable.”
I think my initial reaction was a snort of laughter. Who on earth would listen to me share me story? I was not a public speaker. I had not ever sought the limelight nor enjoyed it when it was thrust upon me. But his words stayed in my head. Maybe I should try. I did after all testify during the trial, and wasn’t it then that I decided that I wanted to write a book about my story? To set the record straight? And wasn’t that another way of trying to help other victims and survivors? Why would speaking be so bad? Most of the sexual abuse came out when I was on the stand anyway; it wasn’t a secret. People knew. It was a matter of public record now. By this time in my life, I had accepted what had happened to me and realized that there is never any turning around in life, there is only going forward. Fortunately, through the love of the best parents and family in the world, I was able to overcome the traumatic experience. I knew that what had happened to me didn’t make me any less of a person. Despite all the lessons I’d heard growing up—about remaining pure and abstaining from sex until marriage—I knew that no one person could destroy what I was born with: value.
I decided to give public speaking a try. My first real speech was at a community college in Petoskey, Michigan. I was so nervous the whole flight from Salt Lake City to Detroit, and then from Detroit to the small regional airport in nearby Petoskey. There was someone from the college waiting to pick me up. As I got into the car, I was told there was great excitement about my arrival and forthcoming speech. I sat in the seat looking out the window. It was autumn, and the leaves were vibrant hues of red, orange, and yellow. Despite the beauty around me, I wished I were anywhere but there. I didn’t know if I’d be good enough to do this. I’d prepared a binder probably three inches thick with notes. I kept reminding myself, Tomorrow will still come and you will still be a good person.
The moment finally arrived. I walked up onstage and started speaking. My voice was shaking from nerves, but I pushed on through to the end. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember the feeling I got from the audience: overwhelming understanding and gratitude. I remember their tears and the feeling that I truly had been able to make a small difference in their lives. The more speaking I did, the more comfortable I felt in front of a crowd. And then the most amazing thing started happening: Women started coming forward and saying that because of what I had shared, they were going to share what had happened to them. Sometimes it’s overwhelming and exhausting—never more so than now, having to leave my little girl at home and being pregnant with baby number two—but I am still reminded of why I speak. Women may know that sex crimes happen, and they happen a lot, and it is completely normal to feel all of the negative feelings one can
imagine. It’s so important for victims to know that nothing can destroy their worth.
In the wake of a violent or traumatic experience, we’re left to struggle with some of life’s toughest questions: Will this thing that happened always define me, or will I redefine myself with the choices I make? Where will I find the strength to survive? And how will I find the strength to forgive?
9
The Power to Forgive
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
—LOUIS B. SMEDES
I’ve talked about forgiveness in almost every chapter of this book, because it’s something people ask about everywhere I go and it’s a thread that runs through every story I heard: the struggle to either forgive the people who harmed us or to forgive ourselves. Perhaps Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
The first time I heard about Chris Williams, I was sitting in church listening to a lesson on forgiveness. The teacher turned on a YouTube clip of a man who introduced himself and said, “I was born and raised in Salt Lake. I married Michelle Dorny, and we had four children together—Mike, Ben, Anna, Sam.”
In the winter of 2007, Michelle was expecting their fifth child. The Williams family was on their way to get ice cream one evening when their car was struck by a seventeen-year-old boy who was driving drunk. Michelle was killed, along with the unborn baby, eleven-year old Ben, and nine-year-old Anna.
Only days after the accident that changed Chris Williams’s family forever, there was a terrible shooting at a local mall. The shooter was a young man, practically a boy. Seven people died that day, and more were injured. At a press conference Chris had already scheduled in response to public outcry about the car accident, he spoke with genuine compassion for the young man who’d killed his wife and children. Then he asked the community to pray for the victims of the shooting, for the families who had lost their loved ones, and for the family of the young shooter, who had finally turned the gun on himself.
Chris’s story stayed with me for a long time, partly because I just felt so heartbroken for him. My family has always been the one thing that I knew I could count on no matter what. Their being taken away is the worst thing I can think of. But beyond the heartbreak was Chris’s astonishing response to it—and his call for compassion magnified his own ability to forgive. When I began this project, knowing I wanted to explore the complex topic of forgiveness, I immediately thought of Chris, who seemed so positive and peaceful. Everything I knew about him told me that he was one of the most extraordinary ordinary people I’d ever heard of.
When I reached out to Chris, he invited me to visit him at the home he now shares with his second wife, Mikkel, who lost her first husband to bone cancer. She had two children from her first marriage—Arli and Parker—and together, Chris and Mikkel have two daughters: Emma, born in 2009, and little Caroline, who was born in 2012, on Ben’s birthday, coincidentally. “So that turned out to be a sweet experience,” Chris said. We agreed to meet the following week, and when he shared his new address with me, it rang a bell.
Now I know why. As I follow the GPS instructions around the corner, I realize that Chris lives just a couple of houses down from my grandma and just around the corner from my aunts. It’s a small world, after all. The neighborhood is pleasantly familiar: the bikes and toys scattered in front yards, the well-manicured lawns, and of course my grandma’s redbrick house. It’s a comforting feeling. This is going to be one of the more difficult interviews I’ve assigned myself, with a lot of hard questions. When I think of Chris’s lost children, I get a lump in my throat.
I pull up and approach the front door and ring the bell. A young boy answers, and I ask, “Is your dad home?”
Chris comes up the stairs and invites me into their front living room. From the moment I walk into their home, I feel a certain peace, and I just know that this is a special family. Looking around the living room, I see a beautiful statue on a wooden buffet chest: a young mother with a small boy on one side, a little girl on the other, and a tiny baby in her arms. The family he lost, I think, and I immediately want to ask about it, but I feel it’s hardly appropriate to do so before the usual niceties are shared.
Chris asks me about my project. What are my hopes for it? How did I think of it? Am I experiencing any difficulties getting people to commit? I tell him how grateful I am for the generosity and openness I’ve seen from people I’ve spoken with, though I’m trying to be sensitive in the way I ask the hard questions.
He understands and says, “You’re free to ask whatever you like.”
“Tell me more about the family you had with Michelle. What roles did the children play before the accident?”
Chris smiles as he remembers them. “Michael was a little bit more serious. Being the firstborn, he got a lot of the initial attention, but he was very active in sports. He was the athlete, did a lot of snowboarding, skateboarding, and played basketball. Ben was definitely the funniest of all. He just lived large. He was tremendously fun to be around and was certainly beyond his years in maturity. Anna was just sweet, probably the biggest peacemaker in the house. She was filled with love and had that feminine touch of wanting to wrap things in blankets and loving her dolls and animals. She wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up. Then there was Sam, who is just all around fun. Soccer is his big thing now, but he grew up loving Thomas the Tank Engine. He used to sit and play with those for hours.”
“What did your marriage to Michelle mean to you?”
“It meant everything to me,” Chris says. “Our relationship was just continually growing together and loving together. As I grew and developed as a person, her impact on me influenced that development, and what a positive impact that was. I married above myself. Some people will just roll their eyes when I say that. They’ll just think, Oh, okay, yeah, that sounds like a nice thing to say, but for me, it was really, really true. She was just a superior person and helped me want to be a better person as well.”
I take a big breath, thinking my words will come out faster if I don’t have to stop for air. “What happened the day of the crash? Did you have any premonition of something bad coming?”
“No. Actually, it was the opposite. It was a phenomenal evening. In fact, looking back, it’s interesting to see how the year prior to this was so amazingly perfect. The family trips we took together—we ended up taking a lot more trips than we usually did. My wife and I had the chance to take a couple’s trip. Had an outstanding, amazing time. It left me and left our family with some incredibly sweet memories. It was a tender mercy that we had the time together.”
“What happened that evening?”
Chris describes “just another Friday night”—a seemingly average evening in the life of a seemingly average family. “Michael had gone off with friends to a basketball game. Sam was off playing at a friend’s house. At about seven, I said, ‘Hey, let’s go get Mexican food,’ but Anna was watching a show on Animal Planet, sitting close to Michelle, and I was struck by how wonderful they looked. It’s hard to explain, but I just had this moment where I absolutely appreciated how blessed we were. So instead of getting irritated, like, ‘C’mon, let’s go. I’m hungry,’ it was more like, ‘Okay, we’ll wait.’”
After Anna’s program, Chris and Michelle took Ben and Anna to a nearby Mexican restaurant, where they ran into some friends.
“Ben was cracking the funniest jokes,” Chris says. “Everyone was happy. The memory of what I felt that night definitely helped me get through the tragedy and the separation from them. Just reminding myself that I did have it all. And I still do.”
It was almost ten when they left the restaurant and picked up Sam from his friend’s house, but the kids wanted to get ice cream cones at McDonald’s, a
nd Chris figured, Why not? That’s what set them on the path to go underneath the 20th East underpass. Just going to get ice cream cones. I know exactly where that intersection is. I’ve driven through it many times myself. When I was little, we visited my grandma in that area, and my mom used to call that underpass the “bunny hole” because of the steep decline under the freeway and sudden incline on the other side. For a brief moment, right when you’re about to go under the freeway, your view of oncoming traffic is obstructed. The speed limit there is 30 MPH. Police reports estimate that seventeen-year-old Cameron White was doing about 75.
“I saw headlights coming at us,” says Chris. “It was so surreal. Just seeing the lights and no car behind it. My mind didn’t process it immediately. It didn’t make sense. Instead of realizing that we were going to be hit and that we were in danger, my mind was thinking, What’s going on? How should I react? I did try to do something to avoid being hit, but it didn’t matter.”
Cameron swerved, struggling to correct his course, and struck the passenger side of the Williams family’s car. According to police, even if Chris had gone left or right in that split second, he couldn’t have avoided the catastrophic impact.
There are so many difficult questions to ask. For both our sakes, I want to get through this part. “What happened then? Or did it happen so quickly that…?”
Chris pauses for a moment and looks very thoughtful. “I remember the sound. And I remember being hit so hard that it knocked my vision out. All I could see—all I could perceive—was white, and then as my vision slowly started to come back, I could see the glass from the imploded windshield still falling. Things just popped. Vaporized. I had an immediate sense of pain all over. I was shocked to still be alive after being hit so hard. I didn’t know if Michelle was dead or alive at that moment. I finally got my hand over to hers and felt for a pulse. That’s when I noticed that on her other elbow—the right elbow—she had a significant wound that was not bleeding. I had worked as an EMT for several years when I was younger and knew that when the heart was pumping with that kind of wound, there should be lots of bleeding. I checked for the pulse. I was desperately searching. I couldn’t find one.”
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