Imagine, you’re 20 years old, your hopes and dreams before you, no reason to think you can’t achieve them. You study, you work hard, you maintain a 4.0 and are on the Dean’s list every semester. It seems everything you touch turns to gold.
Fast forward 2 years. All year, you’ve had to struggle. Financial aid was inadequate to cover everything. You move off campus to what you think will be better, less expensive living arrangements. But, roommates are wasteful and run up the utility bills making it difficult to afford other things, like food. You get a job, even though your school hours are already overloaded. You sell blood/plasma just to be able to buy groceries. It seems like everything is falling apart, but you still have the 4.0 GPA.
Then, the bottom falls out of your world. You wake up and there is an intruder in your room. You’re scared, but out of sorts because you just woke up. You can’t fight him off. He’s a full grown, 40-something year old man. He overpowers you. The next 16 hours of your life have him drugging and repeatedly beating and raping you. To add insult to injury, he steals your debit card. The police only charge him with kidnapping and credit/debit card theft.
Our youngest daughter does not have to imagine this scenario. She lived it. On 26 December 2017, she was brutally attacked in her room, while her friends were away on Christmas vacation.
She tried to continue on with her job and university courses, but fell into a state of depression and a life ruled by fear and nightmares. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function, couldn’t keep up with school work any longer. She left school and came home for her dad and I to try to help her recover from this traumatic experience.
Our daughter is receiving the help that we and professionals can provide for her. While she is healing physically, emotionally there is still much work to do. She wants to put this part of her life behind her and try to move forward. Returning to this university is out of the question.
Our daughter is heavily into the theater. Our town offers community theatre opportunities as does the local junior college, which she attended before leaving for the university. The junior college offers a cosmetology program that she thinks will ultimately help to further her career opportunities in costuming and stage makeup.
There is one glitch - a very big one, that we cannot overcome on our own.
Although the local school has tentatively accepted her, they cannot let her enroll without a copy of her official transcript from the university she was attending when she was attacked. This university has a hold on her transcript because when she withdrew, it left a balance of approximately $5,600. This balance was the stipend provided for living expenses during the semester. The majority of it went to pay the rent at the apartment complex where she was raped. The complex would not let her out of the lease. She has had to continue paying the rent there, although she has not lived there since late February. This stipend was not enough to cover the entirety of the lease agreement. There is money still owed for the months of June and July.
Our daughter did not ask to be attacked and have to leave school. Sometimes life brings other things our way and we have to adjust our plans. No matter what, we have to keep moving forward.
Please help our daughter to keep on the road to recovery. By helping her to pay off the deficit with the university so that they will release her transcript to the local college, and paying out the lease to the apartment complex that did not provide proper security to its tenants, she will be able to put that school, that city, and - maybe someday - that awful attack behind her.
Here are the needs:
$5600 to the university
$1400 to the apartment complex
$ 500 GoFundMe fees
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$7500 Total
Thank you for your help in our daughter’s recovery. May our Heavenly Father bless you all for your compassion and assistance. Please click the image below to go to the GoFundMe page.
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