A Celebration of Heroes

SOS at Zac's Ridge invites you to attend our 4th Annual "You Call This Love?" Art Exhibit Appreciation Dinner and dance!

Our guest speaker, Mildred Muhammad, has a riveting story to tell about what it means for a woman to marry the man of her dreams and then watch her world collapse as she discovers that her husband is as dangerous as he is controlling and demanding. Mildred Muhammad was married to John Muhammad for more than twelve years. They have three children together.

Before he was finally arrested, Mildred's ex-husband, who was known as the DC or Beltway Sniper, would be linked to twenty-seven shootings, seventeen of them fatal. Mildred knew John Muhammad better than anybody else. She believed her ex-husband presented a serious and genuine threat to her safety as well as an emotional and psychological danger to her children. When he told her he was going to kill her, she absolutely believed what he said. That is why she spent three long years running for her life.

In those terrifying years when Mildred woke up every day wondering if it would be her last, she went to a variety of different people and organizations for help. She called local police, the FBI, government authorities, and social service agencies, as well as radio and television stations. She simply did not know where to turn. The men and women Mildred spoke to about her fears were overwhelmingly sympathetic and polite. She got the impression that most of them took her seriously when she said her ex-husband threatened her life, but it was quickly apparent that they had heard other similar stories. Domestic violence is so commonplace that she was but one of hundreds of thousands of Americans, mostly women, clutching restraining orders and worried about violent partners.

There is no adequate system in place to help someone who understands a partner's capacity for violence, but who doesn't know what to do to stop it. Why is that? Although loopholes are still prevalent, the system is changing and as it changes, hopefully, the survivors will be included in that process. Because after I have come through the trauma, I learned that resources are little or not at all available to the survivors of domestic violence. This must change!