i could see evil in his eyes. i mean, i was that night i was scared. i had never feared him ever before. but that night, i was worried. he held a knife to my throat that night. missy s husband was eventually convicted of assault and served 3 1/2 months in this very jail. while he was incarcerated his mother died. they refused to let him go to her service. and i think that was the beginning of his real hate for life and for me. when he was released from jail, missy s husband, david ratliff sr. murdered missy s mother. three days later, while on the run from authorities, he hid in the attic of his family s home and shot missy through a vent. i was setting at the kitchen table and my house lit up like a flash of lightning. i ve never heard a gunshot before. i didn t even know what it was. well i heard my brother s
hayes says she will not respond to his angry letters. personally i think it s manipulation at its finest. i know he s hurt. i know he s angry. i know he feels lost and abandoned. and all of that is completely natural. that doesn t give him the right to be mentally or emotionally abusive to me. i think david has misplaced anger. he doesn t know how to handle what his dad did. he has never dealt with it. he put himself there. he s the only one that can pull him out of it. i cannot fix this. missy still lives in the home where her husband, david sr., fired the shots that forever changed her life. well, my mother was killed here. i was shot at the kitchen table. i m not going to let that take away from my home. he took enough. i love my home. i love coming home to my home. i m very proud of my home. my peace. this is my happy. this is my safety zone. believe it or not.
and mental impact on a violent crime victim? good. all right. we got depression. what else? one component of the weeks-long program is inviting victims of violent crime to share their stories. what we re going to do now is transition, give the floor to missy. while these inmates are not convicted of violent crimes, the goal is to make sure they never escalate, as was the case with miss say haze missy haste husband. when i say he was an alcoholic he was sober probably 95% of our relationship. and that 5% of the time that he chose to be an addict, he really went all out. missy says when her husband s construction business slowed down, his drug and alcohol abuse got so bad that she wanted to leave him. when i told him we were going to have to split, he left and he went out for a couple of hours. and he came home, completely wasted, worse than i ve ever seen him in my life. that night, he was the devil.
screaming, he s in the house. he s shooting. i still didn t know that this was a gun that i was hearing. i didn t know that i had been shot. and my father came, grabbed me. we heard another shot. that shot was david killing himself. the tragedy sent missy s son, david ratliff jr. who, at the time was 21, on a downward spiral. 21-year-old man. how did you deal with that? not the right way. i started my drug use took a whole other level. i started shooting heroin, shooting whatever i could. i mean, that was it. i was numbing myself to complete numbness. kept coming to jail. kept getting other chances. what is your relationship with your mom now?
after everything happened, it was crappy. i blame ed her for a lot of it. i blamed her. i blamed myself. i blamed her parents. you know. i felt like everyone just came down on my dad too hard. and i still feel that way a little bit. i get a lot of the blame. and, of course, i understand it. and i take it. and i accept it. and it s okay. i m a mom. that s what i do. i know that what his father did is not my fault. i love my son. he s my heart. and i ll never give up on him. although i have practiced tough love. i m not a parent that looks the other way and pretends that he does no wrong. missy says that david has written her several angry letters. so for now she has decided to stop writing back or visiting. tough love, you think? sure. however long she s going to use that excuse. tough love.