I Rejected Abortion After My Rape, Then the Rapist Sought Custody of My Child

Our culture encourages women who become pregnant after rape to abort their unborn child, so for a woman to do otherwise is extremely courageous and should be lauded. Unfortunately, for one woman who made exactly that brave decision, she ended up going through another nightmare when her rapist fought her for custody of her child.

Years ago I was raped and then learned that I had become pregnant as a result of his attack. I thought that I had fought him off successfully despite the pain throughout every fiber of my body. I fought to make him stop. He would not. I was eventually rendered unconscious from his attack. He even subsequently broke into my home and pointed a gun at my pregnant belly threatening to kill “it” now or later if I did not drop the prosecution against him.

More than half a decade later, during which time there was no contact with my child by the man who raped me — which is how she was conceived, there he was in a Florida court asking for visitation and all other parental rights to which he should have never been entitled. I was horrified and shocked. How could this now be possible when it was not before? And how could the laws of the state where he raped me and where she was born — Louisiana, which had kept us protected from this terror no longer seemed to matter? It was because we were now Florida residents. The State of Florida did not have any laws that would protect my child from suddenly being forced into a relationship with her biological father who raped me, and the State forced me to relive through this court action the circumstances of her conception, which resulted from his attack.

The absence of any legal protection for us here in Florida allowed this traumatic nightmare to happen.

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