Disturbia

By Lavinia Masters

There was a movie that came out in theaters May 2004, entitled Van Helsing. It was an American action horror film and a great film if I may add. The synopsis of the movie was that Van Helsing was a notorious monster hunter sent to Transylvania to stop Count Dracula who is using Dr. Frankenstein’s research and a werewolf for his sinister purpose. However the disturbing thing about me enjoying this movie is that even as a child I have always had a crippling fear of werewolves.

My fear for this half human-half monster was so great that the thought of me being outside on a full moon after midnight…was not an option. I even remember the time when my son was only 3 years old and I purchased him paisley curtains and bed covers because I felt that it was time for his room to reflect the big boy that he was. Well about the third night he woke up screaming and hollering there were werewolves in his curtains and in his bedcovers as he pointed to the detailed designs of the burgundy and blue paisley that I once loved and could not sleep in his room for the rest of the night. Needless to say the next morning the curtains, covers and bed sheets all had to be returned the next day not just for his fears but mine. How in the world did this child know my hidden fears? I never expressed this to him or around him…mainly because I did not want him to see my weakness but especially because I did not want him to develop the same fears. Although I still wrestle with whether or not werewolves really exist…you will not find me outdoors, after midnight when there is a full moon.

Last night I watched this movie again...in its entirety… alone as I was preparing the details of my annual “balloon release” in my continued efforts of raising awareness, education and empowerment to victims of sexual violence. I then began to read this blog about these two young girls out of the Houston area that was gang raped and killed in the early 90’s. The gory details of how these gang members attacked these girls as they walked home… were very upsetting and disturbing to me. I later found myself going off to sleep but before I did…I prayed for two things…one was that it be revealed to me why I am so disturbed with the thought of werewolves and two that the families of these young girls have peace after such tragedies and that the deaths of these two young victims were not in vain.

I woke up in the middle of the night sweating and kicking because of the dream that I was having. In my dream I was being chased and attacked by a gang that was trying to rape me. I remember that no one heard my screams as if everyone had purposely turned a deaf ear to me. There were people all around but no one reached out to help me as if they refused to see my danger. They locked their doors…they turned their heads and they continued to move on as if they did not see or care about my distress or immediate danger. I was devastated…how could people be so heartless in my time of need. How can others not care about anyone else but themselves especially when they are in need? Then the last question I asked myself…why was it a gang of men that was chasing me and not werewolves?

I sat up in my bed and just like the dawn of a new morning it came to me so clearly why I had the fear of man eating werewolves. My mind went back to the night before my grandmother’s funeral in ’81…all the children were over at my cousin's house in Waco, Texas and we were watching “American Werewolf in London”. Note my grandmother never allowed me to watch any kind of horror movies and pretty much shielded me from anything gross, violent or “unnecessary foolishness” as she called it. However if my cousins or big brother did happen to let me sneak a movie that I was not suppose to see…I knew that my “Maam-Maw” would be right there to protect me because she was not afraid of anyone or anything…not even a werewolf. However, as I went off to bed that night in ’81 another reality had sunk in…my granny would no longer there for me. So here I am almost 40 years later…just now understanding that I am associating my grandmother’s death with the terror of werewolves.

This is how I was able to so easily place myself in the nightmare of being gang raped by these young women's attackers...the protection and comfort that I would normally find in my grandmothers arms was no longer there. I was able to identify with the sudden terror of being taken away from loved ones and being attacked and mutilated only for the midnight hour to hear your silent screams. I had personally been there when I begged and pleaded for mercy and for the pain to stop but it seemed to have no end. I wanted help but no one heard or understood my cries…their ears were like those born deaf and their eyes were as if they were given sight without vision…and no one knew the words to comfort me or would use their voice to speak for me. Rape had become my werewolf and my flesh was not all that it wanted to destroy.

Before I went back to sleep last night I was grateful that I was able to overcome and heal from my own personal trauma from sexual violence but I also made a decree that werewolves will no longer disturb me after midnight, because I have the power to slay these half man-half monsters. I also have the power to make sure that these two young victims’ deaths will never be in vain because I will continue to be the eyes to see when things are wrong and need change when it comes to bringing justice to sexual violence…ears to hears the cries and fear of the victims when they cry for help and assistance after sexual trauma… and the voice that will speak out and against all sexual violence.

My grandmother may not be here in body but her spirit lives on. She has taught me many things at such an early age…one thing was that God did not give us a spirit of fear but of peace and a sound mind. I have to be courageous so that I may continue to slay the “werewolves” that prey upon and violate the innocent. This calling is not designated for one month out of the year but for every second out of a minute…there is a full moon rising…its late in the evening and there is much work for us to do. We have got to ask God to give us back our hearing, sight and voices…we need them so we can rescue victims that fall into sexual trauma. These type of occurrences have to be disturbing to you…we have to say enough is enough! We can’t willingly and knowingly continue to allow our children to be sexually abused by those that they are suppose to trust…we can’t continue to let innocent lives be snatched away like a vapor…we must hear their silent screams…we have to see their hidden pain and fears but most importantly we have to give them back their voice by speaking up and out against sexual violence!

I’m not asking you to become Van Helsing but I am asking you to wake up…someone has to work the night shift.

Lavinia Masters is the Founder of S.A.V.E. Ministry and has worked extensively with sexual assault and rape victims, assisting them towards healing.  She has spoken out on CNN and other news outlets, as well as at conferences globally about the need for quick response with DNA and rape kit testing results.

Darkness to Light

By Lavinia Masters

Darkness in contrast with brightness is a relative absence of visible light. It has an appearance of black in a color space. When light is not present, rod and cone cells within the eye are not stimulated and this lack of stimulation means that photoreceptor cell are unable to distinguish color frequency and wave length. The resulting perception is achromatic (or without color) and in the case of darkness…black.

The emotional reaction to darkness has metaphorical importance in many cultures…such as science: a dark object absorbs photons (a quantum of visible light) and therefore appears dim in comparison to other objects. Therefore light can simply be absorbed without limit because energy like visible light cannot be created or destroyed. It can however only be converted from one type of energy to another. Most objects absorb visible light and remit it as an infrared light so although an object may appear dark; it is likely bright at frequency that a human eye cannot see.

Then if we speak poetically about darkness we find that darkness can also mean the presence of shadows, evil and depression. Religious texts often use darkness to make a visual point. In the Bible, darkness was the second to last plague (Exodus 10:21) and the location of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12). The use of darkness as a rhetorical device has a long standing tradition. Shakesphere referenced satan in his plays as the “prince” of darkness; while Chaucer a 14th Century Middle English writer, wrote that knights must cast away the “worker of darkness” and Dante described hell as “solid darkness stained”.

Moreover if we speak about darkness artistically we discover that darkness can also be used to emphasize or contrast with light. Take color paints for example they are mixed together to create darkness because each color absorbs certain frequencies of light.

So emotionally, physically and mentally this is the place where I dwelled after July 31, 1985…darkness. This was the night that I was brutally raped and attacked in the privacy of my own home as a child. This is the night that I thought day would never come and my “dark areas” had so limited light sources that it made things hard to see.

My life was in contrast with brightness, my life had an absence of visible light, my life had the appearance of “black” in all my color space and because there was no light present my life was no longer stimulated and because I could no longer distinguish life from death my will to survive was “black”.

It was not until after I almost lost all that I had, which was my family, that I realized that the overshadowing of my darkness was way too loud and I needed to find my way back to light. I not only desired to be visible to the human eye but I desired my life, heart, soul and purpose to be stimulated. I desired to begin to distinguish my joys from my pains and to replace my fears with bravery. I no longer wanted to absorb all the mixed emotions and self inflicted pain that being a victim carries.

I had to understand and believe that the visible light that God had created within me was not created by my circumstances so therefore it could not be destroyed by my circumstances. I realized that a victim that lives in the shadows of darkness not lonely remains depressed but has a tendency of depressing everyone that comes into contacts with them. When I looked into the mirror I did not like what I could not see…I did not see life, I did not see hope, I did not see a future, I did not see joy, I did not see peace and worst of all I could not see me.

Sexual and relationship violence are occurrences that no one likes to talk about but unfortunately they are indeed occurrences that happen every day…even as you read this blog. So as advocates and survivors we not only have to continue to speak up and out against these types of offences but we also have to learn how to protect, preserve and nourish the survivor in all of us.

As survivors we must learn that you are and deserve the best because God created you and designed you after His own image. A survivor is a person of worth, a person of beauty, a person of strength but most importantly a person of courage! Darkness has no place where there is worth and it cannot overshadow beauty… let it also be understood that darkness is weak where there is strength and darkness breaks loose where courage presides.

Let your light shine through your darkness…let your light lead you from the darkness.



Lavinia B. Masters is the Founder of S.A.V.E. Ministries which assists victims of sexual abuse and intimate partner violence in the Dallas, TX area, and the author of Breathe Again.

Daddy’s Girls

By Lavinia Masters




On Valentine’s Day of 2007…Tyler Perry came out with a movie called Daddy’s Little Girls. The movie in short was about a single father that had 3 little girls that meant the whole world to him. In the movie this father showed that he was willing to do anything for the safety, care and well being of his three daughters…and after viewing the movie myself… I was convinced that this father was willing to not only sacrifice his freedom and all that he had for his daughters, but that he was even willing sacrifice his life so that his girls would be able to live without the abuse, ridicule and shame that their mother and her boyfriend had put upon them.


The dictionary defines a father as man who is a parent… or a male parent of a human being… it also states that that the adjective “paternal” refers to father, parallel to “maternal” for mother.


However, I want to stop and pose a couple of questions to you today…or give you some things to think about….one is… what is the definition of a father to you? or how do you define a father? And now that you’ve answered or thought about that question, my second question is this, do you consider yourself a daddy’s girl? Or are you one of daddy’s little girls?


Growing up I did not have the pleasure of that father daughter relationship or bond that all of you may havehad, mainly because my father divorced my mother before I was old enough to even know who he was. I never knew the joy of going to a father daughter dance or experiencing the bond of a father praising his daughter for my strengths and exposing me to the working world. Oh, how I use to envy other little girls as their daddys would swoop them up in their arms and laugh and play for what would seem like forever.

Unfortunately, as I began to get older, I began to accept the hand that I was dealt in life and one of them was this… that I was not a daddy’s girl…I didn’t even know if he loved me, I didn’t even know if he cared or remembered me and, by the time I began junior high, I had literally detached myself of the idea of even having a father…until the night of July 31, 1985.


This was night that tragedy struck, this was night that my life was held in balance by the hands of a deranged rapist, the night my innocence was violated, the night I thought all hope was lost, the night I wanted and cried for my daddy.


Even though I did not have Timothy Ray Mangum to rescue me on this horrific night, I had a man by the name of Jesus Christ to that heard my call.




Now before I go any further, let me stop to tell you that this story is not intended to depress or get you down you, I promise, my purpose today is to empower and uplift you with my testimony because I now know that I am a part of a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that I should show forth the praises of Him who hath called me out of darkness to a marvelous light.


The reason I can proclaim this is because although I did not have that relationship with my earthly father that I was speaking of, I thank God that I had that spiritual bond with my heavenly father, that bond that no man can break.


It was April 2003, when I got the call that my biological father was dying of lung cancer and he wanted to see me before his demise. Was it to tell me that he was sorry that he was not there for any of my birthdays? Maybe he wanted to say that he regrets that he missed my wedding day where I had to have a proxy father stand in for him to give his angel away or possibly that he was sorry that he missed the birth of his grandson.


Whatever the reason he wanted to see me, but I missed the opportunity because the week during the time my oldest brother and I were to make the trip to Amarillo, Texas, he passed. I remember when I got the call at work, I began to cry. I was confused because how could I shed tears for a man that I knew nothing about but his name? How did I have the strength to tell my aunts, yes, I would travel to Waco and make his arrangements and pick his suit to bury him in. How did I stand over his body at the funeral home and kiss him goodbye, what was wrong with me!


You see, if there is one thing that I have learned to do as a child of God, that is to show unconditional love towards my fellow man and that forgiveness has its place in everything, yes even in the case of my “missing” daddy. I do not know nor understand the choices he made in life and why he chose not to be a part of mine, but I do know that, in the end, he tried to reach out to me for whatever the reasons. I also know that just as Christ has forgiven me and given me the opportunity to eternal life…He could have extended that same opportunity to my biological dad. The healing from his death came through my forgiving of his non existence in my life and the only way that I could have done that was through the love that my heavenly father has shown towards me!


So today I know that I am a daddy’s girl because I have a Father that sits high and looks low... a Father that can take away all my tears and fears…past and present. I have a Father that is with me when I am strong and picks me up when I too weak to carry myself. My Father is omnipotent, omnipresent and can do anything but fail! I love my Heavenly Father because He has taught me to love my earthly father in spite of the circumstances and no matter what he has done in the past or hasn’t done for me it does not take away what God has created me to be in the present….a loving, healthy and happy daddy’s girl!


Finally, to all the little girls, young ladies and women reading this empowering message…maybe you were victimized sexually by your daddy or hurt by his physical abuse, or whatever pain or trauma that the man you loved and trusted as your father in your life inflicted upon you…know that he does not have the final say so in your life, do not give him that authority ,take back what rightfully belongs to you…your sanity, your integrity, your life!


Know that although failure came through the hands of your earthly father…that there is no failure in your HEAVENLY FATHER…so yes you, too, are a daddy’s girl!