‘He broke me’: Rape survivor turns pain into purpose

CHARLOTTE — In August, a man raped a woman at gunpoint. Now, she’s sharing her emotional story with Channel 9′s crime reporter Hunter Saenz.

“I hate he did what he did because I just want to know why.”

Channel 9 isn’t sharing her face or her name, but she said sharing her story is therapeutic. She hopes it shows other victims they aren’t alone.

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“I’m not a people person no more. I’m not a person to myself no more.”

She says she was walking to work near Beatties Ford Road in late August when a man she didn’t know pulled up to her in his car, beat her, and forced her into his car at gunpoint.

“He literally drug me out of my clothes.”

Jeremy Asbury then drove to another area and to a house where he raped her.

“When he done that to me, he broke me.”

It’s the same house where days after the violent sexual crime, Asbury became the center of a SWAT standoff before shooting and killing himself.

According to court records, Asbury was arrested in 2015 for first-degree rape, and the charge was dismissed.

Before that, he had been convicted of a robbery and assault on a female.

From the view of the survivor of the August rape, Asbury didn’t have the proper help to prevent his pattern of violence against women.

“He didn’t have the attention that he needed. He gave out so many signs that he needed help, and nobody saw it.”

She says she’ll never forget it, but she has to forgive him.

“Once you forgive him you can go on with your life and be better.”

She hopes to someday start her own victim counseling services to helping other survivors move forward.

“If I can do it, you can do it too.”

The National Sexual Assault hotline is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at 800-656-hope.

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