Years before meeting her loving husband, Victor, and moving into her storybook Shelby County home, Tahiera Monique Brown was a hostage in Atlanta. A machine gun wielding mad man held her captive, tortured her son and raped her daughter.
“I walked side by side with the devil,” she says. “He would say to me, ‘You love them (your children), but I don’t give a d--- about them.”
In 1986, a strange man showed up on her job and held her captive in an elevator. She got away, but when she arrived home, he was on her porch playing checkers with her children. He had a pistol in his jacket and for Brown and her little ones, it would be the beginning of years under his treacherous rule.
Today, the 53-year-old grandmother of seven is a free woman. She is the author of her biography, Annihilator of Innocence, and a sought-out speaker on overcoming abuse. “I never lost my faith,” she says. “As a matter of fact, my faith got stronger.”
She would need that faith when she had to face her abuser during a trial that stretched out for two years. He was brought to justice, but the memories and scars are still there.
“I do have nightmares. All of us do,” she says. “It might be the first day we were held hostage ... the day we saw all of our belongings on the side of the road … or my not being able to remove from my memory bank the night I saw the man who terrorized us molesting my daughter at eleven years old …”
Brown recently signed an option for her book to be made into a movie and is also in the process of starting a non-profit for abuse victims. “I had to take a leap of faith and I landed in the arms of angels and God surely set me free.”
To get information about her book, go to www.annihilatorofInnocence.com.