Kind Hearted Woman, Raped at 3, Helps Others Heal

When Robin Poor Bear was in her 20s, she asked for a Native American name. The Road Man, or spiritual leader, came up with Kind Hearted Woman.

There was good reason: After a lifetime of physical and sexual abuse, her heart was still bursting with empathy for others.

The daughter of an alcoholic mother, Poor Bear was molested by her foster father at age 3. But today, at 35, she gives a voice to others who have suffered sexual abuse.

"I remember it -- not the rape itself, but the emergency room and the nurses trying to hold me down to examine me," Poor Bear, now living in Minnesota, told ABC News. "I remember the door and being so terrified it would fly open and someone would get me."

Poor Bear suffered repeated sexual abuse at the hands of her foster father and two uncles until she was 13. Then, as a young wife, she was beaten by her husband.

That pain is revisited after the couple divorces and her ex-husband is convicted of molesting their 12-year-old daughter, as well as a teenage foster daughter.

The psychological anguish caused Poor Bear, an Oglala Sioux and member of North Dakota's Spirit Lake tribe in North Dakota, to turn to alcohol. And when Poor Bear eventually spoke up about the abuse, her daughter and son, now 17 and 14, were taken away from her.

On Monday, April 1, and Tuesday, April 2 at 9 ET, PBS's "Frontline" will air a powerful documentary, "Kind Hearted Woman," about Poor Bear's struggle to stay sober, further her education and heal herself from the deep wounds of sexual abuse.

David Sutherland, whose films "The Farmer's Wife" (1998) and "Country Boys" (2005) also offer a cinema verite look at poor, rural life, spent three years with Poor Bear and her children.

The centerpiece of the film is Poor Bear's battle to gain custody of her children while improving her own life.

Kimmer Olesak

Oglala Sioux Robin Poor Bear struggles to... View Full Size

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Sutherland, 67, followed the family from Poor Bear's first day out of alcohol rehab, through school and jobs, juggling being a mother and trying to become a social worker. Frustrated at every turn, Poor Bear fights a corrupt tribal legal system and a culture of domestic violence that pervades many Native American communities.

Native American women have the second-highest rate of rape of all races and ethnicities, at 27 percent, second only to mixed-race women, according to the Centers for Disease Control's 2011 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. Nearly half of all of these women have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking in their lifetime.

"There are two or three thousand enrolled members living on the reservation and just a small handful of law enforcement to get calls," Poor Bear said about the time she spent a Spirit Lake Reservation. "Some reports are not taken seriously and some are not followed through the proper protocols."

Last year, unrelated to the documentary, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs took over social services at Spirit Lake because of concerns that tribal mismanagement had contributed to abuse of children.

But Poor Bear said that the causes of domestic violence and abuse go deeper than scarce funding and little oversight on Native American reservations. She blames the "rape" of the indigenous culture when it was "Christianized."

"Who taught us how to be parents and how to be loving and caring and kind to each other when they took away all the traditions and we couldn't speak our language without being beaten?" Poor Bear asked.

A former singer, Poor Bear said that she comes from a legacy of heartbreak, but also of generosity.

Her mother, an alcoholic, froze to death in her 30s banging on the door of Poor Bear's foster family, who refused to let her in, Poor Bear tells an audience of abused women in the film.

Her grandfather died saving children in a log cabin fire, she tells ABCNews.com. "The doorway collapsed and when they found him, he was still protecting and holding a baby," she said.

Sutherland did not intend to make a film about Native Americans and was hesitant to reinforce negative stereotypes about life on the reservation. He had singled out several other battered women in his search for an authentic character-driven story about abuse, but Poor Bear's rose to the top.

"She had an associate's degree and was smart," he said. "I liked her sense of humor and she was always upbeat, even in the saddest moments, with the kids."

Sutherland never expected the turn the dramatic narrative would take. When Poor Bear's daughter Darian reveals she was molested by her father at the age of 12, she is required to testify in federal court.

'Stalking the Bogeyman': Plot to Kill Child Rapist Comes Alive

David Holthouse said he had the murder meticulously planned. He bought a Beretta 9 mm with a silencer and had the serial number removed, then tested it in the Arizona desert. He said he stalked the intended victim's Colorado home and came within a hair's breadth of killing the man who brutally raped him as a 7-year-old.

"This wasn't just a revenge fantasy, though it's tempting to lie about it now," said Holthouse, now 41 and working as a documentary filmmaker and investigative reporter in Alaska. "If I had gone through with it, I most certainly would have been caught."

Instead, Holthouse said, he confronted his childhood assailant face-to face and found not the "bogeyman" who had haunted his psyche for 25 years but a "frightened, damaged man" begging for his forgiveness.

And were it not for a serendipitous discovery of that awful truth by his mother, Holthouse swears he, too, would have been a dead man.

Holthouse first went public with a story in 2004 in the weekly Denver Westword. Later, in 2011, he told about his ordeal on National Public Radio's "This American Life."

Now, the story of his sexual assault and the shame and venomous anger that followed has been adapted for the stage in "Stalking the Bogeyman," which is in production for a February 2014 opening Off Broadway.

"I just happened to be listening to a 'This American Life' podcast and I stopped in my tracks, kind of paralyzed," said writer and director Markus Potter ("A Perfect Future"), artistic director of NewYorkRep. "Immediately, I thought this story needs to be told. It needs to reach a wider audience."

Courtesy David Holthouse

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Holthouse's story is a powerful one, as he describes in detail about "coming to grips with the killer inside of me."

He was in the second grade in Alaska when the attack occurred. The alleged rapist was 10 years older and a star high school football player, the son of his parents' close friends.

One night in 1978, Holthouse said, when the grownups were "drinking wine and playing board games," the 17-year-old whisked young David away to his room under the guise of teaching him some karate moves and closed the door.

"I didn't know what was going on, but I knew it was bad, so I started crying, and he told me to shut up and then started chasing me around the room, waving the sword," he wrote. "He put the blade to my throat and backed me into a corner, where I dropped into a crouch and cowered. Then, he told me to take off my pants.

"It wasn't Michael Jackson gently introducing my hand to his magical giraffe, and it wasn't anything like a Catholic priest masturbating an altar boy. I was seven, and it was violent, sick, pedophiliac rape. ... I no longer believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, but from that night on, I had no such doubts about the Bogeyman."

Out of fear and shame, Holthouse never spoke about it, though he claimed there were other attempts to abuse him.

"Part of it was I didn't really have a firm concept of what had happened," he told ABCNews.com. "Nobody ever talked to me about sex or rape. I don't think it was a function of the era. Most 7-year-olds don't know what rape is. I didn't have the words to apply to it. ... It was easier to keep quiet."

He wrote that he didn't want to upset his parents: "I didn't want their memories of my childhood tarnished with this scum."

Nearly half of all victims of sexual assault are under the age of 18, according to statistics from the Department of Justice. Of those, 10 percent are boys. Other studies have shown rates as high as one in six boys. An alarming 93 percent of them have been abused by someone they know -- a friend or family member.

"There is no standard reaction or response to sexual abuse," said Jennifer Marsh, vice president of victim services at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. "It can range from anger to denial to a sense of hopelessness. Some of the time we see that anger projected inward.

"We hear folks every day who are angry and talk about hurting their perpetrators," she said. "Usually, it's more a figure of speech than a plan."

As a teen, Holthouse researched rape, learned about the "vicious cycle" of abuse and feared that he, too, might turn into pedophile.

"I felt like a werewolf had bitten me and it was only a matter of time before the full moon rose," he wrote.

He said that if those desires surfaced, he would kill himself and make it look like a mountaineering accident.

After college, Holthouse moved to Colorado, but the memory of the rape "festered." When his mother mentioned that the alleged rapist was also living in Denver with his wife and children, he imagined the man was continuing to assault children, perhaps even his own.

March is heating up...

ESPN Recipes for all your favorite sports! Also: New Foursquare, SoundCloud, and Weather Triggers, plus more. ...so is the NCAA Basketball Tournament! Follow the Madness with this Recipe: Text me Men’s NCAA Basketball breaking news by riway on March 14, 2013 ESPN is now on IFTTT! Track breaking news, in-game updates, and final scores for all your favorite sports and teams. With such a wide variety of ESPN Recipes, there’s something for every sports fan. What’s more, we added new Foursquare, SoundCloud, and Weather Triggers for you to try. Here are a few Recipes we rallied together to show off the new features:   Send me tomorrow’s weather report today at 9 PM by bmaryott on March 24, 2013 Save new Anoraak tracks from SoundCloud search to Pocket by alexander on March 27, 2013 Email your mother Foursquare check-ins tagged #mom! Useful for brownie points by acco on March 06, 2013 Every day at 6 AM, add today’s weather report to my calendar by kev on March 27, 2013 Show your support for the Texas Rangers on Twitter every time a game starts by rastyyle on March 19, 2013 Discover new Recipes and keep sharing your feedback. If there’s a Channel you’d like to see on IFTTT, don’t hesitate to share your suggestions with us. We’ve got exciting things in store for the summer, so stay tuned.   —The IFTTT Team P.S. We’re hiring!     This newsletter was automatically sent to yangquebec.abuse@blogger.com because you signed up for IFTTT with that address. To disable this communication, you can manage your email settings or unsubscribe from the IFTTT Newsletter.   IFTTT · 923 Market Street #400 · San Francisco, CA 94103

'Stalking the Bogeyman': Plot to Kill Child Rapist Comes Alive

David Holthouse said he had the murder meticulously planned. He bought a Beretta 9 mm with a silencer and had the serial number removed, then tested it in the Arizona desert. He said he stalked the intended victim's Colorado home and came within a hair's breadth of killing the man who brutally raped him as a 7-year-old.

"This wasn't just a revenge fantasy, though it's tempting to lie about it now," said Holthouse, now 41 and working as a documentary filmmaker and investigative reporter in Alaska. "If I had gone through with it, I most certainly would have been caught."

Instead, Holthouse said, he confronted his childhood assailant face-to face and found not the "bogeyman" who had haunted his psyche for 25 years but a "frightened, damaged man" begging for his forgiveness.

And were it not for a serendipitous discovery of that awful truth by his mother, Holthouse swears he, too, would have been a dead man.

Holthouse first went public with a story in 2004 in the weekly Denver Westword. Later, in 2011, he told about his ordeal on National Public Radio's "This American Life."

Now, the story of his sexual assault and the shame and venomous anger that followed has been adapted for the stage in "Stalking the Bogeyman," which is in production for a February 2014 opening Off Broadway.

"I just happened to be listening to a 'This American Life' podcast and I stopped in my tracks, kind of paralyzed," said writer and director Markus Potter ("A Perfect Future"), artistic director of NewYorkRep. "Immediately, I thought this story needs to be told. It needs to reach a wider audience."

Courtesy David Holthouse

As an adult, David Holthouse, shown here at... View Full Size

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Holthouse's story is a powerful one, as he describes in detail about "coming to grips with the killer inside of me."

He was in the second grade in Alaska when the attack occurred. The rapist was 10 years older and a star high school football player, the son of his parents' close friends.

One night in 1978, Holthouse said, when the grownups were "drinking wine and playing board games," the 17-year-old whisked young David away to his room under the guise of teaching him some karate moves and closed the door.

"I didn't know what was going on, but I knew it was bad, so I started crying, and he told me to shut up and then started chasing me around the room, waving the sword," he wrote. "He put the blade to my throat and backed me into a corner, where I dropped into a crouch and cowered. Then, he told me to take off my pants.

"It wasn't Michael Jackson gently introducing my hand to his magical giraffe, and it wasn't anything like a Catholic priest masturbating an altar boy. I was seven, and it was violent, sick, pedophiliac rape. ... I no longer believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, but from that night on, I had no such doubts about the Bogeyman."

Out of fear and shame, Holthouse never spoke about it, though he claimed there were other attempts to abuse him.

"Part of it was I didn't really have a firm concept of what had happened," he told ABCNews.com. "Nobody ever talked to me about sex or rape. I don't think it was a function of the era. Most 7-year-olds don't know what rape is. I didn't have the words to apply to it. ... It was easier to keep quiet."

He wrote that he didn't want to upset his parents: "I didn't want their memories of my childhood tarnished with this scum."

Nearly half of all victims of sexual assault are under the age of 18, according to statistics from the Department of Justice. Of those, 10 percent are boys. Other studies have shown rates as high as one in six boys. An alarming 93 percent of them have been abused by someone they know -- a friend or family member.

"There is no standard reaction or response to sexual abuse," said Jennifer Marsh, vice president of victim services at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. "It can range from anger to denial to a sense of hopelessness. Some of the time we see that anger projected inward.

"We hear folks every day who are angry and talk about hurting their perpetrators," she said. "Usually, it's more a figure of speech than a plan."

As a teen, Holthouse researched rape, learned about the "vicious cycle" of abuse and feared that he, too, might turn into pedophile.

"I felt like a werewolf had bitten me and it was only a matter of time before the full moon rose," he wrote.

He said that if those desires surfaced, he would kill himself and make it look like a mountaineering accident.

After college, Holthouse moved to Colorado, but the memory of the rape "festered." When his mother mentioned that the rapist was also living in Denver with his wife and children, he imagined the man was continuing to assault children, perhaps even his own.

National Rx Drug Abuse Summit to make impact on America's prescription drug problem

The prescription drug epidemic continues to take lives in America, causing 100 overdose deaths daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's an epidemic that does not discriminate, wrecking havoc on big cities and small towns alike, striking our youth and aging population.

For the second year in a row the National Rx Drug Abuse Summit is convening to make an impact on America's prescription drug problem. On April 2 in Orlando, FL, Rising Medical Solutions will join federal, state and local policy makers; leading researchers; issue advocates; clinicians; pharmacists; and law enforcement officials to speak at the Summit.

Rising's Chief Compliance Officer and Vice President of Medical Review Services Anne Kirby will be presenting on "Using Analytics to Track, Monitor and Reduce Costs." Kirby will talk about how prescription drugs are affecting the workers' comp industry and how pharmacy analytics are helping to better manage work comp claims through closer case monitoring and early intervention.

"Getting America's workers back to work faster and healthier is our aim," says Kirby. "Prescription drugs need to be tracked and monitored much more closely, our technology has been created with all parties in mind by alerting the medical provider to questionable drug usage early on; helping the patient wean-off meds and return-to-work; and decreasing the medical spend for the insurer."

Experts from Progressive Medical and Markel FirstComp Insurance Company will join Kirby to speak to the importance of:

Cocaine can be lethal for people living with HIV

Cocaine, already a damaging drug for those with healthy immune systems, can be lethal for those living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Mudit Tyagi, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), has received two federally funded grants to study how dangerous this combination is in HIV patients.

Both grants are from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a component institute of National Institutes of Health, which support research focusing on illicit drugs abuse. The first grant he received, titled "Cocaine Enhances HIV Replication by Inducing Transcriptionally Active Chromatin," is for $405,000 and the second grant, titled "Cocaine Induced Selective Epigenetic and Signaling Pathways Enhance HIV Replication," is for $317,000. These grants will allow Tyagi to investigate the impact of drug abuse on HIV gene expression, replication and transmission, especially in brain cells, as the brain is a primary target for both drugs and HIV.

"We are seeing new cases of HIV coming from the younger generation," said Tyagi. "And, unfortunately, the majority of these cases are coming from persons taking these illicit drugs."

Abusing drugs, such as cocaine, is known to modify both cellular epigenetics and signaling pathways, which in turn modulate the expression of several cellular genes. This has led researchers to believe that gene expression of integrated HIV proviruses are also influenced with this type of stimuli that eventually translates into enhanced HIV replication and transmission in drug addicted HIV patients. Cocaine, one of the most widely abused drugs in the United States, impairs both the normal functioning of brain cells and activates HIV gene expression in the central nervous system. As a result, HIV-infected individuals who abuse cocaine experience a more severe and rapid onset of NeuroAIDS than non-abusing individuals.

"As the population is getting older, we are having a lot of instances of HIV episodic dementia - known as HIV Associated Dementia (HAD)," said Tyagi. "Drug abuse induces these problems, even in younger HIV patients, and escalates them in older patients."

Woman Gets New Face After Near Decapitation

Ilianexy Morales was in her 20s when she met a man outside her home in New York City as he was asking for directions. He was older, 38, but doting and generous, and they began dating exclusively.

He encouraged her to quit her job as a medical assistant and began to support Morales, her 4-year-old daughter and bedridden mother. But soon, his attentiveness turned to possessiveness and obsessive demands. She had to ask permission to leave the house and he would spy on her at school.

"There was no violence, but other things, like control issues, jealousy ... like who I would talk to," she told ABCNews.com.

That would change. Three years into the oppressive relationship in 2005, when Morales tried to break up with him, he cajoled his way into her apartment and stabbed her more than 100 times with a butcher's knife, partially severing her arms and nearly decapitating her, she said.

Morales survived after a month in a coma and seven initial surgeries -- one to reattach her arms -- and her former boyfriend is now serving a 15-year sentence for assault with a deadly weapon, she said.

But she was left with horrendous scars all over her body, especially on her face.

Riddled with anxiety, she couldn't even look herself in the mirror. "I didn't look like me," Morales, 30, said. "I would hide a lot. I felt really ashamed of myself even though it was not my fault."

But in 2010, Face to Face, a program based in Alexandria, Va., gave Morales her face and her strength and her dignity back.

The charitable arm of the American Academy of Facial, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS), Face to Face provides about 1,500 surgeries a year to women in need in its National Domestic Violence Project.

Courtesy Face to Face

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"Ilianexy was critically injured," said Dr. Andrew Jacono, a New York City facial and reconstructive surgeon who took her case. "It wasn't just a simple scar. She was almost stabbed to death. She probably would have been killed if he wasn't stopped by a neighbor. He was going to finish her off."

Jacono donated his skills to perform seven hours of complicated "flap surgery" on her face and neck. The outcome was "beautiful," he said. "She's a wonderful person with an amazing spirit. It gave her a lot of confidence."

"It's really gratifying to help these women," he said. "Unfortunately, people don't realize how common domestic violence is in this country."

An estimated 1.3 million American women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year, about one in every four women, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Women like Morales, aged 20 to 40, are at the greatest risk

Jacono has since reconstructed the faces of women who have had acid thrown in their faces and those who are scarred by gunshot wounds. He was inspired to join Face to Face after doing a successful rhinoplasty on a young patient in 1998. She had told him her broken nose was the result of a car accident.

But three months later, the patient contacted him again. "She was crying hysterically, the nose was crooked and collapsed again," he said. "She revealed that her husband had done it in the first place. It affected me very much."

Face to Face's domestic violence project was launched in 1994 after public outrage over the O.J. Simpson arrest and murder trial. Even though Simpson was exonerated, the organization made a large donation to the Nicole Brown Foundation.

Until then, the group offered surgical services in developing countries, which they still continue today.

The board reasoned that battered women had many support services available to them for vocational and psychological rehabilitation, but not the surgery that is "the final piece in their rehab, allowing them to erase the memories of abuse physically from their faces."

The American Academy of Facial, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery also encouraged the cosmetic dentistry group to get involved because if was receiving so many women with broken teeth.

Doctors work with local shelters and psychotherapists to find women who cannot afford surgical services and associated facility and anesthesia fees. To qualify, they need to have undergone therapy and been outside of an abusive relationship for a significant period of time.

"We want to make sure that the patient is out of the cycle of violence," said Dr. Ed Williams, a facial plastic surgeon and clinical professor at Albany Medical College in New York, who has been involved with the domestic-violence program since its inception.

Rabies Death Linked to Organ Transplant

A Maryland man has died of rabies after receiving an infected donor kidney 16 months ago, prompting the Centers for Disease Control to test three other recipients of organs from the same donor.

The CDC said the additional recipients, who received organs including the heart, lungs and kidney from the infected donor, were being tested for rabies and given anti-rabies vaccinations and immune globulin as a preventative measure.

Maryland state health officials had called in the CDC after the man's death to determine if the cause of his rabies infection was linked his kidney transplant. CDC officials discovered the same strain of rabies in tissues from both the organ donor and the recipient who died.

CDC spokesperson Barbara Reynolds said the donor had signs of encephalitis or brain swelling at the time of death, but was not tested for rabies because of the rarity of the illness and the length of time it would take for the test to be conducted. There was no information on the official cause of death of the organ donor.

"There is not a viable test at this point in the time frame that this is done," said Reynolds of the short window when organs are usable for transplant. "Rabies is rare as a human disease in the US. It would be extremely rare to occur to organ recipients."

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Rabies only affects a handful of Americans each year. Although thousands may be exposed to the illness, if treated with preventative measures and vaccines they will not contract the infection. However if not treated preemptively, the rabies virus is almost always lethal.

In 2004 three people died after receiving organs from a donor infected with rabies in Texas. According to the CDC that was the first known time rabies was transmitted through by solid organ donation, though the disease has been known to be transmitted through cornea transplants.

Doctors were also confounded by the excessively long incubation time in this case. While rabies usually has an incubation period of one to three months, the Maryland man who received the infected kidney showed no signs of the disease for 16 months after the transplant.

Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital who was not involved with this case, said that it was not uncommon to transplant organs from a donor that was suffering an unspecified infection with symptoms such as encephalitis.

"Often it's not possible to get a definite diagnosis, then you have to use your judgment," said Segev. "There are certainly donors used every year, where there was a possibility that the donor died of an infectious encephalitis and the organs were used."

Segev says that because of the rare number of rabies cases and lack of information about rabies transmission through organ transplantation, it is unclear whether the other organ recipients would also be infected.

"This is an unusual situation, no one knows if there 100 percent transmission of rabies from donor to recipient," said Segev.