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Father's Day is supposed to be a joyful occasion. But, for me, the day will now always be linked to the memory of an event that changed my family forever.

Last June my daughter, Bridget, a first-grade teacher in Killeen, Texas, sent me a Father's Day card saying how much she looked forward to a summer of visits and travel. The first day of the season, though, brought a painful halt to her hopeful plans.

On June 21 Bridget was raped, shot three times, and left for dead. She survived, some say miraculously. Now it's a year later, yet we all feel years older.

This Father's Day, my wife and I stood in prayerful thanks—grateful for our 25-year-old daughter, wise and strong; for an Army veteran who opened his door in the middle of the night; and to all who helped her get this far.

I give thanks that Bridget never gave in to death and that she never bought in, even for a second, to the age-old scourge of many survivors of rape—the so-called stigma of a sexual assault.

She is not diminished, she is not stigmatized, she is not shamed. Those words describe her attacker, not her.

Bridget is a resilient young woman whose faith in God—and in the compassion of strangers—has only been strengthened by this tragedy.

Recovery, though, is a long road. And a difficult one. She still walks it, as does the rest of our family.

'God doesn't want this'
On the Thursday after Father's Day, Bridget wrote encouraging notes to some of her past year's first-graders. That night she picked up a girlfriend, the librarian at her school, from the airport in Austin. The flight arrived at midnight, and they drove 80 miles home to Killeen.

After dropping off her friend, Bridget returned to her apartment complex. As she got out of her car, she saw a man in the distance but gave it little thought.

She locked two deadbolts behind her and prepared for bed. Minutes later, she heard a frighteningly loud bang at her door. She looked out the peephole and saw a man run up and again kick the door—which hit her in the face, knocking her down.

The man, the one she had seen minutes earlier, stuck a gun in her chest and ordered her to her car. (A neighbor later told police he heard the door being kicked and a woman scream, but looked out and saw no struggle as a couple walked to a car, so he didn't call 911.)

The assailant drove and made Bridget withdraw $200 from a nearby ATM. As he drove farther, she prayed aloud. He told her to shut up.

Trying to make him see her as a person, she told him she was a teacher. Didn't he remember any of his teachers? She talked about her pupils. He was unmoved.

He drove past a new subdivision and into a vacant field, full of weeds and gravel, ordering her out of the car and forcing her to disrobe. She ran, but he caught her and pressed the cold metal gun against her. She told him, "God doesn't want you to do this."

He did it at gunpoint. During her horror, she prayed to survive—but she knew what would come next.

These, she said, were the worst moments, when she thought she would die in an ugly field far from her family. The rapist didn't want to look her in the eyes as he killed her, so he told her to turn around.

From about five feet away, he fired a 9 mm bullet into her back, just left of her spine. The bullet missed her heart and exited below her left breast. She fell.

He stood over her and fired again. The bullet entered her upper-left buttock, ripped through her colon and exited just above the pubic area. For good measure, he fired again, the third bullet slashing across her lower back and creasing the flesh of her right elbow.

Somehow she played dead. He drove off, and she began crawling. Bridget tried to get up but fell, fearing she would pass out and bleed to death.

Then, she says, she felt she was lifted up by God. She rose—and was amazed that her legs worked.

She walked, stumbled and ran 200 yards to homes. She tried one house, where a terrified woman didn't open the door but, at 3:41 A.M., did call 911.

Bridget, losing strength, didn't know that. She staggered next door, where Frank James, a 43-year-old retired Army veteran of the Persian Gulf War and Somalia, was awakened by her cries. He opened the door and saw her naked, bleeding, and curled in a fetal position.

"Oh, my God!" he said to a family member. "Get a blanket."

	Almost unbelievably, the bullets hadn't struck Bridget's spine, heart, lungs, or a major blood vessel.

Mr. James knew gunshot wounds when he saw them. In Somalia, he was three blocks away when the famed Black Hawk went down. On the mantel of his living room sits a picture from Somalia—of himself and Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, now Secretary of State.

At 3:49 A.M., as I slept unaware hundreds of miles away in Omaha, Nebraska, Mr. James knelt over my daughter, comforting her and protecting her. (She said she could tell by his actions that he was a father.) A police officer arrived, quickly radioing Bridget's description of her attacker.

Rescuers took Bridget in an ambulance to the hospital. She kept asking if she would live, and could they call her father?

A surgeon, Dr. Jon Bruce, assessed her wounds and watched her blood pressure drop. If they had arrived at the hospital any later, he said, she would have died.

He got her to the operating room, opened her up, saw the massive bleeding and contamination from intestinal wounds and called in another surgeon. In six hours, repairing damage to her stomach, colon, liver, spleen, intestines, and diaphragm, they saved her life.

Almost unbelievably, the bullets hadn't struck Bridget's spine, heart, lungs, or a major blood vessel. Dr. Bruce said later that while performing surgery, he felt as though he was a conduit—that divine intervention was at work and, whomever this young woman was, God wanted her to live.

A swirl of emotion
Her attacker, meanwhile, picked up two friends and drove back to the scene of the crime. Earlier, he had told them that he was going to rob someone. Now he was gloating, ready to show off the body.

When he and his friends got back to the scene at 4:30 A.M., they saw police and ran—but one friend was caught.

The police deployed a helicopter, a K-9 crew, and every available cruiser. Six hours later, about the time Bridget's surgery ended, 14 armed swat team officers surrounded a house two blocks from police headquarters downtown.

The 18-year-old attacker ran out the back door and was arrested. Bridget's cell phone was in his pocket.

In his statement to police, he told them he thought she was dead. He led them to the gun, a stolen Ruger P95, which he had ditched in a flowerpot.

Police found Bridget's address book at her apartment. At 10:45 A.M., as I prepared to write my weekend columns at the Omaha World-Herald, I received a call from Sharon Brank, a Killeen detective—the call every parent dreads.

The detective spoke incongruous words that swirled in my mind: "Bridget" and "raped" and "shot." Adrenaline surged and my stomach knotted.

My God.

I asked, "Is she alive?"

Yes.

I reached my wife, who was away in Ohio, telling her this was the worst day of our lives, but that Bridget was still breathing and I was headed for Texas.

Shock sets in, thankfully, letting you function. On the flight, I thought a thousand somber thoughts—tender, bewildering, angry. Would Bridget survive? If so, in what condition? How bad were her wounds, physical and psychological? What kind of beast could do this to my child?

Bridget is the third of our four children. I looked out at the tops of clouds and saw her as a baby, a girl, a woman.

As a child, she read early and often, the start of a lifetime passion for reading. She sold Girl Scout cookies, displayed writing talent, excelled in school. As she grew, she loved to travel. In college, she and a friend backpacked Europe for a month. For spring breaks, she went on "service trips," working with the poor.

When she was small, we called her "Bridget the Midget," or just "Midge." At a college Halloween party, she dressed as "Miss Nebraska," wearing far too much makeup and an ear of corn for a corsage. Everyone says she is so funny.

But this day was so, so far from funny, so full of sorrow and woe.

At 2:45 P.M. I entered the hospital, and one of the surgeons, Dr. Clinton Beverly, briefed me on Bridget's injuries. She was in critical condition and now had a colostomy.

Rape-kit nurses stood by, waiting until I could see my daughter before they began their two-hour exam. I walked into the intensive-care room. Bridget had tubes in her nose, her mouth, and her arms.

I kissed her hand, her arm, her head, saying what words a brokenhearted father can muster. Her eyes looked lifeless and she was unable to speak, but she motioned that she wanted to write. I pulled out a reporter's notebook.

"Dad," she wrote, "I was thinking about you and Mom and my whole family when it was happening. I just wanted to see you again. … I didn't want to die."

Together, my daughter and I wept. She wrote and wrote, telling what happened. Her body was ravaged—that night a lung collapsed—but her mind was sharp.

Bridget, who had come to Killeen two years earlier, instructed me which friends to call. Soon her fellow teachers arrived, overflowing the waiting room.

Going public
Most news outlets don't report rape victims' names. It's not only to respect privacy, but also because police say reporting names would discourage victims from calling authorities. And because, regrettably, much of society still applies a stigma to those who have been raped.

My own newspaper at first reported Bridget's name and the fact that she was a gunshot victim, but not the rape. She wrote in the notebook: "It's okay if they say rape. Why is it more shameful to be a rape victim than a gunshot victim?"

Indeed. Five weeks later, when her attacker was indicted on several charges, including attempted murder and aggravated sexual assault, our paper decided to report the indictment.

In my column that day, we went public. I wrote, "Now you don't have to read between the lines and wonder: My daughter was raped."

Bridget isn't saying, and neither am I, that the names of all rape victims should be reported. And certainly not without their consent.

But the silence about rape, treating it as a dirty secret, may add to the feelings of victimization. Because rape is such a personal and despicable act, it is natural for victims and their families not to talk. But perhaps, in the long run, that works to the advantage of the attacker and to the detriment of the victim.

Rape is all around us. People we met in Texas told us painful and harrowing stories—a 9-year-old daughter, now 23, beaten nearly to death in an attempted rape; a wife, now in her 40s, abducted in her 20s, chained to a pig sty and raped; an airline supervisor's daughter, now 15, raped by a stranger when she was 12.

Since the attack on Bridget, many others have told our family they were raped—including longtime friends. We had no idea.

Living in the aftermath
From the start, Bridget refused to accept the notion that she was somehow lessened by her attacker. She received great support. Friends and family soon came from California, Missouri, Ohio, Nebraska and Florida. Her fellow teachers swarmed the hospital.

Frank James visited, along with his wife and children, saying he wouldn't have left Bridget's side that night even if her attacker had returned.

From her hospital bed, Bridget quietly said to his son and daughter: "Your dad is my hero. When that door opened, for the first time I thought I might make it. He was so brave."

Bridget gave a four-hour statement to detectives, and she picked her attacker out of a photo lineup.

	Bridget said she never felt abandoned by God—that he was there all along, holding her hand.

We were relieved that he was in custody, but Bridget still had to fight for survival. She suffered severe nausea, anxiety attacks and pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas. Friends or family stayed with her around the clock.

Twenty-two days after the attack, she was able to fly to our hometown of Cincinnati to recuperate amid a large extended family. In July more than 50 relatives celebrated her birthday with renewed appreciation for each of the candles on the cake.

Bridget stands almost 5-foot-10, and before the attack she weighed about 150. In August, her weight had dropped to 122, and she became thirsty all the time. Her blood sugar shot up. On top of everything else, she was diagnosed with Type I (juvenile) diabetes.

Two doctors said it was brought on by the stress of the attack. Now she pricks her finger several times daily and injects herself with insulin.

Her colostomy was removed, and she began healing physically. She has seen a psychologist weekly to deal with her emotional wounds and her post-traumatic stress.

On August 30, only ten weeks after her attack, her assailant pleaded guilty and stood in District Court in Bell County. DNA tests confirmed that he was my daughter's attacker.

He was sentenced to life and 40 years—and won't be eligible for parole until 2052.

Holy ground
Bridget has received regular counseling, and now so have her parents. She inspires us, her siblings, and others. People say she is so brave, so spiritual. She laughs and says she is "a normal gal, not holier than thou," and yearns for that sometimes elusive "normalcy."

So do we. We're all getting there, we think. But what is normal?

My daughter was determined to return to teaching. Her substitute had the class send "Ms. Kelly" a letter, with questions suggested by the children: "When will we see you? What do you look like? How was your summer?"

As Bridget read the last question, she managed a smile. "I've had better."

Seven weeks into the term, she returned to her school. In the hallways, fellow teachers embraced her.

Her return to teaching was a big part of regaining control of her life and a semblance of normalcy. She says she's not the same as before, and doesn't really want to be.

"What good would all of this fighting have been?" she said, adding that she hopes she is stronger, more compassionate, and more useful to society.

"I want to be a voice for rape survivors," she has told others. "I want to encourage discussion and destroy the secrecy and silence that shrouds this crime."

Recently, she and a friend made an unannounced visit to the field where she was attacked—her first since that awful June night.

They drove past Frank James's house and parked. The field looked different. Construction equipment had graded the previously rough terrain, preparing it for a new subdivision.

My daughter's blood is out there, unseen. Is this accursed ground, where a violent atrocity occurred? Or hallowed ground, where God lifted her up?

Soon families will live there, and children will play and grow.

Bridget returned to this site to conquer any lingering fear, to see for herself that there was nothing there to be afraid of.

She stood and wept quietly.

On a website her brother set up, Bridget wrote that faith, family, and friends had carried her through the trauma. "I know I will always carry with me physical scars that will serve as reminders of what happened to me that night," she said. "With time, I hope to see them as symbols of survival."

My daughter survived a terrifying abduction and rape. She could have died alone in the dark but said that she never felt abandoned by God—that he was there all along, holding her hand.

On the first day of summer, the longest for daylight but the darkest for our family, bullets pierced Bridget's body. But surely not her spirit.

Adapted from The Dallas Morning News (Nov. 24, 2002), © 2002 Michael Kelly. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
Click here for reprint information.

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