Monique Faison Ross - Playing Dead: A Memoir of Terror and Survival

PLAYING DEAD published by:

WILDBLUE PRESS

P.O. Box 102440

Denver, Colorado 80250

Publisher Disclaimer: All opinions, statements of fact or fiction, description, dialogue, and citations found in this book were provided by the author and are solely those of the author. The publisher makes no claim as to their veracity or accuracy and assumes no liability for the content.

Author Disclaimer: The author has made best efforts to maintain accuracy based on her memory, interviews with witnesses, police reports, medical records, and myriad saved physical documents. Painstaking attention was given to reconstructing the events and conversations described herein. Any substantiated errors, oversights, or omissions are purely unintentional and will be corrected in future editions of this work. A few names, as indicated in the Epilogue, have been respectfully changed to protect the privacy of the individuals.

Copyright 2019 by Monique Faison Ross

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

WILDBLUE PRESS is registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Offices.

ISBN 978-1-948239-33-2 Trade paperback

ISBN 978-1-948239-32-5 eBook

Interior Formatting/Book Cover Design by Elijah Toten

Author Photo by TimeFrozen Photography

Readers Favorite:

2020, Gold, Non-Fiction True Crime

Independent Author Network, Book of the Year Contest 2020:

Finalist in Non-Fiction Memoir

Won Outstanding Non-Fiction, Social Issues

Kindle Book Review:

2020, Non-Fiction, Finalist

Dedication

To my four incredible pumpkins: Ashley, Alese, Nicholas, and Lillian.

You are the lights of my life. We have been through the unthinkable and have a true understanding of what it means to say, tomorrow is not guaranteed.

I know it was not easy for you to give your permission for me to tell our story, but you did it anyway. I am forever grateful.

As we continue through life, at times, on shaky and unknown ground, were always stronger, together.

I love you always.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank

Mom, for being my role model and showing me the true definition of unconditional love.

Leah, for your commitment and devotedness to the kids and me and for your daily hilarity.

Gary M. Krebs, for your patience, organized mind, and for immediately believing me and my story.

Steve Jackson and Michael Cordova, for acquiring the title at WildBlue Press.

Adam Buongiovanni and Ashley Butler, thank you for your tremendous contributions in the areas of social media expertise and production management.

Thomas Panholzer, thank you for your attention to detail and patience as my editor.

Amy Ehrlich Charney, Ph.D., for your skilled ability to cap the paranoid tornado in my mind.

Rabbi David Small, Leslie and Rabbi Yitzchok Adler, and Liora and Rabbi Avraham Kelman, for years of warm personal and familial guidance.

Patty Kells-Murphy, for your talented web mastery and tremendous patience.

Rae Tattenbaum, for having the loudest voice in urging me to share this story with others.

Attorney (now known as The Honorable) Daniel Wilensky, for doing all that you could for my children and me and, in the end, never sending me a single bill for your countless hours of legal representation.

Attorney O. David Barksdale, for being a man of your word and obtaining justice.

Alina Bricklin-Goldstein, Marlene Geary, Lisa Lenkiewicz, Scott Selig, and Carolyn Topol, for reading the earliest manuscript and draft and providing necessary, if challenging, feedback.

Michael Neff and Marcelle Soviero, for providing professional guidance and encouragement.

The Jacksonville Police Department, for your professionalism and skilled police work.

Michael J. London, for enthusiastically getting behind this story to help market it and for encouraging me to discuss the lifelong scars that trauma leaves behind.

The Jacksonville Jewish Community, for the tremendous resources you provided to my family and me the instant we needed them.

Jessica Rubin and Gary Schulman, for your friendship and for connecting Gary and me.

Authors Note

The events recounted in this book are true. My immediate family members have been identified by their real names, and I owe them all a major debt of gratitude for their courage, support, and willingness to appear in the pages that follow.

Some names have been changed out of respect for the privacy of the individuals. A full listing of these may be found in the Epilogue of this book.

As you read my story, please keep in mind that I suffered life-threatening head injuries as a result of the attacks against me. Even under the best of circumstances a persons memory and/or perspective can become fuzzy over the years. I have tried my best to ensure accuracy and logic throughout. Even so, reconstructing the exact sequence of events and precise dialogue that occurred many years ago was quite the challenge and painful, to say the least. To this day, I remain haunted by what happened to me.

Thankfully, I retained physical copies of everything . In reconstructing the chain of events related to my case, I was able to refer to numerous police reports, eyewitness testimony, hospital records, photographs, and piles of other documentation. To fill in a few minor memory gaps, I conferred with several people directly involved in the story.

It is my sincere hope that my cautionary tale will serve as a wake-up call. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the world in the years since my story took place. Despite increased awareness and organizational efforts (i.e., domestic violence educational programs and agencies, the #MeTooMovement), statistics reveal that the epidemic of abuse continues:

Nearly twenty people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than ten million women and men.

One in four women and one in nine men have been victims of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetimes.

If you or someone you know is suffering from abuse, my heart goes out to you and your family. Be assured that you are never alone . There are always people out there who care and will rally to your side. Its never too early to seek counsel and assistance (though, unfortunately, sometimes it can be too late). If you or anyone you know is being threatened in any way, I encourage you to reach out to every resource at your disposal: legal, physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual. Do not hesitate to tap into community and political resources for assistance and support, such as the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence cited in Appendix A or your local organizations.