Reflections Of Hope | Photography Project | Tiffany Warren’s Story

I am wiping my eyes right now of broken hearted tears after reading Tiffany’s story. It is very tragic. It is very heart-breaking. But it is also very uplifting with how she has came out of such a cruel situation a much stronger and braver person whose faith is powerful. Like, wow. Tiffany, you’re amazing and I love you!

With the Reflections of Hope Project, I do not have to share your images or your story only unless you feel comfortable with sharing. Sometimes by sharing your story, it can reach out and help others. I believe this is one of the reason that God placed it onto my heart to create this project this year. I’ve not shared all of my projects which is totally okay. I only share those who give me consent to. Tiffany was unbelievably brave and wanted to share her story.

I must warn everyone who is about to read this story, that this is graphic. This might be a trigger story for those who might have experienced rape or something similar. It is not for the faint heart, I will say that. So if you don’t feel like you can handle this story, you may skip to the bottom and look through Tiffany’s beautiful images.

Tiffany goes into great detail with her story and there is such bravery in this! But those details are very crucial to her overall story so there is a reason they are there. We both hope that in sharing this project, that Tiffany’s story will help other women. Women who have been through something similar. Women who deserve justice. Women who deserve a friend who understands. If you are one of these women, you are more than welcome to reach out to either Tiffany or me. We are here for you <3

Below is Tiffany’s story.

“This is my story. I would tell it a hundred times if it somehow helped someone else.

On Thursday November 29th, 2018 at around 8PM, I thought I was about to die. Murdered to be specific. I had been continuously choked for what seemed like hours but what had to have been thirty minutes. There are many periods during this time where I had to have blacked out because usually, I just remember bits and pieces. I remember thumbs being driven into my throat so forcefully, I thought my windpipe was going to rupture.

I remember talking to God and begging him to let me live because if this sick man killed me, I knew in my bones he was going to leave me for dead in the woods we were located next to. I was so worried for my mother. She’s a widow and I’m her only child and growing up and even still to this day I have her words burned into my brain: “What would I do without you?” How was she going to handle me going on a date and then never being seen alive again? I couldn’t let that happen to her.

I had been on a date. A coffee date with a man I’d met on Tinder. He was soft spoken, listened, he seemed kind and he was handsome. We never spoke of anything beyond the date. No sexual talk whatsoever. I honestly hate dating apps but I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. I was 23 at the time with no prospects of a boyfriend in sight. I’d just went through a 6 weektherapy program that got me out of a depression lifestyle that had lasted almost 9 years. Going on a date seemed promising. I was healthy but looking back now, I can see that my fresh mental state was vulnerable, easy trusting and almost reverted back to a time before I had gone through those long years of deep depression.

We got our coffees and parked outside of a gas station just to talk. We talked for hours. I laughed and had a good time. I felt charmed. We kissed and before I go any farther, I must say this. I asked HIM if he wanted to have sex.

This is usually where I lose people. They hear that I originally asked, and their minds are made up about the situation and what followed afterwards but hopefully, you can stick with me until the end.

He tells me we can’t go to his house. He lived with his parents, but he knew of a place we could go. I didn’t have phone service at the time. I had just started a new job and needed my first paycheck to reactivate my phone. I didn’t think anything about it at the time.

He drives us deep into an unfamiliar park(I was out of my county so everything was unfamiliar) and parks deep in the woods. I’ll spare the details and just say yes, we did sex in his car. Nothing felt wrong yet.

I was talking and starting to put my clothes back on when he grabbed me by my throat. He asked me “If I wanted to satisfy him.” I was confused and then he said “You’re submissive, right? So satisfy me.” He then began to rape me orally. This is where the thirty minutes of not being able to breathe began. He’d hold my nose, shake me using his bare hands around my throat, he slammed my head into his back window repeatedly. I couldn’t get words out but when I did, I pleaded with him to stop. I told him I wasn’t having fun anymore. I even asked what a safe word was if that’s how he was going about it. He ignored my first to pleas but then said “With me, there is no safe word.” This torture had me throwing up and having to force it back or drown. He choked me and choked me until my limbs and body experienced an excruciating pain and then, numbness.

I felt my life draining out of me. I was so tired and felt so helpless. The backseat was small and kicking and shoving did nothing in the small confinements, plus the guy was strong. He told me he took pride in going to the gym several times a day.

I prayed with what coherent thought I had left. I prayed that I wouldn’t die. I prayed that my body wouldn’t just be discarded in the woods and I prayed for my mother. I prayed for strength to do whatever I had to do to survive this experience. I prayed for a working phone. I prayed for physical strength. So many prayers were sent straight to God.

Finally, he stopped choking me. I was in dire need of air, so I didn’t even care that he whipped me around by my hair alone to throw me around this tiny backseat like a ragdoll. I was choking and gagging, breath had never felt so good. I remember him kissing me roughly but at this point, I was in survival mode and was unable to care about much. I just surrendered. My attempts at struggle had been so futile, I hadn’t even caused a dent in his strength.

He raped me and then sodomized me. I screamed with pain and sobbed, tears flowing from me like crazy, but this did not disturb him. He was brutal and unrelenting and did not care to smack me(My face or other various places), choke me some more or yank my hair so harshly, he must’ve pulled some from the roots.

When he was finished, he was finished and returned to the person I believed him to be during the duration of the date. I did have to beg for my clothes back. He seemed to think it was a fun game to hold on to them and ask me to beg for each piece back one, by one.

I was silent as he drove me back to my car. I don’t remember the drive. I just knew I was bleeding and wanted to get home. I remember he talked. Conversation as if nothing had happened but I don’t remember what it was about. I could only think of getting to my car and getting home.

Finally, we made it to my car. He smacked my bottom and said “I can’t wait to see what that looks like tomorrow,” and sent me on my way. He truly thought he had done nothing wrong. He expected that I would keep in touch with him.

On my way home, I was a ghost. I don’t remember the drive at all. I must’ve been on autopilot. When I did arrive home, I just felt so wrong. It had not sunk in yet that I had just been brutally raped. In my head, I had messed up by having sex with the wrong person. My mom greeted me. She asked how the date went. I replied “Fine,” and went to my room where I then stared at the wall for about 2 hours. I remember this because when I looked at my phone and noticed 2 hours had went by, I began to know something was wrong. Terribly wrong. I then blocked this man from everything. All social media and his phone number. I then texted a few friends I trusted and said, “I think I’ve been sexually assaulted.”

I didn’t have a confirmation from anyone. It was hard to dive into the details then. So, I called the National Sexual Assault hotline and spoke to a woman who was kind and compassionate and told me that I had indeed been assaulted and needed to get to a hospital ASAP.

I did. I asked my mom to drive me and told her as much as I could. She went into an absolute panic and was ready to go in minutes. She tried talking on the way there, but I just couldn’t. I felt like a wide-eyed deer in the headlights and I had no words. I was trying to figure out what had happened.

When we arrived at the hospital, I was taken into the ER immediately. A doctor examined me and just began apologizing. Telling me he was sorry over and over again. At the end of the night, he told me he hadn’t seen such severe sexual assault injuries on a person in his career.

I spoke to a sheriff and he asked me if I wanted to press charges. That was my first burst of clarity that night. I asked him to explain what would happen if I did and when he told me he could serve jail time if convicted of a crime, I didn’t hesitate. I said I wanted to press charges. I wanted to try and spare other women.

After the interview with the sheriff, I underwent a rape test kit. It was very painful, I cried again from the pain alone and it was during this time that they stopped the bleeding I had going on. The whole ordeal was humiliating. I was naked in a room without my mom for almost 3 hours. They took all of my clothes except for my shoes and socks for evidence. I’ve still never gotten them back.

One of the nurses working on the rape test kit was cold to me and often shook her head. She said things like “You shouldn’t have went out with someone you didn’t know,” and “I can’t choose a side in this in case it goes to court.” She didn’t care when I was in pain but the other nurse was young, probably my age. She was very kind and apologized for the other nursesbehavior.

At about 5am, I walked out of the hospital in a paper like material pair of pants and a random t-shirt they had found for me. No underwear. I had contacted my new boss to let her know what had happened. She is a wonderful, beautiful soul and she told me to take all of the time off that I needed. I wanted to explain to her in person what had happened though so I went in later on that day on the 30th. She told me I didn’t have to tell herbut she was my boss and I was new. I thought she deserved to know. She cried along with me as I told her. I told her I didn’t need long. Just three days and I would come back to work. Several times she asked me if I was sure that was long enough, and I assured her that it was.

It was. I took those three days to sleep and recover mentally and physically. I can’t remember anything else that I did. I just know that I didn’t leave my bed unless I absolutely had to.

After those three days, I was determined to fight then for my justice. I went back to work, continued with school and carried on with my life. It didn’t enter my thoughts regularly. I just wanted to keep going.

A detective soon got in touch with me and I was able to verify my assailant without any help from his end. I let him record an interview and answered all of his questions. He was nice and dedicated to his job and left me his number if I had anything else to report or if the man tried to get in touch with me.

Fast forward to March of 2019. I hadn’t heard anything about the case. I didn’t know if my rapist knew I had reported him, which unnerved me but finally, a sexual assault advocate got in touch with me and told me my case was being presented to a grand jury to see if they thought a crime had been committed. She told me what to expect and told me I wouldn’t be there for the trial.

Two weeks go by and she calls me back. Turns out, the jury decided to not reach a decision until they’d spoken to both me and my rapist and we were both to come in to answer questions and present our sides of the story in April.

I felt very strong that day in April. I told my truth, answered all questions, even the hard ones, and only cried when I mentioned how scared I had been for my mother. My rapist and I were kept apart so I didn’t have to see him. We testified separately. My interview with the jury lasted about 30 minutes. His lasted for about 2 hours. I thought things were in my favor.

When we were ready to leave, they asked him to leave first. I caught a glimpse of him out the courthouse window and saw a young woman hug him, kiss him and get into his car with him. To this day, thinking about that chills me.

A week later when I was at work, I received the results back from my sexual assault advocate. The jury decided that a crime had not been committed. I broke that day. I nearly collapsed at work into a fit of sobs. During the duration of the case, I had been keeping everyone up to date on my journey and pushing women to come forward. I had received a lot of messages from women who had been in similar situations and I talked them through it. I felt like not only had I been let down but so had those women who had contacted me as well.

This past year, I lost friends over this. I was told that by posting online, I was seeking attention and didn’t truly care about justice or being a good person as long as I got a reaction out of the public. I was told that by not sharing all of the gruesome details, I wasn’t telling the public everything and making the situation look positively in my favor. The worst thing that I was told was that my pain was not the same as the pain of ‘actual victims’ and that by trying to gain everyone’s sympathy, I was basically just playing a selfish role. This was all said by one person. A person I’d known for years. A person I really trusted and loved like a sibling. It hurt me to my core but in the end, I had to let them go.

If they see this story, I’m sure they’ll roll their eyes and try to message me about how this is another attempt at attention.

It’s not. It is a testimony that coming forward rather than bottling your pain up will give you your life back. That sharing your story, will inspire others to share theirs. You can go through absolute hell and come out the other side perhaps not unscathed but stronger than you were before you ever went in. Just because justice wasn’t served for me doesn’t mean it can’t be served for others. When we use our voice, all of us, we cannot be ignored. We will be heard, and this is how we can make a difference. I do hold regrets for the choices I made but ultimately, I have become a whole other person. Stronger, more thoughtful and grateful. I gained a backbone and I learned how to defend myself so no one can ever hurt me like that again. I am a strong mental health and sexual assault advocate and I encourage women and men alike to come to me so that I can bare their pain and struggles with them. I won’t ever turn anyone away. I can be a busy woman with work, school and theater but this is something I am passionate about; helping others to see how much strength they have to gain. Thank you for reading about my story!”

”I chose this project because, as many women, can relate from time to time, I’d become very self conscious. Mostly with my body. It was getting harder and harder to look in the mirror without feeling disappointed but I didn’t deserve to feel that way. I knew I needed a big push to work on remembering to be kind to myself everyday. Plus, I’m a survivor! I have much to be thankful for and gracious for. Everyone is beautiful in their own way, I truly believe that and I wanted to capture what made me feel beautiful. India did a wonderful job and had me completely in my element.

A year had gone by and I needed to celebrate. I needed to capture the woman I am today in pictures. Not a wilted flower but a strong willed, blooming one and I know that once I can love myself completely and whole heartedly, even the way I look, nothing can stop me. This photoshoot was a huge step in that direction!”