Editor's Note: Some details in this story are sensitive in nature and may be disturbing to readers. 

APPLETON, Wis. – The question is asked and her head bows. When Rachel Smith eventually looks up, her eyes stare at the world outside as the horror replays inside her head. The silence continues.

As her eyes remain locked on the beautiful fall day outside, they begin to moisten. This is not pleasant. But she wants to share her story, so she presses on.

“I woke up and he was laying there next to me,’’ she finally says of her ex-husband.

She said they had fought the night before. Her ex-husband was screaming at her. Their two children were present. Fists were put through walls.

“Then he rolls on top of me and says, ‘This is for me and not for you and you’re not going to like it,’’’ Smith said.

He held her down by her shoulders, she said.

“And he raped me,’’ Smith said.

It was 2014. She admits she was meek, easily manipulated and too scared to go to the police for she knew the retaliation could be even worse. She said she also couldn’t help but wonder if anyone would believe her, so she remained silent.

Today, 33-year old Rachel Smith is a police officer.

“He made me feel like anything I ever said to anybody was not going to be believed, that I was always a liar, he was always the victim and that no one was going to get what I was saying. So, that’s what really pushed me,’’ Smith said of deciding to pursue a career as a police officer.

And now, she’s trying to help those who, like her, couldn’t help themselves.

“I’m not going to believe everybody. I know that,’’ she said of domestic violence cases she will encounter in her job at the Sheboygan Police Department. “But maybe I can be the person that helps them through it; maybe to not always believe them, but help them through the situation because I’ve been there.

“It’s not just, ‘I understand you’re going through something difficult.’ I can actually say to someone, ‘I understand what you’ve been through,’ and that really hits home differently for people.," said said.

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She had seen the warning signs. Friends told her to walk away. She had searched his name on CCAP, because with a child from a previous relationship, she wanted to make sure no one of questionable character would be around her daughter.

“His record was not great,’’ Smith said.

But the evidence before her eyes was ignored. They had met online. And she was in love.

“I thought that I knew better,’’ she said. “It’s easy to gloss over things and be like, ‘They’re never going to do that to me. They love me. They’re not going to do that to me. They say, 'It was just a bad situation.' They’re not really like that.’

“But they are.”

Troubling incidents, and verbal abuse, quickly began to pile up, she said.

She said she went to her parents’ home in Kaukauna. She had left her home in Greenwood without cleaning it because she opted instead to read a book, one of her favorite pastimes. 

“He actually took a pile of my books and he burned them, and he sent me a picture of my books burning,’’ she said. “And he said, ‘That’s what you get for not doing what I told you to do.’’’

Another time, she said they were fighting in the kitchen. He picked her up and she said she was sure he was about to throw her across the room, so she screamed in his ear. He dropped her and then, went outside and began smashing wooden chairs. One after another.

Things would get better, and then they would get worse; and the rollercoaster never ended, she explained. She was pregnant with their first child when she decided she’d had enough. She said she told her parents she was coming home. But they were not happy.

“My parents are very religious,’’ she said, “especially my mom. She kept telling me, ‘God doesn’t believe in divorce.’ And that is really more of the reason why I stayed. It made it harder to leave.

“She didn’t understand how hard it was at that point, but things hadn’t gotten worse at the point. Things would get worse a year or so later.”

One day, she said her ex-husband received a letter from the bank. He had his own business, but did not purchase health insurance for his family after their daughter was born. Instead, he bought 200 acres of land so he could go hunting, she said. But the letter from the bank said he was missing payments, again, and repercussions were forthcoming.

“He’s like, ‘I’m just going to the garage and shoot myself in the head,’’’ she said. “And he literally took off running, and I took off running after him. And we get outside to the garage, and he’s got the gun in his hand. It was like a hunting shotgun, and he’s just yelling about this and I’m like, ‘No, if you want financial issues to go away, shoot me instead. I have life insurance, you’d be set. You and the kids would be set. Shoot me instead.’ He had me so beaten down and warped that I was willing to be like, ‘No, just do it to me instead.’

“That hit me really hard. So that was kind of a big wake-up call for me after that happened because I was like, ‘I just told him to shoot me.’ I have children. … I just told my husband to shoot me dead because he’s having a bad day. And he’d rather shoot himself in the head. What the hell kind of situation have a got myself in to?’’’

He never aimed the gun at Smith, but she said she knew it had reached the point where tragedy was waiting around the corner if she did not act.

And then, she said she was raped, the morning after another fight over the operation of their outdoor wood furnace.

This time, she knew she had to go home. She was pregnant again, and she told her husband her mother was coming over to help in preparations for the new baby. But she was really there to assist her daughter to begin packing things up. When he went on the road again for work, her dad and brother came and helped move all her possessions back to Kaukauna.

She said stayed one more night, then got up the next morning, went to the courthouse, filed papers for a divorce and then drove to Kaukauna.

But the end of their roughly two-and-one-half year marriage didn’t end the nightmare.

She said he continued to harass her, threaten her, demand he be able to have the kids on unscheduled weekends, threaten to come and take the kids out of school and daycare, he showed up at her parents’ house – in violation of the terms of the divorce settlement – and had to be removed by local police.

“I just got really, really tired of continuously being his victim, in one way or the other,’’ she said.

So she asked a former boyfriend, who was a police officer, about filing a domestic-violence report. He said it was still within the statute of limitations.

“I called the Greenwood Police Department and said I want to file a domestic violence report and they’re like, ‘OK,’’’ she said. “They took my statement and then I got a call back a little while later and they said, ‘We think you need to fill out a sex-assault packet.’ And everything kind of went from there.”

Her ex-husband was arrested and charged with second- and third-degree sexual assault. He was convicted on third-degree sexual assault and sentenced to two-and-one-half years at Redgranite Correctional, according to CCAP. He is now out on parole.

“I was a little disappointed, because I couldn’t understand how other people couldn’t see through his b******, essentially,’’ she said of the verdict. “But he’s very good at manipulating people and making people feel sorry for him. So, I was just glad that he got something out of it -- some kind of reprimand for him.

“Was it long enough? Absolutely not. But it was something, and he has to register as a sex offender until 2039. So there were consequences. And sometimes for people it doesn’t seem like it’s enough; it’s something. So, I’m just glad there was something there.’’

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She said she was happy, but not content. As Rachel Smith sat at her desk at Capitol Credit Union, working as a mortgage processing specialist, she was making enough money to pay her bills, could afford daycare and was surrounded by supportive colleagues and bosses.

“I thought, ‘You know what? I’m not accomplishing anything here. I’m just existing,’’’ she said. “So I decided I was going to go back to school, because I know there are other women out there who have similar, and much worse, situations than I was in that don’t go to the cops because they’re scared. They’re scared because their abusers are going to lash out at them, and they’re scared that the cops are not going to take them seriously. And I thought, ‘You know what? I want to be that officer that takes somebody seriously.’’’

She quit her job and enrolled at Fox Valley Technical College to pursue an associate’s degree in criminal justice. Her parents thought she’d lost her mind.

“I told them, ‘Yup, I figured it out,’’’ she said.

She completed the two-year program in one-and-one-half years and graduated with honors, and then, it was on to FVTC’s Law Enforcement Academy. She completed that by June but, in many respects, still didn’t feel she was quite ready.

She took additional firearms courses at FVTC, did extra medical training, she saw a therapist, she enrolled in a martial-arts school, run by a former Chicago policeman -- and learned Krav Maga. She also learned how to deal with trigger words and, especially, her trigger when someone grabbed her shoulders.

Rachel Smith and other law enforcement recruits give back while learning about the community. (Courtesy: FVTC)

“I trained myself to have that hard exterior to be able to handle that stuff,’’ she said. “Because I know there are situations I’m going to be in where people are going to grab me and touch me and I don’t want them to touch me, but I’m not going to have a choice. It’s going to happen. And I knew I had to be prepared for it. And I don’t think I would able to be an officer if I hadn’t gone through that step of making sure I could handle those physical aspects and help prepare me mentally.

“I also saw a therapist for a couple of years, like right after I left my husband … So that helped me make sure that mentally I was in the right spot, wasn’t like drowning in what had happened to me.’’

She said goodbye to alcohol and quit smoking.

She would be a victim no more.

After a six-month stint working at Oshkosh Correctional Institution, she was hired by the Sheboygan Police Department.

“Rachel is really a positive and resilient young lady,’’ said Sgt. Matthew Walsh, Smith’s supervisor. “And that is a really big asset to the citizens of Sheboygan and here inside of our building. To spread positivity among coworkers is a huge thing in this day and age. And then, as far as her ability to relate to victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, it’s just a huge thing.”

He then pulls up some national statistics that show one in five women are victims of sexual assault at some point in their life, compared to just one in 71 men.

“So, I guess, just to draw upon what I said earlier, how hard it might be for a woman to walk in and talk to a man, and to have that resource, not only to have a woman available, but also a woman whose been through that herself. It’s a huge asset for us.

“She’s still very new, and from what I’ve seen and from what I’ve read, she’s performing above and beyond someone who is in her position. She’s doing better than what she should, so it’s pretty impressive. We threw her to the wolves, literally, and she’s already handled a couple of serious domestics. She’s handled at least one serious sexual assault already that I know of, and she’s doing a good job at it.’’

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Rachel Smith is doing well today. She loves her job, loves the daily challenges it brings, loves her ability to help people in need.

She has also met a man she plans to get engaged to.

Once she is finished with her 18-month probation, she wants to become a part of the Domestic Abuse Response Team (DART) in Sheboygan. She would also like to start a program where she connects with high school students that talks about sexual assault, red flags and healthy relationships and how to maintain them.

Courtesy: Mike Woods

“I actually have starting points in sight, and it’s really exciting,’’ she said. “I want to be able to share my story and have it be a part of that because people are sometimes, ‘Adults, they don’t know what they’re talking about.’ But if you can tell a teenager I’ve been through this. This is what my experience was like. I don’t want this for you. I don’t want this for your friends. I don’t want it for your family members, and this is how you can help yourself and help other people. That would just be awesome if I could go beyond my normal duties and do that.”

Yet for all she has progressed, her past remains.

“I do get stressed out about him. Fear is still a reality when it comes to him,’’ said Smith of her ex-husband, even though he is not allowed to have any contact with her or her children. “But it’s a lot better than it used to be, a lot better.

“If he were to try to mess with me now, he would not get the same person he dealt with years ago. I am confident. I know that I would be able to deal with him now. If he were to try and put his hands on me, or force himself on me, it would never happen now because I would be able to protect myself. I would be able to protect anybody else there. I am not the same person.’’

Story idea? You can reach Mike Woods at 920-246-6321 or at: Michael.t.woods1@charter.com