After many years of silence, the sixteen year old girl from Madisonville, Louisiana, Debbie Morris , has written a detailed account of what happened on the fateful evening when she and her boyfriend were parked outside of town in his car. She describes how she was raped and kidnapped by two men, how she survived her ordeal, and testified at their trial. As years passed, she got married and thought everything was behind her. The publication of Sr. Prejean's book and the award winning movie, stirred up many old feelings and made her the focus of national attention. Now, in her own book, Forgiving The Dead Man Walking , Debbie Morris lets us look inside the mind of an amazing survivor.
Many survivors talk to themselves during crises.
Debbie Morris has lets us hear the self-talk she used to cope and sustain herself during many hours of being repeatedly raped and threatened with death by the two men. They had just finished raping and stabbing to death another teenage girl and told Debbie the gruesome details. Debbie gives a fascinating account of strategies she used to try to survive after the men kidnapped her and left her boy friend behind. She describes her attitude toward the two rapists, and how she talked back and refused to be intimidated by Robert Willie. She says, for example, that after a long night of being raped and threatened by the two men, they put her between them in the front seat of her boy friend's car and drove down the interstate highway playing the radio full blast.