Stacey Dash Shot at the Man that Raped Her

In a memoir that she is set to release next week, actress Stacey Dash opens up on a whole host of personal struggles that she reveals have informed her social and political views. Perhaps the most traumatic of the experiences, which include her fight with addiction and a near abortion, is her telling of the abuse she once suffered as a survivor of domestic abuse and rape.  One particular memory Dash shares in "There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative", she revealed on Wednesday [June 1], is of the day she chose to fight back, firing a gun at an ex-lover to stave off what would be his final attack. 

As is typical of victims in an abusive relationship, the 49-year-old Bronx native went into depth about the kind of emotional attachment she kept to the troubled relationship, despite being on the receiving end of recurring violence.  She was in her mid-twenties and had yet to achieve success in film when she initially broke off their relationship, but largely prevented from moving on with him continuing to stalk her, even after she had gotten into another relationship, from which she would bare her first child. She recollected the day he appeared at her door 25 years ago and forced himself upon her.  

“He had a gun to my head and I thought, ‘My son is in that crib right there,’ ” said Dash. “[I thought], ‘No you are not going to do this. My son’s life was more important to me than my own.’”

Dash would move out of the the apartment and in with a friend.  But relocating proved to be insufficient as he would find her again. It took one fateful night in which he muscled his way into her new residence and began assaulting her, for her to snap.  She scurried up a flight of stairs to her bedroom where she would retrieve a .22 revolver with what she admits was an intention to kill.