Twenty-six years ago, there were a number of things Marilyn Stevens found unusual about Dominic Carter, an 18-year-old fresh off the bus to attend a rural State University of New York college-prep summer program for promising students from disadvantaged backgrounds. For one, he looked entirely out of place in upstate apple country—understandable given his childhood in a run-down Bronx tenement overlooking a gritty expressway, and the years he was abused at the hands of his own mother.
For another, he had an unnerving clarity about where he was going in life, and with whom. He was on campus for only a few days before approaching Marilyn, the 25-year-old program coordinator, to improbably declare: “You’re going to be my wife and the mother of my children.”
Dominic Carter gives his testimony at Churches around the Country.