Darnetta Harris was 12 the first time someone molested her. That time, she says, it was a drunken family friend. The next time, it would be a relative.
She lost her innocence, she says, against a grim backdrop of violence and substance abuse in a southeast Fort Wayne apartment complex. She heard gunfire at least once a week, and she and her siblings would sometimes crawl on the floor - just to be safe. She also watched pushers deal drugs on the sidewalks outside her home in the plain light of day.
She was afraid to tell anyone about the men who forced themselves upon her - afraid that her family would be mad at her. She figured it was her fault and became convinced that her purpose in life was "for guys to use me."
"I felt like I couldn't depend on anybody," she says. "I was hurtin'. I was really hurtin'."
The only flicker of hope came to her when she was 13. It was in the form of a Girl Scout leader who took an interest in her and became her confidant. Harris didn't tell the leader about all of the abuse, but told her enough to form a bond.
"She helped me to get self-confident," Harris says. "She didn't completely cure all of my issues, but she was like a friend I'd never had before. I think if I hadn't met her, my life would have gone in a totally different direction."
It took some time for the Scout leader's encouragement to take hold. Harris got pregnant out of wedlock at 16, suffered a miscarriage, and then got pregnant again at 18. But somewhere along the way, her encounter with the Girl Scout leader gave her the strength of character that ultimately led her back to the organization that once helped her.
At 21, she took at job with the Girls Scouts of Limberlost Council, a United Way agency partner. She is now married, the mother of five and a Girl Scout volunteer and executive administrator with a local mental health center.
She works with Girl Scout leaders in southeast Fort Wayne in some of the same neighborhoods where she grew up.
"I constantly go back to see if there is any way I can help those girls," says Harris, now 26. "Every time I drive past that apartment complex, I think: 'There's a girl just like me in one of those apartments.'"