“I didn’t have time to get scared after the initial shock,” recalls Megison in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, describing that moment when a process server handed her an envelope containing her attacker’s petition for custody. “I thought, ‘I’m going to fight like hell to keep him away from my girl. You can’t take my daughter.'”
Megison has been fighting for herself and for other women facing the possibility of co-parenting with their rapists ever since.
But Megison persuaded the Pinellas County, Florida, family court judge overseeing the case to review the police reports detailing his violent behavior, notes from a rape crisis center that she turned to, along with her medical records. Much to her relief, in 2012, the judge denied his petition and awarded her sole custody of the little girl.
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“As good as it felt to win, all I could think about is all the other women like me out there who are going through this,” says the 48-year-old mother of three, now living in Phoenix and working as a stockbroker. “I had a responsibility to help them.”
Cassidy Araiza
So Megison kept fighting.
Within months, the Florida State University College of Law graduate was using her legal training to help draft legislation that would deny parental rights to fathers without requiring a criminal conviction for rape.
“It felt amazing to know that I’ve had a chance to make something good out of what happened to me,” Megison tells PEOPLE. “It gives so many rape survivors their power back.”
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The successful passing of the Florida law inspired Megison to keep working to help women — and state legislatures — around the United States. Two years after her initial victory in Florida, the federal Rape Survivor Child Custody Act was passed in 2015.
Today, 32 other states, most recently Arizona in 2021, have begun using the “clear and convincing evidence” legal standard that helped Megison win her own custody case.
“I’ve accomplished some things,” says Megison, who has counseled hundreds of sexual assault victims over the years, “but there’s so much left to do.”
source: people.com
