Diamond in the Dark

A blond, green-eyed child of a Marine sent home from WWII suffering from acute brain trauma, Phyllis Brown Hain frankly chronicles her struggle to survive devastating domestic violence and spousal abuse by creating two personas―one for the darkness of home, the other for the brilliance of life. This fascinating journey of an abuse survivor and national advocate will not just steal readers’ hearts but leave an indelible, searing mark on readers’ minds . . . and on society at large.

Phyllis Hain was born in Alabama and grew up in the Gulf Coast of Florida. During twenty-one years of work as a U.S. Navy Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (SARC) and a Family Advocacy Educator, she taught well over 20,000 students. Working alongside military and community law enforcement, she helped educate first-responders on how to properly document incidents and how to provide sensitive, effective treatment and support to victims of sexual assault. She responded to hundreds, if not thousands, of victims in crisis―all during a career in which she received hundreds of hours of training in the field of domestic violence, child abuse, child sexual abuse, sexual assault and victim intervention, and the correlation between animal abuse and domestic violence.

Highlights of Phyllis’s DoD service include: working on the National Joint Task Force in Washington DC, which studied the problem of sexual assault in the military; working with the National Organization for Victims’ Assistance; serving as Vice President of Northwest Florida’s Victim Coalition; and being selected NASP’s Civilian of the Year for her contribution to the Sexual Assault Victim Intervention Program.

Inspired by interviewing, and responding to, many courageous victims and survivors of abuses, she decided to undergo what turned out to be the multi-year ordeal of writing a memoir about her own tumultuous life as the victim of child abuse, child sexual abuse, sexual assault, and spousal abuse.

She and Captain Robert Hain, Medical Corps, (USN Ret). have been happily married for more than twenty years. The two are now enjoying retirement together in the very place she spent her formative years―Pensacola, Florida.