She was sexually abused by her step-grandfather until she was 12 years old. She was raped in the desert as a 15-year-old. And when she was a 16-year-old witness in a trial against a white supremacist who killed two of her friends, she was sexually abused by a federal prosecutor.
Johnson’s father made her feel that she was less-than. Even though she had high self-esteem, he convinced her that nobody else could see what she saw in herself, she said.
“There are so many ways you can be harmed, and if you don’t understand the language of victims … abuse is tricky because it can be subtle,” Mitchell said.