Surviving the Unsurvivable

Editor’s Note: This piece contains graphic descriptions of abuse and homicide, specifically toward children, and may be triggering for some readers. Please read with caution.

Key Takeaways:

1. Recognizing Domestic Violence and Its Warning Signs – Megan Hiatt didn’t initially identify herself as a victim of domestic violence, which is a common experience for many survivors. Her story highlights how abuse can be emotional, psychological, and physical, often escalating over time. Strangulation, a tactic used by her abuser, is a significant red flag associated with a higher risk of homicide.  

2. The Complexity of Leaving an Abusive Partner – Hiatt’s journey demonstrates how difficult it is for survivors to leave, often taking multiple attempts due to manipulation, fear and dependency. Her abusive partner used control tactics, false promises and coercion to keep her in the cycle of abuse, a pattern that is common in domestic violence situations.  

3. Finding Meaning and Advocacy After Tragedy – Despite experiencing unimaginable loss and enduring years of healing, Hiatt has dedicated herself to preventing others from experiencing the same fate. Through therapy, a new life and a commitment to education and advocacy, she is working to raise awareness about domestic violence and support other survivors.

In a matter of a few minutes, everything that mattered to Megan Hiatt was gone—her twin baby girls. Her father. Her abusive boyfriend had murdered them all in front of her and shot Hiatt at least seven times. Doctors would later tell her she had been “riddled” with bullets. 

The abuser’s final act was to take his own life. How Hiatt was even still conscious was beyond her, but she felt a deep pull that maybe, just maybe, it was for a reason. As she lay on the floor bleeding, Hiatt told herself that she had a choice. 

“I could die or I could fight for my life. So, I decided to fight for my life with the promise that no one else would go through what I went through. I decided to fight for my life with that commitment to myself.”

Before that nightmarish day in 2015, Hiatt had tried to leave her boyfriend, Gawain Rushane Wilson, 28, twice, knowing the relationship wasn’t healthy but never identifying herself as a victim of domestic violence. Only 22 at the time, she says she was “young, naïve and uneducated,” not knowing that abuse could look more like a black eye or bruises. 

At least one in every three women in the U.S. has endured domestic violence to some extent—an abuser who feels entitled to having power and control over their partner. In Hiatt’s case, it started off as so many relationships with abusers do—covertly, behind closed doors, and without overt physical violence. 

“He threw things in anger, but he wasn’t kicking or stomping me. Later on, I would realize he was raping me often, but I thought I needed to be submissive, as a woman,” says Hiatt. 

Wilson also had a penchant for strangling her during intimacy—perhaps the most glaring red flag of an abuser who has the ability to murder their partner. It’s something Gabby Petito’s boyfriend liked to do, too. Strangulation, even when consensual (it wasn’t, in Hiatt’s case) is just as dangerous as an abuser who uses strangulation outside the bedroom. In a study of homicide victims killed by an intimate partner, it was found that 43 percent had experienced a non-fatal strangulation by their partner prior to their murder. In attempted homicides by an intimate partner, 45 percent of victims had been strangled before the attempted murder. 

Leaving Twice, Returning Twice with Hope

The first time Hiatt tried to leave was six months into the relationship. She was pregnant at the time. 

“We technically weren’t dating,” she says of Wilson. “He wouldn’t even call me his girlfriend. And then he went through my phone and found out I was talking to a friend who was a guy.”

Hiatt had disclosed to him what Wilson was doing to her. The friend told Hiatt he thought she was being abused. When Wilson saw that his abuse had been revealed to someone else, he became irate to the point that Hiatt feared for her safety. She locked herself in her bedroom until her dad came to get her.

“Eventually I went back,” says Hiatt. Most survivors of domestic violence do. This isn’t on them, though. Abusers are cunning, manipulative. They make sure the survivor is dependent on them for something—money, shelter, emotional support. They give survivors hope that things will change. They make promises they have no intention of keeping. They often enter into a never-ending cycle of abuse that starts with remorse and ends with yet another abusive incident. 

“Rush played the victim. Then he asked what my conditions were to come back,” says Hiatt. 

But this time, when she returned, his abuse started to affect more than just Hiatt. 

“The abuse was affecting the growth of our daughters.” Hiatt had found out she was carrying twin baby girls. “Their heart rates kept dropping and I ended up in the hospital at 30 weeks, then on bed rest.”

A study by the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology found that intimate partner violence during pregnancy is “significantly associated with” preterm birth (before 38 weeks) and low birth weight, finding that women who endured abuse while pregnant were almost twice as likely to deliver their babies preterm.

There was just one problem: Hiatt says Wilson didn’t allow her to be on bed rest. His control had reached a level where she put her own health aside and did as he asked. As a result, the babies came early, delivered June 8, 2015 via emergency C-section. Hiatt named them Reese and Rose. 

Not surprisingly, Wilson’s abuse of Hiatt continued. Luckily, Wilson left their babies alone, focusing his abuse only on Hiatt, who entered therapy to try and cope. She was sure she was suffering from PTSD. 

“My therapist told me, ‘Do not ever leave your girls alone with him,’” she remembers. It was a warning that scared her enough to convince her she had to try to leave again. 

The babies were three months old. Wilson was out of the house visiting his family, and Hiatt packed up the girls and herself and left. Her fight or flight kicked in, she said, even though she carried guilt at the same time. 

“I felt like an asshole and a piece of shit for leaving him without telling him,” she says. “But it was the safest thing I could do.” That thought gave Hiatt pause—why didn’t she feel safe breaking up with Wilson the way someone in a normal relationship would? 

“No one likes ending a relationship,” she says, “But to not feel safe? That should have been the biggest red flag.”

It lasted a month and a half. Hiatt went back to Wilson after he promised he would take a domestic violence class through the Navy and start individual therapy.

“The therapy was one session and the domestic violence course back then was only two hours.  It was the stupidest thing once I realized what it was,” Hiatt says.

The Ending She Never Saw Coming

Abusers do a lot of shocking and horrific things in the name of power and control. Each act of abuse they likely justify in their head as being entitled to doing. Their partner is their property, they think, a severely misguided conclusion with often very violent consequences. Wilson was no different. 

A week before Hiatt tried to leave him for the third time, he raped her. But he took a step farther. 

“He tried to call my dad so he could hear it,” says Hiatt. “I got the strength to throw the phone across the room, breaking it.”

Later, she reached her dad and told him what had happened. He broke down crying. He asked Hiatt to leave, if not for herself, for her daughters. Something clicked for Hiatt. She realized for the first time, she says, that Wilson was an abuser. And that he wasn’t going to stop. 

She chose a day when she knew Wilson would be working a 12-hour shift on base. Her dad and one of her girlfriends came to help her pack up and get out of the house. But something went wrong—a neighbor across the street, one of Wilson’s friends, called him and told him: She’s packing her stuff.

He immediately called Hiatt, his temper flaring. I’m going to fucking kill you, he told her over the phone. 

“I could hear someone in the background saying, ‘Hey Rush, calm down,’” says Hiatt. But instead, Wilson got in the car and sped home. 

“It took him less than 30 minutes to get to the house, and it was usually a 45-minute drive.”

When Wilson walked in the house, Hiatt knew something was different this time. She told her dad to call the police, but he hesitated, asking her if she really thought that was necessary. Hiatt talked herself out of her gut feelings. He wouldn’t hurt her or his babies, would he?

Wilson kept asking her if it was really over, meaning their relationship. Hiatt tried to calm him down by sharing the blame. “We’re so toxic for each other,” she said. 

Wilson, who was holding Reese while Hiatt was holding Rose, feeding her, asked her one more time. So, we’re over? Hiatt confirmed it was. And with that, Wilson threw Reese, just five months old, onto the couch. Hiatt was in disbelief. She immediately picked up the crying baby as Wilson walked to the front door, shut it, and then opened a nearby closet. When Hiatt looked over, he was holding an AR-15 rifle. 

I’m going to show you what over is, bitch, Hiatt remembers him saying. He told her he was going to kill her father and she would watch. 

Hiatt yelled for her dad to run. He made it to the front door and opened it before Wilson shot him. Her dad tried to get up, but Wilson kept shooting until Hiatt’s dad collapsed. He then turned the rifle toward Hiatt and shot her in the stomach once, then twice. 

“I can’t grasp what’s going on,” Hiatt remembers. That’s when the unthinkable happens. Wilson turned the rifle on his two daughters, killing them. He shot Hiatt again in the leg, shattering her bones.

“I fell on the ground with Rose still in my arms,” Hiatt says. She closed her eyes and pretended to be dead, knowing Wilson would shoot her again if he thought she wasn’t. He went outside and fired the gun again—she thought he'd shot her friend, but she’d find out later he didn’t. When he came back inside, Wilson shot one of his daughters’ lifeless bodies again before standing over Hiatt. That’s when Wilson took his own life. 

The room was eerily silent. Hiatt says she knew her girls were dead because there was no noise. That’s when Hiatt started screaming for help. She could hear the ambulances and fire trucks getting closer, but then they stopped. No one rushed, as first responders were unsure if the shooter was lying in wait for them.



“At this point, I’m like, OK, I’ve got to do something,” says Hiatt. She looked toward her dad lying motionless on the ground, but still able to speak.

“I’m not going to make it,” he told her, and then made a promise she’ll never forget. “I’m going to take care of them on the other side,” he said of her daughters.

She couldn’t walk or even crawl due to being shot so many times. As she picked up her leg to inch forward along the floor, the bones in her leg felt like shattering glass. She could only see out of one eye, a bullet having gone through her brow bone, nose and left eye. She used her arms to pull herself closer to the door. She doesn’t remember feeling any pain, with the rush of adrenaline coursing through her. She reached her father and laid her body on top of his, thinking she might be able to stop him from bleeding out.  

Finally, two officers approached the house, guns drawn. 

“As soon as they arrived, my dad took his last breath because he knew that I was safe,” Hiatt says. After they cleared the scene, paramedics rushed Hiatt into an ambulance with a police officer.

“At this point I’m very awake. I’m very aware of what’s going on. The cop came with me because they need all the information they can—they don’t know if I’m going to make it,” says Hiatt. 

She asked them not to call her mom yet, worried she would drive to her in a panic. Her parents were divorced and she was in a different city. Soon after, everything went hazy. It wasn’t until almost a week later that Hiatt woke up. Her first question was if she’d missed her daughters’ and her dad’s funerals. She was assured she didn’t.

“Women in my church worked around the clock making beautiful, handmade bonnets and little crocheted booties for the girls. The church was standing room only,” she says. 

Survivor’s Guilt

Hiatt knew that she had a momentous journey ahead of her, one that wouldn’t be easy at any point. Not only would she go on to have over 50 surgeries, 40 alone on her shattered leg, but the emotional toll would be just as arduous. 

“I had a lot of survivor’s guilt. I thought that if I was enjoying life, I would be enjoying life without them,” she says of her daughters and her dad. She moved to Texas in 2019 for a new start—Florida held too many memories, too many people who she says unintentionally reminded her of who she used to be. 

“I was consumed, engulfed, in grief. I took it out on my friends, who had always known me as a happy-go-lucky person,” she says. “When I moved, I found myself again.” She wasn’t the same Megan she’d been before, and that was inevitable. An experience like this would profoundly change anyone, and Hiatt began to accept that. 

“There’s been a lot of therapy and a lot of healing,” she says. 

It’s only recently, at 31, that Hiatt feels like she can talk about what happened and also begin to fulfill the promise she made to herself that no one else would go through what she did. 

“Honestly, I’m surprised that it’s only taken me nine years to get back on in my life,” she says. Around 2020, she wanted to go back to church, but she didn’t want to go by herself. That’s when she met Joe. 

“Our first date was at church, so it wasn’t really a date. I just sat next to him,” she says. From there, they began to get together and do things like play board games and order take-out. Joe knew something had happened to Hiatt, but he didn’t know what. 

“He told me later on that he knew he had to be patient and … he knew that I needed to feel safe to share that with him.” 

Eventually she did, and in 2021, the two were married. Hiatt thought she would never want to be a mom again, the pain of losing her daughters too deep. She used to avoid children’s birthday parties—they were too painful to attend. 

But then, something changed. She attended her niece’s first birthday, the first child’s birthday she’d been to since her daughters died. 

“It was the most chill experience. I went through this birthday, and I never once thought about my girls as in the loss of them or the life they didn’t live. I was just enjoying this birthday party with my family, and this beautiful one-year-old girl,” remembers Hiatt. 

She says Reese’s first stuffed animal was an owl and Rose’s was a fox. The animals matched their personalities. “Rose was very feisty and sassy and Reese was very observant and quiet. She’d sit there and watch everything,” says Hiatt. 

At her niece’s birthday, they began to open gifts. Hiatt’s mom had gotten the girls outfits with foxes on them while her aunt bought them outfits with owls on them, “so they’d always have their guardian angels watching her,” says Hiatt. 

That was the moment, she says, when she knew she was ready to be a mom again. 

“I think that was my calling in life. I loved being a mom. It was the greatest gift I’d ever been given. I can now enjoy being around children. That has required healing.”

But after what her body has been through, doctors have told Hiatt getting pregnant won’t come without risks. Because of her abdominal trauma, Hiatt’s next pregnancy will likely be her last pregnancy. She needs more tests to tell if she can even carry a baby to term, if she’ll need IVF or if adoption is a better route. She and Joe started a GoFundMe to help with the expenses. Any money leftover, she says, will be donated to a domestic violence nonprofit. At the time of publication, they’ve raised over $2,800. 

“We are open to any way that we can have a child,” she says. The couple has even considered fostering children who lost their main caregiver to domestic violence. 

“This needs to be worth something,” she says. She’s referring to it all—the abuse, the losses, the healing. In a way, it’s almost like Hiatt wants to go back and warn her younger self. But since that’s not a possibility, she’s opting for the next best thing.

“I know there are young, naïve girls who don't know they’re being abused,” says Hiatt. “I need to warn them.”