Crissey’s Story

Abused Since Infancy

When nineteen year-old Crissey came into the medical office with an injury that needed surgery, Dr. Eddie Cooper knew something deeper was wrong. Her hair was pulled completely forward to cover her face, and anytime he came near to speak with her, she placed her hand up in front of her to further shield herself from him. He called his wife Lee for help. 

This began the Coopers’ relationship with Crissey. Within weeks she left the home where she had been abused her entire life, and moved in with Eddie and Lee and their four young children. They took her out to eat for the first time, bought her new clothes that weren’t soiled, and tried to give her fun memories to replace nineteen years of horrible ones. But when Crissey didn’t respond the way they thought she would, when her behaviors grew more and more disturbing, the Coopers quickly realized that Crissey needed more than clean clothes, warm food, and even positive family experiences. She needed something they did not have the skills to provide.

Crissey was born to a low-functioning young mother who herself lived in an abusive home. Crissey’s father was a practicing Satanist, and disappeared when her mother became pregnant. Her grandmother punished her mother for this by forcing her to neglect and abuse Crissey when she was an infant. She would not let her change her diaper. She would not let her touch her or console her. When baby Crissey would cry, the grandmother would punish her by not feeding her. When she stopped crying, a bottle was propped up in the bed. She was never held. Instead, the grandmother would actually pinch her baby skin as hard as she could anytime she walked by the crib. She rarely bathed her, but when she did, she held her tiny body underwater to see her struggle for a while before she pulled her back up for air.

All of this horrific abuse happened while Crissey was just an infant. At nineteen, she had no idea. But it made a difference in her brain, and she was living the effects. 

At the Cooper home as a young adult, she began having psychogenic seizures almost daily, where her body would shut down, fall to the ground and writhe, due to her brain being wired for survival, and having lived in toxic stress her entire life. She was unable to participate in a conversation, but instead dominated every family dinner with horrific details about her traumatic childhood and demonic visitations. The more Eddie and Lee tried to love her and care for her, the more things continued to deteriorate with Crissey.

From her own years as a NICU nurse and from the information she learned about Crissey’s childhood, Lee knew Crissey’s problems were attachment-related. She began seeking Christian attachment therapists and found Matthew and Fawn Bradley. At an Attachment Therapy Intensive with the Bradleys, the Coopers learned much more about attachment, and they better understood why parenting Crissey with normal parenting methods would never work. After returning home, they put more boundaries in place to keep Crissey (and the rest of their family) safe by not allowing her to control their home. They implemented therapeutic parenting techniques for brain-healing communication. They moved Crissey into a private apartment on their property. And over the years, Crissey found much, much healing in a growing relationship with the Cooper family.

Today, Crissey no longer wears her hair down over her face. She doesn’t put her hand up in front of her to shield herself from others when they try to speak to her. She is able to enjoy some healthy relationships, most significantly, with her husband and their new baby daughter.

Because of the severity and duration of her abuse, Crissey still has significant struggles. She will likely always struggle with some of the effects of her abuse. 

But Crissey is alive. 

And Crissey is not abusing her baby girl. 

In her family line, Crissey has ended the generational cycle of abuse.