Debra Puglisi Sharp was the kind of woman who got misty at Coke jingles and Hallmark cards. Trusting and idealistic, she was, in her own words, sentimental to a fault. Until the day it all changed in a brutal instant.
Sharp brings her riveting personal account of abduction, imprisonment, rape, near-death trauma, and finally, rescue to Penn State Harrisburg on Tuesday, March 20. Her presentation will be from 12:15 to 2 p.m. in the Morrison Gallery of the campus library. It is free and open to the public.
In April 1998, this wife, nurse, and mother of teenage twins was tending the roses in her garden when a factory worker with a cocaine habit saw her and decided he had to have her. Slipping through an open door, he waited for her to come in.
Nino, her husband of 25 years, got in the way and was shot. The man then attacked and raped Debra, placed her in the trunk of his car, and drove away. Debra was kept tied in her abductor’s house for five horrifying days. She learned of her husband’s murder from a report on the radio that the man blared to muffle her screams while he was out.
After five days, she managed to loosen her ties, grope her way to a phone, and dial 911.
A riveting inside account of the horror, Shattered — a personal account she wrote with Majorie Preston — is also an indelible portrait of hope, determination, and the agonizing journey back to life. Struggling to heal from her horrendous ordeal and the devastating loss of her husband, Debra Sharp also had to endure an agonizing court trial, the raw grief of her children, and her own crippling fear. But through her work in hospice care and as an advocate for victims of violence and trauma, she has slowly discovered the measure of her own strength as she attempts to make sense of a senseless crime.
