This episode contains descriptions of sexual assault.

Listener discretion is advised.

I couldn't think of a better thing to hear for someone to tell you,

I don't know how you did it. You survived. You did the right thing. Because they're already blaming themselves

for being in that situation in the first place and what you don't ever think about when someone

is out to hurt you, that's because the plan's in their head.

In 1994, Karen Carroll, then Coleman,

was working as an emergency room nurse

and living in the Bronx, New York,

with her husband Ron.

I met Ron on a blind date.

He was very different from most of the men I was used to.

He had sort of a kind of like an edge to him.

There was something attractive about the bad boy but not quite the bad boy. He was spontaneous. He just like liked life and I said, oh, this was kind of nice. He was very easy to get along with.

Then one day out of the blue, Karen answered a phone call that would change her life.

This is I Survived, the podcast where we talk to women who've lived through the worst things

imaginable and all of the tragic and messy and sometimes great things that can happen

after survival. I'm Caitlin Van Mall.

It was my father's day and we've gotten up.

We were planning to spend the day together.

Actually, we're going to go out and visit his dad and he said he was

going to go buy the Sunday morning paper. So he left the house and about half an hour after

...