Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

By MATHEW R. WARREN
The New York Times, January 3, 2011

By the time Wendolyn Colon was 20, she had no expectations about finding true love. She was a single mother raising a son, Dayon, and was determined to do it alone, having escaped abuse at the hands of men she had trusted.

"Men were disgusting to me," Ms. Colon said. "I was like, 'I'd rather continue raising my son by myself.' "

But then she met Dean Parsons. He worked at a discount store and had a son the same age as Dayon. They bonded over being single parents. Ms. Colon began to let her guard down, slowly learning to trust again.

"I never knew I was going to find my true prince," Ms. Colon said. "I thought because of everything I've been through, I'd never find somebody who would accept me."

Ms. Colon, 28, is developmentally disabled and has battled severe depression for much of her life. When she was 9, she said, she saw her younger sister fall four stories from a fire escape, dying of her injuries in the hospital. A year later, Ms. Colon said, she was sexually assaulted at gunpoint by her mother's boyfriend.

The abuse continued for two years, she said, until the boyfriend went to pick her up from school one day and she broke down, screaming. Ms. Colon said school officials rushed to her aid, alerting her mother and the police. A social worker took her to a doctor, who discovered that she was pregnant. At 12, she said, she had an abortion. Her mother's boyfriend was arrested and convicted, Ms. Colon said.

"I know there are a lot of teenagers today who are going through similar stuff," Ms. Colon said. "But they're not open enough to say what's going on."

Her mother, Marina Castillo, 48, said she was devastated by the assault on her daughter.

"You can't imagine how I felt," Ms. Castillo said in Spanish in a recent telephone interview. "It pains me so much."

Though Ms. Castillo had not been aware of the abuse, Ms. Colon said that at the time she resented her mother.

"Inside I was hurt," she said. "The man who you brought into my life, he did that to me."

By 13, Ms. Colon was running away from her home in East New York, Brooklyn, and sometimes living on the streets. After telling a school guidance counselor that she wanted to kill herself, she was sent to the psychiatric ward at Kings County Hospital Center, where she stayed for months. She then lived with an aunt, but by 16 she had dropped out of school and was pregnant.

"I reached out to men to give me love, to give me comfort," Ms. Colon said.

When her son, Dayon, now 11, was born, Ms. Colon moved in with his father, hoping it would be the start of a better life. Instead, Ms. Colon said, she again had to leave.

She took Dayon to live with her father in Texas, but after a dispute with her stepmother, Ms. Colon said, she left again. She wound up in New Orleans, then made her way back to New York, reconciling with her mother. Ms. Colon found work as a restaurant cook. Then, seven years ago, Ms. Colon met Mr. Parsons. She had gone to the store to buy batteries, and he paid for them. She liked the way he presented himself.

"I decided to give him a chance," she said. "He proved that he was the right one."

In their living room hangs a poem that Mr. Parsons wrote on their first Valentine's Day together. It reads in part, "I love you like I've never loved another." On the other side of the room hangs a photograph from the day they introduced their sons. It was also the day that Mr. Parsons proposed.

"She'd do anything for me; she's my backbone," Mr. Parsons, 34, said of his wife.

The couple now have three daughters, ages 6, 4 and 3, and Ms. Colon is a stay-at-home mother.

In October, Mr. Parsons lost his job of three years delivering auto parts. The family gets by on the monthly $306 in Supplemental Security Income Ms. Colon receives, along with $309 in public assistance and $600 in food stamps. The couple pays $80 in rent, and Section 8 covers the rest.

Three years ago, they turned to Brooklyn Community Services, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, for tutoring for the boys and counseling for Ms. Colon. In October, when the couple needed help buying furniture — they had been living without a couch or a dining room set — the agency drew $1,200 from the fund.

Mr. Parsons is applying for a commercial driver's license in hopes of finding work. Ms. Colon wants to become a counselor, to help teenage girls who were victims of sexual abuse.

"The advice I give young teenagers who've been through what I've been through: speak out, no matter how much someone's threatening you," she said.

"I won't let my past get in my way," Ms. Colon added. "I'm going to move forward from that."