Hope after the unthinkable happens

Gracie Bonds Staples is an award-winning journalist who has been writing for daily newspapers since 1979, when she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. She joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2000 after stints at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Sacramento Bee, Raleigh Times and two Mississippi dailies. Staples was recently promoted to Senior Features Enterprise Writer. Look for her columns Thursdays and Saturdays in Living and alternating Sundays in Metro.

A mother sits in a church basement office remembering the moment she learned her son had been gunned down in a hail of bullets outside a Sweet 16 birthday party.

It was here at Vinings United Methodist Church that Jessalyn Dorsey began to put the pieces of her life back together.

Notice I didn’t say find closure. There’s no such thing as closure when someone kills a loved one, but you can learn, as Dorsey did, to get up and put one foot in front of the other until finally the numbness starts to subside and you feel your heart beat again.

It’s a long process, a difficult journey, but it is possible.

Soon after her son, Terrence Greene, was killed on the night of Oct. 3, 1999, Dorsey found her way here, where the Crime Victims Advocacy Council Inc. runs a support group every Tuesday night.

She was there one night when she realized she wasn’t coming for herself anymore.

“I was coming for the others, the new ones who were showing up and the old ones who were still struggling,” she said.

All these years later, Dorsey is still coming. No longer looking for hope. She has plenty. She just wants other crime victims to have it, too.

Dorsey is now executive director of CVAC, a faith-based nonprofit that provides support to victims of violent crimes. The organization will celebrate its 25th anniversary in September.

Terrence Greene was Dorsey’s only child.

He left home that night around 9:30 p.m. heading to the fair at Jim Miller Park.

When he arrived, he called his mom. The crew was shutting down. He and his friends were going to get a bite to eat.

They were at a nearby Burger King when someone stopped by with a flier announcing another friend’s birthday party in Powder Springs. It was 11:30 p.m.

They hadn’t been there long when they decided the crowd was too unruly and headed to the car. That’s when gunfire rang out. Terrence and his friends made a run for it, but before he could find safety, a bullet ripped through Terrence’s back. His friends kept running.

Shortly after midnight, Dorsey began to worry. It wasn’t like Terrence to miss his curfew.

“I started texting him but he didn’t reply,” she said. “I started calling some friends but got everybody’s voice mail.”

Sometime around 2 a.m., she called the fire department, then the police to see if there were reports of any accidents. There hadn’t been, but Dorsey knew something was terribly wrong.

It was 7 a.m. when friends started to pick up her messages. One of them, Jerome Wray, roused his son and headed to the party scene, where police tape surrounded the perimeter of a neighbor’s house. A man out for an early morning smoke had walked upon a dead body in a flower bed.

Meanwhile, Wray’s wife Janice sat with Dorsey at her home in Marietta. She had been there only a few minutes when the phone rang.

“I knew when I saw her face that something had happened,” Dorsey said.

If Wray told her anything at all that morning, Dorsey doesn’t remember. She only remembers her knees collapsing under the weight of despair.

It was noon when a Cobb County detective arrived with the news.

Terrence, a 19 year-old senior at Osborne High School, was dead.

I'm going to find out who did this, the detective told Dorsey. I'm a mother and I won't stop until I find out who did this.

At first, it seemed the detective might have to eat those words. Dozens of kids were at the party that night, but none of them were talking.

As the end of October approached, someone gave investigators what they needed. John Wayne Broussard and Julius Tramaine Gragg had boasted a little too much.

They were arrested and charged in connection with Greene’s death. Broussard was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison plus 10 years. And Gragg, convicted of aggravated assault and voluntary manslaughter, was sentenced to 20 years.

CVAC, Dorsey said, helped her through the maze.

“I was a total basket case,” she said. “I didn’t work for nearly a year and a half because I couldn’t.”

Dorsey’s only child had been murdered, but in the support group, she met people whose entire families had been killed and all at once.

If they could keep going, so could she.

In 2001, she started volunteering at CVAC, calling victims, telling them about support groups and memorial services. She joined the speakers bureau to tell people about the agency and its work helping people find healing after homicide.

In 2003, she was named vice president, and then president the next year. She was CVAC’s mouthpiece wherever and whenever she was needed.

It was just as Janice Wray had predicted at Terrence’s funeral.

Not only has Jessalyn Dorsey worked through her pain, she has spoken before thousands of people about the impact violent crime has on its victims, testified before the Georgia Senate and House in favor of victim’s rights legislation, and received numerous awards, including the 2014 National Eva Murillo Unsung Hero Award, presented to a crime victim who has experienced personal tragedy and found a way to triumph over adversity.

“I think this is a calling from God because otherwise I couldn’t do it,” Dorsey said.

Last year, Dorsey was tapped to head CVAC. In June, crime visited her family once more.

This time, her cousin Gregory Smith was killed while working his shift as night manager at a Fayetteville Applebee's.

It’s hard to say how long Dorsey will remain at CVAC, but there’s no question that the work she does is desperately needed.

That isn’t something we should be proud of. It just is.