Shannon M. Deitz

I am a survivor of incest and date rape. I lived as a 'victim' for a good portion of my life because I felt unworthy and untouchable. I made choices during that period of my life based on a victim 'nothing good ever happens in my life' mentality. Helping survivors find their voice is my passion. 90% of this world has been 'victimized' in some fashion and instead of giving our 'life' over to those who hurt us let's begin to 'get back' by LIVING life to it's fullest.

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Shannon Deitz is a woman in love with God and excited about her faith. But it wasn’t always that way. She was only 3 years old when the abuse began by a family member. While still a teen, her boyfriend was tragically killed in an auto accident, and she began to question a God who would claim a young man with so much life yet to be lived. At the fragile age of seventeen, she was raped and she began to distrust a God who would allow such a thing. Again, as a freshman in college, she was raped a second time, and she began to earnestly put as much distance between herself and God as she possibly could.

At the age of 27, having run from God as far as she could go, she found herself at the bottom of a life that was no longer tolerable. Having no place to go but up, she looked to Heaven. And there was God, surrounding her with His peace. Shortly after Deitz felt a distinct calling to begin teaching the teens at her local church. Her work with teens led to a full-time youth ministry. Within the next four years, that ministry bloomed, allowing her to witness God’s amazing work in her church and her life. In 2007, her youth group was voted in the top five of EWTN’s Catholic Youth Groups in the United States, and in 2008 she was invited to speak on God’s unfailing love at the World Youth Day Festivities in Sydney, Australia. In 2011, she was again asked to speak at the WYD Festivities in Madrid, Spain.

Having spread the message of God’s amazing love to thousands of teens, she eventually felt called to broaden the sphere of those with whom she shared her personal story. Shannon wrote Exposed: Inexcusable Me…Irreplaceable Him (Believers Press 2010) as a way of offering encouragement and hope to both teens and adults suffering from physical and emotional abuse. In 2011, she stepped away from her parish ministry to have more time for speaking engagements and to start Hopeful Hearts, an advocacy non-profit organization (501 c3) giving a VOICE to survivor