Kimberly Mull is an advocate for victims of sexual assault and human trafficking. Mull herself was a victim of both. She opens up and talks about her rape, why having a firearm is so important, what she’s learned, and about seeking justice for nearly a decade.
Mull can be found online at KimberlyMull.com. Portions of this interview have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Petrolino: Kimberly Mull is a policy expert on violence against women, and she’s got a very interesting story, but it’s a horrible story that she’s going to share with us today. Kimberly, you’re a policy expert, you’re also involved heavily in legislation as well. Let’s talk a little bit about those things first to get the ball rolling.
Mull: My background is in public policy, specifically in areas of violence against women and children. What that means is I help legislators figure out how we can make the lives of victims of crime, specifically women and kids, better. I work on all kinds of pieces of legislation: everything from domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and child abuse — are kind of the main areas. I’ve worked on probably nearly 100 pieces of legislation over the last decade, mainly in Nevada, some in Oklahoma, Texas, and then, of course, in Washington, D.C.
That’s kind of my background is as far as career wise. Personally, I got into this area because I’m a survivor of child sex trafficking, I was trafficked between the ages of 11 and 14 in middle school. Once I became older and aware (that) it happened to other people and other kids, it kind of became a life mission to speak up on it and help. Help hopefully change the future generations for better.
Petrolino: You’re your gun owner, right? You’re a firearms owner, and your journey into getting involved with the Second Amendment might be a little bit different than other people’s. Do you want to talk a little bit about your original call to becoming a gun owner, and then maybe some of the things you learned before we got into the minutia of your story?
Mull: I grew up in a law enforcement home. My dad’s a law enforcement officer, retired here in Texas, and I grew up around guns. I’m in Texas, right? We grew up learning how to be around guns, how to handle guns, when we’re allowed to — how to not touch them when we’re not supposed to. I grew up in a very gun-friendly home, but then as an adult I made the journey, like a lot of women do, into Liberal Land and decided that guns were bad and evil. I needed to follow all these rules and regulations that everybody else says.
I did have a gun that someone gifted (to me) for self-defense. I got one of those little lock boxes. You put it in the lock box and I kept my bullets in a different place — because that’s what you’re supposed to do. I did all the things that — if you’re going to be a liberal with a gun, you have to do all these steps, right? I did that. My initial journey as an individual single woman with a gun was: it’s in a box in a closet, the bullets on the other side, and it’s safe. That was my journey in my 20s of being a gun owner. Things definitely changed down the road.
Petrolino: Now you’re in Texas, that’s where you grew up. But you ended up in Nevada, right?
Mull: I ended up in Nevada for probably close to a decade. (I was) working in public policy, working at the legislature, working on crime bills, helping victims’ rights, helping with women who have been prostituted in the legal side of things in Nevada, who are extremely harmed in that system, and helping them get resources and connected to help and helping trafficking victims out of Vegas and things like that.
After the October 1 shooting happened, I was appointed by the governor and the head of Department of Health and Human Services to oversee the $17 million recovery efforts for the victims because again, my background is in victims to crime, and so (I) oversaw that for the end of it, and yeah, so that was another exposure to not only guns, but mass violence as a whole, the largest mass shooting in US history, and being around all the things around that, and so definitely Nevada had its different experiences for me while I was there.
Petrolino: While you were in Nevada, you were a victim of a crime as well, as an assault. Why don’t we talk a little bit about the beginning? How did things get started? Because the beginning of your story, I think, is something that people need to pay attention to as much as the whole story, right?
Mull: I was a single woman living in, at the time, I was living in Reno, which was the closest big city to Carson City, which is the capital of Nevada. Like a lot of millennials, I met a guy on a dating app, and he kept calling and texting me, asking me to come out, and I was like, “No, I’m already in for the night.” Kept asking me to come out, so his brother was there, there were other people there, it was at a sushi restaurant not very far away from my house, which I knew, I’ll just come say “Hi,” we’ll see what happens.
I go say “Hi.” He says, hey, let’s go back to his place or something. I was like, “No, no, that’s a no go.” I’m gonna go back to my place, because I thought my place was safe, right? And (we) go back to my place. It’s one of those things where you meet someone and you were talking and you like them on the app or texting, all that. Being in person, you’re like, “Eh, maybe not my thing.” And we made out. We, you know, made out a little bit, fooled around a little bit. Then he wanted to have sex, and I said, “No, I’m not, not really interested in having sex.” He kept pushing it, and I asked, “Well, do you even have a condom?” I’m really not having sex without a condom, and he said, “No.” And I responded, “Yeah, we’re really not having sex without a condom.” And he decided that was not the right answer.
At this point, he was on top of me, he put his hand around my neck and started choking me and raped me. During the whole time I was saying, “No, you’re raping me, stop.” I’m pretty sure, I know I even quoted some NRS, which is Nevada statute. This is a sexual assault.
My mind just went to, what I do, right? I was literally going, you know this is sexual assault, this is the definition of sexual assault, you’re raping me, and just kept repeating over and over. And by the end of it, when he finished, he laid down next to me in my bed, and I’m just gonna try to figure out, okay, what do I do? This whole time I’ve been trying to think, do I fight? I can’t really fight. I’ve done research on strangulation, domestic violence, I know it take(s) seven pounds of pressure for him to choke me, or to kill me. I’m trying to keep calm enough to think, “Okay, I gotta, I gotta stay alive through this, I can’t pass out.”
I had a J-tube, which is like a feeding tube in my stomach. I was trying to keep the weight off of that, because he could rip that out and literally rip my intestines out of me. All these things are going through my head, and then I kept thinking, there’s a gun in my closet. I have a gun in my closet.
When he laid down next to me, when he was done, he started talking about (how) he was going to rape me again. But, he wanted to invite a friend over, so that he could, I guess, help. At this point, I’m (thinking) I have to get to my gun, I have to get this guy out of my house … I asked him if I can go to the restroom, because it was directly across from my bed. And he says, “Yeah, you can get to the restroom.”
I get into the restroom, my closet’s right there. I reach into my closet, and I’m trying to reach up. The gun case is on the top shelf of my closet, so I’m trying to reach it. I have one hand. I’m trying to be inconspicuous, right? I’m trying to use one hand to open this damn case, and he literally starts giggling. Kind of like chuckling, and he says, “What? Do you do… getting a gun?” At that point I (decided) it’s now or never. I reached up (with) both hands, I’m pushing both of these things to get this stupid case open, (and) grab the gun.
I’m thinking (in) my mind, the bullets aren’t even here, the bullets are on that side of the closet, because I’m being a safe liberal. Okay, it’s a revolver, you can see it — I had to make sure he can’t see there’s no bullets in it. I turn around, I point the gun down in his direction, but down, so he couldn’t look directly into the revolver, and I said, “Yes, motherf*cker, you just raped me, get out of my house.”
At this point, he kind of takes a second and starts putting clothes on. I honestly, I don’t care if I was screaming, yelling, I can’t hear what was happening. I mean, he gets dressed (goes) right out my house. I go lock the door, go to my phone to call 911 and then after that it’s kind of pretty simple.
The police caught him a few blocks away from my house. I did the police report. They took evidence. I had a rape — a sexual assault exam. I went to the police station and talked to them for several hours, because they caught him — when the police caught him, I found out recently he confessed twice to police, once to the police that arrested him, and once to the detectives that were interviewing him. That yes, I was saying “No, stop it” the whole time. That yes, I did not consent. That yes, I was saying he was raping me. And a week later the district attorney of Reno decided that that wasn’t good enough, and released him, and no-charged him.
The last nine years I’ve been ranting and raving around Nevada about a couple things. One, we need to charge people with sexual assault, which wasn’t being done in Washoe County. The DA’s theory was, he could have been confused and thought it was a fantasy game, and that I wanted to say no, and I wanted to be raped. Which is ridiculous, considering we never talked about that, we never spoke about that, it’s just an assumption the DA came up with. Which seems to be a common thing with that DA. And then two, I really became a big advocate for, if you’re going to have a gun, it needs to be loaded to where you can get to it. It does you no good if you have all these “safety measures” when you really need it.
It took me a while to kind of figure out…everything I was supposed to do with the gun. I was doing everything I was supposed to do with the gun by the definition (by) the people who say I shouldn’t also have a gun, right?
The people that say you shouldn’t have a gun in your home are also the ones that say, “You need to have it locked away, and the bullets are (in a) separate place.” All the stuff that makes no sense, because when you actually need the gun, it needs to be accessible and needs to be loaded, and you need to be trained on how to use it.
That kind of started my journey back to the conservative side — was just how people (would say), how dare I have a gun? The fact (is) now I’m very much a proponent of, you need to know how to use your gun, you should have it loaded, you need to have it accessible, because otherwise it does you no good.
Petrolino: Obviously, in the aftermath of this horrible experience, there’s a number of things that you went through…we’ll just talk a little bit about the relationship with the firearm, because you have now, since, like you said, changed your mentality and your thought process. There’s like a comfort level, right? That you were talking about manipulating and using a firearm. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, too?
Mull: I think that it’s kind of multifaceted. This isn’t something that happened immediately after. This is something (that) over a period of the last nine years of trying to slowly get more comfortable with a gun — even though I was raised around them. I think it’s just one of those things where I’ve had exposure to it, but not enough practice. (Or) steady consistent use of them that I felt super comfortable with the gun. That was something that I had to work on, (am) still working on.
A lot of my anxiety and nightmares and things related to the to the rape aren’t necessarily about the rape. They’re — I have flashbacks of pulling the gun on a person, and it’s one of those things where…I can tell you right now, I have no problem now pulling a gun on someone if I need to, but it’s one of those things where I want to know I feel comfortable and confident in it when I do it. I think that’s been a lot of the journey.
The second has been just kind of the aftermath. A lot of the things I found out with the district attorney not charging my rapist was he was concerned that before my sexual assault, three weeks before my sexual assault, I had posted a picture with my gun online. It was the “Me too” movement, and again, from Texas, so I posted a picture of my gun.
It’s a pink pearl handle revolver. It’s a pretty gun. I thought (it) was a cute social media post: “Hey, you know, don’t ever come after me, because I can protect myself.” Which apparently was a lot of talk, more than anything. He found that concerning that I was posting a picture of a gun on my social media.
After the assault a local nonprofit took me — they had, I believe he’s a sheriff’s deputy — took me to practice shooting, because they wanted me to feel more confident, because I was so traumatized by pulling a gun on someone. They wanted me to feel confident and I posted a picture of that, and the DA found that concerning that I would go shooting after pulling a gun on someone.
I think part of it is, not only learning to be more comfortable with a gun over this last nearly a decade now, but also realizing that people, even so-called Republicans, are using the fact that if we post photos or are open about using our Second Amendment (rights), they’re using it against us.
That’s baffling to me. It’s one of those things where I think as a society, because society has gone so crazy whacky, the left, that they’ll really hold the fact that someone is actually embracing their constitutional right against them in a number of ways is mind blowing.
In Nevada right now, there is a great congressional candidate named David Flippo, who’s running for Congress in District 2 , and I saw a post yesterday or the day before, of people losing their minds.
When you go to his website, there’s a picture of him shooting a rifle, and (commenters) have gone off in Nevada about ‘how dare he have a photo of himself with a rifle,’ and ‘he’s a criminal, we should be arresting him,’ and ‘if you see him, get on the other side of the street, because he’s going to start shooting people in the streets.’ I mean, the notion is absolutely crazy.
My favorite photo of me is at the Gear Summit with an M50 and I have that on my Facebook. Just because you see me shooting the M50, doesn’t mean that I’m going to go crazy. It actually probably means I’m safer with a weapon.
This whole notion that people are using it against us in all areas of our lives — but especially a DA using it against a crime victim (for) using a firearm, therefore you know you either should have fought back harder or you should have, you could have been trapping this person — I mean, trying to use these, make up these excuses of how using a firearm is a reason to not believe or not to convict a rapist is mind-blowing to me, but apparently it’s not that uncommon.
Petrolino: Looking at your story here, you’ve been victimized at least three times, and throughout this process, where you had the initial assault and rape, then you had the system really victimize you, because (it) doesn’t sound like your case was handled the way it should have been. And then on top of that, while it was being mishandled, you also got victim-shamed. This is somehow negative that you had a firearm and everything like that. In those nine years, you actually pushed for and advocated for different policy change as well, right? Let’s talk about that nine-year period. There were some things that maybe you didn’t know, and you went forward with saying, “Hey, these are things that need a change in the law,” right?
Mull: It’s very multifaceted and a very long process, for the most part. A lot of things I did not know about the DA forgoing charging my rapist … until a story done by the Reno Gazette Journal was released a couple months ago. I had my suspicions, but didn’t have actual proof of all of it.
But during that time I have worked on legislation because I knew at this point, after a couple years in, that the DA was not going to charge him, or at least felt (that he wouldn’t). How long did it take to have a guy that you’ve arrested for rape (and) put him back in jail? It would take him too long.
I worked with legislators to pass legislation in Nevada that says if your sexual assault had DNA, which mine I assume did, because the man came inside of me and you know had I scratched him, I had water bottles with his DNA, all kinds of things at my house. I assumed I have DNA, so we changed the time period from where you could prosecute someone for sexual assault if there’s DNA to no statute limitations. Forever.
As long as there’s DNA, you can charge the person, and that’s what I really wanted to make sure. Well, the next time we get a new DA, they’ll have that DNA, they’ll have the evidence, and they can charge my rapist.
(I worked) really hard on that piece of legislation, also on legislation that said that as a victim of a crime, as survivor of sexual assault in Nevada, that we had the right to know the results of our rape kit and of the DNA. I’m convinced that this man — I was not the first woman that this man had raped, and so I kept thinking, ‘Well, they run the DNA, they maybe will find a CODIS hit,’ right? They’ll find a hit somewhere that shows, you know, he’s done this before.
My rapist is Ivy League educated. He has a master’s degree, or two master’s degrees, from Cornell out of New York. He’s been around too much, he’s gone through too much, he’s done this before. There’s going to be a CODIS hit somewhere. I worked on legislation that said that as a survivor, that we have the right to know our results.
The DA told me I didn’t. When I was asking, (he) was telling me I didn’t have the right to know anything.
Another piece of legislation that I testified on — I wasn’t an author, anything, but I testified really strongly — is in Nevada they were working on the law — of course by the liberals — that said that if you have a gun in your home, it has to be locked away, and the bullets would be separate. Which is exactly what I did. I testified, ‘That didn’t work for me when I needed it. That’s not the thing that’s going to keep you safe when you need it. When you need it, you need it, and you need it loaded.’
Of course it was a very strong Democratic culture. They were able to pass part of it, where you can be held, I believe, civilly liable if a child in your home gets to a hold the gun — which, of course, that’s part of also teaching your kids how to be around weapons and not to use them. It’s one of those things where the people that have the most opinions about this are also people that just don’t want you to have a gun in the first place.
A message I want especially women to know is that it doesn’t help you if you’re not comfortable with it. It doesn’t help you if you don’t have it loaded, and if it’s not near you.
Those are the things I’m really trying to get across to people. These are things we need to make available to women. I feel like if I could have got to the gun before it started, maybe I would have been able to not go through some of the things that I went through.
Petrolino: Sure, and now you talked a little bit about learning (more) things … over the last couple of months. There’s a reporter that did some investigative work on your story and stories surrounding this individual. What have you learned now, like most recently about your case, and then perhaps potential patterns?
Mull: I think the biggest thing for me is I honestly think that the current district attorney of Washoe County, Chris Hicks, isn’t prosecuting sexual assault cases. Now, crimes against children? Yes. Human trafficking? Yes. He has special prosecutors brought in for those cases, and so, through grant money, and so they’re very well versed in that. But plain, old-fashioned sexual assault and rape from someone that’s 18 and over, I don’t think he’s prosecuting.
It seems to be that his excuse repeatedly is, ‘Well, the guy could have believed that you wanted it.’ That’s the defense for every rapist, I think. The notion is that he’s all about protecting his win rate and his numbers and his statistics. If he charges someone with rape and then doesn’t win in trial, that would hurt his statistics. I think his way of avoiding that is just not charging sexual assault.
I think if we looked at his numbers which, seriously, for nine years I’ve been trying to get and can’t get, but I think if the Reno Police Department brings him 200 rapists a year, or rapes, they identify 100 of the rapists, I would think his numbers are in less than the 10s of actually prosecuting, and it could be lower than that. I think his main thing is to avoid the subject as a whole, which isn’t only hurting women in that community, but it’s also, just hurting the whole thought of justice and fairness.
The fact that I’ve learned through all this that my ability to get justice and my ability to seek justice rely on this one person who’s voted into office by the people of that area, and when their focus is on their own reputation or just the fact that they’re not good enough apparently to try a rape case where the man confesses twice to police…if they’re not good enough to do that, then that somehow negates my access to justice. That’s not a fair system. That’s not fair to the people of that county. It’s not fair to the people of the country. When that’s how the system works. That’s kind of been the journey, mostly.
With the reporter, I found out that he had been holding the fact that I had pictures (of) myself with a weapon, and that I went shooting after the fact, (that the DA0 use(ed) those against me. Those were part of his reasoning on the record of why he chose not to charge my rapist, and if we have — and this man’s a Republican — if we have people who are elected to office, or just even who are members of the public service, using the fact that someone has embraced their Second Amendment right against them, that’s that’s not good for our society as a whole. It’s such a bigger issue and a broader issue.
Seeing the David Flippo things online in Nevada about people freaking out because there’s a picture of him with a gun on his website, do we forget that shooting’s in Olympic sport? Shooting is so much more than just targeting people. It’s one of those things where I think we have bigger issues in this country than people even realize.
This is something that people are using against us in not only a civil way or an online way or a way to bully us or attack us online, but now in a judicial way, and a way where people are saying, ‘Nope, if you had pictures of yourself with a weapon or you’re shooting the gun and you’re a victim of crime, well, then you know, well, that seems suspicious to us.’ And that just doesn’t make sense to me.
Petrolino: Now this district attorney, he’s currently the district attorney right now? But you had some news that you just shared with me right before we got online, right? So let’s talk about that.
Mull: For the first time in 12 years he had someone that ran against him, also a Republican, that man’s name is Wes Duncan, and Wes, he was the assistant attorney general at the time of my assault. Whenever Chris Hicks wouldn’t give me or tell me information about my rape kit, Wes is who I went to at the attorney general’s office. (I’d explain,) “Hey, here’s what’s going on,” and Wes is the person that went and found my rape kit.
Wes ran against Chris Hicks last month, and beat him by almost 20 points. Incumbent for 12 years was just beaten by another Republican in the primary, and there’s no Democrat running, so he officially wins, but by almost 20 points.
I believe a lot of that has to do with the fact that not only myself, but other women were coming forward and talking about how this district attorney is not prosecuting sexual assaults, how he’s holding against women things like where we were, how we dressed, if we had been drinking, if we invited the person over or not, if all … different kinds of things that are things that, in this day and age, we have so much more to deal with than think, ‘Oh, well, you know, her dress is (too) short, so she must deserve it.’ How a DA thinks that is mind-boggling to me. Thankfully, as of January, he’s going to be out of office.
Wes Duncan is going to be the new district attorney for Washoe County and one of Wes’s big things is he’s going to go back and look at cases over the last 12 years that have been no-charged, and see what can be done. When you have someone that’s not prosecuting just because of their own personal beliefs, you know that’s something easy to be looked at.
Heaven forbid there’s more people that are victims of crimes — especially women — who, if they posted a picture of themselves with a gun, or are known to be a shooter, or are known to embrace their Second Amendment rights, hold that against them, and say, ‘Well, because of that, I can’t prosecute your rapist, because in some fantasy land and maybe you were luring them in trying to shoot him.’ …And so hopefully this mindset now will be erased from the county, and hopefully new, better days are ahead.
Petrolino: Do you think that you’ll find some level of justice in your own case now, with the new DA getting involved? You enacted that policy change, you were a positive force in those regards. Are you hopeful come January?
Mull: That’s a double-sided blade. One, of course I’m hopeful. But again, like I said, one of the bills that I worked on, probably a year or two after my assault, where we removed the statute of limitations if you had DNA.
During the reporter’s story that came out a month or two ago, the DA, the current DA, told them that there’s no DNA in my case. That even though the man raped me, I scratched him with my nails, even though he ejaculated in me, and even though they have water bottles that he drank from my house, a wine glass he (used) from my house, there’s no DNA.
Nothing could come up? Which seems very suspicious in a lot of ways. I’m not a conspiracy theory person, but they said part of it, even though I went through a whole rape exam — I was a lot heavier at the time, and I had weight loss surgery, which is why I had the J- tube, but I had weight loss surgery…and they said they couldn’t get DNA because they couldn’t complete my sexual assault exam because I was overweight.
I was obese at the time, which I don’t think they know how the woman’s body works. Pap smears, everything else, always (come) back normal, so I’m not sure how that works. They’re saying they took no swabs. I sat through a rape exam. They were sticking things inside of me and swabbing things. The fact that now there’s mysteriously no rape kit in my case…again I don’t want to be a conspiracy person, but also, where did it go? Where did all that go?
I’ve been a thorn in this man’s side for nine years now, this DA’s side, trying to get people to listen to me, trying to get people to say, ‘Hey, you know, I was raped. I know I was raped,’ you have to get this man in jail. He works with kids every day, that’s what this man does.
He’s a month away from losing the election … now he’s reporting that there is no DNA in my case? In my view, Wes Duncan had to go find my rape kit a year after I was raped because they had no clue where it was, but now they’re saying there’s there’s not even any DNA, and they didn’t actually do a rape exam, they didn’t take any swabs?
I’m very skeptical if, once the new DA takes over, they’re going to find anything in my case, just because it feels like things are being done to make sure they’re not. But again, I did scratch him. The police took photos of the scratches I took on him, like they can’t have excuses for that DNA, right? They had the water bottle (he drank) out, that’s going to have DNA.
I’m hoping that the new DA can use some things other than just the sexual assault kit that mysteriously doesn’t exist against this man. We’ll see what happens. If anything, at least the people moving forward and some other victims will get justice, and in that time I’ll just keep ranting or raving trying to get people to listen about how we can make things better for everybody.
Petrolino: Kimberly, this is an absolutely horrible story, and I’m so sorry that you had to go through this and endure this. It’s just absolutely awful. What’s your, I guess, your final call to action here, like your message to women that might be hearing this? Is there a place on socials or something that you want to plug where people can find you if they want to reach out to you if they have questions or maybe are looking for advice? What are your handles?
Mull: I’m not huge on social media, but I do have a website, it’s KimberlyMull.com. People are free to reach me out there. My goal is to try to help as many women and people as I can. I think now I’m kind of leaning more to just helping people be educated and know that the whole notion that we’ve … a lot of us, not everybody, but a lot of us have bought into (the narrative that) we have to keep our guns separate and locked away.
When it comes down to it, that doesn’t help you, when you need it, that doesn’t help you, and why have it if it’s not going to be accessible when you need it? I think that’s the main thing I want to help people with, and help (people) become educated and go from there.
Petrolino: Kimberly, thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate you sharing your story with me, and for me to be able to send this out to my audience. Thank you very much.
Mull: Yeah, absolutely.