14 DAY TRIAL // Carmen Tarleton was disfigured when her then-husband threw industrial-strength lye on her, in 2007. 44-year-old Tarleton, from Vermont, is writing a book documenting the domestic abuse and how the experience has helped her get a fresh start in life.
Her book, titled “Overcome: Burned, Blinded and Blessed,” is set to be published in March 2013. She aims to send victims of abuse the message that “Life is a choice,” as she was able to get through terrible hardship.
According to the Clarion Ledger, the book is set to chronicle her journey to Los Angeles, when she was just 28, an event which would change her life. She took a job as a nurse at a UCLA hospital, relocating with her two children.
She met her husband Herbert Rodgers there, and they moved again to Thetford, Vermont. In 2007, following repeated counts of abuse, they became separated.
According to a 2011 report by the Daily Mail, Rodgers broke into her home, and beat her with a baseball bat, before pouring lye on her face and body.
Tarleton suffered burns on the larger part of her body. She was blinded in one eye, and can barely see with the other. Her arm was fractured, as was one of her eye sockets.
Since the incident, she has undergone more than 50 surgeries, of which 14 performed on her neck. She is still awaiting her face transplant in 2012.
During the last years, she went through physical tests, MRIs, speech tests, blood and tissue tests, was in counseling and had to submit herself to evaluations by psychiatrists in order to be eligible for said operations.
“I am very proud of my mom, because if that had happened to me, I would probably be in my room all the time and she comes out here and tells people about it,” her daughter Hannah says.