Hampton Roads, Va. (WAVY) — A survivor of abuse is sharing her story after having her voting rights restored.
Gina Sederwall Dobson is a Hampton Roads mother and wife.
Dobson was awarded the Courageous Activist Award during the 2024 Women of Impact Gala.
“When I was originally contacted by Focus on Women Magazine that they wanted me to come to Baltimore and give a speech and be honored at the gala, I thought it was a fake call because I hadn’t considered my story significant. It’s tragic, but as a personal loss for me of what I lost with my family and being a felon afterwards,” said Dobson.
In May 1998, Dobson was arrested in Virginia Beach for a crime she said she did not commit.
Leading up to her arrest, Dobson recalled experiencing extreme abuse at the hands of her child’s father.
“I had been living in Virginia with my boyfriend, who was also violently abusive. He said he wanted to move to Tennessee. Everything was always making my circle smaller. I’d been isolated from my family in Illinois and now, going to be isolated from the friends I’ve managed to make in Virginia,” she said.
Dobson confided in her supervisor at Nation’s Bank during that time. The two coordinated a plan for her to safely escape her abuser shortly after the move out of state.
“That’s the first time I told somebody I was being abused. I went to work because it was the only people I had contact with. I went to my boss, and I said, ‘My boyfriend is beating me, and I’m scared,” said Dobson.
The plan was to leave while her child’s father was at work. Her job would be on hold, and she would return to Virginia.
“She even set up another bank account for me so I could put my last checks in there so he wouldn’t have access to them. I left [to TN], but he never got a job. Three weeks had passed. I was getting worried.”
On Easter of that year, Dobson’s abuser pulled out a shotgun. That night, she drove with a piggy bank of change back to Virginia.
“My boss had got me a safe house to stay in while we got ourselves together,” said Dobson. “Two weeks later, a SWAT team showed up and I was arrested for murder. He [Her child’s father] had called the police and reported the miscarriage I’d had five years earlier, which was actually before I’d even met him. He reported that it was not a miscarriage, that I’d had a life birth and that I had killed the baby.”
Without evidence, she was extricated from Virginia to Illinois where she went to college. A bond was set at $3 million.
“The detectives who questioned me didn’t believe that I was abused. They said I didn’t act like an abused person,” said Dobson. “During those ten days, I was exchanged between overcrowded prison vans, sometimes in a cage, always shackled and handcuffed with very little food and water. By the time I made it back to Illinois, the newspapers were reporting me as the ‘Murdering Mommy’.”
After several months in jail, her parents even started getting hate mail.
“During that time, I was locked up in Illinois. My abuser comes forward and says, ‘I want full custody of our son,'” said Dobson.
Since the odds were stacked against her, she entered the guilty plea to a lesser felony of concealment of a homicide, for a crime she said she never commit.
“I didn’t trust the process anymore. I took that deal. That’s how I got to go home and raise my children. I don’t regret that. I raised my two children very quietly. I decided a quiet life was the best life. I did not want to battle anything,” she said.
As a convicted felon, she took up acting with her daughter.
“I found the opportunity to be someone else, to be a relief. Then, also being the truest of myself,” said Dobson.
While acting, she met an acting buddy turned friend, Carla Kelly Turner.
“Gina has a way of holding on to her joy despite…,” said Turner, who encouraged her to share her story.
“Her story is everybody’s story,” said Turner. “That’s not supposed to happen to you and if that can happen to you, what’s the chances for me?”
Now 25 years later, Dobson is working to address domestic violence. As her daughter is now at the age she was when convicted, the mom-daughter duo voted together for the first time in the November election.
“Women are actually being charged. Physicians are scared to treat women who’ve had miscarriage,” said Turner. “That’s a conversation we need to have because there are women who are dying because physicians won’t treat them, or they’re scared to be arrested.”
Dobson and Turner hope to empower women through film.
“We try to bring women and marginalized voices onto our film sets,” said Dobson.
To learn more, click here.
If you or you know someone who may be a victim of domestic violence or child abuse, click here for a list of local and national resources.
