Graduation announcements are beginning to arrive in the mail for family and friends across North Texas.
One district attorney received an announcement and it brought him to tears.
“Dear Mr. Wilson, where do I begin,” the letter began.
For Whitney Threatt, celebrating her accomplishment also meant reflecting on what helped her get here.
“I was like: I have to send him a ‘thank you letter,’” she said.
“On May 12, 2018, I will graduate from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas,” the letter read. “I want you to know that you have impacted my life in such an enormous way.”
Threatt sent a picture of herself in her cap and gown along with a letter to Patrick Wilson, a former Ellis County prosecutor and the current Ellis County District Attorney.
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“I cannot begin to thank you enough,” she wrote.
“Traditionally when there’s hand-written letters in my inbox people in my position don’t really like those,” Wilson said with a laugh. “But I could tell from the shape of it, it must have been nice.”
The words inside immediately took Wilson back 13 years to a little girl with chubby cheeks.
“In 2005 you helped me have the man who sexually abused me convicted. I was 9 years old,” she wrote.
“Throughout the entire trial I remember you continuously reassuring me that the situation was no fault of my own,” it read. “Unfortunately I had to see evil in the world at such a young age but you showed me that I deserve justice and from that point on, a fire was lit inside me. I beat the statistics of sexual abuse victims and graduated high school with honors.”
The girl who walked into the historic courthouse in Waxahachie to face her abuser.
“I remember that she was scared about going to trial,” he said.
“The inside was very intimidating, especially walking in there as a 9-year-old,” she added.
The girl who would also face homelessness and the loss of her mother at a young age, thrived despite the odds.
“It’s remarkable for me to see what she’s become knowing, knowing what these kids go through, knowing in particular what her situation was it’s just uplifting,” said Wilson. “We just deal with so much ugly in my business, to see something like that it’s just remarkable.”
Threatt is going one step further, becoming a social worker.
“I’m taking my past and I’m using it to become a better social worker,” she said. “I’m going to be an advocate for the rest of my life. I’m going to help children just like I was helped.”
Whitney has already landed interviews for social worker positions ahead of her graduation.
