For a while, just about the only place Jajuan Archer felt safe to sleep was in her closet.
This was after she'd been kidnapped a second time by her ex-boyfriend, Calvin Keith Brown.
On Aug. 8, 2011, she'd just returned to her Bryant home with her plumber from a quick trip to Hot Springs to check on work at property she owned there. On the way back to Bryant, they picked up food at McDonald's. After they arrived at her home, Archer was putting the McDonald's bag and wrappers in a garbage can at the curb when Brown appeared from some bushes by the house holding a .30-06 rifle.
"Run!" the plumber shouted, but Brown forced Archer back into her car and drove away holding the rifle to her head. As he drove, he was also pushing up the blade of a box cutter with his other hand.
The first time he kidnapped her, on July 27, 2011, near Pinnacle Mountain, he pointed a cocked and loaded pistol at her and said he was going to kill her and then himself. She managed to calm him down and eventually get help from the police.
The second time, though, he told her she wasn't going to talk her way out of it.
As he drove them away from her house, where her then-11-year-old daughter, Erica, was with Archer's 9-year-old godson and 14-year-old niece, Brown told her to call the plumber and tell him it was all just a joke, that the rifle he was holding was actually just a BB gun.
As she searched for her phone, she realized her purse was behind the driver's seat. In it was the .38 caliber Ruger handgun she'd gotten after the first kidnapping attempt.
"Please, Jesus, give me strength," she prayed as she retrieved the pistol.
She pushed the rifle barrel out of the way and shot Brown with her gun, emptying it before jumping out of the car and running down the street, about a mile from her home. Witnesses said that Brown had gotten out of the car and aimed the rifle at her. She kept running in a zig zag pattern, coming out of her flip-flops. A passing motorist picked her up.
"Get me back to my kids,'" she told him.
Brown had gotten back into the car and was pronounced dead at the scene.
During their relationship, she says, Brown never physically assaulted her, although she says there was emotional abuse.
"I never felt like I was going to be physically abused until there was a gun to my head."
Ask Archer, 48, how she recovered from that trauma, how she no longer needs to sleep on her closet floor, and she replies quickly. "Therapy. To realize that's the past and we can move forward. I had to do what nobody would ever want to do, but I'm still worthy of a good life. I used to think I was saved for my daughter. Now I feel like I was saved to help more than just my daughter."
In 2012, Archer formed the nonprofit Women's Own Worth to help survivors of violence not only deal with the aftermath emotionally but to help them negotiate the legal system and with other needs such as dental health, money for college, food and help with housing.
The fourth edition of WOWapalooza, the group's annual fundraiser, is Oct. 12, at the Arkansas Governor's Mansion. The event features food, drinks, live and silent auctions and entertainment.
Archer grew up in southwest Little Rock, the youngest of Hiram and Pat Stalter's three children. Talking at her Little Rock salon, Beyond Hair, she's wearing a blue top with black pants. From a thin, gold necklace hangs the Women's Own Worth logo -- two connected Ws with an O in the middle spelling WOW. She keeps a tissue nearby and frequently dabs away tears as she recalls her story and the people WOW assists.
The group has helped "hundreds" of women and men, she says.
"Right now we have 15 people in therapy at no cost to them," she says. "That's a very big deal, and we're only able to do this because of our fundraiser. We have zero federal or state grants."
Brandi Strickland of Searcy first heard of WOW after the August 2016 murder of her mother, 51-year-old Stacy Jo Moss, in McRae.
"They contacted me either a day after or two days after my mother was murdered," Strickland, 31, says. "They were there to help me with court dates and the funeral. I was struggling, trying to make ends meet after my mother passed away, and my car ended up getting repossessed. Women's Own Worth helped me get a new vehicle."
Strickland says that WOW representatives were at every court date until Moss' killer, Strickland's stepfather, Bobby Moss, was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
"I didn't know what to do" after the murder, Strickland says. "I had no idea where we went from there. Without Women's Own Worth, I wouldn't have known what steps to take."
Rebekah Tucci is the former director of the Domestic Violence Program, Arkansas Supreme Court Administrative Office of the Courts. She met Archer when Archer reached out to her about the 63-page guidebook Domestic Violence: A Practical Guide for Navigating the Legal System in Arkansas, one of two guides Tucci was involved with to help survivors and also court workers dealing with domestic violence and the legal system.
Tucci says that the way WOW emphasizes overall care is akin to the hierarchy of needs based on psychologist Abraham Maslow's theory that there are five levels of human needs beginning with physiological ones such as food and water and capped by the self-actualization of achieving one's full potential.
"[Domestic violence] shelter programs are focused on food, clothing and shelter," says Tucci, who now works with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges in Reno, Nev., and notes that she is not speaking on behalf of the national council.
"Oftentimes survivors of trauma are trying to figure out, 'Am I safe today?' What Jajuan does is help bridge that gap between the need for safety and into being able to articulate victimization, being able to move through it and onto being able to self-actualize. That's something that no other program that I know about in the country does. She's doing something amazing."
Archer, though, is quick to deflect credit or praise.
"It's not 'Me,' it's 'We,'" she says. "I could not do this on my own."
'IT HAPPENS'
WOW's volunteer board members are Rebecca Reynolds, executive director of the Arkansas Community Action Agencies Association; Kelly Gleason of Gleason Insurance; Lize Wilcox, a forensic chemist with the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory; and Dr. Frank Peretti, a medical examiner with the crime lab.
WOW has an arrangement with Riverstone Wellness Center, a Little Rock clinic that specializes in helping survivors of trauma through therapy. The group also works with Little Rock Family Dental Care, which reduces rates on dental work for the survivors that WOW helps. Lawyers with the Lancaster Law Firm in Benton accompany Saline County WOW survivors to court when they are seeking orders of protection.
Last year, WOW received a gift of two acres of land that Archer hopes will one day be the site of transition homes for survivors of violence.
WOW work is all in the family, as well. Archer's husband, Greg, whom she married in July 2014 and who is director of architecture at engineering and design firm Garver, did the preliminary drawings for a planned Women and Children First facility.
"There are so many Arkansans who are so wonderful," Archer says. "Every need has been met every time. If somebody needs a car, we start reaching out, and it happens. When people need mental health therapy, it happens."
And while courts provide advocates for survivors, and the attorney general's office has a reparation fund for survivors, Archer sees WOW as covering other needs that aren't always met.
"We bridge the gap of the services that are available," she says. "They have so many cases that sometimes I think a lot of information falls through. We try to fill the gap in any way we can."
A NEW LAW
Archer's father was a hairdresser (even after a stroke a few years ago, he sometimes still cuts her hair), and cosmetology was a career she started pursuing as a teenager. Through a program at McClellan High School she was able to take cosmetology classes at Mills High School.
"Like everything else people do, whether it's biking or whatever, if you're good at it, all of a sudden you really like it," she says. "I was really good at cosmetology and thought that I would like this as a career. It's been great for me."
She has had her cosmetology license since 1987 and opened Beyond Hair in 1994.
"You get to see an instant result in people's outlook," she says of her work. "Not only on the outside, but on the inside. People have more confidence when they look good. It's always been real special to me."
And it's a line of work where one can become a trusted listener.
"Being a cosmetologist, you hear stuff that people might not disclose to their best friend or their mom. I've heard a lot of stories about domestic violence through my job."
When she learned about an Illinois law that requires cosmetology students to get training in how to spot signs of domestic violence and sexual assault, "I got chill bumps," she says. "I knew we needed to have that here."
Archer reached out to state Rep. Charlene Fite (R-Van Buren) and began the process of bringing a similar law to Arkansas.
"I knew immediately that it was something I wanted to be a part of," says Fite, who is in her third term as a representative and sponsored of the bill. "Jajuan was a great help. We met with people from the health department and the cosmetology board and figured out a way to implement it."
House Bill 1720 passed easily in the House of Representatives and the Senate during the 2017 legislative session and became Act 488 in March. The law requires that Arkansas cosmetology students receive an hour of domestic violence and sexual assault awareness training.
"They won't be mandated reporters or counselors," Fite says. "We're just saying that if you see signs of abuse, you can say 'I have some brochures that might be of interest to you.'"
Archer adds, "It's for the cosmetologists, too. They can go home and breathe a little easier knowing that they did what they could to help someone."
PASSING IT ALONG
In the five years since WOW was founded, Archer has seen survivors of violence not only get on with their lives but also help others.
"One of the first people we helped was a woman who was attacked by four guys as she was leaving work," Archer remembers. "They crushed the bones in her face. They really hurt this young lady, and you can imagine the trauma that follows, even after your face has healed."
The woman was in therapy for quite a while, Archer says, and now "she's so strong mentally that she is trying to help other people. That's what we see all the time. I would say nine out of 10 people we help, after they've done their own healing, come back and say 'What can I do for others?' It's not always through WOW, and it doesn't have to be, it's just paying it forward."
Strickland asked Archer to take the Women's Own Worth booth to her son's pee-wee football game in Searcy to pass out pamphlets, ribbons and spread the WOW gospel.
"Nobody here even talks about domestic violence," Strickland says. "It really helped out. My son is 12, and now he can talk about it with his friends. Some women are so scared that they will end up just like my mother. I want to help try to change that and get the word out that there are people who care and will help you get out of situations like that."
Archer often tells her story as a public speaker. It's never easy.
"People that haven't been through it don't know. I want everyone to know that when people do share their stories, it's such a big deal. I know how big a deal it is when they're telling me their stories. That's how I can relate to them."
And she keeps telling her story, because she has been at the wrong end of a gun, because there are people who need help.
"I haven't done anything by myself, but if you have an idea, it starts with you," she says. "Do something and other people will do it when they see good happen. I mean, it happens, I'm telling you, over and over."
Tickets to WOWapalooza are $100 and can be bought online at eventbee.com/v/wow_events or by calling (501) 303-9978 .
Jajuan Archer
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: June 21, 1969, Little Rock
FAMILY: husband Greg Archer, daughter Erica Cloy Legate and stepsons Ian and Adam Archer
THE PLACE I’D MOST LIKE TO VISIT IS Paris with my daughter, Erica.
FAVORITE MEAL: seared tuna with vegetables at Benihana’s
I DRIVE my daughter’s 2012 Fiat. I love tooling around in her car.
THE LAST BOOK I READ: It’s Your Time by Joel Osteen
MY PEEVE IS my children ignoring me.
FAVORITE SCHOOL SUBJECT: cosmetology
MY PERFECT DAY WOULD BE a day of not hearing about violence.
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: assertive
Tickets to WOWapalooza are $100 and can be bought online at eventbee.com/v/wow_events or by calling (501) 303-9978.
High Profile on 10/01/2017