Cedric Youngblood begs for help
It’s just another scam
Dorothy’s relationship with Cedric was so stressful that she lost a tremendous amount of weight, eventually getting down to a size six. Cedric told her that she looked like she had AIDS.
She was spending so much money on Cedric that she couldn’t keep up her car payments. Her new car was repossessed.
By December, 2005, Dorothy had had enough. She planned to move to Florida to get away from her husband. According to Dorothy, Cedric fell on the floor, saying he didn’t want Dorothy to leave him, and that he was going to commit suicide. So when Dorothy went to Florida to stay with a friend, Cedric went with her.
Cedric continued to abuse Dorothy while they were living in her friend’s home. So on February 15, 2006—right after Valentine’s Day—Dorothy left Cedric and moved into a women’s shelter. She was homeless.
“There I was, a 53-year-old woman living in the shelter,” Dorothy says. “I don’t have nothing to show for myself. I was living out of a bag.”
A month later, Dorothy got a temporary secretary job at the Eustis, Florida Fire Department. Cedric made harassing phone calls to Dorothy at her job. According to a police report, Cedric told Dorothy that if she left him, he would “put her in a suitcase.” He also threatened to kill himself.
At first Dorothy was going to take him back, but then she changed her mind. On June 30, 2006, Dorothy got a restraining order against her ex-husband. The Youngbloods were divorced on July 17, 2006.
Giving him food
Still, in August 2006—after the restraining order and the divorce—Cedric showed up at Dorothy’s new apartment, saying he was hungry and had no food. Dorothy didn’t turn him away.
“One part of my mind was saying kick him out,” Dorothy says. “But I try to live by the Bible, and I try to help people. I try not to look at what people have done to me.
“He’s falling on the floor begging me, saying ”˜Ain’t nothing wrong with you, I know it’s me,’” she continues. “If anybody goes through all that drama, you say, maybe this time he really wants help.”
Dorothy later realized that when Cedric came to her home, he left with some of her property—a camcorder, Playstation, and two of her rings. The rings were found in a pawn shop.
Dorothy pressed charges. Cedric tried to get his new girlfriend to bail him out.
With that, Dorothy says, her eyes were open.
“I had a gut feeling all along that he didn’t love me, and he was just using me for what I had,” she says. “But I was willing to sacrifice myself if he would change. My desire was so strong to help him, to change him, that I totally forgot I was destroying myself in the process.”
Victim impact statement
When the case went to trial, Dorothy submitted a victim impact statement. It read, in part:
I stuck by Cedric’s side from April 2003 to September 2006. I have allowed him to abuse me in every way anyone could imagine. I have been physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually abused by him. During the almost three and a half years I have been with him, he has stolen from me, caused me to go to the hospital because he beat me up, choked me almost unconscious, put a gun to my head about three times with his finger on the trigger, dragged me down the street, pulled off while I was trying to get out of my car and caused me to break my ankle, made me walk home in about 15 degree weather without a jacket, mentally abused me by calling me old, wrinkled, and cussing me out in front of his children.
I have literally been through pure hell with this man. Yet still, because of the love of God in me, I gave him food when he came to my door saying he was hungry. I took him to work when he said he did not have a way. And this is the thanks I get.
It’s like I am being punished for being a Christian. He used the fact that I am a minister against me. He knew I was not going to turn him away and he used me, more than one time. He is a cold, calculating, pathological liar who has no regard for no one. He preys on women who have low self-esteem and who he thinks he can control. He separated me from my family, friends, and whoever he thought would open my eyes to what he was doing.
He would come to my home, fall on my floor, pretend to be crying and tell me he wanted my help. He wanted to go to counseling with the pastor to get help. He would beg me to pick him up for church. But all that was a fake. He was scamming me again.
Dorothy recommended that Cedric receive the maximum sentence for his crimes. Cedric went to jail.
Good is buried deep
Dorothy doesn’t regret all the opportunities she gave Cedric. “It took that to make me wake up,” she says. “It was God who brought me out of that bondage, who gave me the strength to say ”˜No’ to Cedric.”
Dorothy still believes everybody has good within them, including Cedric. “It’s in there, but it’s buried deep,” she says. “There comes a time in everybody’s life, if they keep messing up, that they come to a point where they need serious counseling. I guess he didn’t reach that point. Maybe he’ll never reach it.”
But she knows she made the right decision to get away from him. “I can get more money, and I can get more possessions,” she says. “I can’t get another me.”