Flory Teletor was 17 when she began living with her boyfriend, Santo, in a cramped apartment in Guatemala City. Santo, who was 20, worked as a security guard. He was violent and controlling. He gave Flory a daily allowance of 20 quetzals ($3.50). She had to account for every cent; when she failed to do so, he would beat her. Sometimes, he would brandish the pistol he used for work, even shooting above her head. Flory was terrified, but she had already fled an abusive father and had no other place to go. Then one evening, Santo came home in a rage. He had heard that Flory was cheating on him with the man in the apartment above. "He thought I had been writing this man letters," she says. "No matter what I told him, he didn't believe me."
Santo came at Flory; she thought he was going to hit her. Instead, he pulled out his pistol and fired. "I was so frightened that I didn't hear the shot," she says. "All I knew was that suddenly I was lying on my back, and I couldn't stand up. My legs seemed incredibly heavy, like my shoes were concrete blocks."
The bullet had severed Flory's spinal cord, instantly leaving her a paraplegic.
Santo called an ambulance and Flory was rushed to hospital, where she spent the next two days in an intensive-care unit. When the police questioned him, Santo said there had been a robbery at the local bakery, and that Flory had been shot in the crossfire. "He told me to say the same thing," Flory explains.
After her discharge, Flory went to live with her mother, father and grandmother. Santo also moved in. (He has never been charged with
