Article By Sherri Tennyson // EEW Magazine // Inspirational Stories

A woman who suffered severe neglect, sexual abuse and cruelty as a youth, was full of pain, anger and hopelessness.

How could Kim Zulkowski, who was just three years old when a family member sold her for sex in exchange for drugs and food, ever be whole, and enjoy a productive, happy, successful existence?

This is her story.

“There was raw sewage on the floor, toilets didn't work. We had no running water, no beds, no refrigerator, or stove,” she told CBN’s 700 Club in an interview.

Zulkowski and her 12 siblings all suffered tremendously, regularly rummaging through trash cans, scavenging for food.

“All you had to do was clean off the ants and bugs, and dirt, and that's what we ate. We were always hungry,” she said.

The hunger, mistreatment and sexual abuse took its toll on the poverty-stricken girl, leading her down the dangerous path of self-harm, specifically to deter sexual deviants. “I started cutting private areas of my body. I thought if they saw that there was blood there that they would be scared off,” she explained.

Unfortunately, she said, “I was wrong.” The abuse did not cease.

At eight years old, social services became aware of the dire situation she and her siblings were living in and removed them from the house of horrors. They were placed in separate foster homes.

“The day I was removed and placed in foster care, that was the hardest day of my life,” she said. Being separated from her siblings was too much to handle. It broke her heart.

Over a six-year period, Zulkowski was moved around and placed in several different foster homes where she continued to be sexually and physically abused. Finally, at14, she was released into the care of her Christian grandmother, Margie Ree Harris, who started taking the broken teen to church.

“The first thing that she told me was that ‘I love you.’ I had never heard those words before in my life,” reflected Zulkowski. “She taught me that I was worth something, that God is preparing me for something great.”

Despite the positive affirmation and love, all the hardship she had faced up to that point made her heart hard against God.

“I was hurt and I needed revenge and I needed to be avenged,” she said.

One day, as the teenager was strolling past a church, she heard a woman singing a hymn about an anchor and a solid rock. She said it ministered to the deep places within her.

I need an anchor, Zulkowski said to herself. If Jesus is the answer, I needed to know him.

Right then, she began to pray, telling God, “I know You don't know who I am, because if You knew who I was, You probably wouldn’t have let all these things happen that happened to me. But I hope You want to know me, because I want to know You.”

Her transformation did not happen right away, because Zulkowski admits that her soul was filled with bitterness and hatred. “I began to really wish death on them,” she said of her abusers. “I thought that they deserved to die.”

At 17 years old, she met a Christian man named Alan. The two began dating and she started going to church with him. That is where she learned that she was truly in need of a savior. Zulkowski surrendered her heart to Jesus and was baptized, and God turned her life around in amazing ways.

View the rest of her story below and see her transformation from broken to whole, from poor to successful, from lost to found.