Gina M. Garcia is the 1%. Ninety-nine percent of all children abducted by a stranger are murdered within the first 24 hours. At the tender age of eight, Gina saved herself by jumping out of a moving car half-naked, after being brutally raped, sodomized, and assaulted at knife point, at the Fashion Square Mall in Orlando, Florida on October 12, 1981. Gina was taken by the same person that abducted and murdered Adam Walsh, (son of John Walsh, the host and creator of America’s Most Wanted). After Gina’s innocence was stolen, she experienced decades of self-destructive behavior including dropping out of high school and college.

In 2006, Gina was once again victimized when her business was burglarized in an apparent hate crime, thus triggering suppressed memories of that horrific day twenty-five years earlier. She began to feel like she was losing her mind and sought out mental health treatment from the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital, where she was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There she learned the necessary tools to not only live with PTSD, but to excavate and heal much of childhood trauma.

With Gina’s deep understanding of the journey of healing, from the long-term effects of sexual trauma, she was inspired to write a script with hopes of helping other survivors. During an award ceremony for a film project she had helped produce, Gina bumped into award-winning writer/director Patty Jenkins, whom she admired for her work on ‘Monster.’ She believed Ms. Jenkins was the only one who could direct her story and asked her, but was told “No Gina-- you have to tell your story.” Gina stated she wasn’t a director, but Ms. Jenkins response was “you will be when you are done”.

Never in her wildest dreams did Gina imagine that the director of ‘Monster’ would teach her how to be her own ‘Wonder Woman!’ With Patty Jenkins as mentor, Gina wrote, produced and directed her life story in her directorial debut “Untold: This is My Story” which she self-funded, adapted into a book called “Untold: I am the 1%” and launched a charity called the “The Untold Project” where survivors of sexual assault have a safe space to tell their own stories. Gina believes that when it comes to trauma, no story should go UNTOLD!