Son of Rape Victim Reunites With Birth Mother, Travels Country as Pro-Life Advocate

Photo: theepochtimes.com

MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. — More than 40 years ago, a mentally disabled teenager became pregnant after being raped by five men. Pressured to abort by the state-run psychiatric facility where she lived, the young woman instead fled. Alone, pregnant, and homeless, she gave birth to a baby boy who would one day become a powerful national voice for life.

That boy is now Steventhen Holland: an author, singer-songwriter, motivational speaker, and pro-life advocate who uses his personal story—marked by trauma, survival, and redemption - to inspire others and defend the unborn.

“I believe God innately put in her heart to fight for her baby and to me, that's a miracle," Holland told The Epoch Times. "My mom was mentally challenged, she was raped, she was homeless, all these things that were against us or against me, but I still have purpose, and I still have a beautiful life despite my conception, despite the circumstances around that."

Holland’s birth mother, Glenda Sue Holt, was a ward of the state of Georgia her entire life, reportedly functioning at the mental level of an 11-year-old. At 18, after aging out of her group home, she was placed in a psychiatric facility and enrolled in a work program that allowed her to leave campus. It was on one of those walks back from work that she was attacked and raped.

Too traumatized to tell anyone, Holt remained silent about the assault until signs of her pregnancy became visible. Staff at the facility quickly pressured her to have an abortion, citing her mental limitations, lack of resources, and the circumstances of conception. Instead, she fled.

Nine months pregnant, Holt made her way to Whitwell, Tennessee, where a 16-year-old boy found her living behind a grocery store and took her home to his family. They cared for her until she gave birth to her son at a hospital in Chattanooga. Just a week later, unable to care for the baby, she surrendered him to Human Services in nearby Jasper. Malnourished and weak, the baby was taken in by a foster family - the Hollands - who nursed him back to health and soon adopted him.

The Hollands, a family in the Chattanooga area, raised Steventhen in a loving Christian home. He didn’t even know he was adopted until he was 8 years old.

“They weren’t hiding it from me, they were just waiting on me the time for me to realize," Holland said. "This family, even though my color was different than theirs, they believed that love goes deeper than DNA, our color, or our blood, so they told me, from the moment that I was placed into their arms as a 7-day-old child, that I was their son."

Despite a happy upbringing, Holland carried deep questions about his origins. “Why didn’t my birth mom want me?” he asked himself throughout adolescence and college.

After marrying his wife, Rachel, and suffering the loss of two children to miscarriage, Holland felt a deep spiritual prompting to search for his birth mother. Armed with only her name and a handful of typewritten documents, he turned to the internet. On the third day of searching, he stumbled upon a magician’s website from Spartanburg, South Carolina. The magician, Steve Holt, listed relatives whose names matched those in Holland’s documents - one of them being Glenda Sue Holt.

After sending a carefully worded email, Holland received confirmation: Steve Holt was his uncle. Two months later, they met in person. Holland learned that his birth mother was still alive and living in a care facility in Jeffersonville, Georgia.

The day after meeting his uncle, Holland traveled with him to see his mother. Though she had significant cognitive challenges, their reunion was powerful.

"'Son, I love you. I always have and always will. And I would’ve never given you up if I could’ve kept you,’” Holland recalled.

Their relationship blossomed over the next 11 years until Ms. Holt passed away on Thanksgiving night in 2020 at age 57. Holland and his daughters lovingly called her “GG” - short for Grandma Glenda.

Since meeting his mother, Holland’s life has taken on new purpose. He authored the book "The Journey" in 2015, began working with pregnancy centers, and launched his own ministry, Broken Not Dead, to bring hope to the hurting and advocate for the unborn. In recent years, he has become one of the top booked pro-life speakers in the country.

“I believe there’s value in life from the womb to the tomb,” Holland said. “... I think, specifically, if you're somebody that has been conceived in rape like I was, you still have worth, and you still have value."

Through his speaking engagements and ministry, Holland hopes to inspire others to see the inherent dignity in every human life - no matter how it begins.

"Those who hurt you thought they could make you carry their evil inside of you by what they did. But that is a lie. The only thing they could place in you was the seed of life - a creation of God - which can never defile anyone."

- St. Olga of Alaska

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