Kate Ranta: Survivor Inspired Speak Up - SISU

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Kate Ranta: Survivor Inspired Speak Up - SISU

On November 2, 2012, Kate Ranta and her father were shot twice each by her estranged husband, Thomas Maffei--in front of their 4-year-old son. Get out.

On November 2, 2012, Kate and her father were shot twice each by her estranged husband--in front of her then 4-year-old son. This care page documents her journey toward healing from the horror of domestic violence at the hands of a textbook sociopath. This page is also dedicated to everyone who has experienced domestic violence. Please stay strong...and safe. Seek help. Speak up...loudly!

10/21/2026

Thanks Vanessa for the prompt idea you heard about. 🤣 Ask AI to create a movie you belong in. Mine knows me well. 🤣🤣🤣

🎬 SEA HAG: A New Kind of Hero

Genre: Dark comedy meets inspirational drama, with a killer New England soundtrack.

The Plot:

At 54, a sharp-witted, fiercely independent woman living on the Massachusetts coast has survived things that would have destroyed most people. She’s raised children, challenged powerful institutions, loved the wrong people, and learned that peace is worth more than anyone’s approval.

Now, armed with sarcasm, an unapologetic mouth, two cats, excellent music taste, and absolutely zero interest in making herself smaller for anyone, she’s discovering that the best chapter of her life might be the one she’s writing entirely on her own terms.

The Tagline: She didn’t survive all that just to become agreeable.

The Soundtrack: Queen, The Cure, Depeche Mode, and The Smiths.

The Final Scene:

She’s sitting beside the Atlantic, laughing at something completely inappropriate, when her phone lights up. She glances at it, smiles, puts it facedown, and looks back out at the ocean.

For once, nothing needs fixing.

Critics Call It: “A wickedly funny, defiantly feminist love letter to the woman who finally chose herself.”

Rated R. Mostly for language. And a spectacular lack of f***s to give.

⸻

🎬 COMING NEXT: SEA HAG 2 — THE AUDACITY OF MEN

10/21/2026

Before my ex-husband sh0t my father and me in 2012, there were years of warning signs and escalating abuse.

Tonight while scrolling my camera roll, I came across these notes I wrote in 2010–2011, documenting what was happening in my marriage. Reading them again was incredibly triggering, but I’m sharing them during Domestic Violence Awareness Month because I want people to understand what abuse can look like long before it escalates to potentially lethal violence.

The lies, manipulation, intimidation, financial abuse, obsessive control, and threats were all part of a much larger pattern. Like during my grandfather’s funeral, my husband sent me 157 text messages because he couldn’t tolerate not having my attention. He had also told me that after separating from his previous wife, he’d contemplated how he would m*rder her.

One detail in these notes is a particularly disturbing example of gaslighting that I’d honestly forgotten about/blanked on. On Christmas Eve 2008, I grabbed his shirt trying to stop him from taking our infant son, then fled upstairs with both boys and locked us in a bedroom. He unlocked the door, showed me bruises on his neck that he claimed I’d caused, and smugly announced that he’d called the military police to have me arrested. I believed him. But he hadn’t called anyone, and I later learned he’d inflicted those marks on himself. I was so thoroughly manipulated that I documented his lie as fact, believing for years that I’d actually caused those injuries. [THIS IS HOW WOMEN GET BLAMED!]

What strikes me most today is how much I recognized the danger and how hard I was working to protect myself and my children. I documented incidents, contacted law enforcement and military authorities, obtained a restraining order, and repeatedly expressed concerns about our safety. I did so many of the things society tells victims they should do, and I was still nearly k*lled.

We spend far too much time asking victims why they didn’t leave, why they didn’t recognize the warning signs, or why they didn’t seek help, instead of asking why abusers are allowed to continue terrorizing their victims and why the systems meant to protect us so often enable it.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read these notes, because they offer a firsthand glimpse into the reality of coercive control and escalating abuse. And please understand that even some of what I wrote at the time reflected the lies I’d been manipulated into believing.

We need to stop placing the responsibility for preventing domestic violence on victims and start holding the people who choose to abuse accountable.

10/15/2026

These six photographs are of me at Purdue University in the early 1990s. I was 19–20 years old. The same age as Jane Doe, the young woman at the center of the horrific gang 🍇 at Cornell University. When I arrived on campus, when I went to a toga party with a brother at Betas, when I met and dated a Delt pledge, when I went to his formal, when I joined Pi Beta Phi.

I was young, happy, carefree, and full of life. I wanted to make friends, join a sorority, go to parties, meet boys, drink, dance, laugh, and have fun.

And here’s something I’ve thought about for decades: I’ve always considered myself LUCKY that I made it through college without being s*xually assaulted.

I attended fraternity parties. I drank. I found myself in vulnerable situations. And I THANKFULLY encountered young men who respected my boundaries, didn’t pressure me, and didn’t take advantage of me.

HOW TWISTED IS IT THAT I’VE SPENT MORE THAN 30 YEARS FEELING FORTUNATE THAT THE MEN I ENCOUNTERED DIDN’T 🍇 ME?

Because I know plenty of young women who weren’t so “lucky.”

And here we are, decades later, still having the same conversations about s*xual assault on college campuses, with the same old victim blaming rhetoric.

Don’t drink too much.
Watch your drink.
Don’t go upstairs with a guy.
Don’t dress like a w***e (Shane Gillis can suck it).
Don’t flirt too much.
Don’t put yourself in compromising situations.

I AM SO TIRED OF WOMEN BEING HANDED AN ENDLESS LIST OF RULES FOR HOW TO AVOID BEING 🍇’ED.

How about we start handing MEN a list?

DON’T 🍇 WOMEN.
Don’t exploit someone who’s intoxicated.
Don’t mistake incapacitation for consent.
Don’t pressure women into s*x.
Don’t stand by while your friends assault someone.
Don’t protect predators because they’re your fraternity brothers or buddies.

For generations, we’ve made preventing s*xual assault WOMEN’S responsibility instead of holding MEN accountable for committing it.

We scrutinize what she drank, what she wore, where she went, and who she trusted…instead of focusing on the person who chose to harm her.

Look at these pictures. I was a young woman who had every right to enjoy college without fear.

So did Jane Doe. So does EVERY young woman.

Being s*xually assaulted is not the consequence of having fun. It’s the consequence of someone choosing to commit s*xual violence.

I should never have considered myself lucky that men respected my bodily autonomy. THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE BARE MINIMUM.

It’s time to put the responsibility, the shame, and the accountability where they have ALWAYS belonged.

ON THE MEN WHO COMMIT SEXUAL VIOLENCE.

Not the women who encounter them.

10/07/2026

https://stan.store/AlisaDivine/p/killing-kate-the-next-chapter

I’ve gained a lot of new supporters here recently, so first: welcome. 💜

For those of you are new, but I’ve been yelling about domestic violence and gun violence on this page for 14 years. Over the years, I’ve told this story in the media, in documentaries, at rallies, on the steps of the Capitol, in front of members of Congress and policymakers - anywhere someone would listen.

And there’s a reason I never stopped: I’m lucky enough to even be here to talk about it.

In 2012, after I left an abusive marriage, my estranged husband who was a Major in the Air Force ambushed me at my home and shot me and my father multiple times in front of my 4-year-old son (his own son). We survived. And I learned in the most brutal way possible that “why doesn’t she just leave?” is often the wrong question. Leaving doesn’t necessarily end the danger - more often, it increases it.

That story became Killing Kate, the book I co-wrote with Alisa Divine, with a foreword by actress Evan Rachel Wood. It’s about abuse, coercive control, the warning signs that are so much easier to recognize in hindsight, the systems that failed us, and what it actually looks like to survive and rebuild.

And unfortunately, it feels every bit as timely now as it did when we wrote it. Every time another story of intimate partner violence explodes across the news or social media, people want to understand: How did it get there? Why didn’t she leave? Why didn’t anyone stop him? What were the signs?

That is why stories like mine still matter. There is a demand for this conversation.

Now Killing Kate is entering its next chapter. The book is in development for television, and we’ve released a limited Next Chapter Edition - 1,500 hand-numbered copies, with a signed book, exclusive message from Alisa and me, a private virtual conversation with us, behind-the-scenes updates and a chance to be part of what comes next.

If you’ve followed my advocacy for years, thank you. If you just got here, I’m glad you found me.

Come be part of the next chapter. 💜

***Get your numbered copy of Killing Kate: The Next Chapter:
⁠https://stan.store/AlisaDivine/p/killing-kate-the-next-chapter***

10/03/2026

In not as heavy news, Will and I got to share a concert experience last night: Smashing Pumpkins! His favorite bands are all from the 90s and this is one of the tops. He’s got great taste in music and yep, I’ll take some credit for that. 😉 I’ll post some videos in the comments - they sounded INCREDIBLE and the entire show was gorgeous/dark at times, both musically and visually. I can’t stop thinking about it and that’s how I know I was blown away by a band. 🖤

(I think it’s important to remind trauma survivors with posts like this that there is light and life on the other side of it. It was a very long road for us but I was determined that the failed attempted m*rder by my ex wasn’t going to derail the rest of our lives. He can’t take that from us.)

10/03/2026

A STATEMENT ABOUT THE COMMENTS ON MY CALEB FLYNN POST REGARDING THE MISTRESS:

I’m not defending the mistress, excusing her, or suggesting she bears no responsibility for her own choices. Of course she does.

But Caleb Flynn is responsible for Caleb Flynn’s actions.

Redirecting responsibility toward the younger woman (she enticed him, she encouraged him, she wanted his wife gone) is yet another way of diminishing a grown man’s agency. Whatever she said or did, CALEB had the ability to say no. He had the ability to leave his marriage. He had the ability to walk away from the affair. He had countless choices available to him that did not involve mu*dering his wife. HE chose m*rder.

***Just like my ex did. TM chose to ambush us at my apartment and sh00t us “because I just left.” He didn’t snap. I didn’t do anything to “cause” him to try to k*ll me. His choices are on HIS shoulders.***

Men are fully capable of making choices and being responsible for them. Pointing at a woman and saying “but look what she did” does not make Caleb less responsible for what he did.

That’s not accountability. It’s deflection. And on MY page, I’m not entertaining more whataboutism designed to shift the focus away from the man who m*rdered his wife.

👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇

To the toxic men and the women riding the coattails of the patriarchy who want to derail important conversations on my page? Get f’ed.

STOP babying grown men. Hold them accountable for their own actions.

10/02/2026

Watching a documentary about Aileen Wuornos and I just have some questions.

• What did the men do to deserve it?
• Why were they picking up a hitchhiker in the dark?
• What were they wearing?
• Had they been drinking?
• Why did they let a stranger get in their car while they were alone?
• Why didn’t they just say no?
• Why didn’t they fight her off?
• Why didn’t they scream?
• Why weren’t they more careful?
• Did they have a history of risky behavior?

I mean, men really need to start taking some responsibility for their own safety.

Sounds ridiculous, right?!?

Yeah.

That’s the point.

10/01/2026

**October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and we have a LOT to talk about.**

“Why didn’t she just leave?”

We ask women this ALL. THE. TIME.

Here’s my question:

WHY DON’T MEN JUST FU***NG LEAVE?

You don’t love your wife anymore? Leave.
You met someone else? Leave.
You want a different life? Leave.
You don’t want to be her husband anymore? LEAVE.

Get a divorce. Move out. Split the house. Fight about money. Start over. Be single. Go live your new life.

Why is unaliving your wife even an option?

I am so tired of the questions being directed at women.

Why did she stay?
Why did she go back?
Why didn’t she see the signs?
Why didn’t she tell someone?
Why didn’t she get a restraining order?

Maybe we need to spend a hell of a lot more time asking why some men believe a woman dying is preferable to a woman living outside of a man’s control.

Stop asking why she didn’t leave.

Ask why HE didn’t!!! 👹

09/29/2026

EDIT: I didn’t expect this post to get the engagement it has but here we are. I’ve deleted comments and blocked people making victim blaming statements, outright ignorant comments, male apologists/“women do it too” bu****it. A couple people even complained about use of “unaliving,” obviously clueless that Meta suppresses certain words like k*ll and m*rder. 🙄 Welcome to my page I’ve had for 14 years since my family and I were almost unalived by my psychopathic, abusive ex-husband. If you have questions about my story, you can scroll my page, Google me, order my book that was published in 2019 (Killing Kate, on Amazon). October is DV Awareness Month, let’s keep exposing these monsters!!

***Just a reminder: you never know who you could be married to.***

Look at these photos.

On the left is Ashley Flynn with her husband, Caleb Flynn, who is currently on trial for unaliving her.

On the right is me with my ex-husband, the man who shot and nearly ended me.

Two smiling couples. Two completely normal-looking men.

Because homicidal men don’t generally walk around looking crazed or psychotic or waving flags to let you know they’re unsafe. They look like husbands. Boyfriends. Fathers. Coworkers. Friends. Neighbors. They smile for pictures. They can be charming. They look like men you would trust.

And as we continue the horrifying conversation around the Cornell 7, and the men who knew what was happening and did nothing, we need to stop pretending violence against women is some collection of rare, isolated horrors.

***Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of the most lethal violence women face. In CDC data examining female intimate-partner homicide, 98.5% of identified suspects were male.***

That doesn’t mean all men are dangerous (and oh how sick I am of having to repeat that - by now we should know it’s “not all men” 🙄). It means women are allowed to name who our most dangerous predators statistically are…men.

But danger doesn’t always look dangerous at all.

Sometimes it looks like this. 👇

09/27/2026

I am so fu***ng tired of this.

In just the past few weeks, my feed has been a relentless parade of women being r***d, s*xually assaulted, stalked, abused and murdered overwhelmingly by men who felt entitled to their bodies, their obedience, their attention, or their lives.

A woman says a man masturbated next to her on a United flight while staring at her and she was required to return to the seat beside him for landing.

A former Cornell student has filed a lawsuit alleging that seven fraternity members drugged and gang-r***d her for HOURS. It was a guy friend of hers that lured her there.

And the domestic violence cases coming across my feed lately read like a fu***ng nightmare. Women shot and killed by their husbands. Women murdered in their own homes. Women attacked by men they loved and trusted. Women trying to leave. Women who did leave. Women whose children witnessed the violence.

And then we inevitably hear: “Not all men.”

Of course not all men.

But somehow women are expected to know WHICH men.

We’re told not to walk alone. Watch our drinks. Share our locations. Check the back seat. Don’t wear headphones. Don’t be too trusting. Don’t reject him too harshly. Don’t go home with him. Don’t stay with him. Leave at exactly the right time, in exactly the right way because leaving can be dangerous too.

And when fathers talk to their daughters? Suddenly they understand perfectly well what some men are capable of.

I survived male violence. I know what it feels like when the person who is supposed to love you decides he is entitled to control you and what can happen when that control is threatened.

So yes. I am fu***ng angry.

I’m angry that women are still being asked what they did, why they stayed, why they went there, what they drank, what they wore, why they trusted him, why they didn’t see it coming.

Maybe we need to spend a hell of a lot less time teaching women how not to become victims and a hell of a lot more time demanding that men confront the violence, entitlement and misogyny of other men.

Women are exhausted.

And we have every fu***ng right to be.

Address

Delray Beach, FL
33444–33448, 33482–33484

Website

http://www.kateranta.com/

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