The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
JOURNEY TO FREEDOM
Sadie Lane, sister of convicted killer, shares her battle with eating disorders
While some people were soberly remembering the fatal Chardon High School shooting on Feb. 27, the convicted killer’s sister was sharing a message of hope.
Sadie Lane, 23, was asked to speak to an interdenominational women’s group at Northeast Community Church of the Nazarene in Burton Township, but her focus was on surviving her own personal hell.
The Munson Township resident, whose grandparents raised her and her two older brothers, said her struggles began long before a sibling opened fire in the school cafeteria in 2012.
‘Root of rejection’
She was 9 or 10 when she started to have a negative selfimage. She noticed that other children weren’t playing with her as much.
“I believed I was fat and ugly, and no one wanted to be my friend,” she said. “It built that root of rejection.”
By her early teens, she had experienced name-calling about her weight and continued to withdraw from others.
“In the midst of these lies, our family went through an awful trauma,” she said, alluding to her brother, T.J., killing three students and wounding three others.
She was in the room at the time.
“I had a lot of PTSD,” she recalls. “I didn’t even know it wasn’t normal to jump at every sound and be looking for an escape, and that took years to overcome.”
T.J. was sentenced to three life terms without parole. Her other brother died of a heroin overdose the year after the shooting.
Sadie had been brought up in church, but began to question everything.
“I was mad at God,” she said. “I thought the purpose of my life was to lose people and be in pain.”
Downward spiral
She spiraled into depression and sought ways to take control of her life, becoming a certified “angel card reader” and succumbing to eating disorders.
Her grandmother, Carol, was frightened by what she saw and determined to put her into a rehabilitation program.
Sadie, then 17, said the anorexia and bulimia had become a stronghold, and she wanted to protect it at all costs.
“The only thing in my life I could control was food,” she said. “I was screaming at the top of my lungs at her not to take this away from me. I couldn’t see outside of the walls I’d built around myself.”
“The only thing in my life I could control was food,” she said. “I was screaming at the top of my lungs at her not to take this away from me. I couldn’t see outside of the walls I’d built around myself.” — Sadie Lane, on her eating disorders
‘It’s not about me’
Ultimately, she went through The Emily Program in Cleveland Heights, but resisted change and came out still feeling lost.
As a last-ditch effort, she decided to “give God another shot” and began to read her Bible.
“I knew I needed help, even if I didn’t want to admit it,” she said.
She learned of an opportunity for a two-month trip with Teen Missions International to Zimbabwe, Africa. She didn’t particularly want to go, but saw it as a “last hope.”
“(I thought), if Jesus isn’t who He says He is, I have no reason to live,” she said.
After proving to her doctors that she could make herself eat, she was released to go. The trip transformed her life.
“I met the real Jesus there,” she said. “I came back changed, I came back free. I didn’t care about food . ... It’s all about Him; it’s not about me.”
Moving on
Her life now involves helping others, through her testimony and as a part-time personal trainer at a local gym.
She holds out hope that T.J. will experience the same supernatural deliverance from his own demons. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia after the shooting, she said.
“What we saw that day was not the real him,” she said. “He was so sweet, such a big heart.”
She sometimes wonders whether she missed signs that might have helped prevent the tragedy.
Her faith helps her deal with such thoughts, and she continues to pray for the families who lost loved ones.
She has come to terms with being associated with “the Chardon shooter,” and finally feels free from the slavery to what others think of her.
“I know that that part of the past doesn’t define who I am,” Sadie Lane said.