‘I am so, so sorry this happened to her’: Rape, kidnapping victim of Raymond Moody speaks out
Kerri Harding was kidnapped by Moody in 1983. She was 8. Moody was 23.
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WMBF) - Childhood memories can often fade, but for Kerri Harding, the events from the winter of 1983 are etched in her memory permanently.
“By the time I get up to his car, he’s unlocking the passenger door of his car and he threw me in. He drove off, had me out of there so fast, I couldn’t even blink, that’s how fast it happened,” said Harding.
Raymond Moody took Kerri Harding in 1983. She told WMBF News he drove her to an undeveloped housing site in Vallejo, CA a few miles from her school, where she was hoping to play with a girl her age.
“And then he assaulted me, brutally, for hours,” said Harding.
By telling Moody that she needed to go to the bathroom, Harding was able to escape from his car, run and find help.
Harding immediately told her family, who filed a police report.
“My mother and my aunt got in the car with me every single day and drove and drove up and down every street, looking for the description I had given of his car, and it wasn’t very long until the police found him,” recalled Harding.
What Harding didn’t find out until a few months after her attack was that she was not the only victim. She says she was one of seven girls under the age of 14 that Moody also kidnapped and assaulted.
The details are listed on Moody’s sex offender profile with SLED.
The charges landed him with a 40-year sentence, but he was released from California State Prison Solano in 2004, after only serving 21 years. That’s when he moved nearly 3,000 miles from California to Georgetown, South Carolina.
“You know when you’re the sixth of seven girls, what you know for sure is that he’s never going to stop doing this,” said Harding.
In 2012, when Moody was first named a person of interest in the Brittanee Drexel case, Harding said she spoke with police in Myrtle Beach and told her story publicly.
“I did everything I thought I could do to help them have evidence to support that he had done this to Brittanee. For instance, I told them to get my records here and compare them to Brittanee’s records and they did and the similarities were uncanny,” said Harding.
Harding has been emotional since she found out Moody was behind bars again. Those emotions multiplied Monday.
“I was sickened, that’s all I can say, I was sickened. He needs to be put away forever,” said Harding.
For Drexel’s family, Harding has a tearful apology, one she says she, herself, will never hear for what she went through.
“I’m so, so sorry this happened to her.”
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