Lacy Smith

My name is Lacy Smith, and I’m urging ALL parents in the Dallas, Texas area to please read this article and share it far and wide.

I'm exposing the decades of sexual abuse that I and my sister Cheyenne Smith have endured at the hands of our father Rick Smith, a resident of Dallas, Texas and former employee of the Episcopal School of Dallas who lived and worked on the grounds.

I and my sister were raped by our father as children and as adults and I have strong reason to believe that there have been other victims who attended the Episcopal School’s sleep-away summer camp’s at Wolf Run Ranch between the years of 2011-2015.

I have since moved states for my protection in anticipation of releasing all of the information that I have regarding my father’s abuses and predatory behaviors. Additionally, my mother Bambi Smith knew of our father’s abuses and did nothing to stop them.

The earliest rape I remember took place when I was just 7 years old.

It was the year 1993 when I awoke startled and confused to my father on top of and inside of my small body.

Out of fear and shock, I passed back out.  

The rape when I was 9 was different. This one I can recall with crystal clarity. 

My father had gone into a rage over who knows what – he did this sometimes – and on this particular day, I became the target.

In his rage, he hurled all 60-something pounds of me onto my bed, pinned me down by my throat using his forearm, reached down to rip my underwear off, and started raping me. 

I was fully coherent, and all I could do was freeze and wait for it to end.

When he finished, he gave me a look of disgust and walked out as if I were nothing. 

At that point, the emotions began to bubble to the surface, and I remember sliding off of my bed and onto the floor sobbing and asking him “WHY?!” over and over again. 

My father never did come back, and he never did answer. 

Instead, I’d bear the brunt of answering that question for myself at a later time in my life. The question of, “Why would the man who I loved most, the man who I thought was my best friend, want to hurt his own daughter so badly?”

And these are just the most vivid rapes I remember.

The worst part of it all? 

My mother knew my father had been sexually abusing me my entire childhood and did absolutely nothing to protect me. Nor did she protect my little sister Cheyenne.

— 

I was 15-years old when my mom said the words “Your dad is sleeping with Cheyenne.”

At the time, my father would leave for a week at a time to care for his terminally ill mother. Whenever he left, he’d take my sister with him. She would have been around 6-years old then.

When my mother shared this information with me, I couldn’t even comprehend what she was saying– it sounded crazy!

At that time, my father hadn’t raped me for several years. Since then, I’d blocked out all of his abuses– a survival tactic to help myself cope with living inside the same house as my rapist.

When I asked my mother why she would say something like that about my dad and little sister, she insisted it was true. When I questioned what we were all still doing here then, she said “I can’t say anything. He’ll take Cheyenne away from me.  He’ll make sure I’m deemed psychotic, and I’ll never see my child again.”

After our conversation, I remember asking my sister where she slept when she went away with our father, and she responded “with dad.” My grandmother lived in a four-bedroom house, and it had enough bedrooms for her to sleep in her own bed, just like she did when she was in our own house. A clue.

Had I been ready for another clue, my mother’s confession paired with Cheyenne’s would have explained why my sister constantly had a super red and inflamed vagina when she was a baby.

But I didn’t want to believe what she was saying was true, nor did I want to think about it ever again, so I did my best to push it out of my head and move on while Cheyenne continued staying away with my dad. 

Until I was 16 when my mother finally did leave my father – another clue – and I never saw much of him again.

Not until I was a 24-year old college student, and he begged to have me back in his life, acknowledging that he’d treated me poorly as a child. Wanting my dad in my life, I forgave him, not truly knowing exactly what it was that I was forgiving. 

That’s when the sexual abuse began all over again.

— 

Wolf Run Ranch - Photos from PeoplesNewspapers

I was 25-years old when Rick lived and worked on Wolf Run Ranch in Anna Texas– an overnight camp and outdoor education center for children owned by the Episcopal School of Dallas.

Rick ran the ranch while I lived and went to school in Denton, Texas about an hour away. I’d go to Anna Texas and stay with him all weekend to go fishing, have dinner, watch our TV show, and do what I thought were typical father-daughter activities. 

To my horror, I would come to realize that my father had been drugging and raping me during those weekends.

There was a night after dinner where I I remember feeling unusually tired– a drunk-like feeling that left me feeling off and lightheaded. As my father witnessed my altered state, he joked “Someone’s getting tired and loopy.”

I remember asking aloud “Why do I feel like this? I feel so out of it. I feel drunk.” Except we hadn’t been drinking together– all I’d drank was soda.

His response was simply “I don’t know.” His way of gaslighting me into thinking it was nothing more than fatigue. Not knowing what else to think or do, I went to the spare room I was staying in to get some rest and brought my dog with me, as I always did.

What I remember is waking up in the middle of the night to a feeling of pressure on top of my body. I wasn’t fully coherent, but I could feel something on top of me.

In the morning, I woke up hours past my usual time and didn’t see my dog in the room– this was weird to me because she always slept wherever I was.

What was also weird to me is that my shirt was on backwards– something I’d never done in my adult life.

Finally, when I went to pee, I discharged a white fluid, and I remember thinking that it looked like semen and feeling confused– it was something I only saw after spending the night with my boyfriend. However, he’d been out of town for work, and we hadn’t slept together for two weeks.

Despite all of the clues, my mind would not allow myself to ask the question, “Did my father rape me last night?”

Instead, I’d accept more of his gaslighting statements: “Man, you must have been tired last night!”

This experience would happen for a second time– same exact scenario, except this time my shirt was on the right way. 

At the time, both of these instances were just “weird.” I had no reason to believe, nor would I want to believe that my own father had drugged and raped me. Now I know better. Especially given the pattern. And especially given incident number three. 

One weekend, my father came to visit me in college when my roommate was out of town. We’d gone out with my friends, and I drove us home because he was so messed up, which surprised me because he never got drunk around me. When we got back, he passed out sitting up on the couch– something else he’d never done around me.

This was the same year as the other two incidents, and I now feel my father had accidentally (and thankfully) drugged himself instead of me that night.

During this time my sister also chose to live with my abusive mother and refused to live with my father on the ranch. She would never go there alone instead would always check with me first “Are you going? I only want to go if you are.” Another clue.

— 

I began piecing all of this together starting December of 2022 when the memory of being violently raped at 9-years old came flooding back in. My suspicions about being drugged by my father as an adult felt validated due to a conversation I had with a former friend of his earlier this year– a man he’d had a falling out with when I was in high school. I’ll call him B.

Where I shared with B what I was remembering, his reaction was that he wasn’t surprised that my father sexually abused me given that he knew my father had a sex addiction, that he would frequently visit pornography shops, and that he had cheated on my mother with multiple women. 

From there, B told me that my father had a cocaine addiction as well as an addiction to an illegal drug called GHB– a tasteless, odorless MDMA-like drug in liquid form that he’d would use for bodybuilding and for his sex addiction. His friend said my father once gave it to him and that he ended up blacked out for hours at the bottom of the shower, scaring his wife and waking up confused about what had happened. 

The way he described his experience was eerily similar to what I experienced while staying alone with my father during those weekends at the ranch.

— 

Around the time of my repressed memories coming to the surface in December of 2022, I’d stopped numbing out on weed and alcohol and had begun better supporting myself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. 

This opened up pathways to be able to dig deep into all of the issues I’d had in life, as well as the memories I’d either blocked out for survival or had repressed due to being drugged.

Since then, I’ve spent the past year putting the pieces of my life back together and facing the devastating reality that not only had I been a victim of incest, but that my own mother knew it had been happening to BOTH of her daughters and allowed it to happen on her watch– not only allowed it, but enabled it.

Piecing together all of the signs and disturbing memories and really looking at the big picture of my life, I could now see that everything pointed to severe trauma and sexual abuse.

Signs and memories like:

• My father grooming me as a child by playing “physical games”– pinching my nipples as a “joke” and grazing my vagina with his hand while we were rough-

• Being around 3 or 4-years old and my mother doctoring up my vagina and begging her not to touch because it was so painful.

• Not being allowed to wear shorts or panties to bed as a child– ONLY a long t-shirt. (Why wouldn’t a CHILD be allowed to cover her most sensitive areas?)

• Waking up at around 4-years old with my father’s hands between my legs and sleeping with heavy covers after that. When he asked why I was doing that, even during the hot summers, I remember answering “it makes me feel safer.”

• Hitting the age of 12, and feeling a huge shift towards my father and not knowing why. I felt deep-seeded anger, and I never felt comfortable being around or alone with him. At that age, I also began seeing how evil and hateful he was towards my mother, and I loathed anything to do with him.

• Living with severe paranoia and constant panic that somebody was going to hurt me all throughout my youth.

• Having horrific stomach issues from around 4-years old until my early 20’s. I’d be in the bathroom for an hour sweating with stomach cramps so painful that I would be in tears. I was told that it just IBS– I now know it was emotional distress and trauma

• Nearly committing suicide when I was 15 years old. I put a noose around my neck to hang myself in my closet, but I did not follow throw. I told no one. Around that time, I also started cutting myself, and became bulimic, which went on until I was around 18 years old. All signs of extreme signs of emotional distress.

• Being put in counseling and on antidepressants for depressions when I was in high school– something I now see was my mother’s way of putting a bandaid on my issues without wanting to face or discuss the root cause herself

As if all of this weren’t obvious enough that something was horrifyingly wrong, when I was 19-years old, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. My oncologist, Dr. Stringer at Baylor Medical of Dallas, actually told me that my environment at home was so stressful that it had caused cancer.

Before he told me this, he asked my mother to leave the room and then said to me, “There’s no reason why you should have cancer. You’re 19, you’re healthy and young. Based off of what I know about you and what you’ve shared, the stressed at home is what gave you cancer.”

I knew once I recovered from cancer, I was going to leave home, and I did. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of my health issues.

When I was 25, I had two lower back surgeries for a herniated disc and a slipped disc. They were so extreme, my doctor thought I’d been in a car accident or a horse-riding injury. I had done nothing to bring on these injuries. I now know it was yet another way the stress I’d been carrying throughout my life decided to manifest itself within my body.

As everything came flooding back to me the winter of 2022, the signs and symptoms throughout my life finally made it too hard to ignore the obvious: I’d been a victim of incest.

With all of this coming to the forefront, I reached out to my maternal grandmother and told her what I was remembering, including that her daughter had known. That’s when she started crying and said to me “I knew it! I knew there was something going on!”

That now made two adults who knew and did nothing.

My grandmother told me that my father would not allow me near anyone, that I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, or go anywhere without his permission. She explained that he “lost his ever-loving mind” anytime her and my grandfather dropped by the house and that he would “go through the roof” and yell that they were “not welcome to just stop by and needed to have permission.”

Unfortunately for me and my little sister, my grandmother’s failure to act on her suspicions and her own daughter’s failure to protect us from what she actually knew meant a lifetime of hell for us.

From there, I reached out to Cheyenne.

That’s when I learned that things were worse than I could have ever imagined.

— 

My sister and I didn’t remain super close or talk a whole lot as we each got older, but between the summer of 2022 through winter of 2022, we began to rekindle our relationship. During one of our conversations, I shared with her that I felt I’d been sexually abused at some point in my life but that I didn’t know who did it.

After my memories started flooding in, that’s when I called Cheyenne and asked her, “Remember when I told you I thought I’d been sexually abused but didn’t know who it was? I know now.”

Then I told her it was our dad.

Her reaction was to hang up on me and text me telling me I was brainwashed and in a cult. About a week later, she texted me with regret around how she’d acted and said she needed to speak with me. Still grieving and feeling hurt by her initial reaction, my response was to tell her to never contact me again.

A few days later, Cheyenne’s ex-boyfriend reached out to me on Instagram letting me know that she’d been trying to get a hold of me, and then he dropped a bombshell: my sister and my father were sexually involved with one another.

Not only that, but he shared that Cheyenne had always had full memory of our father sexually abusing her and that he continued to exploit her as an adult in return for money she used on drugs. 

Messages from Cheyenne's ex

Now it all made sense to me.

For as long as I could remember, any time that me, Cheyenne, and our father spent time together, she was always decked out with her hair done up. If it were just me and her, she never dressed the same way. I remember having the thought flash into my mind multiple times, “Is there something sexual going on?” but I’d always shake it away.

Yet now I understand why our father would talk about my sister’s body in front of me, and not just hers, but both of ours. His line was that you “could bounce a quarter off of our asses.” He’d make crude and sexual remarks like that, and I’d tell myself, “It’s just dad being silly.”

But it’s not and never was dad just being silly.

It was my father, Rick Smith, being an incestuous predator and sex addict, and I have reason to believe that my sister and I were not his only victims.

— 

After I learned the truth about my father and my sister, I contacted the Richardson Police Department in January 2023 and filed a report on my father with Detective Pipho.

Along with sharing the details of my sexual assaults, I also also disclosed to him that my father had:

• Been an off-the-books informant for the Richardson Police Department narcotics department in the early 1990’s

• Disclosed to me two acts of arson he committed in Richardson: a garden nursery at Alma Rd. near Collins Blvd and a lumber yard near Phillips St. and Sherman St.

• Been sexually exploiting my sister for sexual favors in return for money to support her heroine addiction

I told Detective Pipho that my father is dangerous and that reporting him could put my life at risk, and I was promised that he would contact me before conducting interviews so I could plan to go somewhere safe. That didn’t happen.

Instead, I didn’t hear from him until March of 2023 when I contacted him first and was told that he had already spoken to my mother, my sister, and my father.

When I asked him he hadn’t told me given that my safety was at risk he casually stated “Oh, I forgot to call you. Sorry.”

To make matters worse, when he began reading my report back to me, I had to correct him, realizing that he didn’t even take accurate notes of the details of my rapes.

Additionally, he NEVER contacted the Episcopal School of Dallas to notify them of the report in effort to investigate if there were any other child victims. 

Instead, I was told that my sister had seemed uninterested in speaking with him and that he’d “try to find her in-person,” and that my father made a false claim about me being in a cult.

I then called Detective Pipho’s supervisor, Sergeant Willardsen, numerous times and left a voicemail– never to be contacted.

After that, I began doing some digging.

That’s when I found a case against a man named Jimmy Derrell Tippie, my father’s friend and coworker from Wolf Run Ranch, who was arrested in 2015 for child pornography ON the school grounds of the Episcopal School of Dallas. Both my father Rick Smith and Jimmy Derrell Tippie were working on that ranch at the same time, holding overnight camps and workshops to children who were middle and junior high-aged while having access to their bunk rooms.

Additionally, I learned that a teacher had been fired from the Episcopal School of Dallas for sexually abusing a student.

With this information, I called the Richardson Police Department yet again to ask why nothing was being done and was essentially told that I could do my own investigation because there isn’t anything further for them to do since it’s past the statute of limitations for my childhood rapes. 

For the rapes I experienced as an adult in Anna County, I was told I could take it up with them. So I did. I called the Anna County Police Department three times, left voicemails and NEVER received a single call back.

I also called the Episcopal School of Dallas nearly a dozen times. I spoke to Sandra Woolever, the receptionist who told me she’d put me in touch with Human Resources. I left three messages with people, asking for Chief Human Resources Officer, Bernadette Gerace, to return my call. I never heard back. After awhile, I believe they began screening my number as my calls starting going right to voice mail, never to receive a call back, even after letting them know that I WAS RAPED by THEIR former employee ON SCHOOL GROUNDS.

It began to feel intentional, and I now believe it that it is.

Even after providing extensive details of multiple crimes, WHY was the Richardson Police Department avoiding an investigation into multiple accounts of CHILD RAPE, especially given that he could have victimized even more children given the access he had at the Episcopal School of Dallas?

My guess?

Between being an off-the-books informant for the Richardson Police Department, to being well-acquainted with the Anna Police Department, to working for one of the heads of the Episcopal School of Dallas, it wouldn’t surprise me that my father has been using his connections to ensure that no one listens to what his daughter has to say about the REAL Rick Smith. That’s one real possibility. Another possibility is that the Episcopal School of Dallas wants to ensure that they don’t have yet another scandal on their hands. 

That’s why I’m now taking matters into my own hands and urging the city of Dallas, Texas to help me in making sure that something is done.

— 

Rick Smith - 6'4" 230lbs. - Short dirty blonde hair, scruff, blue eyes. Carries a knife on body. Carries a gun in vehicle.

To the outside world, Rick Smith may seem like a nice, outgoing, dependable guy you can trust.

He has a beautiful dog and has owned his own landscaping company for the past 30 years, maintaining the yards of some of the wealthiest homes throughout Highland Park, University Park, Preston Hollow, and North Dallas up to Sherman. 

But that’s just what he wants you to see.

The reality is that ever since my father was let go from the Episcopal School of Dallas 8 years ago, he’s lived paycheck to paycheck out of a motel in Plano, Texas.

Why is that? Why would a man who owns his own business and serve the elite of Texas live for nearly a decade choose to live without so much as a stove? Does that behavior seem normal?

He also stores a collection of naked children’s dolls and children’s sunglasses inside of his truck that he’s accumulated from the parks he frequents all over DFW.

Why? What grown man in his 60’s would do such a thing? To him, it’s just “being silly.” To someone who understands predatory behaviors, I say it’s a red flag. Who’s are they? Why is he holding onto them?

Even more chilling is that my father takes his dog all over Dallas, Sherman, and Denton to visit parks and creeks where young children and teen girls hang out and spends time talking with them. He once shared with me “I don’t talk to them very long, though– because then people may think I’m a pedophile.

Parks frequented: Garland Greenbelt and Oak Point Park Nature Preserve in Garlnad, TX. Moss Haven Park, Flagpole Hill, Church Hill Park, and others around University Park and Highland Park in Dallas, TX. Winters Park and Point North Park in Plano, TX.

Who would someone even think or say that about themselves if they were truly acting in innocence? I feel that statement is my father telling on himself, and I feel he uses his dog to lure children into talking to him, especially little girls.

Motel in Plano, TX Rick Smith lives at - Drives a similar Chevy truck to photo - 2007 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTZ Extended Cab bluish green

— 

Today, I’m continuing to heal and create a beautiful new life, yet knowing that my rapist is still out there is something I think about everyday.

I think about the fact that my father Rick Smith RAPED me and my little sister Cheyenne Smith for years, and then went on to have access to HUNDREDS of children and teenagers.

And with everything I’ve shared, my hope is that – whether you’re a parent in the areas I’ve listed, have had a child who attended Wolf Run Ranch, or you were a former student – that you join me in putting pressure on the Richardson Police Department, the Anna Police Department, and the Episcopal School of Dallas to do a formal investigation.

If you had a teenager who attended World Run Ranch, I urge you to think back to when your child returned and ask yourself if they showed any signs that could indicate that something was wrong.

Did they seem depressed? Did the show a change in sleeping patterns and personality? Did they come home groggy and not themselves? If you’re not sure, PLEASE share this article with them. They deserve to know and to feel into things for themselves.

This isn’t just about my or my sister’s justice– it’s about any other child that may have been victimized by my father, too. And the only way we can find out is everyone joins together and speaks up.

Please help me in helping all of us to investigate Rick Smith.