PLAINS TWP. Within days of her marriage, Lynn Shiner said the abuse began.

Shiner, director of the Office of Victims' Services with the state Commission on Crime and Delinquency and a survivor of domestic violence, shared her harrowing story Friday afternoon at the Victims Resource Center's 40th anniversary luncheon at the Woodlands Inn.The luncheon's keynote speaker, Shiner spoke on the importance of advocacy groups like the VRC and how they helped ease her pain after her abusive ex-husband murdered their two young children and took his own life on Christmas Day in 1994.Soft-spoken and steady, Shiner told the audience of 80 how she endured a roller coaster of mental and physical abuse at the hands of her then-husband, Thomas Snead, including being forced to sleep with a surveillance camera on her because Snead believed she was letting other men in through the bedroom window.Before he left home, Snead would lock Shiner's steering wheel to make sure she couldn't drive. If she came home late from work, Shiner was forced to undress and endure a full-body inspection. Repeatedly, she was told she was worthless and no one would want her.Through the torment, Shiner said Snead fulfilled every abuser's goal."He controlled me and isolated me from my family and friends," she said. "They knew nothing of my abuse."Too humiliated to tell her friends she had been raped by her husband and fearful she couldn't raise her two children, Jen and Dave, on her own, Shiner said she told herself "as long as he's just hurting me and not the children, I could hang in there until the kids were a little older."But a near brush with death at Snead's hands forced her to flee, enduring months of custody battles and child support proceedings while the divorce ran through the legal system.Shiner said to this day, she still remembers the voice of a judge who denied supervised visits for Snead."He said, 'Mother, just because he hurt you doesn't mean he'll hurt the children. Supervised visitation denied,'" she said.Still, the process was much easier than having him under the same roof, she said.Eighteen months later, on Christmas morning in 1994, Shiner said she arrived at Snead's suburban Harrisburg home to pick up the children, who had spent the night.But they never made it through to the morning.Sometime after midnight, Snead, 46, stabbed the two children, ages 8 and 10, to death in their beds before turning the knife on himself. She told the audience she later found a checklist from Snead, the last item: murdering the two children."This was my husband's ultimate act of revenge and my worst nightmare," she said, as many VRC employees in audience sniffled and wiped away tears.Even after 20 years, Shiner acknowledged her story was never easy to tell nor was it easy to hear. But she shared it anyway out of belief in the support system that helped her though her own grieving process."I know without a doubt I would not be standing in front of you this afternoon without the support of programs like the Victims Resource Center," she said. "Their ability to touch victims' lives, to listen, to simply be there during some of the worst moments of their lives is priceless."As advocates, members of the Victims Resource Center address crime in all its forms, helping people move from victim to survivor, said Pat Rushton, outreach and education manager."The support of the community in the work that we do is just so important," said Rushton, a retired Wilkes-Barre police officer. "If they weren't supportive of our work then we wouldn't be able to reach all those victims."Shiner, no longer the victim, has been working in the support field for 19 years. Since then, she's helped raise $160,000 in the fight against domestic violence.In 1996, she helped establish a law that became the nation's first statewide phone system for obtaining criminal charge information on those involved in custody cases. It was called "Jen and Dave's Law."Recently, Shiner co-authored her story in "Stabbed in the Heart," along with another survivor of domestic abuse.Shiner thanked those like Carol Lavery, a former VRC director, for supporting her, pushing her and being there for her through her "most vulnerable years.""That's advocacy," she said.She asked the rest of the audience to never doubt the difference they make in victims' lives by supporting groups like the VRC."It's often said 'it takes a village.' Thank you for being part of that village," she said.