— In a growing culture of divisiveness, a 27-year-old Raleigh woman, who now lives in Charlotte, feels like she has put a face on how someone's views can lead to violence.

"Free speech doesn't mean you can run up on someone in the street and punch them randomly because you don't agree with them. It doesn't mean you can mow them down with your car. It doesn't mean that you can drag them into someone's backseat and assault them," said Calla Hales.

Since Hales was 8 years old, she has worked in the family business - running abortion clinics in Raleigh, Charlotte and Georgia. After attending college and graduate school in New York, she decided she was passionate about women's reproductive rights and decided to come home and take over the clinics.

She was used to protesters exercising their right to free speech outside of her clinics, but when she was raped by a man she said attacked her of what she did for a living everything changed.

"I told him what I did and he didn't have a problem with it, or it seemed at the time."

When Hales met a man at a Raleigh bar, she told him she was the head administrator of "A Preferred Women's Health Center," which operates abortion clinics.

"I told him what I did and he didn't seem to have a problem with it, or it seemed at the time," she said.

On their second date, in Nov. 2015, something changed. He started asking her a lot of probing questions about her job.

"Just being very standoffish, rude and acting oddly," Hales said.

She ended the date. The man walked her to her car in the corner of a shopping center parking lot.

"I got dragged into my car by him," Hales said.

She froze. He took the seatbelt and put it around her neck.

"At that point, I was just hoping to make it out of the car," Hales said.

She was raped. She said his motive was clear.

"(He was) calling me a whore. Telling me I was a Jezebel and deserved to die like one. That I deserved this. That I deserved to die for the babies that I killed," she said.

Hales was bruised, bloody and afraid. She sought medical help at UNC Hospitals and reported the attack anonymously to the Raleigh Police Department.

"It's taken me two years to realize it is not my fault," she said.

"I've heard the rhetoric and the words have become much more hostile, much more violent."

With hundreds of protesters gathering weekly at her clinics, Hales said she was worried about giving them more ammunition.

"I've just watched protesters increase. I've heard the rhetoric and the words have become much more hostile, much more violent," she said.

The clinics, which were started by her mother and stepfather in 1998, serve 25,000 women a year. Hales decided she could use her story to be a voice for them.

"I just want to be able to say, 'You didn't stop me,'" she said. "From this awful experience for me and the pain that I've had to go through, I've been able to help other women."

Even though Hales did a rape kit at the hospital, her attacker was never found. Hales said the man had two Facebook profiles and she is not sure he ever gave her his real name.

She says the incident has made her stronger, and more vigilant than ever of protecting the women who come in and out of her clinics on a daily basis.