Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Michael Alison Chandler.

Alberta Williams friend’s four brothers took turns raping her. It was her friend who helped tie her down.

She was 13.

She says it was turning point in an already difficult life that would, for the next four decades, become dominated by drug use and on-and-off homelessness.

Three out of four women in Washington, D.C. who are homeless and living without children are survivors of violence, according to a new report by the D.C. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

These women are especially vulnerable to continuing violence while they are homeless.

Almost two-thirds — 63 percent — reported at least one act of violence against them during their current episode of homelessness or housing instability.

There has always been an understanding that violence is part of the picture for homeless women, said Kris Thompson, executive director of Calvary Women’s Services and co-chair of the council that spearheaded the report. “This report shows the ways in which violence and trauma are at the heart of the issue.”

Because their numbers are small in comparison with the numbers of families or single men, service providers say the specific needs of these unaccompanied women can be overlooked.

The report, the first of its kind, was designed to provide a fuller picture of who these women are and what they need. It involved detailed interviews with 434 women conducted between Aug. 26 and Sept. 8, 2017, by service providers who know them.

Three-quarters of those surveyed were African American women, and 72 percent had lived without housing for longer than a year or had lost housing at least four times in the last three years. Nearly a third reported current or past drug use, and 72 percent reported mental health issues, ranging from feeling depressed and anxious to hearing voices and having thoughts of hurting themselves.

Nearly a third — 31 percent — said that violence is the cause of their homelessness or housing instability. The number is nearly three times the rate previously reported in the 2017 census.

In addition, 29 percent reported they had engaged in “survival sex” in their lifetime, a term that was defined as “trading sex for food, money, alcohol or drugs, a place to stay, or any other goods.”

And 28 percent said they have been at some time forced, threatened or pressured into performing a sex act with another person. Of those, 36 percent said they had been trafficked.

Overall, 54 percent said they had been a victim of violence during their current episode of homelessness. The rate was higher — 63 percent — for women with a history of violence. Research has linked childhood abuse and trauma to higher rates of mental health issues, substance abuse and other risky behaviors in adulthood.

Advocates say the report has implications for how to serve these women, including by providing safe housing and more therapeutic services for survivors of trauma.

“We tend to look at women fleeing domestic violence as this group of women for whom violence is an immediate crisis,” Thompson said. “And it is, but violence against women is happening all the time to so many of these women.”

The report also found that a quarter of women surveyed did not stay in any kind of shelter, putting them at increased risk of violence. About 12 percent said they had spent most of the past month on the streets, and another 12 percent were “unstably housed,” often couch-surfing in people’s homes.

For Williams, violence was a part of her life before and while she was homeless. On Valentine’s Day 40 years ago, she was shot in the back by her then-infant son’s father. She lost a kidney, and he went to prison for 15 to 45 years, a sentence that ended a five-year relationship that was abusive from the beginning.

And she bears a three-inch scar on her cheek, where another drug addict cut her with a knife eight years ago, because she would not give him any crack cocaine.

There were other traumatic events in her life: Her mother left her with her father when she was a baby. Then her father was incarcerated when she was 13, and she was sent to live with her estranged mother.

She had her first child at 14, and two more over the next decade.

Her mother and other relatives mainly cared for her children while they were young. She spent a lot of time living on the streets, in and out of shelters or rehab.

During her decades of abusing drugs, Williams said she often did what she needed to do to get high, including selling drugs and sex.

It took a long time to talk about these things, she said. Through years of therapy, she learned how to trust enough to be honest. “If you are not honest about what’s really going on with you, you are doomed to repeat,” she said.

Now, she is reliving many painful experiences as she is writing her life story, a book that her daughter thinks should be titled “Nine Lives,” she said.

She is in a different place now, with nearly eight years of sobriety and a permanent apartment. She has shelves filled with plants in her tidy living room, and, on a Sunday afternoon, oxtails in the slow cooker filled the kitchen with the smell of dinner.

Twice a week, she volunteers in the reception area of her community, greeting homeless women who come for meals, showers, or laundry and help at a busy day center.

“When I see them, I see me,” she said.

Williams is worried that the message of #MeToo is not trickling down to the women she sees coming and going with their heavy bags and worries.

“They don’t know there is help. They don’t know you can say ‘no’ and mean ‘no,’ ” she said.