(calm music) - There's a lot to be afraid of.

There's a lot of deep uncertainty out there.

- [Narrator] In November 2019, this 45 year old mother of seven from Georgia, was in Pittsburgh, Squirrel Hill neighborhood revealing who she was a lifetime ago.

- From the time I was 15 until the time I was just about 20 years old, I was a Neo-Nazi White Supremacist skinhead.

My day-to-day life was based on violence.

I hated Jews, I hated black people, I hated Muslims, I hated Latinos, I hated gay people, I pretty much hated everyone.

- [Narrator] The hate she embraced was part of an extremist movement that has only grown more prevalent and more violent since then.

In recent months, men espousing white nationalist ideology, murdered dozens of people near and far.

Including 11 killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue.

- I imagine after last years attack that any time you gather together that there is fear, and I commend you for feeling that fear and facing it and coming anyway.

- [Narrator] She came to share her personal insights into why young people join hate groups.

It's not just ideology, she traces her own hatred back to when she was raped at a party when she was 14.

- I knew that I couldn't tell my parents.

I think there was a protective part of me that knew that I could not take the additional burden of being blamed for what had just happened to me.

Within about six months I was just so filled with self-hatred and self-loathing and so angry, so filled with rage.

(upbeat punk music) I went to a lot of punk shows.

On the periphery of that were the white power skinheads, and I wanted so desperately to feel like I belonged somewhere, so maybe I could belong in this place full of hate.

- [Interviewer] What's the worst thing you did as a member of that group?

- flyering and graffitiing of synagogues, of mosques, racist flyering inside historically black neighborhoods.

We had a tear gas canister in the car that we threw into a gay nightclub.

- [Narrator] She says she was on a path to prison.

- It's not just a hurtful, harmful idea that I had, that it was hurtful and harmful to other humans.

I'm so deeply remorseful.

- [Narrator] After five years in a life of hate, she turned away from it with the help of a woman who took her in.

- Rather seeing me for this violent, hate filled creature that I had become with this gruff and angry exterior and she chose instead to see a hurting and struggling young woman who needed somewhere to be.

And she accepted me fully into her family.

- [Narrator] After that she built a life.

She went to college, married, and is raising a big family.

Her work to fight violent extremism has gained national attention from speaking at the United Nations, to working with schools and community groups sharing her understanding of how hate begins.

- There might be things in our lives that create vulnerabilities, that make us more susceptible to making poor choices.

Ideology is not the primary driver.

- I thought it was eye opening.

- [Man] Hey guys!

- [Narrator] The speech gave students a new way to think about how hate begins.

- I've heard stories of what they're like but not how they got there and how they got out of the position they were in.

- I feel that she was clearly in a really, really rough spot in her life, and she had nowhere else to turn.

- If we've never been through an experience like that, we wouldn't understand where that person is coming from, so it's not just coming from a place of hate, it's also coming from a place of insecurity and vulnerability.

- Somebody walked into this building and their intent was to murder as many people as they could.

If somebody didn't take a chance and believe in me and reach out to me, it coulda been me.

I could have been the person here that murdered these people.

- [Narrator] As Shannon was leaving the Tree of Life, a group of college students arrive to see the memorials.

She explained her violent past and apologized for interrupting their visit.

- Hopefully we're not compromising your experience of being here.

- You're adding to it.

- By doing.

- [Narrator] There, in front of a place so badly hurt by hate, came an unexpected moment of forgiveness.

- We all make mistakes.

- Yeah.

- [Narrator] And proof maybe, that change and redemption are possible.

- How can we transform the whole world if we don't believe that individuals can transform their lives?

And so I continue to go out and talk about helping build children who are actually able to thrive.

They'll feel seen, they'll feel heard, they won't need to go looking in dark and desperate places to try to feel those things.

And so if that is what I can bring then again, that that it a life well spent.

(calm music)