HIS STORY WAS PUBLISHED in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence. Subscribe to its newsletters.

One week in November 2008, Dawn Williams-Stewart showed up for work at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, in Fairfax, Virginia, with bruises on her face. A close friend in the financial services division, where Dawn worked, saw her crying.

“Look at my mouth,” Dawn said, according to notes from a law enforcement investigation. Her husband, Antonio Stewart, had almost broken her jaw, she explained.

Dawn, who was 41, and among the NRA’s few Black employees, had been open with coworkers about her fear of Stewart; she was in an abusive relationship, and disclosed that he had threatened to kill her. She confided to a senior colleague, Sonya Rowling, who is now the NRA’s treasurer and chief financial officer, that Stewart said, “If I can’t have you, no one can.”

Dawn and Rowling had recently discussed getting a restraining order against Stewart. Dawn had been reluctant because she thought it might inflame him, so Rowling said the NRA would help when she was ready. On the day she saw Dawn’s jaw, Rowling insisted it was time to move forward and meet with Gordon Russell, then the NRA’s head of security. The three gathered together, and Dawn described her situation. Russell instructed her to get a restraining order. The NRA’s general counsel, the investigative notes say, sent Stewart a letter informing him that he was prohibited from the...

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