A Hard-Knock Life

"He was never really physically violent with me," says his second wife, Pamela Lark. "Sometimes his words and actions I didn't trust, so I had to put out protection orders." She asked for one before they got married and one after.

The pair tried counseling but agreed to divorce in 1995.

"He has a heart of gold," Lark says. "After we had divorced, he did things in the community, got more active."

Hunt says his turnaround began in 1989, when he was convicted on drug charges and spent two years in prison. There, he read books on black history. After his release, he started speaking at schools and juvenile detention centers, and he became a patient representative at Samuel U. Rodgers Community Health Center. He also attended meetings at Ad Hoc, the community organization now known as Move Up.

But his activism took off when he attended the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., in 1995. Thanks to an introduction from Jesse Jackson, whom Hunt had met in Kansas City the year before, Hunt became a protégé of march organizer Farrakhan. Though Hunt never converted to Islam, he says Farrakhan's powerful self-help messages hit home.

"Sure, I robbed. Sure, I hustled women. Sure, I did all these bad things," he says. "But I put back twelve years of service in the community."

Hunt says his latest indictment shows that the Jackson County prosecutor's office, which Hunt has criticized in the past, is out to get him.

"The way the prosecutors are going after Ron, it's clear it's an abuse of power and there's some kind of personal vendetta," Washington says.

"Who ever heard of somebody getting indicted for a domestic abuse?" Hunt says.

John Liebnitz, spokesman for the prosecutor's office, says state law prevents him from discussing why a grand jury was convened, but he says that the office has no special agenda with Hunt. "The only interest the prosecutor's office has is fighting the crime he's accused of," Liebnitz says.

For his part, Hunt says he's planning a forum in February to examine the prosecutor's handling of the Wilson and Davis cases. "We will do a report card on prosecutors and police," he says. "We have too many people out here on the streets who have killed people. That's where our tax dollars go. This summer, it's going to get real hot down at the courthouse."

But Hunt might be feeling some of that heat himself. His own court date has not yet been set.