Elyse Umemoto -- Former beauty queen talks about 'double life'

YAKIMA, WASH. -- Elyse Umemoto championed spanersity and women's issues during her reign as Miss Washington 2007.

While she was serving in that role -- and partnering with the YWCA to publicize her platform of "Embracing spanersity, Empowering Women" -- she now says she was privately living "a double life."

"I went from being a passionate advocate to a victim, quite literally a statistic," she said in an interview during a recent visit to the Yakima Valley. "One in four women will be a victim of domestic violence in her lifetime."

Umemoto is the oldest of four sisters, and one of the top three finishers at the 2008 Miss America pageant in Las Vegas. She made it as far as any Miss Washington ever has, tying with 1959's title-holder, Sharon Joyce Vaughn of Port Orchard, as second runner-up.

Outside the limelight, Umemoto was dealing with domestic abuse.

"If this can happen to me -- I was almost Miss America -- nobody's exempt," she said.

Less than two weeks after the Miss America pageant, she filed a report with the Pierce County Sheriff's Department, claiming her ex-boyfriend had physically assaulted her in her Tacoma apartment.

According to the sheriff's report, the Feb. 8, 2008, assault was one of several incidents, going back to early 2007.

"Nobody knew things were bad, and there was this escalating cycle of abuse," Umemoto said. "As traumatic as it was -- and it was -- it was nothing compared to what some women live with on a daily basis, and it strengthened my resolve."