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Nov. 19, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:41:52

"I WAS A VICTIM OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING!" Freedomain Call In

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	Hi, everybody.
	So I'm here with Stacia, and you sent me an email, a message that, I mean, it's kind of ripped out of the headlines of today and is one of the most troubling aspects of human society and some of the effects or the fallout that you're dealing with from that.
	I wonder if you could tell me, our listeners as a whole, a little bit about yourself, your history, and what you're dealing with now.
	Of course. I am a survivor of human trafficking, both sex and labor trafficking.
	And in my trauma, I have come out of that life with complex PTSD, and it makes it pretty difficult to do a lot of really basic, normal, adult-like tasks.
	I have a hard time focusing on And dissociation happens every once in a while.
	But one of the biggest problems that I've been struggling with lately is an effort to be able to communicate properly, especially once emotions become involved in my communication.
	I have a hard time keeping track of what I just said or what was said by my partner.
	In this conversation and it becomes a jumbled mess and then I feel like I keep backtracking or repeating myself over and over again and it becomes frustrating for him because he's able to completely keep a calm head and he remembers all of the details because he's not emotionally flustered.
	I genuinely believe that This is partially because from the age of four, I have suffered from abuse from my stepdad at the time.
	And moving forward through life, I was trafficked at the age of 19.
	And I was trafficked on and off again for about seven years.
	I never really got many opportunities to have conversations where my voice was allowed to be heard, where my opinions mattered, and I was punished a lot for speaking out and sharing my mind.
	So I feel like I'm a baby in terms of communication, where I just don't feel like I have all the proper tools to be able to handle myself in A debate or a conversation where I feel like I'm being triggered.
	Right. It's a real hell of a story and I just first and foremost want to tell you how immensely and deeply I sympathize with This hell that you were put through for years, and I'm so sorry that you got dragged down, obviously against your will, violently against your will, into this underworld of human predation and exploitation and destruction.
	I mean, we don't have to wait to die to see hell, right?
	I mean, you've kind of gone through that.
	Come out the other side, and I'm so sorry.
	I'm just incredibly sorry that these aspects of human nature exist in the first place, because it's hard to picture just how anyone could be so vile and violent, or any group of people involved in this kind of stuff, and to use young people, to use children, as you say, at the age of four, to use young people, as you say, in your late teens, as...
	Slaves. Sexual slaves.
	It's an absolutely appalling aspect of human nature and I'm just so incredibly sorry that through incredible bad luck you just got caught up in this monster land.
	Yeah. It's a troubling thing that the world is plagued with and it In my circumstances, my first trafficker that trafficked me when I was 19, he pretended to be my boyfriend.
	He actually romantically became involved with me, let me live with him and his family, and it was kind of a slow introduction into That world.
	But once I was in it, it was just an onslaught of daily abuse.
	I was malnourished and dehydrated and I maybe got two or three hours of sleep a night.
	So I was very, very out of my mind after only a couple months in that life.
	And I feel like that was really the catalyst to the way that my brain works and processes Heavily emotional information.
	I would get in extreme trouble and get hit, punished, food withheld from me or any number of things that he could think up if I spoke out about something or tried to stand up for myself or even if I just said something he didn't appreciate or didn't like.
	Right. So if we can just rewind and, you know, I'm always of two minds about this stuff because I think it is important for the world to know this world because it is kind of all around us.
	It's not nearly as rare as we would like to think.
	But at the same time, I don't want to sort of...
	Be perceived as some kind of jackal feasting on the innards of your history, if that makes any sense.
	So I do want to ask, but listen, this is your life.
	I certainly don't want to do anything even remotely in the realm of exploitation in this conversation.
	So I'm going to ask.
	I'm perfectly comfortable and happy.
	If there's anything you don't want to talk about, just tell me you don't want to talk about it.
	And I will completely respect those boundaries.
	But I will confess to some, you know, it's a kind of morbid curiosity, like what the hell is going on in this world?
	And for you it started, as you said, at the age of four.
	Tell me a little bit about your biological mother, your biological father, their relationship, how you ended up with a stepfather, and then how this all began at four.
	So, I was not trafficked at the age of four, but my stepfather was abusive in every form of the word.
	He was emotionally, mentally, physically, and sexually abusive to me and a few of my other siblings.
	My biological parents divorced when I was probably around two.
	They were high school sweethearts and my mom had me her senior year.
	And they just didn't really get along.
	Their personalities didn't mesh well, so they left.
	Well, sorry. Do you know much about your biological father?
	I do. We didn't have a really strong relationship until more recently in my life.
	He moved down to California when I was nine or ten.
	And he lived about six or seven hours away from me most of my life.
	Well, I'm sorry to interrupt, but just help me through this part because I will occasionally listen to some of these true crime documentaries or podcasts.
	And in it, I'm always kind of surprised because sort of a way that it plays out Some often is that, oh, you know, this guy, you know, killed this kid, right?
	And then, you know, he got married twice after that.
	And, you know, maybe he's caught near the end of his life because some DNA thing shows up or there's some pattern recognition in the DNA of relatives or something like that.
	And then it's like, okay, so like I know nice guys who have a tough time getting a date and these guys who are literal murderers.
	They seem to be getting married left, right and center, right?
	And so I guess what I'm curious about with regards to your biological father is did your mother, did your biological mother trade in a non-abuser for an abuser or a merely verbal or physical abuser for a verbal, physical, sexual abuser?
	I guess like the nature of your father relative to your stepfather, I mean, was this a massive downgrade in terms of moral qualities or was there massive issues with your biological dad or how did that play?
	So my biological dad is a relatively normal person.
	He... I mean, they both were pretty young when I was born.
	They had two kids together.
	So right after my biological sister was born is when they officially split up.
	And he was just not my mom's type.
	Like my mom's a very strict religious person and he's not.
	And they had a bunch of different views on the world and life that they just weren't going to get along.
	And then she met this other guy who had two kids of his own from his previous marriage, and he was actually really good at masking.
	I would classify him as textbook narcissist.
	He made everyone around him think that he was just this really great, strongly convicted Christian man.
	And I don't think that the abusive personality traits came out right away.
	He was very angry all the time from my memory, but again, I was four when they were married, so I don't have very many strong vivid memories until around 10 or 11.
	I'm sure that was because of the trauma, but I I was really struck, Stacia, by your description of your mother as a strict religious type, right? Not that strict because she made a vow with your biological father, right?
	They got married in the eyes of God and she made a vow to stay together for better and for worse in sickness and health until death do they part, right?
	Yes, and...
	So help me understand how this religious aspect of her comes in, where it's like, I have sworn to Almighty God to stay with my...
	Oh, no, we're not getting along.
	Okay, bye. I think they both were just very much not in it, and my dad, not being a religious person, didn't want to make it work, as well as they had...
	A bunch of differing views and him not being religious.
	I think when they first met, she wasn't as strong a Christian as she is today.
	And then with her, the husband that she married after my dad, him being somebody who used religion as a smoke and mirror to hide his genuine, true personality, I think created more of a Almost cult-like deep conditioning around religion.
	Okay, no, and I get all of that.
	So do you know if your biological father was more religious when he was younger?
	Did he become agnostic or atheist as he went forward?
	Or you said that your mom's religion changed, but did your biological dad's as well?
	You know, we don't really talk about religion, so I don't really know where he stands.
	I know that he says he believes that there has to be a higher power out there, but I don't believe that he would classify himself as any particular religion.
	No, sorry, but what I mean is, back in the day, did your mother know that he was less religious when she married him?
	I believe so.
	I believe the reason they got married was because of me.
	Right, but she took her religious vows very seriously until she didn't, right?
	Honestly, I believe that she wasn't as religious back then as she is today.
	No, no, no, hang on. Sorry to be annoying.
	I'm not saying there's anything wrong with what you're saying.
	I'm just telling you where I don't follow.
	Because if she say, well, she divorced my dad in part because she was very religious and he wasn't, then clearly she was religious enough to divorce him, which is kind of confusing because the religious commandment is to stay with your husband, right?
	So if she was religious enough to divorce your dad because he wasn't religious enough, then she should have been religious enough to stay with him.
	Because she'd made a vow to God.
	Now, if she wasn't that religious back then, but she became more religious later, then she couldn't have dumped him just because he wasn't religious enough.
	Does that make sense? Right, and she didn't.
	Like I had said, it was a lot of things.
	They did not get along very well, and I genuinely believe that they got married because she was pregnant with me.
	So I don't think that...
	That's really a point of pride in her life.
	Like she was just trying to do the right thing.
	I think he was trying to do the right thing.
	I gotta tell you, Stacia, I mean, as far as not being a point of pride, I would say trading in the decent guy for the unholy pedophile who sexually abuses your children.
	That's what I'm trying to figure out, right?
	She had a decent guy.
	And she's like, no, he's not good enough for me.
	And the pedophile comes along, and she's like, oh, you'll do just fine.
	That's what I'm trying to sort of follow.
	And I know that there's explanations.
	Maybe you know them, maybe you don't. But I'm just saying from the outside, this is about as much of a trade down.
	Well, the non-pedophile is not good enough for me.
	But the pedophile, well, he's just fine.
	That I can't follow.
	I genuinely wish I had an answer.
	Honestly, I have no clue what was going on in my mom's world back then.
	We haven't really had a conversation about it.
	I bet you haven't. I bet she's not that keen on that kind of conversation, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	Okay, so around the age of four, now you said you didn't have strong memories before 10, so how do you pinpoint four?
	I'm sorry, I know it sounds like I'm cross-examining you.
	I'm not. I just want to make sure I sort of follow the history clearly.
	Oh, of course. I... I am a survivor leader and one of the things that I do as a survivor leader is talk about what happened to me and talk about trafficking and talk about the precursors and some of the things that are common threads between other survivors so I in wanting to be able to share my story accurately I was I had Some conversations with my mom about timelines and stuff.
	So I am aware that I was around for when they married, but it wasn't until after me and my sisters finally came forward and the courts did a polygraph test and He basically admitted everything that he had done and he admitted to starting the sexual abuse of me when I was four in my sleep.
	How old were you when he confessed?
	I believe I was about 16.
	I was in high school.
	Wow. Now, from the age of 9 or 10, do you remember his predations upon you from that age as well?
	There are a few memories that I have.
	My brain has been very good at suppressing a lot of memories.
	So a lot of my childhood has blank holes.
	I mean, I'll even be sitting with my siblings and they'll be like, oh, remember that time when we did this one thing?
	And it's not even in my memory at all.
	But there were definitely a few things that I remember vivid things that I struggle with sometimes with flashbacks.
	And there are all sexual abuse is just about the most heinous evil in the world.
	There are still, of course, differing degrees.
	And on the scale of horror with regards to sexual abuse, where would you place his kind of predations?
	Were they about as bad as could be or somewhere in the middle or what?
	The sexual abuse from him that I have memory of, I would say was more molestation, less I don't know what was happening in my sleep, so I don't know what happened to me in my younger years.
	But the memories that I do have were just very aggressively like I belonged to him and he was allowed to touch me however he wanted to touch me.
	Thank you.
	So it really was more invasive and not so much for physical sexual gratification of him?
	I believe so.
	Okay. So really just an assertion of power and control over your body in humiliating ways.
	Okay, okay. I'm so sorry.
	Now, what was the course of your mother's relationship with him?
	He hid a lot of what was happening with them behind closed doors.
	But we found out later that he was sleeping around with other women.
	He forced her to get a boob job so that she had bigger boobs for him.
	It was a lot of humiliation and degradation in the way that he treated her basically like property.
	And he wasn't as Physically abusive, as you would say, like most abusers' textbook would be.
	He liked to make you feel horrible.
	And was this stuff going on when you started to pick up your memories at nine or ten?
	Yes. So she wasn't under any illusion that he was some kind of good guy.
	No. At all. Like, I mean, and relatively quickly into the marriage, right?
	Yeah. And far, far worse behavior than anything you've heard about with regards to your biological dad, right?
	Right. What the hell?
	What? Like, what the hell?
	How could your mother...
	Put up with this. I mean, she's capable of kicking guys to the curb because she did it with your dad.
	I mean, I know maybe it was more mutual, maybe he didn't.
	But she kicks him to the curb.
	She keeps this monster.
	I mean, how long did...
	Please tell me they didn't stay married until he went to jail.
	Did he go to jail? He didn't actually go to jail.
	I'm sorry? He did not actually go to jail.
	He was put on probation.
	Probation. Probation.
	Probation. And he did not have to register.
	And he did not have to register.
	Mm-hmm.
	Holy Epstein.
	Do you know what the reasoning was behind that?
	They claimed that because it was an event that happened only within the house, he did not classify as a predator.
	What? Yeah.
	I'm no lawyer, but that doesn't seem right to me at all.
	Because the children were totally captive, it really wasn't as bad.
	What? Yeah.
	Oh, my God.
	And so what was the arc of your parents' relationship in your teens, or your mom and your stepdad?
	When there was a lot of religious shaming and religious abuse within the household on all of us, but when we finally came forward, my mom went to the church and Sorry, you and your siblings?
	Yes. And I'm so sorry because I asked you about you, but that's kind of a pivotal moment if you could tell me how that came about.
	I'll get back to your parents in a sec.
	Of course.
	Me and my siblings went down to California to visit my dad and we were allowed to bring our stepsisters with us because it was summer break so we were down there and random conversation happened and Our stepsister mentioned something about how I'm glad that we don't have a dad like that in reference to having a conversation about abusive families.
	And both me and my sister went completely stone-cold silent.
	And at the time, I thought I was the only one.
	Wait, sorry. So your stepsister said, we're glad that we don't have a dad like that in reference to your stepdad.
	No, but they do have a dad like that.
	Wait, who were they referring to?
	Sorry. So my step-siblings didn't know what was going on.
	I thought it was an isolated situation with just me.
	I didn't realize it was happening to my sister as well, my biological sister.
	Oh, so he didn't prey upon his own daughters, to your knowledge, but he did prey upon his stepdaughters?
	Right. Okay. So after I found out that I was not the only one, I knew that I couldn't stay quiet anymore.
	I'm so sorry, can we just back up for a second?
	Your stepsisters say, so there's some conversation about bad dads, and then your stepsisters say, I'm glad we don't have a dad like that, but then how did that come out with you and your sister?
	Well, both of us went super quiet and just nervous and inside of ourselves, and I believe one of the step-siblings brought us alone and said, hey, what was that? That was weird.
	What's going on? And both of us started to tell her what had happened to us, and I'm the oldest sibling, and so there was a huge amount of guilt on my part because I thought that If I just like separated myself from him and didn't put myself alone in a room with him and just kind of kept my mouth shut, then I wouldn't destroy my family because he was the one that was making the money.
	My mom was making some money doing daycare, but he was the one that was providing for the family.
	And I also had been physically, emotionally, mentally abused from him as well.
	So I feared him very much.
	So I didn't I didn't know how to tell or if I could trust anyone to tell because he had made everyone around us genuinely believe that he was this super awesome, nice guy.
	And your mother was providing care to other children.
	Did you have any suspicion when you were in your early mid-teens that your sister might be preyed upon as well?
	I didn't. She was...
	Must have crossed your mind as a possibility though, right?
	Honestly, no.
	I didn't think that he...
	I mean, he was not nice to any of us.
	He was verbally abusive to all of us and he enjoyed spanking us to the point of leaving bruises on our butts.
	But I didn't Think that he had taken it sexually with any of my other siblings at all.
	And your thought, everybody has this thought process.
	And I was abused but not preyed upon in this way as a child.
	And of course the question is always okay, but wasn't there anyone you could tell?
	Wasn't there anyone you could raise this concern to?
	Did it even cross your mind or was just like, I gotta just find a way to survive this?
	I had been living with him for the entirety of my memory, so I didn't really know any better.
	He also, because we grew up in the church, he used things that are in the Bible as excuses to his behavior.
	And we were homeschooled.
	And not allowed to know anything about sex ed or any of that.
	We were never allowed to go to the classes where they would have taught us good touch, bad touch, stranger danger, things like that.
	So I didn't even know who I could tell or if anyone would even believe me.
	Right. So after your conversation with your stepsisters, how did it play out from there?
	I had made up my mind that I didn't care if anyone believed me or not.
	I was going to figure out a way to tell somebody.
	I called one of my church friend mentors and I just called her bawling and I told her I don't know what to do and she asked if there were any family members that I felt like I trusted that weren't on his side of the family.
	And I just thought for a moment that maybe my grandma might hear me out.
	So I called her and she came and picked me and my sister up immediately.
	She said, pack a bag quick.
	I'll be over there. And then she called my mom and my mom came over and we told her and my mom just broke into pieces.
	And she'd never, well, we don't know what the truth is, of course, but did she claim to never have any suspicion?
	She, yeah, she said she has no, she had no knowledge that anything was happening and she was never around when any of the things were happening, so I am inclined to believe that that's true.
	Well, this is always a tough question, right?
	I mean, of course. It's always a tough question because, in a sense, pleading ignorance It's so very tempting for parents, right?
	It's so very tempting for parents because who can prove otherwise, right?
	Who can prove otherwise?
	Now, of course, your mother could probably quite credibly say, well, I didn't see anything, right?
	But that's not...
	Of course you can't see anything, but very few people see crimes as they're actually occurring.
	You kind of infer them as circumstantial evidence and this and that, right?
	So, she wasn't close enough to you or your sister that you guys could talk to her about it, right?
	Maybe she didn't notice any changes in behavior or falling of grades or issues with your attraction to men or, you know, when you got into your teens or whatever, right?
	But, you know, I just sort of say this for the parents out there.
	Like, it really is your job to stay close to your kids because they could be being preyed on.
	Every time they're not in your sight directly, they could be being prayed on in some manner or another by someone in the house or Boy Scout leaders or priests or school teachers, a very, very big thing.
	It's much more common in schools, even per capita, than it is in the Catholic Church.
	But, of course, the leftists in the media don't want to focus on government schools and their predations.
	They just focus on their natural enemy, the Christian Church.
	But saying as a parent, I didn't know, to me...
	It's hard to say which is worse.
	Like, if somebody says, I knew, but I didn't do anything, that's pretty damn bad.
	But if somebody says, I was so clued out as a mother that I genuinely had no idea that somebody was molesting my children, I don't...
	I mean, it's hard to know morally which is worse.
	For me, if that makes any sense.
	To be fair to my mom, there were six of us all around the same age.
	It was...
	Four of us were all one year apart, and then the other two were one year apart each, but two years apart from the youngest of the four.
	So, sorry, there's four of you biological.
	So there was two.
	I have one biological sibling.
	He had two kids with his previous marriage, and then they had two kids together.
	Okay. And so was it only you and your sister who were molested?
	Yes. See, when you say there were six of us and somehow that makes it less your mom's fault, I've got to tell you, to me, that makes it more your mom's fault.
	And I'll tell you why. Because she had a comparison.
	She had a Blind study, right?
	She had a placebo, so to speak.
	So she had, in her care, four children who weren't being sexually abused.
	And then she had two children who were, right?
	Right. Are you saying that there's no difference in the behavior?
	That it has no effect on...
	Come on. I... His biological children from his first marriage...
	There was split custody between him and his wife, but we didn't find out until they were in high school that she was also using drugs and they had been abused by the guy that she remarried.
	Oh, so your stepsisters themselves have been sexually abused, but not by their own father, but by their mother's boyfriend?
	Right. Please don't make me root for the coming asteroid.
	It's bloody tempting at times.
	Clean it all with fire.
	Let's start from scratch. All right.
	I don't want to make it about me.
	Don't want to make it about me. Let's get back to you.
	Okay, so there were four kids who were being sexually molested.
	Yes, but we did find out about their experiences later on in life.
	And did he go to jail?
	I think he did. But I think he was a repeat offender that just didn't...
	A repeat offender?
	Yeah. Four to sixteen?
	That seems like a lot of repetition for me with your stepdad and you!
	Sorry. You mean one charge as opposed to many instances.
	Okay. Okay.
	All right. I'm trying not to get all the Old Testament of the convo because I'm sure you've been through all this before, but...
	All right. So...
	The eruption of truth about this brutalization of you and your sister, which was all that was known at the time, as you say.
	And again, anytime I get something wrong, just jump in and let me know.
	So what happened?
	Your grandmother scoops you up, gets you safe.
	What happens then? We called the police.
	We made a report. We were taken down to be interviewed with a I'm an advocate at one of our local agencies and then we met with DHS people and it was just this whirlwind of just having to meet with a whole bunch of different people and retelling our stories and it was I mean traumatic is probably downplaying how it felt just going through that whole process And how were the people,
	sorry to interrupt, how were the people that you were dealing with?
	Were they skeptical?
	Were they like everyone's nightmares?
	You go and talk about this stuff and they're like, oh yeah, prove it.
	Maybe you're just a kid who's trying to cause trouble.
	Maybe you're a kid who just didn't get her pony for Christmas.
	Or, you know, my gosh, let's get this sorted out.
	You kids deserve justice. I mean, I know there's a lot of people you talk to, but what was your general sense or impression?
	I... I believe that the people that we talked to very much believed what we were saying.
	They had a forensic interviewer that did specific forensic interviewing for child victims of abuse and the questions were very invasive and it was a long interview process.
	There was no doubt in her mind after the interview that we were completely telling the truth.
	And then there was, I guess, not a trial if he confessed, right?
	Right. There was no trial.
	I think the probation was only five years and he was not allowed to be around children during those five years.
	I'm so sorry, man. I'm so sorry.
	God. After all of that process, right?
	After all the trauma you went through and reliving all of this stuff while being interviewed and obviously you went into this process with a faith in the justice system and how it would handle these kinds of unbelievably hellacious crimes, right?
	Yeah. I mean, being naive as I was, I didn't really know How the law worked back then or what I could have even done or what was on my side or if I could have even had a say in the sentencing or any of that.
	Well, there must have been one hell of a deal they cut.
	And I thought, I mean, this was the whole Jeffrey Epstein thing, right?
	That they ran this deal past without checking with the victims, right?
	And again, don't tell me where you are or anything, but my understanding is that they can't cut a deal without checking with the victims, right?
	That was my...
	Or maybe if he confessed, there's no deal to cut.
	It's just a matter of sentencing, right?
	Because they're not offering him something in return for a guilty plea.
	I guess he volunteered that through the process and then they just have to sentence him, in which case maybe they don't have to run anything past you.
	Right. Man, that must have been a hell of a day when you got that sentence and saw that.
	Yeah. I think I was more...
	Concerned, based on the level of rage that I knew he possessed, that he was going to be walking free right after all of that happened.
	We obviously had restraining order against him.
	He wasn't allowed anywhere near us, no matter where we were.
	But it was still...
	It was terrifying.
	No kidding. I mean, this is, okay, this is just for those of you who don't know, who are listening to this, so this is the, and I don't want to speak for you, of course, I want to speak for myself, but this is the nightmare.
	The nightmare is that you go to gain justice against an abusive parent and you end up in more danger.
	You end up in greater risk, you end up further traumatized and in greater danger than if you'd had done nothing.
	And any system that was designed to protect children would make sure that did not happen.
	But of course, the legal system is not designed to protect children.
	The legal system is designed to make money and to fuel the prison industrial complex.
	And I mean, there are good people who work in it for sure.
	Don't get me wrong. But I think as a whole, it doesn't wake up every morning and say, hey, let's really focus a government funded government controlled system on a group of individuals who are neither taxpayers nor adults.
	No, you focus on the taxpayers or the people who can actually cause problems in your life, not the kids who can't, right?
	Kids who are just helpless, right? Yeah, I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry, my God. That's just one of the worst stories I've heard with regards to this kind of stuff, and I've heard a few.
	Okay, so what happened then?
	He's got his...
	Basically, he goes into court for sentencing, and he walks out.
	Right. Mostly a free man.
	He's got some no-kids contact, doesn't even have to register as a sex offender.
	Right. Oh, my God.
	Okay, so then what happens?
	I haven't seen him since, so luckily that fear never came to fruition, and I'm very grateful for that.
	But by that point, I was nearing the end of high school.
	No, what happened with them and your mom?
	I mean, the divorce or what?
	Oh, yeah, they did divorce.
	So my mom went to the church for spiritual counseling, and the head pastor of the church told my mom that she had an obligation to God to stay married to the man that she married.
	You mean this guy?
	Yes. Yes.
	All right. So, he obviously wasn't allowed around us and she didn't see him, but she, out of shame for this church body that was basically telling her that,
	I don't care what he did to your kids, you were supposed to stay married because you made that vow, she silently filed for divorce and told him that he wasn't allowed to go back to that church because we would be there and she would call the cops if he showed up.
	So she was able to do it but it ended up being a backhanded thing but we didn't stay at that church for very long because obviously that was not a healthy church body.
	To put it mildly, I mean it's hard to think of a single institution that didn't betray you and your sister.
	Now, sorry, he didn't confess to anything involving his biological children, right?
	So his biological children, I found out years later because I didn't actually get the court transcripts.
	I didn't think that I would be able to handle it, and I'm pretty sure that that was accurate.
	But we found out later because my sister wanted to know.
	That he had abused his biological children when they were infants.
	You mean sexually?
	But stopped abusing them at six months.
	And I've got to tell you, I really hate the word sexually anything to do with children.
	You know, sexual abuse of children.
	But it's not sexual because sexuality is a word that legitimately applies to consenting adults.
	And it's just one of these crossover words that I dislike having to use.
	But, you know, we've got to go with the nomenclature, I guess, as a whole.
	But I just don't think you would take any of that.
	It's like taking the word lovemaking and applying it to...
	Children, you know, sexuality is something that's legitimate among consenting adults, but absolutely evil when inflicted upon children who can't consent.
	So anyway, it's a sort of just a side peeve.
	I just wanted to sort of mention that because it's on my mind.
	And so your mom divorced him.
	And what, I mean, did she get money out of it?
	I mean, how did that play? So he still had to pay child support for His kids.
	But my mom ended up going back to work and she got she had two jobs for a while and then she got a really good job working for an insurance agency and she was single until 2010 when she remarried to A guy that's actually perfect for her and is actually a genuinely Christian man who is aligned with everything and he's been more of a father figure to me than I could have imagined.
	Man, she really does roll the dice, doesn't she?
	This guy was definitely a good choice for her, but she did take a significant amount of time Did she get therapy or something?
	Because I got to tell you, I mean, without wanting to cross too many wires in your brain during the conversation, if I was a single guy and I met someone like your mom and she's like, oh yeah, yeah, my last husband was a pedophile and sexually abused and assaulted his children, I'd be like, good luck with that, but no.
	Yeah. Like, I don't want to say anything negative about your new stepdad, but...
	God! That he stepped into this quagmire.
	Because it would also be like, okay, so now I have to be a parent to kids who have been cruelly violated, and it wasn't by me, and they're going to have trust issues.
	Like, it's just really complicated and messy to get into, right?
	Yeah. So, you know, I've got to tell you, I know he's perfect for her, but he's far from perfect for me, just from the outside, looking at that, be like, okay, this is what you're stepping into?
	Like, why? Can you not get a non...
	Pedophile bride? I mean, I'm sorry to put it so harshly, but...
	I think one of the things that a lot of people tend to gloss over when talking about women who find themselves in these situations is they're being abused as well.
	And she went through a lot of trauma herself because of all of this.
	And so when she came out of it and decided to take The time to heal herself and get therapy and get help and become a whole person.
	She became a much better person all around.
	An amazing mother today.
	I talk to her almost every single day and she's one of my best friends now.
	But she didn't find herself in this situation.
	Yes, and she doesn't...
	She chose a man.
	Yeah. She exposed her children to this man.
	She didn't have a close enough relationship for you to trust her to say what was happening.
	She didn't protect her children.
	She didn't find herself in this situation.
	Look, come on, you know, there are genuine victims in this world.
	You when you were a child. I was...
	But not your mom. She's not a genuine victim in this way.
	She chose to marry the man.
	She chose to stay with the man.
	And it was her choice that exposed you...
	To a vicious, abusive, cruel child molester.
	Now, you know, I'm happy with the Reformation story, don't get me wrong.
	I mean, good, you know, a little hard to conceive of, but good.
	But when you say to me the situation she found herself in, no, no, no, come on.
	She had agency, she had choice the whole time.
	She saw you guys being abused.
	I know she says, and I'm no reason to doubt her, of course, but I know that she says she didn't see you getting sexually abused, but she did see you guys getting verbally and physically abused, right?
	Yes. So she knew that this guy was damaging her children.
	So then the question becomes, why did she stay?
	Now, you say, well, she's become a better person now.
	It's like, well, why didn't she do it when it would have really counted?
	When you were a child, to keep you safe.
	I think not to be disrespectful to what you're saying.
	No, no, be disrespectful if I'm wrong completely.
	It's totally fine with me.
	I'm just telling you what I think. But it's your story, your life.
	So you have final authority in all of this.
	Go for it. I think it's one of the things that you said is considered victim blaming and that why did she stay?
	I feel like we really need to start flipping the script when it comes to survivors of domestic violence and abuse that, like, why was he abusive?
	Why did he put people in harm for his own gain?
	He was a very No, no, but she had choice.
	She had choice.
	You were children. You can't put yourself in the same category.
	But psychologically, though...
	Okay, but if you're... Sorry to interrupt.
	But if you're going to say, well, my mother had no choice because she was traumatized, without a doubt, your father was traumatized, your stepfather was traumatized as a child, right?
	You don't just wake up one day and say, hey, I think I'm going to start doing this, right?
	So why is it that your mother has reduced agency and becomes a victim because she was in control of him or in control of the past or she had a history or whatever?
	Because... I can't sit there and say, well, your dad, your stepdad, is so morally culpable that he should have gone to jail for a long time, which is my sort of thought and impulse about that, but then say, well, but your mother was just a victim.
	Because your mother had all the choice and freedom.
	She chose him. She chose to date him.
	She chose to get engaged to him.
	She chose to marry him.
	And although he was abusing Her children and his children, she chose to stay.
	Now, if you say victim blaming, now, that to me would be to blame you for what happened to you as a child.
	That would be victim blaming because you were a genuine victim.
	And the reason I'm fighting you hard on this, and I'm not saying I'm right in some existential manner, right?
	This is your life again, right?
	Everything that I say in these kinds of conversations is always heedful to the initial issue.
	And the initial issue is dissociation.
	The initial issue that you talked about was not being able to follow through on thoughts, losing track of conversations.
	Now, one of the ways I think people end up in that situation, my friend, is that there are two standards.
	And those two standards collide in the mind.
	Your stepdad was, without a doubt, a victim of horrendous child abuse when he was a baby, when he was a toddler, when he was a child, when he was a teenager, without a doubt.
	I mean, obviously, that's not proof of anything, but to me, I know the bomb in the brain stuff, the effects of child abuse.
	People don't just wake up and start abusing and molesting children because they had themselves a great childhood.
	It doesn't happen, right? So your father, your stepfather, I'm so sorry, your stepfather, Was himself a victim and was present for the harming of the children and that he inflicted the harm upon his children.
	But your mother was a partner to that abuse.
	You say, oh, well, but she was a victim.
	But she chose him.
	She had full legal rights to leave him.
	She had full recourse. Your grandmother, the moment she heard about it, scooped in.
	And saved you guys. Why wasn't she a victim?
	Well, of course, then it comes to the question of the grandmother.
	Why didn't she act beforehand?
	Why didn't you sit you kids down and say, you guys don't seem to be very happy.
	You guys don't seem to be very content.
	Something's going on in the household.
	Something's going on in the family.
	Please tell me what.
	Because you guys were surrounded.
	By dozens and dozens and dozens of people and probably hundreds of people who came in contact at some fairly significant degree with your family over the course of your birth to 16, right?
	Right. And this is all happening in full view of society.
	Now, I don't mean that there's glass walls to your house and everyone can see kids being treated as punching bags, but...
	Being abused has a massive effect on a child's personality.
	And the idea that nobody in the environment knew anything about at least four children being violently and sexually abused, not enough to sit down and say, guys, what's going on?
	You're not happy. And listen, I say this as a father who is constantly keeping track of my daughter's emotional state, because, you know, she's still young, she's still learning how to manage and deal with her emotions, and she's very good at it.
	But I know if she's sad about something.
	I mean, I'm sorry, it's not funny, right?
	But when she was younger, she had a specific sad corner.
	If she was upset about something or sad about something, she doesn't really get angry because she's really, really listened to, but she would get up and she'd go walk into her sad corner and I would follow her and say, what's the matter?
	And I know. I know when she's upset.
	You can't hide it if you're close, right?
	So you had all of these people around you.
	When you were a child, dozens, hundreds of people, teachers, priests, Mother, extended family, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, nieces, cousins, you name it.
	And the question is always, why didn't they ask you what was wrong?
	They must have noticed that something was wrong.
	Of course, right? You can't.
	It's to say that A child can be brutally abused and violated in these kinds of ways, but there's no clue to anyone else that anything is going...
	I mean, that's not humanly possible.
	You couldn't have been the same child being abused as you were not being abused or being loved, right?
	And so...
	I wasn't really ever in a place where I was not being abused, though.
	So my whole personality was always the same.
	Well, let me ask you this.
	Did your family, or your extended family, did they own televisions?
	Yes. Did they watch television shows where they were children?
	Probably yes. Of course they did, right?
	I mean, I don't know what the newer ones are, but you know, when I was a kid, you know, Full House and...
	Eight is enough. Going back, my three sons.
	Wait till your father gets home.
	Leave it to Beaver. There was, oh gosh, just endless cavalcades of peppy, happy kids' shows, right?
	Did they not know any children in their entire environment who weren't being abused?
	At least in this way, right?
	This horrendous kind of way.
	Of course, they would have had some knowledge, some access, even if they only saw it through art.
	I mean, you go and watch Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and Tom Hanks is a pretty good dad.
	Chats with his son. His son is kind of peppy.
	He loses his temper occasionally, but it's not the end of the world, right?
	I mean, even if you watch dysfunctional families like Kramer vs.
	Kramer, the kid doesn't get hit.
	And the parent and the child have some kind of positive interaction, some kind of chats.
	So the idea that you were so heavily camouflaged that nobody could tell you were abused, I can't believe it.
	As a parent, I didn't believe it before I became a parent, and I sure as hell can't be convinced of it in a million years now.
	Because it's the job of the parent, and everybody knows this.
	Everybody knows this. If your parents were abused growing up, then they know that there's child abuse in the world.
	You know, it's one thing if I'm in my backyard with my daughter and some tiger comes crashing through the trees.
	I have the right to be a little freaking surprised because it's Canada.
	Not a lot of tigers around.
	But if we grow up in an African village and I as a child have been mauled by a tiger, then I know that there are tigers out there.
	And I know it's my job to keep my child safe from tigers.
	Because I got mauled as a child.
	I can't claim to be ignorant of this possibility, right?
	Your mother was abused as a child.
	Your stepfather was abused as a child.
	I was abused as a child.
	You're abused as a child. Now you're being responsible and you're going to get therapy.
	You're talking to people, talking about things.
	It's great, wonderful, good for you.
	You're going to be a great mom. I took, oh my gosh, there are tigers out there that can half rip the arms off children.
	They have mine sewn back on with a fishing lure and a staple gun.
	So I know that there are predators out there.
	They almost took me down. They almost took you down.
	They almost took your dad down, stepdad.
	You almost took your mom down. So they know.
	So your mother knows that there are predators out there because she was abused as a child without a doubt.
	Your stepdad and your father because he got together with your mother, right?
	Your biological father.
	Everybody knows that there are child abusers and predators out there.
	And so the idea that your mother, knowing that there are predators out there, the idea that your mother wouldn't sit there and say, well, my daughter, let's go over some basics.
	There's evil in the world, which she knows because she's a Christian, right?
	She's a Christian, which means she knows that there's evil in the world and that the devil tempts people with crimes, particularly crimes of the flesh, greed, sexuality, gluttony, and so on.
	So the idea that your mother Knowing that there are child abusers in the world wouldn't sit down and say, okay, here's a couple of really, really important tips to keep you safe.
	You've got to trust your gut.
	Anybody touches you in your vagina or your anus or your nipples or your butt and you feel uncomfortable.
	I don't mean like, I don't know, some kid bumps against you in roughhousing or something.
	But if anything makes you feel uncomfortable, you come to me immediately, directly, right away.
	Nobody has the right to touch you against your will.
	Nobody. Not even me.
	No human being in the world has the right to touch you against your will.
	And the more uncomfortable you feel, the worse you feel, the more important it is that you come to me.
	Your mother, knowing that there are predators in the world, even if she'd never been preyed upon, we know there are predators in the world, sexual predators, abusive predators, kidnappers, you name it, right?
	You talk to your kids and you say these things.
	That's parenting 101.
	That's not even complicated.
	And you said that you were homeschooled and you weren't taught about any of this stuff.
	It's like, well, that's kind of important.
	Why would your mother not tell you this stuff?
	Because every child needs to know this stuff.
	Nobody has the right to touch you, particularly in your private parts, against your will.
	And if anybody does that, you come tell me.
	So why? See, she says, well, I had no idea that you were being preyed upon.
	But she didn't give you even any remote street proofing as a child.
	Those two things don't make any sense.
	I'm not teaching my daughter about the dangers of tigers in the woods of Ontario, because there aren't any tigers in the woods of Ontario.
	But I sure have told her about bears and coyotes and snakes and whatever, right?
	Of course, right? Because those things are there.
	So if you're going to say, well, my mother was just a victim and she had no idea and this and that and the other, but if she genuinely had no idea that you were being preyed upon, she would have street proofed you.
	She would have set you up to be secure and safe to come to her in case any of this happened, because she sure as hell was not ignorant of the fact that there are people who prey upon children.
	And even if she had no suspicion of her husband, of your stepdad, no suspicion whatsoever.
	She still needs to do it for strangers.
	She still needs to do it for extended relatives.
	She still needs to do it for priests.
	She still needs to do it for any teachers you might come.
	Anyone! Because it only takes a moment, right?
	You can be at the library.
	Your kid goes to the washroom. Someone just grabs them and molests them.
	It could happen anywhere, anytime.
	Again, I'm trying to make people paranoid, but you know the numbers.
	You know the numbers. I mean, you're one of the numbers.
	It's one in three girls and one in five boys.
	One in three girls and one in five boys are molested as children.
	Your mother knows this.
	I know this. You know this.
	Better than all of us.
	So the idea that your mother would not say, oh my gosh.
	I mean, what are the odds of getting smallpox or polio?
	Tiny, but still we inoculate our children.
	You know, we take them down, they get jabbed, they cry, they scream, we take them for ice cream, we explain it as best we can and remind them later why we did it, right?
	Right. So, even without your stepdad, you had a one in three chance of being molested as a child.
	Now, the idea With a one in three chance, if there was a one in three chance of a very dangerous illness striking you down, but one simple inoculation could keep you safe, would your mother not be responsible for failing to give you that inoculation?
	She would. She would.
	And everybody knows there are predators out there who will prey upon children.
	And if your mother didn't street proof you, Please, please do not tell me she's a victim.
	You're the victim. You're the victim.
	But she's not. Because if she had told you, come on, imagine, imagine, my friend, if she had told you, no one is allowed to touch you against your will, and you must promise me on the most solemn oath that you can conceive of, you must promise me you will come immediately to me If that happens to you, even a tiny bit.
	If your mother had said that to you when you were a child, what would you have said?
	I would have come to her.
	You would have said, your husband is doing it to me.
	Yeah. So, for 10 years, or more, 12 years, for 12 years, one One one-minute conversation could have saved you.
	One one-minute conversation over twelve years could have saved you at any time.
	and saved your sister and saved your stepsisters and whoever else this squid-armed mother bleeper was grappling onto.
	One, one-minute conversation at any time over 12 years.
	Thank you.
	You cannot convince me that your mother is a victim.
	Or if she is because she had no control over her life, if your mother is not a victim, then your stepfather is not an abuser because clearly he had no control either and he has no free will and he has no agency.
	But you can't have one without the other.
	You can't just do the sexist thing, right, of saying, well, the man has total responsibility, even though he was preyed upon as a child and he was a child abuser, right?
	But my mother doesn't have any responsibility and is just a victim.
	I would like to clarify and will continue to say that both me and my mom acknowledge her responsibility in the actions.
	She does not deny that.
	Her responsibility and I am not disillusioned in believing that she could have done or she just had no capacity to do any better than she did.
	We both have had that conversation since.
	So I completely agree with everything that you're saying.
	When I say that she is a victim, she was also a victim of his abuse as well.
	So, no, she is not...
	But he himself had been a victim of abuse as a child as well, right?
	I don't know, but I would assume...
	Yeah, of course he had, right?
	So, if they're all just victims, nobody has any responsibility.
	Do we not take into account...
	Somebody else taking somebody else's power away in their life as something that creates a victim in a situation.
	Do we not take that into account?
	But clearly that happened to your stepfather when he was younger too.
	Somebody took his power away.
	Somebody violated him in the most cruel conceivable ways.
	But doesn't he still have moral responsibility as an adult?
	Of course he does.
	And if he has moral responsibility as an adult, even though his childhood was brutalized by an unknown series of abusers, if he still has moral responsibility despite being the victim of abuse, does not also your mother have the same moral responsibility despite being the victim of abuse?
	With the difference being that your father was a victim of abuse when he was a child and therefore not morally responsible.
	Your mother was the victim of abuse by a man she chose.
	By a man she chose.
	You didn't choose your stepfather.
	You didn't choose your father.
	You didn't choose your mother. Your mother chose your stepfather.
	Chose to, as I said, date, get engaged, get married, and stay married to him.
	What concerns me is the time between 16 and 19, if we can dive into that.
	And listen, I mean, I'm not saying we got a draw out of this, which I think is a good resolution as far as this goes, right?
	Because you made some great points.
	I think I made some decent points.
	And let's just leave that one lie for the moment, because I really want to make sure that we get on to your present, right?
	So I don't want to get too stuck on the responsibility thing, because I've made the speech a bunch of times before.
	But 16, it's all revealed you escape the predations of your stepfather.
	Help me understand, 16 to 19.
	After all of that came to light, I became basically textbook.
	I started to rebel and hang out with the wrong crowds and seek validation from people who didn't deserve my time.
	Well, the system made you kind of nihilistic, right?
	Yeah. You're cynical about your society as a whole.
	Yeah. So I ended up in the wrong crowds.
	I ended up partying and drinking.
	And I ended up sneaking out of the house and getting caught.
	And I got sent down to live with my biological father.
	Okay, now I'm sorry to go back on your mom.
	Let's step back on that landmine field, shall we?
	But to go back to your mom...
	Now your mom knew that you had experienced more than a decade of sexual abuse, right?
	Right. So what did she do about that?
	I mean, we went to therapy a lot.
	And did you go yourself to therapy alone or was it with your mother?
	Both. We had sessions where it was me and my biological sister and my mom and then we each had our own individual sessions.
	But the therapist didn't last long for me.
	I had a strong aversion towards religion at that point, so I didn't want to see a therapist that talked to me about the Bible and how...
	It's a little tough to stuff 10 years of sexual abuse into God's plan, right?
	Right. Okay, so your mother found that a religious therapist was not working for you.
	So what did she do then? Did she get you into a secular therapist?
	I started seeing a counselor at school instead.
	And was that your choice or your mother's choice or what?
	My choice. Your choice, okay.
	I told her I wasn't going to do it anymore and she believed that I still needed to talk about what was going on.
	So I asked if I could just see my counselor at school and she...
	So that that would be great because I had a rapport with her at this point already.
	And at what age were you when?
	17 or so? Yeah.
	Well, that was when they finally divorced.
	I was about 16.
	I graduated right after I turned 17.
	So it was 16, 17.
	That I was seeing the counselor at school.
	And did the counselor have any luck in trying to pull you back from the darker path?
	Not really. It wasn't until more recently that I found a counselor that really connected with me and was able to help me find a lot of really great healing tools.
	What do you think was missing from the therapist when you were 17?
	I guess for me, I just, especially at that point, I didn't really know how to be raw and vulnerable in front of strangers.
	So I...
	I think it was more me.
	Well, no, no. That's like saying when you're a skater, I don't know how to do a triple axel.
	Well, the point of the coach is to teach you how to do a triple axel or whatever, right?
	So it can't be a deficiency on your part because you have a coach, right?
	And obviously the coach is going to know that emotional self-expression is going to be kind of tough because you've been hiding a blistering secret for over a decade as a child, right?
	Yeah. So I wouldn't put that on you at all.
	That's the coach's job to figure out how to help you through that, right?
	Yeah. I didn't really like talking very much, though, so she didn't really have much to work with.
	I mostly was just satisfying my mom's need for me to see a therapist, and at that point, I really just wanted to kind of sink inside of myself and not really be around anyone.
	Could I ask you for something?
	That's a pretty useless thing to say.
	Can I ask you for something?
	A kidney. No, I would like to...
	One thing I need to sort of understand, this doesn't mean you have to provide anything to me, I'm just telling you my needs are not any commandments on you by any stretch of the imagination, but could you give to me The speech that your mother gave to you about her responsibility.
	Because you said, you know, my mother took responsibility and so on.
	What did she say to you?
	What were her speeches? And I assume there was more than one because it's such a big issue.
	But if you could just roleplay your mom, I'll just be you.
	And just tell me what your mom would say about this stuff, this history.
	So over the course of several conversations, it was her talking about how she...
	I mean, obviously it was a lot of, I'm sorry.
	No, just inhabit her if you could.
	It'll be easier than third party.
	And just give the speech as if she was her giving it to you, which would be me.
	I'm sorry. I failed you as a kid.
	You kids did not deserve to go through that.
	I wish that I would have been stronger.
	I wish that I would have felt like I had the capacity to...
	Leave him sooner and I don't know how to express to you how guilty and shameful I feel about my actions.
	They are irreprehensible and I have zero desire to try to tell you right now that I I had no part in this because I stayed.
	I stayed married to him, and you deserved more than that.
	Okay, so as you, I would say, why did you stay?
	At that point, I had been in multiple abusive relationships, so I understood.
	I understood the crippling feeling of having no autonomy and no voice and no power and fearing waking up every day, fearing looking at somebody the wrong way and getting a backhand or choked or suffocated.
	But you did leave him.
	Yeah, it took a while.
	No, no, but you left him.
	When his criminal predations came out.
	So you always had the capacity...
	Like you say, I wish I'd had the capacity to leave him, but you did have the capacity to leave him because you did leave him.
	When it became unbearable to you, you did leave him.
	So you did have the capacity.
	And now, they say women want to feel empowered, and I think that's true, and I want to help empower you, Mom, because...
	A lot of what you said was, I wish.
	I wish I had done this.
	I wish I had been strong enough.
	I wish I'd had the capacity.
	But that's not true, really.
	Because you did have the capacity.
	Yeah, you were scared.
	I get that. But you were also scared that he was going...
	Like, you were scared, as was I, Mom, when...
	When Dad...
	Was convicted because he confessed.
	Remember, we were terrified that he was going to come after us, right?
	We had a restraining order, but it doesn't take a Dixie Chick song to know that sometimes people walk right through those, right?
	Right. So you were able to leave him even though it was more volatile.
	It was more volatile to leave him after this legal action.
	So you were able to do it.
	And the idea that you were able to do it means that you, like, you know, you asked me to lift a car.
	Mom, I just can't lift a car.
	I just can't. I physically can't.
	You asked me to jump 20 feet in the air.
	I physically can't. But you could have left him.
	Now, I'm not trying to say you're a terrible person, but we've got to be really frank.
	You say, oh, well, I was beaten down.
	Yeah, well, you were beaten down, but...
	You did leave him and it was even more dangerous.
	So I need to know why you stayed.
	Because you could have left and you did leave.
	Why you stayed?
	So you were scared? Well, you were scared when you left him too, so it can't be that.
	What? Was it the money?
	Was it the status?
	Was it a fear of ostracism?
	Was it like what? Like, one phone call to the cops, we could have been out of that.
	One phone call to your mom.
	Remember how she scooped me out of that whole situation the moment she found out?
	Why was I responsible for fixing and saving this family, Mom?
	Why was I the one who had to act?
	Why was I the one who had to tell the truth?
	Why was I the one who had to engage?
	If you'd have left early on, I wouldn't have had to spend month after month after month going over the most sordid details of how I was sexually molested with strangers.
	I still don't understand what calculation it was in your head that had you stay.
	And I'm terrified of this question,
	Mom, because if I don't Mom, because if I don't know why you stayed, then I don't know why I stayed or why I might in the future stay in an abusive relationship.
	Because if you were helpless because of a prior history of abuse, Mom, do you know what curse that puts on me?
	That puts the curse on me that I'm going to be helpless in the future and unable to leave.
	Do you know how terrified that makes me to have kids?
	Do you how terrified that makes me to commit to anyone?
	I am scared beyond words to have kids, because then I'm trapped, to get involved, to be vulnerable, to fall in love, because then I'm trapped in the way that you were trapped.
	So I don't know, if I can figure out why you stayed, then I can keep an eye out for that.
	But if it just, well, you marry an abusive guy, he takes away your will, you become his puppet, and then you're his slave, and okay, that could happen to me, right?
	It's terrifying. But if there's some reason that I know, then I can look out for it.
	But you're asking me to identify an invisible predator that could destroy me.
	I can't do it.
	And you're part of that invisibility, Mom.
	Because you've given me like a list.
	I wish. I wish I had the capacity.
	I feel all this guilt and shame.
	I was helpless. He took control.
	That's a curse that rolls forward down to me.
	And if you really want to make it up to me, then we can have a conversation about why you stayed.
	Because, look, deep down you know why you stayed.
	And it wasn't an I wish.
	And it wasn't I didn't have the capacity.
	It was something. I don't know what it was.
	But that's the real gift I need from you, Mom, is why you stayed.
	Because if I know that, I can start to feel safe myself.
	Because I'll know what the predator is.
	Yes.
	Because you didn't explore why it was unbearable for me.
	You left when it became unbearable to you, but you never for 10 years explored why it was unbearable to me.
	And that's what I'm having trouble getting past.
	You know, probably 75% of my brain is forever picking this lock of what the hell happened.
	How did this come about?
	How was it that I was sexually preyed upon as a helpless little child for 10 goddamn years, Mom?
	How? And I'm out there trying to concentrate in the world and trying to have conversations with people and trying to choose what to eat for dinner and go to the grocery store and 70% of my brain is just churning around!
	In this goddamn quicksand.
	How did it come about? How did it come about?
	How did it happen? It wasn't my fault.
	I was just a kid. If you say, well, I didn't have the capacity, then it all falls on Dad.
	Dad is the only one who had any choice.
	Dad is the only one who has fundamental responsibility.
	And I'm telling you, the kindest thing you could do for me doesn't make up for it, but it goes a long way.
	The kindest thing you could do for me is release me from the 70% of my brain picking this lock from here to kingdom come.
	Because I don't know how to be safe, Mom.
	I don't know how to be safe in this world.
	You didn't protect me. And you don't even know why you couldn't protect me.
	I mean, you give me some voodoo curse like he possessed you and took over your body and brain and soul, okay, well that gives you some relief maybe, it gives you some excuse maybe, but it curses me because some voodoo man could come along and strip me of willpower and agency and morality and choice and will.
	It's terrifying. How the hell am I supposed to get married?
	How am I supposed to have kids with someone?
	How am I supposed to be dependent on someone?
	Was it the money? I don't know.
	But there's something. Some fundamental error, some fundamental mistake, some greed maybe, some selfishness, some what?
	I don't know. Was it because he was good looking?
	Was it because he was wealthy? Was it because he was successful?
	Was it because nobody would believe? It's something!
	And I don't know what it is, and I'm going crazy.
	My brain is just melting itself in two, just trying to figure out what the hell it is.
	But I can't, because I'm not you.
	Only you can open that lock.
	Me, I can spend the rest of my life picking this lock.
	You could just open it like that.
	And I'm begging you to, Mom.
	I'm begging you to. Why did you stay?
	I know it's dark.
	I know it's a dark thing.
	But that's the greatest gift you could give me.
	Why? If you say, I stayed for the money, then I can look out for that and say, okay, well, make sure you don't marry a guy and stay just because he's got money.
	I know where the predator is then.
	And it's not dad. Fundamentally, it was you wanted the money or you, I don't know, didn't want another failed marriage.
	Like there's something. Status.
	I don't know. Maybe you liked how popular he was and it made you feel special.
	There's something. I don't know what it is.
	I can't move forward till I do.
	So what was it? It's definitely a valid conversation that I have been unwilling to have.
	And I will tell you this, my friend, I know you jumped out of your mom's skin there.
	Was that because you couldn't think of it or you had something that you didn't want to share?
	I have no answers.
	I don't know. I think you do.
	I think you know your mom well enough to know why she stayed.
	My only guesses would be fear.
	No, no, because we went over that.
	It was more dangerous leaving later, and she was able to master that fear.
	So it's not fear alone. I'm not saying she wasn't scared.
	But it was more dangerous after he went through the legal process, right?
	Right. And you say, oh, well, he had a restraining order.
	It's like, yeah, but he's a smart guy.
	He could just pay someone on the dark web to go knock you for 10 grand, right?
	Right. So it's not fear.
	Because if it was fear, she wouldn't have left him even afterwards when it was more dangerous.
	It's not fear alone. It's got to be something else.
	Right. It doesn't negate that there probably was fear.
	Yeah, of course. There was fear, but she was able to overcome the fear.
	But on top of that, it was probably a mixture of shame being a part of a church who obviously did not agree with divorce.
	No, I'm sorry to be so annoying.
	It's not shame. Because it's far more shameful to divorce a guy because he sexually preyed upon your kids under your roof for 10 goddamn years.
	It's not shame. Again, I'm not saying she didn't feel shame, but she was able to handle the shame of divorcing a guy that she exposed her children to who sexually preyed upon them for 10 years.
	Now that's pretty, I can't even imagine that kind of shame, but she was able to deal with and process that, right?
	It's not shame. It's not fear.
	It's not shame. It's something else.
	Again, I'm not saying those emotions weren't involved, but that's not the primary thing.
	Because she was able to overcome much worse fear and much worse shame down the road.
	It's like saying, well, I can't lift five pounds and then somebody leaves me lifting 15 pounds.
	It's like, well, obviously you can lift five pounds then.
	And if she could deal with much worse fear and shame later, then she could have dealt with the fear and shame earlier.
	She just didn't have the motivation.
	I do wish that I knew.
	I wish you knew too.
	And maybe your mom doesn't even know that well.
	Or maybe she avoids it. But that, if you want to know to me, like how do you emotionally make yourself available to others?
	How do you get more consistency in your conversations?
	I think that you've got a great mystery.
	A great crime has been committed upon you, my friend.
	A great and terrible crime was committed upon you for over 10 years.
	And you don't have an answer as to why.
	I mean, you have the answer that the court system sure as hell didn't do the right thing, in my humble opinion, but you don't know how this crime came to be.
	And we will, but we haven't even gotten to 19 yet.
	But if you knew the crime at 17, I don't think you'd have had the crime at 19.
	If that makes sense.
	If you knew the cause of the crime that was committed against you as a child, I think it would have been much harder to have that crime committed against you as an adult.
	And I'm not blaming you, of course, right?
	I mean, you're still a kid, right?
	But knowing why the crime happened.
	Like, you know...
	The old stories. And they go all over the culture.
	They go all the way back through human history.
	And the story is basically this.
	A guy kills a woman on a lonely crossroads.
	She haunts, her ghost haunts those lonely crossroads until people dig up her body, find the killer, lay her to rest, and then her soul is released, right?
	Right. We haunt our histories until the crimes are revealed.
	Until the guilty parties are held to account.
	And I think you're haunting your childhood.
	Because the cause of the crime is still unknown.
	And the cause of the crime, obviously, your stepfather.
	But that's not enough.
	Because your stepfather isn't some stranger who wandered into your life.
	He was a man invited into your life by your mother and then kept in your life By your mother.
	Until events shifted to the point where she was experiencing more negatives from being with him than positives.
	And the big question is, why wasn't potential predation upon you and your sister and your stepsisters enough of a motivation for her to dig in?
	Because she knew. She knew.
	She knew. She knew. I'm telling you she knew.
	Because she didn't tell you.
	About the most basic thing to tell a child, particularly a girl.
	One in three. She did not tell you how to stay safe, which means she knew that you were in danger.
	She didn't tell you because she knew.
	You say, oh, well, she didn't know consciously.
	You can always say that.
	Anybody can say that.
	Anybody can say that.
	She didn't want to tell you no one gets to touch you against your will because she knew.
	Now, if that's possible, well, certainly possible, right?
	If that's a working thesis, it's not obviously proven, but if it's a working thesis, then the question is, okay, if she sacrificed you to stay married, if she...
	Fed you to him so that she could stay married, the question is why?
	Now maybe, just maybe, he raped her if he didn't have the children.
	Maybe, I don't know.
	Maybe he was more abusive to her if he didn't have the children, if he didn't get to prey upon the children.
	Maybe he was so high status that her ego and vanity became bound up in being the wife of this great guy, right?
	He said he put on a great show and people believed it top to bottom, right?
	Maybe people looked up to her and she was addicted to that.
	I don't know. It also can't just be the money because she survived without the money afterwards, right?
	Or at least without as much.
	Yeah, and he wasn't rich by any means.
	So let's talk about the guy when you were 19, if you don't mind.
	Of course you might. It's a horrible story to have to tell.
	But what did you not see about him?
	And please understand, you're still 19.
	You're coming out of an incredibly traumatized childhood with a dissociated, obviously, dad, a complete lack of empathy, a stepdad, and I think a dissociated mother, in my opinion.
	But what in this guy, looking back, you say, okay, there was at least this I could see.
	I mean, looking back with a healthy mind, there were a lot of red flags.
	Like what? I mean, he was not a good guy, but I again was seeking validation in people that were not good people.
	He, on our first date, Took me with him to a gas station and sold a bunch of drugs to some guy sitting in the gas station.
	And he told me, don't worry, we're safe because I have a burner under my seat.
	A burner being an unidentifiable gun?
	Yes. So, first date, he takes you on an armed drug deal.
	I'm so sorry my god.
	It was terrifying.
	Also at that point I had been mixed up with a lot of really bad people and those were the only people who ever really Like, welcomed me.
	I felt like they were the only people who didn't judge me for my past, because they sure had pasts of their own.
	Well, they had presents of their own, which is a little different from having a past of your own.
	Well, I mean, before I met him.
	No, no, I understand that, but to be victimized in the past is a lot different from victimizing others in the present.
	Yes, and I mean more so the kinds of people, the kinds of, like...
	Drugging, partying, had been abused in their homes that I was hanging out with in high school before I left my hometown and met this guy.
	Did your mother ever meet him?
	Yes, once. She kicked him out.
	Why did she kick him out?
	Because she...
	Happened to be sitting next to me while I was on the phone with him.
	He had gone for a walk because he was mad at me and he was yelling at me and saying that he was going to beat my ass and just like completely aggravated and irate and my mom heard so she said he's not allowed in my home.
	You need To leave him, he is not safe.
	Do you realize what a jaw-dropping story this is?
	Yeah. Why am I winching my jaw back up from the floor?
	Because of her past behavior.
	This was three years into her own therapy, so she definitely had a better handle on respecting herself and Finally standing up for us.
	So, yeah, it's apparently unironically said that you can't have abusive people in your life after she brought an abusive person to abuse you into your life for over 10 years.
	Yeah, and...
	And that means, of course, sorry, that means that if she had gone to therapy...
	If she had gone to therapy...
	When you were younger, she would have learned this at a time that it would have done you some real good.
	She wasn't allowed to.
	She wasn't allowed to go to therapy?
	Oh, no. Her husband at the time, my ex-stepdad, thought that therapy was...
	I don't remember how he described it, but it was...
	Biblical. And it was a shameful thing to do to tell people about your problems.
	Well, yes. Okay. So let's say that somehow she would become the first wife in human history to never want to keep any secrets from her husband.
	Come on. Of course, right?
	Of course, wives do.
	But also, I mean, she could have just picked up a book or two and worked on workbooks herself.
	She doesn't have to go to therapy.
	I mean, there's things that you can do to start down that path, right?
	She knew she was in an abusive relationship.
	There's tons of books that you can read, lectures you can watch online, lots of things that you can do to start to deal with it, right?
	Yeah. But she didn't.
	Okay, so your mother says you're in a relationship with an abusive man, right?
	And how long into your relationship with this man did your mother observe this behavior?
	It was probably about five months into it.
	And did you have any other friends or did your sibling know about this man?
	My siblings met him.
	They were all still living at home.
	He had met all of my siblings during that visit.
	And what did they think of him?
	He is also a narcissistic sociopath, so they thought he was charming until they found out that he was abusive.
	Wait, so... The fact that your father was charming had not given anyone inoculation as to dangerous charm, right?
	They thought he was charming until they found out later that he was abusive.
	Yeah. What the hell have you people been doing for three years?
	I mean, you had a sexual, violent, abusive predator in the house and three years later everyone's like, hey, charming people are great!
	It's never a warning sign!
	What the hell? Yeah.
	I mean, something hadn't been working and if you guys did the best that you could during that time and you still remain this unprotected, I can understand why you're a little jumpy now.
	So how did he maneuver you into the trafficking thing?
	As you said early on, you went to live with his family, is that right?
	And then he kind of levered you that way?
	How did that process work?
	Over the course of the grooming period, he made me completely dependent on him.
	How did you do that?
	I had been isolated from my family Most of my family lived up seven hours away from where I was living.
	No, I'm sorry. I'm not criticizing anything.
	You had been isolated.
	It doesn't mean you can't call or Skype.
	How did that process work?
	My calls were monitored.
	Every time I made a phone call, they had to be on speakerphone.
	And did that just happen one day?
	I mean, it wasn't like the second date he said, anytime you talk to your family, I gotta be on speakerphone.
	Like, how did that come about? It was over the course of time, but at this point, I wasn't close with any of my family either, so I didn't really talk to them very much anyway.
	I hated my mom.
	And was that true with your sibling as well? Yeah.
	Okay. All of my siblings and I had kind of Separated after I graduated high school, I stopped really communicating with everyone in my family.
	Okay. And was that before you met this guy?
	Yes. And why did you separate from the people in your family?
	You weren't listening to me or anything, were you, at that point?
	Because that's everybody's big fantasy, right?
	It's somehow me. Sorry, go ahead.
	Honestly, at that point, I hated my mom.
	I thought that she was weak.
	And I didn't feel like I could ever have a relationship with her that was honest.
	So I distanced myself from her for that.
	And then my siblings, the ones that were biologically his, for the longest time...
	Kind of minimize the situation because that was their biological father and they didn't want to believe that he was the monster that he was.
	And so I never really felt seen or heard by any of them.
	And my biological sister at that point had become the complete opposite personality of me, a very preppy cheerleader type person.
	And I was the one hanging out with the druggies at the corner store.
	Like I, her and I Didn't get along for that reason.
	Right, okay. Okay, so he would monitor your calls and I guess other communications as well, right?
	Right. Right.
	And then, okay, so that's one thing, right?
	But at some point, the trafficking part is go have sex with other people for money, right?
	Right. Yes.
	I mean, it just seems like such an odd thing to broach.
	You know, like I was the kind of guy, you know, at that moment where you're out at a movie with a girl or whatever, and you just put her arm around her or you try and take her hand.
	That's always like a big leap off a cliff.
	It's always like the menage a trois guys, you know, like at what point you just say, hey, feels a little lonely here.
	Let's bring in 12 other people.
	It just seems like such an odd topic to broach.
	And how did that come about?
	So, he was very manipulative about it, and in the end, he made it feel like it was a decision that I had made.
	He was still selling drugs, but he was telling me that money wasn't coming in as quick, and all of his connects were not giving him as much anymore, so we weren't making very much money, and he was just making, at this point, I didn't know anyone else in that city, and it was just me, and so he was the only one making money at that point.
	I had heard him mention something to his cousin or something about escorting, and I asked him what that was.
	Because in my little small town naive mind, genuinely thought at that point that escorting was, you know, being arm candy at parties and events for wealthy men.
	And I immediately thought like, hey, that's, that may be something that I could do.
	And then he laughed at me and he was like, oh, no, no, no, no, I don't think you understand what escorting is.
	And so he showed me an escorting website and I said, oh my gosh, yeah, no, I didn't know that that's what that was.
	He said, yeah, I didn't think so.
	And then he left, like completely left it off the table.
	Walked away from that conversation.
	And then he started talking randomly about his friend or his cousin or his whatever that just went down to Monterey or San Diego or something and over the course of three days made $6,000.
	Isn't that awesome? I was like, wow, how'd they do that?
	Oh, you know, they do escorting.
	I was like, oh, dang, that's a lot of money.
	And I didn't have any desire to do it.
	I mean, you were living together with this guy.
	He was making his money as a drug dealer.
	Were you working or... No.
	And that's because he didn't want you to work, I assume, right?
	Yeah. I wasn't really supposed to leave the house.
	And your mother must have been aware of the fact that you were staying in an abusive relationship, right?
	Oh yeah, because after she met him, I went back to him.
	I think it was a rebellious, in spite of you, move that I made that was...
	Very dumb on my part.
	Well, no, no. So if your child is in danger and your child is to a large degree in danger because you failed her as a parent to keep her safe as a child, shouldn't you do whatever it takes to get your child to safety?
	I don't know what she would have been able to do.
	She didn't know where I lived or even what city I was in at the time.
	This is where the helplessness thing kind of troubles me, right?
	And I'll tell you what I mean by that.
	So if you can imagine your child was in some danger somewhere, right?
	What steps could you take to try and find out where they were or what they were doing?
	I mean, honestly, I would Liam Neeson, the whole thing.
	Yeah, whatever it takes, right?
	Yeah. Whatever it takes, because you could die, right?
	Your child could die, right?
	So, I mean, you know, just off the top of my head, right?
	Just off the top of my head, I would say, I would call the cops and say, I believe that my daughter is in danger.
	Now, the cops have ways of finding you, right?
	Right. So she could have done that, right?
	Probably, at that point, would have lied to the cops even if they showed up.
	Okay, but then she knows where you are.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And then what do you do?
	I mean, me, if I had a kid, I would raise the kid to not be.
	No, no, no. In this situation, I get that.
	No, of course, of course. In this situation.
	Like, I need you to dislodge this helpless mom from your mind.
	Because the helpless mom is the helpless you.
	Because you're both women. And you're both human beings and bipeds and bald apes and you name it, right?
	So what else? What else could you do?
	You got the address, then what?
	I mean, I would assume she could have come with reinforcements to come try to talk some sense into me.
	Certainly possible. Did she know this guy was a criminal?
	Would she have had reason to believe?
	No, I didn't tell her any of his dealings.
	She just had overheard that conversation so she knew he was not a good guy.
	Right. Right.
	Well, she could see if he had any kind of criminal record.
	She could pay a private eye to look at, like there's tons of things, right?
	Yeah. Tons of things.
	And she didn't do those things, right?
	Right. So you remained in danger.
	Now, you say that she was helpless when you were a kid.
	Okay. Was she still helpless when you were 19 and 20?
	No, not in her own autonomy, but...
	Well, that puts a little bit of a lie, not a lie like you're lying, but it puts a little bit of a lie to the argument that she was helpless when she was under the control of your father, because she seemed kind of a stepdad because she seemed kind of equally, quote, helpless when she was independent of him.
	Right.
	In reference to me.
	Yeah. Anything.
	She couldn't keep you safe when your stepdad was around because she was so controlled by your stepdad, right?
	But then your stepdad was gone and she still couldn't keep you safe.
	So that... It's not your stepdad who's not...
	He's not the key issue. Do you see what I mean?
	Yeah. She is able to dissociate from love to the point where she will not do...
	What is necessary to keep her children safe.
	She lacks a bond.
	She lacks empathy.
	It's not about her ego.
	It's just keep your kids safe, right?
	And you're fundamentally unprotected.
	And fundamentally unprotected and endangered is a terrible combo.
	And they usually, of course, go hand in hand, right?
	So how then did he get you to sleep with people for money?
	Or how did you end up doing that?
	So after all of the little subtle hints or not so subtle hints that he was dropping about not having money and then about his cousins and stuff, he at one point He decided to just flat out say,
	hey, here's the thing. You're out there, like before you met me, you were out there having sex for free and you're really good at it, so why not capitalize on something that you're really good at and let's make a little bit of money for a little bit.
	Now, you of course had originally said, I'm not interested, and how did that transition?
	I mean, not that you wanted to or anything, but how did it transition where you did?
	Brokenness. I had a lot of shame around my sexuality at that point, and I was also starving at that point, and Experiencing a lot of mental health issues that had never really been addressed properly.
	And I felt so broken.
	And like, well, that's the next step.
	Are you going to be happy if I do that?
	Like, are you going to be nicer to me?
	Are you going to respect me?
	Sure, that was naive of me to think.
	But I genuinely tried to do everything that I could to avoid his next...
	Blow up or his next...
	And he was violent towards you, is that right?
	Yes. I mean, black eyes, broken noses, bruised ribs, what are we talking?
	He liked to hit me where there would be less visual evidence, open-handed slaps across the face.
	He strangled me several times.
	One time he pinned me up against the wall and He grabbed me by the throat and lifted me up the wall several inches off the floor and screaming and yelling in my face for doing something he didn't approve of.
	And then when he realized that the life was fading out of my eyes he gripped my neck harder and slammed me onto the floor.
	After several months of the abuse once I finally Gave in and started working as an escort.
	The abuse for him, he didn't feel like he had to hide it as much as long as I could cover it with makeup.
	So it was a lot of bruises and I got really good at covering up everything on my face.
	And what was it like that first night?
	Did you join an escort service?
	Did you put up an ad? How did that play out?
	He put up an ad for me.
	Of course he did. Yeah, sorry.
	Of course he did. And then what?
	Yeah, he put the ad up and he bought me a throwaway phone.
	Just one of those phones that you buy at a grocery store.
	Hey, another burner. We've got a theme.
	Yeah. Yeah. And then we waited for somebody to call and then he had me take my phone and call him, put it on speakerphone and he put his phone on mute.
	And I set it on the nightstand and waited for the guy to show up.
	up, I had taken NyQuil because I was shaking violently and nervous.
	And he figured that that would calm my nerves enough to make me not look like I was doing something I didn't want to do to the buyer.
	So I remember just feeling like my everything inside of me, any possibility of light left had faded in that moment.
	Sorry, any possibility of light?
	Yes, left inside of myself had faded.
	At that point, I started crafting a completely different personality where I actually had a dissociative identity and that new personality was what saved me.
	That new personality took on a very calloused, streetwise...
	It's harsh, right?
	You have to harsh yourself in a way.
	I was very robotic.
	But also, there's a coarseness and a harshness to these sort of physical acts, right?
	Rather than the tenderness and intimacy of lovemaking, it becomes like grunting and pumping and machinery.
	Yeah. I would always turn on the television in the hotel rooms and just tell the guys that came in that I had it turned on so that the neighbors wouldn't call and complain.
	But really it was just so that I had something to focus on and zone out on.
	And I assume that there was not any particular physical pleasure in these kinds of situations.
	No. But then you have to fake it, right?
	Like you have to fake being normal when you're being molested by your stepdad.
	Yeah. I haven't ever experienced sexual pleasure until...
	I met the guy that I'm with now.
	Right. And how long did this go on for and how many men do you think roughly did it occur with?
	So I was with that guy for about a year and a half and then I quote unquote traded up to a different trafficker who claimed to be a better person ended up being just as bad and it was just that kind of cycle of like trying to move from Just for the record, I don't think there's much of an upgrade when it comes to these kinds of guys.
	I'm sure you know that now, but just for those out there, there's not a lot of trading up, I think.
	They actually, the term for it in that life is called choosing up.
	And there's generally a fee that you have to pay to your new trafficker when you choose them.
	Or if your trafficker can't handle you anymore or thinks you're too much trouble, they will sell you to another trafficker.
	If you operate without a trafficker, is that dangerous?
	Oh yeah. You're considered a renegade and a black eye on the game, and it's considered open season, so if a trafficker sees you and he tries to get at you and pull you into his situation and you refuse, he has every right In the code of the game, obviously not every right in the legal sense to kill you.
	So yes, it is enormously dangerous to go without that.
	Okay. So I was with him for a year and a half, moved on to several others.
	I officially got out of the life in 2015.
	Was there a particular moment or situation that you're just like, I can't do this anymore?
	I, at one point, had stumbled across a program that was specifically designed for survivors of trafficking.
	And I stayed there for a few months and...
	That's where I learned that my situation was not unique and that all traffickers have the same way that they go about recruiting their girls and treating them and there's not really any upgrades in any of these stories that I hear over and over and over again.
	But I at that point didn't think that I deserved healing.
	I didn't think that I I didn't like myself.
	I didn't care about myself. I, at one point, got robbed at gunpoint and laughed in the guy's face, called him a big man for robbing the smallest girl out there, and threw his money in his face and walked out.
	I had so much disregard for my own life at that point.
	Oh, yeah. I mean, that's really playing with...
	That's Russian roulette, right, at that point?
	Yeah. Just take that one guy.
	Yeah. And you're gone.
	But healing was painful.
	Healing was hard. Facing everything was painful and hard and raw.
	So I ended up in this cycle.
	And the average amount of times that a survivor tries to get out of the life is about seven.
	And I am no exception to that.
	It took me seven times Of trying to exit the life before I went into a program where I actually felt like they saw me and they cared about me and they helped me kind of see myself and care about myself.
	And they gave me hope that you could heal from all of this trauma and craziness.
	And so it was about eight months into that program when my last trafficker, who was the reason I was involved in labor trafficking, I was who was the reason I was involved in labor trafficking, I was trafficked out of strip clubs with him for about eight months
	And he reached out to me and made me feel small and made me feel Like, I had made the biggest mistake in the world leaving him and he had caught me in one of my low depressive moments and I went back.
	But I was only there for about two weeks before I realized that I liked myself at this point in my life too much to turn off my emotions again and just go through the motions and live this life.
	So I spent The next two months trying to come up with a plan to leave and it wasn't until he had hit me so hard that he had immediately bruised my face and busted my lip open that I had physical evidence and proof and in that moment I'm sitting there crying and Like holding my face and he's sitting there yelling at me and he asks me,
	are you listening to me?
	Do you hear me? And I said, I want to go home.
	And he laughed at me because at this point my family my family thought that I had just decided to live this life and that that I was just Destined to die a call girl.
	And I believed that for a while too.
	But he used that shame to try to keep me there.
	But I didn't listen to him.
	And I just kept saying, I don't care if they...
	Wait, hang on, sorry. Sorry, let me just pause you for a second.
	This is a heart-wrenching story and I'm really with you and incredible sympathy emotionally.
	So your mother was of the opinion that you had chosen this life?
	Yes, based on the fact that I had gotten out multiple times and then gone right back into it.
	But your mother knew or had told you that she didn't have any power because she was being abused and she was scared.
	With your stepdad, right?
	Right. So help me understand this.
	Your mother in her 30s and 40s is not responsible because she's scared and there's an abuser around.
	But you in your early 20s are responsible even though you're scared and there's a series of abusers around.
	Wouldn't she know exactly what was keeping you there?
	Because that's what she says kept her with your stepdad.
	What am I missing here? Help me square this circle.
	I'm not able to put this together in my mind.
	I totally understand.
	She of all people would know exactly.
	I stayed. I was scared.
	I was abused. I felt guilt.
	I felt shame. All the excuses when we did the role play would apply to you much more so.
	And I had also left multiple traffickers and went to programs where I was safe and far away from them and still went back.
	So in her mind, I had decided to live this life because why would I leave a safe situation where I had completely removed myself from these traffickers and then ended up back in that world again?
	Well, she stayed in an abusive situation for 12 fucking years.
	I'm sorry? But when she left, she didn't get back into one.
	12 years?
	Yeah. She would know why you were there.
	And if she thought that you had made such terrible decisions, she would also know that she was causal in that as your mother.
	So there's no way she gets to put this on you, both because of the excuses she took and even if those excuses didn't apply to you, what did your mother model for you growing up?
	Sorry, I don't mean to yell at you. I'm passionate.
	I'm not yelling at you. But your mother had modeled what growing up?
	Helplessness in the face of abuse.
	Being dominated, being controlled, being dependent on men.
	How on earth could she imagine that you just came up with this on your own?
	And she'd gone through therapy, she'd gone through self-help, she'd gone through self-work, so she would know these patterns.
	Right? Yeah.
	That she had modeled, being dependent, and it turned out your stepdad was a criminal of the worst kind, in my opinion, outside maybe of a murderer.
	So she slept with the enemy.
	Stayed with a rampant, abusive, violent, dangerous, predatory, rapey criminal of children for 12 years.
	And she's like, well, my daughter is strangely susceptible to criminals.
	Come on, that's it.
	It's not even remotely credible that your mother would think this in any real sense, in any reasonable sense.
	Or remotely objective sense.
	She couldn't possibly say, well, I did model being subjugated and controlled by criminals for 12 years to my daughter while subjecting her to the criminal violence and abuse and molestation of a criminal.
	But, you know, she's just choosing to hang out with criminals because, you know, I guess she's just this sort of thing.
	So to be fair, it wasn't so laissez faire.
	Your passion is very evident and I appreciate that there are people out there like you because we need more warriors that get heated about this kind of thing because it's devastating.
	She felt that it wasn't a, well, she's just...
	This is obviously her choice.
	No, I was being blasé.
	I'm not sure that you... I know that your mom was probably tortured by it all, so I appreciate that clarification.
	You're totally right to bring it up.
	But I was, of course, being a bit hyperbolic when it came to the blasé-ness.
	So, sorry. Go ahead. So, it was definitely a...
	I mean, she was experiencing severe depression and...
	Losing unhealthy amounts of weight and she was devastated over it.
	And did she call the cops?
	She actually multiple times tried to.
	She couldn't find me because I wouldn't give her my real phone number or tell her where I was at or any of that information.
	But When I called her after he belittled me and pretended like my parents would never accept me home again after going back so many times.
	I'm sorry, because it just took me a moment earlier when you said, I want to go home.
	I thought you meant to whatever flop house you were staying in, but you meant home to your mom.
	Yeah. Got it.
	He... After he tried to make me feel like they would never accept me, I just knew that I don't care.
	I don't think you're right.
	Obviously, in that moment, I had a pit of fear, but I believed completely that even though my mom didn't understand what I was going through, because she never could have understood the intensity of that life.
	She didn't go through half of what I went through.
	I knew that she loved me, and I knew at that point that she would completely welcome me back.
	So I call crying, Mom, can I come home?
	And she said, absolutely.
	Thank God.
	Where are you?
	We'll get you a ticket. Like, can you come tonight?
	And he wouldn't let that happen.
	He made me stay until my face healed.
	But I... He was the one that bought me a plane ticket.
	Because at that point he knew that I was going to be more hassle than I would be worth.
	Because of the nature of how he was trafficking his girls in a public setting.
	All I had to do was tell anyone at the club.
	Or use the club phone and call the police.
	So he let me go.
	And I... Didn't look back and haven't been in that life since then.
	So it was really a combination of things and all of the different programs that I experienced giving me some version of hope as I went along.
	And that last program really making me feel like I was worth the effort of healing that Was what got me out officially.
	And now it's the PTSD, the continuity of thoughts, the continuity of conversation that you find challenging.
	I mean, do you spend a lot of time sort of outside your body, so to speak, or observing yourself or dissociated that way?
	Not so much anymore on a regular basis.
	When I feel...
	Triggered by something, sometimes I catch myself kind of slipping into dissociation, but I've learned a lot of tools to help ground myself and bring myself back out of that.
	The biggest problem that I have is just that I never really was allowed to free think or even Be an intelligent person.
	I was actually shamed for saying something that made me sound smarter than my trafficker.
	Probably not too hard.
	No. How did you find this show?
	My partner, actually.
	He listens to you very regularly, so he started introducing me a couple years ago.
	Oh, good. We both are firm believers in a lot of what we hear in these conversations and really appreciate the value that comes out of just listening to the conversations that you had.
	So I figured it would be worth a shot to reach out and hopefully get some help.
	Good. Now, I appreciate that and do say hi to him for me.
	What is the very best value?
	Because I know we've been talking for a long time.
	What is the very best value that I can provide to you before we end the conversation?
	I mean, I obviously have my thoughts, but I'm here to serve you.
	So what would be the most valuable thing that I could focus on?
	And if you don't know that, that's fine.
	I mean, you can feel free to toss it back to me, but I just want to make sure if there's something in particular that you want me to focus on, I'm happy to do that.
	So, I mean, in reading your book and listening to your podcast, I have mined a lot of information and having regular conversations with people throughout my everyday life, and I have gained a lot of skills and actually feel like I can actually now hold my own weight in a conversation, whereas before I was very much...
	The timid person that couldn't talk because I felt like everything that would come out of my mouth was unintelligent or wrong or would be punished.
	So the biggest struggle that I have is in this relationship With this decent, functional human being in front of me that I actually value his opinion.
	I care about the interactions that we have together.
	And when he speaks through the logic tree and tries to get me to accurately say what I'm saying instead of repeating myself over and over again saying the same thing, he'll Be like, okay, you've said this a few times now.
	I understand what you're saying, but we're actually not even talking about this point right now.
	I would like to talk about this point.
	And in my mind, for some reason, in those moments, I immediately go to...
	Anxiety and fear and oh my gosh, he's gonna think that I'm stupid.
	He's gonna think that I can't handle a conversation and so then my amygdala starts pumping really hard and I just become incapable of remembering the flow of conversation and then I get stuck on these pieces of conversation or he'll say one word and And I'll just completely ignore the rest of the conversation and focus on that one word.
	And he's like, why? I would appreciate it if you could acknowledge that you actually heard the entirety of what I said before you dismiss it because this one word didn't sit well with you.
	And I'm at this point so flustered that I'm like, I don't remember what you said.
	And then it just becomes this whole runaround of me trying to remember what's being said or what has been said and how to keep my thoughts straight in that moment and the anxiety just keeps building and building and building until I can't have a conversation anymore at all.
	Right. And based upon your history, That is perfectly, perfectly, perfectly comprehensible to me.
	I'm sure to you and I'm sure to your partner.
	I don't want to refer to him as a boyfriend because he sounds cooler than that.
	And that just sounds kind of goofy.
	I call him my person.
	Your person. Okay. So it seems to me that you have evolved in a situation of win-lose.
	I mean, seriously, win-lose.
	So obviously with your stepdad, with the abuse, with the violence, with the lack of protection from your mother, which I'll still keep mentioning.
	I hope you'll have that conversation.
	I hope you'll let me know how it goes with your mom.
	But if the other person gets their way, you experience what some people have referred to as soul murder.
	A soul murder doesn't mean that your soul can't die, but it just means it has to go underground, it has to eat from a can, so to speak, right?
	Right. So when your partner, your person says, this is what I want, I think that deep down you experience that as a death threat.
	Why didn't you go to squeal, to report, to reveal what your stepdad was doing?
	Because he might have killed you. Right.
	I mean, no fooling, no kidding.
	That happens. And so when you are in the presence, like what was the greatest desire that you saw, not experienced, but saw as a child, was your stepdad's unholy lust to violate your body, right? Right.
	So his preference comes at the murderous expense of your identity.
	For him to get what he wants, you have to be alive and dead at the same time.
	Because if someone's a genuine sadist, and that's why I asked earlier about, did he get sexual gratification?
	Well, no, not really, because now sadism requires that the person still be alive.
	Because they have to be alive to be hurt.
	Right. You think of a torturer who's enjoying torturing.
	If the victim dies, he's like, oh, just when I was getting my groove on, just when I was getting into it, right?
	Right. So for you growing up, Desire, lust, preference was death.
	Now, desire is life.
	So you've got this... Remember earlier I said the contradictions I think produce dissociation.
	So for you to be alive in the presence of somebody else's preference was to die.
	And the reason I call it soul, people call it soul murder is because you don't physically die because that would be an end to it, right?
	No more contradictions, no more stress, no more difficulty, no more life, right?
	Right. But you have to be alive to be hurt.
	Now, in the human trafficking days, guys wanted you to make money and you wanted to make some money, but the men who came in had a desire for you sexually to Actually, it's really a desire to erase.
	To have sex with only a body and not a person is a way of erasing a human being.
	It is screwing somebody into the grave.
	Except it's not even the grave, because that would at least be an end to it, right?
	So their desire...
	Was for your non-existence, for your anti-existence, so to speak, right?
	And so, again, you've got your stepdad.
	His desire means you don't exist.
	You've got your johns. Their desire means you don't exist.
	I would also argue, which is kind of why I pounded on your mom a little bit.
	Sorry, that's the wrong way to phrase it.
	The way that I sort of focused on your mom a little bit, right?
	Was, I think that your mom has an avoidance of responsibility that I can completely understand, given how she handled...
	Your stepdad and brought him into your life and overlooked to some degree, at least, his predations upon you and your sister and his children.
	I think that your mother's desire to avoid responsibility, which is what came out in the role play, at least to me, is also if you assign responsibility to her.
	In other words, if two people have responsibility, they're both in the conversation.
	Right? If nobody has any responsibility, they're usually not even in the conversation.
	But if one person has responsibility and the other person doesn't, That's very much a recipe for disaster in relationships.
	So you want to know why Your mother was so susceptible to criminal abuse.
	Obviously, you need to know that.
	Why? Because you're going to be a mother, I hope.
	I hope you will be. I think you'd be great.
	And you're going to have a daughter, a son.
	You're going to need to street-proof them.
	And you want to be able to trust your person here, the listener who introduced you to this conversation and tonight.
	You want to be able to trust that person.
	So you need to know what is the weird kryptonite in the maternal line of your family That has them roll over, sometimes literally, for outright criminals.
	You need to know that kryptonite, because you've got to break the cycle.
	That's what you're here for tonight, right?
	To break the cycle. Yeah. Because, you know, people are either repeating trauma or breaking trauma.
	That's kind of all we got in the modern world and probably most of history too, right?
	So you need to, and you've got big questions to ask of your mother.
	I don't think, maybe you do know, and it just didn't come up in this conversation, but I don't think you even know the specific trauma that happened to your mother as a child that had her be more susceptible to your stepdad.
	Do you? Do you know what?
	No. No. Okay. So that's important for you to know.
	Okay. Because that's how the kryptonite gets into the bloodstream, is through childhood trauma.
	So you have big questions for your mom, but your mom has a preference for you not to ask them.
	So even in your mother, if you get what you want, she gets the opposite of what she wants.
	If she gets what she wants, which is for you to not ask these questions, you get the opposite of what you want, which is the trauma continues to some degree because you don't feel safe.
	We feel safe when we know Where the predators are, what triggers them, what causes them, what brings them into being.
	Years ago, I was playing with my daughter and she screamed in my ear.
	Just not angry or anything.
	And I freaked out a little bit, right?
	And I said to her, you know, my mom used to yell at me, this has nothing to do with you.
	I'm just like, this is what bothers me.
	Please feel free to do whatever you want.
	I just, you know, I knew what was going on.
	I knew, right? It was pretty obvious, right?
	My mom was a real screamer and my daughter screams in my ear.
	If you got mauled by a tiger, you see a stuffed tiger out the corner of your eye, you still freak out a little bit, right?
	That's the way it works. So you're in a situation which is perfectly understandable given how you were raised and what happened.
	If other people get what they want, you're toast.
	But there was no chance for you to get what you wanted because they were bigger and stronger and meaner and colder and nastier and gropier and more violent.
	So for you to manifest preference is to court soul murder.
	It's like in the World War I trenches.
	People were very, very careful about smoking.
	Do you know why? Snipers.
	Oh. I want a cigarette.
	Light it up. They can see in the dark.
	Maybe even the gloom. They can see the light and they'll shoot at it.
	Get snipers up in the trees.
	And they might be hundreds of yards away.
	But if they're good shots, they can take you out.
	I want a cigarette is courting death in a World War I trench.
	I have a preference is courting death in your upbringing and your youth.
	So, of course, walking towards the fire goes against every survival instinct that got you through all of this.
	If you hadn't listened to that survival instinct when you were growing up, you probably wouldn't be here.
	Right. Even in the trafficking situation, to go against the will of the trafficker is to court death.
	Which is, again, why I asked what are the punishment of you, right?
	If you don't get, if you don't have a trafficker.
	So, preference, which is life, the only time we don't have preference is when we're dead.
	Even when we're asleep, we have a preference, which is whatever we're dreaming about, for better or for worse, that's what's going on.
	Or even just to stay asleep is our preference.
	So life is preference, life is choice, life is manifesting your will in the world.
	The zebra manifests its will on the grass.
	The lion manifests its will on the zebra.
	Life is the manifestation of will.
	The imposition of will on nature and the manifestation of will in relationships.
	You don't want to be imposing your will in relationships because you've had enough of that, right?
	Other people imposing their will upon you.
	So life is the manifestation of will.
	But for you, growing up and in your youth, the manifestation of will was death.
	So to be alive is to die.
	And the only way you can keep breathing is to stop living.
	Does that accord with your experience?
	Definitely. Right. So then, you're in a relationship with this great guy, your person, you're in a conversation with him, and he says, no, no, no, I want...
	And after that, you're like, danger, danger, danger, right?
	Yeah. Does that make sense?
	Of course you would. It's like he pulled out a burner, and not the phone kind, right?
	And that death anxiety, it's about as powerful a thing as...
	Because, you know, we're not designed to be happy.
	You know that. We're not designed to be happy.
	We're designed to survive. We're designed to survive.
	Because if you're happy but you don't reproduce, whatever genes contribute to your happiness, they don't reproduce either.
	Whereas if you do whatever it takes to survive...
	And because you were in a combat situation, you were in a war as a child.
	And we know that throughout history, the only way that women survived war was to sleep with the conquerors, right?
	Right. And so the idea that when you grow up in a situation of war, that you end up being drawn to criminals who can dominate you sexually, well, yes!
	That's not your moral failing, that's Evolution, that's Darwin, that's genes.
	The only way we can survive is to sleep with the violent people, to sleep with the criminals, to sleep with the dominant males, to sleep with the whatever, right?
	Right. So you were trained to be a war bride, so to speak, by being criminally preyed upon as a child.
	And you survived. To have this conversation, because man, if you hadn't survived, well, I'd look completely insane right now.
	Wouldn't mind just talking to nothing, screaming at the top of my lungs with no stimuli.
	So, the contradiction at the heart of things is for you, I would assume, I would argue, that life is death.
	Well, that's an impossible circle to square.
	Now, if you're in a situation, and also the other thing, too, is that when you're with evil people, they want to know about you in order to hurt you, right?
	So you hear these cults, right, whatever they say, oh, tell us every bad thing you've ever done, right?
	And it will free you, it will liberate you, right?
	And then what happens is if you try to leave, they say, oh, by the way, we recorded everything that you did, that you said that was bad, we'll put it out in the public sphere.
	If you go, right? So they want to find out about you in order to control you.
	Like the torturer says, does it hurt when I do this?
	Not because he wants to do less of it, because he wants to do more.
	So if you're in a situation of intimacy, like genuine emotional intimacy, people say, oh, I want to know what makes you tick, right?
	I want to know what motivates you.
	I want to know what makes you happy.
	I want to know what makes you sick. For most of us who grew up with abuse, that was a hugely dangerous thing.
	Yeah. It's like you're playing for your soul and the devil says, hey, can you show me your cards?
	You're like, no. No, thank you.
	I play my cards close to my chest because I don't want to lose this game and my soul.
	Right. And so when you're in an intimate relationship, your person says to you, oh, I'd like to know more about you.
	And you're like, that's not good.
	That never worked out well, right?
	Yeah. I mean, if a criminal comes along and says, hey, tell me the person you care about the most, do you want to reveal that?
	No, of course not, right?
	Then he'd use it against you. And so for you, I would assume, that when he says, I would prefer or I like or I want, which is him being alive and being present in the relationship, that's like a hand raised above your head, right? Yeah.
	Yeah. And then when he wants to know more about you, part of you, I would assume, is danger, danger, right?
	He's going to use it against me, it's going to blow back, it's right.
	Yeah, vulnerability took a lot of work on both of our parts.
	Oh, and you see this crap going on in alternative media or the alt-right or like, hey, let's go out for dinner and chat.
	It's like, somebody's recording.
	You know what I mean? Hey, let's just be honest.
	Express yourself. So I think that if you recognize that and if you're a partner, if your person recognizes that, but look, when he says, I want, he might as well be pulling out a weapon.
	Because desire was death.
	Other people's desire was death to you.
	Even your creepy boyfriend when you were 19 and his desire for money was death to your self-respect for a time, right?
	Yeah. So when he says, I want, maybe just pull out a kitchen knife.
	So he can empathize with you.
	He says, I want you.
	Like, swing! I've got a knife!
	Right? Because that's what it feels like, right?
	Yeah. So he can understand that.
	Now, here's the thing.
	You don't want your trauma to totally dictate everything.
	You can't say, I want anymore, because that's just killing him for the sake of your fears, right?
	Right. But if he's sensitive to that, he can say, I want...
	Not to kill you. First of all, let me say I don't want to kill you.
	I don't want to exploit you. I don't want to hurt you.
	I want to make you feel better. But I do have a preference here.
	And I know that it's alarming for you.
	And I completely understand why.
	Because I love you and I know your history.
	But I still, I'm not going to let the bad guys win by not having any preferences.
	So I have a preference. I know it's going to be upsetting to you.
	But I promise you it is not a negative for you.
	It will be a positive, right?
	Like, just to be sensitive.
	And that doesn't take a lot of time to do, right?
	And I'm sure he'll listen to this, so this is what I'm sort of suggesting, right?
	You have to be sensitive to other people, but that doesn't mean you dictate, that their sensitivities dictate everything you do, because then nobody's alive, if that makes sense, right?
	And the real-time relationships thing is the moment you start to pretend you cannot connect, So the real-time relationships book that I wrote 12 or 13 years ago now, which people can get for free, freedomain.com forward slash books, the real-time relationships thing is if you start to feel anxiety, what do you say?
	I feel really anxious.
	I'm not saying it's you.
	I feel really anxious.
	But if you say, I have to put aside my anxiety and focus on something, you've lost it then.
	You can't connect with someone. The moment you pretend, the moment you fake, you can't connect.
	You know, it's like the old thing that if you fake your orgasms, you're never going to get what you want in bed because the guy thinks he's already delivering it, right?
	Right. Our sex life isn't getting any better.
	It's like, well, he thinks it is, right?
	I mean, if you fake love your partner's cooking and you don't like it, it's like, well, he's just not cooking me what I want.
	It's like, well, you're not telling him. You're telling him the opposite of what you want, right?
	So the moment you fake, the moment you try and manage things, the moment you aren't directly honest about the emotions you're experiencing, the moment you fake, you break.
	The connection, right? You fake, you break.
	There's my rap song for the evening, right?
	And all of this is perfectly comprehensible and perfectly sensible given your history.
	Now, of course, you don't want this to go on and on into the future because you don't want to let the bad guys win and you don't want their evil actions to be the train track that determines where you go in the future, right?
	Exactly. But if you say, I feel anxious...
	See, that's breaking history.
	Because if somebody is scaring you in the crime world and you say, you're scaring me, they're like, good.
	No, that's what they want, that, right?
	And so you have to cover things up in the crime world, in the underworld, right?
	You have to fake, you have to pretend, right?
	Your stepdad says, come sit on my lap, you've got to smile and go over, right?
	Right. Because it might kill you.
	Or, you know, it wouldn't be like he'd strangle you, but, you know, you might go hiking and have an accident.
	If he thinks you're about to expose him, he doesn't want to go to jail.
	Turns out he didn't, but he wouldn't know that ahead of time, right?
	Right. So, the dissociation, I think, you can't concentrate because you've broken with your own emotions by Overleaping them and either judging them as bad or thinking that it's bad to express them.
	But if you are with someone you care about and who cares about you, you can express your feelings and they will deal with that in a tender and positive manner.
	They won't use it against you and they won't exploit you and it won't blow back later or whatever, right?
	Right. So he wants to get to know you.
	Because he cares about you, not because he wants to control you or force you to do something or whatever, right?
	That's not how you were raised.
	That's not what you had to do as a child, right?
	Right. Is this in the vicinity of helpful?
	I'm not sure. I can't see people in these calls, so you could have dozed off for all I know, right?
	No, it's very helpful.
	I always just felt like My emotions were my responsibility to handle, and I needed to figure out a way to basically not necessarily circumnavigate them, but in a sense, that's what I felt like I had to do in conversations.
	So instead of just stopping the conversation and saying, I'm overwhelmed, I'm feeling anxious, I'm having an emotion that's making it It's hard for me to concentrate in this.
	I just keep going. Right.
	And then it turns into this confusing mess for the both of us.
	You can't untangle that Gordian knot.
	Right. And here's the thing, too, because we men, we like to please women so much that the moment a woman is upset, our first instinct is to change our behavior so she's no longer upset.
	But that's not being honest either.
	And that's letting the upset then become dictatorial, which is not...
	Respectful to your capacity for strength.
	You can handle being upset.
	I can handle being upset. Our upset does not...
	We're not, you know, hypersensorious triggered leftists who have to bully everyone who makes us upset.
	Right? That's not... Right.
	That's letting the bad side of the human nature win.
	So this is what real-time relationships is about is I feel anxious and most people say dot, dot, dot and therefore you're bad for making me anxious or therefore your behavior needs to change so I'm no longer anxious, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But that's not honest.
	That's jumping to a conclusion.
	You feel anxious. You don't know why necessarily.
	Right? Right.
	You don't know why. And if you get someone to change their behavior because you're anxious, you lose the opportunity to figure out exactly why you are anxious.
	And that's true. Stop it from happening again, right?
	Yeah. I mean, I never said to my daughter, as I said before, you have to stop yelling because my mom was a screamer.
	No, that's not her job.
	And that's letting my mom win. It's like letting my mom dictate what my daughter should do.
	No, that's not how it's going to play, right?
	Yeah. Right. So no, you can be honest.
	Honesty is stating your emotional experience without the expectation of the other person changing.
	And you can say, I feel anxious.
	I feel nervous. I feel confused.
	I feel baffled. I'm losing track of the conversation.
	Something's going on for me.
	And that's real for you.
	And he's going to be interested and curious and ask about that.
	But I think understanding the basic principle of you had a survival mechanism which you should honor and respect because it kept you alive.
	But it's not productive now, right?
	Right.
	And the honesty of what you're experiencing without a demand for anyone else to change is a very powerful thing.
	I think I can do that.
	Good. I'm sure it's going to take a lot of practice.
	I know we talked for a long time, but it was a big, big topic.
	How was it for you?
	I appreciated everything.
	I have so much now that I mean, I've got a lot of homework to do, but I feel a lot better and I feel like I have some tools to walk away with to be more productive and in conversations with him.
	Well, and listen, I appreciate that.
	Your fortitude is a force of nature.
	I mean, what you have survived and what you have overcome and what you have escaped is immensely powerful.
	I don't think you know quite yet, which is an annoyingly condescending thing to say, so I apologize in advance.
	Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. I don't think you know how much of a force for good you're going to be, given how much evil you've experienced.
	You're like the cancer researcher whose five most loved people died of cancer.
	He's pretty motivated to find a cure.
	You are an enormous and powerful force for good in this world because of your intelligence and your verbal acuity and your sensitivity and the fact that you will never be in any doubt that evil exists and has power in this world so you know how important the fight is and I think you're going to be incredibly formidable over time.
	Thank you. And the bad guys will regret, if not downright rue, creating a superhero in the form of you.
	I appreciate that.
	All right. Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
	I will. I will.
	Okay. I appreciate that.
	And yeah, do say hi to your person.
	Thanks again for a great call tonight.
	I really, really appreciate it.
	Thank you so much.
	Take care. Bye. Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
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