Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - My Wife Fled with my Son! CALL IN SHOW

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June 16, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:13:11

My Wife Fled with my Son! CALL IN SHOW

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	All right.
	Well, listen, man, I'm all ears.
	Lay it on me.
	How can I best help?
	Well, I don't know where to start.
	I'm a single father now at the moment because my wife is out of the picture.
	We were in the process of separating, and in the middle of, to make a long story short, she didn't like the judgment of the courts and tried to take the baby.
	Back to, I don't know if I say specific locations, but to a different country.
	So she was caught by the police at the border.
	Sorry, I think you can say the country because that kind of matters.
	It does matter a lot.
	No, yeah, well, I'm in Italy now.
	And she tried to take the baby out of Italy, which was against the court's order.
	Sorry, was she taking the baby somewhere else in the EU or further afield?
	To Russia.
	To Russia?
	I lived in Russia for many years and we left in 2022 when everything happened.
	I'm an American and an Italian citizen and she's a Russian citizen and the baby has three passports, three citizenships.
	We have been living here, well, I had lived in Russia for almost 18 years and I'm I was quite happy there.
	We had a good life.
	And then the war started, and I said, you know, we have to leave.
	So we got up and we left for a couple different reasons.
	But one of the main reasons was my documents, my passport was expiring, and I couldn't get it renewed in Moscow because the embassy was closed.
	And they wouldn't renew it, so they wanted me to leave the country.
	And I didn't want to leave my family behind.
	I didn't want to leave my young son.
	He was two and a half.
	And my wife was Russian.
	And so we, as a family, decided to leave.
	And we came to Italy because I have dual citizenship.
	And I couldn't get her even to America, where my parents are.
	So we just went to Italy in order to get our documents in place.
	And I knew almost immediately that we were not going to be able to come back to Russia.
	That it was not going to end.
	She was hoping that we would come back.
	So, you know, fast forward to two and a half, off to 22, 23, I was trying to get her on board and understand that we cannot go back to Russia with a small baby, me as an American citizen.
	And she was sometimes okay with it, but other times just not okay with it.
	But, you know, her parents are there.
	Her apartment is there.
	Our whole life was there.
	All of our friends and family.
	But I just said that we have to build our new life in Italy here.
	And she was trying to do it, but we had issues between ourselves even before we came to Italy.
	We were arguing, fighting in Moscow.
	So when we came to Italy, it was rocky, mostly financially, and we just kind of grew apart.
	And she got to the point that she just kept saying, I want to go home to Russia with the baby.
	And I said, no, you're not going to.
	We're not going to allow that.
	And eventually I had to file for separation in order to get an emergency order to keep the baby in Italy.
	So the judge issued this emergency order in October, and we went in front of the judge.
	The judge upheld it after speaking to her because she, again, admitted that she wanted to go to Russia.
	She has an apartment.
	She has a job and her parents, and that she should be able to, as a mother, take the baby to Russia.
	And the judge said, no, you have residency.
	The baby goes to school here and he's an Italian citizen.
	I guess the main crux of the matter is that So if she brought the baby to Russia, the baby, well, I wouldn't be able to freely go there, and we would be separated.
	So about 10 days after we met with the judge, she, well, we had a fight, an argument in the morning, and she, Physically attacked me, I guess is the best way to say it.
	She assaulted me, and it wasn't the first time, and the baby was in the house with us.
	He was in the room, actually.
	Well, sorry, but what do you mean by physically assaulted you?
	That's a wide range of things.
	Well, she started with throwing things at me, and maybe she hit me first.
	But we were discussing about this idea that she couldn't find an apartment in Italy and she wanted me to leave the apartment so that she could stay here with the baby.
	And I said, you know, you want the divorce, you want separation, you have an apartment, go find, do your own thing.
	the apartment is in my name, all the utilities.
	And actually, what I should say is before that, I was willing to We were working with our lawyers, but she didn't want that at all.
	She either wanted to take the baby to Russia or she wanted to leave completely.
	So when she found out that we couldn't leave Italy with the baby and then she couldn't find an apartment, she just decided to get a plane ticket to Russia.
	For the 21st of November, this was like the 14th of November, all this happened.
	So she was going a one-way ticket.
	She was basically leaving us alone here.
	She had agreed to just go and leave me here with a baby.
	And so I was a little bit sour about this, and I said to her that, you know, you'll need to pay child support.
	You'll need to help us.
	I can't just...
	And she said that she didn't have money because of all the sanctions and she couldn't change money, which is all legitimate, reasonable things.
	And I said, well, if you don't contribute to the welfare of the child, you're not going to see him.
	And at this point, she hit me in the face.
	She repeatedly, not just once, but she punched me, as I remember, with I guess it was a closed fist.
	I have it on recording.
	I believe she was throwing things at me before.
	She was yelling before that because I had my phone recording, which is what I would usually do when she got out of control.
	Like I said, this was repeated.
	This happened for many, many years, especially the last two years.
	I have so many videos of her that I would record for my own protection, but also to see what's going on in my household.
	But this was the worst one.
	And so it started recording.
	I believe my battery was dead on my phone.
	So it started recording right about the argument when she started to hit me.
	And I removed her from the house physically.
	I took her by the back of the neck, I believe, or her shoulders or something.
	And I pushed her out of the door in her nightgown.
	And this was after she had hit me about at least five or six times.
	It's on video or on audio, I should say, because the video was blackened.
	And I let her back in the house after that in order to get dressed because she was outside pressing the doorbell.
	And at that point, she started throwing things at me, anything she could grab, like batteries, heavy, heavy things, not just papers or something.
	And at one point, she was in the bathroom and she threw a water pick, electronic devices and toothbrushes and whatever she could grab.
	From the bathroom.
	And that one particularly hit my hand, which I still have pain in my finger from that.
	And like I said, the hits to the face happened before I put her out of the house.
	At that point, after she threw things at me, I backed up into the other room and I locked the door because the baby was in the room with the television where I sleep.
	And I locked the door on her and she was just banging the door like crazy.
	So I started Give me my son.
	Give me my son.
	Again, all terrible.
	It's all on video.
	Sorry, that's what she was saying?
	Give me my son?
	Or you were saying?
	Yeah, she was saying, give me my son.
	And I was saying to the baby, let's get dressed.
	Let's get out of here.
	I was trying to get him out of the house with me.
	So as I remember, I was trying to put his shoes on or something.
	And then she came around on the balcony.
	We have two French doors on both.
	So she came around to the balcony and was destroying everything on the balcony.
	And at this point, I went out on the balcony and this had been going on for 30 minutes or 40 minutes.
	And I went on the balcony and I confronted her and we had a little bit of a tussle, let's say, on the balcony outside of the view of the baby.
	But at this point, I had had enough and she started, like I said, she threw everything on the balcony.
	And I believe I was telling her to go back into her room, and I hit her with an open, like a smack to the face.
	This is, again, not in view of the child.
	But that was the only thing that stopped her and her hysterics.
	She went into her room, and I went back to the baby to calm him down and get him dressed.
	And then she did calm down, and she wanted to speak with him.
	And I went around, so I let her speak with him.
	He was scared, you know, out of his senses.
	And I continued to clean up all the stuff that she threw.
	And she went into the, just as quick as it started, it stopped.
	So then she took the baby into the kitchen to feed him and brought him to school.
	I called my lawyer immediately and said, we have a problem here.
	He said, I think you need a criminal lawyer now.
	And then I think we made a couple phone calls back and forth, and he said that she had called the police on me for domestic violence and or telling them that I have marijuana in the house.
	That you have, sorry, what in the house?
	Marijuana.
	Okay, got it.
	So my lawyer said, you know, The police are coming.
	Again, I don't want to say anything that will be incriminating on the phone, but basically I got up and out of the house and I spoke with the criminal lawyer that my family lawyer had recommended.
	She told me, get to the hospital and document the injuries that you have, which is what I did.
	She told me not to go back to the house and to go to a hotel or rent an apartment, which I did for the night.
	And I assumed that the baby was at school and that she was calming down or speaking to her lawyers or her parents or whatever.
	I found out later that she had also gone to the hospital, but I guess she had a cut on her foot from broken glass.
	She didn't have any injuries from me, but I had injuries.
	So I had x-rays of my hand and MRI of my head at the emergency room.
	And I have documents that it was, you know, I had the video as well.
	So they documented it as domestic violence in front of a minor child.
	And like I said, in the meantime, what happened, I didn't know at the time, was that she went to her friend's house and...
	The police came to my house and searched the house for drugs.
	So they found nothing, of course.
	They found equipment that I had in my house or paraphernalia, but they didn't find anything illegal in the house.
	Again, I didn't know this at the time.
	I knew that the police were in my house searching when I was on the phone with the lawyer.
	But I didn't, because I had cameras in the house that they had disconnected.
	So I had seen that they were in the house.
	And like I said, I went to the hospital.
	And while I was at the hospital, she at some point got on a bus and took the baby.
	This was after she met with the police.
	And as the police did the search, I'm sorry, I'm all over the place here.
	It's even stressful to talk about it.
	Oh, no, no, that's fine.
	Go ahead.
	As the police searched the house, they found the passports, which I had hidden in the garage with my documents, with all my other birth certificates and everything.
	So I had his American passport and his Russian passport in the folder with all my documents.
	The police searched everything in the garage and in the house.
	So they found the passports and gave them to her for some reason.
	The Italian passports for him was surrendered when we had the emergency order from the Italian courts.
	So the Italian passport wasn't there.
	So she got a hold of the American and the Russian passport.
	The Italian passport.
	So she had now a Russian passport, and she decided to make a run for it.
	And I don't know exactly the details, if she had help or if people advised her.
	I know she was speaking to a lawyer.
	I assume she was speaking to her parents in Moscow, and I don't know if anybody locally was working with her.
	But as I was in an apartment at the hospital, and then I came home to an apartment, not to come home here, as per my lawyer's advice, she was already on a bus on her way up to, I guess, Germany.
	And I guess she went to Munich, from Rome to Munich to Warsaw.
	And during this, this was a Friday, I believe, or this was a Thursday night, this was.
	And meanwhile, I was in this hotel trying to understand what to do next and speaking with my mother, my brother, and my lawyer.
	I still didn't understand that she had run.
	I thought that she was at home still.
	So as she was going...
	Sorry, in the home that you shared?
	I was in a...
	I assumed she was at home with the baby.
	Sorry, had your cameras been disconnected?
	Because otherwise, wouldn't you have seen her at home?
	As soon as the police came, they disconnected.
	Okay, got it, got it.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	So I didn't know what was going on at home.
	My dog was home.
	So, again, I was just kind of, I guess, in shock.
	And I was told not to go home.
	Which is what I didn't do.
	And I wanted to go home at 8 or 9 o 'clock that night to see what the police had done to my house.
	And my lawyer said, don't go.
	Wait till tomorrow when the baby's at school and she leaves or something.
	And so that's what I did around 7, 8 o 'clock in the morning.
	I got up out of the hotel and I decided to go to his school where normally she would bring him.
	And he had a field trip going to some...
	They were getting on a bus, so they were really excited about it.
	He was talking about it all week.
	I decided to go there and say, Papa's okay.
	I'll see you this weekend.
	I'll be home tonight or whatever.
	I'll see you on the weekend.
	As I waited there, she never showed up.
	The idea was that you would go home with where your wife was that night?
	That seems odd to me.
	I'm not an expert.
	Well, I didn't really understand how serious things were.
	I mean, yeah, I wanted to at least go home to get my things or to see the baby or to take care of the dog.
	Sorry, you keep saying baby, but he's like two and a half, right?
	Well, no.
	At this point, he's five.
	We left Russia when he was two and a half.
	Oh, so he's five.
	If you could just say you're a son, the baby puts a different thing in my head.
	No, that's totally fine.
	It's just my own particular preference.
	So, sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, he's not a baby and he's a big boy now.
	So I went to the school to see him, to let him know that I was okay and that I would see him on the weekend.
	And she never showed up.
	And it was around this time I realized that there was a problem, that she wasn't at home and that she went somewhere.
	But I didn't fully understand at this point.
	I had the school contact her because they asked me if I wanted to call her and I said I can't or I don't want to because we had family problems.
	The school contacted her but she didn't answer her phone and they went ahead with the buses and left and so I went home at this point to check to see if they were at home or what the police had done and this was 8 o 'clock, 9 o 'clock on Friday morning.
	The first place I went to was the garage where the passports were hidden.
	And I saw that the police had ransacked, gone through everything, and that the passports were gone.
	That was the first thing I saw.
	I spoke to my lawyers that the passports were gone.
	Originally, I didn't find my passports.
	And I thought that they were holding them and that I was under arrest for something.
	So I thought I was in trouble.
	And I went up into the house, I checked everything, and I found my American and my Italian passport, but his Russian and American passport were missing.
	So I knew immediately that she took them and that she was running because also the toothbrushes were gone and the suitcases were gone.
	Again, I didn't understand that she was running to Russia.
	I thought maybe she just went to a hotel or to a friend's just to get out of the house with the baby.
	So what happened?
	From that point, I was speaking with my criminal lawyer, and this was Friday.
	By Friday evening, we were putting together a complaint.
	I guess it was too early to do with missing persons, but we were putting together, filing a complaint for the carabinieri, the local police here.
	And that was Friday night.
	I was on the phone with her, and I was, I guess, contacting her parents and her.
	And making screenshots of the phone logs and the text messages in order to show the police that I had been trying to contact her.
	This was all dealing with a criminal lawyer telling me what to do step by step.
	So I was back at my house at this point and Friday night I was at home alone.
	So Saturday morning I met with a criminal lawyer and I signed papers and she gave me the printout to give to the police.
	So that's what I did around noon on Saturday.
	I brought the papers to the police, the local police, and filed a complaint for missing persons.
	They interviewed me, and we tried to call her on her Italian phone number, and it was disconnected.
	So she had her Russian SIM card that she simply just changed out, and when we called the Russian number, it started to ring.
	So she was using her Russian.
	Sim card.
	And the police, you know, at this point were like, ah, okay.
	And they pulled up her file and they saw that she had, you know, a Schengen visa for five years.
	Of course, she was here on Italy with her green card, her permisso di soggiorno to live here in Italy.
	And the baby, of course, is, I'm sorry, the child is an Italian citizen.
	So he was living here with me as an Italian citizen.
	So we didn't have any visas, but she was here on a permit, living permit.
	And she also had her Schengen visa, which we had entered from Russia.
	She had come from Italy.
	So they immediately expanded the search zone all the way to the borders of all of the Schengen zone.
	I assume you know the Schengen zone is basically the European Union and a couple other countries.
	This was Saturday.
	I didn't hear anything.
	I wrote her a few more times as per my lawyer.
	I called her mother and father, I believe, two nights in a row.
	They told me that, oh, she's in a hotel probably, just relaxing, spending time with the baby before she comes to us on Thursday.
	A few days later, it sounded reasonable.
	It's possible.
	My mother, my brother, everyone said, no, she's running, she's running.
	And I just couldn't believe that it was true until around Saturday night.
	And at this point, my lawyer said we might want to get a hold of a lawyer in Moscow to try to fight her as soon as she arrives, whether by airplane.
	I didn't even think she was trying to go by bus, which is what she was doing.
	So I was on the phone with some of my Russian friends and contacts that know people in Moscow that maybe could help.
	And as I was on the phone with them, her father contacted me by text message, and he said that they have her and the baby in Poland, and that I need to get up there as soon as possible to get them out of there.
	So they being like the border people?
	Yeah, the Polish police.
	So I called her on her phone.
	They were in detention at the border with the border police, and she was not happy.
	I got to speak to my son for the first time in three days, and he was doing okay.
	The first thing he said to me was, Papa, we're in jail.
	I tried to tell him that he was just being protected and whatnot.
	I told her to stay put.
	She was in custody.
	She told me where she was.
	I told her I would come up there as soon as I could and get them out of there.
	So that morning, 6 a.m., was the next flight up to Warsaw.
	Now, sorry, so she was being held on child abduction, or was it just she couldn't cross the border, or what was she being held on?
	She was being held because I had...
	The Italian courts had said he can't leave Italy, and she took him out of Italy.
	So I had filed a formal complaint with the Italian police that she was gone.
	We didn't know where she was at that point, but when they found her in Poland, they obviously knew that she wasn't supposed to be out of Italy with the baby.
	And so when she was at the border, I found out later what happened was that she was, I guess, taken off of the bus.
	They checked the passports, and she has her Russian passport with permission to come and go, but the baby didn't have any documents in his Russian passport.
	So she was trying to cross the border with the Russian passport.
	And then, of course, there was this amber alert, this siren system.
	There was a system for abducted children that had, you know, the alert had gone out all over Europe looking for her and the baby.
	So they immediately put her in custody and they took the passport.
	So his Russian passport had no stamps in it because we entered on his Italian passport when we left Russia.
	So when they looked at his Russian passport, there was no, you know, there was no visa in there.
	There was no, so she couldn't actually get across the border anyhow.
	One of the first things she said to me, she was mad at me because I called the police.
	She said, well, I couldn't get across the border anyhow.
	That made a difference.
	She still violated the court order.
	Well, and of course, she called the police after what your claims are that she had assaulted you.
	So, OK.
	Yeah.
	And she and she and she said that that that was her lawyer had put her up to that, that that was the only way that she would he was.
	She didn't really want to do it.
	And again, I don't want to say anything else.
	Oh, she didn't really want to hit you?
	It's just, she says, her lawyer told her to you?
	No, about calling the police about marijuana.
	Oh, sorry, sorry.
	Okay, got it, got it.
	So she knew, again, I don't want to say too much publicly, but she knew what I was doing.
	I was smoking.
	But when the police came, there was nothing in the house.
	They didn't find anything.
	But they found paraphernalia and equipment and some seeds and stems and things like that, but nothing illegal.
	There's actually still an active investigation going on about this, which my criminal lawyer is taking care of.
	That's in the future here, coming in the future.
	But yeah, she said that she didn't really want to call the police on me about the marijuana, but the lawyer said it was the only way for her to stay in the house.
	And maybe she had told him that she hit me already.
	I don't know what she had told the police.
	I told the lawyer, rather.
	So yeah, she was mad at me that I called the police, and she was mad at me that there was no marijuana in the house.
	She thought, she knew that I had something illegal in the house, but of course I knew that we were in such a delicate situation that there was nothing in the house because I didn't trust her to not call the police on me.
	So I got up to Poland at about 11, 12 o 'clock that following morning, that Sunday morning.
	And my friend had sent some local contact to meet me at the airport and drive me from Warsaw to the border to a town called Terespol, which is just next to Brest-Litovsk in Belarus.
	It was just on the Belarusian border.
	And it took us about two hours to get across the country.
	And when we got there, the Polish police said that they can't release the baby because the Italian carabinieri So we waited a few hours.
	I had the Italian consulate in Warsaw working with me, and of course my lawyers were working with trying to get the Carabinieri to send the document to the Polish police so that they could release the baby.
	And the Polish police said that if nothing happens tonight, that we will have to go to Polish court in the morning.
	And my Italian lawyers and the Italian consulate said, no, release the baby immediately.
	And there was some back and forth.
	We couldn't get the child to meet that night.
	So I stayed in the hotel locally.
	And the next morning around 11, 12 o 'clock, I was outside where they were being held custody.
	And I was waiting for them.
	As I understand, as I remember, the Italian consulate.
	And my lawyers were telling me that we had to go to court and that the police would take us there, the Polish police.
	So I was waiting outside.
	I met with the Polish police and they let me sit in their car.
	And as I was in their cars, when the first time I saw them come out of the, out of, out of the building and I saw him and her, all three of us got into the back of the car and the two policemen drove us to We met with the judge.
	The judge said, what's going on?
	We explained the situation.
	Oh, I should say the Italian judge who issued the emergency order had issued a second order as a result of her being arrested, caught in Poland.
	And I believe the three points on it were that the child should be released to the father immediately and that the father has sole custody of the child.
	That the mother has to leave the house immediately.
	And the third one was that she should have no physical contact.
	So, you know, it's just incredibly stupid, what she did.
	I still can't even explain it.
	I guess we'll get into it later.
	Well, she was, I mean, according to her, she was taking advice from her lawyer.
	Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but that's what she would claim, I assume, right?
	She's entitled.
	She said she's the mother.
	She said she's emotional.
	She panicked.
	Yeah, I mean, about the lawyer, I don't think the lawyer told her to run.
	I believe that was her, either, she did it herself, she's claimed.
	Because I've asked her directly.
	But I believe it was her parents also put her up to it.
	Oh, I see.
	I see.
	Yeah, sorry.
	Her lawyer was saying, call the police and get the documentation and all of that.
	But yeah, sorry.
	Her lawyer did not advise her to write because that would be illegal and lawyers don't advise things that are illegal.
	My apologies.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, I can't imagine that he did that.
	I know that my lawyer was surprised at his unprofessionalism and amateurishness in the court and after.
	I don't know who she hired, but whatever.
	That's between her and her lawyer.
	Who put her up to going across the Belarusian border?
	It's got to be just her.
	I can't even imagine her parents were that stupid.
	They just didn't understand the situation.
	And they said, just come to us and we'll help you.
	She also, I suppose, it's hard to read people's minds, of course, but I would imagine she was like, well, once I get across the border, I should be fine.
	And she was hoping, I suppose, that the fact that you went to your son's school and found that he wasn't there was your first real tip off the fact that she swapped out the Italian with the Russian sim.
	So she may not have expected you to be as decisive and as proactive as you were.
	Yeah.
	And again, there were definitely angels watching us the whole way because there were things that happened.
	They all happened in sequence.
	Either I just got extremely lucky.
	I had good lawyers.
	My family were talking me through it because I was in shock.
	I still can't believe that she did it because it's just so stupid.
	I mean, if she had just gone to Russia and come back, we could have separated peacefully, we could have divorced if that's what we wanted to do, and had 50-50 custody, but she didn't want that.
	She wanted to go back to Russia.
	Well, no, she doesn't.
	I mean, if you don't want to live in Russia and she doesn't want to live in Italy, then 50-50 doesn't work for her, right?
	Yeah, exactly, exactly.
	And to be fair, I would love to go back home, meaning Russia, but I can't.
	just can't with what's going on what will be happening I mean it's just a You mean the divorce or the war or both?
	Well, both, yeah.
	Okay, got it.
	But especially what's happened to Russia.
	Russia has changed since 2022.
	The society, the laws, and as an American, I just can't live in Russia.
	I'll be a target.
	And now with her, she wants custody of the baby.
	Whether her or her father, it's just too much of a risk to take.
	They'll arrest me like all the other Americans and hold me as a hostage to swap me out with some other weapons dealer or something, some spy.
	Where was I?
	Sorry, you were at the Polish court and you had a judgment from the Italian lawyer with the three points.
	Yeah.
	The judge said to us, we had a translator there, an English translator, and we were all sitting, three of us together, and the judge asked, who has seen the document from the judgment from the Italian courts?
	And now my wife hadn't seen it yet, so she didn't know that I had full custody of him, and she didn't know that she was forbidden from being in the house or seeing the baby.
	So I raised my hand, and the judge, of course, had seen it.
	And we walked through it, and to make a long story short, he asked us, what do you want to do?
	And under my lawyer's advice, and I guess her lawyer's advice, we had sat down for lunch.
	No, lunch was after.
	I had told her, just remain calm.
	I'm going to get you out of here.
	Even her father said to him, please don't leave me there.
	I don't know if I could say names.
	No, if you could say off names, I would appreciate that.
	Yeah, so don't leave my daughter there.
	Don't leave her there.
	Take her with you.
	And I said, I'll see what I can do.
	I didn't know if I was going to be able to get her out.
	So with the judge, I said to the judge, and she said that we want to go back to Italy to solve this as a family with our lawyers.
	We don't want, you know, there's no, there's no, um, uh, Thank you.
	We want to get back home to Italy to solve it with the courts there.
	And so he made us sign some papers and make statements about that she could come home to Rome with me and that we would deal with it with our lawyers.
	And he gave us the baby's passports back to me, told the police that I have...
	So if for any reason she gave me a hard time and of course we were ordered, I guess, to not talk about the situation and stay calm and just get back to Italy as soon as we could and deal with it with our lawyers.
	So she was cooperative the whole way.
	We went to lunch.
	As soon as we were released from the court and all three of us, we went to, you know, the police just gave us our documents back and said, okay, good luck.
	And we were near, next to a train station, which was how we were going to get back to Warsaw.
	So we sat down at a restaurant to have lunch and figure out our next moves.
	We took a train back to Warsaw in the evening.
	It's just you and your wife and your son.
	Where was your friend who drove you?
	He had left.
	He had to go back the night before.
	He had drove me, and I stayed in the hotel, and then he drove back.
	Okay, got it.
	So just the three of you.
	And so you're just basically thrown to your own devices after all of this crazy legal wrangling.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	And it's just like a nightmare thinking about it.
	And it was just minute by minute, hour by hour.
	I was on the phone with the Italian consulate in Warsaw.
	They were advising me because we didn't have any travel documents for the child.
	We had only his Russian passport, which had no visa in it, so we couldn't get.
	The only way to get back from Warsaw back to Italy was by train, which was about 36 hours, I believe.
	And I did not want to sit on a train for 36 hours.
	I wanted to fly.
	It was awkward as it was.
	So I wanted to fly.
	So what we did was we got on a train.
	It was about an hour and a half train back to Warsaw.
	And I booked a hotel on Airbnb or booking.com or whatever online.
	Near the train station in Warsaw, so I was able to get into a safe place for that night.
	Obviously, I could not sleep.
	I was like a soldier on watch.
	Everywhere, I was afraid that she was going to run with him again.
	That was her chance.
	I wanted to get back to Italy, in the borders of Italy at least, or just as far away from that border as possible.
	We stayed in the hotel that night.
	And then that next morning, I took the baby to the Italian consulate in Warsaw to get an emergency travel document.
	And she cooperated.
	She came to sign for the document.
	They needed both parents' signatures.
	And at that point, I realized just how much trouble she was in.
	And I started to tell her that she's looking at jail time.
	They're talking about three years in prison.
	And I said, you know, you need to, and I guess she had spoke to her lawyers too.
	I said, you need to cooperate.
	You just need to stay calm and, you know, let's get on the airplane tonight and get home and we'll figure things out.
	So that's what we did by about 5 p.m. that night.
	And sorry, the prison time, again, I'm no lawyer, was to do with defying the court order to not leave the country with the child.
	For child abduction.
	Child abduction at that point, right.
	Okay, got it.
	And so, you know, I was saying to her, like, this is getting out of control.
	I don't want her in prison.
	I didn't want her in prison at the time and I wanted just to get back to Italy and I was afraid that we were going to get stuck in the Polish courts and that she would be held and I wouldn't be able to get her out or help her anyway.
	Sorry, but how is it that her cooperating gets her to evade the charges of this child abduction stuff?
	I don't think there's an asterisk in the law that says, well, unless you cooperate afterwards.
	The Polish judge allowed her to come back to Italy.
	My father doesn't understand why she wasn't held in Poland as a criminal.
	But I guess it was because it was Italian jurisdiction and that we needed to get back to Italy.
	Well, and I'm not sure that, yeah, I mean, she would have to be extradited to Italy, I assume.
	Hang on, bro, bro.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Slow your roll.
	And I know this is stressful, I get it, but I really do.
	I mean, you've been talking for half an hour and happy to hear.
	I really do have to be able to get a question or comment in from time to time.
	Okay, yeah.
	Okay, and I understand it's stressful, but, you know, just do your best, all right?
	So, yeah, I would imagine that Poland doesn't want to get necessarily involved, and they certainly don't.
	So she'd have to be extradited at some point.
	It's not like Poland is going to pay for her being in prison when none of this happened in Poland.
	I believe it was for the best of the child, was not to make it more stressful for the child.
	I think that's what they were thinking.
	Oh, sorry.
	And is that to do with whether she goes to jail or not?
	No, about releasing us together as a family.
	Not ripping the baby from her and leaving her and having to say goodbye to her in Poland.
	I think the idea was to get back to Italy and then solve it with our lawyer to lawyer in the Italian system.
	Okay, got it.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	And that's why I was interrupting you.
	I was just trying to get that part out.
	So when we got back to Well, no, and sorry, just interrupt.
	It's because...
	So if I don't even get the question out, you know the answer, but my audience doesn't.
	So, sorry, go ahead.
	Absolutely.
	We got back to Italy, and I had booked the same apartment that I stayed in.
	It was close to my house, so I had booked it for that night because I knew that she wasn't allowed to come back to the house.
	I spoke with my lawyer, well, I spoke with her, and I said, sorry, you have to stay out of the house.
	You can't come home tonight.
	And she, of course, started to cry, and she asked me if she could stay just one more night with him.
	I spoke with my lawyer.
	My lawyer said, the judge won't know, but under no circumstances do you leave them alone.
	So we all, three of us, went back to the house.
	It was late at night at that point.
	And they slept in the normal room that they would normally sleep in.
	I slept in the other room with the dog, but in the house.
	And everything was calm and quiet.
	We didn't argue or fight about anything.
	The next morning, we brought the child to school.
	And we had talked either that night or on the airplane or something.
	In order to de-escalate the situation, because now we have the police looking at me for drugs.
	I don't know what she told them.
	If I was growing, selling, using whatever she was telling them.
	But they were looking at me for, you know, not going to say narcotics, but marijuana.
	And she was in trouble for child abduction and domestic violence in front of a minor child.
	And so my lawyer said, you know, you're a hair away from losing custody of the child.
	They're going to take him away.
	Now, do you mean not to her, but to she?
	Like, be taken by the state.
	Like, both of you are in such trouble.
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So we both, as parents, we didn't want that, obviously.
	And she, I said, I'm sorry, she, you need to get on a plane.
	Come on, man.
	Just give me a favor.
	Don't give me all these edits.
	Just stay off names.
	Let's make Svetlana.
	Let's call her Svetlana.
	She needs to get on an airplane and go.
	Back to your parents.
	Get out of here.
	And let me pick up the pieces and figure out what to do next.
	So she agreed.
	She said that I don't want you to lose the child also.
	Meaning she understood that she already lost him.
	And that's what she did.
	So the next day we brought the baby to school and she packed her suitcase.
	And we picked him up from school in the afternoon.
	And we spent a few hours together, took some pictures as a family, the last pictures we have.
	And we put her in a taxi and she went to the airport.
	I stayed here at home with the baby and the dog.
	At the airport, she checked in because, again, she had already had a flight that she bought the week before, before all the fight and everything.
	So she tried to catch this flight, and she checked in, she got to security, and they, of course, pulled her on the side, and this is where they, I guess, you would consider her arrested.
	She was fingerprinted and photographed by the local Italian police.
	They let her leave the country.
	You can't just leave the country if you're embroiled in legal issues, right?
	Well, yeah, that's what we don't really understand.
	They allowed her to...
	And this paper, I emailed it to her, and she showed it to the police at the airport.
	And I guess her and her lawyer had signed some papers or agreement that they would answer the criminal charges.
	So they allowed her to leave.
	The country.
	And that's what she did.
	She booked another flight and went to Moscow.
	She was there by the next day.
	And that's it.
	So she's been there, and I've been with the baby since.
	And how long ago was that?
	That was November, the end of November.
	Okay, and you guys, late 20s, early 30s, so you don't have to give me exact ages, but just rough decades.
	40s.
	Oh, you're both in your 40s, is that right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, got it.
	Early, mid, late?
	I'm late.
	She's early.
	Okay, got it.
	Okay, so you're pushing 50. All right, got it.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So I've talked with her.
	We talked on the phone every day, I believe, until around Christmas or New Year's.
	And then I stopped speaking with her every day on the telephone.
	But from end of November, December, we had...
	I spoke with her maybe one time on the phone in November through text messages maybe in the airport.
	But I couldn't speak with her.
	I didn't want to speak with her.
	I have nothing to say to her.
	And then on Christmas morning, I let her experience Christmas morning with us.
	And, you know, that was difficult.
	Just the two of us here, and she was distantly.
	Around, like I said, New Year's, second and third of January, I just said, this is enough.
	I can't speak with her on a daily basis.
	It's just making me crazy and making my And, of course, the baby sees that.
	He sees me getting angry and upset.
	And that was around January 2nd, 3rd.
	And now we talk to her about every 10 to 14 days, only because she asks.
	And I don't want to keep her from talking to him, but I don't want a regular every day.
	So she has been asking for once to twice a week to speak with him.
	And we're kind of in some disagreements about my stuff that's in Moscow.
	I'm still trying to They're in boxes.
	And so she's dragging her feet on this.
	I don't know why.
	I guess it's her leverage on me.
	And I told her, as long as you don't listen to me and you don't respect what I'm telling you or what I'm asking you, I have no obligation to have you speak to the baby every day because it's affecting our daily routine.
	Well, and you have custody, if I understand this right.
	Yeah, I have sole custody.
	It's my discretion.
	And I've talked to the lawyers and they said, "You can do whatever you want." Because I was afraid that I would anger the judge that if I had parental alienation or something.
	And I just didn't want to affect the child negatively either.
	And do you know what's happened with the criminal charges?
	It's under investigation still.
	They basically told me that which is, you know, everything is slow in Italy.
	It's just so funny.
	They literally have her travel documents and they have the judge's order, but it still takes a year to investigate.
	Yeah.
	They told me if she tells me she's coming back to Italy, they will move up the investigation quicker.
	Yeah, I guess they have an idea with stuff that's more imminent threat.
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah.
	So we have a hearing in June for the separation.
	That was from the original emergency order for separation and or divorce and I guess custody arrangements.
	That's June of this year, and the criminal hearings we don't know anything about, but I assume it will be before November.
	She is planning to come back in June to go in front of this judge that issued the emergency order, so that should be interesting.
	And I believe at that point the custody arrangements will be made permanent where I have sole custody.
	That's what my lawyers are telling me.
	And, of course, I told my criminal lawyer that she's coming back and that she's planning to come back and or visit three to four times a year.
	So if that will affect the criminal case or the speed of the criminal investigation, then we will know from there.
	But as I know right now...
	A lot of backstory.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
	Because, obviously, philosophically, that's not much I can add to that situation, but with regards to how things are going now.
	Sorry, did you just not let me finish my sentence again?
	Yeah, I did.
	I'm sure.
	I apologize.
	Okay, go ahead.
	My whole body is shaking.
	difficult.
	Yeah, but the backstory, it's just, that's, you know, that's our, our, Your voice fades in and out a little bit.
	I'm not sure if you're getting further or distant from the microphone, but if you could try and keep a constant distance, I'd appreciate that.
	Sure.
	About our marriage, I mean, we were married for six years.
	We were together for ten.
	Always arguments, fights.
	It was never really peaceful.
	And this was just the final...
	Yeah, okay, but how pretty was she?
	She had a cute face, I'd say, but I can't say that she was so...
	I guess it was more about money and comfort of living.
	We had our apartment.
	We had a good life there through her family.
	Wait, sorry.
	Hang on.
	She's a pretty girl.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, I mean, in general, Russian women are elves and Russian men are orcs.
	That's just a general pattern that I've seen.
	So, what you're saying is that her family gave you money?
	Yeah.
	They supported us.
	But why would they support you?
	I mean, you met her, you were in...
	Why would you need money from her mommy and daddy?
	Well, I didn't.
	She did.
	She accepted it when we got married.
	She accepted a position in her father's company.
	It was like a ghost position where she would collect a salary.
	And the idea was that we could focus on starting a family.
	Sorry, a ghost position.
	So he paid her.
	For not working, really.
	Yes, exactly.
	Okay.
	And I guess it was a huge amount of money or whatever, but why, I mean, are you guys Christians?
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, aren't you supposed to be the...
	Sure, her unquestionable I'm questioning her belief system.
	Well, did she claim to be a Christian at the time, like 10 years ago?
	She did.
	She was baptized, yeah, she was baptized, we got married in the church and everything, yeah.
	Okay, so you're the head of the household, right?
	Yeah.
	So how are you the head of the household if, okay, what proportion of your household income was coming from your wife's salary for her pretend job?
	35%, 40%, 60-40 something.
	Okay, so she was getting paid X amount of dollars, she was getting paid 60K, you were making 100K, or I'm not saying that was it, but something like that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And again, I...
	I agreed in the beginning, but I was always against her father giving the amount of money that he did, whether it was gifts.
	Even to me, he would give me birthday or Christmas gifts, and I just felt uncomfortable taking it from him.
	But the monthly salary, this was something that I had spoke to my mother and my students and friends about, and they all said to me the same thing.
	If he can, and he wants to, and he can, it's their only daughter.
	He wants to help.
	Just take the help.
	And I had had multiple conversations with him about that this money needs to stop, that I don't want it coming into the house.
	So I was not taking it like, oh, free money.
	I was really against it for years.
	But it did help.
	I mean, it really did help.
	Having a child is expensive, so he did help.
	And he told me he wanted to help, so I accepted the help.
	Okay, got it.
	Hang on, so were there any red flags with regards to Svetlana, not her real name, but we'll just use that.
	Were there any red flags with her early on when you were dating?
	Of course, of course.
	I mean, from the very beginning, she basically thought that we were married, which is very common with Russian women.
	I always slow down a little bit.
	We just met.
	It's been a month, three months, something.
	Massive fights and arguments.
	Sorry, she thought that you were married?
	I'm not sure what you mean by that.
	So she basically considered me her husband from the very beginning.
	Not just boyfriend, girlfriend.
	She was like, you know, we have a relationship, so we're together, and you're a close person to me now.
	So looking back, that was way too quick.
	She was trying to move into a marriage relationship.
	And how long after you first started dating did you have sex?
	About one month.
	Okay.
	It was very quick.
	Got it.
	All right.
	So she was kind of pushy with the marriage stuff.
	And, you know, three months is usually a better rule, but you guys went with a month, which is not, Obviously, I've heard, like, same date.
	So what else did you see with regards to sort of impulsivity and temper?
	Well, she had these just hysterics.
	She would just get upset and just...
	Thank you.
	What?
	But when?
	Like early?
	If we had, yeah, in the first three to six months.
	I would say the biggest red flag was when we first visited America to visit my parents.
	So this was after about eight or nine months of dating.
	And we were living in separate apartments.
	So I had my apartment, she had hers, and she would visit on the weekends.
	We would see each other all the time.
	It was pretty much okay that first year, but the biggest red flag was in America when we were in Washington.
	She got mad at me because the night before I had been inebriated, just silly drunk.
	The next day, I didn't remember anything in the hotel room, and so she got upset at me, and she started to drink the vodka that I had left there, and I said, okay, we're going home.
	And I checked out of the hotel and started driving home from Washington up to New York, and she just got belligerent in the car, telling me that she was going to have me deported from Russia.
	She was going to tell her father and have him, you know.
	Contact the police or something to have me deported and lose my job and have me kicked out, lose my visa.
	Sorry, but on what grounds would she get you deported?
	Did she say that or just make the threat?
	No, just the red suit.
	And then the big one was that she was going to...
	And this was how she said nine months in?
	Yeah, this was January.
	We had met in February, March of the previous year, so it was about nine, ten months.
	Okay.
	She had threatened to tell the American police that I raped her.
	Oh, my God.
	Yeah, whoa.
	Again, this was ten, eleven years ago.
	I can't remember the details, but I remember trying to get her and her suitcase out of the car, and she was kicking the windshield from the inside.
	On my rental car.
	And I was just, you've got to stop.
	You've got to get out.
	And it was this kind of where she would just get emotional and hysterical that she couldn't.
	Again, this particular morning, I know she had drank vodka because she was trying to show me how I behaved or something.
	But yeah, that was the biggest red flag.
	And when we got back to, I drove her back to my parents'house in New York and we were busy.
	And we flew back to Moscow together, but we were not together.
	And I think we were separate for about a month after that.
	And we got back together in February or March.
	But why the fuck would you get back together?
	No, no, this is not funny.
	This is not funny.
	It's not funny because there's a child.
	So, help me process this.
	I've never heard of anything like this before, and I've been doing this for a long time.
	So, there's causality here that I don't grasp.
	And I'm a guy who likes to figure out causality.
	So, she threatens to get you kicked out of Russia and take your job and your career.
	She threatens to tell the police you raped her.
	And you get back to...
	Oh, and previously she has the...
	And previously she had these sobbing hysterical fits where she's like screaming and writhing on the ground in tears, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So why?
	and she's not she's not some stunner and you get completely dicknapped so I don't Maybe there is for you too, but why on earth would you get back together?
	And why on earth would you give her a child?
	Those are two big questions.
	The first one I can answer, I believe it was my judgment was clouded from my alcohol use.
	I was a big drinker at that time.
	I was alone in a foreign country.
	I had friends and stuff, but she was my girlfriend of about a year.
	Gave her another chance, you know.
	But you're not drunk all the time, obviously, right?
	At the time I was.
	Now I'm sober, but at the time I was.
	No, nobody's drunk all the time, right?
	I mean, you sleep.
	You wake up with a hangover.
	Or did you just drink when you woke up?
	I had a bottle next to my bed.
	Sorry, I'm still not getting sentences out, okay?
	Sorry, sorry.
	So, you're not drunk all the time.
	Or were you?
	No, I had to work.
	Yeah, I would drink every night.
	Okay, so you weren't drunk all the time because you said you're a teacher, right?
	Yeah.
	I assume you didn't teach while drunk.
	No, but hungover.
	Hungover, yeah, I get that.
	So if you say, I made bad decisions because I was drinking, I understand making bad decisions while you're drinking, but you're not drunk all the time.
	So in your sober moments, didn't you say, I'm literally walking into a lion's den here.
	I don't remember thinking that at all at that time.
	At the time, I remember that you asked me for a reason why I went back to her.
	Looking back, I believe it was because of a kind of, I want to say, flammabond, but it was some kind of connection that we had.
	No, connection answers nothing.
	Okay.
	No, it's tautological.
	Like, well, why did you get back together?
	Because we had a connection.
	Well, that doesn't answer anything.
	The question is, why did you have a connection?
	What was the nature of the connection or whatever, right?
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	So you've got friends and you've got family.
	Do you have siblings?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So do you share or did you share what happened with friends, family?
	And siblings.
	Parents and siblings.
	I know for sure my best friend knows about the rape accusation because we've talked about it recently.
	No, no, no.
	At the time.
	Not now.
	Sorry, I was unclear.
	My apologies.
	So at the time, did you say, she's hysterical, she's lying on the ground, she's kicking windshields, she's trying to destroy my career, she's threatening to have me thrown in prison for 20 years for rape, and did you share the facts and the truth about what was going on with your girlfriend, with parents, siblings, friends, extended family, and so on?
	One friend, for sure, 100% at the time.
	Father, I believe I spoke with him when we were still in New York before we left.
	And we were, you know, obviously I told him we were split.
	But my siblings, I don't speak with very much.
	Okay, so your father, you told your father, she's insanely dangerous, she's going to destroy my life, she's going to get me thrown in prison, she's making threats, and so on.
	And so you said something along those lines to your father, I assume, because he must have said, why did you break up?
	And I assume you're not lying to him.
	So what did your father say?
	I think he was shocked and he was happy when I told him that we're done, we're finished.
	But we went back to Moscow and I didn't speak with him after.
	So, what, you didn't tell your father, who was very happy and relieved, that you were out of danger in this way?
	You didn't tell your father you got back together with Svetlana?
	Is that right?
	As I remember, yeah, it was nobody else's decision but mine.
	At the time, as I remember, I was speaking to my parents about once a month.
	Sorry, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	It was nobody else's decision but yours.
	I don't understand what that means.
	So I told my friend and my parents what happened in Washington.
	And then we went back home to Moscow.
	And then I believe I didn't speak to anybody for two to four weeks before I got back together with her.
	I wasn't on the phone with my friend or my family very much.
	I must have told friends in Moscow what happened, but I really don't remember.
	Sorry, and I'm not asking that.
	I'm asking when you say it was nobody's decision but mine, are you trying to say that your decision to get back together with a dangerous and unstable woman does not involve friends, parents, and siblings somehow?
	Like, they're not going to somehow be fucking affected if you get thrown in prison.
	Well, no, I just didn't have any discussions with them.
	But why?
	Because I was involved with my life in Russia.
	I had left my family in America.
	I didn't speak to them on a daily basis.
	So you understand that you're just prevaricating here, right?
	This is bullshit.
	I didn't speak to them on a daily basis.
	Jesus Christ.
	Come on, man.
	You're a father.
	Stop with this.
	Stop it.
	I'm sorry, Seth.
	You're a father, which means that if your son...
	He gets older, right?
	He's in his teens and your son has a friend who's an out-and-out criminal.
	And then he says, oh yeah, my friend got arrested and I'm no longer friends with him.
	You'd be like, oh, thank God, right?
	Now, would you be okay with your son becoming friends again with this criminal, hanging out with him and starting to engage in criminal actions and not telling you?
	No.
	And if he said, well, you know, Dad, sometimes we don't talk every day, what would you say to him?
	We need to speak more often.
	Okay, what would you say to him about hanging out with his criminal friend and hiding it from you?
	I would say that, you know, he's going to get you in trouble and you need to stay away.
	And he'd say, hey, man, no, no, this decision only affects me, Dad.
	What would I say as a father?
	I would say, no, it doesn't.
	You're my son and I want the best for you.
	Yeah, what you do affects me.
	And it has.
	What I'm trying to say is I didn't have communication with my father in that way.
	We didn't speak on the phone more than once a month and I would speak.
	Jesus Christ, man.
	Oh my God.
	What are you doing to me?
	Why are you making up all these bullshit excuses?
	Okay, when you needed your father's advice and help, when you were engaged in all these legal battles, did you call him?
	In November?
	Well, whenever this shit was going down.
	I really don't speak with my father on the television.
	I speak mostly with my mother.
	And yeah, of course, now I speak with...
	Fantastic.
	Okay, so you have a line You have a line of communication to your father that's open.
	You talk to him now on a daily basis.
	So when you say, well, we didn't talk before.
	Are you going to let me finish my sentences?
	Correct you.
	Thank you.
	So when you decide to get back together with a woman who could destroy your entire life and is threatened to do so, and you say, well, but I didn't talk to him that often, that's bullshit.
	Because now you talk to him all the time.
	So you can easily pick up the phone and say, Dad, this woman who you told me you were incredibly relieved that I got away from.
	I'm really thinking of getting back together with her.
	What do you say?
	Or you could have called a friend who said, hey, that woman who threatened to accuse me of rape, I'm really thinking of getting back together with her.
	What do you think?
	Or you could have called your mom and said, mom, this woman who threatened to destroy my life repeatedly, I'm thinking of getting back together with her.
	What do you think?
	I understand what you're saying, but I do not have that relationship with my mother or my father talking about my relations with my friends or girlfriends.
	Stop lying to me.
	You already said that you had a conversation with your father when you broke up with your girlfriend.
	When we returned from Washington.
	They asked me why we returned early.
	So I told them why we returned early.
	Right.
	So you did have a conversation with your parents about your dating life.
	In person, in New York.
	And then when we went to Moscow, I didn't have that open line of communication.
	I would only call once a month or so just to tell them I'm alive.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	This is what's frustrating.
	What do you mean you didn't have that open line of communication?
	You could have had a video call anytime you wanted.
	It wasn't like you were locked up or in prison or you were in some Soldier of Fortune mission where you couldn't talk to people.
	You could have picked up the phone or picked up a video call and you could have chatted with them anytime you wanted.
	I understand I could have, but I did not.
	You're asking me what happened and I'm telling you.
	I did not speak with them at that time.
	Why not?
	You keep giving me all of these circumstantial excuses like, well, we didn't have this line of communication and we didn't talk more than once a month and it wasn't in person.
	I'm asking why you didn't tell them that you wanted to get back together with this woman because they're your parents, they care about you, and you were making fairly suicidal decisions without telling them and I'm asking why.
	And giving me some circumstantial bullshit like, well, we didn't talk that off, that doesn't answer the question.
	The question is, why did you hide it?
	I'm trying to help you here.
	I really am.
	And I just can't.
	He listened to this nonsense.
	Why did you not tell them?
	I don't understand why it's nonsense.
	That's why I want to give you an answer, but I don't understand when I'm telling you what happened, you're telling me that it's nonsense.
	No, you're giving me excuses.
	Like, I didn't have an open line of communication, which is false.
	You absolutely had an open line of communication, which is you could have picked up the phone and told them anytime.
	I have never spoke to my parents about my relations with, you know, or decisions about, I would have conversations with my best friend.
	Okay, but how can you...
	Oh, my God.
	We're just going round and round in circles here.
	So you did tell your father why.
	I'm still trying to ask a question here.
	So you did tell your father...
	You told your father why you broke up with your girlfriend.
	I told him why we returned from Washington early, because they couldn't understand we were supposed to be there three days we returned after one.
	I told him what happened.
	And that we were going back to Moscow.
	Okay, how is that not exactly what I just said?
	You told him what happened, that she kicked the window, that she threatened to accuse you of rape and all of that, right?
	So you told your father about what happened in your relationship, and he expressed enormous relief that you were not going to be with Svetlana anymore, right?
	I don't remember his exact response, but I imagine it was the US.
	Okay, bro.
	Listen, listen.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	Look, we're going to have this conversation or not.
	It's up to you.
	But if you're going to sit there and tell me, well, I don't remember his exact...
	Of course you don't remember his exact words from 10 years ago.
	Who would?
	But if you're going to prevaricate in this kind of way, then I don't really know how to have the conversation.
	I don't know why we're fighting about this stuff.
	Because you give me these things which aren't true, but you're telling me things that aren't true.
	And I can't work with you if you tell me things that aren't true.
	I'm trying to be truthful with you.
	I just don't understand what you're asking me.
	You want me to say that my father did not, that I didn't speak with my father about it, that he didn't step in to save me, to help me?
	I was 37, 38 years old, making decisions about my relationships with a woman.
	I'm not saying it was a good one.
	Obviously, it wasn't good.
	You asked me about the first red flag.
	That was the major first red flag.
	The only person that ever said anything to me at that time that I remember was my friend, and he said, you know, run, get away from her.
	And even recently, he said, I told you so.
	I told you 10 years ago.
	He was right, of course.
	But, you know, my parents were the only one that I remember telling them that I returned.
	From Washington early, but I didn't speak with him about getting back together with her.
	You know, when I was back home, it was just something that happened.
	I contacted her, we met at a movie theater, and we decided to, you know, give it another shot.
	Okay, given that your parents and your extended family and your siblings, I mean, so you're not that close to your siblings, let's just stick with your parents.
	Has it been fun over the last while for your parents?
	Oh, of course.
	They're devastated.
	Right.
	That's what's going on.
	Now, if you had called your father and said, hey, that woman who threatened to accuse me of rape, I'm thinking of getting back together with her, what would your father have said?
	They'd say you're nuts.
	I'll tell you what I would have said if I were your father.
	Thank you.
	If that's of interest to you.
	No, it is.
	But let's just say for whatever reason, I would say, or let's just say as your friend, I would say, if you do something this self-destructive, I'm not your friend anymore.
	Our relationship is over because I'm not going to watch you destroy yourself.
	Like if you sent a video to a friend saying, hey, I'm going to live stream playing Russian roulette, he wouldn't watch, would he?
	No.
	I don't watch people who make absolutely suicidal decisions.
	I'm not in relationships with people who are that self-destructive.
	So I would have said, hey man, you're an adult, you're free.
	I mean, this is so completely crazy and predictably self-destructive.
	You can't get back together with her.
	That's an absolute fact.
	If you do get back together with her, I'm not going to be around to watch the shit show.
	Like, I'm not.
	I don't have the energy, and I don't have the focus, and I don't want this insane decision that you're making to spill over and screw up my life.
	If you want to go it alone, that's fine.
	You can go it alone, and you can reject all of the good advice that people give you.
	But then don't ask for their help.
	Because you want to go it alone, right?
	You don't want to give other people input in your decisions.
	That's fine.
	But then don't ask them for help when things very predictably go haywire.
	So my question is...
	As I remember, that was the relationship that I had with my family.
	I was in Russia.
	I had left everybody.
	I was very cut off.
	So I didn't speak with them.
	No, none of that's true.
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	Are you currently in Canada?
	No.
	Wow.
	But how are you and I able to have an important conversation, despite the fact that we're not in the same country?
	Okay, I understand.
	I don't think you do, because you keep saying, well, I was in Russia.
	Like, that somehow means you can't talk to your family.
	I used to use calling cards.
	Calling from Russia, where I had to scratch off a PIN number.
	We had Skype at the time, but my parents didn't use Skype.
	We would use Skype only for birthday calls.
	Mostly, I would use calling cards that had minutes on them.
	I called very rarely.
	I had very little contact with my family.
	I would visit once a year.
	I think even the following year, it was two years that I hadn't visited.
	I was not that close at that time in my life.
	Did you even hear yourself?
	When you say, my parents didn't use Skype, we would only use Skype for birthdays.
	Yeah, well, I mean, the way that we use it now, we have video calls all the time.
	We have Messenger, we have Viber now.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Bro, bro.
	This is a complete contradiction.
	My parents didn't use Skype, but they did use Skype for birthdays.
	We didn't use Skype on a regular basis, Stefan.
	We used Skype once a year.
	So what the fuck are you talking about, pin cards and all this stuff, and calling cards, when you could call Skype for free?
	Because my parents did not use it.
	My father did not have a computer.
	My mother didn't even know how to set up a call.
	We just didn't use it.
	So then how did you use it on birthdays?
	My God, man.
	Okay.
	We didn't use it very often.
	We used it once a year.
	So they used it.
	So you could have called them on it.
	You could have texted them and said, turn on Skype, I need to talk to you.
	And they would have turned on Skype just like they did on birthdays, and you didn't.
	Yes.
	Could have, but we didn't.
	You didn't.
	You're the one who had information that was directly affecting your parents, which is I'm getting together with an extremely dangerous woman who's legally threatened their son.
	Yeah.
	That's what I said from the beginning.
	I did not share this information with them.
	They were not part of the decision making.
	I'm not going to circle this drain anymore because I think you're just purposefully misunderstanding me at this point.
	Because I'm asking why and you're giving me all of these ridiculous technical...
	I was in Russia.
	That doesn't answer the question as to why you didn't tell them.
	Now, let me ask you this.
	Why was it okay To be with such an unstable woman, was your mother very unstable?
	Was there instability or chaos or mental illness in your family while you were growing up?
	Something made this familiar or acceptable?
	It's a question I've been asking myself.
	We had a stable house except maybe fighting between my siblings.
	There was no history of mental illness, no drugs, no alcohol.
	Just my brother would fight with my father, my sister would fight with my mother, my brother would fight with my sister, and I was in the middle.
	And I just picked up and I said, you know, I went to Russia.
	I had enough.
	I just didn't want to be part of the whole mess.
	So that's the only thing that I can pinpoint.
	Okay, how often would these, on any given week?
	How many days would be spent with there being conflict?
	I mean, how many days were peaceful and how many days were conflict in a week?
	I would say three to four conflict, if not more, five, six.
	They were always fighting, my brother and sister.
	Okay.
	Why do you think they were fighting?
	Why do you think they were fighting?
	I believe because my parents were not involved properly.
	My father took sides with my sister, my mother took sides with my brother, and my sister and my brother just had clashing personalities.
	As you're alluding to, I believe it starts with the fish rots at the head.
	It starts with the parents and how they organize the household.
	Okay.
	How bad would these fights between your brother and sister get?
	Similar to what we had between my wife and my girlfriend at the time.
	My sister would throw things at my brother.
	My brother would do some passive-aggressive things like flush the toilet while she was in the shower so hot water would go off and call names.
	Oh, so they really kind of hated each other.
	Yeah.
	For years this went on.
	At least a decade.
	From what age to what age?
	My age?
	No, from what age?
	Were they 6 to 16?
	5 to 15?
	Was it a decade?
	My sister is 6 years younger than me and 8 years younger than my brother.
	So my brother and I are closer in age.
	My sister, I guess it started when she was maybe 8 or 10 until she was 16. Wait, hang on, hang on.
	Sorry, sorry.
	You said that your brother was eight years older than your sister?
	Yeah, and I'm six years older than her.
	So your brother was picking on a little girl when he was an adult?
	Yeah.
	Okay, what the fuck?
	Calling names, you know.
	Okay, it's not funny, not funny.
	So why was your brother That's not a fair fight, is it?
	No.
	So why was he mentally abusing and torturing a little girl?
	I didn't do that to her.
	I believe because, now that you say it that way, I believe it's because the relationship he had with my father.
	Either out of jealousy or because of how close.
	How close she was with my father.
	Maybe he was jealous or the way that my father treated him.
	How did your father treat him?
	I don't know how to say it.
	I guess dismissive.
	He was always the black sheep of the family.
	Towards when he was 12, 13, 14 years old, he started hanging out with With friends, bad friends, and smoking cigarettes, and doing drugs, and getting bad braids.
	So, your brother started doing drugs when he was like, what, 13 or 14?
	Did I get that right?
	Drinking and smoking, yeah.
	Okay, when did he start doing drugs?
	Harder drugs.
	The harder drugs later, I guess, 16, 17. Okay, hang on, hang on.
	When did he start doing the soft drugs?
	I guess around 14, 15, 14, 15. Okay, so your brother started abusing drugs when he was 14 years old.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I guess your sister was eight.
	So he would be in ninth grade, so she was, yeah, so she was.
	Yeah.
	Sorry, 6, my apologies, 6. She was 6 years old.
	First grade, something, yeah.
	All right.
	So, when did you find out that your brother was abusing drugs?
	Well, I knew that he was smoking cigarettes because he would smoke in the room.
	We shared a bedroom, so he would hang out the window, and then he would sneak out at night, out the window, and meet with his friends at nighttime.
	So I would either come with him sometimes, but...
	Okay, and who was it?
	Was it your mother who raised you, or was that outsourced?
	Well, both my parents were in the house, but my mother was the main, you know, the main, she kept it, the glue kept everything together.
	And I should also say.
	No, she worked.
	My father was...
	And my father compressed his spine and was put on disability.
	So he was going through this difficult time.
	My family was also around this time.
	Okay, so your mother worked.
	So who raised you?
	Well, both my parents worked until my father was injured, and then my father has not been a worker.
	Hang on.
	When you were little, someone had to take care of you.
	Okay.
	I mean, you've been a dad, you know this, right?
	Did you leave your six-month-old son on his own for the day when you go to work?
	No, of course.
	I was with my mother until she went back to work.
	Okay, so how old were you?
	Or I guess your sister's the youngest, right?
	Or how old were you when your mother went back to work?
	I believe she went back when I was one or two, I believe right away.
	Okay, and did she then take more time off for your sister?
	No, I don't believe so.
	My father would work at nighttime and would take care of my sister as my mother went back to work.
	But my brother and I, I believe she went back to work after a year or two.
	Quite early.
	Okay, got it, got it.
	We went to daycare.
	Okay, right.
	Okay, so did your parents know about your brothers?
	I assume drinking, smoking, drug use, and so on.
	Yeah, they did eventually, or quite early on, yeah.
	How old do you think your brother was when they finally figured out that he was hanging out with the wrong crowd and doing drugs and drinking and smoking?
	I would say around 14. So they realized that he was being influenced by sort of very bad peer pressure and that he was in grave danger, right?
	And the reason I'm saying that is that, of course, there's the addiction issues.
	There is criminal elements, particularly in the drug trade.
	But, of course, most importantly, there's fentanyl and things like that that regularly get added to drugs that will kill you.
	And this is early 1990s, so it was mostly alcohol and marijuana.
	And then, as I understand later, I found out that it was a Coke, and I think he smoked crack a couple times or something.
	A lot of hallucinogens, but there was a lot of LSD.
	I think there was fentanyl wasn't even a product at that point.
	No, that's fair.
	I appreciate that.
	There was no opiates or anything like that.
	That was way before.
	Right.
	Okay.
	I mean, there were, but it wasn't.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It wasn't.
	No, I appreciate that.
	I mean, I guess heroin or so, I guess, was out there.
	But as I said, he never did any of that.
	I was shocked when he told me that he had smoked crack.
	I was already in my 20s or something when I found that out.
	Okay, so.
	Your brother is spiraling down into this pit of dangerous addiction.
	And what did your parents do?
	Tried to punish him, take things away from him.
	You know, he had problems at school, so they were trying to keep him in school, but they, as I remember, not much.
	Just yelling.
	Yelling at him, threatening, yelling.
	Well, I mean, listen, I mean...
	Addiction is a very dangerous condition.
	And, you know, amateurs...
	Sorry.
	Yeah, yeah, you know for sure.
	And amateurs can't fix it, right?
	I mean, have you ever heard me trying to fix somebody's addiction?
	I don't even, right?
	I can talk about childhood stuff, but, you know, dealing with addiction is a complex, multidisciplinary thing because you've got psychological issues.
	You have social issues.
	You have physical dependence issues.
	It's a big, complicated thing to deal with addiction, right?
	Sure.
	So, I assume that your parents, when they're dealing with this, would have called on help, right?
	they would have talked to a doctor, a doctor might have referred them to an addiction specialist or an addiction counselor or something like that.
	Or punish him.
	They would say, gee, you know, this is a big, complicated thing.
	We've got to get some experts in, right?
	And, I mean, this was known in the 90s, right?
	I was around in the 90s that addiction was a big, complicated thing that you don't just yell at people who are addicts, right?
	And it's a big thing.
	So I assume that they would have consulted with experts.
	I don't think that they knew the extent at the time.
	I think they knew he was drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes, but they didn't know the extent of it.
	Not that that's an excuse.
	It's not an excuse, because it's their job to know.
	Sure.
	It's their job to know.
	And if he's hanging out with a bad crowd, and even if we just say he's drinking and smoking, alcohol is catastrophic for developing brains.
	It's bad as a whole, right?
	But it's really bad for developing brains, right?
	Of course.
	Okay, so it's their job to know.
	So they can't claim ignorance, right?
	Like if you have a test to study, you can't just say, if you forget to study or you decide not to study, you can't just say, well, I didn't know.
	It's like, well, it's your job to know.
	You know the test is coming.
	So when your child is falling off the rails and hanging out with criminals and drinking and smoking and all of that, then it's your job to find out what's going on.
	And it's your job to move heaven and earth to help your child no matter what.
	And again, at this time, my father was dealing with a head injury and he was.
	Did I have that wrong?
	Yeah, neck compression, but he has a head injury, short-term memory.
	Sorry, did he get the head injury at work?
	Yeah, it was at work.
	He had one of these giant 27-inch TVs at the time, not these flat screens, and it compressed his spine, which caused all these injuries.
	Sorry, did he have cognitive deficits?
	Is that like he had a head injury that caused cognitive deficits?
	Yeah, he still does.
	Ah, maybe that's why you didn't talk to him about your girlfriend.
	I wasn't aware of that.
	Okay.
	So, your father has cognitive deficits.
	What about your mother?
	She does not, thankfully.
	Okay, so then she should have known.
	Everybody knows that peer pressure in the teenage years are a tough thing, right?
	Every parent knows that.
	I mean, it's been on TV, you know, since I was a little kid, right?
	It's a long, it's a half a century, right?
	It's 10 o 'clock, you know, where your children are.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Actually, I think it was 11. It's 11 o 'clock.
	So, yeah.
	So, I mean, the teen peer stuff and all of that.
	We had curfews.
	They were involved in everything.
	I want to say they were doing their best, but it obviously wasn't good enough.
	Okay.
	So, was this about the time that your brother started tormenting your little sister?
	Yeah, I would say.
	I would say that...
	Okay, so...
	Right, so they were letting a drug addict mentally torture their little girl.
	Yeah, it was more when he was 17, 18, 19, 20, like when he even got into his 20s, when he was living at home still, and she was, you know, young, young, preteen.
	Sorry, how does that come up with what I'm saying?
	No, she was a little bit older, that's all.
	It wasn't like she was six and he was...
	What about the mental torture, the torment, the teasing?
	Come on, man.
	I think that was a little bit later.
	Okay, so what started at 16?
	Unless I misunderstood something.
	I feel like I'm just lost in this fog.
	Everything keeps changing.
	Now, maybe that's my perception.
	So what started at 16?
	With your sister?
	All of the...
	The...
	The teasing and, as you said, mental torture, it was when he was a little bit older, and she was a little bit older.
	I would say he was absent, really, between these years of 14 and 17. And it was only later when they started to fight all the time, and even when she was older, when she was 16, 18, and he was in his 20s.
	And they would fight all the time.
	Okay, hang on.
	I'm so sorry.
	Maybe this is completely on my side, so I apologize for that.
	I thought you said that the torment started a couple of years after he started smoking and drinking and all of that, which I thought was 14, so that would put it at sort of 16 or so, maybe 17. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
	It's a little bit later than that, as I remember.
	He was a little bit older with the really bad fighting.
	So it was like when he was 20 and she was 12?
	Yeah.
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	Or a little bit older, maybe even 20, 24, and she was 12, 16. Okay.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So he was still living at home.
	And what did you...
	As I was, too.
	Okay.
	We were all at home.
	Okay.
	So, you're all at home.
	So, you've got a guy in his mid-20s picking on a tween, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, or, you know, early teens.
	What did you do about that?
	What did you do about that?
	I stayed out of it.
	What do you mean you stayed out of it?
	This is your little sister.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	It's your little sister.
	I mean, did you not care about protecting her?
	We didn't have a relationship from about when she was about...
	Thank you.
	I really don't speak to her.
	so I had a relationship with him but not with her so you sided with the Until his late 20s, maybe early 30s.
	So you sided with the drug addict against your little sister?
	Well, yeah, because I was also smoking and drinking at the time, too.
	Okay, so your little sister had two drug addicts, one of whom wasn't talking to her and one of whom was tormenting her.
	Yeah, you can put it that way.
	I'm sorry?
	What is incorrect about that?
	No, I mean, I just never considered myself as part of the problem.
	You're absolutely part of the problem because neglect is a form of abuse, right?
	Sure.
	Okay, so what did your parents do about the fact that their little girl was being tormented by two drug addicts and alcoholics?
	One tormented by not talking to her, and the other directly mentally torturing and abusing her?
	I would say about me, they didn't know the extent or any of my activities.
	And my brother, I mean, my father was trying to protect her.
	And he was always fighting with him and yelling at him, you know, or trying to kick him out of the house or would fight with my mother.
	And then, of course, my mother would try to protect my brother and, you know, not want him to be kicked out of the house, not want him to be yelled at.
	That's something that, you know, to this day is still continuing.
	And he's, you know, he's 50 years old and there's still a fight between my mother and my...
	Where did you guys get the money for your alcohol and your drugs and your cigarettes?
	I worked.
	Well, we both worked, but later on when he was in his 20s, he did work, but he was always asking for money from my mother and my father.
	I always have been financially stable.
	I just always took care of myself.
	And why did you stop talking to your sister when she was 15 or 16?
	As I remember, the specific thing that broke the camel's back was when I split up with my girlfriend of four years, and she said something like, no wonder she didn't want to marry you or something like that.
	That was the last thing that I remember, and I just stopped speaking to her completely.
	I mean, was she wrong?
	No.
	That's why I'm laughing.
	She wasn't wrong.
	She was right.
	So, have you apologized to her?
	I have, yeah.
	Has your brother apologized to her?
	I don't know.
	I know that they had, uh, they did have a more of a connection than I did with either one of them, uh, for a period of time and the teens here and the, you know, 2000 teens.
	He publicly would denigrate her?
	I think in private messages or something.
	Maybe on her wall he posted stupid things, but yeah, that would be public.
	Yes, it would be.
	Okay.
	And what's your relationship?
	You said you're not close now.
	What's your relationship with your siblings?
	With my brother, I spoke to him just in November when all of this happened.
	And then in December, January, he had a medical issue, so I called him to check up on him.
	But that's the first two times I've spoken to him since 2016.
	So that was almost eight, nine years that I haven't spoke to him.
	Wow.
	And my sister, so I'm basically, I think when I, he never met.
	My girlfriend at the time and my brother had never met with my girlfriend, eventual wife.
	They never met.
	My sister, we had a very cold relationship.
	It's since gotten better.
	It's hard when so much water has gone under the bridge.
	But we communicated, and mostly through my wife, as far as my nephews.
	And we were just at the baptism.
	She asked me to be the godfather of the second son.
	My brother is the godfather of the first son.
	So they have a connection, but I know that it's not very close now.
	For example, in November, my sister checked up on me.
	But I haven't heard from her since November.
	And how long were you drinking and using drugs for?
	Well, I started drinking at a young age also when I was like 12 to 14, but not like him, but I was drinking, you know, little airplane bottles and, you know, grab a beer from the barbecues.
	And I didn't smoke.
	I didn't do any drugs or smoke anything until I was 17. But I started really drinking.
	When I first got drunk, I remember I was in ninth grade when I had my first hangover.
	That was like 15, 16, and we drank 40-ounce of Old English back in the day.
	But my drinking really took off.
	Of course, I drank in America with my friends.
	We would drink two to four beers, go into bars, small beers, like 333 milliliters, 12-ounce beers.
	So you would go to a bar, you'd drink a couple beers, and then either one of you would drive home or you would be sober enough to drive home.
	Somebody would be designated a driver, either not drink at all or have a couple drinks.
	And I was usually the driver, so I didn't drink that much, but I smoked a lot from about 17, 18, through my 20s.
	I smoked on a daily basis marijuana.
	Acid, the hardest drug I did was LSD, and that was maybe five to ten different times throughout 17 to 18 years old.
	But then I stopped it because I stopped hanging out with friends and I had a girlfriend, so I stopped maybe once or twice at an Ozzy Osbourne concert or something.
	But I smoked a lot and I drank beer.
	And from time to time, I would drink some bottle of vodka or whiskey with my friends, and we would just drink to get drunk, not just for fun.
	You said that was still happening in Washington back in the day.
	So when did you last get drunk?
	The last time I drank alcohol was June of 2023.
	That was just beer that I had.
	I would say when I really stopped drinking to get drunk, it was June of 2020.
	June 21st, 2020.
	Wow, so you were like over 30 years drinking.
	Yeah, I drank a lot of 30. Yeah, yeah.
	You said 12 to 14, right?
	Yeah.
	12 to 14 to early mid-40s.
	I drank heavily starting in about 2011, and that was, so I was 34. So from 34 until about 44, I guess, after about 10 years, I was really, really drinking heavily on a daily basis, hard alcohol.
	And that's why when I'm sort of asking you for, like, alcohol is kind of an excuse machine.
	It's a way of avoiding difficult things.
	And so when I'm trying to get these contacts together, like I need answers for this and you've given me circumstances, that's one of the reasons why we'd have to fight.
	But that's all right.
	Okay, so why do you think you were drinking and doing drugs in your teens?
	I guess my family life was...
	I mean, as I remember at the time, it was fun or cool, and me and other friends, we would get a hold of something, and we would want to drink it, and it was this idea that you were peer pressure or being cool, but at some point, it just became...
	Oh, your brother introduced you to hot drugs.
	Well, I mean, we knew, you know, none of, let's say we got, me and my friends got it through him and his friends.
	The only way that we had access to was through him and his friends.
	So your brother introduced you.
	It's so funny, right?
	This is the funny thing.
	This is like a constant pattern in our conversation, which is like, you say something, I repeat it back to you, and then you shift it.
	Well, no, I know that that's true.
	I've known that for many years.
	Why don't you just say yes?
	I got LSD through my brother and his friends.
	So your brother introduced you to hard drugs.
	Yes.
	As opposed to, well, that's a strange thing.
	It's like, you tell me two and two makes four, and I say, so two and two makes four, and you say, well, not really.
	It's a pattern, right?
	I would say the drinking as well.
	Yeah, it's a pattern.
	The drinking as well, it was with him and his friends as well.
	It was just something that they all did.
	I was with my older brother and I wanted to, but then I also brought it with my group of friends.
	And I remember at the time recognizing that and vocalizing it to my other friends.
	Hey, you know, this all starts for my brother and his friends.
	Not that we couldn't have done it without him, but...
	So, I...
	Don't know the answer, of course, in every situation or every circumstance.
	But in general, people end up drinking because they lack social skills.
	They don't know to have productive and enjoyable conversations with people, and so they get together and get shit-faced.
	Yeah, that would basically say, I mean, You go to a bar, you have to sit down and have beers.
	Now, it's just abhorrent to think that I would do that or that I would even do it now.
	I have no problem speaking to people now and communicating.
	In fact, I love to talk with people and connect with them.
	Remember what you're talking about.
	I can't stand to speak with people who are under the influence now.
	Right.
	And of course, I know immediately.
	So, did your parents, when you, and I guess it's tough to know with your siblings, although maybe you saw it with your sister, did your parents have conversations with you when you were little?
	Little meaning before the drinking?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, no, like I'm talking like, yeah, three, four or five years old.
	I mean, you're the father of a five year old, you know that they can have, they can have.
	So, you know that with your son, like, he's five, I assume that he can chatter away like nobody's business, right?
	Yep.
	Okay.
	So, did your parents have conversations with you from, like, as early as you can remember?
	Not the way that I do with my son.
	Okay.
	Of course, that's by definition.
	Of course, it's not exactly the same way that you would have with your son.
	Go ahead.
	We talk about religion, we talk about God, we talk about alcohol.
	No, I understand that.
	Hang on, hang on.
	I understand that it's different with you and your son.
	By definition, it would be, because you're not your parents.
	So, when you say, not the way that I have with my son, my question is, what did your parents have conversations with you about when you were very little, that you remember?
	Television.
	Television programs.
	There's always television.
	Not sports.
	My parents were not into sports.
	My mother was preoccupied with her work and different goings on in the office.
	My father and I played video games, Nintendo, and on a nightly basis, we always played.
	So we would talk about the video games and the different sports teams that we built or the different strategies.
	I used to go to work with him, so we would talk about his.
	Okay, so you didn't really have conversations where you're bringing your sort of thoughts and ideas together.
	You're commenting about what you're doing.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so that's lacking conversational skills.
	And that's not any fault of yours, right?
	I mean, my parents didn't teach me Japanese, so I don't speak Japanese, right?
	So if you lack conversational skills, then...
	You have to do stupid stuff like drinks and drugs.
	You have to do stupid stuff like that.
	I played sports a lot with some of my friends, but then as I got into drinking and drugs, it was always about getting more alcohol.
	Well, and you notice, if you're around drunk people, how boring and stupid they are.
	Not when you're drunk, but when you're sober.
	Sorry, you were saying that you just can't stand being around drunk people anymore.
	No, yeah.
	And the insecurity and the lack of ability to connect with people is blindingly clear, which is why kind of everyone has to get drunk.
	Because if you're sober around a bunch of drunk people, it's repulsive.
	Absolutely.
	So lack of connection skills, lack of communication skills, lack of conversational skills often leads to addiction.
	Because you lack conversational skills, you also don't necessarily have much of a conversation with yourself.
	And that emptiness, you want to kind of drown it out.
	But you can't be around quality people because you don't know how to talk to them.
	again, through no fault of your own, just your parents not talking to you.
	And Lord knows we don't learn these things in school.
	So you just have to hang around with a bunch of other people who all want to self-erase and make loud noises for no purpose.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I mean, I would just say that I'm not a...
	It's almost like I was just bored or addicted at some point.
	My point is that you're not making friends if all you're doing is drinking together.
	That's not friendship.
	That's just shared addiction.
	That's just mutual addiction.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And so that's sort of my, the reason I'm going down this road is because I'm trying to figure out why you didn't share your troubles with people and thus lighten your load, right?
	With regards to your girlfriend slash wife, right?
	With regards to Svetlana, you didn't really, I mean, you talked to one friend who said, for God's sakes, run.
	You didn't talk about it with your father.
	And you didn't talk about it with your siblings, really, and you didn't talk about it with your parents.
	And that's, I would assume, because your social life was not about sharing actual thoughts and ideas, but just around drinking and partying.
	So you don't have the habit of talking to people about what's going on in your life in any particularly real or connected fashion, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I do now, but at the time, I would say, yeah, I mean, it was just, even if you talked about what's going on in your life, you would meet for beers and talk about work or Moscow or whatever is going on in your life.
	But as far as family and friends back home, I did not communicate with them.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	All right.
	All right.
	So, how's your son doing?
	As far as what happened in November, he's doing remarkably well.
	He's just a normal, happy little guy.
	I'm trying to get him to speak with a psychologist, looking for an English-speaking psychologist.
	I'm working with the local social worker that I'm in contact with to try to find somebody.
	We've been sick January, February, so I just haven't done it.
	I have to get him to speak with somebody.
	I'm speaking with a psychologist on a weekly basis.
	In the beginning, he was having temper tantrums and hysterics, and he was hitting me.
	In the beginning of what?
	In November, in December, when she first left.
	He was very upset, especially after the phone calls.
	Which is one of the reasons that I stopped them.
	But generally, he misses his mama, but he doesn't ask about her.
	I try to speak with him and try to get his feelings out and let him always know it's not his fault what happened, that it was between his mother and I, and try to reassure him that I'm not going anywhere, that I'm not leaving him.
	He told me recently that he had nightmares that I went away.
	But generally, as I see, and I hope, he's adapting well to the situation without her.
	Sorry, he's got tantrums, he screams, and he's having nightmares, but he's doing well?
	Well, since, yeah, that was in November, December.
	Now, since January, February, there's been a marked improvement in his behavior, except for always being sick from school all the time, having a virus or...
	Oh yeah, no, this meant a nasty part going around early this year, yeah.
	But as far as his, he's just much calmer and he's just, he's shows, you know, shares everything with me and we...
	And then just what happened today, just as you contacted me, which was kind of providential, he was mad at me because the TV wasn't working or something, and I was just trying to reload the modem or something, and he just got so angry at me.
	You know, stomping around the house and saying bad things to me, like, you know, your stupid papa.
	And I just said to him, you can't talk to me this way.
	And, you know, I'm your father.
	You have to just go in your room and calm down until I can figure out what's going on with the modem.
	But, I mean, generally, he will.
	He'll, you know, stomp his feet and turn red, you know, just give me the evil eye.
	But I usually will.
	I don't know if it's right or not, but I enforce the fact that I'm his father and that I'm the source of discipline of the rules and that you can't just speak to me that way.
	So he usually will calm down.
	Well, but he grew up seeing his mother speak to you that way and worse.
	Absolutely.
	So you've trained him to do that.
	I'm not sure why he's punished for something you trained him to see and to do.
	Yeah.
	Well, I was punished.
	I want the behavior to stop.
	I tell him that it's unacceptable.
	No, no, but you trained him.
	Yeah.
	Because you were married to a woman who spoke to you appallingly, and he was exposed to that.
	And he saw everything he saw.
	Right.
	So you trained him to speak to you, It's kind of like if some guy teaches his daughter that the word for tree is like a horrible swear word, right?
	And then would he punish her for using that swear word while pointing at a tree?
	He might, but it wouldn't be right.
	Well, it'd be totally wrong.
	So you loved a woman, married a woman and loved a woman who spoke to you like that, and now you're punishing your son for speaking to you like that.
	I don't, I mean, sorry, maybe I'm missing something that I'm not I wouldn't say punished.
	It's more that, you know, I guess it's verbal punishment.
	I'm telling him that it can't happen.
	I'm trying to correct.
	No, no, but it did happen.
	What do you mean it can't happen?
	It happened for years with your wife and you.
	It's throwing, I assume, horrible verbal bombs at each other.
	So what do you mean it can't happen?
	It happened for years.
	I mean that it shouldn't be this way.
	It needs to stop.
	Okay, but you are responsible for him speaking to you that way because of the woman you chose to be his mother and the fact that you let the relationship continue in this horrible way for years.
	Yes.
	Right?
	I mean, am I wrong?
	No, I'm responsible.
	Everyone says to the kids, well, it's not your fault.
	It's like, okay, well, whose fault is it?
	Is it your son's fault that he was exposed to years of verbal abuse between his parents?
	No, it's mine and my wife's.
	Right.
	And she's not around, so it's yours?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, saying, I'm your father, you should respect me, is incomprehensible to him because you let yourself be treated with immense disrespect for years, and his formative years, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, the personality is largely set by about the age of five or so.
	Now, that doesn't mean all habits or, you know, anything like that, but the nature of the person is largely set around that time, so that's what I'm sort of trying to figure out.
	I mean, if a man and his wife scream at each other, and then the child screams to get his way, how on earth would the child get punished?
	They're just doing what they were taught.
	They're just doing what they were taught.
	I mean, I was more like trying to correct his behavior and saying that it's not acceptable to do that.
	As you said, I've already shown him that it is acceptable, but...
	Not only is it acceptable, you marry it!
	Yeah.
	No, no, seriously.
	You pursue it.
	You date it.
	You get engaged.
	You marry.
	You give it.
	She's not only as it's acceptable.
	Yeah.
	I mean, the honest thing, what would be the most honest thing you could say to your son if he calls you stupid?
	Yes, I am.
	I married your mother.
	Well, no, I wouldn't say that because then you have no credibility.
	But what's the most honest thing you could say to your son if he says you're a stupid daddy?
	It's not nice to call me stupid.
	No, that's not.
	It hurts my feelings.
	No, because you stayed with this mother who called you far worse.
	The most honest thing to say would be, in my opinion, we taught you, your mom and I taught you that was okay.
	We were totally wrong.
	Yeah.
	Like, I completely understand why you say that.
	That's what you grew up with.
	And I accepted it, and I put up with it, and I, in fact, claimed to love it.
	And I was not in my right mind, I don't even know how to explain it because you're five, but I was totally wrong and your mom was totally wrong.
	This is not how we should talk to people, but we taught you wrong.
	So you're not to blame for this habit, but we've got to try and figure out a way to undo what your mom and I did.
	Yeah, and we have had some kind of conversations along those lines, and he does know about, My drinking, because I told him that I stopped drinking, and I told him alcohol is forbidden as he gets older.
	And I try to teach him not to repeat the same mistakes that I made.
	So I do talk with him openly about, I don't know if he's the right age.
	Probably not.
	But I tell him alcohol is forbidden, and anyone who drinks alcohol, just please, please stay away from them.
	Remember this as you get older.
	He's seen pictures of me in the hospital with needles in my arms.
	He asked me what was happening.
	Of course, she's called me an alcoholic in front of him.
	We've talked about my alcohol use.
	What did you put you in the hospital?
	I had pancreatitis from alcohol.
	Drinking too much.
	Acute pancreatitis.
	Is that dangerous?
	Yeah, it was life-threatening.
	That was the main reason that I stopped because my enzyme levels were so high.
	You continue to drink your pancreas, which is eating itself.
	I did continue to drink, but that was my main impetus besides the baby.
	That was when she was pregnant with him.
	And then even after he was born, for the first six months or so, I did drink.
	And it's shameful.
	But I do let him know that Daddy had a problem with alcohol and that I don't drink it anymore.
	And the reason was because I got very sick.
	And so I teach him to just have a very strong aversion.
	So you quit because of health, not because...
	No, I wouldn't say that.
	Obviously, I was trying to quit for many years and I just couldn't.
	No, no, but you finally quit because your health was in danger.
	When I finally quit, the final, no, I didn't quit when my health was in danger.
	I started the process before, I had started before, but I really quit for, you know.
	Three, four, five months at a time, but I would go back to drinking heavily.
	But when I really quit, the reason I know it was June 20th of 2020 was because we had a huge fight, and I sent her to her parents' house.
	She stayed there for about a month, and somewhere in that month, I realized that I was going to lose my son.
	I was going to lose my family.
	And I needed to stop drinking completely.
	And that's what I did.
	But that's more to the story than that.
	I started smoking in place of it.
	And then I would drink like one or two beers at a maximum along with smoking.
	And how much of your wife's complaints about you were founded upon you just not being there because you were drunk or stoned or hungover?
	I mean, towards the end?
	I mean, during the whole relationship.
	She didn't really complain about You said you started drinking heavily in 2011, right?
	Yeah.
	So, before I met her.
	Before you met her.
	Yeah.
	So, you were drunk throughout the relationship?
	Absolutely.
	So if you had quit drinking, do you think that Well, if you quit drinking, she probably wouldn't have wanted to be with you.
	But let's say you had quit drinking...
	I assume, yeah.
	Okay.
	I mean, we still have hurt problems.
	You can stop drinking alcohol, but if you still have somebody who's She was not against it until she was pregnant.
	Nope.
	Absolutely false.
	Sorry.
	Unless I misunderstood something.
	Hang on.
	When you were in Washington, she got really angry and started drinking to show you how bad it was.
	Yeah.
	So she had a problem with it.
	She had a problem with me getting shit-faced drunk.
	But not just drinking because it was part of culture in Russia.
	It's a part of culture, drinking in Russia.
	Yes, I understand that.
	I would drink with her father.
	Okay, do you think that I was talking about having a glass of wine at dinner?
	Oh my god, man, you just make me work so hard, it's crazy.
	I mean, this is just, again, this is just prevarication, right?
	So yes, she had a problem with my drinking.
	She had a problem with your drinking.
	It became more extreme, her problem, when, you know, like really, when she was pregnant with the baby.
	And when the baby came.
	And why did you decide to have a baby?
	She vocalized.
	Because we were married and we were starting a family.
	That was the reason that we got married.
	Okay, so it wasn't an accident like you chose and you said, this is a great environment to bring a child into.
	No, we got married in 2018 and we immediately started to try to have a child.
	Right?
	So you thought this is going to work?
	This is a good environment to bring a child into?
	I did.
	I did, yeah.
	Okay.
	And you were still drinking at that time, of course.
	Yeah.
	And you drank throughout the pregnancy?
	And you drank after your son was born?
	Within the first year, I had the pancreatitis.
	So that was 2019 and the baby came in October.
	So from January to October, there were And then when the baby came, I remember I was drinking in October as celebration, as stress, I don't know.
	But it got progressively worse through the pandemic came, and it got progressively worse in March, April, May.
	March, April, and then May, I remember I was sober, and then June.
	It was the final straw that I stopped drinking hard alcohol.
	That was the last time that I drank whiskey or vodka or anything.
	All right.
	So, is there anything else?
	And I really, really do appreciate the conversation.
	And it's very illuminating.
	And is there anything else in particular that I could help you?
	Because, I mean, we've been talking for a good old chunk of time.
	And is there anything else in particular that I could help you with over the course of the conversation?
	and I really do appreciate the chat.
	Well, I mean, you know, all the nonsense of my...
	It matters, obviously, but it doesn't matter at this point.
	Right now, I'm focused on being the best single father I can for my son and not repeating the same mistakes for his life or that my parents made.
	Just trying to stay emotionally grounded with him, not creating any more trauma and or helping him to deal with the situation.
	That's really what I'm trying to do.
	And that's a great commitment.
	And of course, you mentioned you haven't read Peaceful Parenting.
	Hey man, it's only been out for two years.
	So if you want to check it out, of course, it's PeacefulParenting.com.
	I would strongly recommend it, as you would imagine the writer or the author would.
	So yeah, is there anything else?
	No, I just thank you for all the work that you do and for helping us to grow as people and protect children.
	That's really the most important thing.
	Thank you so much.
	I really appreciate that.
	Do keep me posted about how it's going and I certainly wish you the very best.
	Okay, I'll read the book or listen to the book and hopefully take some things from it.
	Thanks again, Steph.
	Fantastic.
	Thanks for the chat, man.

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