WEBVTT - Read This: How Sonia Orchard Reclaimed Her Story 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.400 Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to share 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.080 another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast. 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:09.119 It's hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams and 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:12.000 features conversations with some of the most talented writers from 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.800 Australia and around the world. In this episode, we're going 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:18.759 to hear from writer Sonya Orchard. Before we begin, though 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:22.279 a warning. This week's conversation is about sexual assault and abuse. 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:26.439 It's about the failures social, structural legal that entrench and 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:29.720 prolong the trauma for victim survivors. It may be triggering 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:35.080 and upsetting to hear, so please proceed with caution. As usual, 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:36.879 I'm joined by Michael to tell me a bit more 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:37.680 about the episode. 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:40.880 Hi Michael, Ruby Jones. Hello, So, Michael. 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:44.440 As I mentioned up top, this episode delves into some 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.640 difficult topics and might not be for everyone. But as 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:50.080 you mentioned in the episode, the proliferation of this kind 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:52.599 of abuse means that there is actually a very good 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.160 chance that many of us will have either experienced it 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:58.840 or will know someone who has. So with that in mind, 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:01.600 tell me a bit about Sonya Orchard's new book, Groomed 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:03.400 and why you found it so powerful. 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:06.959 Yeah, it's a really tricky one and the warning is 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:11.800 particularly acute this week. This isn't a book that deals 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:14.959 with trauma and traumatic topics in passing. It is a 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:18.360 book where they are front and center, and in many ways, 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:20.720 that's the point of doing this episode. That's the point 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:24.560 of Sonya Orchard's book, is that we understand, through things 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:28.080 like the Me Too movement, through various global attempts to 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:32.280 raise awareness, the ubiquity of sexual violence and sexual assault. 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:35.760 You know, the chances are ruby anyone listening to this 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:38.600 will have someone in their life who's been affected by 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:42.400 gendered violence one way or the other. It's an absolute epidemic. 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.200 And one of the things that have really well written 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.680 memoir in this space can do is offer a language 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:52.000 for victim survivors, offer them a space with which they 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:55.320 can see their own experience reflected, understand the kind of 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.800 universality of some of these challenges, and maybe hopefully give 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:04.080 them the strength to find ways to process, fight, and 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:05.840 live with that struggle themselves. 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:08.880 And you note that this book is beautifully written in 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.040 addition to of course being rigorously researched, and that's because 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:15.520 Sonya is actually first and foremost a novelist, Is that. 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:17.720 Right, Yeah, that's right. Sonya has written a couple of 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:20.600 books before this, The Virtuoso, which won the India Award 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.480 for Best Debut Fiction back in two thousand and nine, 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:26.280 and Into the Fire in particular. Both of them were 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:30.279 incredibly well reviewed. She's a natural writer and a beautiful storyteller. 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:33.120 And one of the things that's really interesting in our 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:37.000 conversation that listeners will get to hear is that relationship 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.960 between the creative ridly life and the processing that Sonya 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:44.760 was doing of her own experiences and working out how 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:47.679 to share them with the world. The two are interconnected, 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:50.560 and it's a fascinating. 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:55.560 Conversation coming up in just a moment. How Sonya altered 0:02:55.639 --> 0:03:09.840 reclaimed her story. 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:08.800 About ten years ago, I was at a counseling session 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:13.280 and this just came up as a, you know, something 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:14.680 to fill the end of the session with. 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:18.000 And it came up. 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:23.079 That I'd had this what I called a relationship, and 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:26.680 she said to me, you know, you were violated, and 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:29.000 I was just like, no, I wasn't, don't be ridiculous. 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.720 And she was the one who kind of suggested new 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:36.920 words to me for what I had experienced when I 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:41.880 was a teenager, and I flatly denied what she was 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:42.400 saying to me. 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:46.440 And it was only when she sort of spun the. 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:50.360 Story around and said, Okay, imagine your daughters are in 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:55.360 that relationship. And that's when the story suddenly looked very 0:03:55.440 --> 0:04:00.800 very different to me, and I experienced what I realize 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.760 now is a trauma response where I was shaking all 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:10.040 over and shivering and it was like a you know, 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:12.560 a computer crashing or something. 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:13.360 That's how it felt. 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:19.600 And that was very very confusing because she had just 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:22.120 driven a truck through a wall kind of thing, and 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:24.680 I was just like, hang on, what's on the other 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:25.400 side of the wall. 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:26.960 You know, what's going on here? 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:31.760 I don't understand because I stick by my story and 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:33.680 this is the story that I've held onto for my 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.000 entire life, that I was in this regular in inverted 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:42.120 commas relationship when I was fifteen. But she has unpicked 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:46.680 something for me, and I don't understand what's going on here. 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:52.000 You know, a lot of people might have just decided 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:55.200 I'm not going to go there, but I suppose there's 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:59.039 the you know, investigative journalist in me that took it 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:00.479 on as a I need to. 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:02.200 I need to get to the bottom of this. 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:06.320 This is it's too interesting for starters, and it's too important, 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.720 and it's it's important on so many levels. Sort of socially, 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:14.560 it's important for me as a mother of teenage girls. 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:16.560 It's you know, I just needed to. 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:22.840 And and also presumably once you start pulling at the thread, 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.279 it's no longer a choice to see it through because 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.440 the scaffolding is down. Just to mix my metaphors from 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:33.320 thread to scaffolding, get a single go. But you know, 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:39.240 that thing of reassessing story and story as coping mechanism 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:40.560 no longer being adequate. 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:41.240 Yeah. 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.200 Part of what I love so much and groomed is 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:52.520 that you're in really deft, careful ways toggle between memoirist 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:56.520 and investigative journalist. As you say that, on the one hand, 0:05:56.640 --> 0:06:02.239 this is a deeply personal, very story that you're bravely 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:06.159 sharing with readers, and on the other hand, it seems 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:07.960 to be one of the new mechanisms you have to 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.600 make it possible to do that is your instincts as 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:14.320 a writer. How can I think about utility? How can 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:17.640 I think about where the problems are here that need 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.400 to be identified? How can I write about it dispassionately. 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.120 Was that the way the writing flowed out, and was 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:27.479 that the way the retelling of your own story flowed out, 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:29.560 that you have the arms length thing of the writer there. 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:35.279 Absolutely everything I wrote was very intuitive, and I think 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.280 one of the ways that I deal with issues in 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.600 my life and problems, whether it be a relationship or 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:47.000 parenting or whatever it is, is I research the hell 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:51.320 out of it. And it's something that I do talk 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:57.640 about kind of intellectualizing in Groomed and how intellectualizing and 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:01.320 really studying a topic can become a form of sort 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:06.200 of self soothing, where you are just poking at something 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.680 and poking and poking and poking and trying to look 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:14.320 at it from different angles, because well, I think there's 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:17.720 trying to understand it, and there's also if you do 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:23.040 have disassociation, which I think anyone who's had any trauma 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:27.480 will have some disassociation. It's a way of trying to 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:32.120 break out of the numbness. I was hitting these walls 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:36.320 in my own memory and my own sort of sort 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:37.480 of emotional response. 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:39.520 I was kind of trying. 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.280 To feel something and often it just wouldn't be there, 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:44.600 or try and remember something, and it wouldn't be there, 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:47.400 so I had to do something, so I would just 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:49.040 start reading and researching. 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:53.559 That makes a lot of sense. I can see both 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:56.760 the kind of support that that would give to the writing, 0:07:57.240 --> 0:07:59.480 but also the kind of comfort it would give that 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.720 you don't have to feel everything that happens on the page. 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:05.720 Sometimes you can think it through and. 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:10.080 Yeah, yeah, And I mean when I put them into 0:08:10.120 --> 0:08:13.200 the book, I didn't put them necessarily in like a 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:17.400 glossary or oh, you'll need to understand this term. I 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.880 was putting things in as I was learning about them, 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:25.880 So I was it was the process of my discovery 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:30.480 and learning that I thought, if this is relevant to 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.559 me and my unpacking, then. 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:35.360 It's a part of the story. 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:37.720 A part of the story is me learning about these 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.440 things and trying to fit them into my life and 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:44.040 what they mean for me as I'm going through this process. 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:49.120 So the crucial thing is off the back of having 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:53.600 that conversation and therapy of suddenly starting to reassess your 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:58.600 own experiences through this different lens and understand them differently 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:03.160 at some point, and that understanding led to a desire 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.600 or a need for action and a need to kind 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:09.679 of for lack of a better word to socialize that 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:14.480 experience in the legal system in a kind of search 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:15.000 for repair. 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:19.720 Yes, well, it was probably about six or eight. 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:25.520 Years between the therapy and contacting the police, and I 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:28.400 think there were quite a few factors at play there. 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.240 There was obviously the time that I sat with it 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:36.240 and sort of got used to the idea of okay, 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:37.679 so this is my new story. Now. 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:40.800 There was the fact. 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:45.520 That I was more aware of how trauma had played 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.640 out in my life and had affected me, and I 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.000 wasn't really seeing the shifts I would have liked to 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:56.880 have seen. And you know, it can get really boring, 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:04.400 you know, dealing with the the same problems and going 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:06.679 why can't I move on Like this happened thirty five 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:10.160 years ago. Why can't I just flick a switch and 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:12.840 move on from it? So there was kind of getting 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.520 sick of it and sick of the fact that nothing 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:19.360 had shifted really for me. And then there was I've 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:22.880 got three daughters, and my eldest daughter was fourteen at 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:27.400 the time, and I was just finding myself among lots 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:31.960 of other parents chatting about teenage parties and getting drunk 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:33.920 and oh, it's all a lot of fun. Isn't it 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:35.960 when the teenagers go out and get drunk. And I 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:42.559 found myself getting really upset during those conversations, and I thought, Okay, clearly, 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:45.679 I'm not comfortable with this next phase of my daughter's 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:48.280 hitting teenage years. There's stuff that I need to work through. 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:54.000 But then there was that year of Grace Tame, becoming 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:59.400 Australian of the Year, Britney Higgins allegations, the Christian Porter allegations, 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:03.200 and the March for Justice, and I think that was 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:05.520 that was what tipped me over. 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:08.959 And I didn't see it coming. The morning of the. 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.240 March for Justice. It hadn't entered my mind to go 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:16.640 to the police. But that night I couldn't sleep and 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:21.000 I just stayed awake all night. And you know, I 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:23.440 try and describe in the book what was going on 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.200 for me that night, but it was almost like I 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:31.600 just went into this kind of subliminal zone during the 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:36.480 night and just unpacked a whole lot of stuff, and 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:38.200 in the morning, you just thought it, right, I'm going 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:38.800 to the police. 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.480 I want to take this moment just to pause on 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:45.000 the title of the book and Groomed and why the 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:49.400 idea of grooming and being groomed is such an important 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:51.800 central part of the way you want to tell this story. 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:55.680 As I write in the book, I don't actually really 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.000 relate to the word, and that's one of the reasons 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:05.120 why I chose the word, and I use it often. 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:09.560 It's almost like brain training. And I do talk in 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:12.880 the book how for me and for other survivors that 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:16.400 I've spoken with, the word that comes up constantly is 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:20.400 that they've been robbed or they've had something stolen, and that, 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:23.480 for me, is a much more potent word and something 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:24.240 that I relate to. 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.319 The word groomed is not. 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:31.560 Something that I really relate to because when I look 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.920 back on the relationship, I recall being in love. 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.320 The more I. 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:42.439 Looked into what grooming is and what it does and 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.840 how underhand it is, I just found it such a 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:54.079 fascinating concept because you are being kind of almost convinced 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:59.360 to be in love. And that's how perpetrators are so 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:04.400 successful because they don't need to use violence or force. 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:08.400 They can be pretty confident that you're not going to 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:13.439 go and say anything because you come away thinking, well. 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:19.800 I consented to that. So it's such a. 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:22.280 Confounding thing to experience, and you know, I spend a 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:26.080 lot of time in the book talking about the behavioral science, 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:31.960 the neurobiology, what grooming actually is, and how it is 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:38.160 very closely related to our need for attachment, our need 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.480 to be cared for as a child. It's very similar 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.360 to courtship. It's very similar to all these things which 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:49.240 are really important, necessary, beautiful things in our lives. Hence 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:54.720 why it's so seductive. It's all these great things except 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:57.959 with this one little poisonous kind of element, which is 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:04.199 it's done by an abuser, not a caring, loving equal. 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:08.280 It's kind of weaponizing those instincts against you as a 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:10.360 kind of active manipulation. 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:11.400 Absolutely. 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:14.800 And the other thing about it, which I think is 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:18.400 so tied in with the kind of lasting trauma of it, 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:22.240 is that it's a recasting of your reality. Your reality 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.480 is distorted by your abuser. Then interests of being. 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:28.560 Groomed, yes, yeah, and you're so vulnerable to that as 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:31.960 a child, yeah, you know, because you can be groomed 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:37.560 at any age. But hopefully as an adult you're more 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:42.560 aware of power dynamics and you're not entering relationships with 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:47.760 such a power deficit as you are as a child. Definitely, 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:51.480 for me, I was a people pleaser, and I was 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.640 pretty obedient, you know. And this is again one of 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:56.400 the things that people don't talk about. 0:14:56.520 --> 0:14:57.240 With grooming. 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:01.320 You are there because you're getting good things. You know, 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.280 are you're getting. There are a lot of advantages and 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:09.040 benefits and pluses, you know, whether it's attention or you know, 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:12.040 whether the person's giving you money or whatever they're doing 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:16.760 that there's a payoff and you are really enjoying being there. 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.360 But then there's also the abuse, which you have to 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:27.240 then compartmentalize and sort of disassociate from. But yeah, it's 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:33.440 a very clever manipulation and I still can't. 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:34.360 Really relate to it. 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:36.840 I can only sort of relate to it in a 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:41.560 theoretical kind of way. But I find it such a 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:44.440 fascinating sort of dynamic. 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:50.040 You write really well about the desire to constantly pick 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.680 up the scape of knowledge about this stuff that, even 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:56.560 as the personal processing was it some of its hardest points, 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:01.800 you couldn't resist reading everything you could find, the accounts, watching, 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:06.480 listening to just absolutely mainlining any stories about kind of 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:13.080 similar reviews. And I'm curious about the relationship between comfort 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.280 in seeing the familiar and seeing the echoes and discomfort. 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:21.520 Seeing elements of your own experience echoed in the stuff 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:25.160 that you read help or was it jarring? Did it 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:27.360 make it harder to carve out your own space? 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:34.400 It definitely helped, and it helped for quite a few reasons. 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:43.680 I could feel enormous empathy for other survivors in a 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:48.480 way that I couldn't for myself, and that helped me 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.880 kind of, I think, grieve, because I could kind. 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:54.360 Of a grieve for these other survivors. 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:58.280 It's so lonely grief, but then when you're around other 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:02.160 people who are grieving, it can you can find incredible 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:04.320 kind of company in the loneliness. 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:05.880 And so I think. 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:13.960 There was a lovely feeling of community within this otherwise 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:19.720 kind of harrowing space, and it helped me feel like 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:25.800 not such a freak because people were describing exactly what 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:28.399 I was feeling and doing, and I was just like, Okay, 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:32.600 this is what I'm experiencing. Is these are normal responses 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:35.160 or you know, I don't like using the word normal, 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:39.000 but these are to be expected and not total outlies. 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:44.560 When we returned, Sonya shares her grueling journey through the 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.840 legal system and reveals why she didn't hide under the 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:51.680 covers that they groomed, hit the shelves. We'll be right back. 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:06.040 So there's another overlay that we haven't gotten to yet. 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:10.040 If we begin with the stories that you tell yourself 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.200 to cope and to be able to get through life, 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:15.760 and then we have the layer of stories that come 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:20.560 when confronting one's own experience and giving it a different 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:24.080 name and dealing with it. But the third level is 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:27.600 the legal system and the ways in which there are 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:30.720 structures and pressures for how a story must be told. 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.240 There that in some ways rob you again of the 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:37.199 telling of your own story, and that's a kind of 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:42.560 key part of how Groomed plays out. Your experience with 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:44.200 the legal system was not a happy one. 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:45.479 No, I didn't enjoy it. 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:48.800 No, I didn't enjoy reading it. I mean, it was 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:52.879 beautifully written, but it was it was upsetting. You know, 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:56.480 six to eight years between that therapy session and when 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:00.479 you felt ready to go to the police, talk me 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:03.000 through what it felt like to suddenly lose ownership of 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:05.479 your own story again having just regained it. 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:12.400 Yeah, it's, uh, what's the best word for it, fucked? Yeah, 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:15.600 it is. It's you're going. 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:18.240 Through the legal system, not because you know, you think 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:20.320 you're going to have a great time in the legal 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:22.280 system and you're not going to get any money or 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:25.640 anything like that for you know, a criminal case. You're 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:30.200 going because you've had power taken from you and you're 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.200 trying to regain that power and to say, Okay, I'm 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:36.840 in charge, I make the rules to do with my 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:40.040 body and what things are okay and what things aren't okay. 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.160 So you're trying to kind of gain control, and then 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:47.280 you enter this system where the door is shut in 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:53.119 your face. Once it hit the legal system, that's where 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:56.160 I felt like I was just out in the cold, 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:02.000 and there would be all these hearings that were being 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:06.280 conducted that I wasn't allowed to be ash, and there 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:13.280 would be the accused and his lawyers, and then the 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:18.000 prosecution lawyers for the opp crown lawyers, and there would 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:21.840 be a magistrate. So everyone was there except for me, 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:25.320 the person who could actually explain what was going on, 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:29.760 and they would have these hearings and I would be 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:32.639 kind of frantically saying what happened in the hearings, and 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:35.040 they'd be like, oh, well, it's just going to be 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:37.720 you know, it's going to be another three months and 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.320 we'll let you know if anything happens, and if we're 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:43.439 hear any you know. So you were constantly, you know, 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:47.080 constantly sort of knocking at doors trying to say, you 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.120 know what's going on, and just let me in the room. 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:53.960 Let me in the room with him, his lawyers, give 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:56.800 me a lawyer, and we will bash this out in 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:01.639 ten minutes. And I do describe this period of feeling 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:04.320 like I was in a straight jacket because I was 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:09.240 kind of in this battle mode, ready to go back 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:11.639 to the scene of the crime and fight it out again. 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:16.080 But I was just being told to, you know, just 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:18.880 sit in the waiting room. We'll deal with it, leave 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:19.440 it to us. 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.359 Plus, you've been wildly retraumatized in the process of having 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.560 to dredge it up and go into forensic detail over 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:30.679 stuff that is hard enough to kind of tell the 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:35.240 story of in broad terms let alone, Yep, expose yourself to. 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:36.679 That absolutely, and. 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:43.520 You're going in with the knowledge that you are ninety 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:46.520 five percent of the evidence. And so the entire job 0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:49.159 of the defense is to undermine you. Like if they 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:52.639 can undermine you and they can kind of break you down, 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:56.359 then they've won. So you realize very early on that 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:02.680 truth is completely irrelevant, Like there doesn't seem at any 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:07.400 point a time when people are trying to actually work 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:11.640 out what happened, and people don't seem interested in what happened. 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:16.720 It's just can they break you? Because if they can 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:19.880 break you, then they're one. If they can't break you, 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:20.680 then you win. 0:22:21.320 --> 0:22:30.600 So laying out these different versions of your story, personal, structural, legal, 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:33.920 all of those a question. We come back to it 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:38.240 again and again on read this. It seems is different 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:42.840 writers feel differently about the cathartic potential of writing, about 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:46.560 whether it's a thing that frees them from stuff they're 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:50.160 working through or whether that's a bit of a false economy. 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:51.600 I think we've come back again and again to the 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:54.640 fact that writing is not therapy. Therapy is therapy and yep, 0:22:55.240 --> 0:23:00.439 worth doing alongside the writing. But one about for you, 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:02.960 the experience of putting it down in a book and 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:06.080 seeing that book in the world and having a launch, 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:11.520 doing interviews, actually thinking about it as an artifact. 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:13.280 Yep, how's that been. 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:17.160 I'll have to break it down into a few because 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:20.200 there's the writing process and then there's the publishing process. 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:24.720 The writing process, a lot of people said to me, 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:26.800 it must have been really hard to write, and it 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:32.280 was incredibly easy to write and even enjoyable to write. 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:38.679 And I think that possibly a lot of it comes 0:23:38.920 --> 0:23:42.880 back to that sense of control that I didn't have 0:23:43.920 --> 0:23:46.440 in the legal system. 0:23:46.560 --> 0:23:51.680 But when you're the writer, you are you are God. 0:23:51.840 --> 0:23:54.280 When you are writing, you know, you decide what goes 0:23:54.320 --> 0:23:57.080 in and you decide how are you going to say this, 0:23:57.800 --> 0:24:01.959 So you become the protagon hot and you become, you know, 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:05.560 the hero of the story, not that you know, necessarily 0:24:05.600 --> 0:24:09.520 a traditional hero, but you are the person who tells 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:11.840 the story and tells it how you want to tell it. 0:24:12.680 --> 0:24:17.720 So I found that sense of being able to say 0:24:17.720 --> 0:24:19.879 what I wanted to say and be in control of 0:24:19.920 --> 0:24:25.720 my story really really helpful. The publishing side of things 0:24:26.160 --> 0:24:31.680 was terrifying, and you know, thankfully I had a very 0:24:31.800 --> 0:24:37.080 supportive team, my agent and my publisher, a firm press 0:24:37.640 --> 0:24:41.439 or very supportive. I have very supportive friends, my husband, 0:24:41.520 --> 0:24:43.800 my kids, so I had I had a great network 0:24:43.840 --> 0:24:48.800 around me. But it was still absolutely terrifying. And I 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:51.159 did initially say that I wasn't going to have a 0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:54.520 launch because I just I just wanted to hide under 0:24:54.560 --> 0:24:56.600 the doner when the book came out, I was just 0:24:56.720 --> 0:24:59.360