Speaker 1: A young girl abducted and sexually abused by a family friend,
Speaker 1: not once, but twice. That is the jaw dropping headline
Speaker 1: of the Jan Broberg story, which is chronicled in a
Speaker 1: Netflix documentary and a series featuring Colin Hanks. On Peacock Now,
Speaker 1: Jan is opening up about her experience, revealing details she's
Speaker 1: never shared before. How was a friendly church going neighbor
Speaker 1: able to infiltrate Jan's loving family? What led to her
Speaker 1: being kidnapped a second time by the same person? How
Speaker 1: was her abductor able to evade authorities? Today? Jan shares
Speaker 1: her captivating story of surviving a psychopath hiding in plain
Speaker 1: sight from Red Table Talk Podcasts and iHeartMedia. I'm Doctor
Speaker 1: Rominy and this is Navigating Narcissism. This podcast should not
Speaker 1: be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice.
Speaker 1: Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and
Speaker 1: or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any
Speaker 1: medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters
Speaker 1: discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse and suicide,
Speaker 1: which may be triggering to some people. The views and
Speaker 1: opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or
Speaker 1: individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the
Speaker 1: opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Jan.
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how happy I am to have
Speaker 1: you here to meet you. My sister and I have
Speaker 1: been following your journey. My sister in particular, who said
Speaker 1: you really need to talk to Jan Broberg. We've read
Speaker 1: your book, We've watched all the shows. It has been profound,
Speaker 1: it has been impactful. But above all else, I cannot
Speaker 1: tell you what a blessing is that I get to
Speaker 1: have you right here live.
Speaker 2: So thank you, oh doctor Rominey, thank you for having
Speaker 2: me because I really admire what you do.
Speaker 1: Thank you quick headline of your stories. It's almost impossible
Speaker 1: to imagine you're a young girl. You were abducted not once,
Speaker 1: but twice by a close family friend. What happened is
Speaker 1: so much deeper than the story of this perpetrator and
Speaker 1: what he did. He not only groomed you, he groomed
Speaker 1: your entire family in a campaign that the likes of
Speaker 1: which most of us have never seen. So can you
Speaker 1: share that just to bring everyone listening up to speed
Speaker 1: in case they don't know your story.
Speaker 2: I'd be happy to because I often find that people
Speaker 2: are very unaware of what grooming is. Yes, So when
Speaker 2: this man and his wife and his five children moved
Speaker 2: into our neighborhood, I was nine, and for three years
Speaker 2: we didn't know it was genuine on our part. We
Speaker 2: grew to love this family. They were like our best friends.
Speaker 2: His oldest son was my age, and then he had
Speaker 2: two other sons that matched my sisters in age, and
Speaker 2: we became close close friends. We went on our bikes,
Speaker 2: we went up to the park, we went swimming together.
Speaker 2: He had a boat, he had a snowmobile, he had
Speaker 2: the trampoline, things we didn't have.
Speaker 3: And so we were always at their house. His wife was.
Speaker 2: Always, you know, in the kitchen making cookies. We were
Speaker 2: just having that Camelot childhood that I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people don't get.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: I had parents who loved me, who we talked around
Speaker 2: the dinner table every night. Because we didn't have cell phones,
Speaker 2: we actually communicated and they listened. We were never spanked
Speaker 2: or yelled at. We were only told that we were
Speaker 2: wonderful and amazing and.
Speaker 3: That we could do anything.
Speaker 2: And so he looked just like how my dad was.
Speaker 2: He was fun, he was nice to everybody. Everybody in
Speaker 2: our neighborhood, in our congregation just loved him. He was
Speaker 2: a leader in the church. He was the new furniture
Speaker 2: store owner in town. There wasn't anything that looked scary
Speaker 2: at all about this man, and certainly not his wife
Speaker 2: and his five children. We truly became the best of friends.
Speaker 2: So over three years, we did hundreds of activities with
Speaker 2: this family, took vacations together, all the things that brought
Speaker 2: us closer. And then one day he picked me up
Speaker 2: to take me horseback riding. It was one of those
Speaker 2: things that we had done before. And he handed me
Speaker 2: my allergy pill, which was drugged, and I fell into
Speaker 2: a deep sleep. And the next thing I knew, I
Speaker 2: was strapped to a bed by my wrists and my
Speaker 2: ankles in the back of a motor home that was moving.
Speaker 3: And I woke up.
Speaker 2: It was dark to a high pitched, monotone sounding voice.
Speaker 2: Now this is the seventies, it's the space Age. All
Speaker 2: of our shows on TV are I dream of Genie.
Speaker 2: You know they're lost in space. You know they're the
Speaker 2: Twilight Zone. He would take all of the kids to
Speaker 2: the science fiction movies. He would tell these stories. We
Speaker 2: all were just kind of like, oh wow, And then
Speaker 2: there'd be a UFO siding in the newspaper in black
Speaker 2: and white. This is a really important part of the
Speaker 2: story because all of those little seeds of grooming that
Speaker 2: were being planted weren't directed at me. They were just
Speaker 2: stories did he'd tell my mom and dad or around
Speaker 2: the kitchen table. But all of that to that nine,
Speaker 2: ten eleven year old is processed in there like this
Speaker 2: could be real. And then he related that to some
Speaker 2: of our religious beliefs at the time, like Armageddon and
Speaker 2: the Second Coming and people are going to come from
Speaker 2: other planets. That when I woke up to that high pitched,
Speaker 2: monotone voice as a twelve.
Speaker 3: Year old, I was terrified.
Speaker 2: I believed one hundred percent that I had been taken
Speaker 2: by a UFO. And then over those couple of days,
Speaker 2: as that voice kept coming on and as I was
Speaker 2: in and out of a drug induced sleep, eventually it
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, now you're unstrapped, you can go get
Speaker 2: something to eat. We've been watching you since you were born.
Speaker 2: And all my favorite foods were in the little refrigerator,
Speaker 2: the cooler, you know, all these little details that he
Speaker 2: had thought of and had obsessed over, I guess for
Speaker 2: those three years.
Speaker 1: So that right there is a really important part of
Speaker 1: your story for people to understand that you were in
Speaker 1: an RV, you were drugged, so you didn't even understand
Speaker 1: how that transfer took place. You had spent years hearing
Speaker 1: all this amped up kind of UFO stuff. But in
Speaker 1: those first three four days in that RV, in that
Speaker 1: motor home that is stocked with the foods and the
Speaker 1: snacks and the things you like, you did not see
Speaker 1: the perpetrator. Yeah, Birt Shoulder, you didn't see him. Now,
Speaker 1: that part of that is so important because you were
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere. You're hearing this kind of
Speaker 1: voice out of a tiny speaker saying, we're the aliens,
Speaker 1: We're here, and that's the only voice you heard for
Speaker 1: three or four days. It was almost like taking the
Speaker 1: grooming to this horrific level, because now you're almost being
Speaker 1: groomed by this disembodied voice, right that carried on what
Speaker 1: he was saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've been calling me female companion. You are a
Speaker 2: very special person. You have a special mission to perform.
Speaker 2: I didn't understand what any of this meant, I didn't
Speaker 2: know that this was going to be the basis for
Speaker 2: all of the rape and the abuse that happened. And
Speaker 2: then after those several days, they said, okay, now it
Speaker 2: is time for you to meet the male companion. And
Speaker 2: so when that partition between the backbed and the rest
Speaker 2: of the motor home was taken down, I was then
Speaker 2: to go to the front of the motor home where
Speaker 2: I would meet the male companion. I mean, I was terrified.
Speaker 2: I didn't know who that was going to be. If
Speaker 2: it was an alien, who was it that I was
Speaker 2: supposed to have a baby to save a dying planet.
Speaker 2: I'm very scared to meet the male companion when I
Speaker 2: walk to the front of the motor home and there's
Speaker 2: be that person that loves me. He's like my favorite
Speaker 2: uncle that I know so well. I'm so relieved you've.
Speaker 1: Put a clarification on the story here that they don't
Speaker 1: think we've seen and heard anywhere else. We really haven't.
Speaker 1: Because you thought you'd been abducted. The surroundings, the voice,
Speaker 1: your age, and everything you'd been told to that point
Speaker 1: makes sense, and that they've been watching me since I
Speaker 1: was born, and they read your thoughts because they knew
Speaker 1: what to feed you and give you to drink. This
Speaker 1: partition is removed to meet this so called male companion.
Speaker 1: And when you see someone who you still think is
Speaker 1: safe in your mind, is not the sense that you
Speaker 1: have been kidnapped or taken against your will. This is
Speaker 1: a multiplier on grooming because now he is a safe person.
Speaker 1: He can completely control you at this point.
Speaker 2: Right And when I see him, he's covered in blood,
Speaker 2: he's literally cut himself and he's passed out. I think
Speaker 2: he's dead, So I immediately I'm shaking him.
Speaker 3: I'm crying.
Speaker 2: I'm like, be Bee, wake up, are you okay? And
Speaker 2: he wakes up and the actor or that he was,
Speaker 2: you know, oh my word, what happened?
Speaker 3: I saw this white light, the car went out of control.
Speaker 3: Are you okay?
Speaker 2: Dolly That's what he used to call me, that was
Speaker 2: my nickname. And I'm like, yes, I'm scared, okay. And
Speaker 2: then then he becomes that person that we're in this together.
Speaker 2: And ugh, when I watch that scene in the series
Speaker 2: with Little Hendrix as Little Me in that motor home
Speaker 2: and he's telling her what he's heard and what he's seen,
Speaker 2: I was so angry. How does an adult construct this
Speaker 2: and terrify that little innocent twelve year old who really
Speaker 2: was just so scared and then lived that for the
Speaker 2: next four years of my life.
Speaker 1: And I am so sorry because twelve is so young.
Speaker 1: It is and the whole situation is scary. We can
Speaker 1: sit here and think it's far fetched, but not to
Speaker 1: a twelve year old's mine. It's really not. And again,
Speaker 1: the twelve year old of the seventies, not of the
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty three, where I think kids might have
Speaker 1: a slightly different savvy now because of the tools they
Speaker 1: have versus no way in the seventies. Now, it's sort
Speaker 1: of like this really exploitative gas slighting. Now you've also
Speaker 1: been told the male companion is going to be on
Speaker 1: the other side of this wall.
Speaker 3: So I don't even know what that really means.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't know what that means exactly.
Speaker 2: I was so relieved to c B and I was
Speaker 2: told he was the male companion. He just knew all
Speaker 2: of the next steps to open up a cupboard one day.
Speaker 2: This isn't in the series. I haven't said this to
Speaker 2: anybody either. Opened up a cupboard one day and here's
Speaker 2: five or six books on sex. You know, one hundred
Speaker 2: and one sexual positions or something like that. And I've
Speaker 2: never seen anything like this. I was so innocent. I mean,
Speaker 2: I knew what sex was, but I'd never seen a
Speaker 2: book like this.
Speaker 3: And he's like, oh, I think maybe.
Speaker 2: We're supposed to look at these because you know, the
Speaker 2: baby to save the dying planet. I think this is
Speaker 2: a part of it. I'll do it with you, Dolly,
Speaker 2: so it won't be scary and opening these books and looking.
Speaker 3: At these pages.
Speaker 2: Of course it was scary, but he was there.
Speaker 3: At least it was with him.
Speaker 2: See, that is just so eugh, it's just so disgusting
Speaker 2: and nefarious. And that's what it was. That's how he
Speaker 2: unfolded the rest of the story of what.
Speaker 3: Was going to now happen.
Speaker 1: Well, he bonded you to him. You were only a child.
Speaker 1: There is no consent for a child, right. Every behavior
Speaker 1: you were engaging in jan was about safety. How do
Speaker 1: I keep myself safe? How do I keep the world safe?
Speaker 1: How do I keep my family safe? That was what
Speaker 1: motivated you was safety. That's all that motivates a child,
Speaker 1: safety and attachment. And in a way you were trying
Speaker 1: to also have attachment to be because he was the
Speaker 1: only safe adult in that moment, and with someone you
Speaker 1: had grown to care deeply about. So those primal needs
Speaker 1: of a child were really mobilizing against the backdrop of
Speaker 1: this terror of these disembodied alien voices. I think that
Speaker 1: you know to give context to it, because I get
Speaker 1: really frustrated when I hear people saying, oh, come on, aliens,
Speaker 1: and that disbelieving is what keeps all survivors in the shadow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for saying that, because I feel sometimes
Speaker 2: like I'm always trying to explain myself and it's really
Speaker 2: hard for me to keep doing that, and it's hard
Speaker 2: for a victim. And I feel like I'm definitely a
Speaker 2: survivor and a thriving human being, But for a victim,
Speaker 2: when they're a child, you never get over the need
Speaker 2: for the base.
Speaker 3: Somebody else has to do that for you.
Speaker 2: It's why children their abuser is their parent, or their nurture,
Speaker 2: their you know, grandparent, it's someone close to them, and
Speaker 2: they don't tell because who would feed me?
Speaker 1: Correct?
Speaker 2: Will I be okay and have a home? Will they
Speaker 2: take me away from my family?
Speaker 1: Exactly right?
Speaker 2: And I just wish people would realize that.
Speaker 1: One thing that struck me about your story is that
Speaker 1: you always had a close, loving bond with your family.
Speaker 1: So one thing I'm sure though, is people are listening
Speaker 1: to this. They're wondering, you've gone horseback riding. Obviously now
Speaker 1: it's been days, is anybody looking for you? What is
Speaker 1: happening on the side of your parents?
Speaker 2: So when I didn't come home that night, the first
Speaker 2: person they called was his wife, Gail, like, have you
Speaker 2: heard you know from b has he made contact? Of
Speaker 2: course we don't have cell phones either, and she's like, no,
Speaker 2: but I'm sure you know, you know how he can
Speaker 2: be with his mood swings and you know, up and down,
Speaker 2: and he probably just got lost in time and they'll
Speaker 2: be home. And eventually they're like, we think we better
Speaker 2: call the police. And she came immediately down to our house.
Speaker 3: Please don't call the police. You know that he'll be back.
Speaker 2: He would never hurt her. And of course my parents
Speaker 2: were like, well, right, we know that, but what if
Speaker 2: they were in a car accident or what can we do?
Speaker 2: So eventually they did call the highway patrol of the
Speaker 2: police department and they said, has there been a car accident?
Speaker 2: We don't know what to do because you don't know
Speaker 2: what you don't know, And so they put out an
Speaker 2: APB to look for.
Speaker 3: Nothing was found. He had hidden the car.
Speaker 2: So now it's the next day and it's a Saturday,
Speaker 2: and they're like, okay, well, let's call the relatives. So
Speaker 2: Gail starts calling relatives like, you know, have you seen Bee?
Speaker 2: You know, have you seen Bob, Robert Birchild. And they're
Speaker 2: all like, no, he hasn't been up here. And she's
Speaker 2: still begging my parents, don't call the police.
Speaker 3: We don't want to cause a fuss.
Speaker 2: You know, he'll be back, you know how he gets
Speaker 2: that he has these depressive episodes. And of course they
Speaker 2: don't even have the right words for all the things
Speaker 2: that we talk about today. There's no such thing almost
Speaker 2: as mental illness or whatever you would call his depressive experiences.
Speaker 2: And so now it's been a day and a half
Speaker 2: and my mother does call the FBI.
Speaker 3: She calls the.
Speaker 2: Number that's in the phone book, and it's not in
Speaker 2: our hometown. It's in a like it's a regional office,
Speaker 2: and an answering service type of thing picks up and says,
Speaker 2: we're closed. We'll be back on Monday. If this is
Speaker 2: an emergency, call your local police department, which they had
Speaker 2: already done. But it wasn't that they didn't call the police.
Speaker 2: It's just they don't know what they're looking for. They're
Speaker 2: certainly not looking at their best friend having kidnapped their daughter, right,
Speaker 2: not even a remote possibility in their head, right.
Speaker 1: I think is very important to note and that your
Speaker 1: parents had been groomed. And it's not beyond the pail
Speaker 1: for a perpetrator to groom entire systems, school systems, families, camps, churches,
Speaker 1: pick something and a groomer will work that system, and
Speaker 1: in this case, in a very cold, calculated, callous way,
Speaker 1: groomed your entire family. And his wife, whatever her motivation was,
Speaker 1: did not want this to be known for what she
Speaker 1: very likely knew it.
Speaker 2: Was right and her own self preservation.
Speaker 3: For herself and her children.
Speaker 2: That's why, and even today in twenty twenty three, we
Speaker 2: don't see nearly enough women who come forward to say,
Speaker 2: I know something's going on with my husband and my children,
Speaker 2: or with my father, or I believe this school teacher
Speaker 2: for this coach or the USA Gymnastics doctor. They don't
Speaker 2: do it because there's something to preserve for themselves and
Speaker 2: the people that they care about, well, my daughter wants
Speaker 2: to be an Olympic champion.
Speaker 3: This is how you get it.
Speaker 2: So even if I have a funny gut feeling, I'm
Speaker 2: going to ignore it.
Speaker 1: I have to say, as somebody who is very focused
Speaker 1: and identified with the trauma of a child in this situation,
Speaker 1: I felt a lot of strong negative emotions against him
Speaker 1: because she felt like a huge impediment to this getting
Speaker 1: found out. But it's now four or five days in
Speaker 1: the FBI is involved. You're in this motor home with
Speaker 1: somebody who is now sexually assaulting you. How long did
Speaker 1: that last?
Speaker 2: We were found by the FBI and the federales in Mazolan,
Speaker 2: Mexico about forty five days later.
Speaker 1: Forty five days, six and a half weeks. That is
Speaker 1: a really long time.
Speaker 2: And it's a long time to be hearing the voices
Speaker 2: yes constantly, And I think there's a lot of guilt
Speaker 2: in this, what I'm going to say. But then to
Speaker 2: be gently being abused and having to go further and further,
Speaker 2: and not that it ever felt good, because it really
Speaker 2: never did. But there is something different when the abuser
Speaker 2: is someone that you love and that they are on
Speaker 2: some level. Well, I'm not trying to hurt you, but
Speaker 2: we have to do this because we have to deliver
Speaker 2: on the promise or we'll be vaporized. You know, if
Speaker 2: we don't have the baby to save the dying planet
Speaker 2: before your sixteenth birthday, we're going to be vaporized. Or
Speaker 2: your little sister will have to do what you're doing. Now.
Speaker 3: That was the threat.
Speaker 2: That was what kept me, which keeps most children in line. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: many survivors that I have interviewed, it was always the
Speaker 2: threat of, well, if you don't do it, I'll do
Speaker 2: it to your.
Speaker 3: Little sister or your little brother.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest mistakes I think we've made historically
Speaker 1: in the field of psychology and even in the field
Speaker 1: of medicine is we view children as small adults, and
Speaker 1: they're not. They're entirely different entities, with very different nervous
Speaker 1: systems and very different ways of interpreting the world, very
Speaker 1: different needs around attachment and safety. So none of those
Speaker 1: rules that apply to adults apply here. So forty five
Speaker 1: days in you're found this is six weeks without communication.
Speaker 1: Did you have no communication with your family during that time?
Speaker 2: No, there was one time where a phone call happened
Speaker 2: and I was allowed to talk to my family, but
Speaker 2: of course everything was fine, and I couldn't say anything
Speaker 2: about never about the aliens, and nothing about that abuse,
Speaker 2: which I wouldn't have even called it that at the time,
Speaker 2: Nothing about those things. But I was so homesick. And
Speaker 2: it was when I got to call home and basically
Speaker 2: beg my parents, like, we can't come back to the
Speaker 2: United States.
Speaker 3: Be says we can. Hadn't come back.
Speaker 2: Because now all the police are going to arrest him,
Speaker 2: but he hasn't done anything. He just was sad and
Speaker 2: we just kept driving. And he keeps that story going
Speaker 2: for like the next year and a half, like, why
Speaker 2: did you get the FBI involved? Why in the world
Speaker 2: would you do that? You know I would never hurt her.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't come back because they think, you know
Speaker 2: that I kidnapped her. I haven't kidnapped her.
Speaker 1: Birch told claimed he was having a depressive episode and
Speaker 1: just kept driving with Jan. That's how they ended up
Speaker 1: in Mexico. At the time, there was not much understanding
Speaker 1: around mental health, and Jan's family empathized with his plight.
Speaker 1: As a mental health professional, I must stop to clearly
Speaker 1: say depression would never explain or excuse an abduction. So
Speaker 1: what was that like to see your parents after that period?
Speaker 3: It was wonderful.
Speaker 2: But before they got there, Birch told gave the guard
Speaker 2: his gold ring, his wedding ring, and had that guard
Speaker 2: bring me to his cell. I've been stuck in this
Speaker 2: little six by six foot little room, you know, with
Speaker 2: really nothing to eat. It was a scary situation for
Speaker 2: me as well, being separated from him. He had me
Speaker 2: come to his cell and he said, Zaida and Zethra,
Speaker 2: the name of the aliens. They've come to me and
Speaker 2: told me that if we talk about these things, we
Speaker 2: will be instantly vaporized, and that we will have to
Speaker 2: continue the mission at some point.
Speaker 1: This story is so much pain, so much harm came
Speaker 1: to the manipulativeness, the gold ring, bribing the prison guard,
Speaker 1: bringing you in there to further again groom you and
Speaker 1: silence you. But here's the thing, Jen is, he wasn't
Speaker 1: talking alien talk to the other people. He wasn't talking
Speaker 1: aliens to the cops. He wasn't going to be talking
Speaker 1: aliens to your family. That capacity to keep these two
Speaker 1: narratives so separate, right, The narrative about the aliens with
Speaker 1: you and the narrative I'm so sad, I'm depressed with
Speaker 1: everyone else. That feels a lot like psychopathy to me.
Speaker 1: There's a skill to that, because most people are not
Speaker 1: great liars. The more emotion involved in, more anxiety involved,
Speaker 1: more we're going to crack under the lies. We're not
Speaker 1: going to get our story straight. But his ability to
Speaker 1: just shape shift like that between the alien story with
Speaker 1: you and the sad I was sad story and being
Speaker 1: misunderstood with everybody else, and without missing a kind of a.
Speaker 3: Beat, It's so true.
Speaker 1: That's the psychopathy.
Speaker 2: An amazing way to explain him. That was exactly what
Speaker 2: it was like. And I knew what the real story was.
Speaker 2: That we had a very important mission to accomplish, right,
Speaker 2: I had no doubt about it. I never thought otherwise.
Speaker 2: And I would do whatever I was told to do
Speaker 2: to protect my family. Karen, my middle the next sister
Speaker 2: younger than me. If I did X y Z, she
Speaker 2: would go blind.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He had some kind of threat that came through the
Speaker 2: aliens for every member of my family.
Speaker 1: And hears something about the story. I never even connected
Speaker 1: this to dots until now. In the case of many
Speaker 1: perpetrators like him, they issued the threat, if you talk
Speaker 1: to anyone, I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to
Speaker 1: hurt them. So now the child knows the perpetrator is
Speaker 1: a dangerous person. Right, depth of the manipulation you were
Speaker 1: exposed to, which was he couldn't be the bad guy,
Speaker 1: so we constructed these aliens and this box and this
Speaker 1: speaker so he could remain a wonderful person, and that
Speaker 1: it was going to be these aliens that would harm
Speaker 1: your family. We e went further than that. He had
Speaker 1: to be kept safe or they would issue you a
Speaker 1: new male companion. Right, So this was the way you
Speaker 1: were uncomfortable. You were not consenting, You were being abused.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have used those words, but the unknown alternative
Speaker 1: to that farwards would have been terrifying. So it was
Speaker 1: these stacked up manipulations, and you didn't even want him
Speaker 1: to go to jail. You were worried about him.
Speaker 2: Well, right, and then how do we finish the mission
Speaker 2: if he's in jail?
Speaker 3: How long is this going to go.
Speaker 2: On until this can be accomplished? Yeah, I couldn't do
Speaker 2: that without him, and I certainly didn't want somebody I
Speaker 2: didn't know that would have been horrible.
Speaker 1: So you come back from Mexico, your parents come down
Speaker 1: to Mazulan, they pick you up, they bring you home.
Speaker 1: How does your family feel about birch Child after all
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: Well, what's so interesting is the amount of time that
Speaker 2: it takes for anything to happen legally. So he is
Speaker 2: back and now he's at home with his family and
Speaker 2: back in church with us. We're showing up and there
Speaker 2: he is.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Because as the FBI is trying to put a case together,
Speaker 2: and as my parents are like being threatened by birch
Speaker 2: Hold's lawyer, like going to say that you're unfit parents
Speaker 2: and take your children away from you, and then we're
Speaker 2: going to express that you know, the bos my dad
Speaker 2: is a homosexual, which he was not. But you know,
Speaker 2: that's the threats that they made at that time in
Speaker 2: the seventies that were so horrific for my parents. And
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't get that. They're like, your
Speaker 2: stupid parents and they just were protecting themselves. I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: they were trying to make sure that their children weren't
Speaker 2: taken away from them. So that's one of the things
Speaker 2: that a lot of people miss. They don't know that
Speaker 2: he called my house when we were at school, trying
Speaker 2: to talk to my mom every.
Speaker 3: Day, multiple times a day.
Speaker 2: You don't have a caller ID, you don't know who's
Speaker 2: on the other end of the line, and it was
Speaker 2: always Mary Anne. Don't hang up, Mary Anne, please. I
Speaker 2: just got to tell you exactly what happened. You know
Speaker 2: that I'm in love with you. I've been in love
Speaker 2: with you since the day I met you.
Speaker 3: And he had flirted with my mom and.
Speaker 2: Given her all the compliments, and you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of ladies found him to be quite charming and handsome.
Speaker 2: And you know, my mother loved my father very very much.
Speaker 2: But anybody can be swayed by the right set of circumstances.
Speaker 1: Bob birch Toold went to extreme lengths to groom and
Speaker 1: gain collateral from Jan's family before he abducted her. The
Speaker 1: first time, he manipulated her father into performing a sex
Speaker 1: act on him. In between the first and second kidnappings,
Speaker 1: he preyed upon Jan's mother, seducing her into a three
Speaker 1: month sexual affair. He then used these transgressions as proof
Speaker 1: that they were unfit parents. This textbook grooming and manipulation
Speaker 1: further isolated the person who was hurt worst of all
Speaker 1: in this jam, and is consistent with the pattern of
Speaker 1: psychopathic behavior exhibited by birch Told. I think that every
Speaker 1: one of us is manipulatable, and every one of us
Speaker 1: has been manipulated.
Speaker 2: And I love that you've let me tell that part
Speaker 2: of it, because my father never let him back in
Speaker 2: the house.
Speaker 3: He hadn't really told my mom.
Speaker 2: He said, was I'm taking care of it, and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna repent, and I love you, and I'm just so
Speaker 2: mad at myself for ever, you know, having a weak
Speaker 2: moment in my life. It's very interesting because I think
Speaker 2: those two pieces of my story were part of the
Speaker 2: you know, this is so shocking and how could they
Speaker 2: have done? And I'm like, really, most people in the
Speaker 2: world without a master manipulator calling the shots and stringing
Speaker 2: you along, have made a sexual experience mistake.
Speaker 3: Yes, almost everybody, but I know.
Speaker 1: However, what birch Told was doing was getting collateral on
Speaker 1: your parents, right. That was a very calculated maneuver on
Speaker 1: his part. Going back to what the show is about,
Speaker 1: I think when we hear about people interacting with people
Speaker 1: like birch Told, people who are psychopathic and they're coming
Speaker 1: into contact with someone like your father your mother who
Speaker 1: have absolutely no roadmap for this. People view this as
Speaker 1: at encounter of equals, and it's really not. It's sitting
Speaker 1: down to play a twisted game of chess with a
Speaker 1: twisted grandmaster. They're going they already won the game. Birch
Speaker 1: told went into this with an agenda. Your father went
Speaker 1: into it thinking it was a burgeoning friendship. And I
Speaker 1: think that's where we often blame your father in this
Speaker 1: and your mother in these kinds of scenarios, because they're
Speaker 1: viewed to think, how could you not see this? Because
Speaker 1: the idea of grooming is if we could see it,
Speaker 1: then it wouldn't happen exactly. We will be right back
Speaker 1: with this conversation. Okay, So now you're back and you know,
Speaker 1: getting into a rhythm again. He is not in prison,
Speaker 1: he's living his life in the community. How does he
Speaker 1: insinuate himself back into your lives again?
Speaker 2: Well, really, he was never in my home again. Eventually,
Speaker 2: what happened was that my mother, soon after I was found,
Speaker 2: when she went down and agreed to meet with him
Speaker 2: where he was going to tell her exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: And it was in that first communication in his motor
Speaker 2: home that you know, she stayed too long. He told her,
Speaker 2: you know, every time I would look at jan standing
Speaker 2: at that little sink, I was thinking of you, and
Speaker 2: why don't we just figure out how we can be together,
Speaker 2: and I'll break the news to Gail that I'm in
Speaker 2: love with you and that I you know, all these
Speaker 2: things that he was saying to my mother, whether was
Speaker 2: on the phone when he called, you know, two or
Speaker 2: three times a day to get her to listen. That
Speaker 2: was the first time that she met with him in private,
Speaker 2: and that's when that first happened. And then she told
Speaker 2: my dad and he basically got divorce papers and put
Speaker 2: them on the table. He said, I think he's an
Speaker 2: evil person. I don't think you're seeing it, and you're
Speaker 2: putting our girls in danger.
Speaker 1: And my dad.
Speaker 2: Said it was the worst day of his life when
Speaker 2: he put those divorce papers on the table, because he
Speaker 2: loved my mother so much. And my mother has basically said,
Speaker 2: that was the worst day of my life too, except
Speaker 2: for the day you were kidnapped the second time. That's
Speaker 2: the time when I felt like it was all my fault,
Speaker 2: that if I had seen through him sooner. So she
Speaker 2: went down and spent some time with her own mother
Speaker 2: and sisters, and came back within ten days and just
Speaker 2: fell into my dad's arms and they sobbed, both of them.
Speaker 2: She said, it's over, it's done. I see through it.
Speaker 2: I do think he's been manipulating me, and I do
Speaker 2: want this family, and I want you and I love you.
Speaker 2: You know, even though it was only that little two
Speaker 2: week period of time, it was very life changing for
Speaker 2: all of us.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because what it does seem is that what
Speaker 1: Birch told was trying to do was make your family
Speaker 1: system a weaker place that would have given him even
Speaker 1: more entry in right to her access. The calculated scheme
Speaker 1: around this is one of the biggest webs I think
Speaker 1: I've ever heard. Although it's involving so few people. This
Speaker 1: is the kind of stuff you'd read in an espionage novel, right,
Speaker 1: and it involves entire countries she's doing it with in
Speaker 1: one family system. And so your parents have come back together,
Speaker 1: but you still believe there's this possibility the world is
Speaker 1: going to vaporize on my family's going to get destroyed.
Speaker 1: How are things unfolding? Because we're still building out to
Speaker 1: you being kidnapped a second time. Nearly two years after
Speaker 1: she was drugged and driven to Mexico, Birch told coerce Jan,
Speaker 1: based on instructions he said he'd received from aliens, to
Speaker 1: write a note to her parents and climb out her
Speaker 1: bedroom window where he'd be waiting for her. Jan was
Speaker 1: fourteen years old and missing once again. This time, he
Speaker 1: took her to California.
Speaker 2: He enrolls me in a Catholic boarding school in Pasadena, California,
Speaker 2: Flintrich Sacred Heart Academy.
Speaker 1: So the first time it was forty five days. The
Speaker 1: second time, how long were you gone?
Speaker 2: I was missing for over three months?
Speaker 1: How did law enforcement? How did the police? How are
Speaker 1: they conceptualizing this case?
Speaker 2: This time they treated it as a runaway because of
Speaker 2: the note that I had left that you know, I
Speaker 2: was going to go and be, you know, on my own.
Speaker 3: I was grown up.
Speaker 2: I was fourteen and pre pubescent, and the note was
Speaker 2: how they decided. I guess they all knew it was him,
Speaker 2: but the FBI would not sanction getting involved with it
Speaker 2: at the beginning until there was more proof.
Speaker 1: I just want to make a comment though. Here you
Speaker 1: are someone who's been abducted before, they know this, and
Speaker 1: they go right to that idea of a runaway. I
Speaker 1: still don't think we get it right. I think in
Speaker 1: too many missing young people's cases that's where people go.
Speaker 1: In some cases that may be true, but as far
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned, who cares? A fact that someone ran
Speaker 1: away means that they were distressed?
Speaker 2: And side note that I think is very interesting. When
Speaker 2: he spent from the kidnapping with time served and the conviction,
Speaker 2: his fifteen days in jail. Fifteen days, it was after
Speaker 2: he'd already taken me to California. It was after Jan's
Speaker 2: a runaway. Now he goes and shows up to serve
Speaker 2: his fifteen days jails.
Speaker 1: Were from the original abduction. So you were abducted for
Speaker 1: forty five. Huh, he only has to do fifteen and
Speaker 1: he hasn't served it yet and has managed to kidnap
Speaker 1: you again, right, And.
Speaker 2: Then he goes to serve it and says, well, I
Speaker 2: don't have her. I mean she's in communication with me.
Speaker 2: She just she can't possibly go back to her terrible
Speaker 2: parents in her terrible home.
Speaker 1: And yet he managed to enroll you in a private school.
Speaker 2: By telling those wonderful nuns who ran the boarding school
Speaker 2: that he was a CIA agent, that we had escaped
Speaker 2: from Lebanon, that my mother had been killed in the
Speaker 2: Lebanon crisis, and he basically showed them, I mean proof,
Speaker 2: and he said, oh, I'm sorry, I've got to go.
Speaker 2: I have a meeting with Jerry Jerry Ford President, and
Speaker 2: he's like, and really, the most important thing is that
Speaker 2: you've got to protect her. And if anyone comes looking
Speaker 2: for her, I mean, they may pose as police officers
Speaker 2: or FBI or whatever, but if you tell them that
Speaker 2: she's here, they will get her and they will torture
Speaker 2: her to get to me so that they can find me.
Speaker 1: This is sort of like a navigating narcissism hack for
Speaker 1: everyone listening. If anyone ever tells you they are CIA
Speaker 1: or in the Witness Protection program, don't spend time with them.
Speaker 1: They are lying to you. You're not supposed to tell
Speaker 1: if you're in the Witness Protection program, right, And you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to tell if you're in the CIA. It
Speaker 1: is amazing how often psychopathic people weaponize the whole CIA thing.
Speaker 1: I guess it seems intriguing and it seems like someone's
Speaker 1: got to be a CIA agent. They're not talking about it.
Speaker 1: And they're definitely not enrolling kids in the private school
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: You know, there's something sexy about that on some level
Speaker 2: or something that people are just like, Oh.
Speaker 1: I think it also makes the other person feel special, right,
Speaker 1: like I'm part of this sort of thing being brought
Speaker 1: into it. So how would he see you?
Speaker 2: He would come on the weekends and he would pick
Speaker 2: me up and we'd go in the motor home and
Speaker 2: he'd take me for two or three days and then
Speaker 2: I'd go back to school.
Speaker 3: Okay, and that's when all the abuse happened.
Speaker 1: So he would s actually assault you. Tell you note
Speaker 1: that weekend. So now though they do finally find you
Speaker 1: at this private school, so you then go home again.
Speaker 3: Go home again.
Speaker 2: I'm still fourteen, but still one hundred percent believing that
Speaker 2: we have not accomplished the mission. So I know that
Speaker 2: the mission is going to somehow have to continue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: After abducting jan a second time, Birch Told evaded charges
Speaker 1: by claiming he had a mental defect. He ended up
Speaker 1: serving five months at a psychiatric facility before being released.
Speaker 1: What was your attitude towards your parents?
Speaker 2: My mom describes that day when because I was listed
Speaker 2: as a run away I had to be processed through
Speaker 2: the system. I literally spent a night in jail, in
Speaker 2: my own hometown jail. It was horrible. I am so
Speaker 2: angry at my whole life and my parents that when
Speaker 2: they processed me and then they drove me home. Now
Speaker 2: I haven't seen my family for all these months.
Speaker 3: I've been homesick for them.
Speaker 2: There was definitely sure all of that, but I did nothing.
Speaker 3: My mother sees us pull up.
Speaker 2: I walked through the back door, and I look at her,
Speaker 2: and she looks at me like she wants to put
Speaker 2: her arms out, she wants to hug me. And I
Speaker 2: walk down the stairs. I never say two words to her.
Speaker 2: I walk down to my bedroom in the back. I
Speaker 2: closed the door, and my mother says, I still didn't
Speaker 2: have the words or the what or how to get
Speaker 2: you to.
Speaker 3: Talk, and I wasn't talking.
Speaker 2: And then the whole abuse and meeting up with birch
Speaker 2: Hold happened for another two years.
Speaker 1: So you've come back, you're in your parents' home. The
Speaker 1: abuse continues.
Speaker 2: Yes, when I go and meet up with him, even
Speaker 2: though he was totally not supposed to be in our county.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was a whole court order that he
Speaker 2: could never you know, but I would meet up with him,
Speaker 2: the abuse would continue. We're trying to make sure we
Speaker 2: have this, you know, this baby to save this dying planet.
Speaker 2: And I am going further and further down into a
Speaker 2: loneliness and a state of desperation that I can't really
Speaker 2: describe fully. But I put on the happy face, just
Speaker 2: like all the just like all the kids do that
Speaker 2: are being abused, come to school and they act like
Speaker 2: everything's fine.
Speaker 1: Bearing the burden of sexual trauma, having to carry this
Speaker 1: sort of catastrophic secret that you truly believe that the
Speaker 1: world is going to be destroyed because you have been
Speaker 1: indoctrinated into this belief system since you were about ten
Speaker 1: years old. Yeah, and so now you're six years into
Speaker 1: being told that this is it would be like being
Speaker 1: raised in a doomsday cult.
Speaker 3: Yes, where you don't have other information.
Speaker 2: You don't have any other information, right, I don't know
Speaker 2: what's normal what's not.
Speaker 3: At this point?
Speaker 1: Is there anything that's going through your mind? Is there's
Speaker 1: something wrong about somebody who keeps pulling me away from
Speaker 1: my family?
Speaker 2: The only disconnect was the requirement that I was not
Speaker 2: to have a relationship with my father or any other boys.
Speaker 2: And that was so hard for me because I was
Speaker 2: so close to my dad.
Speaker 3: He was just my life. I loved my father, we
Speaker 3: all did.
Speaker 2: And you know, to his credit and to any parent
Speaker 2: listening out there where your child's behavior has.
Speaker 3: Changed so severely.
Speaker 2: My dad, when I would push him away, when I
Speaker 2: would ignore him, when I would turn away, when I'd
Speaker 2: never let him touch me, my dad would just say,
Speaker 2: I don't know what's wrong, Jenny, but I'm here whenever
Speaker 2: you need me.
Speaker 3: I love you.
Speaker 2: I would die for you. And it was so unconditional
Speaker 2: and it.
Speaker 3: Was so real.
Speaker 2: And it was right before my sixteenth birthday that I
Speaker 2: knew I was going to be vaporized. That I made
Speaker 2: a plan. I started to test the waters. I started
Speaker 2: to talk to boys at school. As school started, I
Speaker 2: accepted a date to a dance with a boy that
Speaker 2: I didn't really know. And when I came home from
Speaker 2: the dance and my dad was asleep in his lazy
Speaker 2: boy chair waiting up for me, and I walked through
Speaker 2: the door and I looked at him and I sat
Speaker 2: and he woke up and he say, oh, Jenny, did
Speaker 2: you have a good time. It was my first aid,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I did Dad.
Speaker 1: And I sat on the.
Speaker 2: Arm of that chair and talked to my dad for
Speaker 2: like the first time since basically after the first kidnapping,
Speaker 2: when I had already been told you can't have any
Speaker 2: relationships with any other men, including your father.
Speaker 3: And we talked about.
Speaker 2: The date, and I gave him a little kiss on
Speaker 2: the forehead, and I walked down the hallway and there
Speaker 2: my mom's asleep, Karen's asleep, Susan's asleep, everybody's safe. And
Speaker 2: I just went, I don't think you're real. I don't
Speaker 2: think this is real. And I did not have a
Speaker 2: clue what I was going to do next. I didn't
Speaker 2: know what to do next. I didn't know if I
Speaker 2: should tell somebody or even how to do that. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't until my best friend Caroline and Karen, my sister,
Speaker 2: basically dragged it out of me within a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks of that experience.
Speaker 1: It absolutely is a process. One of our experts was
Speaker 1: a cult expert, doctor Yanya Lala. She uses this example
Speaker 1: of a shelf in the back of your head, and
Speaker 1: one day you see things in a way that they
Speaker 1: pile up on there that you now see what this
Speaker 1: really is. Yeah, the shelf breaks.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's a great way to say it,
Speaker 2: because it has to come to that.
Speaker 1: All that stuff piled up more, more experiences, and then
Speaker 1: ultimately it was that you did make a leap of faith.
Speaker 1: And so that leap of faith to allow something as
Speaker 1: simple as a boy a dance and the world didn't
Speaker 1: stop to me is one of the most profound metaphors
Speaker 1: for healing I've ever heard, because there are moments for
Speaker 1: many people will say, but if I do this, then
Speaker 1: this terrible thing will happen, And you know, they just
Speaker 1: have been so brought into the structure and one day
Speaker 1: they do the simplest thing and the world doesn't stop spinning.
Speaker 1: For many survivors, it's the idea that if I speak out,
Speaker 1: then all these terrible things will happen, my family will
Speaker 1: fall apart, or I'm going to end up on the
Speaker 1: streets or whatever. And then they do the thing, whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. In someone situation file for divorce, speak
Speaker 1: out about abuse, and while it does take them to
Speaker 1: a different difficult phase of their life, it's now from
Speaker 1: a place of clarity and the healing can begin for
Speaker 1: you that shelf break moment, as doctor Yanya would call
Speaker 1: it was starting to see things. All the things you
Speaker 1: were told would happen didn't, And now is when healing
Speaker 1: could start, slowly, slowly to begin. Once you realized that
Speaker 1: everything he was telling you about about the aliens and
Speaker 1: all this wasn't true, did you connect to the idea
Speaker 1: that Birch told this whole time had been abusing you.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: It was pretty quickly, so hard, it was, it was terrible.
Speaker 1: In her book The Jan Broberg Story, Jan estimates that
Speaker 1: Birch told sexually, abused or raped her approximately two hundred
Speaker 1: times over a four year period.
Speaker 2: Even when many many years later he died by suicide.
Speaker 2: I had people calling me and I said, it's so
Speaker 2: weird because I'm crying, like I'm sad, but I'm so relieved.
Speaker 2: But I'm I guess I'm sad for the little girl,
Speaker 2: and I'm sad for his children. And I don't even
Speaker 2: know how to process the fielding.
Speaker 3: That I'm having. Why would I be at all sad
Speaker 3: for him?
Speaker 2: Because I was also relieved and elated, and I had
Speaker 2: all these various feelings. And I think that was the
Speaker 2: same way it was when I started to unpack what
Speaker 2: he had actually done and it took me a long
Speaker 2: time to talk about the abuse. I just called it
Speaker 2: the icky stuff, and I said I don't want to
Speaker 2: talk about it, and my parents just kind of honored that.
Speaker 2: I said, there was ikey stuff and I don't want
Speaker 2: to talk about it. It wasn't really until I was
Speaker 2: in college and I was writing an English assignment about
Speaker 2: a period of time in your life that was significant
Speaker 2: and it had to be long, fifteen twenty pages, and
Speaker 2: I would call home and I would.
Speaker 3: Be like, Okay, I want to talk about this. Why
Speaker 3: didn't you know this? And that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: When people asked me, how did you forgive your parents?
Speaker 2: I said, look, I had wonderful parents.
Speaker 3: First of all.
Speaker 2: That was the foundation luckily that I had.
Speaker 3: It wasn't my parents, Thank goodness.
Speaker 2: I don't know how kids survive that, but they do. Also,
Speaker 2: every time that I would call and I would be upset,
Speaker 2: they just acknowledged my feelings. They didn't try to defend themselves.
Speaker 2: They didn't try to if anything, they just said, we're
Speaker 2: so sorry, we wish we had known, we were so sorry.
Speaker 3: What can we do?
Speaker 2: How can we help you know what's next? Because we
Speaker 2: just we love you always. It was just unconditional from
Speaker 2: my mom and my dad, and I'd experienced that before
Speaker 2: and I experienced it again as I tried to begin healing,
Speaker 2: and that was really a big, huge plus for me.
Speaker 2: For those that it was parents or grandparents, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody in the family, Ugh, I do have a huge
Speaker 2: empathetic heart because they were supposed to be protected and
Speaker 2: nurtured and they didn't get that correct correct. You know.
Speaker 1: Doctor gebro Matte talks about the idea that equally horrific
Speaker 1: as the trauma that happens to the child is the
Speaker 1: sense for the child that they weren't protected, especially when
Speaker 1: it's happening within the family system. I have to say, though,
Speaker 1: when I heard your mother say that your parents never
Speaker 1: attempted to defend themselves, and that was a big part
Speaker 1: of your healing. One of the hardest things is when
Speaker 1: people are part of a traumatic system. They themselves were
Speaker 1: not perpetrating per se, but they were part of a
Speaker 1: system that may have sort of allowed something to happen.
Speaker 1: Most people, when we are having to face up to
Speaker 1: our contribution to someone else's pain, our first go to
Speaker 1: is to defend ourselves. Well, you need to know that
Speaker 1: this was going on and you need to know that
Speaker 1: this and I didn't know that, and I didn't know this.
Speaker 1: I agree that their willingness to say I am so sorry,
Speaker 1: you know, how can we be here for you? There
Speaker 1: is no excuse like that, even though many people say,
Speaker 1: well that's frustrating too. It's a much more towards the
Speaker 1: right direction of healing than somebody trying to defend their
Speaker 1: position when it was your pain. How has it affected
Speaker 1: you long term, your relationships, how you entered life as
Speaker 1: an adult woman and lived and loved as an adult woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, a lot of trial and error because I
Speaker 2: didn't really have a guide necessarily to say, oh, this
Speaker 2: is how we deal with trauma, this is what you
Speaker 2: can do. So for me, I went through many relationships,
Speaker 2: multiple marriages. I was looking to reclaim somehow that twelve thirteen, fourteen,
Speaker 2: fifteen year old experience. So I was not operating out
Speaker 2: of a fully formed, you know, adult woman mind set.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I was just lucky, but substance
Speaker 2: abuse or drugs, alcohol, that never was a part of
Speaker 2: my struggle. But it was definitely relationships that were a
Speaker 2: struggle for me. And how do I, you know, let
Speaker 2: go of what happened and be able to have, you know,
Speaker 2: a good sex life.
Speaker 3: How do I be able to have a.
Speaker 2: Good relational life that is an adult relationship that can grow.
Speaker 2: It's been a struggle for me my whole life. And
Speaker 2: then I really feel like some certain things that became
Speaker 2: very transformative for me are basically those twelve transformational breakthroughs
Speaker 2: that I can now identify that happened in my life
Speaker 2: for me to become the person that I am today,
Speaker 2: where I am a very happy person, I'm a very
Speaker 2: healthy person, and I feel like I just want to
Speaker 2: help other people get there faster and sooner. That's really
Speaker 2: what I've kind of created in my own kind of
Speaker 2: twelve step program for sexual assault and abuse survivors, especially
Speaker 2: child abuse survivors.
Speaker 1: You said there was sort of twelve transformational points moments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't expect you to list all twelve, but what were
Speaker 1: some of those?
Speaker 2: Telling my story for the first time and a friend
Speaker 2: of mine had a little book club and she said,
Speaker 2: come tell your story. And as I told my story
Speaker 2: and the questions they asked me, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have an answer for that, or.
Speaker 3: I can tell you something you know that.
Speaker 2: I realized not only was it good for me to
Speaker 2: get it out side and to have other people hear me,
Speaker 2: but it was good for them. And so step one
Speaker 2: telling your story being believed is really important and not blamed.
Speaker 2: Finding that person or a group where you can be
Speaker 2: safe to tell your story and know that you will
Speaker 2: be believed. So that's when I started an online community.
Speaker 2: It's called Thrivevers Survivor plus Thriving is thriving, so you're
Speaker 2: a thriviver and in that community, those are the ground rules.
Speaker 3: It's a safe place.
Speaker 2: There's no judgment here, you are always believed, you will
Speaker 2: never be blamed. And so having a space like that,
Speaker 2: if you can't find that with your parents or with
Speaker 2: someone else, is really a big key because I believe
Speaker 2: that just festers, especially adults that it happened when they
Speaker 2: were children. They say it takes on average twenty one
Speaker 2: years for a woman to come forward and disclose, and
Speaker 2: that most men never do.
Speaker 1: And most men never do. I say that as a clinician,
Speaker 1: and I don't think we can put you find a
Speaker 1: point on that is that many men never speak out
Speaker 1: about it. I think the shaming for men is it's
Speaker 1: a different process. It's not a worsom, whether it's a
Speaker 1: different process, and how men are taught to sort of
Speaker 1: manage those kinds of emotions and experiences, how they're received
Speaker 1: by the world. In terms of you telling your story,
Speaker 1: that's one of the hardest things for trauma survivors because
Speaker 1: you got almost view. Trauma's got these different elements to it.
Speaker 1: I think for some people, the telling the story is hard,
Speaker 1: but then there's this whole experience they're having, and then
Speaker 1: there's the fear, there's the shame, there's the disbelief, all
Speaker 1: the things people come up against.
Speaker 2: My mom and I had been asked to speak at
Speaker 2: an educational conference and the other gentleman who was a
Speaker 2: keynote speaker, he said, I've been a superior court judge
Speaker 2: for a number of years, but I was an attorney
Speaker 2: for children and children's rights, and all of my cases
Speaker 2: had to do with criminal pedophiles, and your story contains
Speaker 2: all of the elements every case I've ever worked with.
Speaker 2: It's in your story. And he said, there will be
Speaker 2: millions of people that will resonate with your story because
Speaker 2: even if it isn't, you know, the same exact thing,
Speaker 2: they've been groomed. It was somebody they knew, and it
Speaker 2: doesn't look like a scary stranger. So those basic things
Speaker 2: are so important for someone to feel that they can
Speaker 2: share in a safe place and that they can survive
Speaker 2: the blowback that may happen, because it is that first
Speaker 2: place of putting it in words that are outside of
Speaker 2: your body that you can examine. I studied brainwashing. I
Speaker 2: studied the tactics that he.
Speaker 3: Used on me. I have names.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, you know that makes a big difference.
Speaker 1: Does make a big difference. I mean so glad you
Speaker 1: said that, because these things do have names. Right. Gaslighting
Speaker 1: is a psychopathy, is a thing, Grooming is a process,
Speaker 1: and these have been substantiated. They are things that are
Speaker 1: designed to bring a person to the point where they
Speaker 1: no longer trust themselves and are more likely to trust
Speaker 1: someone outside of them even more. It can happen to
Speaker 1: any of us. It doesn't happen because someone is foolish.
Speaker 1: It's often based on the establishment of trust. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, when we throw into this all
Speaker 1: of these mechanisms that are based in manipulation and exploitation
Speaker 1: and learning about someone's vulnerabilities and infiltrating a system. None
Speaker 1: of this is against the law, and so our systems
Speaker 1: are designed to react to this. So something terrible has
Speaker 1: to happen. Someone has to be sexually abused, or assaulted
Speaker 1: or raped. Somebody has to be manipulated and exploited the
Speaker 1: way you were with these unfounded beliefs, and you know,
Speaker 1: having that belief system be hijacked. And even none of
Speaker 1: those things, the sexual abuse, sexual assault is illegal, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that still happen to someone
Speaker 1: in these experiences still fly under that radar. So we
Speaker 1: have all this data on what's leading up to it,
Speaker 1: but there's not a single legal place you can act
Speaker 1: on this. Does that make sense? Total a porities, We
Speaker 1: go to the law enforcement that justices they got nothing right,
Speaker 1: so when it gets over that line that they can
Speaker 1: do something about it, so much harm has now already
Speaker 1: happened to this person that from a mental health perspective,
Speaker 1: the amount of work we need to do is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, because these things aren't illegal,
Speaker 1: they're not talked about enough. The world looks with suspicion
Speaker 1: at the person who is perpetrated against rather than at
Speaker 1: the perpetrator, which not that I'm saying that they're signing
Speaker 1: off on the perpetrator. What I'm saying is that to
Speaker 1: believe that there had to be something wrong with and
Speaker 1: I hate the word victim, I'm going to use it
Speaker 1: for a minute, but that there had to be something
Speaker 1: wrong with the victim makes the world safer because otherwise
Speaker 1: we are all potentially susceptible to a birch hold, and
Speaker 1: that makes the world far too terrifying to live in.
Speaker 1: So it's easier to say what's wrong with Jan? What
Speaker 1: was wrong with Jan's family? And that story repeats every
Speaker 1: single damn day.
Speaker 3: It does, and it repeats by the thousands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we would rather talk about murder, We would
Speaker 2: rather talk about children that are kidnapped, in sex trafficked
Speaker 2: in another country than we would talk about the one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand children that are being perpetrated right now for
Speaker 2: every one or two of those other victims, which is
Speaker 2: a terrible thing, and murders terrible and all of that,
Speaker 2: But the number of people, it's twenty five percent of
Speaker 2: the world has gone through childhood's sexual assault and abuse.
Speaker 2: Those are facts and figures of those that have reported
Speaker 2: to those organizations that can tell you these are the.
Speaker 1: Numbers, correct, correct, and that creates people who often don't
Speaker 1: get the help. We do not have the support, especially
Speaker 1: if it happened either within the family or the family
Speaker 1: just doesn't get on board. It wasn't a healthy family
Speaker 1: system to begin with. I remember hearing that Elizabeth's Smart
Speaker 1: story had a major role in you speaking out about yours.
Speaker 3: She'd been missing for nine months.
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm glued to the TV, and I knew
Speaker 2: when they showed the pictures of her exactly what had
Speaker 2: happened to her, because she was downtown Salt Lake, you know,
Speaker 2: she had the little like veil and stuff on, and
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, yeah, she's been brainwashed for sure.
Speaker 2: That day was a woman that came on to the
Speaker 2: television in her car where the newscaster was going down
Speaker 2: the street.
Speaker 3: Hey, have you heard the news? Have you heard the news?
Speaker 2: And the people are like, oh, we're so grateful, We're
Speaker 2: so happy for her family, we've been praying for them,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. And then this woman in this car,
Speaker 2: he said to have you heard the news that Elizabeth
Speaker 2: Smart's been found? And she took her hands off the
Speaker 2: steering wheel, she folded her arms in front of her.
Speaker 2: She looked at the newscaster, and she said, I think
Speaker 2: this is ridiculous, this is disgusting. Didn't she know how
Speaker 2: much time and money we were spending trying to find her?
Speaker 2: Her picture was everywhere she was right downtown. Why didn't
Speaker 2: she run in the street and start screaming? At that
Speaker 2: moment it codified h what is missing in this conversation
Speaker 2: is people do not understand grooming and who the predators are. No,
Speaker 2: I knew why she didn't run in the street and
Speaker 2: start screaming. Even if her mother had been standing right
Speaker 2: beside her, she may not have said anything or lifted
Speaker 2: up the little veil and said, mom, it's me, help me.
Speaker 2: The missing piece of this conversation in my mind that
Speaker 2: day was the grooming and how that leads to the
Speaker 2: brainwashing and why people don't run in the street and
Speaker 2: start screaming.
Speaker 1: That sort of cold face of public opinion, which absolutely
Speaker 1: is not trauma informed, that doesn't understand what happens in
Speaker 1: these kinds of circumstances of her petration and abuse in
Speaker 1: somebody who is young, who is a child or an adolescent.
Speaker 1: That that is something that literally should be taught to
Speaker 1: every educator, every cop, every judge, every attorney, every lawmaker,
Speaker 1: everyone needs to understand this and realize that something is
Speaker 1: happening and that we would all be at some level
Speaker 1: vulnerable to that. Yeah, I understand that Oprah's gratitude journal
Speaker 1: has really worked for you.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about other round of
Speaker 2: my transformational breakthroughs. I was around a table with a
Speaker 2: bunch of other friends women. We were complaining about everything.
Speaker 2: I got home and I thought, no, I don't want
Speaker 2: to be the person with the saddest story, because I
Speaker 2: could top all of theirs. I don't want to be
Speaker 2: that person. I actually want to be the happiest person
Speaker 2: at the table that people want to be with me
Speaker 2: because I have hope, I have joy, I have that.
Speaker 2: And then I had heard Oprah talk about keeping a
Speaker 2: gratitude journal, you know, and I was kind of exploring,
Speaker 2: like how can I actually shift that in myself, and
Speaker 2: so committed that I would do it for two years
Speaker 2: and I wouldn't miss a day, and it had to
Speaker 2: be different.
Speaker 3: You could never repeat, you know.
Speaker 2: After you ran out of the obvious things like you know,
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful for my son, or you know, all
Speaker 2: the people, you had to start looking and that was
Speaker 2: the process that allowed the shift to happen in doing
Speaker 2: that work of taking that thirty seconds to actually think
Speaker 2: through my day or as I'm going through my day,
Speaker 2: what am I going to write? And so it was
Speaker 2: the day that my stepdaughter passed away in a car
Speaker 2: accident that i'd been keeping this gratitude journal. And when
Speaker 2: I got back with all the other kids, her three
Speaker 2: sisters and my son, we were all devastated, and that
Speaker 2: little journal was sitting there, and we'd all been crying,
Speaker 2: and you know, it was just a really heartbreaking day.
Speaker 2: And I looked at it and I was like, no, nope,
Speaker 2: I can't think of anything not today.
Speaker 3: It's not fair. I don't have to do that. And
Speaker 3: I didn't have to do it.
Speaker 2: But then I remembered going to pick up her sister
Speaker 2: as I was trying to take them all from you know,
Speaker 2: southern Utah down to Salt Lake where she had been
Speaker 2: life flighted and was in her seventh surgery, trying to
Speaker 2: get there before she passed. Didn't make it, got about
Speaker 2: halfway there and they said turned around and go home,
Speaker 2: and I had to tell all the kids that she
Speaker 2: had died that were in the car. I'm sorry, Oh
Speaker 2: it was a day it was so hard.
Speaker 3: But I remembered when I went to pick.
Speaker 2: Up Melissa, her sister that's just younger than she is.
Speaker 2: She was at a friend's house. It was Labor Day weekend,
Speaker 2: and it had been raining and the road was muddy,
Speaker 2: and I thought, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get stuck
Speaker 2: in the ud.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to get to Melissa. I gotta get her.
Speaker 2: I gotta get her, you know, I gotta get her
Speaker 2: in the car.
Speaker 3: We gotta go, we gotta go.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, I hit gravel on that
Speaker 2: road and I could get to the house.
Speaker 3: To pick her up.
Speaker 2: And so that day, that night, I remembered that there
Speaker 2: was gravel, and that's what I wrote, I'm grateful for gravel.
Speaker 2: And I know that the exercise, the practice of doing
Speaker 2: that for those two years, it changed who I was.
Speaker 2: It had a true psychological and physiological change, but I
Speaker 2: had to practice. And so knowing that things can shift
Speaker 2: for you in such an extraordinary way for me on
Speaker 2: a day like that, to me is evidence that we
Speaker 2: can We may not know how, but we can choose
Speaker 2: to get on the path to healing, to get on
Speaker 2: the path to finding the right therapist to get on
Speaker 2: the path to finding the right exercises, the right things
Speaker 2: to do for us in order to come back to
Speaker 2: what I call our perfect record that we were born with.
Speaker 2: It has our own music, and it's very unique to us,
Speaker 2: and it's our own playlist, and it's our own soundtrack
Speaker 2: to our life. And then somebody puts this huge scratch
Speaker 2: on your record with that abuse, and what you really
Speaker 2: have to get good at when the needle gets stuck,
Speaker 2: you have to get good at picking it up and
Speaker 2: moving it past the scratch, and you do it over
Speaker 2: and over and over again throughout your life. Scratch doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily go away, but you can form a new.
Speaker 1: Groove that I love that and it's music, and you
Speaker 1: still get to keep the song you do.
Speaker 2: It's your unique music, your soundtrack, but you have to
Speaker 2: choose it and then you have to.
Speaker 3: Do the work.
Speaker 2: And it may take medication, it may take all kinds
Speaker 2: of things. I'm not saying it's easy, but to stand
Speaker 2: up for yourself, to take the time to say I
Speaker 2: am worthy of healing. If you were to give advice
Speaker 2: while I get to be here with you today, what
Speaker 2: would be your advice for people that are still dealing
Speaker 2: with so much shame, which is so misplaced. They didn't
Speaker 2: do anything wrong. How do we get past that so
Speaker 2: that we can get to the point of going, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to stand for my healing. I'm going to
Speaker 2: get involved in a group. I'm gonna read the books,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do the exers, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: My conversation will continue after this break. It's a multi
Speaker 1: step because it's going to be a little different for everyone,
Speaker 1: depending on what they endure, the kinds of supports they have.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in front of someone right now who went
Speaker 1: through a very very severe, pervasive, persistent, developmentally significant trauma.
Speaker 1: Right so that's capital T, no question about it. But
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine you're carrying a messy backpack
Speaker 1: or a messy bag, and I'd say, let's dump this
Speaker 1: thing out, and i want to see what we've got
Speaker 1: here to work with. And in doing that, I'll say, okay,
Speaker 1: look there, actually there's like seventeen crumpled dollars in here.
Speaker 1: You's out you had no money. There's actually a little
Speaker 1: bit of money here, and this stuff we don't need.
Speaker 1: Let's let's figure out a way to get rid of this,
Speaker 1: and I see what we don't have here, right, I
Speaker 1: don't see your driver's license, or I don't see you know,
Speaker 1: whatever else you might need. My point in this saying
Speaker 1: this is in everyone's bag is something different. In your
Speaker 1: particular case, you had the very complicated space of family.
Speaker 1: And I say complicated because the first twelve years of
Speaker 1: your life were unconditionally loving and securely attached, and you
Speaker 1: felt confident and in yourself. Right. That is not often
Speaker 1: the case for a lot of trauma survivors, right, but
Speaker 1: you had that. But then your parents obviously you've forgiven
Speaker 1: them and all of that. But there may very well
Speaker 1: have been a moment in time when you thought, why
Speaker 1: didn't you keep me safe? For right, going back to
Speaker 1: doctor Gabromante's point of not feeling safe, not being protected
Speaker 1: and the support's there, it might have been this access
Speaker 1: to therapy. It was your willingness to say, okay, there
Speaker 1: are things like the gratitude journaling process that Oprah had
Speaker 1: talked about. Was that forcing yourself of you every day?
Speaker 1: You can't say that I woke up like you get
Speaker 1: to do that. Once that you've got to move on.
Speaker 1: It's almost like this retraining of the brain. It's like
Speaker 1: the clearing of the groove into a mindset of growth,
Speaker 1: of noticing joy, because joy is something that trauma survivors
Speaker 1: often are afraid to notice. It feels like it could
Speaker 1: be taken away. There's almost like a safe it feels
Speaker 1: unsafe exactly. So I would say that it's understanding everyone's
Speaker 1: story is different, because the one thing I always want
Speaker 1: to tell folks is that there's no one size fits all.
Speaker 1: Your journey and healing is going to be very different
Speaker 1: than someone else's. And people might sometimes say, look, I
Speaker 1: can't even heal right, you know, so it's adding up
Speaker 1: that shame of like, look, they're doing fine, and I
Speaker 1: can't even think of a thing to be thankful for
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me? And I think that it's getting
Speaker 1: away from the what's wrong with you. Some people just
Speaker 1: need education. They need to understand what a psychopath is,
Speaker 1: they need to understand what grooming is, they need to
Speaker 1: understand what those processes were. When we think about what
Speaker 1: trauma informed work looks like, it's things like safety, accountability, empowerment, choice,
Speaker 1: And the key for a trauma survivor is to recognize
Speaker 1: there is choice because all of that was taken away
Speaker 1: from anyone in the moment of trauma. There was no choice.
Speaker 1: So sometimes it's even I can choose to write this
Speaker 1: thing in the Gratitude Journal, there are choices I can make.
Speaker 1: Each step of this is a choice. Therapy is essential.
Speaker 1: I do think that you know, without therapy, there is
Speaker 1: really not a path for with someone who knows sexual trauma.
Speaker 1: And if it's early life trauma, who knows child sexual trauma.
Speaker 1: To be with a therapist who gets that, who creates
Speaker 1: that safe, non judgmental space, is absolutely crucial. And there
Speaker 1: are people out there who do absolutely extraordinary work in
Speaker 1: that way, and that becomes a lifelong process, and the
Speaker 1: life longness of it is also Listen, we do lots
Speaker 1: of things for our health lifelong. We make healthier food choices,
Speaker 1: how we sleep, the movement, we engage in, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. This is no different. It's just that it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a steeper climb. And then there
Speaker 1: are the leaps of faith, like having a family, you
Speaker 1: have a son, how did your experience impact how you've
Speaker 1: mothered your son.
Speaker 2: Wanted always to have the communication part because that became
Speaker 2: such an important part of my recovery with my own
Speaker 2: parents and my own family. So I remember having deep,
Speaker 2: really truly deep conversations with my five year old, like
Speaker 2: the first time he ever asked me about where babies
Speaker 2: come from or said something like that. I mean, we
Speaker 2: just you know, laid it out, you know, and and
Speaker 2: he didn't seem scared of it. I know there's this
Speaker 2: age appropriate thing that you have to be aware of,
Speaker 2: but for me, it was like, whatever he asked, I'm
Speaker 2: going to tell him the truth. And that is why
Speaker 2: I think that we are still so close today. We
Speaker 2: have very deep conversations about all kinds of things. He
Speaker 2: knew that I was never going to be mad at him,
Speaker 2: that he knew that he could tell me anything. But
Speaker 2: I kept thinking, if I'll tell him at the right time,
Speaker 2: my own story, if he can know that I'm doing
Speaker 2: my best, and there's been trauma that I have passed on,
Speaker 2: you know, to him, because of my multiple marriages and
Speaker 2: things that I you know, it's taken me a long
Speaker 2: time to figure out.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I still haven't figured out.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I was more cautious in some ways, but
Speaker 2: maybe not cautious enough in other ways. You know. It's
Speaker 2: interesting I look back and I'm like, why was I
Speaker 2: as trusting as I was? That was one of the
Speaker 2: key pieces for my own healing. I couldn't go through
Speaker 2: my life not trusting people. That was a miserable existence.
Speaker 2: And I made a very firm decision that unless somebody
Speaker 2: gives me a reason not to trust them, or I
Speaker 2: have that gut spidey sense feeling that something's off, I'm
Speaker 2: going to trust people.
Speaker 1: Amazing because a lot of people listening to this will
Speaker 1: say I experienced trauma and I can't trust to which
Speaker 1: I'd say, and that's okay too. Of course, those are
Speaker 1: the processes that people might say, I'm still very tentative,
Speaker 1: and you know about your son. We actually had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk with Jewel on our show. She talked
Speaker 1: really beautifully about something called an emotional inheritance that we get.
Speaker 1: And you know what I loved about that model is
Speaker 1: we are given that emotional inheritance, good, bad, and indifferent, right,
Speaker 1: you know, from our parents. But it's an intergenerational inheritance
Speaker 1: because that emotional inheritance is also based on what the
Speaker 1: generations before us have gone through. We went through something,
Speaker 1: and for all the things we do for our kids,
Speaker 1: they get the whole thing and certain wisdom that comes
Speaker 1: from that. But there's also a certain difficulty that comes
Speaker 1: from that. We know trauma is intergenerational, and so there
Speaker 1: is that generation though that says I need to make
Speaker 1: sure I do everything I can to keep my child safe,
Speaker 1: and then with the hope that that just keeps getting
Speaker 1: paid forward. A lot of people will say a lot
Speaker 1: of their healing happened through parenthood.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh, definitely.
Speaker 2: For me, it's definitely been one of the best things
Speaker 2: that's ever motivated me or made me want to, you know,
Speaker 2: look a little harder at what could I be working on.
Speaker 2: You know, it takes a lot of trial and error
Speaker 2: or trying different things and going, well, that didn't work,
Speaker 2: let's try something else.
Speaker 1: Something else exactly. And I think that's every human being.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's unique to people who've been through trauma.
Speaker 3: Don't either.
Speaker 1: What would you say to parents listening to this episode
Speaker 1: who might have a suspicion, as you call it, spidey
Speaker 1: sense or intuition about a friend or their child has
Speaker 1: come to them about something that's happened. What would you
Speaker 1: say to parents under those situations?
Speaker 2: First of all, I would say listen, trust what you're feeling.
Speaker 2: I know that we live in a world where we
Speaker 2: really want to give a lot of grace to people.
Speaker 2: We want to not be judgmental of people.
Speaker 3: I am so.
Speaker 2: About all of that, I really am. It's a huge
Speaker 2: part of my own life. But when you have something
Speaker 2: that hits your gut like something is off, it's something
Speaker 2: is wrong, or the way my child responds when he's
Speaker 2: around that family member or that person at school, or
Speaker 2: that you dance teacher, or whatever whatever it is, you
Speaker 2: have to listen to that because your subconscious, you know,
Speaker 2: your computer system that is taking in all this data,
Speaker 2: It's got a lot of unconscious reasons for why you
Speaker 2: have that feeling, I think, and so often we can't
Speaker 2: even consciously understand why listen.
Speaker 1: We have a vision of what a perpetrator looks like, right,
Speaker 1: we have that vision in our mind. There's a look.
Speaker 1: The problem is a lot of perpetrators don't have the look.
Speaker 1: They Birch Tol didn't. Nope, he did not have the look.
Speaker 1: In fact, he was considered attractive and people welcomed him
Speaker 1: into the church and thought he wasn't great. Think it's
Speaker 1: the hiding and plain sight of it all as the
Speaker 1: wolf in sheep's clothing and the grooming process. It's about
Speaker 1: really that psychopathic ability to sort of worm your way in.
Speaker 1: And most people want to believe human beings, human relationships,
Speaker 1: human societies can only exist on the basis of trust.
Speaker 1: If we don't trust anybody, there's no You really can't
Speaker 1: leave the house. The fact of the matter is is
Speaker 1: it's listening to kids. It's believing them. It's trusting your gut.
Speaker 1: It's maybe erring on the side of being conservative. It's
Speaker 1: doing your due diligence saying, hey, my kid's going to
Speaker 1: hang out here, I'd love to come by and spend
Speaker 1: some time here. Who else is in the house. It's
Speaker 1: asking the questions. We often don't even give ourselves permission
Speaker 1: to ask those questions, and so kids do not make
Speaker 1: stuff up. It is too terrifying because children have to
Speaker 1: believe the world is safe, right, even more than adults do.
Speaker 1: So to make this up, knowing the stakes, they need
Speaker 1: the social ties. When a child speaks, talk to them,
Speaker 1: pay attention to them. And I think from time immemorial
Speaker 1: we have not accorded equal rights to children. I really
Speaker 1: have not in paying attention to what they're saying, hearing
Speaker 1: them and if anything, more than anything, we now know
Speaker 1: there shouldn't be equal rights for children. There should be
Speaker 1: more rights for children because they don't have the capacity
Speaker 1: to advocate for themselves. And while there have been glacial
Speaker 1: movements in that direction, obviously the world doesn't look like
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. We're still not there. People say, what's
Speaker 1: the most important thing we could do in the world.
Speaker 1: That's a top three and that means everything. Ensuring they're
Speaker 1: well fed, ensuring they have shelter and reading, they're well
Speaker 1: cared for, and frankly, jan, if children were kept safe
Speaker 1: and free of trauma, I wouldn't have a job anymore
Speaker 1: and I would be thrilled.
Speaker 2: Right, That is the core of all this other stuff,
Speaker 2: the other things that come, you know, the criminal activity,
Speaker 2: the substance abuse, the cutting, the anarexia, the bolima, the
Speaker 2: mental health issues. I mean, it stems from this, And
Speaker 2: I'm like, why are we not spending all of our
Speaker 2: money trying to create awareness campaigns for adults and educational
Speaker 2: campaigns for kids with all the appropriate words, so that
Speaker 2: that six year old who's grown up with this abuse,
Speaker 2: at some point in school goes, oh, This isn't the
Speaker 2: way all the kids in my class get treated at No.
Speaker 1: No, and the shame and the fear and all that.
Speaker 1: I want to double back to birche Told for a minute.
Speaker 1: He continued to contact you for decades after the abuse.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about the last time you saw him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this was same year that Elizabeth Smart was found.
Speaker 2: It was in two thousand and three, and I'm doing
Speaker 2: some conferences and I get asked to speak at a
Speaker 2: university that's an hour away from where he was living.
Speaker 2: I had no idea he was this close to me
Speaker 2: and my family, no idea he'd remarried and he's about
Speaker 2: an hour away. Sees my picture on a poster, my
Speaker 2: face that I'm going to do this conference telling my story. Well,
Speaker 2: little did we know that birch Told had been making
Speaker 2: threats against this university, like you can't have this girl talk,
Speaker 2: she's made up this story whatever. Well, because all of
Speaker 2: that was happening, they almost canceled me, and so I
Speaker 2: went and filed a stocking injunction now knowing that he's
Speaker 2: like an hour away from where I live. And then
Speaker 2: what happened was you have to go to court if
Speaker 2: the person on the other side contestsct it, and he did,
Speaker 2: and I was I was shocked, though he actually wanted
Speaker 2: to go into a courtroom.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I had to show up in court.
Speaker 2: And there I'm sitting like he's as close to me
Speaker 2: as you are, you know, three four feet away from
Speaker 2: me at a different table. The courtroom is full of
Speaker 2: my friends and family, and he's defending himself and at
Speaker 2: one point, I mean, I'm shaking like I'm twelve years old.
Speaker 3: This whole thing is just like, oh my gosh, he's
Speaker 3: right here.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen this guy for twenty seven, twenty eight years.
Speaker 3: At that time.
Speaker 2: And he says this thing to the judge in response
Speaker 2: to it, what is your defense against this stocking injunction
Speaker 2: being placed in force? And he said, well, first of all,
Speaker 2: she's made up this story. And I hear that ABC
Speaker 2: wants to tell her story, and I just want to
Speaker 2: know how much money she's getting from telling her story.
Speaker 2: There was something about that particular comment, because I've really
Speaker 2: never made any money significantly on telling my story, and
Speaker 2: anything that I've made I've put back into trying to
Speaker 2: start organizations and other things that I think will help people.
Speaker 2: At that time, though, in life life, some mother Mama
Speaker 2: Tiger took that little girl that was shaking for the
Speaker 2: whole first like forty five minutes of that proceeding, and
Speaker 2: just wrapped her big claw arms around that little girl
Speaker 2: and was like, I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Keep you safe. I'm going to protect you. You don't
Speaker 3: need to worry.
Speaker 2: I'm right here, and I'm going to tell him to
Speaker 2: his face exactly what I need to say to make
Speaker 2: you feel safe. I mean, it was just like it
Speaker 2: happened in an instant. And I turned to him and
Speaker 2: pointed at him, and I said, mister Birch, told, the
Speaker 2: only reason that I have ever told my story and
Speaker 2: will continue to tell my story, is to protect other
Speaker 2: children from monsters like you. Now, if you were really sorry,
Speaker 2: you would stand up, tell the truth, and serve your.
Speaker 3: Time in jail.
Speaker 2: And I sat down, and I was done being scared.
Speaker 1: But chan, you know what he said, because I just
Speaker 1: watched it again last night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead, you tell everybody.
Speaker 1: Sorry you feel that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, put it all back on me.
Speaker 1: Okay, sorry you feel that way is a narcissist's apology.
Speaker 1: It is a psychopath's apology. There is no responsibility taking
Speaker 1: there It is sorry you feel that way, as though
Speaker 1: you don't have a right to that feeling. I heard that.
Speaker 1: I was one of those moments. I mean, we had established,
Speaker 1: beyond a shadow of doubt, this dude's a psychopath. But
Speaker 1: I was like, right till the bitter end, listen, I've
Speaker 1: never met the man. Now he's dead. So this is speculative,
Speaker 1: but based on the behavior, everything we saw, how it unfolded,
Speaker 1: the intensity of the grooming, the systematic nature of it,
Speaker 1: the callousness of it, the unwilling, the absolute and utter
Speaker 1: lack of remorse, right to the bitter end, zero remorse,
Speaker 1: zero accountability, the parasitic nature of him, finding a family
Speaker 1: member to work with, finding the way to bribe the
Speaker 1: guard with his wedding ring. All of that stuff that
Speaker 1: screams psychopathy to me. And there's a difference between a
Speaker 1: psychopath and a narcissistic person. A narcissistic person can experience
Speaker 1: guilt and shame and negative emotions and remorse, and all
Speaker 1: of those things. Certainly narcissistic, particularly malignant narcissistic people can
Speaker 1: be capable of really horrible things in the context of
Speaker 1: a relationship. But the systematic nature of Birch told the impunity,
Speaker 1: the way he could work systems, all of it that
Speaker 1: smacks of psychopathy, and even more so in something we've
Speaker 1: called the dark tetrad, which is psychopathy meets narcissism meets machiavelianism,
Speaker 1: which is exploitativeness meets sadism. And he was very sadistic.
Speaker 1: The whole alien thing, putting you in such a place
Speaker 1: of fear and terror for so many years, that's sadistic.
Speaker 1: You know, doctor Fry, who I spoke about, has this
Speaker 1: model called darvo. They deny, they attack, and then they
Speaker 1: reverse victim and offender. You know, I'm the one who's
Speaker 1: the victim here. You're all coming at me. I didn't
Speaker 1: do anything wrong. I'm just trying to live my life.
Speaker 1: And then Jan in that courtroom, he twisted it and
Speaker 1: you said, like you made up these stories to a
Speaker 1: little girl about aliens, like and he said, well, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with you? This sounds crazy, judge. Can't you see
Speaker 1: what she's saying? And I thought, I mean gaslighting right
Speaker 1: there in real time in a court. It showed not
Speaker 1: only how pervasive, but how terrifying. And you said there
Speaker 1: were other victims, Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: There were two before me, and I know there were
Speaker 2: at least four after me. There was no remorse effort.
Speaker 1: The fact of the matter is is that people with
Speaker 1: these personality styles psychopath really narcissistic people, these don't change.
Speaker 1: His personality styles don't change. They will forever perpetrate, which
Speaker 1: really Birche told did until he went out on his
Speaker 1: own terms, basically, and so the unchangingness means that the
Speaker 1: entire onus of prevention is on all the rest of us.
Speaker 1: How to protect our children, how to protect ourselves, which
Speaker 1: goes back to a point you were making earlier. Sadly,
Speaker 1: we do need to be a little less trusting. That's
Speaker 1: what it comes down to. I have kids, they're adults,
Speaker 1: and I still don't trust people because there's nothing that's
Speaker 1: going to stop the perpetrator side. Nothing. So it's all
Speaker 1: about everyone else having the information to say themselves. But
Speaker 1: what you're doing, though, you're healing all the things you've done,
Speaker 1: from therapy to gratitude journaling to fostering supports doing the
Speaker 1: work you've also it's paying it forward. I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more again about thrivivors. Thing I
Speaker 1: want to understand is thrivivors is it designed for people
Speaker 1: who experienced sexual abuse, trauma, assault, rape in childhood, or
Speaker 1: is it for a person who's experienced that at any
Speaker 1: point in their lives.
Speaker 2: You know, because childhood has its own special like ramifications.
Speaker 2: I mostly am speak from that point of view. However,
Speaker 2: I would not necessarily discourage someone from joining our community
Speaker 2: up to the age of twenty five. I consider you,
Speaker 2: I do a child a team between because you don't
Speaker 2: have the mental capacity to have maneuvered through so many things.
Speaker 1: This is high burnout work. Oh yeah, you know, it
Speaker 1: really really is.
Speaker 2: Jen.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you get tired, and that's the one thing
Speaker 1: I want to you know. It's your story reminds me
Speaker 1: that for many survivors, paying it forward and thrivers, paying
Speaker 1: it forward is an important piece of their healing. But
Speaker 1: it's also about pacing yourself because I think some people
Speaker 1: out there they're like, Okay, I'm going to go help
Speaker 1: someone else. I'm like, okay, let's slow down. Let's make
Speaker 1: sure you're putting your healing first. You're doing your stuff first,
Speaker 1: and then you give yourself permission to step back when
Speaker 1: it becomes too much. Because to hear these things over
Speaker 1: and over, that is its own form of re traumatization.
Speaker 1: It's not easy for anyone, not even a mental health
Speaker 1: professional who sometimes needs to sort of step back, and
Speaker 1: so for people who've gone through it. While there is
Speaker 1: a validation and hearing other people's stories, learning from other
Speaker 1: people's journeys, there's also the risk of burning oneself out
Speaker 1: and do healing yeah right now, compassion, fatigue, call it
Speaker 1: what you will. So it's very clear the things that
Speaker 1: you know that have helped you heal, what are still
Speaker 1: some of the barriers for you healing.
Speaker 2: I think you just brought up one of them, and
Speaker 2: I think it's self care, which is another transformational breakthrough
Speaker 2: r that you absolutely have to know that your self
Speaker 2: care is not selfish because so often that's where we
Speaker 2: have lived in that shame piece for so long that
Speaker 2: if we take care of ourselves first, that somehow we're
Speaker 2: being selfish because that was just like integrated in every
Speaker 2: aspect of somebody else having control of you and doing
Speaker 2: whatever they told you to do. So I think that
Speaker 2: that whole self awareness, self actualization, self care, to really
Speaker 2: be mindful in that process and to develop mindfulness for
Speaker 2: your own self every day correct is hugely important.
Speaker 1: Well, we see this in complex trauma survivors. It's that
Speaker 1: ability to listen, to get into your body because that's
Speaker 1: where again, our bodies hold the trauma. You know this
Speaker 1: much more than anybody else does. Then it's listening to
Speaker 1: this font of information that is our body and taking
Speaker 1: information from that and learning when sometimes like I need
Speaker 1: to pull back, or I need to not do this,
Speaker 1: or I do need to do this, Like there is this,
Speaker 1: you know, the pain of your body holding or trauma
Speaker 1: is also the exquisiteness of what you learn from it
Speaker 1: and being in tune with that. But to that end though,
Speaker 1: is that you know again, it's all the things you're
Speaker 1: saying that could be barriers for any form of healing
Speaker 1: from any kind of relational trauma. How can people join thrivivers.
Speaker 2: You can go to thrivivers dot com, you can go
Speaker 2: to thrivivers dot so there's several ways to get to
Speaker 2: the community itself. But if you want to have a conversation,
Speaker 2: you can write to one of my social media places.
Speaker 2: I read everything and I reach back out to people
Speaker 2: who are really interested in you know, I'm ready for this.
Speaker 2: I'm ready for some healing and some guidance there and
Speaker 2: to be around other people that already get it. That's
Speaker 2: very safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it is. It's finding other people who
Speaker 1: get it. And we'll obviously have all of this information
Speaker 1: in the show notes for folks who want to look
Speaker 1: into this. And so I'm going to as one last question,
Speaker 1: I know your father passed a few years ago. How's
Speaker 1: your relationship with your mom?
Speaker 2: Really wonderfrid Yeah, she's older, yeah, yeah, and there's some
Speaker 2: memory things happening, and that's hard, you know, because she's
Speaker 2: been such an independent force. She went back to school
Speaker 2: after all of her daughters graduated from college and got
Speaker 2: her degree in social work and worked for the state
Speaker 2: of Idaho and also worked in Utah for a period
Speaker 2: of time and placed a large number of children in
Speaker 2: good foster care homes and in adoptive homes the family
Speaker 2: couldn't be or unified.
Speaker 3: And you know, and.
Speaker 2: She's done a lot. She's lobbied for back in the day.
Speaker 2: I just found the letter that she wrote and then
Speaker 2: she stood up and lobbied to have Idaho be a
Speaker 2: part of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Speaker 2: It was one of the last states to join. And
Speaker 2: when she told our story that happened, and that was
Speaker 2: back in the eighties early nineties, and I'm like, looking
Speaker 2: at these things that I now have, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: you know, just little moments throughout life that you can
Speaker 2: make a big impact and you don't even realize it
Speaker 2: at the time. So you know, I hope I can
Speaker 2: make a difference for somebody and that you know, one
Speaker 2: of these things either my podcast where we do talk
Speaker 2: to survivors and then how are they getting through the
Speaker 2: next steps of their own healing and thriving, And we
Speaker 2: talked to experts and we have those experts are on
Speaker 2: my community as well that come in and do great.
Speaker 1: Well again, everything you're doing, it's amazing and just you
Speaker 1: sharing your story and showing everyone that there's another side,
Speaker 1: and not just another side, but a place of growth,
Speaker 1: a place of thriving, a place of supporting other people
Speaker 1: and helping other people and reminding people that the shame
Speaker 1: is where we get hurt and to bring these stories
Speaker 1: out of the darkness into the light. So again, I
Speaker 1: cannot thank you enough.
Speaker 2: This was one of the highlights of my telling my
Speaker 2: story and being acknowledged. Thank you for being that person.
Speaker 3: I just want to.
Speaker 2: Acknowledge your sister who apparently has been following my.
Speaker 1: Story, and it was the beginning.
Speaker 3: It's just so sweet.
Speaker 2: And I got to meet her briefly through a little face.
Speaker 1: To make you meet her again. Yeah, so she again.
Speaker 1: She was the one who brought your story to my attention,
Speaker 1: and in the minute I heard about it, I said,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, we absolutely you know, with oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: do you think we could get Jan Ferberg? And she
Speaker 1: said you should try, and here we are. So we
Speaker 1: did and so blessed. So thank you, thank you, thank.
Speaker 3: You, thank you, thank you. And her.
Speaker 1: Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Jan. First,
Speaker 1: Jan's story is a reminder that grooming, the building of trust,
Speaker 1: seeking of vulnerabilities, isolation, and then cultivating opportunities isn't just
Speaker 1: an individual phenomenon, but it can happen within systems. He
Speaker 1: groomed her family, he groomed their community, He even groomed
Speaker 1: his own family. And all of that, coupled with society's
Speaker 1: tendency to not believe children and to believe perpetrators, especially
Speaker 1: perpetrators such as Birchtold who held privilege within society, meant
Speaker 1: that perpetration can last years with few consequences for the perpetrator,
Speaker 1: but a lifetime of consequences for the survivor of the trauma. Next.
Speaker 1: Over so many conversations on navigating narcissism, one theme has
Speaker 1: become clear that, whether it is betrayal, blindness, or cognitive dissonance,
Speaker 1: or self preservation or straight up denial, so much perpetration
Speaker 1: is kept in place by other people in the system
Speaker 1: being afraid of challenging the status quo. A groomed system
Speaker 1: is a vulnerable and distorted system, and that desire to
Speaker 1: not rock the boat sadly often overrides intuition and instincts
Speaker 1: that something isn't right. Perpetrators count on this and are
Speaker 1: basically taking advantage of a very basic human drive to
Speaker 1: keep things the same and not have to face the
Speaker 1: devastation that shifting a worldview can bring. In this next takeaway,
Speaker 1: the patterns and behaviors of the perpetrator, Birch told the
Speaker 1: systematic grooming, the lack of remorse, the entitlement, the grandiosity,
Speaker 1: the relentless and obsessive menace, continuing to send no living
Speaker 1: close to her, the tactic of behaving like a victim
Speaker 1: and setting complex ruses playing upon a girl's fear and
Speaker 1: sense of responsibility with the alien story, but then flipping
Speaker 1: when he talked to adults and making it about mental illness.
Speaker 1: The shifting identities, claiming to be a CIA agent, the
Speaker 1: capacity for constant deceit, the callousness. It all points to psychopathy,
Speaker 1: and people with this kind of antagonistic personality style, which
Speaker 1: is far more dangerous than narcissism, will often exploit systems
Speaker 1: like the courts to play out their entitled beliefs that
Speaker 1: after brutally harming and traumatizing Jan, that she had no
Speaker 1: right to share her story. The entitlement is so unfettered
Speaker 1: that they genuinely believe that they can control that person
Speaker 1: in perpetuity. These stories never end. Folks like this perpetrate
Speaker 1: in perpetuity, and sadly, our court systems keep giving, giving
Speaker 1: them an arena within which to keep perpetrating. For our
Speaker 1: next takeaway, Remarkably, after the acute period of returning to
Speaker 1: her family past, Jan found a place of peace and
Speaker 1: connection with them again. Many people watching or listening to
Speaker 1: Jan's story were angry at her parents for not acting faster,
Speaker 1: for not protecting her more, for not seeing it sooner,
Speaker 1: for getting pulled in. Jan went through her a process
Speaker 1: of understanding, but she did point out something that she
Speaker 1: said helped her as they went through the period of
Speaker 1: healing that her parents never defended themselves, that they shared
Speaker 1: that they were sorry and wanted her to heal. While
Speaker 1: Jan's was a unique story, an important takeaway is that
Speaker 1: when we are supporting someone close to us who has
Speaker 1: gone through something and maybe we didn't get it right
Speaker 1: all along, that we don't fall into the cycle of
Speaker 1: defending ourselves but simply face in to supporting the survivor next.
Speaker 1: Jan shares that she experienced multiple transformational points in her
Speaker 1: process of healing. Some of these included telling her story
Speaker 1: in safe places, paying it forward to other survivors, which
Speaker 1: in her case was establishing a platform to give survivors
Speaker 1: a safe place to share, practicing gratitude, reminding survivors of
Speaker 1: their strengths, and teaching people about these patterns so they
Speaker 1: are aware and can protect children. Everyone shares their story
Speaker 1: in their own way and in their own time, and
Speaker 1: it can take some time to determine what those safe
Speaker 1: spaces are. It may be therapy, it may be a
Speaker 1: support system, it may be a support group. Whatever a
Speaker 1: survivor finds sharing your experience in a way that feels safe,
Speaker 1: in a space free of shame and judgment, and beginning
Speaker 1: the step by step process of healing is essential. And lastly,
Speaker 1: Jan uses a beautiful metaphor, I want to come back
Speaker 1: to here. She talks about her experience of trauma as
Speaker 1: a scratch on a record that causes a favorite song
Speaker 1: to skip, but that with time and healing, that the
Speaker 1: groove becomes less deep and this song can play again,
Speaker 1: and the skip may slowly become less perceptible. Seeking out
Speaker 1: joy and not allowing trauma to steal joy are key
Speaker 1: elements of trauma healing, But again, it takes a minute.
Speaker 1: The metaphor of the scratch on the record reminds us
Speaker 1: that initially everything that is beautiful can seem spoiled and
Speaker 1: disrupted by trauma or abuse, and while the scratch may
Speaker 1: never completely go away, the song can still play again