Speaker 1: He denied it. He was like, I'm not gonna get
Speaker 1: in trouble for anything, and then I mean, at one
Speaker 1: point he admitted, yes, there were pictures of kids, but
Speaker 1: I've checked all the laws on this and there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal Episode six collections.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned in previous episodes, we heard from women
Speaker 2: all over the country. It's what made us realize there's
Speaker 2: a bigger story here. People from all walks of life
Speaker 2: are in possession of child sexual abuse material, also known
Speaker 2: as c SAM. There's no economic difference or profession that
Speaker 2: separates deviant behavior as humans. For families that are stung
Speaker 2: by betrayal, the shock manifests in different ways. We heard
Speaker 2: from Erin, whose story has a lot in common with Ashley's,
Speaker 2: but it's also very different. You've heard about fight, flight
Speaker 2: or freeze. This brave lady took it to another level.
Speaker 1: I'm a marriage and family therapist. My dad was military
Speaker 1: and my oldest brother was also military. My mom had
Speaker 1: a real heart for the families that were left behind
Speaker 1: during deployments, and I think that really inspired me to
Speaker 1: become a marriage and family therapist. Someone who could understand
Speaker 1: that helping out first responders and military is impacting their lifestyle.
Speaker 1: During the height of going to Afghanistan and going over
Speaker 1: to the Middle East, deployments were happening a lot more quickly,
Speaker 1: so you have these guys out there, and rather than
Speaker 1: doing your time and then coming home, you were rotating
Speaker 1: out like every six months, so this trauma was never
Speaker 1: really ending.
Speaker 2: Aaron's mother is now deceased, but her influence remains. Erin
Speaker 2: is comfortable around military culture and its people. Through her family,
Speaker 2: she met a soldier.
Speaker 1: Joel would come home from deployments and hang out at
Speaker 1: my brother's house where we became friends. And I had
Speaker 1: recently gone through a breakup and my brother said, you
Speaker 1: have shit tasted men. You really should date someone more
Speaker 1: like Joel because he was a soldier. He was in
Speaker 1: the military, so there were things that we thought were
Speaker 1: like inherent guarantees, you know, like he wouldn't be on drugs,
Speaker 1: he would be background checked, you know, certain things that
Speaker 1: you figure you probably have the same value system. And
Speaker 1: we grew up in the same community.
Speaker 2: That friendship grew into a relationship and then into a marriage.
Speaker 2: Aaron was happy they eventually had two kids, a little
Speaker 2: boy and girl.
Speaker 1: Ninety percent of the time, I would say it fit
Speaker 1: the mold of my perfect relationship. He was supportive and loving,
Speaker 1: and we had a symmetrical relationship where we could easily
Speaker 1: interchange parts. You know, I'd mo Thelann, he'd mow thelan.
Speaker 1: I'd change a diver, he'd change a diver. Like either
Speaker 1: of us could take over some task and knock it
Speaker 1: out and get it done.
Speaker 2: Aaron's husband had the highest military clearance. She understood that
Speaker 2: she'd never know everything he faced.
Speaker 1: Joel worked in explosive ordnance disposal. His job was to
Speaker 1: make sure that there were no bombs in certain areas,
Speaker 1: or if there were bombs, to send in a person
Speaker 1: or a robot to disarm that bomb. Also to pick
Speaker 1: up any debris, and sometimes that was bodies. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: leave a body behind, so you'd have to pick it up,
Speaker 1: bag it and take it home.
Speaker 2: She knew his job had unique stressors, so she made
Speaker 2: some allowances for bad behavior. When the family relocated to
Speaker 2: a small town in Texas, I took a toll on her.
Speaker 2: She felt disconnected from people, and since that her husband
Speaker 2: was becoming more distant as well.
Speaker 1: When I noticed that our marriage was declining. I thought
Speaker 1: it was because I was having a hard time adjusting
Speaker 1: to this new area. You know, everything was different. It
Speaker 1: was further away from my family. I felt more and
Speaker 1: more isolated from them. My mom had died just before
Speaker 1: we got married, and we had really good communication. But
Speaker 1: when Jamison got involved, that's when we would fight.
Speaker 2: Jamison was Joel's whiskey of.
Speaker 1: Choice when he was really under the influence of alcohol.
Speaker 1: I felt like I could I didn't reach him, I
Speaker 1: couldn't talk to him. He would kick in the door
Speaker 1: or I would ask for space. I would say, let's
Speaker 1: come back to this in an hour and let ourselves
Speaker 1: cool off, and then we can talk about this again.
Speaker 1: He would pick the lock to the bedroom.
Speaker 2: She's a therapist, so she did the natural thing, asked
Speaker 2: for help, not just for herself but also for her husband.
Speaker 2: But the therapist was discouraging.
Speaker 1: He said, I honestly think you should just not bring
Speaker 1: that up because he could lose his job, or he
Speaker 1: could lose his weapon, and so I would just sort
Speaker 1: of keep that to yourself.
Speaker 2: Aaron thought about other areas where her marriage was struggling.
Speaker 2: Their sex life was one of them.
Speaker 1: I did feel like it was very automatic, and it
Speaker 1: was very one sided. So like when you have one
Speaker 1: of those Xbox controllers and you're like up down, up down,
Speaker 1: x y Okay, it's done. Like I just like Mortal Kombat,
Speaker 1: you know, like I know exactly what to do. I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you like. And it didn't matter what
Speaker 1: I liked. But maybe this is a part of marriage,
Speaker 1: is it gets routine.
Speaker 2: After a while, she wondered if there was something else
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 1: One night, he had gone out with a friend and
Speaker 1: I had the inclination to snoop on his phone. I
Speaker 1: feel like an angel or a guardian angel just was
Speaker 1: nudging me, like, hey, something's off here. Go look through
Speaker 1: his phone, go do something. So I looked through his
Speaker 1: phone and I pulled up a picture in his search history.
Speaker 1: It was a girl in a jazz outfit. It looked
Speaker 1: like a Facebook page almost. She was maybe about six
Speaker 1: years old. She was not naked, it wasn't anything lude.
Speaker 1: It was like your wallet sized photos that you would
Speaker 1: order from whatever. And she looked really sad. But the
Speaker 1: comments underneath the picture are what really bothered me. This
Speaker 1: is our little Jenny with like the devil emoji, like
Speaker 1: a smiling devil emoji or whatever, and I thought this
Speaker 1: is weird. So I confronted him about that, and he said,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that is. I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Maybe I clicked on something, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's accidental.
Speaker 2: Arin wasn't buying Joel's story.
Speaker 1: It just didn't feel right to me. I knew he
Speaker 1: had a history with porn, which I didn't necessarily mind.
Speaker 2: But this wasn't pornography. These were disturbing comments around a
Speaker 2: little girl's photo in her husband's search history.
Speaker 1: He gas lit me and I didn't accept it, but
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was to the point where it
Speaker 1: was something reportable because I don't know this girl. I
Speaker 1: don't know how he got to this page.
Speaker 2: Now they were a critical mass, and Erin knew he
Speaker 2: needed help.
Speaker 1: I got him a therapist that was experienced in the military.
Speaker 1: He was actually a retired military person, and we paid
Speaker 1: cash so there would be no record of him going
Speaker 1: to therapy, and I just tried to make it as
Speaker 1: easy as possible for him to go.
Speaker 2: But he wasn't getting better. His behavior was growing more concerning.
Speaker 1: We got into a fight in May. It was a
Speaker 1: silly fight, like he had been storing all night. So
Speaker 1: I went and slept on the couch so I could
Speaker 1: just finally get some sleep. And he woke me up
Speaker 1: in the morning because he wanted to have sex, and
Speaker 1: I was just so delirious and cranky. I was like,
Speaker 1: get away from me. I finally fell asleep, don't touch me.
Speaker 1: So he got upset and he was in a really grouchy,
Speaker 1: powdy mood because I had rejected him. I started making
Speaker 1: breakfast for him and the kids. My daughter was one,
Speaker 1: my son was three.
Speaker 2: The tension escalated. Joel said something ugly and Aaron responded
Speaker 2: in kind.
Speaker 1: I walked away. He threw a sippy cup at my back,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound like a big deal, but it really
Speaker 1: her like. He really threw that cup at me hard
Speaker 1: and it hit me in the shoulder. So I went
Speaker 1: in the bathroom and I cried for a while. I
Speaker 1: ended up leaving. I just got in my car and
Speaker 1: went for a drive and sat by the side of
Speaker 1: the road and cried and thought for a while.
Speaker 2: She needed more support, but she didn't know where to turn.
Speaker 1: I was kind of afraid to tell my family what
Speaker 1: was going on, because already they often had his back
Speaker 1: on things, and I had this reputation for being the
Speaker 1: dramatic baby sister, So I just kind of sat there
Speaker 1: and thought, like, what am I going to do with this?
Speaker 1: You know, maybe I can talk to him and get
Speaker 1: him to agree, like he shouldn't be violent with me,
Speaker 1: or whatever the case may be. But I was getting
Speaker 1: really really anxious in having an increase in panic attacks
Speaker 1: by this point because his behavior was getting more and
Speaker 1: more unpredictable like that. I ended up coming back to
Speaker 1: the house because my son had a soccer game, and
Speaker 1: so there we go, just being normal couple again. We
Speaker 1: get in the car, we go to the soccer game,
Speaker 1: and we watch it. Then when we came back to
Speaker 1: the house, I think he was trying to punish me.
Speaker 1: So he took off for a while and left me
Speaker 1: with the kids, and I figured, okay, whatever, let him
Speaker 1: cool off and I'll see him later. That's when that
Speaker 1: little nudge came at me again.
Speaker 2: So she followed her gut.
Speaker 1: I decided to look at his computer. There was no
Speaker 1: search history, there was nothing, It was completely clean, and
Speaker 1: I went into his recently deleted files and that's where
Speaker 1: there was just a plethora of pictures the titles of
Speaker 1: these things were pretty indicative of there being young women
Speaker 1: on there, like little Miss Country USA. All different ages,
Speaker 1: all different looks. It's not like he had one kink
Speaker 1: or one fetish. It was so many people he had collected.
Speaker 1: I clicked on one and it was this little girl
Speaker 1: who I'd never seen before, don't recognize at all, standing
Speaker 1: naked on a beach. She had a look on her
Speaker 1: face like, this is not me being cute and playing
Speaker 1: on the beach. No, it was inappropriate. So I actually
Speaker 1: took a picture of her from the face up because
Speaker 1: I just needed to prove to myself that I wasn't crazy.
Speaker 1: And then I took a picture of the names of
Speaker 1: the files, and then I shut it all down and
Speaker 1: I put it all back. I called his brother, who
Speaker 1: was a cop in Colorado and works with cases specifically
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 2: She was far away from friends and family.
Speaker 1: I'm in Texas and my family live in California, so
Speaker 1: I was completely frozen in fear, not knowing what to do.
Speaker 1: And he said, do you think you can get the
Speaker 1: laptop and take it with you? Hell no, I don't
Speaker 1: even know if I can take me and take it
Speaker 1: with me. Like there was no way. I was going
Speaker 1: to go back into that lion's den and let him
Speaker 1: know that I was on to him.
Speaker 2: But she knew now, she knew what he was doing.
Speaker 2: He had a large stash of photos. She had to
Speaker 2: get herself and her young kids out of there. He
Speaker 2: had a weapon, and he was a soldier. Now she
Speaker 2: feared him.
Speaker 1: He was probably gone for a couple of hours. So
Speaker 1: when he came home and I am just soaked with tears,
Speaker 1: he thought it was because of our fight that morning.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, I'm really sorry. I hope you
Speaker 1: can forgive me. Let's just move past this, and so
Speaker 1: I played along. I said, yeah, you know, it really hurt,
Speaker 1: but I'll get over it. I just want to go
Speaker 1: through the kid's clothes because their dressers are overflowing, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to take some of these clothes over to
Speaker 1: the donation bin. So we're fine. It's fine. We actually hugged,
Speaker 1: which was so cringey, but I was just trying to
Speaker 1: get out of there safely.
Speaker 2: The donating clothes of a ruse. She was packing clothes
Speaker 2: for the kids, just enough for a few days. Aaron
Speaker 2: offered to take the kids on a play date so
Speaker 2: he could take a nap.
Speaker 1: I'd packed the bag and I just got in the
Speaker 1: car and I went to the airport. Is a very
Speaker 1: small airport, so it's like one man friends the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And I think he could tell the look on my
Speaker 1: face because he said, it's going to cost you like
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred dollars to fly out tomorrow on the next flight,
Speaker 1: and I said, I don't care, let's do it, let's go.
Speaker 2: Aaron took the kids to a hotel near the airport
Speaker 2: and stayed the night. When he called asking when they'd
Speaker 2: be home.
Speaker 1: I just told him like, oh, I'm at one of
Speaker 1: my friend's house. The kids are watching a movie. You know,
Speaker 1: we'll be home later. Oh, the kids fell asleep. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to let them spend the night here and
Speaker 1: we'll be home in the morning. And I think he
Speaker 1: was content with that because then he could just continue
Speaker 1: to drink and play video games and kind of do
Speaker 1: his own thing, so he wasn't really alerted. He found
Speaker 1: out that we were gone when I landed in Dallas
Speaker 1: and when I got to California, and then that's when
Speaker 1: I told him, you know, I know what's on your computer.
Speaker 1: I know what's going on. I know that this isn't
Speaker 1: going away, and I'm not coming home until I get
Speaker 1: some answers on what's going on.
Speaker 2: Arin returned to her hometown, where two older brothers and
Speaker 2: her father lived and Joel's parents were close by. Two. Now,
Speaker 2: with her family, she wouldn't have to face this alone.
Speaker 1: I went straight to my brother because he was the
Speaker 1: closest to me at that time, we were the closest
Speaker 1: in age, and so I went to his house. I
Speaker 1: called all the family over and I said, this is
Speaker 1: what I found, this is what's going on, and I
Speaker 1: don't know how to handle this situation and I need help.
Speaker 1: My dad was like, let's think about this because if
Speaker 1: he goes to jail or something, you're going to lose
Speaker 1: all of your military benefits. Like I give a fuck
Speaker 1: another question. They asked, well, how old are these girls?
Speaker 1: It doesn't fucking matter.
Speaker 2: Another one of her family members count her with words
Speaker 2: like love the sinner, hate the sin, And I realized
Speaker 2: there seems to be a kind of ignorance or impediment.
Speaker 2: There are people who just can't understand that viewing this
Speaker 2: material is egregious criminal behavior. It reminded me of what
Speaker 2: John Huber said a few episodes back.
Speaker 3: We were getting some pushback from federal judges of why
Speaker 3: are you bringing these cases people looking at pictures? You know,
Speaker 3: what's the big deal. We thought that was a misunderstanding
Speaker 3: and that we need to communicate better to the judges
Speaker 3: what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: But Erin understood perfectly.
Speaker 1: If they had been seventeen or sixteen, it's still not consensual.
Speaker 1: These kids are still affected for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: They didn't put their pictures up there. Somebody's abusing them,
Speaker 1: so like, what were you going to say that it's okay?
Speaker 2: Even with the pain? Aarin was able to think about
Speaker 2: the long term consequences of reconnecting with him.
Speaker 1: If I covered for him, if I didn't bring this up,
Speaker 1: if I didn't tell anyone, but I knew that this
Speaker 1: had happened, I would never feel okay with my kids
Speaker 1: having a slumber party. They could never have a birthday
Speaker 1: party at our house. How could I be sure that
Speaker 1: he would perpetrate online but not perpetrate people in real life?
Speaker 1: You know? How was I to know that it wouldn't
Speaker 1: snowball into that, Like I would have to constantly be
Speaker 1: on guard. I would have to take them to every
Speaker 1: grocery trip. It's impossible, and that's not a life for
Speaker 1: kids to have to live. So that wasn't reasonable.
Speaker 2: She wasn't getting the family support she had hoped for,
Speaker 2: but she did find someone who listened.
Speaker 1: I saw my therapist from when I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: I got a hold of her and she's a really
Speaker 1: great therapist, and she made time to see me for
Speaker 1: just a few minutes. She said, so, what are you
Speaker 1: doing back in California? And I just bawled and broke
Speaker 1: down and told her. She said, if you don't report this,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna report this. And I was like, oh fuck,
Speaker 1: it's go time.
Speaker 2: She called the office where Joel worked and reported it.
Speaker 2: His colleague asked questions, one of them was how old
Speaker 2: were the girls in the photos?
Speaker 1: Like, maybe I don't have to report it if their
Speaker 1: birthday's coming up, you know, Like no, it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: And he really kind of acted like maybe we'd gotten
Speaker 1: in a fight. I was being a vindictive wife, Like
Speaker 1: I'm just throwing these accusations out there.
Speaker 2: It's hard to stomach the reaction from Joel's coworker. It's
Speaker 2: another version of are you just being dramatic? This was difficult.
Speaker 2: This was a loss for Erin.
Speaker 1: Initially I felt like, yes, I'm doing the right thing,
Speaker 1: but I feel like someone just cut off my right arm.
Speaker 1: I just betrayed my husband, and I don't know what's
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: She held onto a little bit of hope that there
Speaker 2: was a reason Joel had done this. Maybe it's a
Speaker 2: part of a secret mission. She couldn't know about.
Speaker 1: What if there's some miraculous thing, like there's a reasonable
Speaker 1: explanation for this. And I just completely betrayed my best friend,
Speaker 1: you know, And now I'm shoving him out the door.
Speaker 1: I'm pushing him off the cliff. It just fell awful.
Speaker 1: I felt gas lit for a lot of years, thinking
Speaker 1: not did I do the right thing. I know I
Speaker 1: did the right thing, but I just felt gas lit
Speaker 1: because no one else could understand that, and I felt
Speaker 1: really alone and miserable.
Speaker 2: To be honest, Aaron wasn't finding any evidence of a
Speaker 2: reasonable explanation. She was finding more suspicious activity.
Speaker 1: I found charges on his credit card to like weird websites,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, this is not good.
Speaker 1: He's been doing this for a while. He took some
Speaker 1: of the money and started paying off those credit cards
Speaker 1: were reporting him stolen to kind of like start covering
Speaker 1: his tracks, and I was like, Okay, now I know
Speaker 1: this is bad because your reaction.
Speaker 2: Aaron's call to the military made its way to the
Speaker 2: Office of Special Investigations the OSI.
Speaker 1: And then OSI facetimed me and asked me again what
Speaker 1: I had seen and what I had heard, and they said, okay,
Speaker 1: well we are going to take care of this. We're
Speaker 1: not going to scare him or anything. We're not going
Speaker 1: to hurt him or anything.
Speaker 2: Erin was upset, heartbroken and angry, but she still didn't
Speaker 2: want Joel to be injured.
Speaker 1: And then what actually happened the next day was that
Speaker 1: they decided, because we didn't technically live on base, they
Speaker 1: passed it over to the local police department, and the
Speaker 1: local police department decided that because he had all this
Speaker 1: top secret security clearance, because he had experienced working with bombs,
Speaker 1: that he was a high threat.
Speaker 2: And the local police weren't taking any chances.
Speaker 1: They went into the house with flashbangs, knocking down the door.
Speaker 1: The detective told me he was sitting at the couch
Speaker 1: with his hard drives, trying to erase everything, trying to
Speaker 1: get rid of all of this evidence. So they went
Speaker 1: in there and they arrested him, and they took all
Speaker 1: the electronics. I'm really glad we weren't there for that.
Speaker 2: Joel was arrested and made bail soon after, and he
Speaker 2: was determined to see his wife and kids.
Speaker 1: I think he was trying to be nice to me,
Speaker 1: hoping that I would renag or whatever, like pull back
Speaker 1: on all of this stuff. And I said, we're not
Speaker 1: going home until I fully understand what happened here, what's
Speaker 1: going on, Like, you can't have any secrets from me,
Speaker 1: So until you're ready to just spill your guts, we
Speaker 1: are not going back there at all.
Speaker 2: She fled Texas with just her children. She had left everything,
Speaker 2: her job, her clothes, the kid's toys.
Speaker 1: He did come out at one time after I left,
Speaker 1: to bring me some of my stuff and the kids
Speaker 1: this stuff.
Speaker 2: His visit to California went downhill quickly. Joel returned to
Speaker 2: work in Texas.
Speaker 1: He went back to work, and the military decided that
Speaker 1: because he wasn't convicted, he wasn't found guilty yet, that
Speaker 1: they would just put them in a different position. That's
Speaker 1: what they call like pencil whipped, you know, basically like,
Speaker 1: you're going to do paperwork over here for a while
Speaker 1: until this settles down.
Speaker 2: Aaron says that Joel wasn't contrite about downloading the images
Speaker 2: he had collected.
Speaker 1: He denied it. He was like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get in trouble for anything. And then I mean, at
Speaker 1: one point he admitted, yes, you know, there were pictures
Speaker 1: of kids, but it's art. It's considered art. I'll never
Speaker 1: forget that. H was saying, like, I've checked all the
Speaker 1: laws on this, and I know exactly what is considered
Speaker 1: art and what is considered pornography, and there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with what I'm doing. And I said there is, though,
Speaker 1: because those kids are not even old enough to consent
Speaker 1: to having their pictures taken. These kids are being abused,
Speaker 1: and you are facilitating that, You're endorsing that. I don't
Speaker 1: care what your excuse is. And I pretty much didn't
Speaker 1: even bother to debate it with him anymore. I was
Speaker 1: just so done.
Speaker 2: Arin didn't return to Texas. Instead, she's stayed in California
Speaker 2: with the kids, but she couldn't practice as a therapist
Speaker 2: there because she wasn't licensed. She had to walk away
Speaker 2: from an entire book of business, and.
Speaker 1: I had left the whole client base. I had clients
Speaker 1: waiting to have their therapy session, and I had to
Speaker 1: be like, there was this huge family emergency, like I
Speaker 1: had to leave. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: The family support that she was hoping for never materialized.
Speaker 1: My brother said that his home isn't a place for children,
Speaker 1: so we couldn't stay with him. My dad's house has
Speaker 1: a lot of knick knacks everywhere, and he would have
Speaker 1: let us stay with him, but it was just kind
Speaker 1: of stressful with toddlers that want to touch everything, so
Speaker 1: we were now homeless. We stayed in a trailer in
Speaker 1: his backyard for a while, just so we could kind
Speaker 1: of have our own space.
Speaker 2: Her father helped her pick up the kids from school.
Speaker 2: There were times her family pitched in, and she was
Speaker 2: grateful for those moments, but they felt like favors, like
Speaker 2: she owed something. Even though none of this was her fault,
Speaker 2: she still felt like she should have been prepared or
Speaker 2: seen it coming. It was these moments when she ached
Speaker 2: for her mother while trying to survive in California. Aaron
Speaker 2: kept tabs on Joel and the case.
Speaker 1: He had to stay in Texas and keep working, and
Speaker 1: he was three for the next three years. So for
Speaker 1: three years I I had to live with this reputation
Speaker 1: of maybe Erin's lying, maybe Erin's vindictive, maybe he did
Speaker 1: something to her to make her make up all these lies.
Speaker 2: Yes, it took nearly three years before the case went
Speaker 2: to court, and it turned out Joel wasn't an art
Speaker 2: collector after all.
Speaker 1: He pled guilty to twenty five felony charges of child pornography.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to eight years, and he only did three.
Speaker 2: He served his prison sentence in Texas, but once he
Speaker 2: got out, he ended up moving back to California as well.
Speaker 1: He got out last summer August of twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: and moved in with his parents a mile away from me,
Speaker 1: and my anxiety just came right back. I was not
Speaker 1: on antidepressants, I was not on anxiety medication, but when
Speaker 1: that ingredient is dropped back into my life, it just
Speaker 1: threw me way out of whack again. And as I
Speaker 1: understood his parents to be excited about his release, I
Speaker 1: was writing letters to the prison every year, say please
Speaker 1: don't let him out, Please don't let him out. If
Speaker 1: he does come out, he's going to want to come
Speaker 1: to California at least keep him in Texas. Don't let
Speaker 1: him near us. You know, we're not the victims, We're
Speaker 1: not the people in the photos, but we are the victims.
Speaker 1: We've been hurt by this too. And if you let
Speaker 1: him out, he's going to come for my children, our children.
Speaker 2: And like many parents in her position, she wonders, how
Speaker 2: do you know what is safe? How do you measure rehabilitation?
Speaker 1: When his parents were all excited and they were like, Aaron,
Speaker 1: he's gone to church in prison, and he's made amends
Speaker 1: and he's good with Jesus, and he's coming out and
Speaker 1: he wants to be a father. This does not impress
Speaker 1: me at all, because there's only a few things to
Speaker 1: do in prison, go to church, work out, you know, like,
Speaker 1: this is not rocket science to me. So while they're
Speaker 1: very deeply ingrained in their religion, and I'm sure they
Speaker 1: had a lot of faith in that, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to believe that that would be enough, I said, show
Speaker 1: me one scholarly article that says that he could be
Speaker 1: fully recovered, Show me one. And nobody ever, would nobody
Speaker 1: ever gave me any guidance, not even in school, not
Speaker 1: even in therapy, like no guidance on how does someone
Speaker 1: lay this down and what's the rate of recidivism on
Speaker 1: this kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But she found other parents to help fill the gap.
Speaker 2: She couldn't afford to live on her own and was
Speaker 2: forced to look for alternatives.
Speaker 1: I've had a few really good roommates that totally understand
Speaker 1: they're single parents. They've all been single parents, and we
Speaker 1: just get it done. Somebody with their parents at school, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll go over there. I'm off work. I can go
Speaker 1: pick them up. Somebody sick, Okay, well, I can take
Speaker 1: the day off. I'm working from home, and I whatever
Speaker 1: we needed. We were all there for each other, and
Speaker 1: we still are. We still have really good relationships with
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 2: But she can't shake the deep disappointment she feels for
Speaker 2: her own family.
Speaker 1: Even when I was in between places, I asked my
Speaker 1: other brother if I could come stay at his house
Speaker 1: until my apartment was ready, and he charged me rents.
Speaker 1: It was just really really hurtful, really worth confusing. I
Speaker 1: could feel myself getting choked up. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I ever did something to lose people's trust, or where
Speaker 1: I got this reputation put on me. I mean, my
Speaker 1: brothers were older, they were moved out, so it's not
Speaker 1: like they saw me grow up. I've never been arrested.
Speaker 1: I've never done anything like wildly wrong or hurtful to
Speaker 1: other people in my life. So I I don't know
Speaker 1: why they don't trust me. I don't know why they
Speaker 1: don't believe me. And I have really really good kids.
Speaker 1: They're polite, they can make their own breakfast, they can
Speaker 1: assert their own rights, they can stand up for other people.
Speaker 1: Like everybody raves about what great kids they are, and
Speaker 1: yet I still feel like I'm not getting credit for
Speaker 1: having raised them on my own. You know, when I
Speaker 1: lost a contract in twenty nineteen, at the same time
Speaker 1: Joel stopped paying child support completely, I went on welfare
Speaker 1: and I didn't know how to navigate that system. I
Speaker 1: know that's a really privileged thing to say, but no
Speaker 1: one in my family had been on welfare before, so
Speaker 1: I didn't even know where to start. And I cried
Speaker 1: in the office. I said, I have a master's degree,
Speaker 1: How am I here? How am I in this spot?
Speaker 1: And what do I do? So I continue to create
Speaker 1: my own private practice because I stopped trusting other people
Speaker 1: to pay me what they said they would pay me,
Speaker 1: and I just pushed on living off of people's copays
Speaker 1: because I didn't know how to build insurance at the
Speaker 1: time either. So I was doing therapy for an hour
Speaker 1: for ten dollars a session, fifteen dollars a session, you know,
Speaker 1: like whatever, as long as I could just kind of
Speaker 1: keep generating income. I couldn't afford groceries. So when I
Speaker 1: told my dad and my brothers it's hard to even
Speaker 1: buy groceries, they didn't do shit. The church gave me
Speaker 1: a gift card for groceries. My village was there for me.
Speaker 1: My friends were there for me. I don't know how
Speaker 1: we had the same parents and they turned out so differently.
Speaker 1: But I would have been right there for any of them.
Speaker 1: I would have brought them in. I would have brought
Speaker 1: their kids in no matter what. Sleep on my couch,
Speaker 1: sleep on my floor, sleep in my bed. I'll sleep
Speaker 1: somewhere else. I don't think that these are big, can
Speaker 1: say russions to make for family.
Speaker 2: Aaron is working to have Joel removed as a custodial
Speaker 2: parent permanently. It's a long and difficult court battle. The
Speaker 2: kids were very young when this happened, and she wants
Speaker 2: them to continue on the successful trajectory that they're on.
Speaker 2: The case is ongoing, but there was one way she
Speaker 2: thought that they could all make a fresh start together.
Speaker 1: I said to my kids, do you want us to
Speaker 1: keep the same last name so we all match, or
Speaker 1: do you want to change last names? Do you want
Speaker 1: to separate yourself from what's going on in this side
Speaker 1: of the family, because we have the opportunity to do
Speaker 1: that now, or it's up to you to do later
Speaker 1: on in life. And my son, who's ten, he suggested
Speaker 1: that we change our last name to Romen because he
Speaker 1: likes Romen. Such a kid idea, you know.
Speaker 2: But all kidding aside. They all agreed on a new
Speaker 2: last name, but we're keeping that private because Aaron has
Speaker 2: worked hard for a fresh start.
Speaker 1: Makes me feel like we don't belong to men anymore.
Speaker 1: We're not doing this misogyny of women don't know what's
Speaker 1: best for themselves or they don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not doing that. We're not doing the
Speaker 1: maiden name, and we're not doing the married last name either,
Speaker 1: because you can easily google that and then you're associated.
Speaker 1: Now we have family pictures of just the three of us,
Speaker 1: we feel like a solid family.
Speaker 2: On the next episode of a trial.
Speaker 4: He is a threat, a danger to everyone around him,
Speaker 4: a child walking to or from school, a child at
Speaker 4: a grocery store, or even a gas station. That thought
Speaker 4: haunts me to my very core every moment of my life.
Speaker 4: Now I have seen the devastation his actions have caused.
Speaker 2: If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team,
Speaker 2: email us at Betrayal pod at gmail dot com. That's
Speaker 2: Betrayal pod at gmail dot com. To report a case
Speaker 2: of child sexual exploitation, called the National Center for Missing
Speaker 2: and Exploited Children's cyber tipline at one eight hundred the Lost.
Speaker 2: If you or someone you know is worried about their
Speaker 2: sexual thoughts and feelings towards children, reach out to Stop
Speaker 2: It Now dot org. In the United Kingdom go to
Speaker 2: stop it Now dot org dot UK. These organizations can help.
Speaker 2: We're grateful for your support, and one way to show
Speaker 2: support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 2: and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five star
Speaker 2: reviews go a long way. A big thank you to
Speaker 2: all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts,
Speaker 2: a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: The show was executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason,
Speaker 2: hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning, Written and produced
Speaker 2: by Kerry Hartman, also produced by Benfetterman an associate producer
Speaker 2: Kristin Melcury. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Crincheck.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to our talent Ashley Linton, a production assistant
Speaker 2: Test Shields. Thank you to Erin for sharing her story
Speaker 2: on this episode. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Alvecchio.
Speaker 2: Trails theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by
Speaker 2: my Music and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,