Speaker 1: On this episode of Betrayal, you're going to meet a
Speaker 1: survivor of male sexual assault. It's a Hollywood actor. Many
Speaker 1: of us have an infinity for Anthony Edwards. If you
Speaker 1: watched er in the nineteen nineties or early two thousands,
Speaker 1: then you might have known him as doctor Mark Green,
Speaker 1: and before that as Goose in the iconic film Top Gun.
Speaker 2: Pure unadulterated rage, anger that I had never felt before.
Speaker 2: I wanted to take out a full page ad and
Speaker 2: Variety and say, you know, doctor Green and Goose was
Speaker 2: assaulted by this man, and have a wanted picture of him.
Speaker 1: I'm under a gunning. This is Betrayal, season three, episode
Speaker 1: seven one and six. Justin Rutherford's betrayal of Tyler, his wife, Stacy,
Speaker 1: and family opened my eyes to a whole new community.
Speaker 1: It's men who are sexually abused and are carrying the
Speaker 1: trauma into adulthood. They are husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, and friends,
Speaker 1: and they have been largely silent and hurting. Some like Tyler,
Speaker 1: are seeking a community. It's something he expressed in an
Speaker 1: earlier episode.
Speaker 3: There's no one that relates to you. You hit YouTube
Speaker 3: or Google and you know you're searching self help videos
Speaker 3: or stuff related to your trauma, and you're scrolling there's
Speaker 3: not a lot of resources out there.
Speaker 1: We found a resource that we thought Tyler should know about.
Speaker 1: It's called one and six, an organization which helps male
Speaker 1: survivors through providing information and support resources, and the name
Speaker 1: denotes what research has shown that one in six men
Speaker 1: have experienced sexual abuse or assault, whether in childhood or
Speaker 1: as adults. So we arranged a meeting with the heads
Speaker 1: of one in six and Tyler Stacy. Tyler's mom was
Speaker 1: there too.
Speaker 4: It's huge when you're in patum.
Speaker 1: In our studio B we wanted to spend a day
Speaker 1: peeling back the layers of why it is so difficult
Speaker 1: for men of any age to seek help as victims
Speaker 1: of male sexual abuse and assault. Anthony Edwards is the
Speaker 1: chairman and national spokesperson for one in six dot org.
Speaker 2: I'm a professional pretender by trade. I've been an actor
Speaker 2: professionally since I was sixteen.
Speaker 1: Anthony has spent his career in the spotlight, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't until he was fifty two that he came out
Speaker 1: of the shadow of abuse to tell his story.
Speaker 2: I was assaulted by my mentor, the man who had
Speaker 2: taught me a lot about theater and about art and
Speaker 2: was intimately involved with my love for acting. And as
Speaker 2: a result of the betrayal, I lived most of my
Speaker 2: life and fear because my experience of having been assaulted
Speaker 2: as a kid set me up for being afraid and
Speaker 2: not trusting in people, places, or things.
Speaker 1: Anthony is now a leading advocate for male sexual abuse survivors.
Speaker 1: One of the one and six's co founders also joined
Speaker 1: the discussion.
Speaker 5: My name is David Lisak. I'm a clinical psychologist. I've
Speaker 5: spent my career working in the area of trauma and
Speaker 5: also violence. I've studied perpetrators and I've also studied, primarily
Speaker 5: men who experienced child abuse. I have spent the last
Speaker 5: thirty some years working at applied areas training law enforcement
Speaker 5: and prosecutors.
Speaker 1: We wanted to give Tyler the opportunity to connect with
Speaker 1: someone who truly knows what he's dealing with, so we
Speaker 1: asked Anthony to share more of his story with Tyler.
Speaker 2: Men by nature minimize, deny, hide, and isolate, and that's
Speaker 2: the tragic result of what happens to people who were
Speaker 2: assaulted or traumatized as kids. And I learned to survive
Speaker 2: by hyper focusing. I think probably the reason why I
Speaker 2: worked so young and so hard is because that was
Speaker 2: the way to survive. That was the way out be
Speaker 2: an actor, achieve everything. The other flip side of that
Speaker 2: is that acting was something that I loved. It was
Speaker 2: really important to me before I met this person, and
Speaker 2: when this person came in and twisted it all, I
Speaker 2: still had that core of the joy of that, and
Speaker 2: that's what always I kept trying to reconnect to reminds
Speaker 2: me of the fact that we can be damaged, we
Speaker 2: can be hurt, but that core of who we are
Speaker 2: is always there, and that's what recovery is about. That's
Speaker 2: what I've learned about recovery is that you're recovering the good.
Speaker 2: You're not there to take away all the bad.
Speaker 1: When you were fifty two, what inspired you do start
Speaker 1: talking about this? What happened to you?
Speaker 2: Pure unadulterated rage, anger that I had never felt before.
Speaker 2: The man who had been my perpetrator been the perpetrator.
Speaker 2: We try not to say min because he's not mine.
Speaker 2: He is a perpetrator. Was back in the news and
Speaker 2: twenty two years before I had had the experience. When
Speaker 2: I was thirty years old of being a new father,
Speaker 2: and I had run into him on a plane and
Speaker 2: I said, hey, you did was wrong. What you did
Speaker 2: to us as kids was wrong. And I confronted him,
Speaker 2: and he then spent about twenty minutes telling me as
Speaker 2: a walk from the plane about how it was the
Speaker 2: worst thing in his life. He'd gotten help, he no
Speaker 2: longer hurt children, he'd felt remorse, that he was healed,
Speaker 2: and he was trying to lead a good life. And
Speaker 2: I bought it. Fifty two when all of a sudden
Speaker 2: he was in the news having been accused. I was
Speaker 2: so angry. I was so filled with rage, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to take out a full page ad and Variety
Speaker 2: and say, you know, doctor Green and Goose was assaulted
Speaker 2: by this man, and have a wanted picture of him. Luckily,
Speaker 2: a friend took me and said, before you do that,
Speaker 2: why don't you go talk to this psychiatrist and start
Speaker 2: your journey of healing of what really happened to you
Speaker 2: when you were a teenager.
Speaker 1: So you almost turn that anger into purpose.
Speaker 2: I luckily did, and I think a lot of survivors don't.
Speaker 2: We've learned a lot from the Me Too movement, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of women that were hurt and abused
Speaker 2: and they need to get together and get angry and
Speaker 2: shout out. My experience or experience at one and six
Speaker 2: is that a lot of men are already really angry
Speaker 2: and they're already acting out.
Speaker 1: I asked Anthony how the trauma of his sexual abuse
Speaker 1: impacted important relationships.
Speaker 2: The same year that I disclosed, the same year that
Speaker 2: my marriage ended. The problems within that relationship were directly
Speaker 2: affected by my inability to be truthful and honest with
Speaker 2: myself and what my experiences were. So you'll see that
Speaker 2: when you talk to men in their fifties, they're at
Speaker 2: this crisis of looking at this because a lot of
Speaker 2: their life has exploded. The result of unprocessed trauma will
Speaker 2: definitely manifest itself in unhealthy relationships.
Speaker 1: Tyler, what parts of Anthony's story resonate with you?
Speaker 3: A lot of it, having to like overachieve and just
Speaker 3: be super successful in life, having that desire to want
Speaker 3: to do something bigger than myself and help others because
Speaker 3: of what I've been through and use my story for good.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, we've gone through the
Speaker 3: same thing. I can relate to him.
Speaker 1: I know you guys spoke a little bit in the
Speaker 1: green room, but can you give us a little bit
Speaker 1: to the extent that you're comfortable what happened to you?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I was abused by my stepfather growing up, started
Speaker 3: around age nine to ten, all the way up until
Speaker 3: right before I turned sixteen. He had assaulted one of
Speaker 3: my friends, and growing up as a kid going through it,
Speaker 3: I didn't know that it was terrible thinking I was
Speaker 3: all alone. And I'm not saying that it's good to
Speaker 3: know he did it to other people, but it let
Speaker 3: me know that I wasn't the problem, that this was
Speaker 3: just like a terrible man, and other people had felt
Speaker 3: that pain too. Again, not that that's a good thing,
Speaker 3: but it makes you feel understood sometimes, like in some way.
Speaker 2: You learned so much unfortunately when you start uncovering these rocks.
Speaker 2: But the predator in my case very much worked with
Speaker 2: a group. We had a group of boys that were
Speaker 2: all into theater. We were his special group. And so
Speaker 2: the grooming aspect, which you realize that so much of
Speaker 2: this is about control and power and not I mean sex, Yes,
Speaker 2: but the most important thing is the control and the
Speaker 2: manipulation and the power, and part of the silencing is
Speaker 2: the fact that you think, oh, well, I'm not being
Speaker 2: hurt as badly as Scott is. Scott's really getting the
Speaker 2: brunt of this, and oh, oh, it's my fault that
Speaker 2: it's happening. So it's a way of keeping everybody silenced.
Speaker 3: And then like for me, I was always trying to
Speaker 3: bring friends over like as much as I could, because
Speaker 3: it gave me a sense of safety. I thought like,
Speaker 3: this was only happening to me, that he had something
Speaker 3: for me. I don't know why, necessarily, I didn't think
Speaker 3: like it was him. It was just he had something
Speaker 3: for me. Little did I know that I was bringing
Speaker 3: all those friends into a dangerous situation because I wanted
Speaker 3: to be safe. And if someone would have told me,
Speaker 3: this is hurting all your friends and your family and
Speaker 3: you're bringing your friends right to it, I probably had
Speaker 3: have done it. That would have made me break my silence.
Speaker 1: Psychologist David Leasak heard something that didn't sit right with him.
Speaker 2: I sniffed a little guilt.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, because you got like some friends who he
Speaker 3: had done stuff too.
Speaker 2: But who did it to him?
Speaker 5: To your friends, it was.
Speaker 2: My stepdad at the time. Don't call him that no more.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I really don't want you to walk around with
Speaker 5: that guilt because it ain't yours.
Speaker 2: It's not your fault.
Speaker 3: I'd say that's probably like the worst thing of it
Speaker 3: all to this day now, because I like worked on
Speaker 3: what my problems were, but not I guess that problem
Speaker 3: because I thought it more so had to do with
Speaker 3: just feeling bad for those people, but more so it's
Speaker 3: feeling bad for how I went about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that cut me silent for a long time because
Speaker 2: my best friend Scott was the one who was repeatedly raped,
Speaker 2: and he was a gay man, and he died of
Speaker 2: AIDS in nineteen ninety four. My silence really weighed on
Speaker 2: the fact that I thought, my God, if I could
Speaker 2: have said something, if I would have done something, would
Speaker 2: his relationship to sex and promiscuity been different? God still
Speaker 2: be alive today. They make you feel responsible and to
Speaker 2: this day, as David's pointing out us sitting here and
Speaker 2: here you are doing this heroic thing, there's still a
Speaker 2: part of you that's going, fuck, why do I bring
Speaker 2: my friends over? You know that that's somehow your fault
Speaker 2: and it is not your fault, and that's something we
Speaker 2: all work on and we carry You're truly heroic and
Speaker 2: strong to be nineteen and talking.
Speaker 1: Tyler's willingness to share his story at his young age
Speaker 1: really is remarkable. Anthony understands the significance, and so does David.
Speaker 1: He isn't only an expert on child abuse and perpetrators,
Speaker 1: he's also a survivor.
Speaker 5: I disclosed for the first time I know. It was
Speaker 5: in my thirties. I think the way in which the
Speaker 5: abuse that I suffered affected my relationships primarily was sort
Speaker 5: of a deep lack of trust. I was abused by
Speaker 5: somebody who was living in our house. He was a
Speaker 5: border in order to help cover the rant. We were
Speaker 5: pretty poor, and my mother was a refugee from Europe
Speaker 5: and this guy was a refugee from Asia from all
Speaker 5: World War two. And he would come into my brother
Speaker 5: and my bedroom and he would wake me up by
Speaker 5: suffocating me, and then he would take me out of
Speaker 5: the room. In between our bedroom and his room, there
Speaker 5: was a hallway about maybe eight feet and in that
Speaker 5: eight feet every night I would be terrified, knowing what
Speaker 5: it's about to happen to me again. And my brother
Speaker 5: is sleeping over there ten feet from me. My mother
Speaker 5: is ten feet down the hall way and I'm alone
Speaker 5: and nobody's protect me. I was five years old, and
Speaker 5: that's where I lost my trust. You know, if my
Speaker 5: mother doesn't protect me, if my brother doesn't protect I
Speaker 5: had no father, there's nobody's I don't have trust in anybody.
Speaker 5: And it took me a good chunk of my life
Speaker 5: to get out of that hallway. Yeah, to get out
Speaker 5: of that hallway exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that moment affected everyone in the room. It was heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: not only the awful abuse David suffered, but the years
Speaker 1: it took for him to process and work through the trauma.
Speaker 1: Anthony pointed out that Tyler was changing the pattern.
Speaker 2: You're setting an example not of success. That it's all
Speaker 2: gone and done and we got rid of it, but
Speaker 2: the shame is less. You're not going to carry that.
Speaker 2: You're not going to carry what's not yours. You know,
Speaker 2: this was done to you, not because of you.
Speaker 1: Coming up, Doctor David Lee Sach explains how Tyler's experience
Speaker 1: was like living in a war zone. We are sitting
Speaker 1: with Stacy and Tyler as they speak with actor Anthony
Speaker 1: Edwards and clinical psychologist doctor David Lee Sack.
Speaker 2: Here's Anthony to this day I believe the perpetrator in
Speaker 2: my experience, believed that he was doing it because that's
Speaker 2: what I needed, what I wanted because there was a
Speaker 2: lack of that role model in my life. I didn't
Speaker 2: have a father figure. He was going to be the
Speaker 2: father figure. That exploitation of someone's desire is where they
Speaker 2: get in. Oh you want to be loved, Oh your
Speaker 2: dad's not around. Oh you want this. You want to
Speaker 2: be part of a group, you want to have a career,
Speaker 2: you want to succeed, And you learn that love is conditional.
Speaker 2: There's no such thing as unconditional love. If you're not
Speaker 2: experiencing it, that is love. Love is conditional. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: you don't trust, you don't trust. I say, that's why
Speaker 2: I became a good actor, because I could go into
Speaker 2: a room and I could assess everything. Because you need
Speaker 2: to know where you're safe, where you're not, who you
Speaker 2: can trust. So you get really good at playing a
Speaker 2: room to know how to survive, because surviving is the
Speaker 2: most important thing, because when your spirit's broken like that,
Speaker 2: you feel like you'll die if you don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, it's hard to find joy in things. Really, Like
Speaker 3: I would say, I've worked past my depression, and I've
Speaker 3: worked on myself. I've come very far, but it's hard
Speaker 3: to really find something I enjoy. Like I love watching
Speaker 3: a movie with my mom or my girlfriend, but like
Speaker 3: I couldn't do that alone. I wouldn't enjoy it. I
Speaker 3: don't know what I want to do. I know I
Speaker 3: want to do something big and important, make a change,
Speaker 3: but I have no clue really what that is.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that you both felt this need to overachieve
Speaker 1: in your own ways. Where do you think that comes from?
Speaker 3: In my head, I like picture where I want my
Speaker 3: life to be, and like I just sometimes tell myself,
Speaker 3: I know I'll be happy when I have that dream
Speaker 3: job and I have that wife that loves me and
Speaker 3: that family that I wanted in that house that's paid all,
Speaker 3: and that maybe not sports car, but decent car. I'm
Speaker 3: not looking for anything crazy, but still that's what i want.
Speaker 2: But the irony, of course, is that you're using all
Speaker 2: of these conditions to do it. I use techniques that
Speaker 2: I learned which were conditional. Oh, if I do this,
Speaker 2: if I get this role, then that will take care
Speaker 2: of it. If I get this, I'll believe with it.
Speaker 2: If I find the right person, then I will have
Speaker 2: the perfect family. It was always looking ahead as opposed
Speaker 2: to right here and now. So I have to do
Speaker 2: all these things to get there, and that is a
Speaker 2: habit trail or a spinning wheel that is impossible to
Speaker 2: maintain your whole life. But as long as I was
Speaker 2: in the mindset of this and this and this is
Speaker 2: going to make me happy, it didn't work. It didn't work.
Speaker 2: Happiness is very hard to achieve when you're conditioned to
Speaker 2: have to do something to get love.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I live a lot in what he was saying.
Speaker 3: You constantly tell yourself, I'll be happy when I get this,
Speaker 3: or as I'm approaching this, I'll be happy. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll frequently say that, but I've been trying to be
Speaker 3: better about it.
Speaker 1: Anthony. As a child to learn that love is conditional,
Speaker 1: that's a really scary thing. Was it until you came
Speaker 1: a parent? Did you unlock this unconditional love?
Speaker 2: It was directly related to being a parent. That's the miracle,
Speaker 2: Like I found the strength to confront this man. When
Speaker 2: you're a parent and you experience that unconditional love, it
Speaker 2: changes you.
Speaker 1: With the stigma and the fact that men typically don't
Speaker 1: disclose until much later, in life, could the number be actually.
Speaker 5: We know it is different. That's just what's I mean,
Speaker 5: David could speak to that. It's a notoriously difficult area
Speaker 5: to study, because there's actually a couple studies that have
Speaker 5: shown that even when you have documentary evidence that a
Speaker 5: man was sexually abused as a child and you then
Speaker 5: ask them later in life if they were ever sexually abused,
Speaker 5: the vast majority of those men will deny it, Some
Speaker 5: have lost the memory, most probably are just not willing
Speaker 5: to spawned. So as a researcher, I connected many studies
Speaker 5: and found, you know, about one and six man were
Speaker 5: acknowledging that they had had some kind of experience that
Speaker 5: meets the definition of sexual abuse. And I'm absolutely certain
Speaker 5: that it is only you know, some fraction of the
Speaker 5: actual number. What the actual number is, I can't even
Speaker 5: guess it's greater than one and six, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: The conversation about denial sparked a thought from Tyler's mom Stacy.
Speaker 4: You even said, had it not been for the discovery
Speaker 4: of the cameras in our home, he intended to take
Speaker 4: it to his grave. I mean that was just his thought.
Speaker 3: I mean, the plan was to get the hell out.
Speaker 3: I kept telling myself, next year, it'll stop because I'll
Speaker 3: be older, I'll look more like a man, and never stopped,
Speaker 3: and I just kept telling myself I can push through
Speaker 3: high school.
Speaker 5: You know, it's important to understand that the intensity of
Speaker 5: Tyler's need for purpose, it's the same as soldiers coming
Speaker 5: back from war. The experience in a war zone is
Speaker 5: so intense. You're frightened all the time, you see death,
Speaker 5: and it actually affects your brain. You know, your brain
Speaker 5: gets kind of reset to live on edge, and every second,
Speaker 5: every moment is charged with you know, what if, what if?
Speaker 3: What if?
Speaker 5: And what do I have to do to survive this?
Speaker 5: When you live with the kind of daily fear that
Speaker 5: you lived with you were in a combat zone, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, it's the same thing, and it really recalibrates
Speaker 5: your brain, and it takes really a long time to
Speaker 5: sort of recalibrate again, so that, yes, you could be
Speaker 5: in a situation where you are once again in that
Speaker 5: kind of danger, but most of life isn't that way.
Speaker 5: It just takes a while to get to a point
Speaker 5: where your nervous system and your brain are kind of
Speaker 5: just a little bit more quiet. It's okay to just
Speaker 5: have a quiet day. You really were in combat and
Speaker 5: you're coming out of it now.
Speaker 1: Stacey was sharing something with me this morning about one
Speaker 1: of her concerns for you. Do you want to share
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 4: A huge concern for me is when I start to
Speaker 4: feel that something's not okay with you. You're kind of
Speaker 4: quiet or things like that, and you tell me that
Speaker 4: you're okay. You're trained for so long to be quiet
Speaker 4: and to lie to everyone around you about what's going
Speaker 4: on in your world and how you feel. But I
Speaker 4: worry that there are times where he's telling me he's okay,
Speaker 4: and I'm still dealing with that child again, who's lying
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 2: You're bringing up just a really important part of all
Speaker 2: this too. Everybody's affected by this event, these traumatic events.
Speaker 2: Everybody who loves and cares about these individuals is affected.
Speaker 2: And in the same way that you have to give
Speaker 2: Tyler space for his change, he also has to and
Speaker 2: you have to take the space for yourself as a
Speaker 2: parent to process what it is to feel that, oh
Speaker 2: my god, why didn't I do anything? How Come I
Speaker 2: didn't protect And so you have to allow yourself You're
Speaker 2: healing in this process because You can't only be good
Speaker 2: if Tyler's good. You have to be good unto yourself.
Speaker 2: But you can make your happiness conditional on whether or
Speaker 2: not Tyler recovers, because he's going to and he is recovering.
Speaker 5: It's worthwhile to remember from time to time that there's
Speaker 5: another part of the equation here, and that is that
Speaker 5: both of you were groomed. I've spent a lot of
Speaker 5: my career studying predators, and grooming is an integral part
Speaker 5: of these predations, and it's not just the direct victim
Speaker 5: who's groomed. We're in Boston here now, and I was
Speaker 5: here during the nineteen ninety Catholic Clergy eruption of cases.
Speaker 5: I interviewed a number of both victims of John Gagan,
Speaker 5: one of the most prolific predators, and also the mothers
Speaker 5: of some of his victims. And Gagan was just a
Speaker 5: brilliant groomer, and he started by mothers, which gave him
Speaker 5: access to the children, and he would then pick which
Speaker 5: one of the children, mostly boys, because he understood that
Speaker 5: boys are less likely to disclose. So you were both
Speaker 5: victimized by that grooming process, and that's something that you
Speaker 5: are still coping with. Yeah, everybody can be groomed.
Speaker 2: Everybody.
Speaker 5: What grooming is is taking human trust and perverting it.
Speaker 5: It's almost impossible to detect it. And predators practice this,
Speaker 5: so they're not just doing this for the first time.
Speaker 5: They practiced this over many, many years, and they get
Speaker 5: better and better and better at it, so everybody is
Speaker 5: susceptible to it.
Speaker 1: You typically hear from men that are much older than Tyler.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about the impact of a conversation that's
Speaker 1: starting with a nineteen year old on this public of
Speaker 1: a platform. What does that do to the overall conversation.
Speaker 5: Well, Tyler, let me turn a question to you. All right,
Speaker 5: Let's imagine that there's a fifteen year old boy who's
Speaker 5: in a situation like you were in.
Speaker 2: What would you say to him?
Speaker 3: Probably tell him to listen to the podcast Good Start.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'd probably tell him it might seem like the end
Speaker 3: of the world, but it's not. I'm not going to
Speaker 3: lie to you and tell you it's going to be easy.
Speaker 3: But just like anything that, you find ways to overcome
Speaker 3: it and it'll happen. It's possible. You just gotta want it.
Speaker 1: And one in six dot org has tools to help.
Speaker 5: You can find not only therapists, you can find support groups.
Speaker 5: You can find pure support groups, you can find other survivors.
Speaker 5: What we are really focused on here is to confront
Speaker 5: and challenge the stigma that silences men, so that young
Speaker 5: men like Tyler here who has the guts to come forward.
Speaker 5: We appreciate what you're doing and we don't want you
Speaker 5: to be alone.
Speaker 3: Like what he was saying, men definitely minimize because I
Speaker 3: was talking to one of my buddies a while back
Speaker 3: and he was talking about how he had lost his
Speaker 3: virginity at like twelve, and I was like, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: that's that sexual assault. Dude.
Speaker 2: Well that's what you're doing men. You're naming it, and
Speaker 2: you're just that's you're changing it. You're changing the world.
Speaker 2: But those simple conversations, That's what I also like to
Speaker 2: say too, is like you don't have to be on
Speaker 2: a podcast to affect you know, these are the normalizing
Speaker 2: conversation and that's where the change happens. And you're doing
Speaker 2: it in a selfless way. That is really important. And
Speaker 2: you will here, I guarantee it, you will hear it
Speaker 2: because I know whenever I'm in a situation and there's
Speaker 2: a group of fifty or sixty people and I'm sharing
Speaker 2: part of my story or whatever it is. One out
Speaker 2: of six of them are survivors.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we ask Anthony and doctor Lisak how we
Speaker 1: can approach children who are holding back what has happened
Speaker 1: to them. As we continue our conversation with Stacy Tyler,
Speaker 1: Anthony Edwards, and clinical psychologists doctor David Lisak, we wanted
Speaker 1: to hear their advice on how to approach children who
Speaker 1: are afraid to share their abuse. How do we help
Speaker 1: them feel safe enough to disclose.
Speaker 2: It's a question comes up all the time. How do
Speaker 2: we stop this from happening to kids? We normalize the conversation.
Speaker 2: We take the power of the stigma out of this
Speaker 2: by doing exactly what we're doing here today, so that
Speaker 2: that can role model for people to do it privately
Speaker 2: and quietly. It's not about me going out and being public.
Speaker 2: It's about taking away the power which is done through secrecy.
Speaker 2: And like breast cancer, many many women were dying of
Speaker 2: it because there was shame about even talking about it.
Speaker 2: When we started to normalize that conversation, the energy around
Speaker 2: it just lowered the numbers. Because that's all we're trying
Speaker 2: to do. We're not going to get rid of perpetrators.
Speaker 2: We're not going to get rid of this disease, the
Speaker 2: sickness of pedophilia. But what we are going to change
Speaker 2: is our reaction time to it and that place where
Speaker 2: a twelve year old or a thirteen year old might
Speaker 2: be able to turn to a trusted aunt or uncle
Speaker 2: or brother or sister.
Speaker 5: I don't see how we could absolutely come up with
Speaker 5: a plan. Here's a planner, Here are the rules. Right
Speaker 5: follow these rules and it'll never happen in your family
Speaker 5: or never happen to your kids. It's being willing to
Speaker 5: talk about this.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of big things that we could
Speaker 2: jump at right away, right now, and that's institutional protection.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't have a place where, you know, unvettered adults
Speaker 2: can go and spend three days in the woods with children.
Speaker 2: That's just not okay. And we accept these things because
Speaker 2: we're accepting institutional norms that need to be looked at,
Speaker 2: and institutions need to be held accountable, especially when they
Speaker 2: serve children, and talking about it is really important. It's
Speaker 2: that simple thing of not calling it a wigwam or
Speaker 2: your horky doky whatever, it's a penis, it's a vagina.
Speaker 2: These are things on our body that we talk about.
Speaker 2: We don't have shame, we don't have embarrassment about it,
Speaker 2: and I mean, it's that kind of thing I believe
Speaker 2: that will help.
Speaker 1: Saying it out loud to a safe and trusted person
Speaker 1: is the begining of a new chapter.
Speaker 2: Literally, that moment when they had that first conversation where
Speaker 2: they said, you know, something happened to me when I
Speaker 2: was a kid, and someone listened and they were heard
Speaker 2: and they weren't hurt. That's all we're looking for those
Speaker 2: moments because that's the beginning of recovery. And all we
Speaker 2: want to do is start people on their journey because
Speaker 2: everybody recovers differently. Isolation is the killer. No one gets
Speaker 2: out of this alone.
Speaker 1: And finally, what advice do Anthony and doctor Lisak have
Speaker 1: for Tyler.
Speaker 2: It's the beginning of a journey that's a good one.
Speaker 2: It gets better, it's worth it. It takes some time,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's what you're going to be able
Speaker 2: to share as a nineteen year old that we couldn't
Speaker 2: share as old guys. And there's one other.
Speaker 5: Thing I want to make sure you understand this part
Speaker 5: in all this time, and it's going to take that.
Speaker 2: We're telling you to really heal.
Speaker 5: You know it's an ongoing process, but you know it
Speaker 5: deepens you, really does deepen you. You go through this
Speaker 5: process that you have already started on, you're building yourself,
Speaker 5: you know, not your physical self, but who you are,
Speaker 5: and that gets bigger and stronger, and the trauma stays
Speaker 5: the same, and so the relationship between the size of
Speaker 5: that trauma and the size of you keeps changing, until
Speaker 5: you'll find yourself as a full of doubt in your
Speaker 5: thirties or forties, and you'll realize that, you know, it's
Speaker 5: a much smaller part of you than it was, and
Speaker 5: in a weird way, the trauma has helped you grow.
Speaker 2: It's truly well.
Speaker 4: We just want to say that we appreciate you doing
Speaker 4: this for us.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: This was huge. On the next episode of Betrayal, Stacey
Speaker 1: goes back to the Berks County Courthouse for the final
Speaker 1: part of Justin Rutherford's criminal prosecution, where he answers for
Speaker 1: his plot to kill Tyler.
Speaker 4: I was prepared to testify it.
Speaker 1: If you're a man who has experienced sexual abuse or assault,
Speaker 1: or you know someone who is seeking support, go to
Speaker 1: one and six dot org. That's the number one I
Speaker 1: n number six dot org. Find a path to a happier,
Speaker 1: healthier future. If you would like to reach out to
Speaker 1: the Betrayal team, email us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. Also, please be
Speaker 1: sure to follow us at Glass Podcasts on Instagram for
Speaker 1: all Betrayal content, news and updates. We're grateful for your support.
Speaker 1: One way to show support is by subscribing to our
Speaker 1: show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and
Speaker 1: review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A
Speaker 1: big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is
Speaker 1: a production of Glass podcast a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
Speaker 1: in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
Speaker 1: by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by
Speaker 1: me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Kerrie Hartman, also
Speaker 1: produced by Ben Fetterman and Trey Morgan. Associate producers are
Speaker 1: Kristin Melcury and Caitlyn Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali
Speaker 1: Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Special thanks to Stacy Rutherford Tyler
Speaker 1: and the rest of Stacy and Tyler's friends and family,
Speaker 1: and to Anthony Edwards, doctor David Lesak, and the entire
Speaker 1: One in six organization. Audio editing and mixing by Matt
Speaker 1: Talfechio editing support from Nico Aruka. Betrayals theme composed by
Speaker 1: Oliver Bains. Music library provided by Mob Music and For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.