Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Warning,
Speaker 1: this episode contains discussion of sexual and domestic abuse. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised. The landscape of my childhood was just poverty, abuse,
Speaker 1: a fundamentalist religion. I mean, I can't think of many
Speaker 1: redeeming qualities of my childhood. If a tough childhood creates character,
Speaker 1: I have so much character. You don't get to choose
Speaker 1: your family, and whoever choose my family for me shows
Speaker 1: so you know, the poorest one with you know, the
Speaker 1: most extreme religion's completely dysfunctional and just extreme abuse. Also,
Speaker 1: my my father was extremely violent and I suffered physical
Speaker 1: and sexual abuse when I was a child. That's Freddie
Speaker 1: Rice activists against forced marriage, child marriage, and teenage marriage.
Speaker 1: Activism tends to spring from moral outrage, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: moral outrage is deeply personal. Phreds is a story that
Speaker 1: contains layer after layer of secrecy, isolation, violence, and fundamentalism.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. One of the
Speaker 1: most immediately obvious aspects of the ultra Orthodox Jewish community
Speaker 1: and where I grew up in Brooklyn. The first thing
Speaker 1: you notice is the large family sizes. I was from
Speaker 1: a family of six, and that was kind of a
Speaker 1: small family, believe it or not. So yes, a lot
Speaker 1: of siblings and nieces and nephews and cousins and anna's
Speaker 1: and uncle's communities really really important. I grew up really
Speaker 1: very much cut off from the outside world. I didn't
Speaker 1: have my own bedroom, I didn't have my own space.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was always around other people, and those
Speaker 1: other people were always also ultra Orthodox Jewish. And people
Speaker 1: are surprised to learn just how cut off I was
Speaker 1: from the outside world. You know, I was born in
Speaker 1: in the seventies, or you know, grew up in eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties in Brooklyn and no television, no radio, no newspapers,
Speaker 1: no no real contact with anybody who wasn't also the
Speaker 1: ultra Orthodox Jewish. So I didn't know basic things about culture,
Speaker 1: and it was a lot to learn when I left,
Speaker 1: and people were shocked. You don't know what the muppets are,
Speaker 1: You've never you don't know who the Beatles are. You
Speaker 1: don't know that Hamburgers are not made out of him.
Speaker 1: You know, I did not know any of that, so
Speaker 1: how would I know? English was my first language always,
Speaker 1: which made it a lot easier when I was leaving
Speaker 1: the community. For those for whom Yiddish is their first
Speaker 1: language is much more difficult. And actually my my mother
Speaker 1: had grown up in Hasidic family in Williamsburg and her
Speaker 1: first language was Yiddish. And my father was believe it
Speaker 1: or not, Cuban. He was born in Havana on His
Speaker 1: first language was Spanish, but at home we always spoke
Speaker 1: English and I speak very little Yiddish and not a
Speaker 1: word of Spanish. Did your father was he also raised
Speaker 1: in um an Orthodox Jewish community in Cuba. Yes, absolutely, yes,
Speaker 1: the fundamentalism and my family goes back many, many generations.
Speaker 1: Where were you in the order of the birth order
Speaker 1: of siblings? I was second to youngest, so I got
Speaker 1: exactly zero attention, which in a family that abusive and dysfunctional,
Speaker 1: probably best case scenario. The school that I went to
Speaker 1: was an ultra Orthodox Jewish school, Yeshiva Brooklyn, all girls school.
Speaker 1: There was an Yeshiva Brooklyn for boys, but that one
Speaker 1: was two blocks away in a separate building, so yes,
Speaker 1: completely cut off from boys and men. So yes, um,
Speaker 1: everywhere we went, the stores that I shopped in, any
Speaker 1: business I had to do, and if I was allowed
Speaker 1: to get a job, which was fairly limited, then it
Speaker 1: had to be with an orthofox Jewish boss. When I
Speaker 1: say very limited access to the outside, well we're talking
Speaker 1: about when I showed the city bus driver my bus pass.
Speaker 1: That was like the most contact I had with somebody
Speaker 1: who wasn't from my safe community. What were the more
Speaker 1: raise and customs around the opposite sex At any event
Speaker 1: or party or religious gathering, a synagogue, any any time
Speaker 1: there was there were people coming together, the men and
Speaker 1: the women were completely separated, either in a effort room
Speaker 1: or the women were behind a curtain of afiza uh
Speaker 1: real separation barrier. And it was very very very explicit
Speaker 1: that this was not separate but equal to the extent
Speaker 1: that that exists. This is not separate but equal. This
Speaker 1: is the women are less than the men. Are the
Speaker 1: ones who are partaking in this religious activity or the
Speaker 1: prayer or whatever party it is, and the women are
Speaker 1: there as observers and bystanders, and they better be silent.
Speaker 1: They should not be seen, they should not be heard.
Speaker 1: And to give you a sense of just how explicit
Speaker 1: the misogyny is in that community. In the Prayer Book,
Speaker 1: it shows that every morning men make a blessing they
Speaker 1: thank God for not making them a non Jew, a slave,
Speaker 1: or a woman. And then for women, when the men
Speaker 1: are saying, oh God, thank you Lord for not making
Speaker 1: me a woman or a slaver or non Jew, women
Speaker 1: make a blessing, thank you God for making me as
Speaker 1: you will. It was it was, you know, like, oh boy.
Speaker 1: And then imagine the message that sends as as a
Speaker 1: girl when I was seeing this every morning in my
Speaker 1: prior book and knowing that the men and boys were
Speaker 1: making this blessing thanking the Lord for not making them
Speaker 1: someone like me, which they put in the same category
Speaker 1: as a slave or a non Jew. Because it just
Speaker 1: gives you a sense of also the xenophobia there, like
Speaker 1: anyone who's not one of us is is the equivalent
Speaker 1: of a slave. Just how offensive all of that is.
Speaker 1: It's so if there's so much to unpack there looking back,
Speaker 1: I think one of the most infuriating aspects of that
Speaker 1: is that when when we as girls would ask well,
Speaker 1: why why are men thanking God for not making them
Speaker 1: a non duous slave or a woman? What does that
Speaker 1: mean about me as a girl or a woman? The
Speaker 1: response was the ultimate and gas lighting. The response was,
Speaker 1: it's because women are so special. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that totally explains it. That's why all the men thank
Speaker 1: God for not making a monogious slave or a woman.
Speaker 1: Is because women are so special. I feel better now.
Speaker 1: As a child, those certain elements of the religion felt
Speaker 1: confusing and extreme to her. FREDI doesn't exactly clock the
Speaker 1: misogyny and xenophobia early on. She doesn't clock the abuse
Speaker 1: that's going on at home either. How could she, It's
Speaker 1: all she knows. This is the thing about being born
Speaker 1: into an abusive family, especially when you don't have a
Speaker 1: TV where you see the fake families that are all
Speaker 1: happy and sweet. You don't really have a sense that
Speaker 1: what's happening to you is not normal. There is no
Speaker 1: real sense of, oh wait, I'm not supposed to be
Speaker 1: afraid in my own home. I'm not supposed to be
Speaker 1: physically assaulted in my own home. My mother shouldn't be
Speaker 1: pushed down the stairs and being with a stick like
Speaker 1: this shouldn't be happening. There's a very little sense of
Speaker 1: that when you're a child born into it. So that
Speaker 1: part I really did not question or complain about. And
Speaker 1: even the misogynistic aspects of the religion. I questioned some
Speaker 1: of it and got into trouble because one of the
Speaker 1: roles in that community is the messages you're a woman,
Speaker 1: shut the funk up, you have a vagina. Who are
Speaker 1: you to ask questions? So even the small questions that
Speaker 1: I asked, I got into trouble for asking. But also
Speaker 1: I asked them not as uh, well, this is all bullshit.
Speaker 1: I don't want any part of it. It was you know.
Speaker 1: I asked them based on the premise that obviously, this
Speaker 1: is my religion, this is my life in it, this
Speaker 1: is the right way, this is what God wants. There
Speaker 1: is a God. I believe that back then as well,
Speaker 1: And um, you know, I'm not going to lead, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to rebel. None of that. That didn't even
Speaker 1: occurred to me. So leaving her religion or her home
Speaker 1: never occurs to Freddie. At this time, her mom is
Speaker 1: told to leave her marriage. If is almost unheard of
Speaker 1: in the community, but the rabbis know how violent her
Speaker 1: father is. The rabbis tell Freddy's mom, listen, he's going
Speaker 1: to kill you. He's going to kill the kids. You
Speaker 1: have to get out. Even then when she left, because
Speaker 1: of the deeply misogynistic laws in that religion, only a
Speaker 1: man is allowed to grant a get a Jewish divorce.
Speaker 1: A woman doesn't have that right. She can ask for
Speaker 1: a divorce, but he can just say no, and then
Speaker 1: what happens to hers, She just becomes what's known in
Speaker 1: that community as an aguna, a changed woman, a woman
Speaker 1: who is literally chained to a dead marriage and forever
Speaker 1: a second class citizen. I think second class is too generous.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about someone who is just further
Speaker 1: abused by the entire community, really really looked down upon.
Speaker 1: Being single on that community is already considered shameful, but
Speaker 1: being an aguna, everybody will absolutely blame the victim in
Speaker 1: that situation and just treat and now gun not like
Speaker 1: just complete hurt, as if it's somehow her fault. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened to my mother for seven years. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this violent, abusive man was not going to just willingly
Speaker 1: let her out of this abusive, violent marriage. And I
Speaker 1: saw the way the community treated her, and I heard
Speaker 1: her crying herself to sleep, and that I used to
Speaker 1: as a child, remember hearing her sobbing when she thought
Speaker 1: that we couldn't hear her, And I questioned that. I
Speaker 1: questioned that, why, why, how does it make sense? How
Speaker 1: does it make sense that a woman can't grant to get?
Speaker 1: And then I remember asking, also, why can't a woman
Speaker 1: say kaddish? That's the prayer for the dead. There was
Speaker 1: no one in my life that had died that I
Speaker 1: wanted to say kattage for but it just it just
Speaker 1: didn't make sense to me. And I would ask these
Speaker 1: questions and the response was, you know, shut the funk
Speaker 1: up and set the funk down. And by the way,
Speaker 1: why aren't you cooking and cleaning? You're a woman or
Speaker 1: a girl. So there was no answer. Freddie is four
Speaker 1: when her mother takes her and her siblings away from
Speaker 1: her father. They flee with the clothing on their backs,
Speaker 1: first to Los Angeles and then back to Brooklyn to
Speaker 1: live with Freddy's grandparents. This is where she spends the
Speaker 1: rest of her childhood. She's eleven when her father finally
Speaker 1: gives her mother a get a Jewish divorce. Why did
Speaker 1: he finally give her a get? My understanding is that
Speaker 1: someone convinced him some clever person convinced him that if
Speaker 1: he gave my mother a get, he would show her
Speaker 1: what a nice person he was and she would come
Speaker 1: back to him. So you're like eleven or twelve years
Speaker 1: old when your mother is no longer an abuna, right right,
Speaker 1: So but then, yeah, she's not an aguna, but now
Speaker 1: she's a divorce which is almost as bad in that community.
Speaker 1: Not as bad, I mean agunas is a whole new level,
Speaker 1: or a really low level. But even as a divorce woman,
Speaker 1: that the abuse that she got, the treatment that she
Speaker 1: got was absolutely horrifying. So were you sort of at
Speaker 1: that point watching your older siblings start to get married,
Speaker 1: start to have families. I mean, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: the second to the youngest when you were a teenager,
Speaker 1: was that starting to happen around you? Yes, when I
Speaker 1: was twelve, my oldest sister got engaged. She was nineteen,
Speaker 1: so she was really old. It was time for her
Speaker 1: to marry. And by the way, very very difficult for
Speaker 1: my mother to arrange all of our marriages because we
Speaker 1: are now the children of divorce and that's just so
Speaker 1: looked down upon in that community. So not only was
Speaker 1: my mother punished for being first snaguna and then a divorcee.
Speaker 1: But then we were all punished. I mean, I had
Speaker 1: girls in my class at Yeshiva of Brooklyn whose parents
Speaker 1: would not let them talk to me. That's all. You
Speaker 1: can't talk to Fred, her parents are divorced. It was
Speaker 1: that extreme. And the other thing that didn't occur to
Speaker 1: me at the time, and looking back at this, the
Speaker 1: really really gets to me is my mother's marriage was
Speaker 1: arranged or forced, whatever you want to call it. I
Speaker 1: call it force because there's no there's no real opportunity
Speaker 1: for either party to consent to his marriage. So her
Speaker 1: parents forced her into this marriage to a stranger, and
Speaker 1: it turned out to be I mean, such a horrifying,
Speaker 1: terrible experience for her. She mean, she was abuse every
Speaker 1: single day for the fourteen years that she lived with
Speaker 1: my father. He tortured her. And yet less than a
Speaker 1: year after she finally got her religious of force and
Speaker 1: got out of that, she was already forcing all of
Speaker 1: her children into marriages to strangers. And I don't think
Speaker 1: it ever occurred to her that this system doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: This is a problematic system. You cannot just marry people
Speaker 1: off without their consent to strangers and then have it
Speaker 1: turned out well. So yes, I went from watching her
Speaker 1: get her get and then to my sister being married
Speaker 1: off to a stranger, and then, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: my oldest sister, her marriage was not, as far as
Speaker 1: I know, an unhappy marriage, although I wouldn't necessarily know that,
Speaker 1: But she got pregnant right away, which is was supposed
Speaker 1: to happen in that community. And her oldest son was
Speaker 1: born with really profound disability, very very very sick, and
Speaker 1: spent most of his life in a hospital and a home.
Speaker 1: He couldn't see, he couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, and
Speaker 1: he um and he died when he was eighteen. So
Speaker 1: I was twelve or thirteen when he was born. Yes see,
Speaker 1: this was my first nephew, and I just I just
Speaker 1: fell in love with YESI I still remember the first
Speaker 1: time I saw him in the hospital, hooked up to
Speaker 1: all kinds of machines. He had his first surgery as
Speaker 1: soon as he was born. He had hydrocephalus, and back
Speaker 1: then the treatments for that we're really limited. And I
Speaker 1: just fell in love with him. This is what I
Speaker 1: was witnessing. My sister was twenty years old. And she
Speaker 1: has a son with profound disabilities that she now has
Speaker 1: to care for when she's because she's basically a child herself.
Speaker 1: And then she has to keep having children because that's
Speaker 1: what's required in that community. So I mean, she continued
Speaker 1: having children and then trying to to juggle all of
Speaker 1: that when she herself had not even had a chance
Speaker 1: to grow up. I mean, it's just so heartbreaking. In
Speaker 1: the bridal classes that are mandatory for all engaged women
Speaker 1: in the community, women are taught that you are required
Speaker 1: to have unprotected sex with your spouse on a monthly basis,
Speaker 1: and it's time for when you're ovulating, so it's forced sex,
Speaker 1: forced unprotected sex, which leads to forced parenthood. Freddie watches
Speaker 1: her sister go through this and is aware that before
Speaker 1: long she'll be paired off with someone too. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was just waiting to be married off, and I
Speaker 1: had no hopes and dreams for the future other than
Speaker 1: I want to be a wife and a mother, because
Speaker 1: that's all I was taught. There's a term for a
Speaker 1: girl when she reaches high school in the Orthodox Jewish community.
Speaker 1: They call her a columnate. All it's just a bridal girl,
Speaker 1: just a girl waiting to become a bride. That's all
Speaker 1: really I was. I was required to sign two different
Speaker 1: forms promising that I wouldn't take driver's head and promising
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't take s A T S. It's very,
Speaker 1: very very cheerfully orchestrated that as a girl, I was
Speaker 1: completely financially dependent on my what would have been parents.
Speaker 1: My father was out of the picture by then, so
Speaker 1: it was completely financially dependent on my mother. Had to
Speaker 1: live in her home, not allowed to move out on
Speaker 1: my own. The only way I could move out was
Speaker 1: when I got married, so that I was just never
Speaker 1: allowed to become independent. And there's also lack of education.
Speaker 1: Wasn't allowed to get a real education at issue for
Speaker 1: worklen and we learned how to cook and sew, and
Speaker 1: I was not allowed to go to college. So all
Speaker 1: of this really just conspires against you. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So when Freddie is a teenager, the official matchmaking process
Speaker 1: kicks off. She's seen this play out for her older
Speaker 1: siblings and now it's her time to be forced into
Speaker 1: a relationship with a stranger, a partner chose by someone else,
Speaker 1: the matchmaker. There is no courtship, it's just a match.
Speaker 1: I was one of those couples, those hilariously awkward couples
Speaker 1: sitting five feet away from each other in the lounge
Speaker 1: of a hotel, drinking soda and asking, so, how many
Speaker 1: children do you want to have? What's your favorite? So yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: let's get married. Well it's not even let's get married,
Speaker 1: because that's decide, but the matchmaker, I mean that whole exercise.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh, because there is really nothing funny about
Speaker 1: forcing strangers to marriage when they've never been allowed to
Speaker 1: be alone together. So there has to be in that
Speaker 1: public place, never allowed to have any physical contact, and
Speaker 1: they have a matchmaker arranging the whole thing. And by
Speaker 1: the time you get to go on on one of
Speaker 1: those they call that a date. I would really really,
Speaker 1: I think that's a bit of a stretch to call
Speaker 1: that kind of meeting a date. But by the time
Speaker 1: you get to go on this so called date, both
Speaker 1: families have all and the matchmaker have already decided this
Speaker 1: match is happening. So it's really it's not do you
Speaker 1: want to marry him, it's you're gonna marry him? Right,
Speaker 1: And to say no to that is incredibly, incredibly difficult.
Speaker 1: And especially there's some socioeconomic element to this. So if
Speaker 1: my parents had not been divorced, if I had a
Speaker 1: father who was a famous rabbi or was very wealthy,
Speaker 1: then I probably would have felt comfortable saying no to
Speaker 1: to a few matches. So if you know, the first
Speaker 1: guy that that the matchmaker matches me with, perhaps I
Speaker 1: could have said no, I don't I don't like his nose,
Speaker 1: or I don't like you know, he likes sprite and
Speaker 1: I like Coca cola, so obviously we're not compatible. Uh
Speaker 1: you know. Perhaps, But because I was from such a
Speaker 1: poor family and my parents were divorced, I knew if
Speaker 1: I said no, there was probably not going to be
Speaker 1: another match. And the other thing is there's no real
Speaker 1: basis to say no. I mean, you know, I joke
Speaker 1: about how he likes sprite and I like Coca cola.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, other than that, how much can you
Speaker 1: possibly get to know somebody sitting in that lounge five
Speaker 1: ft apart from each other, you know, talking about how
Speaker 1: many children do you want to have and what's your
Speaker 1: favorite soda? There's very little that you can learn. I
Speaker 1: remember talking to this one woman who said she's also
Speaker 1: grew up a fundamentalist Hasidic community that she came from,
Speaker 1: and she told her mother after this, she actually got
Speaker 1: to meet this guy for a half hour, and by then,
Speaker 1: like the wine had been pouring, the cookies had been
Speaker 1: put out. I mean, both families were there. They were
Speaker 1: just waiting for her to say yes. And after the
Speaker 1: half hour meeting, she went back into the kitchen and
Speaker 1: from the living room she tilled her mother, I just
Speaker 1: I just don't like him. And her mother said, how
Speaker 1: could you not like him? You don't even know him,
Speaker 1: and not understanding the irony of what she was saying, like,
Speaker 1: you can marry this guy, but you can't not like him.
Speaker 1: You have no basis not to like him. You've met
Speaker 1: him for half hour. How could you not like him?
Speaker 1: And there's a lot I had a lot of that
Speaker 1: feeling as well. How can I say no? My mother
Speaker 1: has said this is the right guy for me, His
Speaker 1: family has said this is the right guy for me.
Speaker 1: The matchmaker I always compare the matchmakers to use car salespeople.
Speaker 1: They get paid only if there's an engagement, so they
Speaker 1: go hard. I mean this, They're they're gonna make sure
Speaker 1: that this match happens. In my case. It was my
Speaker 1: mother's first cousin, and she's telling me, this is the
Speaker 1: right guy for you. And it's very much a sense
Speaker 1: of I've never dated before, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know anything. I mean, I'm a nineteen year old, clueless virgin.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna turn twenty this year. And then you don't
Speaker 1: want to turn twenty and still be single. In that community,
Speaker 1: that's basically a death sentence. When I saw him, we
Speaker 1: remember him standing there on the porch, and my initial
Speaker 1: instinct was, oh God, this is not at all what
Speaker 1: the matchmaker had promised had told me. He was unkempt,
Speaker 1: his suit was like a little disheveled. I I'm very
Speaker 1: into clothing, like guy. I always liked to dress well.
Speaker 1: I always always really put together, and he was just
Speaker 1: kind of a mess and he was pretty significantly overweight
Speaker 1: and just just not at all what the matchmaker had
Speaker 1: said to me. And I remember thinking, God, this was
Speaker 1: not what I would have wanted. But then it's always
Speaker 1: so drummed into you. I had been taught for years
Speaker 1: and years physical attraction. That's something the guy um that
Speaker 1: the non Jews the other that's what they worry about.
Speaker 1: That's not something that we care about. Sexual attraction. That's
Speaker 1: not a thing. Physical attraction, physical appearance. That means nothing
Speaker 1: and absolutely nothing to do with anything. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it wasn't This is how you make a decision. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about physical appearance. Instead, look at X, Y and Z.
Speaker 1: There was no look at X, Y and Z. No
Speaker 1: one ever had a conversation with me about, all right,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get to meet the guy at the lounge
Speaker 1: of the hotel. Here's what you should ask him, here's
Speaker 1: what you should look at, here's what you should think about.
Speaker 1: I had no idea, and it didn't even occur to
Speaker 1: me to ask, and it didn't occur to anyone around
Speaker 1: me to tell me that. I was just basically it was,
Speaker 1: you know, checking the box on the page. Okay, did
Speaker 1: the matchmaker come forward, yes? Did his family say yes? Check?
Speaker 1: Did her family say yes? Check? Did they meet three
Speaker 1: times in the hotel lobby and talk about soda preferences? Check?
Speaker 1: All right, and they can get engaged. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was just really, it was just ridiculous. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the average number of these fake dates in the community
Speaker 1: at is seven. By the way, and I can't remember
Speaker 1: exactly how many dates we had, but it was over
Speaker 1: a period of something like eight weeks. And on two
Speaker 1: of these so called dates, this guy got into a
Speaker 1: physical fight with strangers on the street. There was one
Speaker 1: time that he didn't like the way a guy looked
Speaker 1: at me, and they got into a physical altercation. And
Speaker 1: then there was another time that there was some kind
Speaker 1: of driving incident. He was a very aggressive driver and
Speaker 1: he got into a physical fight with with another driver.
Speaker 1: And that was such a huge red flag. I mean,
Speaker 1: the fact that he turned out to be violent and abusive.
Speaker 1: Anyone who would have seen that, who had any you know,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this rationally at all, would have said,
Speaker 1: that's a red flag. This is somebody who has violent tendencies.
Speaker 1: But that did not occur to me, and this didn't
Speaker 1: occur to anyone around me. Did he asked about that.
Speaker 1: Nobody said, well, if he physically assault strangers on the
Speaker 1: street while you're walking with him, that's a guy who
Speaker 1: probably has violent tendencies, and you to you know, proceed
Speaker 1: with caution. No. To me, in my nineteen year old brain,
Speaker 1: it was, oh wow, he's you know, he really protect me.
Speaker 1: This is a guy who's really, really going to protect me.
Speaker 1: This is this is fantastic. Tell me about how you
Speaker 1: felt walking down the aisle. I was so happy that
Speaker 1: it's embarrassing to admit this, and it hurts me to
Speaker 1: say this. I wish I could say God, I was
Speaker 1: begging for not to happen, and I walked down the
Speaker 1: aisle feeling like this is so unfair. I always say
Speaker 1: I walked down the aisle to my execution wearing a
Speaker 1: big smile and the world's ugliest gown. I wish I
Speaker 1: had known better, but I let myself get caught up
Speaker 1: in all in all of it, you know. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing there. You say no to a match, they're
Speaker 1: all kinds of serious repercussions, bad things will happen. You
Speaker 1: say yes, you get a party. You get have to
Speaker 1: be the center of attention. I was the second to
Speaker 1: youngest of six and a girl, and and a fundamentalist religious,
Speaker 1: really poor family. I had never had a birthday party.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever made me the center of attention. I mean,
Speaker 1: in the ultra fox Jewish community, girls don't even have
Speaker 1: a bot mits about. Boys have apartment spob but a
Speaker 1: girl doesn't have a bott mit spot. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you get engaged, center of attention, big parties. You know,
Speaker 1: people will buy you all kinds of gifts and a
Speaker 1: whole new wardrobe and a set of multiple sets of
Speaker 1: pops and pans and dishes. And then also, I didn't
Speaker 1: feel safe at home. I was unsafe at home. My
Speaker 1: brother was very abusive. I did not feel safe at home.
Speaker 1: And I get to move out. I get I get
Speaker 1: to get out of this abusive home. I get to
Speaker 1: go someplace where I imagined in my head I would
Speaker 1: be safe. Finally, for the first time in my life.
Speaker 1: I'd be away from my abusive father and away from
Speaker 1: my abusive brothers. I get to just live in safety
Speaker 1: with all these new pots and pans I have nineteen.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine, you know, getting a bitter deal. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I walked down the aisle. I'll skip in. I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is fantastic way to go Freddy. Freddy and her
Speaker 1: new husband begin their life together. They move into a
Speaker 1: little basement apartment on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, a wide,
Speaker 1: busy boulevard lined with synagogues, yeshiva's, and Jewish businesses. So
Speaker 1: one of the you know, beautiful homes on Ocean Parkway
Speaker 1: in the dinky basement with like one little window, basically
Speaker 1: a prison, which I guess is fitting. So living in
Speaker 1: this little, tiny apartment. And the first thing that became
Speaker 1: very very clear right away was that my then husband
Speaker 1: and I were just not compatible. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: very clear that we had nothing at all in common,
Speaker 1: and that having a conversation was going to be a
Speaker 1: challenge with this man because the way we approached life
Speaker 1: was so different. So, for example, he would make Helen
Speaker 1: Keller jokes where he mocked people who were blind or
Speaker 1: people had physical disabilities. I remember us talking about my nephew, Yesie,
Speaker 1: who loved more than anyone in the world, who was
Speaker 1: blind and he was in a wheelchair. And every time
Speaker 1: my husband made a joke about Helen Keller, I would
Speaker 1: start to cry. You know, I beg him, please don't
Speaker 1: make jokes about that. It really hurts me. I feel
Speaker 1: like you're really offending. Yes see, why is it his
Speaker 1: fault that he's blind? And the more I cry, the
Speaker 1: funnier he found it. Sevent days after our wedding, he
Speaker 1: woke up late one morning and he was late for
Speaker 1: an appointment, and he was furious. Oh my God, I
Speaker 1: woke up late. He wasn't even angry at me. He
Speaker 1: was angry at himself and flew into a violent rage
Speaker 1: the likes of which I, um, well, I can't say
Speaker 1: I had never seen, because obviously there were a lot
Speaker 1: of violent rages in my childhood home. But it was
Speaker 1: not what I was expecting from my marriage. But also
Speaker 1: he was cursing in a way that I had never
Speaker 1: heard before, and I was terrified. So, you know, he
Speaker 1: were talking about a big guy. He was six ft tall,
Speaker 1: and he's two forty pounds, jumping up and down and
Speaker 1: screaming at the top of his lungs, and I'm just terrified.
Speaker 1: I was like, what is happening. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do, Like he's a stranger, just completely lost his ship,
Speaker 1: screaming and yelling. So I was cowering in a corner.
Speaker 1: And then, in his like final active rage, he punched
Speaker 1: his fist through the wall really hard. I left a
Speaker 1: big hole in the wall, and then ran out to
Speaker 1: whatever appointment he was laid for. And that was when
Speaker 1: I said, oh my god, oh my god. And I'll
Speaker 1: never forget Just standing there looking at that hole in
Speaker 1: the wall, shaking, I thought I was going to be
Speaker 1: safe here. I thought I was going to be safe.
Speaker 1: This was supposed to be different. What just happened? What?
Speaker 1: This is what he acts like when he wakes up late,
Speaker 1: and you know, on Ocean Parkway, there's um there's a park,
Speaker 1: a little plate ground across the street. And so I
Speaker 1: remember after he left, I walked across the street to
Speaker 1: this playground and sat on a swing just crying crises,
Speaker 1: just swinging for hours and crying, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: is going to happen to me? And I Am I
Speaker 1: going to end up like my mother? Did you tell anyone? Well,
Speaker 1: at first I didn't. It was like two or three
Speaker 1: days after that. Um, he threatened to kill me for
Speaker 1: the first time, and that's something that became the norm
Speaker 1: in our marriage. He would he would threaten to kill me,
Speaker 1: and he would get very graphic with the detail. He
Speaker 1: would describe to me how he was going to kill me.
Speaker 1: And he would do this while he was screaming in
Speaker 1: a rage and breaking things and throwing things, and so
Speaker 1: even though he didn't have his hands on me, he
Speaker 1: would describe to me like I'm gonna you know, like
Speaker 1: one time he was going to put his fingers around
Speaker 1: my neck and he was gonna squeeze really hard, and
Speaker 1: he was going to watch me as i you know,
Speaker 1: struggle to breathe, and then he was going to watch
Speaker 1: me take my last breath. I mean, he described this
Speaker 1: whole thing. And it was another time he was going
Speaker 1: to go to the kitchen and he was going to
Speaker 1: get a knife, and then he described what he's going
Speaker 1: to do with the knife, and you know, it was
Speaker 1: beyond terrifying. It was very believable that he was going
Speaker 1: to do these things to me because a why would
Speaker 1: he describe it in such graphic detail if he didn't
Speaker 1: actually plan to do it. And be he was doing
Speaker 1: at the same time that he was smashing and breaking things,
Speaker 1: so he was clearly capable of violence. But he didn't
Speaker 1: beat me up. So he would throw things at me,
Speaker 1: he would shove me, or he loved to do this
Speaker 1: thing where he was a really wild driver. And so
Speaker 1: whenever whenever we were going anywhere, obviously he would drive.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't let me drive, and he would do this
Speaker 1: thing where he would speed up to a hundred miles
Speaker 1: an hour and then sam on the brake to send
Speaker 1: me flying, to send me flying into the windshield. Within
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, I started saying, this is a problem.
Speaker 1: I went to my mother for help with this. I
Speaker 1: went to his father. Um, I made an appointment with
Speaker 1: a rabbi, like you know, a rabbi and one of
Speaker 1: the big rabbis in the community, to try to get
Speaker 1: how up. And with everyone it was what did he
Speaker 1: hit you? And I said, no, he didn't hit me,
Speaker 1: but he saw me. He's gonna kill me if he
Speaker 1: didn't hit you. Why are you complaining? And especially with
Speaker 1: my mother, like I remember thinking, how could he even
Speaker 1: complain about this to my mother? I mean, my mother
Speaker 1: had broken bones, she had black on blue marks. I'm
Speaker 1: going to complain that this guy, you know, punched his
Speaker 1: fist through the wall. It didn't even seem fair. So
Speaker 1: they all, you know, they all just try to convince
Speaker 1: me that the problem was me, that I was being
Speaker 1: my standards were too high, that I was being unreasonable,
Speaker 1: that he was really young. He's twenty two years old.
Speaker 1: He just needs time to grow up. And and you know,
Speaker 1: you have to be good to him, and you can
Speaker 1: and upset him, and you really can't complain when he's
Speaker 1: not even hitting you. You saw your mother went through,
Speaker 1: You're going to complain that the guys that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kill you? Did he kill you? No? So why are
Speaker 1: you complaining? So I just lived in fair every day
Speaker 1: that he was going to kill me. And then when
Speaker 1: I had kids, I lived in fair that he was
Speaker 1: going to kill them too, And he would say that,
Speaker 1: I say, I'm going to kill you, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to kill them, and then I'm going to kill myself.
Speaker 1: That was his plan. How far into your into your
Speaker 1: marriage were your daughters born eleven months? That's what happens
Speaker 1: when you are forced to have unprotected sex. Got pregnant
Speaker 1: two months after my wedding, gave birth nine months later
Speaker 1: after that, so um, so eleven months from my first one,
Speaker 1: and then my next one was four years later. I
Speaker 1: had never heard the term reproductive rights. I had never
Speaker 1: you know, didn't have any sense of consenting to sex
Speaker 1: or anything like that. All I knew was my marriage
Speaker 1: was a disaster. My husband was a violent just awful awful.
Speaker 1: The way he treated me was absolutely unspeakably awful. And
Speaker 1: my first pregnancy was a nightmare. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: the morning sickness I had all day, every day the
Speaker 1: entire nine months I kept losing weight. I couldn't keep
Speaker 1: any food down. I was hospitalized for dehydration. At a
Speaker 1: certain point, I was having trouble with my kidney and
Speaker 1: there was urologist who told me that we're going to
Speaker 1: have to deliver the baby early and remove my kidney.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was like, really an awful pregnancy, and
Speaker 1: I just knew I didn't want to do that again.
Speaker 1: And I knew that I wasn't happy in my marriage,
Speaker 1: you know, I was stuck in it. And I went
Speaker 1: to my gynecologist and I said, you need to give
Speaker 1: me birth control. And I give her credit, and she
Speaker 1: used ultra Orthodox Jewish And by the way, she's the
Speaker 1: same kind ofcologist who when I was a bride, performed
Speaker 1: a virginity exam on me to confirm that my hyman
Speaker 1: was intact and I was a so called virgin. So
Speaker 1: I am, in hindsight surprise that she did this. But
Speaker 1: she gave me birth control, and then my husband lost it.
Speaker 1: He said, how dare you? And he took us. He
Speaker 1: took me to the rabbi, who said, you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to use birth control. And I looked at the rabbi
Speaker 1: in the eye and I said, it is my body,
Speaker 1: not yours. And he said, you know what, if you
Speaker 1: feel like I I can need a break, you can use
Speaker 1: birth control for one year, but then you have to stop.
Speaker 1: And I said, what part of my body do you
Speaker 1: not understand? I am not doing this for one year.
Speaker 1: I am never having another child. And the Rebert told
Speaker 1: my husband, don't worry. After a year, she'll stop. And
Speaker 1: after a year, I didn't stop until I finally caved
Speaker 1: into the pressure and had a baby four years later.
Speaker 1: I was lucky that I had only two. And then
Speaker 1: all of this just it's just chains getting tighter and
Speaker 1: tighter and tighter around you, and for me, it started
Speaker 1: really feeling like it was tightening around my neck and
Speaker 1: I was going to die. We'll be back in a
Speaker 1: moment with more family secrets. Despite the vice that grips her,
Speaker 1: Freddie has an escape plan. She's going to go to
Speaker 1: college though she's not supposed to. She's going to find
Speaker 1: a way out for herself and her daughters. It was
Speaker 1: a sense of survival. It was the realization after a
Speaker 1: particularly traumatic incident where my family and my community just
Speaker 1: we're not coming through. For me, I finally realized I
Speaker 1: need to get out on my own if I say,
Speaker 1: this man is going to kill me and he's going
Speaker 1: to kill my two daughters. He made that very clear.
Speaker 1: When you feel that your life is in danger, you've
Speaker 1: become capable of doing things you never thought you could.
Speaker 1: And that's what it was for me. It was it
Speaker 1: was a sense of survival. It was a sense of
Speaker 1: this is the only way I'm going to get at
Speaker 1: it here alive. So I have to get out on
Speaker 1: my own, and the only way I can do that
Speaker 1: is if I have an education in some way to
Speaker 1: support myself financially. Freddy has not been allowed to have
Speaker 1: a job, or a bank account or a credit card,
Speaker 1: so in order to gain this financial independence, an education
Speaker 1: would be a must. Before pursuing the education on her own, though,
Speaker 1: she asks her family, her mother, who surely would understand
Speaker 1: what she's going through right for help. Originally, I did
Speaker 1: not think I would go to college or get out
Speaker 1: on my own after years and years of just suffering
Speaker 1: in this abusive marriage. When I was twenty seven, it
Speaker 1: was this time that my mother happened to come over
Speaker 1: to the house after a really violent outbursts from my
Speaker 1: then husband, where he had kicked in the front or
Speaker 1: we had a dead boatlock and um and he had
Speaker 1: left in a rage, and I locked the door behind him,
Speaker 1: and he came back. I wanted to get back in,
Speaker 1: you screaming, and I said, I'm not going to let
Speaker 1: you back in until you calm down, and he kicked
Speaker 1: in the front door and and she came over in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of that, so she saw the physical signs
Speaker 1: of it, and she saw me sitting there crying, and
Speaker 1: the kids were there crying, and and that was when
Speaker 1: I finally said to her, I said, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: really I'm scared for my life. I'm afraid for my
Speaker 1: kids lives. I don't know why next step is, but
Speaker 1: can I just move in with you temporarily, just, you know,
Speaker 1: just to let I figure out where I go from here,
Speaker 1: and just so that I can be safe. And her
Speaker 1: her answer was she turned around and walked out of
Speaker 1: the room without saying anything. And and I remember my
Speaker 1: my older daughter who was seven at the time. She
Speaker 1: was in the room and she heard this, and she
Speaker 1: said to me, why didn't Bobby answer you? And I
Speaker 1: told her that was her answer. It's incredibly hurtful too,
Speaker 1: you know this this memory is so painful when I
Speaker 1: think about it, and how she never forgave her parents
Speaker 1: for marrying her off to an abusive man, and then
Speaker 1: she turned her back on me when I asked her
Speaker 1: for help, and and I think about, you know, all
Speaker 1: the reasons that possibly she did that, and maybe it
Speaker 1: was because of guilt or because she just you know,
Speaker 1: the trauma it triggered, it was triggering for her. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it was. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, she did me such a favor. If I
Speaker 1: had moved in with her, I would have just continued
Speaker 1: the cycle, and I would have become an aguna, and
Speaker 1: I would have, you know, just remained a victim my
Speaker 1: whole life. And instead, she, for better or worse, forced
Speaker 1: me to take matters into my own hands and to
Speaker 1: leave on my own terms, to get my college degree,
Speaker 1: to save up cash, and to leave and get out
Speaker 1: and leave not only my abusive marriage, but leave this
Speaker 1: whole misogynistic, abusive community and really create a much happier well.
Speaker 1: I can't even see much happier there was loving happy
Speaker 1: about that life. So finally a happy, safe, in free
Speaker 1: life for myself and my daughters. During this time, Freddie
Speaker 1: also seeks therapy. In fact, it's the therapist that helps
Speaker 1: her device and pursue her escape. The therapist she seeks
Speaker 1: is outside the ultra orthodox community, a radical, and, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, a essential move on Freddy's part. How
Speaker 1: did you figure out who to talk to? I had
Speaker 1: a friend who I didn't tell her what was going on,
Speaker 1: that I was afraid or you know, that my marriage
Speaker 1: was abusive. And apparently I didn't have to because one
Speaker 1: day she said to me, you know, I have a
Speaker 1: name of a therapist that that I've been seeing. Nobody
Speaker 1: knows it's you know it was. She had to keep
Speaker 1: it a secret also, and she just slipped me a
Speaker 1: paper and she said, it's just the name and a number.
Speaker 1: You know. She didn't ask questions, she didn't say why
Speaker 1: she gave me the paper. She just clearly saw that
Speaker 1: something was wrong, and she said, you know, this is
Speaker 1: just in case you in case you want to talk
Speaker 1: to somebody, here's a name. And so I reached out.
Speaker 1: It was really hard to go because you know, if
Speaker 1: I got caught, the repercussions would have been great. So
Speaker 1: I couldn't write it down in my calendar. I had
Speaker 1: to pay cash because I couldn't write at a check
Speaker 1: or have any kind of paper trail, I mean, and
Speaker 1: then I had to have a cover story for where
Speaker 1: I was going during that time, so I actually went
Speaker 1: only twice. But this therapist was the first person who
Speaker 1: explained to me what domestic violence was. I mean, imagine
Speaker 1: that I had grown up in that really abusive, violent
Speaker 1: household and I had been married to this abusive guy
Speaker 1: for for at that point eight years, and I had
Speaker 1: no idea what domestic violence was. And she explained it
Speaker 1: to me. And then she was also the first person
Speaker 1: who said, it doesn't matter if he's never slapped you
Speaker 1: across the face of broken your bone, that is domestic violence.
Speaker 1: She went over like what the mess of violence looks like,
Speaker 1: and the power and control will and the cycle of violence,
Speaker 1: and it was it was such an eye opening experience.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was literally life altering. I always it
Speaker 1: was a social work, and I always tell social workers,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have no idea the power you have.
Speaker 1: This woman saved my life. She also explained that I
Speaker 1: had legal rights and that there's something called a restraining order.
Speaker 1: You can get a restraining order against an abusive husband.
Speaker 1: The police will remove him from your house and then
Speaker 1: he's not a goot to come near you, so he
Speaker 1: cannot abuse you or threatened you. Was talking anymore. Now
Speaker 1: I had this new knowledge that this was, that this
Speaker 1: was an option, and it was. It was my family
Speaker 1: and communities reaction to the restraining order that actually ended
Speaker 1: up leading to my five year plan to escape, because
Speaker 1: you know, the police gave me there was this temporary
Speaker 1: restraining order, served it on my then husband, removing from
Speaker 1: the house. And then immediately I started getting phone calls
Speaker 1: from everyone I knew, not only my family, but my
Speaker 1: friends and my neighbors and rabbis, just all saying, what
Speaker 1: the hell is wrong with you? Are you crazy? Who
Speaker 1: does this? You went to the police, you got a
Speaker 1: restraeting order? Are you out of your mind? Miss Era?
Speaker 1: I had always been taught, miss Era, of turning over
Speaker 1: your fellow Jew to the to the police. That's literally
Speaker 1: punishable by death, and I had committed that sin. And
Speaker 1: then the rabbis sent an attorney to my house. An
Speaker 1: Orthodox Jewish mail attorney showed up at my house. He
Speaker 1: drove with me to family court in Tons River, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and you know, went with me in front of the judge.
Speaker 1: You had me tell the judge that I wanted to
Speaker 1: drop the restraining order, and it was it was in
Speaker 1: that surreal moment when the judge asked me whether I
Speaker 1: was doing this of my own free will, and I
Speaker 1: was looking at him and looking at my attorney and thinking,
Speaker 1: how can I possibly explain to the judge what's happening here?
Speaker 1: He looks at me, he think he he thinks this
Speaker 1: is my attorney standing next to me, thinks I retained.
Speaker 1: This guy thinks I'm here willingly. How could I possibly
Speaker 1: explain what's going on? I have not a single friend
Speaker 1: or sibling or relative, anyone in the world who is
Speaker 1: on my side who will back me up here. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do. So I lied to the
Speaker 1: judge and I said, yes, your honor, you know, an
Speaker 1: answer to his question about whether I was dropping the
Speaker 1: restraining letter willingly. And then I went home and I said,
Speaker 1: I need to get out, and I need to do
Speaker 1: it on my own, because these people are gonna let
Speaker 1: me die here. Don't let this guy my husband kill
Speaker 1: me before they will help me, and the hell with us.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to get out on my own. I'll
Speaker 1: get a college degree, I'll save up money, I'll get
Speaker 1: out on my own. And that's what you did, and
Speaker 1: that's what I did. So without telling anybody, I secretly
Speaker 1: applied to Redger's and became the first person in my
Speaker 1: family to go to college man or woman, by the way,
Speaker 1: and um, and I started saving up cash in the
Speaker 1: only place in the house that my abusive then husband
Speaker 1: wouldn't look. He would look through all my personal belongings
Speaker 1: to make sure that I didn't have anything that I
Speaker 1: was hiding from him, and to show me that I
Speaker 1: belonged to him and everything I owned belonged to him.
Speaker 1: He would start in front of me. You would go
Speaker 1: through the pockets of my scarts hanging in the closet,
Speaker 1: and he would go through all my personal belongings. So
Speaker 1: I found the one place in the house I knew
Speaker 1: he wouldn't look, a box of whole grain total in
Speaker 1: the pantry closet, and I would put cash in there.
Speaker 1: And I started going to college. And everybody in my
Speaker 1: family freaked out, how did you go to college? What
Speaker 1: is this about? And try to talk me out of it,
Speaker 1: and I, especially my then husband, was furious, and I said, nothing,
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing that you can do to stop me. From
Speaker 1: going to Rutgers. You know, good luck trying. I started
Speaker 1: to feel much stronger, said, you know, I have this
Speaker 1: great plan. I'm going to get out. I'm stating up cash,
Speaker 1: I'm getting my college degree, which felt really great. I
Speaker 1: really it was a great student. I really really loved
Speaker 1: my time at Rutgers. It would seem that you were
Speaker 1: also being exposed to other people out side of this
Speaker 1: insular community, like really for the first time. Absolutely, that
Speaker 1: was also exhilarating. Really just making friends for the first
Speaker 1: time in my life. That was the first time in
Speaker 1: my life I made friends with people who were not
Speaker 1: also Orthodox Jewish. Here I made friends with this Palestinian
Speaker 1: Muslim woman who had almost the exact same life story
Speaker 1: that I did, except I used to like to say
Speaker 1: her story started in Ramala and mine started in Borough Park.
Speaker 1: But um, but she also had been forced to marry
Speaker 1: and eighteen also had two kids as the neges as
Speaker 1: my kids. But yeah, that was that was part of
Speaker 1: the just the enormity of the experience of going to Rutgers,
Speaker 1: and it was really what made part of what made
Speaker 1: me feel ready to take my next rebellious step, which
Speaker 1: is while I was still a student there, I stopped
Speaker 1: wearing the head covering that is required of Orthodox Jewish women.
Speaker 1: And that was when my family think we were already
Speaker 1: upset that I was a college student. I mean, how
Speaker 1: embarrassing is that? But know, the neighbors don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to know. You can kind of try to keep that quiet.
Speaker 1: But for an Orthodox Jewish woman to walk outside the house,
Speaker 1: a married woman without a head covering, it's like walking
Speaker 1: around naked. That's how much of a statement it makes.
Speaker 1: They couldn't ignore that, They could not accept that if
Speaker 1: they saw that as just too much of a slap
Speaker 1: in their face and too much of an affront, and
Speaker 1: the flat that they would get from the community just
Speaker 1: too much for them to bear. So that was when
Speaker 1: they shunned me. They cut off all contact. And I
Speaker 1: have one sister who was the only one I could
Speaker 1: reach briefly kept in touch with me at first. I've
Speaker 1: since lost contact with her as well, but she kept
Speaker 1: in touch briefly at first and told me that the
Speaker 1: rest of my family was planning to sit shiffl for
Speaker 1: you go through the Jewish morning ritual for me as
Speaker 1: if I had literally died. And this is because I
Speaker 1: walked outside of the house with my natural hair on
Speaker 1: my head, despite being ostracized by her family. Freddy p
Speaker 1: Severes At Rutger's not only does she graduate, but at
Speaker 1: the graduation ceremony, she's the commencement speaker, an extraordinary accomplishment
Speaker 1: for someone who had signed a piece of paper promising
Speaker 1: not to take the SA T S once I graduated.
Speaker 1: By then, my family had already shunned me. So you
Speaker 1: can't kill somebody twice. That probably was their mistake. So
Speaker 1: at that point I was really able to do whatever
Speaker 1: I wanted. So I was able to change the locks
Speaker 1: file for divorce. And my original plan had been to
Speaker 1: leave my abusive marriage. But at that point I said, ha,
Speaker 1: this my family declared me dead because I stopped wearing
Speaker 1: a head covering. This is nuts. Once I started, you know,
Speaker 1: going to college and learning things and making other friends
Speaker 1: and started thinking about life in an adult way, which
Speaker 1: I never got a chance, and you before I was married,
Speaker 1: because I was married as a team. It just really
Speaker 1: really wasn't comfortable for me at all. I said, I
Speaker 1: don't belong in this whole religion. This is not me.
Speaker 1: So not only was I able thanks to my family
Speaker 1: shunning me, and not only was able to get out
Speaker 1: of my abusive marriage, but I was able to just
Speaker 1: leave the entire religion because you know, normally that would
Speaker 1: be a scary thing to do, because your family might shun,
Speaker 1: you might lose your whole family. Well, guess what, I
Speaker 1: had already lost my whole family. To me, the religion
Speaker 1: felt so oppressive. There was a god, and I believed
Speaker 1: in him back then. I mean, I'm an atheist now,
Speaker 1: but back then, I very, very strongly believed that there
Speaker 1: was a god. But he was not a god of
Speaker 1: joy or love. He was a god who was there
Speaker 1: to punish you. He was he was a god. It
Speaker 1: was like my father, he was like my brothers, He
Speaker 1: was like my ex husband. He was an angry, abusive god,
Speaker 1: and he was watching you every second of the day,
Speaker 1: just waiting for you to slip up. And by the way,
Speaker 1: there are so many ways to slip up, biting your
Speaker 1: lip on Saturdays, slipping up. There were so many rules
Speaker 1: in so many ways to mess up, and every time
Speaker 1: you missed up, you're going to get punished. And now
Speaker 1: you were the total people on Saturday. And wow, I
Speaker 1: saw when you washed your hands, you were supposed to
Speaker 1: do a twice on the right and twice on the left.
Speaker 1: You missed the second time. It was only twice on
Speaker 1: the right, and one of the halftimes on the left,
Speaker 1: God is watching in place of religion. Frady continues to
Speaker 1: focus on her education and her career. She's carving her
Speaker 1: own path, freed from the peril of her marriage and
Speaker 1: thrust into a professional landscape so refreshingly and restorative. Lee
Speaker 1: far from where she started. So I was at first
Speaker 1: I got my degree in journalism and loved, really loved journalism,
Speaker 1: and I was an investigative reporter. And then because journalism
Speaker 1: was a really tough time for journalism at the time,
Speaker 1: everybody was getting laid off. In an attempt to avoid
Speaker 1: getting laid off, I became a private investigator for the
Speaker 1: investigations from Corol, which at the time was the world's
Speaker 1: largest investigations firm. And then I became financially independent enough
Speaker 1: while I was there to buy a small house for
Speaker 1: myself and my two daughters. Is a little a little
Speaker 1: cape cod which I of course named the palaisd Trion
Speaker 1: because it was just such a triumphant moment for me
Speaker 1: to be able to to make it far enough out
Speaker 1: of my traumatic situation to actually buy a house for myself.
Speaker 1: And I imagine, but I am the first woman in
Speaker 1: the history of my entire family ever to buy your
Speaker 1: own home. And I was at the closing for the house,
Speaker 1: and if you've ever been at the closing, you know
Speaker 1: how boring it is, still signing your name again and
Speaker 1: again and again until your hand cramps up. And even
Speaker 1: the seller of the house wasn't there because they had
Speaker 1: already moved out of state. So I was just in
Speaker 1: a room with a couple of lawyers and just signing
Speaker 1: my name again and again, and I kept trying to
Speaker 1: explain to them what a big moment this was. I think,
Speaker 1: you Amber sandwhat a big deal this is what I'm
Speaker 1: buying a house. I was, you know, trying to explain
Speaker 1: I had been forced into a marriage to this abusive
Speaker 1: guy and trapped and then my whole family showned me
Speaker 1: and I managed to get out and they did not
Speaker 1: care at all. And so it was at this it
Speaker 1: was this anti climatic moment where I'm signing my name
Speaker 1: again and again to buy the CALLI to trio before
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I need to do something to
Speaker 1: celebrate this moment, and there was also this guilt. It
Speaker 1: was like a survivor's guilt almost where how did I
Speaker 1: get out? And there are so many people I know,
Speaker 1: I mean in my former community and in so many
Speaker 1: other communities who are still trapped in the situation that
Speaker 1: I got out of. So it was at the closing
Speaker 1: where I said, you know what I'm gonna do. I'm
Speaker 1: going to start a nonprofit. I'm going to help those
Speaker 1: other people. And this is just what Freddie does. She
Speaker 1: helps people. She creates a company called Unchained at Last,
Speaker 1: the only organization in the United States dedicated to ending
Speaker 1: forced and child marriage through direct services and advocacy. When
Speaker 1: I found it Unchained at Last, I was working full
Speaker 1: time as a single mom, working full time, commuting from
Speaker 1: New Jersey into Manhattan, you know, very little free time.
Speaker 1: But I said, you know, this is just going to
Speaker 1: be a couple of hours a week. On the side
Speaker 1: I was there was no budget, any expense would just
Speaker 1: come right out of my pocket. At first Life, but
Speaker 1: it was focused specifically on direct services. I wrote up
Speaker 1: a business plan just gonna help five women the first year,
Speaker 1: ten women the second year, just you know, provide some
Speaker 1: support and try to get them free legal representation, just
Speaker 1: like to start begging attorneys to help represent them for
Speaker 1: free while they're getting divorced. And that was basically the plan.
Speaker 1: And at the time, by the way, Unshane at Last
Speaker 1: was the only organization in the entire world with this
Speaker 1: mission of helping people in the US escape force marriages,
Speaker 1: and it still is the only one with that mission.
Speaker 1: By the end of the first year, we had thirty clients.
Speaker 1: From my original plan of five, we were at thirty.
Speaker 1: This was already a second full time job, just unpaid,
Speaker 1: and I realized we're onto something here, like this is this,
Speaker 1: this is something bigger. This has not helped five women
Speaker 1: on budget of zero with a staff of zero, like
Speaker 1: this is an actual thing. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there who need help. We were not marketing
Speaker 1: in any way. That was all word of mouth. Thirty
Speaker 1: people reach out to us for help, and so it's
Speaker 1: just continued to grow from there. Remember Freddy's Muslim Palestinian
Speaker 1: friend from college who was also a survivor of a
Speaker 1: forced marriage. Well, that friend becomes the first president of
Speaker 1: the board of Directors of Unchained at Last, together with
Speaker 1: other dedicated members of the organization. They strive to help
Speaker 1: women everywhere break free from their toxic and unsafe arrangements.
Speaker 1: So from the beginning I knew that, yes, this is
Speaker 1: happening in my former community, but I knew it was
Speaker 1: not limited to that. So my I was determined from
Speaker 1: the start to make this uh, you know, from any community, culture, religion,
Speaker 1: any background. If you are in or escaping a forced marriage,
Speaker 1: reach out to us and we will try to help you.
Speaker 1: You know, at first most of our clients were from
Speaker 1: the ultra Orthodox Jewish community, and now ultra Orthodox is
Speaker 1: you know, a small percentage of the overall clients that
Speaker 1: we help. Actually, so because we've helped people from almost
Speaker 1: any religion you can think of. I mean, we've helped
Speaker 1: people from religions where I had to google that I
Speaker 1: had never even heard of it, and from secular backgrounds.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is of course not only a religious issue.
Speaker 1: So as the years went on, so first of all,
Speaker 1: our staff and budgets sort of growing, it became very
Speaker 1: clear we can't just do this on the the kindness
Speaker 1: of volunteers and this. So after four years we had
Speaker 1: enough funding that I was able to take a salary
Speaker 1: so that I could leave my other job. And now
Speaker 1: we're actually seven of us were a team of seven.
Speaker 1: I mean we have an actual office, so we don't
Speaker 1: have to work out of my dining room anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: And and we have a budget now of over seven
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, where it was from a budget of zero.
Speaker 1: And then the other big thing that has changed is
Speaker 1: where at first we thought this was all going to
Speaker 1: be direct services, what we realized within the first few
Speaker 1: years was that in addition to the forced marriage problem
Speaker 1: we have in the United States, there is a significant
Speaker 1: child marriage problem. And because more and more girls underage
Speaker 1: a team, we're reaching out to us asking for the
Speaker 1: same help. And we operate nationally. So these are girls
Speaker 1: from across the US just calling and asking for the
Speaker 1: same help that we give adults, and we realize, oh crap,
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do for them. If we help
Speaker 1: them leave home, we could be charged criminally. We get
Speaker 1: them to a domestic violence shelter, the shelters turn them away.
Speaker 1: They can't bring a legal action in their own name.
Speaker 1: If in many states, you could be forced into marriage
Speaker 1: before eighteen with without any input from you, your parents
Speaker 1: sign a form or a judge you know, stamps the
Speaker 1: page and you're forced into this marriage, and you can't
Speaker 1: even freaking fall for divorce until you're a team, because
Speaker 1: you can't bring a legal action in your own name.
Speaker 1: There's almost nothing we can do for these girls when
Speaker 1: they reach out to us. So in two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: even though we're we're a tiny team at the time,
Speaker 1: there were I think two or three of us on
Speaker 1: a tiny budget, working out of a little office in
Speaker 1: New Jersey in an undisclosed location because we get all
Speaker 1: kinds of obnoxious threats. So for security reasons, we have
Speaker 1: a you know, a office in a secret location. And
Speaker 1: we said, you know what, in our spare time, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take on this little project. We're gonna end child marriage.
Speaker 1: In the United States. At the time, it was legal
Speaker 1: in all fifty U s. States. Marriage before eighteen was
Speaker 1: legal in all fifty states. Even though it's recognized, I
Speaker 1: said to human rights abuse, and even though minors cyplicate
Speaker 1: can't fall for divorce and you can't get into his
Speaker 1: mystic violence shelter, it's just an absurd, an evil legal
Speaker 1: construct where we have here miners can be forced into
Speaker 1: marriage before they have a legal right to get out
Speaker 1: of it. And in um since two thousand and fifteen.
Speaker 1: Well took us until two thousand eighteen to convince the
Speaker 1: first U. S State to end child marriage, and since
Speaker 1: then we have convinced six U. S. States we have
Speaker 1: helped to end child marriage. We passed legislation, and we
Speaker 1: have only forty four states to go. The work Freighty
Speaker 1: has done with Unchained at Last has saved countless lives
Speaker 1: hers included. Working with us who have suffered similar circumstances
Speaker 1: has become her vocation. It's been enormously healing too. I
Speaker 1: use that word healing all the time. I actually use
Speaker 1: healing and empowering to be able to take my own
Speaker 1: trauma and instead of trying to forget it or get
Speaker 1: past it, instead using it as a way to help others.
Speaker 1: That is truly healing and empowering. And what I what
Speaker 1: I get out of Unchained is so much bigger than
Speaker 1: what I put into it. As hard as this work is,
Speaker 1: that type of healing, I mean, I don't know any
Speaker 1: other way I could have been I could have gotten that.
Speaker 1: And it's tough, you know, many days, just the sadness,
Speaker 1: the stories that we get to, the survivors that I
Speaker 1: direct with who shares some of the worst of humanity.
Speaker 1: I mean the most horrific, unspeakable things that that people
Speaker 1: do to each other, and in this case, it's almost
Speaker 1: always parents doing it to their own children. It's so
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly sad, and it can turn depressing, it can it
Speaker 1: can be really tough and triggering for me, since this
Speaker 1: is so close to the trauma that I myself have
Speaker 1: have overcome. But it's also so healing and empowering. And
Speaker 1: and every time someone says to me, you know, I
Speaker 1: see you did it, you got out of it, and
Speaker 1: you rebuild your life. You give me hope, you give
Speaker 1: me inspiration, you make you prove to me that I
Speaker 1: can do it too. What more can I ask? Family
Speaker 1: Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly z
Speaker 1: a Core is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is
Speaker 1: the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
Speaker 1: like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your
Speaker 1: story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
Speaker 1: one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You
Speaker 1: can also find me on Instagram at Danny Writer. And
Speaker 1: if you'd like to know more about the story that
Speaker 1: inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.