Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This episode contains
Speaker 1: descriptions of sexual assault listener discretion as advised, run.
Speaker 2: Away, you already to right to the end of the line.
Speaker 2: No one need staying, No Onelllow believe in the path
Speaker 2: only line.
Speaker 3: Sunni album.
Speaker 1: That's Jessica Willis Fisher singing from her beautiful song River Runaway.
Speaker 1: If you haven't listened to part one of Jessica's story,
Speaker 1: do that now and then come back for more of
Speaker 1: this powerful, harrowing, and ultimately deeply inspiring story. I'm Danny Shapiro,
Speaker 1: and this is family Secrets. The secrets that are kept
Speaker 1: from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the
Speaker 1: secrets we keep from ourselves. Secrets will eventually spill out.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it takes generations, Sometimes it takes decades. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: takes minutes. Jessica's book is called Unspeakable for a reason.
Speaker 1: When it comes to the horrible truths for father's abuse,
Speaker 1: she simply cannot speak it. It's impossible. Her siblings aren't
Speaker 1: speaking it, and certainly her father isn't either. And it's
Speaker 1: only those few times her mother alludes to it before
Speaker 1: it's tucked away again and As the family extends, so
Speaker 1: does the scope of this secret. One of Jessica's brothers
Speaker 1: is about to get married to a woman named Maria.
Speaker 1: He says to Jessica one day Maria knows. A little
Speaker 1: bit later, Jessica falls in love too. She and Sean
Speaker 1: become involved when they're teenagers, building a romantic connection. She
Speaker 1: doesn't divulge right away to Sean what's happened to her,
Speaker 1: but she does begin to wonder, how can I completely
Speaker 1: connect with this person if he doesn't know the truth.
Speaker 4: So this dreadful inevitability of kind of being on this
Speaker 4: collision course.
Speaker 3: How long are secrets like this going to be containable?
Speaker 4: And the biggest threat to that is, yes, as we
Speaker 4: get older, there's the personal connections that we try to
Speaker 4: make as individuals, and then you know, as we're performing
Speaker 4: and stuff, there's just this bigger and bigger microscope, bigger
Speaker 4: and bigger platform where there's this more and more awareness
Speaker 4: and how are we going to kind of be able
Speaker 4: to balance that? And my brother became engaged and it
Speaker 4: was actually during my late teenage years that I was
Speaker 4: trying to figure out how to have a relationship. But
Speaker 4: it was this disillusionment over time, realizing, oh, my dad
Speaker 4: really is never going to let me go. And I
Speaker 4: think I realized how deep that was in me by
Speaker 4: realizing I never imagine getting married. Some part of me
Speaker 4: knew like, that's probably never going to happen for me,
Speaker 4: but of course I desperately wanted that.
Speaker 1: When Jessica's in her early twenties, she and Sean have
Speaker 1: not had sex, but their relationship is certainly sexual. She
Speaker 1: sends him some partially clad selfies and they're on her computer,
Speaker 1: and one day one of her little sisters discovers these
Speaker 1: selfies through the lens of all she's been taught at
Speaker 1: home and at church. She's confused and traumatized by these photos,
Speaker 1: unsure of why Jessa and Sean have been communicating this way.
Speaker 4: I was secretly talking with him, and I don't think
Speaker 4: any healthy relationship is built on secrets. You know, how
Speaker 4: is it supposed to be healthy? And you are sexually developing,
Speaker 4: you are all of these things, but there's my religious
Speaker 4: teachings and this very drastic logistical thing around me, and
Speaker 4: so you know, we were digitally communicating. We're both young adults,
Speaker 4: were both in our early twenties and when my sister
Speaker 4: saw that, I just knew how much more so, like
Speaker 4: this train is about to slow motion crash, you know,
Speaker 4: and there's no way for me to really wiggle out
Speaker 4: of this. And I was like, here, I am traumatizing
Speaker 4: like a child because this is so confusing. And I
Speaker 4: was just like, please let me tell mom and dad,
Speaker 4: and I promised her kind.
Speaker 3: Of that it was going to be okay.
Speaker 4: And I had this awareness, like this deep guilt of
Speaker 4: feeling like I'm an adult telling a child that's all
Speaker 4: going to be okay. And I also know that this
Speaker 4: is not going to be okay, and I think I
Speaker 4: genuinely meant to go tell my parents and I didn't.
Speaker 3: I played it out.
Speaker 4: It lasted a couple more weeks before basically it came
Speaker 4: out and they found out. I did not just go,
Speaker 4: you know what, this is wrong and like stand up
Speaker 4: and rebel. I basically folded and accepted that. You know,
Speaker 4: of course, a part of me, there were so many
Speaker 4: different parts of me feeling different things, but as far
Speaker 4: as my behaviors, I was like, yes, I am sinful,
Speaker 4: I am wrong. And it got turned into kind of
Speaker 4: even though we don't talk about Dad's problems here you are,
Speaker 4: you clearly have problems, and he's the one in charge.
Speaker 4: You're the child, you need to be disciplined. And it
Speaker 4: started this weird chapter where I was the problem in
Speaker 4: the family and it created this mob like mentality where
Speaker 4: you know, I had to be managed, the kids had
Speaker 4: to be protected from me, My actions had to be monitored,
Speaker 4: and it was really my soul at stake here. Dad
Speaker 4: was like, you know, she's she's being led astray by
Speaker 4: the devil, and parts of me resisted, but it felt
Speaker 4: too much. I was going against the whole entire system,
Speaker 4: all of my siblings, both my parents, and I had
Speaker 4: to keep up this outer shtick and roll and smile
Speaker 4: on stage, and inside it was I was losing my
Speaker 4: sanity bit by bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so painful, this like level of control and surveillance.
Speaker 4: It's cultish because it's the mind control. It's the bounded
Speaker 4: choice theory, where it's like I share with people that
Speaker 4: there is this time where and I have a video
Speaker 4: of it. And sometimes I'm so thankful for that video,
Speaker 4: because otherwise I would doubt that this happened. But there's proof,
Speaker 4: and sometimes I need that proof to even be able
Speaker 4: to believe my memories of these moments, but it's this
Speaker 4: kind of kangaroo court scene where you know, Dad is
Speaker 4: telling me I have to claim my master, and he's saying,
Speaker 4: I already know you're following singe, but you have to
Speaker 4: confess it, you know, And so think inquisition, think whatever
Speaker 4: worst version of that cult leader and control mob sort
Speaker 4: of thing. And it was in that moment that I
Speaker 4: realized that this was an escalation of dynamics that had
Speaker 4: been here forever.
Speaker 3: There were moments.
Speaker 4: Where I would pile on a sibling who was stepping
Speaker 4: out of line, but now how could I protest that
Speaker 4: without being so hypocritical and taking it spiritually? I would
Speaker 4: sometimes open the Bible, which was so troubling to me,
Speaker 4: and I've had such conflicting thoughts, but their scripture that
Speaker 4: says if you do not forgive others, God will not
Speaker 4: forgive you. And so it felt like I was trying
Speaker 4: to find the courage and the foothold to finally like say, Dad,
Speaker 4: you're wrong. The main problem here is what you've been
Speaker 4: doing all this time. But unfortunately I had taken steps that,
Speaker 4: according to what I believed, was also wrong. So it
Speaker 4: was this, who are you to talk sort of thing,
Speaker 4: and it was just really a crazy making situation.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. One night on tour, a set
Speaker 1: of blue flashing lights head toward the Fisher Family tour bus,
Speaker 1: which is pulled over on the side of the road.
Speaker 1: Jessica's father has been violently striking her in the face,
Speaker 1: but now a cop is here. If a cop sees
Speaker 1: what's really going on, maybe Jessica and her siblings will
Speaker 1: be rescued, will be safe. But that's not what happens.
Speaker 4: He pulled the bus over, he continued to attack me,
Speaker 4: and a cop had pulled over. It was just the
Speaker 4: wildest feeling, so surreal, so weird.
Speaker 3: I was just.
Speaker 4: So terrified for my life. I was basically an animal mode.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I didn't know if this was a moment where his
Speaker 4: violence would lead to someone dying, if that would be me,
Speaker 4: if that would have made me happy. You know, I
Speaker 4: really kind of think that moment. One of the things
Speaker 4: I remember thinking is I just wish I wasn't here,
Speaker 4: because if you follow that I'm the problem, believe all
Speaker 4: the way to its end, it's you know, everybody would
Speaker 4: be better off if I wasn't here. You know, the
Speaker 4: cop comes to the door essentially, and I don't even
Speaker 4: need to be forced into the closet or or out
Speaker 4: from you. I just kind of like a zombie go
Speaker 4: hide myself because one of my coping mechanisms was always
Speaker 4: on a dime, being able to smile, being able to
Speaker 4: pull it off.
Speaker 3: But you can't.
Speaker 4: You can't do that when you're bleeding. You can't do
Speaker 4: that when your face is hanging weird. My body was
Speaker 4: going to betray me, and it just felt so out
Speaker 4: of control.
Speaker 3: And as you.
Speaker 4: Hear this person says, there's everybody okay, you know, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: everybody was just screaming.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're not going to be able to pull it off.
Speaker 4: But no, there's this oh yeah, everything's fine, and just
Speaker 4: it was the depths of depression and despair because I
Speaker 4: was realizing I was still waiting.
Speaker 3: For permission.
Speaker 4: To ask for help, for permission to be believed, to
Speaker 4: be rescued, all of these things, and it was not
Speaker 4: going to come. And the heaviest thing was it is
Speaker 4: escalating so fast and my actual bodily safety is fleeing.
Speaker 4: I may die here, and I don't know if I
Speaker 4: have what it takes to get out. I'm the only one, like,
Speaker 4: nobody's coming. If I don't figure out how to get
Speaker 4: out of here, I'm going to die here. And I
Speaker 4: just at that moment wasn't sure it was even worth it,
Speaker 4: Like what am I escaping too?
Speaker 3: This is my family.
Speaker 4: I knew Sean at the time, and I part of
Speaker 4: me wanted to be in that relationship, but I hadn't
Speaker 4: fought for it, so maybe that wasn't even waiting for me.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I had to believe that I was worth, that I
Speaker 4: had value, that I deserved to be safe, and that
Speaker 4: just felt like so far away and so impossible. It
Speaker 4: was a dark couple months there, and chunks that are
Speaker 4: kind of missing. But I gave in and didn't protest
Speaker 4: and kind of took the sin on my shoulders for
Speaker 4: that period and accepted all those negative, you know, judgments
Speaker 4: of me. When I just kind of went, Okay, I surrender,
Speaker 4: I give up, I realized, well, actually, no, I'm no
Speaker 4: longer resisting that. But some part of me cannot do
Speaker 4: the dance and smile and be happy.
Speaker 3: That part's broken.
Speaker 4: But I can't really execute complete nothingness either, Like there's
Speaker 4: still a part of me that wants to survive and
Speaker 4: that kind of made its way to the surface.
Speaker 3: But there was just this normal day.
Speaker 4: It could have been any other horrible day during the
Speaker 4: dark period, but there's an altercation with my dad, and
Speaker 4: something in me went, that is the last time that happens.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't the question, it wasn't the theological statement.
Speaker 4: It just went, that is not happening again. And it
Speaker 4: almost felt like something outside of me. I now kind
Speaker 4: of actually view it, maybe from the core of me.
Speaker 4: I think little invisible girl that had borne all of.
Speaker 3: This time's up. That's it. I'm not putting up with
Speaker 3: any more of this.
Speaker 4: I had sort of been learning about some narcissism and
Speaker 4: talk about vocabulary. I was trying to get the vocabulary
Speaker 4: to describe twenty years of confusing traumatic experience. So there
Speaker 4: were these glimpses of clarity of Oh, I actually know
Speaker 4: what's happening here. I can see some of these dynamics,
Speaker 4: and I would do more of that before too long,
Speaker 4: but I knew he could keep me forever. I finally
Speaker 4: had this moment of oh, the chances are in your mind,
Speaker 4: they're not actually on the door.
Speaker 3: Most of the time. You know, like you can run.
Speaker 3: It is completely reasonable that you can run. And so
Speaker 3: when I just.
Speaker 4: Had that knowing of that's the last time that's going
Speaker 4: to happen. I'm not going to be here by the
Speaker 4: end of the day. I'm not sure exactly how. And
Speaker 4: so it was well, what are you going to do?
Speaker 4: Where are you going to go? And I was like,
Speaker 4: give me a phone. And if they had said no,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe I would have ran that night under
Speaker 4: cover of darkness when I found a chance.
Speaker 3: But they handed me a phone and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: who can I call?
Speaker 4: And I called my dad's cousin who was around my age,
Speaker 4: and I just said, can I come, Can I come
Speaker 4: see you?
Speaker 3: And she said sure, and I said can I bring
Speaker 3: a bag? She said sure.
Speaker 4: It's like trying to climb this wall, so you get
Speaker 4: a foothold and it enables you to get to the
Speaker 4: next So that told me I knew I was going
Speaker 4: to get out today because if I didn't show up,
Speaker 4: other people outside my family were going to wonder. So
Speaker 4: then I had that foothold, and then it was like, well,
Speaker 4: when are you going to go?
Speaker 3: What are you going to take?
Speaker 4: And my dad, he'd never really been in this position,
Speaker 4: and he did all he could to make sure he
Speaker 4: felt as in control all the situation as possible, and
Speaker 4: he framed it to the family that I had to
Speaker 4: leave my choices. We're going to reflect badly on the family.
Speaker 4: So he was pushing me out. And that's another kind
Speaker 4: of before and after a moment where I think it
Speaker 4: could have gone so many different ways, but everything changed
Speaker 4: really fast after that from that moment.
Speaker 1: It's interesting too, because there's something in there about the
Speaker 1: power of language and the power of naming things. Sean
Speaker 1: gives you this book that really describes what you know.
Speaker 1: Pathological narcissism is what it looks like, and that's the
Speaker 1: first time it's sort of like the word molested earlier,
Speaker 1: something clicks for you, where as like that day might
Speaker 1: not have been all that different from any other day,
Speaker 1: but the thing that was finally the last straw that
Speaker 1: said no more has something to do with the arsenal
Speaker 1: of language that you had.
Speaker 4: Now I believe that, and it's astounding how little it
Speaker 4: can take sometimes you know, just a few more words,
Speaker 4: because how would you actually feel if you were angry
Speaker 4: all the time but you didn't even have the word
Speaker 4: anger or any of his adjacent words, Like there's all
Speaker 4: this built up pressure and experience and like a lot
Speaker 4: of times very visceral feelings and there's no way to
Speaker 4: express it. And so certainly the emotional build up and
Speaker 4: back up and just years of events. And for me
Speaker 4: it was helpful is there were a lots lots of
Speaker 4: events that I still needed to sort through, lots of
Speaker 4: feelings I needed to sort through. But when you see
Speaker 4: the dynamics and you see the pattern, and you see
Speaker 4: the way things are related to each other, concepts like narcissism, dissociation,
Speaker 4: high control groups, things like that, I started seeing, Oh,
Speaker 4: my goodness, that's what I'm in right now. And yes,
Speaker 4: it's also in my family. Yes it's happened over years
Speaker 4: and years, and there's religion in here, and there's TV,
Speaker 4: and there's all these things.
Speaker 3: But those surface things didn't matter as much.
Speaker 4: The specifics don't matter. When you look at the patterns
Speaker 4: of grooming, or when you look at the patterns of
Speaker 4: abuse and violence, you notice that you can start to
Speaker 4: see the pillars that hold up how that all works,
Speaker 4: and if you disrupt that pattern, you just stop playing
Speaker 4: into that pattern. And to some degree, it's quite fragile
Speaker 4: and realizing that my dad.
Speaker 3: Had all this power, but what power did he really have?
Speaker 3: He kind of.
Speaker 4: Got it from all of us, yes, and trying to
Speaker 4: understand that, you know, when you're preyed on by such
Speaker 4: toxic narcissism, to remove the fuel, to remove giving my
Speaker 4: power over to prop up him. I had gotten to
Speaker 4: a point where the show couldn't really go on very
Speaker 4: well without me, and it put a lot of stress
Speaker 4: on my siblings that I would have loved to save
Speaker 4: them from. But there was kind of this awareness that
Speaker 4: I at least had at that moment, like looking at
Speaker 4: my dad, like, yeah, you have the power, but all I.
Speaker 3: Have to do is step away, and you like, you
Speaker 3: can't do anything to me anymore. What you've done to
Speaker 3: me is what I've let you do to me.
Speaker 1: Jessica and Sean finally get together for real. Jessica finds
Speaker 1: a really good trauma informed therapist, and she begins to
Speaker 1: learn the language of trauma, dissociation, compartmentalization, hypervigilance, putting words
Speaker 1: to experience she's been living inside her body for decades.
Speaker 1: She also hears a phrase for her therapist when she
Speaker 1: finally shares the scope of everything that has happened to
Speaker 1: her child rape Jessica had desperately wanted this to not
Speaker 1: be the case, but it is the case. The definition
Speaker 1: of child rape fits into the parameters of what her
Speaker 1: father has done to her. She is twenty four years old,
Speaker 1: she has no academic degree of any kind, since she's
Speaker 1: only ever been homeschooled, But what she does have is strength, love,
Speaker 1: the help she needs, and the knowledge that she is
Speaker 1: finally safe.
Speaker 4: This story is not the same without that support. It
Speaker 4: was just a marvel and it didn't really compute to
Speaker 4: me people who, for all practical purposes, didn't know me,
Speaker 4: you know. And certainly there was this compulsion to try
Speaker 4: to share, because how can you really be close, how
Speaker 4: can you really cleanse the moon.
Speaker 3: Without just getting it all out there?
Speaker 4: But I was I was doing that in therapy, and
Speaker 4: I was trying to, you know, get to know my
Speaker 4: husband and now my in laws, and they're welcoming community
Speaker 4: that just opened their arms to me. I was in
Speaker 4: a bad spot and I got so much help, and
Speaker 4: I know that doesn't happen for everyone. I just don't
Speaker 4: think you can separate my health journey and my recovery
Speaker 4: and everything from how critical really good trauma informed therapy
Speaker 4: really accepting.
Speaker 3: And loving people.
Speaker 4: And between those two things, I was also directed towards
Speaker 4: places where my therapy could be funded, you know, because
Speaker 4: I don't have my feet under me and you're trying
Speaker 4: to start our new life. It felt like, all right,
Speaker 4: I got away with my life. I'm going to try
Speaker 4: to start over. And as I'm learning and acquiring the
Speaker 4: vocabulary to understand what happened to me, whether it be
Speaker 4: learning that child rape did apply to me or oh,
Speaker 4: dissociation like that, so that means I was also learning
Speaker 4: about predators and perpetrators. Because the work that we immediately
Speaker 4: jumped into is like, where do you start. There's there's
Speaker 4: twenty four years to address, and the newer, most recent
Speaker 4: stuff with the tendencies and that the mob meant and
Speaker 4: all that felt like not the place to start. So
Speaker 4: we just I just went to when I was youngest,
Speaker 4: when it was clearest, when it's so obviously not my fault,
Speaker 4: and to understand, hey, this is how this happens.
Speaker 3: Many other people have gone through this.
Speaker 4: It was devastating and yet relieving and so empowering all
Speaker 4: the same time because I was able to move so
Speaker 4: quickly and there was less, you know, judgment to myself
Speaker 4: that would come up for my teenage self and my
Speaker 4: young adult self, but as my child self. That was
Speaker 4: really helpful to learn about other victims and survivors, and
Speaker 4: also to understand that it wasn't a problem of my
Speaker 4: dad or me as a daughter, like what's wrong with me?
Speaker 4: Understanding that this happens over and over and there is
Speaker 4: a pattern, and we have words that conscribe these things.
Speaker 4: And it became very chilling, very quick. This is no
Speaker 4: longer just my dad or my abuser, but this is
Speaker 4: a perpetrator that is out there, and so I'm doing
Speaker 4: my best to just get my feet underbeed do this
Speaker 4: extremely excruciating, heavy therapeutic work which is going to be
Speaker 4: a lifetime effort, but very quickly, you know, within weeks,
Speaker 4: especially as my therapist came to understand more, as I
Speaker 4: shared more with her, she was very aware it is
Speaker 4: a very dangerous situation, you know, And I would basically
Speaker 4: came to realize I was kind of needing to prepare
Speaker 4: to play a part and if this was ever going
Speaker 4: to stop, I was gonna have to talk about this,
Speaker 4: and you know, Sean and different people would ask me
Speaker 4: like can you report this?
Speaker 3: So you're ready to tell you.
Speaker 4: They were trying to be respectful and not force that
Speaker 4: on me because they knew I needed to try to
Speaker 4: get a sense of control and ownership over my body
Speaker 4: and my story and my experience.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: The longer time went on, the more I could see
Speaker 4: that not that this whole thing is my fault, but
Speaker 4: it may be on me to stop this.
Speaker 3: And it's becoming.
Speaker 4: More and more of this moral weight that every day
Speaker 4: I don't do something, you know, if nothing else. I mean,
Speaker 4: hopefully my dad isn't preying on my sisters at this moment,
Speaker 4: but they're out in front of people selling a lie
Speaker 4: that is, you know, what was on the surface is
Speaker 4: totally not what was happening behind closed doors. And it
Speaker 4: was a real headspin to try to get the courage,
Speaker 4: and you just want to hide escape, but you feel
Speaker 4: like you have this huge responsibility.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: The initial report about Jessica's father is phoned into a
Speaker 1: hotline at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and it is
Speaker 1: not made by Jessica, but rather by someone close to
Speaker 1: her family who had always suspected that something was terribly amiss.
Speaker 1: In the Willis household, Jessica is called in to give
Speaker 1: a statement. Within twenty four hours, an investigation is launched.
Speaker 4: There are so many agents involved. It really very quickly
Speaker 4: was like, well, will someone speak firsthand to this?
Speaker 3: Will Jessica talk or not?
Speaker 4: And I was very much willing and went in with
Speaker 4: the headspace of feeling like, you know, I'm actually more
Speaker 4: scared about how this could go down. When you start
Speaker 4: looking at perpetrators, even serial killers like cult leaders, when
Speaker 4: you get them cornered, it gets really dangerous really fast.
Speaker 4: And because of how it looked on the outside, I
Speaker 4: honestly was afraid that people were not going to understand
Speaker 4: the gravity of the situation. So my thought going in
Speaker 4: to this interview once I said yes to it, was
Speaker 4: I have to say as much as I can, as
Speaker 4: fast as I can, and stress to them how bad
Speaker 4: I basically have to roll out the greatest hits of
Speaker 4: the worst things that I've ever seen and have ever
Speaker 4: happened to me.
Speaker 3: And you know, they were there.
Speaker 4: To see if I was going to say that any
Speaker 4: sexual crimes had happened, but I was like, okay, you know,
Speaker 4: there's violence, bankings, and there's religious teachings, and there's six
Speaker 4: ar fifteens, and there's end times profits.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: So I'm saying all this crazy, like not very organized stuff,
Speaker 4: but they kept bringing.
Speaker 3: It back to like, okay, did this happen? Like what happened?
Speaker 3: How old were you? Where were you?
Speaker 4: And you know, so in describing the sexual crimes, like
Speaker 4: you would touch me here and this and that, and
Speaker 4: they asked the best questions they can and just saying,
Speaker 4: you know, oh, did this happen like two times or
Speaker 4: five times or ten times? I was like, no, like
Speaker 4: a hundred times. I can't even tell you how many
Speaker 4: times this is. This is the least drastic thing, Like
Speaker 4: I understand it's a crime, and I'm in therapy and
Speaker 4: I'm finally coming to understand just how bad this is.
Speaker 3: But that's the base.
Speaker 4: We're going to add everything else on top of that.
Speaker 4: I was feeling all sorts of things, but even just
Speaker 4: to say that out loud, oh yeah, that happened hundreds
Speaker 4: of times, there's a part of me that was kind
Speaker 4: of just shocked by even hearing me say that, because
Speaker 4: there's so much to grieve, so much to acknowledge, so
Speaker 4: much to sit with, you know, twenty four years of
Speaker 4: reaction that have never had their proper time.
Speaker 3: But there was no time for that, you know.
Speaker 4: It was on to the next thing, trying to paint,
Speaker 4: not to exaggerate. But I finished talking for hours, and
Speaker 4: I thought, did I forget the one thing that's actually
Speaker 4: going to make this change and make this stop? And
Speaker 4: it took me a while to understand that that was
Speaker 4: connected to me thinking I must have not said it
Speaker 4: right when everythings didn't stop. Eventually you come back to
Speaker 4: blaming yourself and saying, well, I'm the problem. And so
Speaker 4: even sitting there in that investigation room and talking to
Speaker 4: these professionals, it was like, have I done enough.
Speaker 1: Jessica's father is arrested. He pleads guilty. Jessica is, of course,
Speaker 1: completely on edge until the moment of our father's sentencing.
Speaker 1: He'll be in prison for most of the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. He has gotten away with so much for
Speaker 1: so long long, and now he is finally being brought
Speaker 1: to justice for all the pain, havoc and abuse he
Speaker 1: has wrought. And just as her father loses his freedom,
Speaker 1: Jessica begins to gain her own. Sean asks Jessica for
Speaker 1: her hand in marriage, and she decides there's something she
Speaker 1: still needs to share with him. For the case, she
Speaker 1: had written a fourteen page letter detailing, to the best
Speaker 1: of her ability and memory, everything that her father had
Speaker 1: done to her. This letter is used in her testimony,
Speaker 1: and while she's let Sean into some degree, she hasn't
Speaker 1: shared all the details, all the horror, in all its granularity,
Speaker 1: But she wants to enter into a marriage in which
Speaker 1: there are no more secrets, nothing hidden, only truth.
Speaker 4: After I'd talked with TBI, I told him all I could,
Speaker 4: and I actually asked she also something that I had
Speaker 4: written be included that included some graphics, specifics of what
Speaker 4: had happened over the years, just to make sure that
Speaker 4: I was giving them all the information they needed. And
Speaker 4: they did end up making their rest warrant from part
Speaker 4: of my testimony, and you know, it didn't really feel
Speaker 4: like an option. There was nothing that I was trying
Speaker 4: to hold back. And in the days after that is
Speaker 4: the investigations going on. You know, I'm looking at this
Speaker 4: man that I love that is getting to know me,
Speaker 4: and you know we had been kept from doing that
Speaker 4: the normal way and dating and recording, and I'm having
Speaker 4: to share the deepest, darkest, worst things that have ever
Speaker 4: happened to me with people I don't know, complete strangers,
Speaker 4: these investigators and therapists, And if he was willing, I
Speaker 4: wanted to tell him, and I didn't want to force
Speaker 4: him to hear that. But our relationship was built on
Speaker 4: him sharing vulnerable things with me, and over time, you know,
Speaker 4: me trusting that. Yes, it's always risky to open up
Speaker 4: to someone, but I had literally lived on the edge
Speaker 4: of a cliff my entire life, and I didn't want
Speaker 4: to go in to a relationship where I was going
Speaker 4: to be judged for that. I was done with having
Speaker 4: those secrets and I lived in their power for so long.
Speaker 4: I couldn't And again, he has his choice. He doesn't
Speaker 4: have to share everything about his past. He had shared
Speaker 4: some things to build that trust, but he said, yes,
Speaker 4: I want to all read whatever someone else has to read.
Speaker 4: And that was a big moment. You know, not a
Speaker 4: lot of fanfare or anything, but you know, to see Sean,
Speaker 4: this man that I love. And also even just having
Speaker 4: talked to the investigators too, there's something about seeing a man,
Speaker 4: this man that I personally love. And then in the
Speaker 4: case of the investigator, someone I don't know but who
Speaker 4: kind of fits all of those stereotypical, especially the way
Speaker 4: I was raised, masculine, manly protector, you know, essentially the
Speaker 4: dat that I would have wanted internally all this time,
Speaker 4: and to see them take in my story and be
Speaker 4: moved by it, grieved by it. But also part of
Speaker 4: the proper reaction to this is anger and action, and
Speaker 4: I think, especially as a woman, those things are a
Speaker 4: lot of times taken away.
Speaker 3: You have to be sweet, you have to be.
Speaker 4: Kind, and you know, in my mind growing up, those
Speaker 4: were the things that.
Speaker 3: Men were allowed to do.
Speaker 4: Men were allowed to get passionate about what should happen,
Speaker 4: and to feel like I trusted that this investigator.
Speaker 3: Was going to make this happen.
Speaker 4: And then to share in vulnerability with the person that
Speaker 4: I'm coming to love and will eventually build a life with,
Speaker 4: like those were really big moments in this whole entire process.
Speaker 1: Here's Jessica reading a passage from her memoir Unspeakable. Yes
Speaker 1: she is speaking.
Speaker 5: We had a small wedding ceremony. By the time I
Speaker 5: stood prepared to walk myself down the aisle in front
Speaker 5: of eighty some people on that drizzly spring day, there
Speaker 5: was an anchor of calm underneath the butterflies. No one
Speaker 5: there would be giving this woman away. When I was
Speaker 5: halfway to Sean, he abandoned his post to meet me.
Speaker 5: We walked the last few steps together.
Speaker 3: We had already won, gone ahead of it.
Speaker 2: The boy as the Crown Hsigan. It's a.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Accour is
Speaker 1: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 1: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 1: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 1: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight secret Z zero. That's the number zero. You can
Speaker 1: also find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if
Speaker 1: you'd like to know more about the story that inspired
Speaker 1: this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance And You're Not Alone.
Speaker 2: I can't let you know. Leave my bottle with the
Speaker 2: lost in fom jump. Don't und you're gone ahead, them
Speaker 2: out before you look
Speaker 1: Again.