[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Prejuice podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Eric Swizinski, and I'm a former member of an independent fundamental Baptist Church, and as a former fundamentalist, I'm now shedding light on the dark side of the church from the pulpit to the pew.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, I'm joined once again by guest Hannah St.
[SPEAKER_01]: George, who many of you will remember from two previous episodes where she shared both her story of surviving abuse within a deeply religious family,
[SPEAKER_01]: to a network of horrifying abuses connected to Bible Baptist Church in Fairbanks, Alaska.
[SPEAKER_01]: In today's conversation, we're discussing the latest developments in a case against her mother, Vicky Leak, who's currently facing thirteen felony charges related to child abuse.
[SPEAKER_01]: As of now, Vicky's pre-trial hearing is scheduled for August eleven, and I'll make sure to share any updates as soon as they become available.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't heard Hannah's previous two episodes, I've linked them in the showness of this episode and I highly encourage that you listen to them before checking out this conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: But either way, there's something here you can pull from the discussion.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's much more interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go ahead and dive into my conversation with Hannah St.
[SPEAKER_01]: George.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in our first conversation, we spent a good portion of our time talking about the church and talking about
[SPEAKER_01]: like the high control of the church we talked about like the way that it kind of glossed over really horrible things that were happening that the church could have easily stepped in and done something about.
[SPEAKER_01]: We spent our second episode talking about how manifested with numerous abuse cases tied to the church and really ended the conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: talking about some of the hits really close to home, specifically with your mom now facing some very serious charges.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we go back to the beginning of that story, can you just inform the audience where your mom's case is currently?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what's what's happening with it right now?
[SPEAKER_03]: So right now, the last that I've heard is just kind of what's public knowledge and that she has a criminal trial coming up in August.
[SPEAKER_03]: She got charged.
[SPEAKER_03]: She got arrested in March.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it was two thousand twenty two.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was over three years ago now.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was immediately bailed out by Bible Baptist Church.
[SPEAKER_03]: and served less than twenty four hours in jail and she's been on house arrest on ankle monitor ever since then so from what I've seen she they are their attorneys are dragging on the case and I don't know what their approaches if it's just you know the longer the time goes by the more that the kids will forget or
[SPEAKER_03]: I have no idea what their thoughts are, but they've continued to drag it on and drag it on.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't know if the trial will actually be happening in August, but that's kind of, you know, what's on the calendar right now, the court calendar.
[SPEAKER_03]: The last hearing that I heard anything about was probably close to a year ago, and they were asking for more time because they wanted to hire an expert witness
[SPEAKER_03]: to delve into all of my records, all of my medical records, all of my mental health records, they wanted access to everything because from what I'm told, it was like a fishing expedition.
[SPEAKER_03]: Their approach to covering up the truth is to blame me.
[SPEAKER_03]: My parents say that due to a head injury that I got
[SPEAKER_03]: from a car accident in, in, seventeen, now, now, two thousand sixteen, they're saying that I made up everything that I convinced all these kids that they were abused, that I somehow got in the heads of all the professionals law enforcement and made up a story because I'm angry and better at the church and at my parents.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what they believe.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they really want to try to convince people that dialogue and so they wanted access
[SPEAKER_03]: to everything personal of mine, so they could try to fish for whatever is going to try to spend their narrative the way they want it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So thankfully, the judge denied that, but it definitely felt like insult to injury when that happened when I read the report.
[SPEAKER_03]: I read my father and mother's attorney put out just this huge three-page document to the court on
[SPEAKER_03]: what they believe is happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: They wanted to delve into all the lives of all the grand jury that, you know, that, and stated the charges back when she first got arrested and say that Hannah had personal relationships with some of these people and she swayed the jury.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they had this huge narrative that they came up with.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think what has been delaying it partly is because they hired an expert witness that is getting whatever information about me that they can to try to
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, try to prove what they're saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't know what's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure that they've, you know, taken the other podcast, anything public to try to use it is going to be kind of a witch hunt when trial finally happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm okay with that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I know what they're going to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I know that the truth is is going to come out.
[SPEAKER_03]: So
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, she's currently facing thirteen felony charges.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I know obviously this is ongoing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's not a lot of detail we can go into relating to these specific charges in this case.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something that there's been patterns of abuse that you've talked about that go back through early childhood.
[SPEAKER_01]: You talked about some of this on our earlier conversations, but we didn't focus in specifically on your mom's interactions with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: going back to the very beginning, like, take me back to your childhood in the leaks household.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what did that look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: And do you remember a specific point where you were like, you recognize now, like, okay, that's one of these really started.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really hard to go back and pinpoint.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is when it be started.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know from the time I was really little, my mom.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I didn't have the same bond that my mom and my sister had.
[SPEAKER_03]: She, my mom nursed her through I think two and a half and that's when she got pregnant with me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think my existence was hard for her from the beginning.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've kind of tried to put puzzle pieces back together to try to understand it, but I'm pretty sure she had severe postpartum depression.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of my earliest memories are for of her telling me that I
[SPEAKER_03]: rejected her when I was a newborn.
[SPEAKER_03]: She said that I wouldn't breastfeed.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I know that really upset her.
[SPEAKER_03]: She said I wouldn't make eye contact.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, there would be times where I got in trouble.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she would say, you never loved me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you never loved me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that it happened often enough to where I believed it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And and I would take every time she would say that I would
[SPEAKER_03]: as a child, everything is personal.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you're like, okay, well, you never loved me, you know.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that was something I just remember, like kind of like a huge gaping hole, thinking that my mom just never connected with me and it was something wrong with me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I did see it with, you know, she could be very, very nurturing and very loving with other people's kids and with my sister I saw it, but I also saw their hot and cold dynamic with them where she would
[SPEAKER_03]: Hooker and low on her, but then it would be split and be abused.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think what I gathered very early on was to just be quiet and to kind of stay in the shadows and just observe and not get in trouble.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I was really good at not getting in trouble.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the first very explosive, I know I talked about one of the first times I saw a witness abuse.
[SPEAKER_03]: of my sister, but one of the first, like, really scary things that an imprinted on my memory was my sister was getting ready to go to kindergarten and I think that triggered my mom's, like, abandonment or whatever she had going on mentally at that time and her and she was screaming at my dad and she took my sister's lunch box and through it, it was like the old metal strawberry short cake lunch box with the thermos and everything and it, I just remember it very vividly hitting the wall and crashing down and
[SPEAKER_03]: I have little snippets of memories like that, but there would also be times of what I always saw as peace and happiness.
[SPEAKER_03]: My mom was very social when she was younger.
[SPEAKER_03]: She interacted a lot with people in the church.
[SPEAKER_03]: She kept very busy.
[SPEAKER_03]: She had been involved in cooking and all kinds of back in the eighties, late eighties early nineties.
[SPEAKER_03]: BBC was a lot more fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess she could say in some ways like they had like a float in the parade and everybody dressed up like clowns and
[SPEAKER_03]: There was just a lot going on.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was very busy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that the big change I saw was when I was around seven when my mom just mom died.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that was that was a huge trigger for her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And things declined very rapidly.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that was also the time where my parents took in the girl that was sixteen in pregnant.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think it was like, there's a lot of stressors.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was a lot of things that just kind of made the situation.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess you could say just
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything just kind of hit at once and like any kind of mental health struggles that she had been fighting or facing.
[SPEAKER_03]: They just were kind of brought to the service that point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk to me about your parents bringing in a sixteen year old girl into the home and you know what prompted that first and foremost and how did that change the dynamic within your family to now have another teenager basically like planted into the household like what did that look like functionally.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well my mom one thing that I will say about her is she always she kind of had that like
[SPEAKER_03]: rescuer superhero they call it that Jesus Christ syndrome where.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I understand you know because it's something that I struggled with over the years before I recognize my own traumas and dealt with my own pain inside.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have this this
[SPEAKER_03]: tendency to want to help everybody else and want to like reach out and fix things and be some superhero for somebody else because you didn't have that yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's one thing I did.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think my mom had a heart to like help people.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think that she went into it with evil intentions, but I think that she was struggling.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so this was something that distracted her from
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess she could say, the demons within her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I don't know exactly how my parents got the story that I was told was that the pastor announced from the pulpit, hey, we have this girl from one of the villages that got pregnant.
[SPEAKER_03]: She has a fetal alcohol syndrome, so she can't raise this baby on her own.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's somebody willing to take her in and help her raise this baby.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's a tall, this is a big ask, you know, and so my parents took her in.
[SPEAKER_03]: They also became friends with
[SPEAKER_03]: with the missionary that that was where that was in that village and that's Ronnie Star and so my parents house missionaries when they would come in for the villages for shopping trips and everything so that it was a tight net community and my parents decided to take her in so they they took her in and that was where my little world definitely got turned upside down she
[SPEAKER_03]: She was viral, I guess you could say.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was a wild girl and my mom took it on herself to tame her.
[SPEAKER_03]: She'd been kind of raised on the streets and unparanted and unmonited for years and years, just going between houses and being abused.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so she was a very big job for my mom to try to
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I guess my mom would have said, I'm going to supplies this girl, which is really sad to think about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, she needed a lot of TLC, she needed kindness and trauma therapy and so much professional.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, you know, my mom who's absolutely not equipped to take on some, you know, a case like this, took it on.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, I just remember a lot of screaming, my mom,
[SPEAKER_03]: was almost given the power by this missionary and by this pastor to do whatever she saw fit to this girl and and it was brutal there were a lot of brutal things like when I hear about like
[SPEAKER_03]: the only thing I can relate it to is when I hear like a slave master like that's what it felt like she she worked around the house she did whatever she was told to do she if she did something wrong she would be beat I just remember a lot a lot of beatings a lot of screaming no so I don't necessarily when she was pregnant remember it the beatings but definitely afterward so
[SPEAKER_01]: Was this something where you'd say, because obviously there's like a sliver of good intentions at the beginning of this that sets this in motion, but then it very quickly devolves into what it became, which was this very abusive kind of like lording over this person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you feel looking back like, okay, she was taking how she treated us and just transplanting that and putting it on to her?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or do you think the treatment of her was far worse than what you guys had experienced personally up to that point?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, at that point, I mean, I believe my dad was still a really big buffer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, he didn't work outside, like, he became an artist and he worked in our home or in a shop outside of our home.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was
[SPEAKER_03]: very heavily involved with us, he helped my mom with us.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I don't think she would have, whatever she had inside that anger and rage and end result, trauma and so much that she was holding in, I don't think that she would have been allowed at that point to really direct it towards us even though sometimes it would spill out and, and you know, there would be abuse.
[SPEAKER_03]: But at that point, I would have been seven and my sister was nine and
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I said, she was pretty distracted with things that the church and you know, she would have times right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: I could see it was like a manic episode of either really overperforming and just out there doing her thing and then she would crash and be depressed and stay in bed for a few days and sometimes even longer.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that it was almost like she was given the keys to this thing that made her feel powerful and made her feel like she had some control or something and
[SPEAKER_03]: There wasn't accountability with her, like nobody loved this girl, nobody protected her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it was just kind of like unfettered like here, don't you want?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for context, people listening who don't remember, like this is in Alaska.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you've got a lot of like tribal populations nearby.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ronnie Star is literally aviation missionary.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's he's a pilot flying to these areas.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it wasn't too uncommon for my understanding for there to be people in the church, like
[SPEAKER_01]: going in and doing these short-term mission trips in native communities or, you know, bringing kids over and people in the church helping in some way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there was a lot of crossover between those two groups if I'm understanding correctly.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, definitely.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, Ronnie Stark and a planet himself, sometimes in the, sometimes in the seventies when he still had kids at home, planet himself and the village of Port Yukon.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he was back and forth.
[SPEAKER_03]: Two Fairbanks often, it's only, I think it's like maybe an hour flight.
[SPEAKER_03]: And even though it's an isolated community, you know, he had these local connections and, you know, there's, there's a whole story there with him.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was ministry caused a lot of damage.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, some people will say that he did a lot of good, but there's definitely some stories there where children were harmed, you know.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I used to think he had good intentions with this girl, but now I don't even know.
[SPEAKER_03]: Part of her story is that she came to my parents.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was pregnant, supposedly four or five months pregnant.
[SPEAKER_03]: They found out it was a cancerous pregnancy growing and she had a DNC.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was sent immediately back to the village within a month or two.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was pregnant again and sent back to my parents.
[SPEAKER_03]: So now I'm like, this is like some of the pieces just don't really fit and I don't understand why she sent back so quickly and into the same exact situation where she could
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, the same thing happened.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so yeah, I don't, I don't really know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't understand it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I do know that's kind of like where the, like the extreme abuse that I would witness started, there was, you know, one instance with her baby where, and it was a very odd situation just with her baby because she gave her to him.
[SPEAKER_03]: She would take care of him, but my mom kind of treated him like more like she was a mom and she had the power and
[SPEAKER_03]: And he absolutely loved her.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, she was a very loving, she called her grandma.
[SPEAKER_03]: She would be very, very loving with him, very nurturing and spoil him.
[SPEAKER_03]: He had every toy.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was very well taken care of by me and my sister.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'd always wanted a baby sibling.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was like, there was a new baby in the house.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we all were in love.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, he was just a sweetest thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there would be abuse.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like one time,
[SPEAKER_03]: I think she was following the train up your child principles but she was in the bed with him and he dropped his bottle off the bed and she said I'm down on the floor and said pick up your bottle and he just kept trying to climb back up on the bed like I don't even think that he understood what she was saying and she started beating him and she gave him several beatings until he finally got what she was asking and he picked up the bottle and so it was like
[SPEAKER_03]: She came out and was like, yeah, that's that this is about the age where they get that will and you have to break their will every child has that that strong will that you have to break and I just remember being absolutely devastated by that like knowing that it was wrong.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so yeah, I think and then there wasn't a strong bond between my sister and his mom, the girl because, you know, I think when you witness abuse being done,
[SPEAKER_03]: It just kind of like you put guards up.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, I will even say how we were trained to boss her around and treat her kind of like a house slave.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like she would start my bath for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: She would do all my laundry.
[SPEAKER_03]: She would put it away.
[SPEAKER_03]: She did all the dishes around in really let her do any cooking.
[SPEAKER_03]: She wasn't into cooking, but pretty much everything else in the house she did.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: How quickly
[SPEAKER_01]: did this grow from just being her to more children being introduced to the mix?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was that after you had left already?
[SPEAKER_03]: No, but when I was about twelve, so I guess I would have been about the little guy was five-ish.
[SPEAKER_03]: My mom got a baby and you weren't baby from somebody in the church had a family member that they were asking around if anybody wanted a baby.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they
[SPEAKER_03]: My mom said, yes, she had wanted a baby for years and couldn't have anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so within a short period of time, the grandma of this baby, the mom was young and not able to care for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so the grandma of the baby showed up at our front door and, you know, we'd known for about her for about a week.
[SPEAKER_03]: And my sister and I were very excited.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was always very like mothering and very nurturing.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this was like my dream come true where I was getting a baby sister and my mom made it a big deal.
[SPEAKER_03]: We went to JCPenie and bought all the cute little early outfits and everything and so she came and that was another trauma that was just something that she used.
[SPEAKER_03]: She would use things that you love to abuse you and
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember when she first came she let me hold her for a few minutes and then she told me no more like she's gonna bond with you and not me so you can't hold her like I wasn't allowed to just sit and hold her and and take care of her at all like as a twig girl who loved babies like that was the most heartbreaking thing she could have ever done and so she did have my sister do a lot of the care for the baby
[SPEAKER_03]: but she just wouldn't really let me do anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Were these all, were each of these like formal adoptions?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, because there was, there was the one and then there was six more following that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Were they all formal adoptions?
[SPEAKER_01]: Were they foster, like, legally, what did this look like?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or was it just like, with the older girl that was sixteen?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it was just a private situation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, two is pretty much popped into their home.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think they wanted to spend the money to do a private adoption, which can be thousands of dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: So she was never officially adopted by my parents.
[SPEAKER_03]: They just housed her.
[SPEAKER_03]: But when the next baby came, that was a private adoption.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she was adopted.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think she was close to year old when the adoption finally was finalized.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then further on down the road several years later, after I had already moved out, that's when, well,
[SPEAKER_03]: The year the summer when I was sixteen my my parents start fostering and so that was their first experience with fostering and they fostered several children my mom made friends with a lady who was the case worker for like the ten and all chiefs conference which is like the native foster care here in their banks and she had pretty much an endless
[SPEAKER_03]: the possibilities of children that she could take on and foster and possibly adopt, so then the next set of six that came later, they were all foster care that were eventually adopted.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these were all native children, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: All of them were native except for the last two boys they were.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my understanding for our previous conversations is that there wasn't very much oversight from their local communities, like the government, because there's like a weird, I grew up in California and near reservation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know there was like, they had their own kind of government system.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also there are also under ours that I still don't really fully understand, but my understanding is like,
[SPEAKER_01]: The in Alaska, where they were adopting these children, there wasn't any like agency or something overseeing these.
[SPEAKER_01]: Am I correct?
[SPEAKER_03]: There was, but they're very overworked.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the way it works is like there's CPS, which up here in Alaska, it's OCS, Office of Children and Services, and they're kind of like the main entity that is called Aldwin.
[SPEAKER_03]: Any child goes into care or there's a child in need of aid.
[SPEAKER_03]: OCS here is the like the main entity, but then the native children have like the tribal portion of it that they're also involved.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at this point, they all the native foster kids were in kind of a separate like child protective services.
[SPEAKER_03]: OCS wasn't didn't have jurisdiction or didn't have any involvement in their cases.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was all here.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's called Tana Chiefs Conference and they are
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, pretty much they have a child protective entity in their program.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so at that point OCS wasn't involved in those cases, it was just the tribal portion.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I do believe that they have the children's best interests at heart, but I also know that they're very overworked.
[SPEAKER_03]: They, they don't have a lot of resources.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which sounds exactly like CPS in any other area.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I also know that my mom knew very well how to, I guess grooming is the only word that comes to mind because she would find out who was in charge of a
[SPEAKER_03]: of a tribe or who is in charge of a certain entity.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she would make friends with them.
[SPEAKER_03]: She would send big goods out on planes so the village is she would do whatever she could to kind of make our family make herself look good and make like she was a safe home for these children.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you know, she used the church.
[SPEAKER_03]: She used our family.
[SPEAKER_03]: She used
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I didn't find out until later that she was inviting me and my sister and all our kids over when she knew that the case worker was gonna come for a visit and she wanted it to look like one big happy family.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting you say that because my friend Isami was a missionary kid in Japan and extremely similar thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her parents were church planners and so her parents were church planners in quotes.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were living in Japan and had a very small ministry were collecting income from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And whenever someone would visit from the church to check on the thriving minister that they had there, they would go out like the week before and invite everyone in the community for free food.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they would pack out their church with all these people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it looked amazing in pictures and in reports.
[SPEAKER_01]: But who's that same thing?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, how do I look really good for this like, forty-eight hour period?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then everyone can leave.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it sounds like that's kind of the same kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like... Very similar, actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So obviously like people that have heard your story, like there's so much that happened just personally for you where like, you know, it's probably hard to see the forest for the trees in terms of like how much abuse is actually happening, what's happening to me versus what's happening here, what's connected to the church, what's not.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what point did you realize like, okay,
[SPEAKER_01]: not only are we all having like some rough things happen or we're having some things happen that are negative but like this is abusive and all of these kids are really in a dangerous position.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like was that all that happened after you left where you're like, okay, this is actually really really dangerous.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so complicated because you know, I think back on some of the things that have kind of just like the impact it me
[SPEAKER_03]: like abuse of things that impacted me as a child and then how much it was interlaced in like the religion and the honor of your parents and you know like the school story of
[SPEAKER_03]: wanting to be smart and wanting to be good and wanting so badly to please my parents and my teachers but then being unable to to to understand and you know having the learning learning disability and just kind of getting that core feeling like that I'm bad and I've done something wrong and and my parent is good because especially and I have to be they're elevated to this godlike level and one story that stands out that kind of shows you like the
[SPEAKER_03]: the internal struggle would be I think it was around of Levin and I broke my leg because in an hour we're goofing around and we decided to go sailing down some stairs on a toy box with and always a good choice that's really fun and I was a bigger girl but and we've been doing it all day but then we've gone somewhere so I had socks on and like I hit the floor the carpet floor and my body and my feet stopped and and I kept going and
[SPEAKER_03]: and shattered my leg and three places.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember my dad came, my mom freaked out and my dad came down and this is kind of shows you my parents.
[SPEAKER_03]: My dad was like, just try to walk on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're fine.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just try to walk on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember thinking like, are you serious right now?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, can you not see that I'm in pain?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I tried to walk on a purse crumbled in.
[SPEAKER_03]: It ended up, it was a weird situation because
[SPEAKER_03]: I went to my bed and I actually was taken to the clinic.
[SPEAKER_03]: They did X-rays and they said, yeah, you're gonna need surgery.
[SPEAKER_03]: They sent me home.
[SPEAKER_03]: My parents went out to get pain medicine and I was in bed for hours just laying there suffering until they got home.
[SPEAKER_03]: And one point, I was screaming loud enough to like, neighbor started to come over and tell me, like, just say, like, what can you do?
[SPEAKER_03]: And back then, there was no cell phones so they couldn't get a home of my parents.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, so I ended up getting taken to the hospital and got immediate pain relief and they sent me in for surgery.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember waking up and my mom was standing over me with this look.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's like, I need to know what you did to cause this.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just remember being terrified, like barely coming out of anesthesia and thinking like back on anything that I could have done.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she said, were you touching yourself again?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like because
[SPEAKER_03]: Like there's only, I can only imagine a few things she would do to receive this kind of punishment from God and that's something that she knew about I guess or that she had groomed me towards and she instilled this fear in me, I've just like, okay, I did something wrong and this is my punishment and she used some Bible verse, like there's correction unto death, there's correction unto
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember I probably blocked it out, but she references Bible verse of like why God would correct us and punish us.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it just that was the type of abuse that I experienced mostly was just like a lot of like fearful like just instilled in me to my core and then when bad things would happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: and you would call it out, or you would say, stop.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, this isn't okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then it was always turned back in your face that you're the one sitting because you're not forgiving and you're not, you're not praying for that person.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're not loving them.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're not, you know, you're not doing whatever you should do.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that my eyes really started to open
[SPEAKER_03]: When the first baby came and you know, I was abused in a way that was just so different, which was like being.
[SPEAKER_03]: Stopped from like loving being controlled in a way that was very covert but very very damaging.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that I guess that was that was like where things really started for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: to where there was like two sides of my brain, but I guess in a lot of ways, I lived in cognitive dissonance and I had, I wanted to believe what I was being taught in that my parents were good and that they just had, they made mistakes.
[SPEAKER_03]: But then they were very, like, blaringly obvious things like when that baby was about eight months old, we took a trip to Anchorage and we had this big van and
[SPEAKER_03]: My mom would put her little carcy in between her and my dad's seat in the front and there was some big fight.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't remember all the details but my mom was convinced my dad had done something and she was screaming and just like complete and rage and we were driving to Anchorage and she started to try to hit my dad and she knocked the rear room mirror off and it hit the baby.
[SPEAKER_03]: and the baby started screaming and so the baby was screaming and she was screaming and like whatever happened triggered her so hard that she just started like smack in the baby in the face like open handed just like as hard as she could just probably ten times like right in the face
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just remember visualizing it and the first thing that stood out was that my dad didn't stop her.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like he was with an arms rate reach and he did not hold her hand back.
[SPEAKER_03]: He did not stop the car.
[SPEAKER_03]: He just sat there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it just made me so angry.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, at that point, it had visions of like pushing her giant body out of the car.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the only thing that helped in that moment was my sister and I ran the back.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, as soon as we get to encourage, I'm running away.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm taking the baby.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we had just gotten our dividend money.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we got to the hotel.
[SPEAKER_03]: And my sister was kind of like, she called herself the dragon team where she would take care of mom.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she got her in bed.
[SPEAKER_03]: this point, my mom's more of a Leo B's like, four hundred pounds.
[SPEAKER_03]: She got her in bed and that's what I'm like, okay, we have to go when she had the baby down her hip.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we went to the bathroom to talk and she's like, no, we can't go.
[SPEAKER_03]: We can't, we can't leave mom, like, what would that do to dad?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, we can't do this.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she talked, we understand.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that I always knew, obviously, we can, like, what happened to my sister?
[SPEAKER_03]: The environment in the home, I knew there was abuse.
[SPEAKER_03]: I knew that it wasn't okay, but the religious aspect of it made it to where I would just make excuses for it and I would forgive and I would try to hope for the best and think the best.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when my mom started taking in foster kids and at this point, I had had kids my own.
[SPEAKER_03]: We were still going to the same church and
[SPEAKER_03]: It kind of became the situation where we were going over there a lot and the kids kind of were something that would like find us all together.
[SPEAKER_03]: My sister also had kids.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it was like this family unit where we were all kind of on the same team in a way.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we weren't seeing like when my sister and I would bring our kids over, we weren't seeing just my mom beating kids and all this stuff happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you have to understand it was like between like, you know, she was volunteering at church and she was was growing all these caseworkers and professionals to believe that she was a good person and she was loving on her fan babies and cooking meals and I mean, it was then there would be these situations just like peppered throughout like
[SPEAKER_03]: There was one situation that stood out where it was one of the first times that I ever stood up and actually just was like, no, enough is enough.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was one of the little girls was about three or four.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she had been had a lack of food at her previous home.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so she had a lot of food issues surrounding food insecurities and
[SPEAKER_03]: She was eating too fast and my mom, whatever reason that triggered her and she walked over to the little table where the kids were at.
[SPEAKER_03]: Start screaming in her face and she was like, you want to eat fast?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll show you how to eat fast and she started.
[SPEAKER_03]: She had one of the other kids go get hot dogs and she started just shoving these things down her throat like just like to where she would throw up and then she would shove more food down her throat and she would scream in her face is like, you want to drink too fast and she had this huge bottle of something and she was just making her a guzzle it and she would throw up and then she would do it again and it was just this like I've never seen anything like it.
[SPEAKER_03]: and it.
[SPEAKER_03]: horrified me and I was just sitting there frozen and I just stood up and screamed at her to stop and I was like this is not okay like stop it right now and she had one of the kids go get my dad out of a shop and then my dad came in and said what's going on and she's like I'm trying to deal with her I'm trying to discipline her and she's getting involved and so then both of them started verbally attacking me and you know it just kind of put me back into this childlike position of like I just did something wrong like
[SPEAKER_03]: just into silence.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, you know, of course, I grabbed my kids and left.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then it would kind of go through this cycle again where I would try to stay away.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wouldn't talk to her.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would just be like devastated and triggered and all the things.
[SPEAKER_03]: And contemplating calling authorities.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then she would just start like this love bombing process and kind of pulling you back in and like, oh, come over from me.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was never dressed.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was never talked about again.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was just like this cycle of
[SPEAKER_03]: pulling you back in and then of course my thoughts are if I don't on our her if I do not forgive this then that's gonna come back on me and my kids and then we're gonna be in danger.
[SPEAKER_03]: So just a lot of here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and you're also hinted at, but you're also now the outsider to the home.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're going, you're seeing the best of which, which is what's scary about these situations is, you know, even when you're seeing the best of you're still seeing stuff slip through the cracks, it's like, okay, there's something really bad here happening underneath the surface.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I have to imagine too, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm curious, like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Often, I notice, and this goes back to just people who's parents spank them really hard a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they have this, they have this feeling of, I turned out okay or, you know, look at me, I have a family of my own and, you know, I have a job and my life is okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I turned out fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you have any of that where you're like,
[SPEAKER_01]: you were reticent to even be like, okay, my mom's abusive or where you're like, you know, yeah, that's how she is, but that's on her all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what was this story?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you were to, like, paint a picture of your mom in your mind at that time, would you have been like, oh, abusive monster constantly?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or would it have been like, it's my mom, it's complicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't go that far.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, like, how did you view her during that stage?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think my sister and I would talk a lot and we just,
[SPEAKER_03]: We knew that she was unstable, obviously.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we would talk about, like, oh, mom's crazy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Mom was crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you say, like, oh, mom's crazy, mom's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Were you thinking, like, oh, there's legitimately something mentally
[SPEAKER_01]: wrong that needs addressing or was it just something like it's the way people go like oh that's my crazy uncle that you know does this and it doesn't make sense but that's kind of the way you explain it away.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah it's kind of strange because like we knew we had this knowledge of her craziness but like it was like this dirty family secret because she was so good at hiding it and she was so good at only pulling out the weapon when she
[SPEAKER_03]: either felt safe to do it or she would just become completely unhinged.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess what stands up to me being in the church and being in this family was that I was really never given like the freedom to mature and grow into like a healthy adult that could assess a situation and make a choice and have boundaries and have anonymity like it just didn't exist in this environment.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you would think like how could somebody that had seen the things that they saw from this woman ever trust them with her children, like ever stand up in an adoption, like ever even like go to this woman's house again, like how could you do that?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like there's the story.
[SPEAKER_03]: I believe I referenced in a earlier episode, but if not, it's probably the one that stands out the most to me as one of the most like
[SPEAKER_03]: impactful, traumatizing events like of my life to this day.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is when my sister had gotten pregnant out of wedlock and my mom and dad were fighting and my sister was crying and for whatever reason it sent my mom into this
[SPEAKER_03]: Just almost like disassociative manic episode to where she literally started talking and to like as this child like voice and she said that she was going to kill all of us we just see dinner so there's like a steak knife by her plate right beside.
[SPEAKER_03]: her and she said, I'm going to grab that knife and I'm going to kill all of you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to cut that baby right out of your belly, but she told my sister and she just, she was completely not there, like completely different voice, um, just a total mental snap.
[SPEAKER_03]: And my sister started quitting Bible verses to her and eventually she just kind of like her body kind of relaxed her head went down.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she ended up just kind of going into like a deep depressive episode.
[SPEAKER_03]: But during that time, my dad and I were terrified and ended up going towards the door.
[SPEAKER_03]: My sister was the one that stayed beside her and calmed her down in my dad and I were about to just jump ship.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we would fully believe that she was going to follow up.
[SPEAKER_03]: She had never been usually when she would lose it.
[SPEAKER_03]: She would throw things, scream, hit people.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, she would go into episodes of rage.
[SPEAKER_03]: But that was more terrifying because she was so calm and deliberate about what she was going to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you would go back to that and think, okay, as an adult child that came out of that home with my own kids, like, didn't widen my protective nature of my children, like, stepping.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I would say that I would have moments of clarity.
[SPEAKER_03]: And just be like, just sick and devastated and not know what to do, but then it was like.
[SPEAKER_03]: those words from the pulpit from the pastor would come back to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I would say you have to get grace.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to, this is not who she is.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is, you know, it was one mistake.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was, you know, so I'd have this internal dialogue, this internal, like struggle of knowing the truth, knowing this wasn't okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: But believing that as a daughter to this woman, it was my job to help her.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was my job to explain away what she was doing to justify it, to whitewash it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: Ultimately, it led to me feeling almost like an accomplice to what she was doing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, the abuse, like it just, I would have nightmares, especially when I was pregnant, I would have nightmares of her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, her stealing my babies and her hurting children, like it just, I know in my subconscious that I always knew the right thing, but I didn't always do the right thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it is such a difference to like, I can imagine, because like, I always talk about growing up in that world, in my mind, the hierarchy stopped at pastor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if things get bad enough, go to pastor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, law enforcement was never even an umbrella.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, law enforcement was, if you see a kidnapping happening on the street, you go find a cop.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like,
[SPEAKER_01]: They exist in a different world than the church, at least for myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I would say is I think like the privilege of being a man in that world is that you do have the ability to
[SPEAKER_01]: like haul out something is being bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas like I can imagine being, knowing your background just from our conversations and knowing just the experience of women and fundamentalist churches, like you're even more disempowered to say something is wrong, like even when you're an adult.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I have to imagine too, there's a piece there where it's like, who am I to talk about my mom?
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if she is, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: as bad as I can see or even if there's like the sliver of things which are bad enough to normally say something like I have to imagine you felt on some level like who am I to say that like there is a right person addresses and it's not going to be me but again I don't want to you know yeah I think maybe because my dad was like absolutely not often had like no background whatsoever like I
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't feel like at least in our family unit.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was like this, like the man lord over the women.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was, we were kind of an odd ball family when it came to that because if anybody was abusing anybody at least, like overtly, it was my mom to my dad, like there I still had him and, you know.
[SPEAKER_03]: Trying hitting him and you know, definitely domestic violence.
[SPEAKER_03]: My dad was more of a covert abuser where he would she would he would have expectations you asked earlier about like.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, some of my like thoughts about about my family and just like how religion played into it and that was something my dad like his one of his jobs.
[SPEAKER_03]: in this whole system was to kind of like talk to me and my sister like he would come to us if something happened and he would ask questions and he would he would just lay the groundwork in a different way like he would say things like our family is so blessed like we're just like he had kind of like this elitist mentality about how like our family was so blessed and we're set apart and like with all gods done for us and blessed us with all these children and
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he would just, he also would do this weird thing where he would question me about my childhood and he would say like, you seem to have some bitterness going on.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, what do you remember?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, what kind of memories do you have of your childhood that you think that could have caused so much bitterness in you?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, so he was kind of like in a conglist and a much more like insidious way.
[SPEAKER_03]: But like as far as like that not being one of the reasons, like,
[SPEAKER_03]: that I spoke out, I think it could have come into the play, but I also think it was more complex.
[SPEAKER_03]: One time we went to Doug Duffett and it was when that first adopted baby.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was at this point a teen and having a lot of conflicts with my mom at one point, my mom even threatened to get a gun and she was just being very physically abusive and she couldn't handle the independence and she was dominating her and abusing her and
[SPEAKER_03]: to the point where she was ready to run away and so she would come to mine and my husband's house and so we took her to talk to pastor stuff it and he just was very like complacent he was very like accusatory of like well what did you do to you know to make this situation happen and I did at that point I confided in him about some of the stuff that was happening with the adopted siblings and he just he shut it down so quick he was like no I know this woman should never do that like you know
[SPEAKER_03]: like pretty much just turned it back on me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that was very common.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there was another instance where my sister had gone to Tom Sutter.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you know who that is?
[SPEAKER_03]: He he deals with like demonology.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess you could say where he like comes to goes to around to churches and talks about like the spiritual realm and like does I don't know if he actually does exorcisms, but he he talks about like
[SPEAKER_03]: basically like the spiritual world and struggles, you know, then cushions face.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he has kind of a crazy story because his wife, there's like a murder suicide where he was a pastor and his wife and daughter were at the personage while he was preaching and his daughter killed the wife and then shot herself and then he came home and.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he goes around to all these churches.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if he still does.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he would frequent BBC.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's his last name?
[SPEAKER_03]: Suitor SOOTR.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tom, suitor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's try and every variation of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting, suitor.
[SPEAKER_03]: I... I would be surprised if you haven't heard any stories from it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suitor, I'm not seeing anything on me to see Tom, oh, SOOTR.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, okay, I'm seeing him now.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, I'm leaving that open for myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went down the demonology rabbit hole as one of my last steps out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm very fascinated.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm surprised you haven't heard about him because he's he's pretty big in the AFB world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the years we've worked with people demonic spirits speaking out of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've worked with wizards, warlocks, all kinds of people in the satanic room.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'll just be real frank with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would never have volunteered for any of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to be a happy little preacher.
[SPEAKER_03]: He went to Bible Baptist one time and my sister actually went and talked to him about some of the struggles that we had.
[SPEAKER_03]: My sister and I separately with the family and my mom and of course he had like you know probably zero mental health experience and it was all demons and it was all family generational demons and
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, he gave whatever advice.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's not like nobody ever heard about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like this kind of stuff was being reported like the stuff in our working that the family we're being talked about and absolutely should have been reported to law enforcement, you know, knowing that kids were in danger.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it was just over spiritualized and just kind of dismissed.
[SPEAKER_01]: So all this period here is like twenty.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ten, twenty twelve.
[SPEAKER_03]: So she started taking like foster placements starting in nineteen ninety nine.
[SPEAKER_03]: She she had several placements before she took permanent placements.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I would say about two thousand three, two thousand fourish was when she started taking like the the first sibling set that was was a permanent placement.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just trying to think in terms of the flow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Twenty seventeen is when you reported based on my notes, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so she the last two.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when she got the last two siblings said they were not through the tribal organization.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was OCS and the reason she took them in is because there was a couple of my church.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a family in the church that would do like emergency foster placement foster care and they had these kids often on for months and they were.
[SPEAKER_03]: They weren't interested in having them.
[SPEAKER_03]: long term and so that's when they approach my mom about taking them and I don't I know she I know my dad didn't want work kids in the home and they she already here do knew that she was unstable and she probably shouldn't have kids in the first place and so
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the draw for these two little guys was that that's the money to be honest because they would get a pretty good stipend from from the state for them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so at the point she got them the parental rights hadn't even been terminated yet and I know the parents were still trying to get them back.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they were drug users or domestic violence and at this point the little guy was barely two and the older one was five and
[SPEAKER_03]: They were just the most horrible babies like the sweetest like the two-year-old was just chubby and barely walked and can see it been neglected and left a lot in groups and went on.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they also came with a sister like a half sister and so she got all three of them and at some point decided she didn't want the girl and then so she had the boy the boys and
[SPEAKER_03]: I think like my internal struggle was just so at that point the way we viewed my mom was like.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was we thought of her as a good mom, a good grandma, a good person.
[SPEAKER_03]: But then if her.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like if she like think of it as a cup, if it hit the the brain, then it would overflow and that's when she would become bad.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like that was kind of like how in my mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: she operated and like when we would justify my sister and I leaving our kids with her or trusting her it was like we would talk amongst ourselves and it would be an open conversation like do you think moms in a good place like do you think she's okay right now and then decide if you know okay can we live our kids or can we you know because there would be times where I would my husband and I would take trips with his work like he had like a sales incentive trip and
[SPEAKER_03]: It was such an internal struggle because part of me wanted to run away from everything and like I just it was.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was it was very hard to live in this environment and so if there was an opportunity to escape either with my kids or you know on one of these trips like I would want to take it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But then in my mind I would have to justify that that she was safe and that my kids would be okay and so my sister and I would talk and would say like she.
[SPEAKER_03]: is she safe as she okay and then she would agree to kind of keep an eye on her and let me know and then you know if she could step in if but then we also knew that like I couldn't let my sister watch the kids or mom would get mad like she had to be in control of the whole family and so I would say in two thousand seventeen things started to unravel because well I think it was a few years earlier things started unravel around the time that she got the last two boys in two thousand fourteen
[SPEAKER_03]: she decided to take on a business and there's a local park and she decided to open a burger shack.
[SPEAKER_03]: She loved to cook and she always wanted a restaurant or a food truck.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so she decided to to open this place called Mama Grizzlies and I would say that it was, it was an mixed blessing for our family because I mean now I see it as a huge blessing because what happened when she took that on like she was working long days and before that she had always been like
[SPEAKER_03]: Like the family was her, like, she was the hub of the family.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like everybody, tiptoed around her.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody did what she said.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody catered to her because she would explode if you didn't.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when she took on this business, it's like, she had this distraction.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was like this radio silence of like a kid's birthday would come around and she wasn't like controlling the dialogue or controlling what we were gonna do.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was just like, in a way, I remember it first it felt like abandonment.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm like, wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's told us all these years that we should never work outside the home like she's controlled so much and like what she says goes and this is something that she was always against like why is she doing this like and and then as she's at this place and she's busy like it was just like this awkward silence at first but then it was it was wonderful because you know you actually
[SPEAKER_03]: didn't have to consult her because she was so busy and distracted.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it was definitely in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was confusing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it caused a lot of discomfort, but it also caused self-reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the inability to keep in this cycle of abuse that had occurred in my entire life, even as an adult.
[SPEAKER_03]: And even my husband even got sucked into it.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was just no breathing room with her because she was so involved in our lives.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this caused there to be breathing room.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it was, I would say it was a wonderful thing that happened to all of us.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not so much to the kids because here they are trapped in this little hut in a public place and caused to sit and to be quiet.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember the, the five year old would have to like, all of our kids would be out.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we visit them at the, at the shop.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they would all be out writing scooters and having fun and playing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the one little guy had to sit on his little patch of the grass out in the distance from him.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would see him through the window.
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of my kids, I didn't find this out to recently, but one of my kids even came into her little restaurant, Burger Shack, and saw her with the little guy like he was at that point.
[SPEAKER_03]: It would be a summer thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: So she got the place when they were little like two
[SPEAKER_03]: And then every summer, this would take up her entire summer, twelve hours a day.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so at this point, I don't know how far in this was, but he was potty training.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she wouldn't want him out of her control long enough to go to the bathroom.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so one of my older kids walked in and she was having him go to the bathroom and a cup like right where she could see it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like not not to mention like what a public health risk that would be.
[SPEAKER_03]: like it just shows you how much she just like had to have control.
[SPEAKER_01]: Come, twenty seventeen filing a report with OCS.
[SPEAKER_01]: You went with your sister and a retired OCS worker to report this.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was it that came across like in front of you where you're like, okay, that's reportable.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to address this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously, I know there's some things we have to be vague about and you can't give away specifics about, even maybe victim gender in some of these cases because it would be too specific.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what was it that you saw that we were like, okay, this is reportable.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to like take some actual steps here to go, okay, let's talk about this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think just to back up, but get a little bit, but not to like go too far into the past.
[SPEAKER_03]: My parents have used my head injury to kind of create their own narrative and their own skit-goat, I guess you could say.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think one of the reasons that they're just so drawn to it is because there was a pretty big shift in my ability to suppress what I saw happening when I got the head injury, like it affected me in a lot of ways.
[SPEAKER_03]: took away my ability to pretend.
[SPEAKER_03]: It took away my ability to see have rose-closed glasses.
[SPEAKER_03]: It took away my ability to like religiously explain it way and to just be blind.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it took my blind yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it would be like if you just fell from a height, like just smack the ground.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like that was, and you would like got up and you had to recover from that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it just, it impacted me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't generating, it wasn't generating these memories.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just removing that block of like,
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, it didn't create any false memories.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I had all these memories.
[SPEAKER_03]: It just, the head injury took away my ability to pretend it didn't happen and to suppress it and and to explain it away.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it was like, I felt so raw and I felt so exposed.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that happened in summer of two thousand sixteen.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that was a big trauma.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then spring of two thousand seventeen, I almost died.
[SPEAKER_03]: We were on a vacation and I had what they call heterotopic pregnancy where there was one baby growing in the uterus and one in my floating tube and the one in the floating tube ruptured.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they saw the one in the uterus so they didn't know that that's what had happened even though I had all the symptoms and I even told them I thought that's what happened because I'd had
[SPEAKER_03]: And it, and it topic pregnancy in the past, which made me more predisposed to this type of very rare pregnancy complication.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was in Arizona, didn't any of the doctors, they literally got me dressed and tried to send me away.
[SPEAKER_03]: Send me out the doors of the ER and that's when I collapsed and they had to rush me back for emergency surgery and I was by myself.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that was
[SPEAKER_03]: Really traumatic because I almost didn't make it a lost a lot of blood and and so that happened in the spring of twenty seventeen and I remember coming home and just being.
[SPEAKER_03]: like even more like just depressed and like the reality of my life was just undeniable.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I couldn't numb it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I said one thing that helped me through the years was just like having babies and maybe I had an addiction to having babies because I gave birth a lot of times.
[SPEAKER_03]: But one thing pregnancy and my kids did was just like it
[SPEAKER_03]: was something that was like healing to me and it made me happy and like the kids were so innocent and maybe like loving those kids and treating them kindly and with respect like it just felt healing and happy to me because I knew that I wanted to rewrite history like I didn't want children to feel like
[SPEAKER_03]: the way that my mom had made children feel.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so... Well, it does.
[SPEAKER_01]: Parenting reframes your childhood a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think about that all the time where it's like the older Mike could get some like, oh, to that thing that happened at that age, was it normal for me or like, or how could a parent?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think as a kid you go, I'll understand when I'm in their shoes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think when you don't, it's kind of like a big eye opener of like, oh, I would never have done that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't imagine that to my kids, you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was something that was majorly held over my head or it's just like just wait till you have kids and they treat you the way you're treating me like you're going to have so many regrets and you're going to see how hard it has been to be your mom and to to deal with you and one thing my mom would say on repeat to us was like you are a report card you're my report card and I'm getting a big that and that was like always raised like stated to us and so
[SPEAKER_03]: thinking about things like that and being like, I would never say that to my kids, like, I'll get frustrated enough fighting and whatever's happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just like, not ever imagined.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year, in the year,
[SPEAKER_03]: We got the travel bug and I would just you would take our save all your and take our kids on big adventures.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so leaving Alaska for Costa Rica sounds like a good idea as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: So understand it was it would just be like a little slice of heaven with just my kids and knowing that we can have to face any of the the things that were our reality.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so the spring of two thousand seventeen I don't know what transpired with my mom if us being gone kind of maybe
[SPEAKER_03]: stirred some things up with her, but I remember I saw my sister in the Sam's club parking lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have Costco now, but it was back in the Sam's club.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she told me she's like moms in a really bad place.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like she's, she's gonna kill him.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she was referring to the youngest of the kids all adopted at this point.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she said she's gonna kill him.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I went over there and he, his face was black and blue.
[SPEAKER_03]: He had bruises.
[SPEAKER_03]: She stood at the door and when let me see him, he was kind of playing off in the corner.
[SPEAKER_03]: kind of hunched over and he turned his face and she said his whole side of his face is black and blue.
[SPEAKER_03]: So like you have to go over there and you have to do some.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at that point, I didn't know what to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: I knew that if I went there, I would be reporting it and I was really stuck.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was this one lady in the church too.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I kind of like been drawn to she was like close to my mom's age maybe a little older and she she was just real like I liked how like she cussed and she like she didn't mince words like she just seemed very very real and not she wasn't walking around with the ankle link skirts and and so I asked if
[SPEAKER_03]: If I could take her out too much, her husband had just died.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I took out too much and I confided a little bit in some of the struggles.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she said that she had a similar issues with her mom.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we kind of got this little bond going.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I was just devastated by what my sister told me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so scared.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I remember calling her and just crying and saying, you're the first person that I've ever opened up to about this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, please don't tell anyone.
[SPEAKER_03]: I knew that her daughter-in-law was a teacher and I knew that a teacher was a mandated reporter and I was like, please don't tell anybody like, I don't know what to do and I unloaded on her a lot of what had happened over the years and she
[SPEAKER_03]: she just told me like you can't I said I want to report to the troopers like I want to and I don't know what to do and she said she said that no you can't do that she said biblically you have to go back to the bible she said biblically you have to confront the person however many times and then if they don't change then then you can take it to authorities and
[SPEAKER_03]: So I remember I called my mom that day and I told her what my sister said and I said I'm very, very close to calling the troopers.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't see a child die on my watch like this isn't okay and I told her that if she didn't get help.
[SPEAKER_03]: like the next step was to report her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she did not take it well.
[SPEAKER_03]: She, you know, got really accused of trying to try the whole.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just shut it down.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was like, she would question, like, what did you see?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, why, why are you saying this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, and she would, she would at first start with all the questions.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then she turned into like this week, picked down to where she was just crying and like, no, we ever helped me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nobody ever does anything.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have to do this on my own and
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it just, it was an odd conversation because I think at the end, she kind of conceded a little bit.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she said she would, she said she would get help.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that was like a big deal because she'd never done that before.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I'm pretty sure her council was just going to the pastor and talking crap about me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure she took zero accountability.
[SPEAKER_03]: But at that point, I was like, okay, I did, I did what I have to do, you know.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, but then I was also terrified that the abuse was just going to get worse or hidden more.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that would have been April, a ship, two thousand, seventeen.
[SPEAKER_03]: And over that summer, I would say that I just, I wasn't able to shake the feeling of just, I can't do this anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I cannot pretend anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, and I slowly started to disconnect even more from my parents and, and
[SPEAKER_03]: Even the church at that point, I was just over at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: I couldn't do it anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was still trying to recover from my head injury.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's when my husband and I started talking and we decided to leave the state.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we had taught art.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also had a son that had complex medical issues as long as they doctors didn't really know it was going on, but he was hospitalized pretty much every month.
[SPEAKER_03]: At this point, he was around three.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he had been hospitalized several times with breathing struggles in ammonia is an aspiration and like they just didn't know what was wrong.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so his doctor had said, he need to be in like a warmer human environment.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that if you know, we're just going to take a break.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to go to Florida for the winter.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're going to regroup.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to get some healing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we just kind of, I guess,
[SPEAKER_03]: And the Christian like explanation put a fleece out and prayed and said, All right, I got if you want us to leave then our house will sell and we're in labor come back if you want us to stay then the house won't sell and we'll come back after the winters over.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we put our house on Airbnb like we got it out that summer.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're really hard to get it all fixed up and
[SPEAKER_03]: And we just hit the road.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was, it felt like a leap of faith in a way.
[SPEAKER_03]: It felt like an escape.
[SPEAKER_03]: I felt really, really happy in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_03]: And just like a prisoner that had been set free.
[SPEAKER_03]: But as the trip went on, I started to realize that I couldn't run from demons.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like they were following me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I guess the demons being trauma and freshmen and just so much
[SPEAKER_03]: that I couldn't run from and so during that trip was when we got involved in a church down in Florida and we got some of the kind of the first real awakening that the environment that we were in was not even a normal life, the church like it was very more much more cult like in much more just extreme.
[SPEAKER_03]: then even your average Baptist church.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then it was just it was really integral like turning point for us because we had that comparison in our mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the people were kind of us and they really loved on our kids and they didn't have the same kind of like judgmental, legalistic like view of if you don't do this thing, then you're going to help kind of think.
[SPEAKER_03]: One thing that happened before we left was my sister and I was relationship was also really a complicated one.
[SPEAKER_03]: I kind of went into that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think in the first podcast, but I think when I left, she was not happy about me leaving and she wanted out to.
[SPEAKER_03]: So she started to get her house ready to sell and start making preparations to leave.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think she felt
[SPEAKER_02]: obligated to help the parents.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I, she came to me one night.
[SPEAKER_03]: We would often go out.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the little ways that I escaped, we escaped some of our family stuff going on and just like the heaviness of everything was that I sister and I would, she lived right up to help from me and she would pick me up and we'd go into town and we would go to a restaurant and have tea and talk and whatever and they're just like a bonding type experience and we
[SPEAKER_03]: We got in really close as adults.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a lot of our pregnancies were around the same time.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we had a lot in common.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, we had talked about this kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it was it was open dialogue with us.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she came to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: We went out one night and she said we have to report like this is getting worse.
[SPEAKER_03]: She had been
[SPEAKER_03]: at the parent's house.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I said, she was getting her house renovated too, so she'd been staying there often on and spending some time there and she had seen some horrible things happening to the younger ones, especially, you know, at one point, she said the little guy was being snuck to the bathroom by the one that was there, so at this point they would have been like maybe seven and ten or something around those ages.
[SPEAKER_03]: she said that he has to sneak to the bathroom to get water like it's it's just it's bad we need to go report this and so her plan was to go to the case worker that my mom had made friends with over the years and she was on the brink of retirement at this point because you know when she was working for the she worked for like the travel the native portion of of child protective services so it's a case worker so you know at this point she
[SPEAKER_03]: had newly been diagnosed with Parkinson's and she had retired from that position and was working in another role in advocacy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I remember it was a dark rainy night and my sister and I mustered up the courage to go to her house and be sat on the couch and just unloaded on her and just told her everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember thinking like I was surprised that my sister was taking the step because she was so empathetic to my mom and she
[SPEAKER_03]: She took care of her like she.
[SPEAKER_03]: She catered to her a lot, you know, and so I was surprised that she'd be willing to.
[SPEAKER_03]: To take the step like it should be do that because there had been so many times where I'm like, I'm going to report I'm going to do this and she talked me out of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we did it together, but we were both very adamant that we were anonymous like we were not ready to.
[SPEAKER_03]: face our parents and for our our to stand up to so we didn't make a police report we just we reported to her and she told us she's like I have to report and I'm going to be sensitive with how.
[SPEAKER_03]: How I reported, but she said, I'm a mandated reporter.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is what I have to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I don't know if she went to law enforcement, but she did go to the other, you know, the OCS, which is Office of Children Services.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she reported it.
[SPEAKER_03]: She, at that time, I didn't know that when you make an anonymous report, it's.
[SPEAKER_03]: almost like not making report it all like it's not taken seriously like if you don't put your name kind of if you don't if you're not able to stand up and say this is what I saw this is what happened then the report just kind of goes nowhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the kids were at that point they were I think they sent over like a intake worker and they interviewed them in the home they talked to my mom and it was just completely nothing happened.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then that's when we the next month is when we left for the entire winner.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then in, I think it was February of, in, my sister called me and Florida and she told me, at that point, she'd been staying with my mom for quite some time during the renovations of her home.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so she had told me just even more just horrific stories.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I told her, I said, I have to report this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I can't report what you told me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I called our friend, the lady that had been the case with her, called her again.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she got me in contact with more people from OCS and more people from
[SPEAKER_03]: from TCC, which is so that they have ordered organization.
[SPEAKER_03]: And interviewed me, they talked to me, the kids were removed, taken to Stevie's place.
[SPEAKER_03]: And my sister went with them as support.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not like in that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stevie's place is like a third party space.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That police used to basically interview children when they feel instead of being a police station or something for for people listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first time I heard that was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: I think two years ago, I was like, what is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I realize there's like a whole, it's like a whole separate facility where they can, yeah, a lot of cities have them where it's, it's great for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it's like, you know, they say that every time a kid's having to relay their story like it's traumatic, you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: So, and this is kind of like a, they're on a room speaking to one individual and then it's recorded and kind of like the close start get type thing and
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they were taken there and I based on the entire day there and we're interviewed and none of the kids as far as I know, they're none of them disclosed anything.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things that's kind of crazy to me that's come out in somewhat like I read this in the news article.
[SPEAKER_03]: I had no idea about this because all of these records are supposed to be sealed.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I found out that a little guy at least
[SPEAKER_03]: had lost weight like a significant amount of weight and like on the growth chart like he adipsed way down and that wasn't a red flag for them like you know the fact that he as the two year old had been you know this robust healthy chubby guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he goes in as this, you know, however old he was six years old or something.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he's at this point like emaciated and that wasn't a red flag for them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it just baffles me.
[SPEAKER_03]: So at that point, you know, the kids had been had been questioned.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I know, I remember even seeing my mom
[SPEAKER_03]: Like question the kids and like coach them about like what to say, if you were ever questioned and like they were all terrified of being taken and put in a house with like taken by OCS and being put in a house with drunk people and abused and like, you know, they're from your abuse was was
[SPEAKER_03]: probably more appealing at that point, at least for most of them because they had been so much fear and stilled in them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you also add in the religious factor of being told that this is your parent and they've done all these good things for you and you can't speak out against them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that interview I think was it's really sad to me to think that like that first interview they had
[SPEAKER_03]: pretty much told them that nobody was going to rescue them, nobody was going to save them and that that second interview was even more confirming to them that
[SPEAKER_03]: We're not going to say anything because we're going to get sent right back.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we're going to be put right back in that home.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So of course, they were out for twenty four hours.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they spent the night with my sister and then within twenty four hours they were back in my parents home.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I learned later that they used people from the church to vouch for them and they came up with some idea that they thought happened where it was like they were convinced that it was some one of the older teens friends that reported and just had it out for them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so
[SPEAKER_03]: they come up with the story that they believed in.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I do remember my dad called me in Florida and he was mad and my dad never really displayed anger, but he was angry and he was like, whoever did this is gonna pay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, this is not okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, they're bringing our lives.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I almost think he had suspicions.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, he did have some suspicions.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he was, I think it was kind of like a half threat of like, if you did this, like, I'm gonna find out kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, after this report is initially filed in, in, in, so this, this sat from, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in,
[SPEAKER_01]: How quickly did things move from this child leaving the home to then they're actually being action happening from law enforcement?
[SPEAKER_03]: I believe it was like fall of twenty twenty when she was, let's see, she was born and she was born in two thousand one, then she was already, um, she was already in a door.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think she was nineteen when she got caught with a cell phone in the house.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, the one of the other sisters that, you know, was already in adult and married, not the one older than me, but the one adopted that's twelve years younger than me.
[SPEAKER_03]: She had helped her get a cell phone and that was discovered by my mom in twenty twenty when she was nineteen and that was like a huge blow up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like she was super angry that she had a phone.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and it just kind of led to a series of more abuse, but at one point,
[SPEAKER_03]: I was told that she took her out and was driving around her radically and made her think she was going to run her into a lake.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like there's just like a whole lot of things.
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the fear and stilling the fear of things was that she'd always made the kids scared of native people and scared of anybody that was kind of like that my mom saw as a threat should make the children fearful.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, one of her big fears was the kids like reconnecting with their birth families and
[SPEAKER_03]: leaving her abandoning her, so she made all of them terrified of native people.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there's like a bus stop downtown and it's a hub for for people that come in from the villages and what what she did was she dropped her off down there and she said, you want to be independent, you want to live on your own, like go ahead, I'm going to leave you down here with these people.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think she fully believed that she was going to find a way to call her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think my mom dropped her off and then driving around and then went circle back to get her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And by that point, she had called our other sister and the other sister picked her up.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's when she kind of was like out and free.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so she lived with an assistant.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think for a year and she had been out for a year.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, I had talked to her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I had said, look, I know.
[SPEAKER_03]: what you win through is not okay and you know at this point I was like probably like ninety nine percent no contact with my mom and the only reason I made contact with her was to check on the kids
[SPEAKER_03]: But I had told her, I was like, I'm here for you.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you ever want to talk about it, I'm not going to make you talk about it, but I'm here for help if you ever want to.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it took almost an entire year.
[SPEAKER_03]: And one day she called me and said, like, I need to talk, like, I can't do this anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we went and sat down.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when she told me she wanted to talk, I thought she was going to say, like, I want to talk about one of my boyfriends or some drama that I'm having or something.
[SPEAKER_03]: But she was very, like,
[SPEAKER_03]: up front with the abuse at that point and she she was like I'm having flashbacks I I can't even live my life without having flashbacks in fear of these kids being killed in this home and so she just she told me several stories of like flashbacks and things that she had gone through that.
[SPEAKER_03]: would haunt her and torment her and that she just couldn't handle it any longer and she said I can never live with myself if if she kills one of these kids and so that's when I supported her and going to the to the state troopers she went in and made we made a police report she was shaking crying like she could she couldn't even hold a pen like she I just helped her and supported her the best way that I could and then at that point
[SPEAKER_03]: I knew that I couldn't any longer.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no way that I could not be a friend with my story.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I sat down and I journal probably like several pages worth and I sent that into law enforcement and I sent it in to Child Protective Services.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the next day I got a call from
[SPEAKER_03]: I believe it was the attorney general that works for the state and she asked me if she said she read my story and she said that asked me if I would be willing to stand behind it and you know, what is this something that I would take enough in court and actually you know, standing behind my story.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said absolutely and so that was the day that the kids were taken from from my mom and she at that point she had already gotten wind of that there was going to be a removal I believe because she knew that the older girl was like
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, a factor that she didn't have control of and you know, they had tried like dropping gifts off to her and they had, they'd really try to pull her back in.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think what happened was some, I was really angry about it when I heard, but somebody from OCS read my report and immediately they sent
[SPEAKER_03]: and then take work or over to the house to talk to her and the kids.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, my history was repeating itself.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just was like, they don't know what they're dealing with.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then at that point, I had their sister saw her driving down college roads of the church on the this end of the road and her houses on this end of the road, like a main road in town.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they saw her just busting it back to from the church to her house to who knows what she was doing, hiding evidence, you know, removing sticks or weapons or who knows what.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it was several hours later where they finally got troopers involved in me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I removed the kids from her.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was doing a meal for like the reform machine on a miss meeting that night and that's when they took four of the kids.
[SPEAKER_03]: The one that decided to stay, she was sixteen and dug her heels in and you know, she was kind of like one of the ones that
[SPEAKER_03]: our mom treated as like a golden child out of all of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a different dynamic of abuse with all of them, but that was when she she definitely treated better.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so she stayed.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the other four were taken into protected custody.
[SPEAKER_01]: So currently where this sits now, I mean, there's some public infrastructures come out that obviously scratches the surface of the overall abuse.
[SPEAKER_01]: But some of it echoes, I mean, similar experiences that you had growing up where
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, accusatory of touching themselves inappropriately where your mom would say that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this, this also led to physical abuse where she was, you know, hitting the children for doing this, you know, there was also mention of withholding food and water, which I think you indicated with some of your stories earlier.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then beatings with objects like slats from a bunk bed, like that's a couple examples of the abuse that was experienced.
[SPEAKER_01]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: All of that right now has brought us back to where we started the episode, which is there's thirteen felony charges currently.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we started talking about this, I think a year ago, where we had our initial phone call in conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: and pre-trial right now is scheduled for August eleven but with the way the legal system works hopefully that's the date that this actually happens and it's not delayed and moved forward but really right now it's just waiting and seeing where this goes from here and
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think if anything is clear from our conversations like the wheels of justice moves super, super slowly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so as right now, though, this is what we have this information there and hopefully we'll be able to regroup and talk a little bit more as this moves forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I have, I'm really hoping that justice will be done.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't say I have a lot of faith in the justice system at this, how I feel about it now is that I, I would love for my siblings to
[SPEAKER_03]: for there to be a resolution for them because I think that for them to get the message that what happened to them was not okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Way was covered by the church was not okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like I touched on another, the other podcast where, you know, the church, I'm all out of jail and they sent around sign up sheets saying all the kids were lying like, and then if I got out that they were a big part of them going back into that situation of abuse and that
[SPEAKER_03]: ninety percent of those people would probably like love to see them go back and have believed all the lies and they don't believe the children.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's just horrible and disgusting.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it speaks into the dynamic of the church currently and all the abuse that we probably even have no idea about happening right there right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, for justice we done.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't feel like I have a personal investment in it anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I've come to a point where I have a piece knowing that the kids are not going to be put back into that situation.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the kids are safe, but I think for my siblings sake and for justice sake, I would like to see.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's something to be done and some and for them to to get the message like this wasn't okay, and this is, you know, people who hurt children and abuse children and victimize them and use them for money.
[SPEAKER_03]: use them for their own personal gain like that's not going to be tolerated and I don't know if that's what will happen but I sincerely hope that that something's done and that the kids at least get some kind of closure from this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I echo all of that, including the lack of faith in the justice system, but it's, yeah, hopefully we have a good update here in about a month or so.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I appreciate you sharing so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that it's not easy to go back and talk about all this over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we spent probably six, seven hours of time total talking about this and I appreciate you being so willing to share and hopefully like we can have some positive updates here in the next couple months.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, definitely I appreciate you being lying to to get time and attention to this story and it definitely hasn't been easy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think a big part of my healing has been to you know my part of it like the
[SPEAKER_03]: There's an aspect here that involves my own children and them witnessing abuse, them being left with an abuser, them essentially being, I guess, abused by proxy in some ways.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's been a very long process for our family to get away from that and to heal.
[SPEAKER_03]: And part of that has been me recognizing that I played a part, even though, yes, I was an abused child.
[SPEAKER_03]: still in such a toxic dynamic.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was so much that came into play.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really had to look at the whole situation and work through my part of it and own my responsibility too.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that that's kind of what holds a lot of people back is like not wanting to face that guilt, not wanting to face that responsibility that they may play.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's so important to report
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's so important to tell the truth and not to hide predators.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not okay on any level.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't put a religious tag on it and say, hey, we're just going to keep this quiet.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like kids need to have a voice and they need to be advocated for.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to thank all of you so much for listening to this very important yet heavy episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd like to shed a further light on stories like this, be sure to share this episode, drop a comment, or send to someone that you think needs to hear it.
[SPEAKER_01]: As I mentioned at the top of the show, Vicki leaks pre-trial hearing is currently scheduled for August eleven.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be monitoring the situation very closely, and I'll share any updates as soon as I receive them.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the meantime, please consider going back and listening to my original two conversations with Hannah St.
[SPEAKER_01]: George.
[SPEAKER_01]: They shine an unprecedented light on the culture of Bible Baptist Church in Fairbanks, Alaska, and it gives us a look and do her experiences growing up in a fundamentalist household.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Prejudice Podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you in our next episode.