I Need Blue
I turned around to see a masked man pointing a gun at me. It was just the beginning of a series of events, including robbery and abduction, which changed my life forever. I Need Blue, hosted by Jen Lee, is a podcast series featuring lived-experiences from survivors of life events. I NEED BLUE creates space for survivors of trauma to feel they BELONG, are LOVED, UNDERSTOOD and EMPOWERED! I called 9-1-1 and they provided me with life-saving directions to help my customer who was having a medical emergency. Law enforcement rescued us and caught the robber. Our first-responders face unique traumas every day. I NEED BLUE provides space for them too!
I Need Blue
Dawn: Child Psychological Abuse Related to Abduction, Parental Alienation and the Mormon Church
When truth is stolen, healing begins with reclaiming your story—one memory, one voice, one fearless step at a time.
What happens when a child is abducted by a parent and raised in a world of control and religious manipulation? Dawn McCarty’s nightmare began at age four when her mother kidnapped her, erased her identity, and filled her life with fear and lies. Subjected to psychological abuse and weaponized Mormon theology, Dawn was taught to obey blindly and fear her real father. By eight, she was adopted by her stepfather and sealed to her abductor in temple rituals. At 15, she was groomed under the guise of religious trust.
After escaping at 16, Dawn rebuilt her life. Now a senior cybersecurity analyst with over 20 years of experience, she helps families protect children online, driven by her own trauma. Her most powerful chapter came 44 years later—reuniting with her biological father. Her story is one of survival, truth, and unbreakable spirit.
Connect with Dawn:
Learn more about my memoir & advocacy site: Sealed To My Abductor
Subscribe to my blog & newsletter: Unsealed Press on Substack
Watch my story (including my reunification with my father): YouTube Channel
Connect with Jen:
I Need Blue now has a new home at The Healing in Sharing! Visit thehealinginsharing.com to explore Round Chair Conversations, all relevant I Need Blue content, and ways to support the mission of sharing stories that inspire hope and resilience.
By sharing the hidden lines of our stories, we remind each other we are not alone — together, we step out of hiding and into healing.
Instagram: @ineedbluepodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ineedblue
Apple Podcasts: Listen & Subscribe
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Memoir: Why I Survived, by Jennifer Lee on Amazon
Imagine when you share your darkest hours they become someone else's light. I'm Jennifer Lee, a global community storyteller, host, author and survivor, guiding you through genuine, unfiltered conversations. Together we break the silence, shatter stigma and amplify voices that need to be heard. Each episode stands as a testament to survival, healing and reclaiming your power. Listen to I Need Blue on Apple Podcasts, spotify, youtube or your favorite platform. Learn more at wwwineedbluenet. Trigger warning I Need Blue shares real-life stories of trauma, violence and abuse meant to empower and support. Please take care of yourself and ask for help if needed. Now let's begin today's story.
Speaker 1:The waves rocked the houseboat gently. Side to side, a small girl, just four years old, sat her wide eyes scanning the unfamiliar horizon. She turned to the woman beside her, her mother, and asked in a quiet voice Where's my dad? Her mother frowned and grew agitated. Dawn didn't know she had just asked a dangerous question. She didn't know that the flight, the strange boat and the sudden disappearance of everything familiar had a dark purpose. She had been taken. She had been taken Over time. Her new reality was rewritten. Her stepfather, a stranger, adopted her at age eight. She was told to call him Daddy. The name that once meant comfort and safety now belong to someone else and the memory of her real father. They tried to erase it.
Speaker 1:Behind the polished facade of a devout Mormon household, dawn's world became a prison of control, emotional manipulation, psychological torment and a belief system weaponized against her developing mind. Developing mind she was taught obedience not love, silence not truth, survival not freedom. For decades, she believed this is all there was, that maybe she had imagined the love of the father she once knew. But the truth never dies. It waits. A decade ago, dawn stopped serving the church that had served as a veil for her suffering. She entered therapy and, for the first time, gave her pain a name Child psychological abuse related to abduction and parental alienation. She began to reclaim her voice and then her story and the miracle 44 years after being stolen from him, dawn was reunited with her father.
Speaker 1:I am honored to welcome my guest today, dawn McCarty. She is a senior cybersecurity analyst, founder of Securing Everything and a passionate advocate for digital safety, who empowers families, survivors and small businesses to protect themselves in the online world. With over 20 years of experience and a trauma-informed approach, she exposes hidden threats like grooming, catfishing scams and identity theft issues often overlooked in mainstream cybersecurity, through her predator prevention protocol, safe methodology and digital safe zones academy. Dawn equips everyday people with practical tools to fight cybercrime and abuse. She is also the author of the upcoming true-life thriller Sealed to my Abductor, a harrowing story of child abduction, violence and the weaponization of Mormon religion, amplifying her mission to shine light on the darkest corners of both the digital and real world. Dawn, thank you so much for being here today, sharing your journey with us and a lot of valuable lessons so other families don't have to experience what you did. Dawn, thank you for being my guest today and welcome to the I Need Blue podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited to be here to talk about this. It's very important issues for children today and the children of our future.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and parental alienation is a topic I had talked about in the past, but your situation is very different from that one, and let me first say that I have been following you on LinkedIn and I definitely am going to put that in the show notes. The information you share and how you share it is so intriguing. It captures my attention every time. So thank you. Oh good, that's great feedback. Thank you, I love that. Yeah, of course. Of course, there are so many layers to your story, so at four you're taken. What did life look like?
Speaker 2:It starts back then with this crime of abduction. Nothing was familiar. The only thing I knew was that my name was Dawn and this was my mom. I had a new house, a new bed. I didn't even have the only the clothes that I was wearing and I don't even know if I still had those, so nothing was familiar in this new. So to me it was an instant twilight zone and an identity crisis. But when they brought me into Colorado, I had a new stepsister who was six years older than me and she hated me, calling her dad, daddy. That was her dad, and who is this booger, snot-faced child coming into my world and trying to claim her? You know, he is her daddy.
Speaker 2:So there was a lot of violence over the next eight years where severe violence and then the big one was when I was in sixth grade. She graduated from high school, she was about to go to college that next fall and she strangled me and I nearly died from that, wow. But our parents pulled in the driveway just in time for her to snap out of it. I call her my demon. I go into that in the book because she morphed into something that most other people didn't see but I saw quite often and when she saw them pull into the driveway she snapped out of that and dropped me, saving life-saving breath, and was able to scramble, get, try to get to my feet and run. I just ran. I ran to my friend's house and I hid behind their couch for hours. I would not come out and they don't know what's going on. They just know I just come into their house and was hiding behind a couch and when I was eight my step-sister and I fly off to Florida visit my grandmother. Was that your biological?
Speaker 1:grandmother.
Speaker 2:My biological her mother. I'd been going there since I was six years old. That was the first thing she started doing after the abduction was to send me there.
Speaker 1:So the grandmother didn't say anything?
Speaker 2:No, she didn't. She didn't like my dad, so she was fine with it. Every now and then my stepsister would be sent with me, which she loved. She absolutely loved that.
Speaker 2:So now we're in Florida while they're going through this adoption process, so I'm not even in the room when this happens and they get it approved without the investigation. Theyived the 60-day mandatory state statute investigation because she had someone ready to step in and take over, and that was. All it took was that somebody was willing to step in, and that's where my problem lies with these adoptions is that he looked the part but he never stepped in. He wasn't my dad, who loved me unconditionally. He was a father figure and he put a roof over my head.
Speaker 2:But there was a lot more than that. Now I'm adopted, my name had already been changed from the time they abducted me. I mean, I have an airplane ticket that I found in my storage inheritance that has my name as his last name instead of Don McCarty. Before he even legally adopted me, they had already changed my name, so when they adopted me, I didn't even notice any change. That's when they decided they wanted to join a church. Their names had been turned into the Mormon church, so now, all of a sudden, we have missionaries visiting.
Speaker 1:He was not raised in this religion.
Speaker 2:We were not religious at all, at least not that I remember. Dad was in the foster system, aged out at 18. He didn't have a religion that I know of. So when I was younger, I can't remember anything being mentioned about God. We didn't pray, we didn't do any of that.
Speaker 2:As we're going through these missionary lessons, the missionaries, when they finally got us to agree to be baptized, they're asking us well, do you believe this church is true? And I'm like okay, I mean, I'm a hostage, indoctrinated child. I know what I'm expected to do. I know I'm expected to go along with whatever it is that they want, with what my captor wants, and agree. So it didn't matter if I really believed in Joseph Smith, it didn't matter that I read the Book of Mormon or not. My stepfather did. And he decided we're joining this church and we're going to be baptized on my birthday. And my mom's like I don't know if I have totally believed in this yet. And he goes don't worry about it, you will Wow believed in this yet and he goes oh, don't worry about it, you will Wow. So she's now agreeing to join the church and she hasn't even determined for herself if she believes that this is the one true church on the face of the planet.
Speaker 2:So all I heard was, when you're baptized, you go into this big bathtub and I'm like sign me up, I'm in, what do you need? I'm all over that. So they show pictures of it. They have like these flip cards back then where they just show up these cards with the pictures of stuff on it. And I saw that huge bathtub and I thought, oh, I mean, I'm a kid that used to play in the gutters in the rain. You know, I love just being able to play in a tub. I love just being able to play in a tub. So I saw that it was like the king of tubs.
Speaker 2:We're signed up to be baptized on his birthday, which was a Sunday. They don't typically do baptisms on Sundays. Sundays is the Lord's Day. So he fought this is the Lord's Day, it is bringing someone into the fold. So he convinced that bishop to allow us to be baptized on the Sunday.
Speaker 2:So most of the time you get up, you go to church in the morning, you go home, you have lunch, you rest, then you go back to sacrament meeting later, partake of the sacrament, you're done. That swallows up your entire Sunday. We get baptized in between the sessions and then sacrament. We had to get dressed into our regular dresses and dry. Our hair was still kind of wet. But then we go into the sacrament meeting and we have to sit in the front row and I'm sitting here watching as they're saying we have new members of the church. They had to stand up and then they had.
Speaker 2:My stepdad went first and they do a prayer for confirming you a member and the prayer is to tell you to receive the Holy Ghost. And that's when you get the Holy Ghost and you live by that belief of the God the Father and the Holy Ghost, that belief of the God the Father and the Holy Ghost. That's where Mormons are kind of different. So then my mom went and then my stepsister went and then I went. There was an opening prayer, four prayers of confirmation, then the two sacrament prayers before the meeting actually started. It took forever, but after the four prayers the Lord has to accept you as members. So they're asked to confirm us as members and they have to raise the right hand to acknowledge and accept us. And anybody can disagree. Of course that rarely ever happens.
Speaker 1:How many people were in the church?
Speaker 2:out of curiosity, would you say this was such a small town it was Madras, oregon, and there was just a little teeny chapel on the top of this hill. So there's probably I don't know 100, 150 people, maybe at the max as members. I don't know if they were all there that day. It was a small chapel, but it was probably not a full-fledged ward. It was probably small chapel, but it was probably not a full-fledged ward. It was probably called a branch. It was a derivative of the mainstream Mormon LDS religion, as they like to be called today. I was born and raised as Mormon, so that's what I say. I'm going to be a hard habit to break. We were Mormons.
Speaker 1:That's what we identified as what was the craziest thing you can recall that occurred.
Speaker 2:Well, I was in what they called primary. We have all these different age groups and we joined the primary session at first, where we sing all the songs and then we split up into our age group and have independent, age appropriate type of lessons right group and have independent, age-appropriate type of lessons right. Well, the songs that we're singing are designed to indoctrinate the young mind. They're telling you things like follow the prophet, follow the prophet because he knows the way. So we're singing these songs. That's kind of confirming or reinforcing these beliefs as young children. Now, the youngest I ever attended primary was eight years old, so I didn't have that three to eight years old timeframe of constant indoctrination and I was raised without knowing any of this, so it was kind of a foreign concept. But I love singing the songs and one of my favorite songs believe it or not and this is a horrible song, but my favorite song was the Book of Mormon Stories. It had a beat To me, it was energetic and it was Book of Mormon Stories that my teacher tells to me all about the Lamanites. I can't believe. I remember this. In ancient history, long ago, our fathers came from far across the sea. Given this land if we live righteously. I can't believe. I remember that After all, this time I was eight years old and now I don't want to tell you how old I am today, but I'm definitely five decades old, almost. So this song, because of my trauma. Background words are always important to me because I had to understand the underlying meaning in order to maintain safety. So I analyze what people say and I also analyze what they don't say. So this is something that I've been able to do my whole life, just as from inheriting it from this childhood. So if you look at the lyrics of the Book of Mormon, this is stories that our teachers are telling to us our primary teachers and that how long ago the Nephites, who were in Israel, jerusalem in that area, came across the sea in these like submarine type ships and were given this land the United States of America, north America if they lived righteously. So, in other words, it didn't matter about all the people that were already inhabiting this land. We came in as the superior saying we now own this land, but there's no evidence of the Nephites. Just unbelievable what we are singing and starting to believe because we're singing it every Sunday, the day that I was sealed and we went to the my Turn on Earth play. If I didn't already believe in any of this stuff, that first year I was a member singing these songs. Going to that play showed me exactly what I needed to believe and it was energizing, it was fun, it was just like everything I loved about these songs and these people.
Speaker 2:And Barbara, who's the main character, is a spirit and she's learning how she's going to come to earth and get a body and she had to make all these choices of right and wrong and opposition. And then there's Satan there because there was a war in heaven. So it goes through this war in heaven and it's played out before me in this play. That actually made sense to my nine-year-old mind. That's what the war in heaven means. Satan is the bad guy. Satan is the bad guy. No-transcript the adversary and get to the temple to be sealed together for all time and eternity, which erases my father in the afterlife, because God will not recognize him as my father now, because I'm sealed to this death.
Speaker 1:So, basically, you had to be a part of this church, if you will, in order to be righteous, Because if you were not, you were like the devil.
Speaker 2:You would have been either a victim of that or become possessed yourself. There's a lot of Mormon doctrine that talks about demons being around you at all times, just ready to take your body If you give them an opportunity, if you watch porn, if you do something that is illegal, if you enter a room that the Holy Ghost won't want you to go into, the Holy Ghost leaves you and stays outside, and you're now vulnerable to anything that goes on without the Holy Spirit with you.
Speaker 1:It's a lot. So let me ask you this Were you allowed to go to a public school?
Speaker 2:Were you allowed to have friends outside of the religion? Yeah, was there? Abuse was never going to do. They weren't going to spoil the child. She thinks she spoiled me, but I remember those wet spoons and broken brushes over my butt. I remember the belt buckle because she grabbed the wrong end of the belt one day. I remember those. And then, on top of that, I had my stepsister beating me up, kicking me with cowboy boots, strangling me. There was so much abuse in that first eight years until she finally went to college and I thought I'd finally be free.
Speaker 2:But then I moved to California and I'm in high school and I have a whole different experience with the Mormon church, where there was a lot of judgment, a lot of shaming, a lot of actually like keeping Tom, kind of things that my cohorts were doing during church camp, girls camp. It's very embarrassing things that took place. And these are Mormons, these are Christ-like people, the true church of Christ, and this is how they're behaving and I've heard oh well, you know, people will be people, not people that claim to be the only true church and live the life of Christ. You don't get to say that you got to live it.
Speaker 1:Can you get out of the religion? Let's say your mom wanted to leave. Would she be able to leave it?
Speaker 2:would be very difficult, depending on the level of mind, control the undue influence, because some people don't have any problem leaving, they're just like gone, you're not going to tell me anything, I'm out. And then you have people that are worried about what is their spouse going to think? What if they jeopardize their children? What if they are no longer accepted? Because the concept of a parent and a child is, it's her responsibility to make sure I stay on the straight and narrow and if I don't stay on that straight and narrow, she would have to turn away from me in order to maintain her salvation. It makes it really hard to leave if you think your eternity is going to be jeopardized, if you won't be able to make it to the celestial kingdom because I didn't parent good enough or I wasn't the best spouse. So there's a lot of indoctrination and not to excuse any of that abuse that happens in that scenario, because it's atrocious, it's just terrible with what this indoctrination will make people do or what people end up doing because of that fear of leaving. So a lot of people haven't left. They'd rather stick it out than risk losing family. So when I left, I left at 16. And I basically I hung up the phone with the bishop and said fuck off, excuse my language, but he was talking about excommunicating me for rumors, and the problem is that, not that they weren't true, the problem was weren't true. The problem was he had them mixed up, so what he said to me was not true. If you took this piece out of that one and this piece out of that one, then you'd have a story that could be true, but what you just said is not true and therefore you don't know shit. So I slammed that phone down and I ended up bolting and there's a lot that was going on. My junior high school year was so incredibly difficult because I had the problems going on with the church, the problems with not keeping the law of chastity which, when you're baptized, you're agreeing, at eight years old, that you're going to follow this law of chastity. Which, when you're baptized, you're agreeing, at eight years old, that you're going to follow this law of chastity that you don't even know what that means, right? That could be someone's first name, for all you know, right? So what is the law of chastity? I was going to be taken before church disciplinary court and if it was determined to be true, they were going to excommunicate me as a 16-year-old.
Speaker 2:In addition to that, my parents were also groomed by a child predator and they invited him into our home because he saw me working at the airport washing and waxing my stepfather's plane, because he was getting ready to take a trip with the executives. They like the clean plane, he likes to make them happy, so he would pay me something to go and clean this plane. Something to go and clean this plane. And this predator was a pilot and he saw me out there in shorts and a bathing suit and he starts befriending my stepdad Before you know it, my stepdad being the perpetual missionary leader. If you're a Mormon, that means that you are over the missionary program for your ward and your job is to convert, convert, convert, convert. Either by you or by the missionaries You're to support that conversion to bring more people into the church. So he sees this as an opportunity. If you know a predator's mind, they're going to adapt to whatever it is you need them to adapt. If you need them to play this role, they'll play that role. If you need them to play this role, they'll play that role. If you need them to act like this, they'll do that.
Speaker 2:So this guy knew that if he wanted to get close to me, he needed to act like somebody that was interested in joining this church in order to gain access to me. So he's saying, yeah, well, I'm interested in the lesson. So he's invited over the house to have people over the house for dinner all the time. There was nothing out of the ordinary. We had missionaries over, we had investigators over. It was nothing different. It was just another meal to be cooked and an extra plate to be set. So now this guy is sitting next to me at my dinner table and months go by he's talking to the missionaries and months go by he's taking the.
Speaker 2:You know, he's talking to the missionaries and he's just kind of he's challenging them. I remember him challenging them and asking them some of these questions and he eventually started talking about, well, what happens after I get married or after I joined the church. And they said, well, you know, you can find a spouse, you can get married in the temple. And they said, well, you have to be a member for a year before you can go to the temple. And he's like what do I do? For a whole year? He's thinking he can marry me in the temple telling me I would look pretty in a white gown, you picture being married in that temple someday too. And they said well, first you have to go through the priesthoods. You need to become an Aaronic priesthood holder, then you need to become a priest, then you go into being a Mephistic priesthood holder and by the time you do all of that and you learn everything you need to learn, then you'll be ready to be married in the temple. So my parents actually allowed him to court me.
Speaker 2:How old is he and how old are you? He's 22 and I'm 16, 15 at first. I was 15 at first. Wow, so 15 and 22, and then 16 and 23. And he hadn't said anything to me yet about any of this. Neither have they. But I just know, all of a sudden his hands go, you know, resting on top of my hand at the table. He'll touch my shoulder. And this is desensitization, where that progressive stage of touching, where these simple little gestures, and if nobody flinches, then they take it to the next level. And when someone sees that all the time and especially if someone is becoming a friend or an investigator their guards are down, they're not questioning anything. This person is wholesome, they're coming into the light. They're a good person if they want to join this church. So there's no guardrails at all.
Speaker 2:So now I'm doing the dishes, I'm taking plates into the kitchen, I'm rinsing them off in the sink. He comes up behind me with more dishes, saying I'd like to help. He has his hands on my shoulders at first. Then there's a hand on the low part of my back and he's like I'll be right back, your dad wants to talk to me. So he's already making these advancements and none of us are privy to what he's doing, this grooming tactic. So it's happening in my own home and I don't even know what's going on, and neither do they, because this guy has good intentions. Right, he's going to become LDS. So now he's convincing them that he would love to be able to get married in the temple and that I would make a great wife. Well, in the state of California, with parents' permission, you can get married. So by the time he goes through that whole year, he has to do all these things to become temple worthy. His intention wasn't to actually do any of this. His intention is to separate me and get me out of the house so he finally gets them to the point where he feels comfortable enough to ask them if he could take me out.
Speaker 2:He comes into the living room and asks me and my mom is standing right over, right behind him, where I can see her over his shoulder and he says I'd like to take you out for a cup of tea and a slice of pie. You can imagine what a teenager thinks about a cup of tea and a slice of pie. I'm like I want to say dude, I drink vodka, why would I? But I couldn't because my mom was right there, right Right, I live in the AZDC. I'm not what. What do you mean? Slice of pie? This is such a corny thing to ask.
Speaker 2:And my mom just loved this guy. He played the piano, he sang, he helped her with her piano playing. She just absolutely loved this guy. So she's got this big grin on her face and I'm thinking oh my God, this is a trick question, because I was often in these positions of feeling like a trick question. And he said cup of tea.
Speaker 2:So my mind is racing for all these different scenarios Like why is he asking me this? Why is she smiling? And he says cup of tea. Well, guess what the word of wisdom says about Mormons we don't drink coffee or tea. So now my mind's going that's it. If I say I go, I'll be in trouble because I'm agreeing to go for tea.
Speaker 2:So I look at this guy and I'm thinking the only thing that I could come up with without feeling like I would get grounded for saying vodka or anything else I like. I'm like dude, I listen to ACDC, I don't go out for pie. And I ran out of the house and slammed the door. That didn't stop him, though he kept coming over for a while. I started having to invite my friends, because I know I'm thinking this guy is weird. Why is he asking me out? And so my mind I'm the teenager, but in my mind I'm having to protect myself from a predator because my parents aren't. So now I'm taking the position of the parent and I'm inviting my own friends, my own age, to my house so that I'm not alone with this person and my parents, because that's dangerous.
Speaker 1:Your parents. I mean, they still wanted you to marry him or him court you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my mom told me he'll make a great son-in-law. I'm like mom, he's so much older than me. That's gross, I mean. I was appalled by this and she wasn't. She didn't think it was anything wrong with this Now adult Dawn, who profiles predators, would say if I left the house that day, I may not have ever returned.
Speaker 2:We don't know. If I wasn't, so like what the heck are you asking me? And if I didn't say no or it didn't run and bolt out of the house, I could have easily gone with him. Thankfully, I had this twinge of something to feel right here. That's a hypervigilant that kicks in and you're having to determine which scenario is going to keep me the safest. I felt. If I didn't feel like there was a problem with the word T, I would have gone with him. I would have definitely gone with him because that's what was expected, right? It wasn't because I wanted to. She's standing behind him with a big grin on her face, which is you're going to do this. That's the lingo, that's the language. It's unspoken but it's understood.
Speaker 2:He eventually gave up and guess what? He never did join the church. Yeah, he's never interested in that. So all of this is going on at the same time. So all these layers are happening. I'm going through the problems with the bishop I'm now dealing with this guy, my parents saying you should go for this, and I'm going through problems in the secular world. You know, I started hanging around with the what the church considers low lives, the people that aren't members. They do things they shouldn't be doing, like maybe potheads or alcohol, you know, drinking alcohol, partying. I started hanging out with people that were in the LGBTQ community and these people didn't judge me. They let me be, they let me be who I was. And that was the special moment of kindness that I had from these people that are supposedly terrible, but they were kinder than the people that I was experiencing at church.
Speaker 2:Were you able to get out of your house? I spent a lot of time over at people's houses that I would babysit for or clean house for, and I would stay for as long as I could. So one lady that I stayed at quite often she had three little kids and her husband was often gone traveling. So at what point were you able to move out, lady I was babysitting, for I ended up having her drive me over to where my cousin was staying so I could pick up my duffel bag, but also she's never tried pot. So I ended up having her drive me over to where my cousin was staying so I could pick up my duffel bag, but also she's never tried pot. So I picked up a joint, drove that home. Then we're just doing that and next thing I know all hell is breaking loose.
Speaker 2:The world's crashing down around me. Their house was under surveillance. There was a known drug house that I just took her over to. She was driving her husband's truck and he was called from Oklahoma saying why is your truck at a known drug house Flies home? He walked in on her and her. You know she was seeing some other guy and I'm now the target of everything coming crashing down. I'm the one that narked on all my friends and my cousins Like I'm getting death threats at this point. Now the church is breathing down my neck and I'm finally like you know what? Fuck all of you guys. Again, excuse my language, but I'm out. I can't live like this anymore. This is too much and I told my mom I'm leaving. So she bought me a one way ticket to Hawaii, which is where, ironically, my sister was staying.
Speaker 1:What was your journey like after that? How did you end up in the career that you are in?
Speaker 2:Ironically right Security. I needed security. Well, I, you know, I went through bad relationships, got married, had two kids, ended up leaving him, and then my kids and I I mean, I'm a single mom for most of their lives and I needed a career that I could raise them in. So I put myself through college and through computer school, and that's how it all got started. One thing just led to the next. I guess I just had this desire to be secure and then I ended up getting two degrees in criminal justice, ironically, and the first one was the psychology of a victim, and that was my focus, was understanding the victim's psychology. So that's what started the whole criminal justice, the forensic stuff and my cybersecurity kind of all wrapped into one. And then 2020 came, and that's when my epiphany finally hit me, when I realized we're sending all these people home to use their personal laptops to work from home.
Speaker 2:In my research that year, I found that in the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children had reported that there was a 92% increase in call volume for missing and exploited children that year. Wow, so that was huge. I'm like why? Why is there such a huge? That's a huge jump. So I wanted to know why. And so I started thinking about it and started just kind of doing some research and digging. And I'm like, because we're all at home and we're all seeing things, we're seeing things we weren't seeing before because we are at work. So, if you think about things happening for a reason not to say that we deserved having COVID at all, because that was horrific, never want to go through that again. But it did expose this. Because that was horrific. Never want to go through that again. But it did expose this. It exposed this pathogen, another form of pathogen, of a predator that is exploiting children. And it took that for us to realize how bad it was. And that's when I decided I was going to start doing more of this and protecting children.
Speaker 1:I think that's so great. You went from not being protected to having to protect yourself and now being able to protect others.
Speaker 2:Now I'm able, I'm in that position, I have the lived experience, I have four college degrees. I have the work experience over 25 years in information and cybersecurity. I'm able to combine all those together and have a unique perspective, and I see things that other people don't. And I see things that are not normally accepted. Other people think, oh no, that's not what I have a different perspective of the way I look at things.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And in regards to prevention and awareness, what is like one of the most important tips you could give our audience in regards to spotting this type of behavior and what to do with it?
Speaker 2:It is so important for parents and caregivers and that goes clear from a parent to a teacher, to family courts, to mental health experts, to education. You know, everybody needs to be able to spot these red flags and determine where are these dangers. Because we're not sitting on a playground anymore with a van or some ugly looking dude hiding behind a bush. We're talking about your neighbor, the normal looking person, the nice guy. Some women Creditors are nice guys. This guy that was my creditor was a pilot. He looked normal. He doesn't look like a scary looking dude. These are people that, if you have a gut feeling, you need to really think about it. You need to think about why are you getting this gut feeling? We have this ability to have that first impression. We have the ability to have good vibes or bad vibes. You need to pay attention to those. That's the first thing. Second thing is the internet is not a playground, but we treat it like one. We think, okay, kids go play, give them their own devices and say have at it. Here's the thing. If your kid is 16 years old and they want to get a driver's license in school, they're required to have great grades, so you have to have a B plus average, I think to get into driver's education. And then you spend a semester or two learning about driving a vehicle. And then you get to practice in a car with an educator who's teaching you what to do and how to do it. You're going too fast, you need to slow down, you forgot to stop, you need to use your blinker, you know all these things you're being trained to do to drive a 3,000 pound or more vehicle. And then you have to take a test to see if you actually can remember and know how to drive this without the educator. So you take that test, you have to pass it and then you get a permit. Right Now you have to drive with another adult who has licensed. They have to be licensed. You have to drive six months to another year and then you can get a license to drive on your own.
Speaker 2:We do not put any one of those mechanisms or guardrails in place when we give them access to the internet. We're doing all this for a 3,000-pound vehicle. The internet can be much deadlier, against the odds. You're talking about cyber bullying. You're talking about predators, catfish, scam artists there's so many more opportunities for danger online but we don't give them the education. We don't test their skills and we don't give them any kind of internship in joining the internet.
Speaker 2:So we were not prepared for this. We did not have. We have this technology parenting gap. They didn't have training from their childhood to prepare them for their children who have access to the internet. So there's this training gap. So what we have to do is now go back and provide that kind of training and expertise for parents who didn't learn technology when they were kids. You have to pick up the tools you have to protect your child because they are now the technology experts. They don't have the security expertise that you have. It's a lot for me to keep up with. I keep thinking I'm going to do this and I'm like, oh, that's old. Now I got to do this Three weeks. Something can be out of date. So I am having to figure out how to teach the fundamentals and then how they can adapt to what's changing.
Speaker 1:Yep and AI.
Speaker 2:that'll be the next conversation, because that is yeah, that is a big conversation sealed to my abductor is where the book starts, which is when I was nine years old. If you're watching on youtube you can see the background behind me as an upside down or inverted Salt Lake City temple. It's actually the reflection pool that I've captured for the book, because this is a memoir about reflecting on my childhood and the weaponization of the Mormon religion. So it's not a depiction of any kind of demonish or anything like that. It's about the reflection and stopping to go back and use critical thinking and go through and dissecting and deculting everything. I want to draw that to the attention of my prospective readers, that this is a story about being raised Mormon as well as being abducted, because they kind of go together in an undue influence kind of cultural family dynamic that also was Mormon.
Speaker 2:So we start with flying into Salt Lake City, going through a massive winter storm, and there were six other couples that were supposed to go with us to the temple in December of 1977. And we kept being told the adversary is going to try and stop you, it's going to do everything it can to prevent you from reaching the temple. And one by one, those six couples canceled. Somebody got sick, somebody else got in a car accident or something like that, and so, one by one, we were the only family left to go to Salt Lake. My stepfather he's a legal guardian, but I don't give him any further title than stepfather, than stepfather, and there's a reason for that, which we go into in the book. But my stepfather was a pilot and he was egotistical, very prideful in his skills and abilities as a pilot. He's that daredevil, that evil kind of spirit, and it gave him an ego boost. We were going to fly through that storm to Salt Lake, no matter what, because the adversary was his challenge and he was going to defeat the adversary by getting us to the temple, even through this severe storm. 1977, the my Turn on Earth play made its debut in Salt Lake City. So it was right there in the same and we had tickets to go. So we got to go see the very first showing of my Turn on Earth and then the next day we go to the temple and we're sealed as a family for all time and eternity.
Speaker 2:It's really hard for survivors and their left behind parents. Because I finally found him after 44 years in 2015, I'm going to go ahead and set up a Facebook account. I found a marriage license at one point that had a bride's name on it, and when I found that on Facebook I found a Patrick McCarty, which is. There's thousands of Patrick McCarty's out there, but on Facebook I found one that had had a friend with that name and I thought this has to be it. So I was able to find him, find her Facebook has the other inbox. There's a secondary inbox for people that aren't connected. That's where my messages were going.
Speaker 2:So I was like, how am I going to get his attention? So I reached out to my half brother, which I didn't know. I didn't have any idea at the time, but I finally thought, ok, he must be a son. So I said, hey, my name is Don, I'm looking for my biological father, I'm wondering if you might have any information about this person. And he's like yeah, I have a sister named Don. That was his response to me. And I said he says but we haven't seen her in a long time. And I thought this can't be right. So I said, well, I was kidnapped when I was 40. He goes yeah, that's the story we were told.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden I could just feel I don't know if it was a state of shock or whatever, but I almost started feeling dumb and staring at the screen in disbelief of what I just read. So I called my son and I'm like read this and tell me if that's what it's saying, what I think it's saying. So he did, he goes yeah, I found your dad. I went really. So it was really quite shocking to have that moment. So I went back to him and said do you think he'd be interested in talking to me? I wanted to be careful not to disrupt a whole family life, so I didn't want to come in with demands or anything. Do you think he'd be interested in talking to me? He's like well, let me find out. And within five minutes I had my dad's phone number and I sat there staring at that number and thinking that's a Florida number.
Speaker 2:I was born in Florida. I lived in Florida. Little did we know which we found out during this 2016, 2017 timeframe that we lived at first, before I got my own divorce and left Florida and moved to Colorado. That my dad lived less than 30 minutes away. Wow, he was living in Tarpon Springs. I was living in St Petersburg, florida. I didn't know that. So I left the state and went to Colorado. So there was about a two-year time frame that I was in Colorado and then I moved back to Florida temporarily and I lived in Tarpon Springs. I lived less than four minutes away from where they were living and we didn't know it. We had no idea that we were living within four minutes of each other. So it was aggravating to feel such a loss that's a huge loss that I could have had access to my dad from 1998, when they moved there somewhere in that timeframe I could have been reunited with him that whole time and yet I had to wait until 2016.
Speaker 2:So it was really hard to instantly become a father to a daughter he didn't see grow up and for me to feel like the daughter of a dad I can barely remember. There is a, not a conflict, but just a huge gap Like how do we become these people? How do we even know we're the right people? My mom and dad when we moved to California when I was six months old, they worked for Sammy Davis Jr and so we were around him a lot. We were at his house quite frequently. So when I found my dad the only way I could know for sure, without demanding a DNA test, was to say what celebrity were we around when I was a baby? And he goes you mean Sammy? And instantly we knew we didn't need a DNA test. We knew we had the right people, because only my real dad would know that answer. That's when it hit us like holy cow. We finally found each other and we had to learn how to be in each other's lives.
Speaker 2:And for me, I felt like I had all these instant walls all of a sudden, like all that indoctrination and brainwashing kept sneaking in, saying he's dangerous. And I'm like he doesn't sound dangerous. So I'm having this battle in my own head. He doesn't look dangerous. He doesn't, you know, act like he's dangerous. When I'm around him, he's loving, he's kind, he's got a family, he's got sons. His sons care about me, they welcome me into the family.
Speaker 2:How could he be dangerous? So I'm battling myself and I've got almost like skin crawling kind of reaction when he tries to reach out and touch me. Like even just his hand on my shoulder would just make me go out and touch me. Like even just his hand on my shoulder would just make me go. Whoa. It felt so foreign in the beginning. It was really hard and I think that's probably a complication, that a lot of people who are reunited, they don't know how to become the person they were and that's one of my points in my manifesto is you're not, You're starting over, you're meeting now and that's the person you're getting to know. The person you used to know doesn't come back because they've changed, they've grown, they've been hurt, they've been scarred, they went through trauma, they've had life experiences. He got remarried, he had three sons. There were so many things that changed us along the way that you cannot expect them to just be daddy and dawn again. You're starting over, you're meeting now and that's the person you're getting to know dawn.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for everything you do to keep us safe. Thank you for having the courage to come forward and share your story and cannot wait for your book to come out. It's called Sealed to my Abductor. The link for that book will be in the show notes. I'm assuming it'll also be available on Amazon too.
Speaker 2:So when it's published, it will be yes.
Speaker 1:Yep, perfect. We'll keep everybody up to date on when they can find it Okay. Thank you so much for being my guest today on the I Need Blue. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I loved it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:You're so welcome. This is Jen Lee, host of the I Need Blue podcast. To learn anything and everything about I Need Blue, visit my website ineedbluenet. And remember you, blue.
Speaker 2:Visit my website inadebluenet and remember you are stronger than you think. Until next time.
