The Process of Healing
The Process of Healing is a powerful platform dedicated to providing hope, healing, and education to individuals who have endured personal trauma. Through engaging interviews with survivors, answering listener questions, celebrity and expert guest and celebrating accomplishments that listeners have wrote in, our podcast aims to shed light on the struggles faced during and after traumatic experiences, while fostering connection and support within our community.
We understand the profound impact that abuse and trauma can have on individuals, and our mission is to offer a safe space where survivors can find solace, inspiration, and resources to aid in their healing journey. By sharing personal stories of resilience and triumph, we aim to empower listeners and provide them with the tools they need to navigate their own healing process.
Whether you have experienced physical, emotional, or psychological abuse, or any other form of personal trauma, the The Process of Healing Podcast is here to offer guidance, understanding, and validation. We invite you to join our community and follow our Facebook page for ongoing support, inspiration, and valuable information on surviving abuse.
For further inquiries or to share your own story, please reach out to us at coaching.theprocess@gmail.com or connect with us @ https://theprocessofhealing.com/ Together, we can create a network of support and healing for survivors.
The Process of Healing
The Process of Healing: Susie Spencer- The Troubled Teen Industry (TTI)
What if the very place that's supposed to nurture and protect you becomes your personal nightmare? In this gripping episode, we follow the harrowing journey of Susie Spencer, a beacon of resilience who opens up about her tumultuous past filled with abuse and survival. Her courageous testimony sheds light on the oppressive silence enforced upon her and the profound liberation she now experiences by breaking it. Through Susie's powerful narrative, we confront the haunting legacy of religious abuse and the relentless pursuit of justice not just for herself, but for countless others who have faced similar horrors.
The episode further uncovers the dark underbelly of the Rebecca Home in Corpus Christi, Texas, a place that promised refuge but instead turned into a breeding ground for manipulation and control. Through a series of personal accounts, we reveal the disturbing practices within the independent fundamental Baptist community and the damaging beliefs that permeated Susie's upbringing. We delve into the complex intersection of faith and personal autonomy, highlighting the lasting impact on individuals who grew up under such stringent ideological constraints.
As we explore these heart-wrenching stories, we also celebrate the power of community and connection in healing. By sharing experiences and fostering supportive relationships, we emphasize the importance of reclaiming power and finding strength in collective resilience. This episode serves as a poignant reminder of the transformative power of storytelling and the unwavering spirit of those who rise above the shadows of their past to seek healing and empowerment. Join us in this journey as we stand alongside survivors, championing their courage and the enduring hope for a brighter future.
This week on the process of healing we wanted to re-release from the Surviving Podcast where Susie shares her story that has led her to where she is today on her healing journey.
Speaker 2:So, david, this is a just a small part of my story. It's been three years and a lot has changed, so I can't wait to release the rest. Just stay tuned for that project. But this that we're about to re-release is a really good way for people to start with my story, the original episode. I want to give everyone a trigger warning before they listen. I'm going to be talking about murder, child abuse, mistreatment. It can get very intense. I appreciate everyone listening and reach out. Let us know if you have any questions. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2:When it comes to trauma and healing, it's hard for me to know whether to talk about what happened to me based on chronological events or on just the level of effect that certain events had on me. I could tell you that, chronologically, my dad started raping me when I was three. My mom no longer wanted to be assaulted, and so she gave me up in her place. Those first few times she held me down, actually so that he could he could be able to rape me while I fought, kicked, screamed. By age six, he was dressing me in his murder victim's clothing and reenacting their deaths by strangling me until I passed out and then raping me, but when I think about the effect that the trauma has had on me and the different times, I could also talk about the times I got pregnant and was forced to do miscarriages, abortions by my mom, or even one of the final rapes while I was in my wedding dress one of the final rapes while I was in my wedding dress. I don't know if you just discuss it chronologically, but I do know that the effect that it has had on me will take me years, maybe the rest of my life, to get over the mistreatment and the abuse that I experienced. I asked myself why a lot of times this happened, why my parents were like this, and I think it comes back to.
Speaker 2:They met while they worked at Lester Roloff's home for wayward girls down in Corpus Christi, texas, in the 1970s. They met and were married there, and I was born while they were on the compound. I was one of the babies that got to be born in a hospital and the girls in the home babysat me. I know about a lot of it because my parents talked all the time about how those girls deserved to be there and they deserved what they got, because they were not virgins, deserved to be there and they deserved what they got, because they were not virgins and anything could happen to them. My dad was a pastor for Lester Roloff and he flew around the United States.
Speaker 2:Some of his murder victims came from these homes, of their opportunity to take advantage of kids, adults, from their position of authority as a pastor, and then my mom as a church secretary or even as later she became a family counselor. Over and over, they said the victims deserved it and that it was a list of things like didn't wear the right clothes, or too much makeup, not enough, or too long of hair, too short of hair, it didn't matter. They always had a reason for what they did. I was groomed to be abused by them, forced to stay silent. I quickly learned what happened to people who stood up to my dad. They died or got assaulted. Some other relatives of mine were groomed to be assaulters, perpetrators, the abusers. My dad was not the only one who raped me, because he allowed it to happen from other people too. He orchestrated those events.
Speaker 2:I was always told to stay silent and never talk about this stuff.
Speaker 2:To discuss it, I was going to cause generational sin upon me or my family to like the fourth generation, my grandparents, my parents, my generation, my children's it was very intense, and so when my dad disappeared in a plane in 2006, again, I was told do not say anything about this stuff.
Speaker 2:You do not have enough evidence to go to the police, you don't have enough information to talk about it. So when I found out last year that he may have faked his death, I felt free finally, for the first time ever, to start talking about the things that I experienced growing up, as well as pursue justice for all the victims, both of assault and of murder, to help them get closure, to help them discover what happened, to finally allow them to talk about it and me to talk about it, to get healing for what my parents and other family members and other assaulters did to us through the church and in the community. I am free to finally speak about it. I can no longer be silent, and so that's what I'll do. I am Susie Spencer and I am a victim of assault, but I am also healing from it and I will continue to pursue justice.
Speaker 1:So the audio you just heard is the survivor statement by Susie Spencer. I want to definitely start out by saying that there is. I want to give a trigger warning. We are going to be talking about some very heavy topics. There's going to be rape and murder and abuse of every form that you can imagine, so be forewarned with that. But this is the very first episode of the mini series that we're releasing for the Surviving Rebecca home. I came across these ladies. One of them reached out to me and shared her story and I was like please get me in touch with anybody and everybody you can, and I cannot wait for the listeners to hear this. What you all have been through, susie, and to show that there is life after trauma, that you all can, that we can be survivors. I would love to introduce you further myself, but I wouldn't do it any justice at all myself. But I wouldn't do it any justice at all.
Speaker 2:So I am going to ask you, miss Susie, to introduce yourself to us. Great Thank you. I am Susie Spencer. I live down in Corpus Christi, texas. I was actually born here years ago. I feel like so many years ago. I never thought I'd live back here again. It was always just a place on my birth certificate. It's a home here in Corpus to a place called Rebecca Home, like you said, by Lester Roloff.
Speaker 2:He used to be a traveling missionary or pastor for a long time back in the seventies, but he settled down and started a set of homes for troubled teens, children, adults and my parents actually ended up working for him and they grew up in the independent fundamental Baptist church on different sides of the country and then they met down in Texas and it was like the perfect place for them to be able to practice their abusive skills and learn, learn and develop this evil rhetoric of the idea that women were less than men and like men, were right next to God and then, like women are just baby makers, or you know how some churches are, where they just really are so misogynistic and completely minimizing of abuse. So I grew up in that environment and it is just so crazy how all this stuff happened over these years, some of it I can talk about. There's actually an active FBI investigation and multi-state police investigation right now into my father and mother and other family members and a couple of other people who seem to help with the abuse they especially my dad did. And then also, he ended up. I don't know if he was a murderer before he came down here to Corpus Christi to work at Lester Roloff, but I know that it was something that happened while he worked here to some of the girls and women and we can talk about. We're still working on identifying some of them, some of his victims, and but again, it just became this place where he could just get away with anything and everything, and then he took it outside of the community, outside of the church here, into the community, and did a lot of practicing on me, my family. Oh, it's just so awful.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, I think the real start was down here, though, at the Rebecca house, or Rebecca home really is what they called it. Rebecca house, uh, home for wayward children or wayward girls. I was born here. They let's roll off like to promote marriages of the people that worked here, and so even the girls and boys who were here at the homes, like they encouraged them to stay and get married to each other, and so he has a whole like registry here of all of these different marriages he had. He would get jewelry from people and like tons of money that would come in to help support his ministry, and my parents were able to select through the jewelry that they got. He had a jeweler on staff to give them their wedding rings.
Speaker 1:When these people would get married, would they continue to reside there? Would this become their home?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, completely, totally. There was a section called trailer row where the married couples could live, and I guess there was a ton of swinging and stuff like that went on between. Like they were allowed to do, have a little more leeway and freedom. Um, they could sometimes even drink beer. Alcohol was a big one and they because this is religious base, right?
Speaker 1:so it's all in the name of God and we can. We can hurt and abuse people, but you can't have a beer. Let's take a quick break.
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Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly as long as you were. Like, the women were wearing dresses and culottes. I don't know why I did air quotes on that. Coulottes is a real thing. What I mean is I hate culottes. Yeah, on that. Kulots is a real thing. Yeah, they could.
Speaker 2:It was like such a standard, all outward base, nothing about being a good person. Everything was the check. Like, oh, go to church on Sunday morning, sunday night, wednesday evening, visitation, going out into the community and trying to make souls win, souls for Christ. I was just watching a show, the Righteous Gemstones. It's totally like the church down here, yeah, but they just notches in their belt like, oh, I've saved 10 souls for Christ tonight at visitation and stuff like that. And so incredible, just, their whole focus was completely outward. So, yeah, they couldn't.
Speaker 2:The idea, the main idea that my parents had and again I don't know whether they came here with it, but it definitely grew here, was and fertilized here was that virgins if you were not a virgin, anything could happen to you. And so a lot of the girls and the kids that were brought here, they just treated them like dirt because they had this assumption that they were not virgins or they were doing drugs or alcohol, and so, again, anything could happen to them because they were going to go to hell. According to Lester Roloff and my family, my dad was a pastor for him and he flew around the United States fundraising and then my mom was in charge of the 16 and older home. She says she was in charge. I think there were other people that helped out there too. Maybe she liked to think she was in charge and there was actually someone else in charge, but she worked there taking care of the 16 and older and then when they got in trouble with the state, it became 18 and older, called the Jubilee girls, and the way they met is that and I sent you a picture of it.
Speaker 2:It's in my baby book actually where she says that they started dating because he was mad at her, that she wouldn't give him access to the girls, because he wanted to date them or who date. There's air quotes again where it was either a date slash assault and he was angry with her. So to show her he wasn't mad anymore, he said let's go on a date and they actually only dated for six weeks before they were married. And yeah, and they Lester Roloff married them here at the church and then, yeah, they moved on to Traylor row and then I was supposed to. I think they had like a midwife on staff and I was supposed to be born here. But my mom's mom came down right before the birth and said heck, no, you're going to a hospital to have the baby there. So I was only one of my siblings born in an actual hospital.
Speaker 1:And you just said siblings. So there are, so you do have siblings. But one thing that I respect is that you said that you will not speak for someone else, that you said that you will not speak for someone else. You're going to tell your story and they can tell theirs when and if they're ready, and I really respect that. Do you mind if I ask you at what age did you realize that the home life that you were in was not like everyone else's? When did you realize it was different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. When we I was one 1980, we moved to El Paso and just jumped right into the same type of really strict church. But there was a friend I had who could wear jeans and I just oh gosh, she desperately wanted to wear jeans. This is only like kindergarten and I had to wear dresses every day. I got my first pair of jeans when I was 13. And, yeah, it was that. Her jeans until I was 13. Horrific. Wear dresses until I was 13. Like, I hardly ever wear dresses anymore because I just hate. Yeah, yeah, I had to just wear them so much.
Speaker 2:And that was the first thing that I really noticed like how could she get to wear jeans and I couldn't? And she wasn't getting mistreated for it. Like she could wear jeans and her family was nice to her, everybody else was nice to her. Yeah, I had to still wear a dress everywhere and like I couldn't.
Speaker 1:Did you see people in jeans or women in jeans and did it go through your mind of, oh my God, they're going to hell. Like they're bad people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like bad people. I knew from the way that my dad would, because I started being raped when I was three. Like my mom said that she didn't want to be raped anymore, so she handed me over to him. I think it was a little younger. There's this story about how, like, when I got my first bed out of a crib, they found me in there totally bleeding, almost dead, and it's one of those stories that you grew up with. And my sister heard a different version, that it wasn't just me in the bed but my dad was with me sleeping there next to me. My mom convinced him it was cherry juice, that somehow I had thrown up cherry juice.
Speaker 2:So I it was like three, age three, a little younger but I always knew if you wore jeans, or like too much makeup, or even not enough, or like your hair wasn't the right style, like for women's short hair, even for guys, like long hair those were all criteria for you could get assaulted like bad things could happen to you and I just knew that. So I, to see friends that could wear jeans and nothing bad was happening to them just made me wonder like how is that even possible? And early on I knew that by age six my mom was helping me put on the makeup that my dad wanted me to wear and he had victims of women that he had strangled and he had a suitcase of their church dress slips that they would wear. You know, you wear under a Sunday dress. And so there was this yellow one that he would have me put on and then had all this makeup and I would have to like I'm six and dancing around and then he would strangle me until I passed out and then raped me and I think I passed out from the fear of everything.
Speaker 2:But those only happened when I was in the dress slips, like I had a yellow one. And then when I got to about sixth grade I gained too much weight and I couldn't fit that yellow dress slip over my hips. I thought he was going to kill me when that happened. But there was another one in there. It was a white half slip, stretchy. I could wear that.
Speaker 1:So these were like his souvenirs of his victims.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he had two suitcases one with the dresses and clothing from his victims and then one that was hair and like pictures and buttons and jewelry. So, like, some of this is my necklace, but sometimes he would have me wear like necklace of another victim that he had kept. So I got my ears pierced. He took me to get my ears pierced when I was 13. And that was like for the time when I was supposed to start wearing the victim's earrings like so scary, creepy, which it makes him sound like some terrible monster. And he totally was. But he had this time like he could just be so happy, smiling and like friendly. He then, if I like a switch, would get turned on or flipped and then he was just the monster.
Speaker 2:But it was always like within this criteria that the church created of what they decided was good or bad behavior for a Christian or a non-Christian. And if you use playing cards, like we could play Uno. But if you used actual playing cards, my gosh, that was from the devil and you were going to hell. I mean so stupid.
Speaker 1:I wonder what influenced them on even just the small rules like that. Is it just a control thing? Is it just a way to still power? I don't understand how what cards you play with is control.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, exactly, it seems that just came through down through the Baptist church and I know other churches have certain rules about stuff they believe people should do or say or how they should act, but within the fundamental independent Baptist churches and they say they're independent but they're all connected throughout the country still, and they just had these rules that I'm sure they took them from different Bible verses that they just squeezed and molded to fit into their own way, but it just became this whole criteria of this is how you are considered to be a good Christian not necessarily a good person, but a good Christian. And then all this other stuff was like out worldly, worldly or free, and so like rock and roll music, so bad you can only listen like at the homes, and you'll hear this from some of the other girls. And part of the reason why it's good to talk about this is because all these girls that came into these homes were forced into this lifestyle too, of that's how Lester Roloff believed they would end up becoming Christians. If they saw this is the way to act and the things to do, you're going to get saved, because the rest is just sin. If they saw this is the way to act and the things to do, you're going to get saved, because the rest is just sin, and so this was the only way you would ever see that and become a Christian, and then that was how you were considered to show that you were a Christian by following all of these rules or standards.
Speaker 2:So it wasn't abnormal for this place. It's just that it happened outside of the independent fundamental Baptist church, like just an extension of those churches. So, and maybe a little stricter, because he did have ideas like no caffeine. No, he didn't believe in doctors or medication, so anybody who came in that was on any type of medication antipsychotics or anything were taken off. All of that. And that's how I grew up too, like I never went to the doctor. It was so awful. Like you mentioned, we talked about children. I have a brother and sister. My dad wanted a teen, 20 kids and my mom actually, after my sister was born, she snuck off to Mexico and got her tubes tied just to prevent him from having more kids secretly to a doctor down there.
Speaker 1:I'm going to put a pin in that because I feel like we'll be discussing a little bit more about that in just a bit, but I do want to ask you. I have two questions I want to ask you. The first one is when you're talking about not having doctors and access to medications, what happened to the people that were dying naturally, that maybe had cancer or that got sick and passed away? Were there situations like that happened?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh yeah, there totally was. And the thing is that it's all centered around the idea that God will heal you of this disease if you have enough faith. And so if someone died from their disease, then it was not that they could have should have gone to a doctor or gotten modern medicine. It's that they just did not have enough faith and or your family didn't pray hard enough. I know it totally sounds cultish but incredibly it's just a regular old Baptist church. Maybe it was because it was back in the 70s and 80s, but I know still a lot of people just really have those ideas today that if you just pray hard enough, somehow it will get better. People just have, mean, I'm about to pontificate here, but people just have the idea like big things like that, oh, if we pray hard enough, it will get better. Yeah, they're not worried about slapping a band-aid on a injury. Band-aids are modern technology too. Stop the bleeding with that band-aid. But you never say, dear, please stop this bleeding on my arm. You just put a bandaid on it.
Speaker 2:And yeah, these people have the idea like the big grand things, like the important stuff that I think God gives us still modern medicine and help for, like through that's a way of his helping, like that. Would they just consider that, oh, I can't, I'm trusting God more by not going to the doctor? Or not involving the big one is not involving the courts or police, or considering that the state could be helpful in providing good ideas for taking care of kids and wards of the state? That was a huge thing that Lester Roloff and the Holmes got in trouble for. They didn't want any oversight from the state of Texas or these other states, for they believe that God's word. They know somehow more than anybody else to how to take care of these kids. And it's crazy. I don't believe that at all kids and it's crazy.
Speaker 1:I don't believe that at all. Yeah, I think this will now be a good time for my next question is where do you stand with religion today and what has been your process and relationship with God throughout all this? Did you blame God?
Speaker 2:No, I in this environment, my, my parents and even the church we went to, it was just reinforced that the right and wrong of things, but mostly the wrong of things. But I had one person that I hung out with. She was 32. Her name was Joy and she had cerebral palsy and she would play with me when I was a little kid and we she would always just tell me Jesus loves you. She's the only person that would ever say that, the only one I ever heard it from.
Speaker 1:It seems like the church was promoting just the hate and the ugly, the damnations of God, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:It's almost like a guilt and shame, like you're going to trust God because you're just trying to keep out of hell.
Speaker 2:Later it really had, but she was the only person that ever said to me Jesus loves you. And but because she was, in my eyes, an adult and not but willing to get down on my level, like I really believed her. And so I I do not believe in the God that these people believe in. I think he's loving and a friend and really cares and, like my dad always believed that because, oh, he'd asked Jesus in his heart. That means that he's forgiven for everything he's ever done, and so all these assaults and all this murder and all this stuff, god just forgives them, his stuff, god just forgives them. So he never had any other people or even listened to the idea that God would possibly say, hey, cut that crap out. He never had anybody doing that. But I just I think I think there God is love, but he's also at some point going to say to you hey, what you're doing is so hurtful to other people, I you might even also say shut that shit out. You're being rude and mean to other people.
Speaker 1:And so I just you can't pray for forgiveness for something and continue to do it, because then you know that it's wrong.
Speaker 2:That was always used as a weapon in our house. Oh, you better forgive me, and that means never talk about it again, and you and it allow me to continue hurting. And so one of my favorite authors is Rachel Held Evans, and she was so great. And there's a place called Center for Action and Contemplation that just talks about there's, a higher power that we all can connect to, and he is love. But he also wants us to make good choices, like on an individual level and to really on a personal level, care for other people and organized religion. Sometimes I think it's just so it's a train wreck or train that's going to run you over, and so I'm just more about myself. If I go to a church now, I look at what people are wearing, because I'm like, if I wear jeans and if I'm going to, if they're going to make fun of me or put me down, I know that's not the place for me but I still love.
Speaker 2:No, this is going to stay out there. I love alcohol, and so I'm going to say that. I asked the the pastor what's your favorite beer, and if they have that answer, you're going to hell because you're drinking, I'm getting out of it, and so before covid there was this a friend of mine who is a lesbian.
Speaker 1:She was asking me if I wanted to go to her church. And I believe, but I. What scares me the most is when someone tells me they're a Christian. It terrifies me.
Speaker 1:And it's the organized religion that scares me, you know. And I told her. I said I just, I don't know that I want to go to a church. And she's like, why don't you come to a Bible study with us and see how you feel about that? And I was like, what do you all do? And she said we meet at this brewery downtown and we drink beer together and we pray and we sing songs and we share stories.
Speaker 1:And it was brilliant, oh, I love it, I love it and then come to find out the pastor or the preacher of that church. I had met him several times Because she's a singer-songwriter. I had met him several times because she's a singer-songwriter. I had met him several times, drank beers with him, done shots with him, said cuss words with him, and you wouldn't know that he was a preacher of all this faith because he yeah, and I was like, oh okay, I can get this, I can do this.
Speaker 1:And I thought that was really neat. So when you said that I want to be able to ask the priest, the preacher, what's your favorite beer, yeah, I think that's really cool and I think that's a great way to start, you know I totally.
Speaker 2:I think that is a really good litmus test for being able to tell, like it really anyone in the church how do they feel about alcohol, because that seems like such a pressure point for so many people Like I. I drank before I was 21, but on my 21st birthday my mom was there to make sure I did not drink because she believed that again, it just goes through this to this mentality within this church. She said that people who drink are going to get in bar fights and they're probably going to break a bottle and stab someone. So she's I'm really concerned, you're going to do that. And I was like that's not going to happen. Like I might enjoy a margarita but I'm not planning on breaking a bottle over the counter and stabbing someone with it. But they're on my birthday to make sure I didn't do that. Come on, that's so ridiculous, but it's just the extreme of how my parents believed and people in this church believe oh, you just have one drink and that is going to happen Bar fighting and stabbing with it.
Speaker 1:Wow, talk about zero to a hundred.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know, yeah, yeah. So I she started telling me this. We just grew up with those ideas and so when I got to college, I didn't go to a Christian college. I really felt like I was stupid. To everyone out there who goes to Christian colleges I'm sorry, but that is. It's not real world environment. It's so separate and insulated and you're not going to learn any life skills for dealing with anything in life. So that christian school, christian college and yeah, so I started drinking. I'm gonna prove to her that I I'm not gonna get in a bar fight. I know it's so crazy.
Speaker 1:Like that one beer is gonna turn you, I promise, everyone around me is safe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Because what would go through my mind is. The only time I ever want to assault someone or hurt someone is when I'm home, because this is where the bad shit is happening. There I feel safer in a bar than I do inside my damn house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and I totally. I actually I work in the medical profession now and I totally believe like healing from a lot of this trauma involves medical professionals, medication that can help. And you're right, growing up the home was what wasn't safe and it's so odd they just focus so much on the otherworldly, the outside world stuff. That was bad, but all of it was going on in the home, in the church. There was times. There was a time where my dad took me to one of the churches we went to and someone there and then assaulted me there. I was young, younger, it was not, it just was a place that provided an environment for evil to flourish. I asked a friend of my parents like how did you not know that we were being assaulted? And what he said is he had his own problems going on at that time, like he was really caught up in trying to hide what he was doing from the church and so he wasn't really paying attention to us. But he said too, like when my parents put on those Sunday suits and a smile, he didn't look past that. They said they were Christians and that's all he saw. And so they were very good at hiding their behavior.
Speaker 2:I call it carefully controlled blindness.
Speaker 2:They could really control the narrative of how they presented themselves to people.
Speaker 2:Like my dad was able to get elected to city council, like he's was that an outgoing and they just presented an image of oh, we're a great family, we're good people, we go to church. And yet all this stuff was going on in the home that was just so heinous and awful we could never talk about it. If we talked about it, like everything was done in silence, like even the assaults, except for when he had me wear the victim's clothing and then he cried as he strangled me and he would say, shh, shh, it's almost over now. That was the only time he made noise part, and then we were not allowed to make noise like to show that we were in pain or anything. I did it first when I was younger, but you just learned that it's better to be quiet. But I think they that was how we were able to minimize the like treat what they were doing as less than bad or assault or abuse, because no one talked about it Susie, you had mentioned controlled blindness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I call it carefully controlled blindness or carefully constructed blindness. Talk about that for a minute.
Speaker 1:I know that you mentioned it about speaking of the, of the gentleman, but can you go into detail of what you mean by that, what that is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just something that I came up with on the idea that my parents and then other abusers that have assaulted me it was all connected through the church and I think one of the things they did was they could. They worked through misogyny and minimization of women, of people that were different, anyone who was different or outside of what they considered the norm, so they would make their choices seem like it was inevitable that this was going to happen. So any conversations or narratives that you had with them and even like going back to Rebecca Holm and Lester Roloff, like his preaching from the pulpit was really centered around why he felt like he had to make these decisions and do these things just based on this criteria of why these kids were bad or going to hell. So it was their way of really controlling the narrative and giving giving people the excuse they needed to turn a blind eye. So he would go on and on about like how we've just saved this girl from going to jail, she's had a bad life and now she's going to go to heaven, and so people would feel good about giving him money or jewelry and would feel good about sending their kids there, because they felt for sure that hearing him talk, he was doing something good, and so they just created this whole world and idea around their rhetoric where people felt like, oh, these girls are bad news, they do need to be turned around. They're the idea that they're going to jail. They must have made really bad choices, so let's send them there and hopefully that will get them saved and then they're never going to do bad things again, Bad things like use playing cards or drink a beer or whatever. And tons of people gave money. They still support his ideas in these troubled teen homes that are still out there, Like there are places that are still around now that have home rooms, halls dedicated to Lester Roloff. They have his picture up.
Speaker 2:One of the things that they did and you'll hear more from the other girls about this is tons of spankings and like he would say, we've got to spank him and better at her, a pink bottom than a black heart was, I think, his motto. And but so you, you hear that and like that carefully controlled blindness comes into the idea. Like people think, oh, I may be spanked my kids once or twice, but they were doing like 50, 60, a hundred spankings at a time. One of the girls calls it hamburger butt that they got. It was just raw and bleeding.
Speaker 2:They would have isolation rooms where the girls were locked up for weeks at a time and all they could listen to was Lester Roloff sermons. They had an intercom in there, that so my dad he was. He would fly around the United States raising money, but then when he wasn't there he was a maintenance guy, so he had access to all the rooms, all the homes and all of these girls and women and the isolation rooms. A lot of times they were duct taped or tied to a metal pipe under the sink in there and then they had to just stay there like that for days, weeks, just listening to his sermons. And then my dad helped put an intercom system in there and so then you could talk to them and or turn it on and just listen to the conversations of the girls in the room and stuff. He ended up putting that in our home later. So gross Like a lot of the concepts and stuff they had there.
Speaker 2:We lived it out Like the Christian schooling that's not accredited, that you just get Christian ideas from that aren't necessarily based in reality or scientifically, sound like you're only allowed certain foods certain days like let's roll off believed on Sundays like it's a cleansing day so you can only have like fruit and that's it, and so minimal amount of meals at different times, or force feed you if you don't want to eat stuff like that.
Speaker 2:We that's how my parents just kept up those ideas and that's what we experienced in our home growing up and I was born into it. I feel bad for any of the kids and girls that are sent there that have to be forced into it. No one ever deserves to be treated like that. To talk about healing and therapy wise, like. These homes were supposed to be a place where kids that were really truly in terrible situations at home like you don't get to a place where a kid wants to go to jail without significant trauma or other things happening to them before that point and so these places should have been a place of healing and help to them, and instead they just added to the hurt, the abuse they had already been experiencing, the trauma, the significant developmental trauma that these kids were now forced to endure. It's just so horrific.
Speaker 1:Were there, children sent there and that their family wasn't a part of the church and didn't know what was actually happening.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that happened a lot through the state. So such a hypocrite, lester Roloff, would say I don't want the state to interfere, but he in his, the way he ran his homes, but he was sure willing to take kids that were court ordered to come there. And so he would work, allow the state to send him the kids. He would get the money from the kids and they would be as wards of the state. They would then come down and he would be considered like the foster parents, so he'd get the money from all those kids that were from the state. But you know, a lot of times a judge would say well, maybe this is a better place, they'll get straightened out here instead of going to jail, and so they would be sent there. And so a lot of times maybe the kids were already in foster care and so they had other foster parents or, as words of the state, were sent there as opposed to their parents having any say in it at all.
Speaker 1:So was this ever? Were there ever children or young girls? These teenagers that went to the state and it was like do you realize what's going on here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the first court case was in, I think, 1972 for the abuse that was occurring there and parents who had come to visit their kids had actually seen a worker whipping another kid there with an actual whip and they reported it to the state. And then they found out there was a number of other abuses going on. In 2006 was another big class action lawsuit against Lester Roloff and his enterprise, Lester Roloff Enterprises, and then he put it under the heading of the church when it, when he found that he was, his enterprise was being attacked and so through it being protected by the church, the separation of church and state it it made him, it gave him the chance to continue to abuse kids without oversight from the state. Yeah, they were. I felt like my parents by agreeing to work there, they had an obligation to help these kids, not hurt them, and instead they were just monsters that had access to now whole group of kids and there were hundreds, hundreds down here on the farm just in their Rebecca home, like 200 to 400 kids at a time.
Speaker 1:Would all of them get the same kind of punishment and treatment, and were they all victims of sexual assault, or were you all picked in a different kind of way?
Speaker 2:I think it was all varied depending on what you look like, how you talked, how you interacted with a worker. Like all the workers had their own leave to do whatever. So if you rub someone the wrong way, they could just mistreat you however they wanted to. And so maybe sometimes it was how you looked, like this color of your skin or the color of your hair, or even again the way you looked, whether you were too skinny, too overweight or whatever. There were all of these different criterias and it was just very individualized based on the workers. It reminds me a lot of a concentration camp, almost, where you have different guards that pick their favorites or have special ones that they mistreat for different reasons, and it was just the kids were so broken mentally and emotionally by the way they were treated there and maybe even by the things that happened before, that it just made it possible for these adults to, who should have been taking care of them, to actually do that. Thanks.
Speaker 1:So I want to give a reminder for a trigger warning, because the next subject or two that we're going to be talking about is going to be hard. Can you tell us the repercussions that came from your rape?
Speaker 2:So, because it started at such an early age I it was the norm in our house, like, for example, sundays we would go to church and get it dressed up.
Speaker 2:My parents were in the choir, my dad played the piano and the organ, and so we'd be there for all the morning services and then we'd come home for lunch and my mom would go upstairs and make lunch and then he, me and my sister would stand in our little dresses and then he would rape us.
Speaker 2:Then we'd all just go back upstairs and have lunch, and so that was like common stuff that happened in our house. So when I got older, getting like anything that would happen where there could be, like blood in your underwear, let's say I learned early on to hide all of that like conversations at school about your period and stuff I and in any like health classes that were offered I was not allowed to go to because I think my parents they don't want anybody telling me what I could do with my body because they were already doing stuff to it. And so by the time I hit my adolescence and teenage years, I had no clue about sex periods, any of that stuff. I learned about sex for romance novels and it was so great. Oh, that was the first time I read anything where sex was good.
Speaker 1:Amazing, I was going to say, when you say sex because rape was introduced to you, but you're not categorizing the rape as sex.
Speaker 2:Right? No, yeah, I do not.
Speaker 1:So when you found that you can have two consensual adults that care for each other and that is something they share as a gift to one another, just mind blown with it, I know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was incredible and I. The idea that it's virgins. If you were not a virgin, bad things could happen to you was so ingrained. There were different times where my mom would cry If we rode a horse oh my gosh, you're not a virgin anymore. And then she would cry profusely You're never going to be able to get married because you're not a virgin. Stuff would happen. You'd fall on a bike and go down your undercarriage and hurt really bad or whatever not in under, I mean, you just got hurt. And then she would cry like oh, you're not a virgin anymore. Using a tampon, oh my gosh, like you're not a virgin anymore and you're never gonna be able to didn't she know what your father was doing?
Speaker 2:yes, and she was there, but is that not?
Speaker 1:would not be losing your virginity that was no.
Speaker 2:That was another way to control the narrative of the stuff and to minimize what he was doing, to make it more about like these external things outside of the home were what was really causing your blood in your underwear. And so I ended up had really irregular periods and mom, just again, we didn't really go to the doctor. So she said you have endometriosis, like your aunt used to have, and so that's why you have so much pain and irregular periods. But a number of those times actually, I was pregnant and I did not. I knew that my periods were really irregular and that I.
Speaker 2:It sounds so stupid. Now I'm like, oh my gosh. Of course I didn't really know how babies were made. It's so dumb. But I didn't get a chance to really have any of that health stuff Seventh grade, like I secretly did health class so I could learn about I didn't mention anything that was happening just so I could learn more about reproductive systems and stuff. And so then when I was 15 was the first time I was pregnant and I when you were 15 is the first time you were pregnant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, by my dad or another family member, someone who was assaulting me. The mom said oh, your period is late because you have endometriosis. Let me make you a tea and you drink this. They would do she would do sometimes and it may have happened before that too, but that this was the worst time Like they would do. Epsom salt enemas my mom would to help like with the constipation, or she'd say that will help regulate your period. It doesn't. That's how you can force an abortion. Also, like this tea that I drank, so like 12 hours later, roughly like I drank it in the morning and by that evening I was just had horrific cramps and such bad abdominal and back pain.
Speaker 2:And I just started bleeding profusely, another I was throwing up. I was so incredibly sick and I begged to go to the emergency room and my mom said, no, let's have another family member come over and check you out. And they came over and they were like you know what? It's just your endometriosis. Take two Tylenol. And that happened a couple of times. Same pattern I one other time when I was 19.
Speaker 2:And so I was very careful to not have sex outside of marriage. The first time I had, like friends, I gave my flower away and there that was. He is Cheryl, he can, can't we can't diy our own kids. When I took the brave step here a couple of months ago through this investigation that we started to go for the first time in years and years to go to a gynecologist and just have her in inspects and, like, really evaluate my undercarriage there because, like I had always just been told by my mom, I had endometriosis.
Speaker 2:When I got married, we actually left on our wedding day. We moved to Alaska. Like he's so awesome, my husband. Like he has tattoos, he drank, he smoked, and I was like, oh my gosh, this guy's amazing like this, like incredible, I've never seen someone like this. We left on our wedding day. Like his family was like, hey, her family's super weird, you need to get out of there. And so we left Washington and drove to Alaska that day and I never had any problems after that with like periods or endometriosis or anything. So, going to the doctor here a couple of months ago she broke the news Like all the stuff that you've experienced was due to sexual assault and scarring from actually vaginally and anally, and I was like, oh my God, I don't remember that part of it. I remember the other. I did eventually remember the anal assaults and it sucks, so awful. But the key was the other thing was that I had been pregnant multiple times and that only could have happened when I was younger. Oh, it's so awful, but were they all?
Speaker 1:aborted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, so that would have caused too many questions in our family to have here this person who is supposed to be a Christian and now she's pregnant and she claims to never have had sex. Like what is going on. What's funny is that here are these people who are so like pro-life, don't abort a baby, but then, when it comes to their own situation and hiding their secrets, like they'll do anything to protect the image that they project, Again, it's that carefully controlled blindness that lets me people think that this is really what's happening. Oh, she's got endometriosis, but instead it's. You were pregnant and then your mom gave you something that she learned how to do at Lester Roloff's to abort a pregnancy Wow.
Speaker 1:Can we talk about the things that you have learned about your father and what he has done? You had mentioned the suitcase of souvenirs. Can we go into a little bit of detail of his actions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, go into a little bit of detail of his actions. Yeah, so there, growing up, I like to say that I remembered like 80% of the stuff. There was about 20% that I made it to adulthood without remembering. It wasn't that I forgot it, I just every instance that I was so traumatic maybe there's 1% that I forgot about it or just put those thoughts out of your mind. It's like spaghetti that's in a drawer and it's not cooked. It's there and you bought it and it's been there forever and it is just there. Well, I started. I've always known that there was sexual abuse in our family and complete mistreatment, physical abuse and the suitcases and the slips, the women's clothing, even the suitcase with the hair and stuff. I knew those were there, but seeing, finally actually reliving a moment of it. That happened for the first time, December 2019. And I immediately sought out therapy. And I don't know if you know what EMDR is.
Speaker 2:It's so cool, it's so awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've had, I've done it.
Speaker 2:Oh, so incredible I was. I'm, I was scared, shitless remembering this stuff. Like once that first memory started, it just flooded my mind with all these things that I had put away again, like that spaghetti now is out sitting on the counter. I had to actually think about it. And all those little pieces that 20% was then put back into all of these memories of my entire life, of stuff that happened. And it started because my mom, my dad, he disappeared in a plane out over Alaska in 2006. And my mom made it just very clear he has, he's gone. She would never say he died, but he is gone and there, and we had a funeral for him and everything. And turns out there was a really good chance. He faked his death and she helped him. They split the life insurance money and I think it was his way of pressuring him to settle down and retire. And then we found out some other stuff about the decisions he was making for the company he was flying for and he, I think, just worked out this grand scheme to get away.
Speaker 2:And when I started remembering all this stuff, my mom had been telling stories, her stories that she used to tell, that we were reiterated over and over again. All of a sudden she couldn't keep him straight. And actually not all of a sudden, it was with me all of a sudden. But I found out from other people like she would tell one version to someone, one version to another person, another. For example, he tried to disappear in 1986 for the first time. He tried to fake his death then and some people she told he had just gotten lost on a mission trip, like flying, and got delayed. Some people she told that he actually was working on an avocado farm in Mexico. Another one I know a story someone else she told while he tried to fake his death and I called, made some calls and got him back. So all these different people had these stories.
Speaker 2:So I, as I remembered more and she was telling these stories, I'm like I'm going to figure this stuff out and so I just started calling people that we grew up with, went to church with friends and family and, sure enough, like here's all this evidence faked his death, all these things that I had always known and then now was remembering in more detail, like the suitcases and stuff. We found a bunch of pictures hidden away in my mom's stuff she had. She'd actually moved in with us after the pandemic back down to Corpus Christi, and so she brought clothes and photo albums with her. And so all these photo albums I started going through them and I found like a whole section of pictures tucked away that were like in my Polaroids and my dad's handwriting and like creepy, weird places, like ugh, so makes me want to throw up thinking about those pictures. And so I just started reaching out to people like, hey, do you know who this is in this picture? Do you know where this was taken? What was the situation here?
Speaker 2:And that's how I found out that all the stories about Lester Roloff being such a great man and like the work they did to help get these girls straightened out, that was the main story that we were always told and that they told other people. And when they would say stuff like, hey, I'm taking care of these girls and getting them straightened out, that was code, for I beat them profusely and they were scared to death. So they asked Jesus into their heart stuff like that or gotten straightened out, tying them up and they were in isolation, or straighten them out, I sexually assaulted them and then murdered them. It's so much of a manipulation of a story and an idea to absolve themselves of their behavior.
Speaker 1:So, other than the rape, your father had also had victims that he had murdered.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and throughout all this investigation and we've just got a really good team of volunteers that are helping us sift through all of this information that we have in these pictures and stuff and contacts with different churches that we've been at and family so we're up to 25 murders now and, yeah, at least three for sure are from two or from Lester Roloff's home here in Corpus Christi and another one is from a troubled teen home in Florida.
Speaker 1:Have these just been cold cases this whole time, and then now they're starting to link them to your father?
Speaker 2:Some of them are yeah, and then the others are that people have come forward saying, hey, this was a friend of mine that was at this home, and then they disappeared at the same time that you have this picture showing this weird place. That was exactly when they disappeared out of the home and my memories of who that person looked like are exactly what they remember. That person looked like their friend, exactly what they remember that person looked like their friend. But see they, my parents were able to get away with that because Lester Roloff is like such a such, held in high esteem by all these independent fundamental Baptist churches and all these troubled teen homes. And then the fact that my dad and mom knew him. Then they just it gave them access to all of these other places throughout the country for all these years, and so they could.
Speaker 2:The idea is that with these girls or kids there, that they're going to make bad choices anyways. Oh, they ran away. Or they decided to drink, or they did drugs and they died in a horrible way car accident or whatever or they ran away and hooked up with the boy, one gal who is missing from 1978, this story, multiple stories again about her. It was on one of his fundraising trips and she was a singer. She was in the home down here in Corpus Christi, but Lester Roloff would take singers, girls, with them to churches to parade them in front of people to say, hey look, how great their life is turning out. Give me a ton of money, basically.
Speaker 2:And so my dad, when he would do fundraising trips, he would take a group of girls with him too, and one of them, went missing on a trip, and my mom said that she, oh she ran away, and then my dad hunted her down and, out of the goodness of his heart, decided to let her go, which is not true at all. But, talking to some other people, there's multiple stories now about what happened to her and in fact I think she ended up getting buried in our basement in Washington. She was buried in my grandparents' orchard for a while and then was moved to our basement in 1995. So the police are working on all of that. Me and another family member, we're the only ones willing to say, hey, we've got all this evidence, we need to go to the police. And so January 2019, we contacted, we started just contacting different places where we used to live and saying, hey, we were sexually assaulted. There are other people who were sexually assaulted, there were murders, and then my dad disappeared up there, like the one in Alaska, or faked his death based on the evidence that has come to light.
Speaker 2:And so we no other family will support us in all of this. In fact, like the police were over at our house to talk to my mom and she said I'm not going to tell you anything, and they basically said we don't have enough evidence right now to arrest her. She's in good mental health, so we can't bring her in for that. We've got to let her go. And so she actually left the next that. Right after that, she said I'm leaving. And she is now on the run from the police, like on the east coast somewhere on the run from the police slash, hiding out for my dad. She said he's gonna kill me. I'm gonna have to get back to life, I'm gonna go to jail.
Speaker 1:And she just took off so there's a huge possibility that your dad is still alive, just running around out there somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And the places that we've heard reports where he was seen like crazy, like not crazy enough, this sort of makes sense, but they for the times that he was in those locations there was an increase, a spike in missing people again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're working really hard with the FBI and the police to try to track him down, because and I know that you're limited at what you can say because of the open investigation, but as soon as it's closed, you're coming back.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, yeah, totally. I'm just there's so much that had happened in in in different situations that we were involved in, like there was a house fire at one point that was arson, so that my parents could get the insurance money and stuff like that. It's so crazy, there's so much.
Speaker 1:So I want to get some clarification on you from a couple of things and forgive my ignorance but, at one point you said that you were living in Washington and then you got married and then you drove to Alaska. Is there a Washington in Alaska?
Speaker 2:No, so we, my parents, my dad was from Washington, my mom was from North Carolina and they met in Texas and in Corpus Christi they had me, and then they moved to El Paso and that's where my siblings were born, and then we were there until 1993. We left because of this house fire moved back up to Washington. My dad was from and lived in the same town. We went to the same church that he grew up in, all that stuff, and then he had been a pastor for all the time. We were in El Paso and did missionary work, like going into Mexico where, again, a number of victims, so sad and he then, when we got to Washington, he worked for a public company, not public, a worldly company, outside of the church doing aircraft.
Speaker 2:He was a pilot, still a pilot, and he flew throughout the United States and into Alaska doing forest service and like wildlife surveys and stuff and firefighter stuff. So he, frankly, he could be anywhere stuff. So he, frankly, he could be anywhere. He used to fly all the way down, like South America, the Bahamas, mexico, united States, alaska, all that stuff. And so that's where he disappeared, in Alaska. And then we, my husband and I, we lived up there in Anchorage, and then we ended up making our way down the map to Corpus Christi, oddly enough for his job. So I'm back where it all started, which is it's not planned, but very fortuitous.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I have questions about is did you say that your mother moved in with you at the start of the pandemic?
Speaker 2:Actually after quarantine.
Speaker 2:So she had always been in Washington and after he disappeared she bounced around between me and my siblings and then, like her family, on the East coast and she got a huge settlement from the state of Washington for his disappearance and so she has not had to work for the last.
Speaker 2:She was last 16 years since then and she, she was in Washington while my sister, my mom, started making a lot of comments about the idea of that rape is not that big of a deal and that sexual assault is. You're only healed from it If you never talk about it. That's how is. You're only healed from it if you never talk about it. That's how you know you're healed from it. And she said that there is this freedom in Christ, prayer that you can pray and that heals you from every sexual thing that's ever happened to you, and if you will just pray that, you will never have to talk about it again and you will no longer be affected by any of the results of it. And so she she said that and she was very annoyed when it didn't happen. I mean, like trauma sticks around man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ptsd apparently isn't a, it's just healed by that one prayer I started to say, if it was that easy, I don't know, that might be against the religion too. That's one seven, we could get that tattoo.
Speaker 2:So she actually was living by my sister and she had such strong ideas about this, she left and so at the beginning of the pandemic, she went back to when and she got stuck in an apartment there just by herself during quarantine and I think her and those four walls, they just did not get along. And so she she ended up. Because I'm the oldest, like I.
Speaker 2:It's just such a weird relationship that can develop with an abuser and then it's called trauma bonding, or you become attached to this person and, because they're a caregiver, you expect them and hope that they're going to be good people. It's like having a brownie that's just filled with shit because it's supposed to be good and you might get a good bite. And then and that's how a relationship with her was she could be so great sometimes but then just so incredibly awful. But I felt responsible for her and I have, for the most part, like I was her stand-in starting at age three, so and I cooked and I cleaned and I was responsible for my siblings starting at a very young age. So I and her and so she moved in with us in October 2019. That's just when it all broke apart for her. I think it's great actually for all this to finally start coming to light, for me to be able to I feel free to talk about it finally.
Speaker 1:So do you? So you think that with her coming there is what brought it yeah?
Speaker 2:Like I I had been helping a family member with her healing from the sexual abuse and so like we were already working on like a timeline of our life. And again, like I had remembered, like I remember times where I'm sitting in a chair and there's a girl being raped on the bed in our home in El Paso and I I just thought somehow like that wasn't me, but of course, like now as an adult, like forcing myself to see it again, like you really have to work hard to put your mind back to that and to really think through, based on the age and the way she looked, everything about that situation and the fact that I was sitting in the chair watching it happen. Like I know that was me, like it couldn't have been any of my siblings and I always just had this idea that somehow I got, I was invisible, like it didn't happen to me. But part of that was reinforced by my dad was did not like my red hair. I've always had it and it is. He has hated it. I actually never got a compliment from him, never. He never said he liked it. He did say one time it didn't look so bad, but he and that and the fact I was overweight and he preferred like you'll see in that little note, like he preferred blondes, and so I just thought somehow I escaped it and I had all these memories of this stuff happening.
Speaker 2:But I still can't mentally see the actual penis coming towards me. I'll say like I can see everything happening, but he's like a kid doll down there. I think it's just my the way my mind chose to process it as a kid, like some of the murders that we were there for, I just thought we had a mannequin with us or a blow up doll, but it wasn't. It was a real person and through therapy and like the EMDR, I can actually think about those things without freaking out, throwing up, shitting my pants, like it's so scary some of this stuff, and so being able to do therapy to actually go back and reassess and reevaluate the memories plus just the unhealthy ideas I grew up with, like working really hard to let go of a lot of that Before we finish up here, may I ask and this respectfully, but how have you been able to maintain a relationship with your mother?
Speaker 2:She's on the run and she won't answer her phone now. So it was the break was that she would not talk to the police, that I went to the police about the stuff that happened, and I'm so thankful for the states that have no statute of limitations on assault and just states that actually consider this stuff important. Everyone considers murder important, but sexual assault sometimes people differ on that. That was so. I don't have a relationship with her.
Speaker 2:I think that one of the things I feel like the idea of forgiveness was so misused in our house, but I love Richard Rohr's idea of it that it is. You are coming to terms with and accepting the idea that what you wanted for the past did not happen, that the way that you hoped it would be did not turn out, and you are going to let go of that idea and yet still hold them accountable and reach for healing for yourself and others. Like that's his definition of forgiveness. I'm paraphrasing, but I love that idea, the idea, this balance of okay, acceptance for the way it was not and the way that you really wanted it to be, but also the balance of justice and healing, that those are equally important. I so any relationship with my mom will include all of that. Like it she.
Speaker 2:We try really hard with our children that we adopted to promote the idea of a safe environment, and I was never given that opportunity growing up, and so, like any relationships I have with any family members now will be based on the idea Like I will make my home a safe place and my family will be in a safe place and for them, I want them to be in a safe place and you make healthy choices and have a safe environment and even if the environment around you can't be safe, like you can learn how to be safe. And internally and so that is my mom is just chaos and so is my dad like chaos and trauma and just plain bad news, and so no amount of any relationship will not include those things. So it can include them. They got to leave those out the door. They can't, it can't and they are not allowed. They will never be allowed unsupervised with my kids because that shit ends with me. That's never going to happen to them.
Speaker 1:I love that, such an inspiration, and may I say that red hair is my favorite. Oh, thank you, reba McIntyre. If you know anything about me, reba's my number one, right? Yeah, yeah, I was thinking even before you mentioned how your father didn't like the red hair. I was thinking like I love the hunter green with it.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1:And so there were times when you were talking it would catch my eye and I loved it and I thought in my head I was like I'm going to let her know at the end of the show that she's my second favorite redhead. Oh thank you. A very close tie to Reba. Please understand that she will always be the number one she should be.
Speaker 2:She should be, she is. If this stuff and whatever happens with my family, she's who I'm going to channel in Tremors, like that I'm going to. She's badass man, I love that.
Speaker 1:I love her. I love her. Tell us where you are in life now and some of the positive, because you and I've had a phone conversation, we've had a lot of chats, you have some really cool things in your life and that's positive and happy and worth waking up for. So tell us about that part of you.
Speaker 2:So we, the best part that has come out of all of this is all of these new connections that I made with the not new some of them are old but just renewing connections with all of these friends and people that I grew up with man, that has been incredible.
Speaker 2:And then getting to meet these I didn't know these sweet ladies that you're going to talk to until last year. I started reaching out to people to try to find out, find more of these missing women and children, from that that I know from our family, and I just connected with the best people and so, like, my life now is just in this great place where I get so much encouragement and love from now that my family's gone, like from all these people that I get to make my family yeah, and it's we'd already talked about with our kids that we adopted. Like you get to choose your family, and so now my family's bigger because of all these amazing women and men that I've got to meet, who, what's great is, they understand more of what I experienced. They understand that trauma and PTSD is not just fixed with a little prayer right A little squirt of that, I just think air freshener yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, god, what I get, getting to connect with all of them, just has been so amazing and I feel like I'm just so true.
Speaker 2:True freedom has just come from being able to start sharing this and talking about it every day, like when I feel the pressure to be silent again, like I just have these great people I can reach out to.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they just send me a message out, unexpected, just encouraging me, like it's so wonderful, and so I I don't know what's going to come of all of it. So wonderful and so I I don't know what's going to come of all of it. My, my biggest goal is one find my father and stop him from continuing to mistreat other people, but the anybody who's helped him and the things that they're doing hopefully that's collateral, they get caught up in it too, because I want them to stop as well the other abusers and people I'm not so focused on them so much as just the healing and giving voice to what happened to me and to the other people like to get for them to get to share their stories and stuff, like it's so I love the group chat that I put together when we all decided who was going to be a part of the show.
Speaker 1:And you're right, like I will wake up sometimes and there's just everyone, is just everyone's cheerleader in there and it's become like a thing outside of even just what the show is going to be about. People have been there needing some love and support and within seconds, someone's responding back with it, like you. You all are such a light and such a blessing, and I love that barbara found me and that you all are allowing my platform to be a safe place yes, Thank you for creating it as a safe place.
Speaker 2:That's the focus is more on how strong we are, how strong you are as opposed to we, the power this builds power within us as opposed to it when it was taken away from us, Like. I don't want to ever give that power back to somebody else. It's ours rightfully, and I'm glad that you've given us this opportunity to be so powerful and share that. Thank you.
