Surviving The Burn List-ish w/ Julie Cruse

On Surviving Ish, host David talks with Julie Cruse, creator of AcademicAbuse.com and author of the memoir The Burn List, about how a hostile university workplace exit in 2023 and a long COVID recovery led her to write 180,000 words and uncover a through line of abuse from home to higher education. Julie explains building AcademicAbuse.com as a searchable dashboard aggregating global media reports of harassment, discrimination, Title IX issues, bullying, and more, noting thousands of stories and hundreds of implicated universities. She shares experiences of academic retaliation, intellectual property theft, coercion, stalking, and multiple sexual assaults by professors, and discusses how complaints can be buried and weaponized. They explore bystander abandonment, vulnerability after trauma, DEI being misused in practice, and Julie’s call for anonymous, double-blind Title IX reporting. 

https://www.academicabuse.com/

https://a.co/d/0gnAPgWV

Transcript

David 0:15

Welcome back to Surviving Ish. Today we're hanging out with Julie Cruse and she is a force to be reckoned with. She is behind the academic abuse.com website and author of the upcoming memoir, the Burn List, which we will be getting into pretty soon. But before we do, Julie, how are you?

Julie 0:35

I'm great. Thank you for having me. How are you?

David 0:38

I'm all right. So before we hit record you noticed my background. So, uh, to the viewers and to the listener, today is my very first recording and my brand new DIY. Never doing it again, studio, if I didn't love it. It was gonna be here anyways. I've had it with that, but luckily I, I like it and you noticed it, so thank you.

Julie 1:04

It looks great.

David 1:05

Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. So before we get into our big topics, what are you surviving ish right now?

Julie 1:19

So these are my petty grievances, right? My surviving, yeah.

David 1:21

Yeah.

Julie 1:21

Petty grievances. Um, well, number one on my list is that there's just one of me and it's become a serious design flaw. I keep thinking that maybe it's time to outsource to a clone. So yeah.

David 1:35

Yeah. You know, I never thought of like a clone of me until, until you said that, and I was like, you know. I'm, I wouldn't be too mad at that. How do we do that? I would

Julie 1:49

be so productive if I just had like a team of three of me. It would just be on.

David 1:53

I mean, because the, the work ethic, we follow the rules. Yeah. You know, like, like we get shit done.

Julie 2:00

Yeah. Yes we do. We hustle. Even when the whole culture is long dead. We still do it. We still do it.

David 2:07

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder though, like. I've always said that I love how diverse my friends are because I don't wanna sit down with a hundred Davids and hang out with a hundred Davids. But I guess if we cloned ourselves just for work, it would be a desk, David, a housekeeping David, and then regular nine to five, David, where I'm remember having to hang out with myself. Right. I don't really have to communicate and hang, like do I have to feed them?

Julie 2:36

I, no, no, but see, they're you, right? So like, you know that they'll just do all this stuff.

David 2:41

Yeah.

Julie 2:41

Like without you doing it for them. Like my clone, my clones, if I had clones, the three of us would be doing it all. I wouldn't just be like, you're desk Julie. 'cause I can't one me, I do not wanna sit in front of a desk all day. Hell no. But like, yeah, I'd be like, okay, I'm sick of this desk stuff, Julia. Number two, why don't you come over and take over and I'm gonna go outside and garden.

David 3:01

Yes,

Julie 3:02

we do that.

David 3:03

Okay. You sold me, you sold me. So however we, uh, make that happen. Let's make it happen.

Julie 3:09

Sorry, my camera's shaking. My kitty cat's making a cameo here,

David 3:13

so,

Julie 3:14

uh,

David 3:14

that's okay. We are pet friendly, you know, and it's always, it's so funny too, I my, my first section of my podcasting experience, we were sharing real deep, survivor stories and we still do, but it's like as soon as we would start getting into those conversations, the person that I was speaking with, their animal would come right to them.

Julie 3:39

Oh, wow.

David 3:40

Yeah.

Julie 3:41

They can sense it. Yeah.

David 3:43

They

Julie 3:43

support. Yeah.

David 3:45

Yeah. And it's almost like, I don't know if it's some kind of. Whisper kind of thing. But it's like,

Julie 3:51

yeah,

David 3:51

somehow when animals hear my voice, they know we're about to talk about some shit and they come to their owner and they're like, Hey, I'm here. I love you. Everything's fine.

Julie 3:59

And they just like you. I bet too. They hear you. They love your voice. They're curious. They just wanna hang out with you. Yeah.

David 4:04

Yeah. And it's funny 'cause I have zero animals. I love them all. I want them all to be in a cool or warm environment, whichever is fitting for them. I want them to be fed. I want them to be happy. I don't want them in my house. I don't want them in my furnace.

Julie 4:19

That's totally fair. I mean, my, my girl is allowed to go anywhere. She's so pleases I, we rescued her from the street about a year ago and all my cats have been rescued, so I just literally am like, whatever you want. I don't care. You're too hard enough.

David 4:34

Yeah.

Julie 4:35

Yeah.

David 4:35

When my ex and I were together, he was the opposite of me. He was like, any animal in the world is allowed inside my house on all my furniture. I don't care if you go to work with hair all over you. Like, he was the opposite of me. But of course, I loved all of our animals and took great care of them and, miss them dearly. But yeah I haven't, and maybe, you know, 'cause I mean, I guess, well now, I mean, my breakup's gone on in two years, so maybe one day I'll get where I'll want an animal, but I just, it's just never been a thing for me.

Julie 5:08

Yeah. Well, you don't need one, you know, not everybody, not everybody likes that type of bond, or needs that type of bond. Yeah. You know, like, and also they're a responsibility, you know? They are.

David 5:21

Yeah.

Julie 5:21

Um, so there was, I mean, most of my life I was like, no, I'll never adopt a pet. I'll never have a kid. None of it like. Uh, and then they just have a way of finding me. And when they do, I'm like, okay, alright. I lied. I'll take you. Yeah.

David 5:40

I love it. Now I will, I will say if I was out and about and an animal found of me or, you know, like I do donate food to the, uh, animal shelter here. Yeah. Like, I do those things all, you know, under my podcast name. And so, like, if I was there and a, a dog or a cat, as long as it's not a snake came running up to me and just took to me.

Julie 6:03

Yeah.

David 6:03

I can't say that I would walk away and say no, but I try to not put myself in those situations because I know that I wouldn't say no. And I just, I, I just, I, I, I, I'm scared.

Julie 6:16

Oh, you know, they're, they're the best. I, you know, there's not any scared one. If, if it happens, it happens. Yeah. And it doesn't, Yeah. You're, you're autonomous a creature in the universe. And sometimes I like to think of it like petals on a flower, you know? Like everyone who's in our lives is like, just we're all one living, connected whole. Yeah. And so we, maybe, you know, one pet falls off and another one grows in its place. And if that happens, you know, and you get yourself a pet or another, extension of your family, you know, whatever your chosen family, your biological family, whatever, it happens. Yeah. And it's not, you're a perfect flower just as you are.

David 7:01

I love that. Thank you. Because I always, I always ask my friends, I was like, is there something wrong with me? Because everyone is such an animal lover and I love them just. Kinda like my nieces and nephews, right. I went to play with them and then I want to send them home.

Julie 7:18

Yeah. Yeah. There can be, there can be moments even with mine, but like, those moments are so small for me, but yeah. I get it. I get it. I get it. Especially when you're devoted as you are to like your many projects. Yeah. You know, then it's just like you already have pets. They're your work. Great.

David 7:37

Yeah. I love that. Okay. You're, you're giving me some material here to, to remind myself of. Okay, so here's what I'm surviving ish and I can't wait to hear if you, um, are, have ever been in this situation, so this whole group texting. Oh. Or, or like group dm, you know, and, and people just add you without consent and then. When you choose to leave and you know, there's 17 people in there. None of us want to be in there. None of us gave permission to be in there. We all want to leave. But it takes that one person because it says David K has left the group. Like, why do you have to tell 'em I left? Like why? Because then I'm wondering, what are you saying about me? Like, well, why did David leave? Did David not like this? Like, well, I'm not listening to David's episodes anymore. Like F David. Like, oh, what are y'all saying about me after, and, and I end up having to leave the groups and then all I think about is David Keck has left the c left the chat. And that makes me so do you know what I'm talking about?

Julie 8:40

Okay. This David is the same thing as that spot in the corner of your studio. It only bugs you. I know

David 8:46

It

Julie 8:47

only bugs you and it bugs you. You know what mean? But I don't think it's bugging anybody else.

David 8:52

You're right.

Julie 8:53

A group, you have a right to leave a group. Everybody knows that everybody's in the same boat. Yeah.

David 8:57

You

Julie 8:58

know?

David 8:58

I try to say that when I do it, I'm taking one for the team because everyone else is just waiting for it to come up, that someone has left the group, so that way they can also leave. And so you know what? I've taken one for the team, but you know what else,

Julie 9:11

what

David 9:12

the same people will a month later start another group chat and add me again. And I'm like, still no consent. And I'm the kind of person I cannot stand for anything to be unread on my phone. Oh, yeah. I can't stand to have notifications. It took a lot of therapy for me to be okay with it, with my emails because I don't want to forget about it.

Julie 9:38

Yeah. Yeah.

David 9:38

And so, so with my emails, I, I've gotten to a place where that's okay, but if it's a Facebook notification, if it's a private message, if it's a text message.

Julie 9:50

Yeah.

David 9:50

Oh boy. I cannot stand to have that icon there. I I, I've got to be right on it, which is why a clone would be great.

Julie 10:02

You brought it back. You brought it back. I know, right? Well,

David 10:08

so thank you for letting me vent with that. Where, okay, so where should we start with this conversation? Um, because you started, okay. Maybe just give us a little bit of history on what led you to the academic abuse.com, because that's then what led you to the book, correct? Is that

Julie 10:24

Yeah.

David 10:25

Kind of the chain of,

Julie 10:27

yeah.

David 10:27

Okay.

Julie 10:27

Yeah. Thank you for asking. Well actually, uh, sort of, kind of, so what happened is, and this is a story that is actually in my memoir, the burn list is I resigned from a hostile workplace. There was an a university environment. And, um, that was in late 2023. And then suddenly I got struck down with COVID and I was down for like three months and it was the longest I was ever sick in my life.

David 10:53

Wow.

Julie 10:54

And it was a long recovery. And, um, during that time of being basically couch ridden I just didn't have the energy anymore to evade myself, my truth. Things that I had I guess just stuffed down, you know, just my energy was so sucked dry that they all just came up and so, um, I pulled out a Google document one night and just started writing. And, um, I didn't think that anything would come of it. I really didn't. I was just like, I just need to do, you know, I remember taking an improv class a long time ago and they told us, you know. Tell the story the way you think you would tell it if you thought that the person you were telling it to wanted to hear every single detail in like graphic, you know, juicy, you know, vivid portrayal. I don't know if I said vivid already. I think I did, but like just No, that's brilliant though. Yeah. And I remembered how therapeutic that was to try that. So I was like, that's it, I'm just gonna open a Google document and write my entire life story as though whoever is reading it, which is no one. My imaginary reader is dying to hear every word I say. And, uh, fast forward six weeks, six weeks later, I'd written 180,000 words. Um, I couldn't stop. And that at that point was really like a third of what I had to say, but. My partner who is a, who is a retired playwright writer, he used to do poetry in the French Quarter as a living, like I'm his typewriter. Um, he was like, Julie, I think you have a book on your hands. And I was like I wonder what would happen if I like really thought about it that way. And then lo and behold, I found the through line in the story of there being this pipeline of abuse from home to higher ed. That was the through line. And there are other, um, you know, dimensions of my life story that are not highlighted in the, the chosen condensed version, which went from 180,000 words to 77,000 words. So there's a lot that's taken out. Um, but once I had it down to like a book. And was shopping it around. I was, um, looking into comparable titles and I accidentally found, um, another memoir. Here it is, uh, by a woman named Callise Phoenix that just came out literally weeks after I started my search. It's called Studies in Lecturey. And, um, she describes her experience being sexually abused by a professor and what happened, you can tell I've like tapped the daylights out of it. But I ended up finding out that she was published by the same publisher that was signed up to publish my book.

David 13:56

Oh, wow.

Julie 13:57

And we're only one of three memoirs in this space. So she was number two. I came along as number three. I got a hold of her. We talked and here's how academic abuse.com was born. We were like, you know this, it's so frustrating because we look, we try to find, you know. Other stories like ours that are out there, and we know they're out there and, you know, we can't find any other books like ours. How is that a thing? You know, like, there, there's no way that's true. And so lo and behold, we both were kind of like, well, what would happen if, you know, we could find a way to pull all the things that are out there somewhere we where we could all find 'em, you know? And she was like, Julie, that is a great idea and I think you should really do that. And I was like, all right, well, Cal, Cal and I, you know, we're like friends now and, and, um, that really encouraged me. And, and so I sat down and figured it out. I literally sat down in about two weeks. Created the data dashboard that's on academic abuse.com. And for those of you at home who are listening, who dunno what that is. Basically, I, I aggregate news stories from around the world into one interactive, searchable dashboard that allows people to look up by university name by category of abuse, whether it's discrimination or harassment or Title IX or bullying or anything like that. And you can also see it on a map and see where it's concentrated again based on news coverage. So I was shocked because when I sat down and invented that, that database, it was December 31st, uh, 2024. And so I was like, oh, it's perfect. I finished it right before the new year, you know, January 1st rolls around. I'm thinking, oh, you know, there might be five stories. Every few months, you know, just because that's what I was used to seeing when I would search in Google. There have been like a hundred or more stories a day, every day. And in the first year it was about 6,000 stories that crossed my dashboard. And this was with limited RSS speed searching. Like I, I pull RSS speeds and that's how I do it. I had limited terms and now already this year I've expanded my terms to try to catch more of the stories and I will see anywhere from a hundred to 200 stories a day sometimes that I then have to go through and clean. Right? So if I clean a hundred, 200 stories, I might end up with like 50 or 60 for that day. You know, a lot of them are. This is a whole story too. A lot of them are, um, not higher ed based. They're just, you know, celebrities or politicians or high schools or community, um, K 12, like anything. And I see them all the time. And so, um, yeah, it's kind of a heartbreaking side project to, to be involved in that. But it's providing a service, you know? Yeah. It's showing people like, we are not alone, you know, we're not abuse and higher ed is real. It is rampant. And I think to date, there are, I wanna say 727 universities total that were captured. Okay. 727 universities, uh, implicated. Why,

David 17:42

okay. So couple questions. When you say, um. Doing like the cleanup, is that kind of like where your vetting process, like you're not gonna put something up unless you know that this is Yeah. Factual information. So that's kind of the vetting process it,

Julie 17:58

well, well, I don't, I'm not a reporter. Okay. What I mean? So I don't vet the stories.

David 18:05

Sure.

Julie 18:05

What I do is I eliminate the ones that are not related to my search criteria.

David 18:11

Gotcha.

Julie 18:12

They go bye-bye. Okay. Also, sometimes there's duplicate stories that'll come through and I, I like set up, um, a program to scrub out duplicates and only keep the most recent of the stories. Stuff like that. So I try to make sure like that whatever is in there represents the current media coverage of this issue. Without inflating numbers. Arbitrarily.

David 18:39

Gotcha, gotcha. So the, the vetting part of it is that it comes from a reliable source? Either way, it's what is in the media.

Julie 18:47

Yeah,

David 18:47

it's, it's what is being said. You're not saying I'm dying on this hill. This is, this is it, but this is what is, so it would also be good if I had children and, or if I was about to send my child to a university Yes. I could use your website to research it to see what the bullying is. Like, what the discrimination is. Like, like, let let you know with me being a gay man, let's say, you know, okay. Well, my my, my friends a gay couple, they're both white. They just adopted a mixed child.

Julie 19:16

Yeah.

David 19:16

And so you would be able to use your website to see like what if there's discrimination against like homosexuals or Yeah. Race, like those kind of stories. Right.

Julie 19:26

Liability, age, all sorts of things that I've seen in there. Yeah. Yeah.

David 19:30

Why, why? Why do we not hear a lot about these cases? Is it money?

Julie 19:39

Oh boy. That's a sore thought. That is Bet A sore thought. That question. From experience and I'm gonna show you another book I think I have here, or I guess I'm not gonna show it 'cause it's across the room there, but there's this other book, okay. Called Complaint, an Exclamation point by a woman named Sarah Ahmed, who famously resigned from Goldsmith's over the university's failure to address sexual harassment. And her book well she publicly resigned, right? And so what ended up happening is all these other people that went through the same thing started writing her and telling her like, yeah, this is what happened when I tried to file a complaint. Here's what happened when I filed a co. And so she put together all of the letters that she got and basically did like a qualitative study, identifying themes in what the people were saying they'd experienced. And, um, so she talks about how complaints in higher ed are often weaponized against complainants. And she also talks about, I think she calls, I, there's a line in her book that I love and it has something to do. It's, it's along the lines of like, even a burial itself can be buried if a burial itself should not have happened, meaning public records start walking away and going magically missing. Um, witnesses that come forward are conveniently dropped from the record. And I've seen it firsthand. I've seen it firsthand, and it is absolutely torture. Some. That, that this is what's going on in higher ed. And it infuriates me. I'm outraged. I think, I think we should be outraged. It's supposed to be our, you know, our gateway to upward social and economic mobility. And then you have elitist, racist, sexist administrations and, um, constituents basically gatekeeping, uh, on the basis of protected classes that should be protected. But then, then the gears, the, the gears of the shadow policies and higher ed start turning. And, before you know it, anybody who tries to make an allegation is, you know, now a ghost of campus, you know, they're, they're not seen anymore. They're gone.

David 22:11

Yeah. Yeah.

Julie 22:12

And so that I think is why we don't hear.

David 22:16

Yeah.

Julie 22:17

As we should.

David 22:18

Yeah. And you know, and like I said, isn't money, and I guess that's the short answer, but man. Mm-hmm. So, okay, so

Julie 22:27

yeah,

David 22:27

Your abuse that you focus on mm-hmm. Um, is that you were a victim of this.

Julie 22:35

Yes. Yeah. Repeatedly pretty much constantly. Um, and that is why I, you know, I had an early developmental editor who told me I should cut my chapters about my childhood. And I was like, oh, absolutely not. Because that was the reason that I was targeted. People need to understand what made me vulnerable in that environment, why I was targeted. Otherwise, you look at me and I'm like a white girl, so like. Yes, I'm a woman, but I'm also white. And there's intersectional levels of privilege. But the thing about higher ed is that it was built by and for a very specific class of people, and they're very good at identifying who is and is not part of that class. Down to the clothes that you wear down to where your hair looks, down to the way you speak, thank and act who you associate with, right? I mean, they're like little cliques. It's like popularity cliques. Mm-hmm. And, and they know, you know, who's in and who's out. And they work hard to make sure that they protect their, uh, their interests. Um, so yeah, uh, I started getting it really early and in college and really had no clue why it was happening. And, um, thought, initially thought, wow, I, I must be crazy because like, this is not at all like what I thought college was supposed to be. I thought like, you go, you work hard, you get good grades, you get scholarships, and you go get a great job. And of course my dream was to work in higher ed. Like, I thought that was like, the most amazing thing you could ever do is like, think and be creative all day for a living. I mean, come on. Who doesn't wanna do that? That's what I thought. And, uh, and I started finding out that, um, each professor has their own kind of like the niche area of research. And in my experience the kind of golden rule is that you are not supposed to think for yourself as much as they say they want you to. What they really want is for you to kick up. Reward, what they're researching, what they're working on, what their opinions are, and they punish you. If you do not, they punish you. I mean, I've gotten punished with grades. I've gotten pun punished with isolation, just taking me out of opportunities that everybody else was getting. Just for speaking on my own opinion about like what, what I thought of the subject material, which is what I, I was told even by the professor themselves, this is what we want you to do. But that's really like storefront. Correct. What they really mean is, you know, I want you to, um, advance my agenda, advance my career. Yeah. And if you don't, you're a threat to me. You're a liability.

David 25:39

Yeah. Your opinion and thoughts are welcome as long as they're approved by me and they're my opinions and thoughts.

Julie 25:47

Yeah. Yeah. If they don't reward my position, my state. This domain of research then you are a threat. You are competition. You are inherently making my own flaws in my research known to me and others. It's not, you know, it's not safe space for actual open dialogue. It's not.

David 26:13

Yeah.

Julie 26:14

So, um, there's, yeah, that's like kind of the baseline stuff that I experienced. And then I started experiencing intellectual property theft, where my own novel research, my own ideas and concepts were being stolen by faculty. And at one point I was cornered in an office and blackmailed with my degree being threatened. Um, and then, um, I filed a report and the faculty member who was involved in the blackmail ended up telling me like, I'm going to ruin your entire career and the faculty are gonna help me do it. And he started, he started his. Cross institutional retaliation campaign and it followed me to grad school. And um, I like to call this by the way, but the survivor ification of higher ed, like we've seen the show survivor.

David 27:05

Yeah.

Julie 27:05

You know, like people really start to, um, treat high achievers as threats. Yeah. You know, so, and I was definitely a model student, a high achiever. And it was really odd because I would get awards and recognition from outside my own department. Like the, you know, the College of Fine Arts at one point gave me a, uh, some sort of special talent scholarship for this piece that I did that was super innovative. And I was invited to do like residencies and guest speaking lectures and stuff from elsewhere. And then my own faculty, they treated me like I was a plague in their department. And so, yeah, it's like, so those are things, by the way, these things are, they are what make a student extremely vulnerable. Like I came in vulnerable already on the basis of class, first generation, low income at risk. You know, having come from that background, I was super vulnerable. Um, but then the faculty started lining up against me and that made me the perfect target for a sexual predator who wanted to, um, coerce me into sex, threatening my grades, threatening my degree, threatening my career, threatening my family, threatening me personally strangling me. And you know, that that was all enabled. By the discrimination and harassment that I faced writ large in those envir, in those academic environments. That's what made me such a special, easy target for, uh, for these other types of predators in higher ed. And so that was a big part of why I wanted to write this book is to show like, we need to stop this. Yeah.

David 29:08

Yeah. So, so this evolved into sexual assault?

Julie 29:16

Oh, yeah.

David 29:16

Wow.

Julie 29:17

Yeah. Multiple times. Multiple times

David 29:20

by multiple people.

Julie 29:21

Yes.

David 29:22

Wow.

Julie 29:23

Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, whew, I, uh, I, it was interesting because. By the time I had come to higher ed, I'd already been through so much domestic abuse, physical violence, sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse. I was like, my parents were on crack. I was kicked out when I was 14. They didn't wanna take care of me, you know, so, and somehow I managed to get a full scholarship to college. Anyway, that's how determined I was. So by the time I got to college, I was really like, man, I'm invincible. You know, if I can get through that shit, I can get through fucking anything. And I will tell you that all of that changed the very first time that I was sexually assaulted by a professor Coercively raped. That changed everything, you know? 'cause that was a person that, that I really trusted. Someone I really looked up to some, sometimes I would even emulate that person hoping to be, you know, that kind of expert one day. Like I wanna be, that good at stuff too. And, you know, I admired the person, I trusted the person. And then, you know, to be, whew, excuse me.

David 30:51

No, you're okay.

Julie 30:52

Um, to be treated that way by that person who by the way, was a volunteer and an activist and, um, someone, everybody kind of associated with like, you know, a flock of doves entering the room. Like just that golden boy veneer, everybody just fond over him, you know? And so I was very, at that age, like avoiding men who I thought would perpetrate against me, what men did in my childhood. And so this person made themselves. Appeal to me as, you know, I'm, I'm your friend. I'm someone you can trust. I, I wanna be with you. I want you to, you know, go to this school to be with me and really courted my trust. And um, and then when I said, no, you know, I don't wanna do this things really, really took a turn. And, uh, and then I found out afterward, like how quickly that person who claimed to care about me so much just dropped me dead in the water, you know, and was just like, flush you down the toilet. You don't exist to me. And by the way, I'm turned on by all the students in the department anyway, so you're not, you know, you're not, the biggest concern here was basically what I was told by the person. Right. And you

David 32:11

heard his ego, so he had to let you know that you were not the only one. That he had other options. And, you know, and.

Julie 32:20

Yeah. I just was like, you know, by the way, this was how, um, although I was sexually abused in childhood, I was abstinate when this happened.

David 32:31

Yeah.

Julie 32:31

So that was how I, you know, my consent was taken from me as an adult. My grades were threatened, you know?

David 32:40

Yeah.

Julie 32:40

And then I was physically forced at one point into it. And yeah. So I had to then live with like this piece of my identity being taken, you know, my consent, the last thing I thought I had in the whole world, my consent Yeah. Was taken by this person who had a responsibility to protect me, who, who lured me in with that promise, and then assaulted me, and then acted like I didn't exist. And this was after four years of like grooming me. So I was thinking like, oh yeah, this is my buddy, my professor is my buddy. And asking me on dates and stuff, I didn't know. I was just a kid. I'm like, in my early twenties. I'm like, I don't get it. And so that, that was the moment that I shifted from being this like invincible, like I have done it all. I'm so determined I can do anything to, all of a sudden I just, um, was really finding it hard to just function, you know, just function in the day. Like, and uh, and then again, I was even more vulnerable after that. So it was really, really isolated. My friends didn't understand, my peers didn't understand. People started turning their backs on me. And I call this like a bystander syndrome, like. They don't wanna, they don't wanna be at odds with the person whose goodwill they still need. 'cause they work with them or they study under them. And then, you know, the survivors left out in the wind. And even in that place, being more isolated, longing for someone to trust and confide in. And, and that was when I was again targeted by a second professor who was a, a, a sexual predator as well. And he coercively, um, abused me for six years. Yeah. And so it took me, uh, changing careers. I had to completely throw away everything I'd done up to that point to get away from his web of influence.

David 34:53

Yeah.

Julie 34:53

Change careers multiple times. Change cities multiple times. 'cause I, he let me know that he was like a cyber, cyber stalking me. So I had to completely erase my identity online, in person, everything cut and run. Um, and that whole story is in my book. That's a whole nother story. Um, but yeah, the, um, the things that go on in higher ed, I think half my point, there are many points, but half of it is like you professors. When you put your students in this type of position, when you corner them, your willing participants, excuse me, willing participants at that point in what happens to them next you've basically set the trap.

David 35:48

Yeah.

Julie 35:48

All they gotta do is, you know, somebody has to do is just trip it and they're done. Yeah, so like I, yeah, I have a, I have a lot of anger about that and, um,

David 35:57

yeah, as you should, as we all should, you know, and, and, and like, you're giving me so much information that I just didn't know happened as much as it does, it, it, it's like, when I first started my podcast, I'd come across a lady that was telling me about, abuse in church and religion and in the troubled teen industry. Yeah. And I was never involved in religious cults, i've had some religious trauma, but nothing like that. You know, I'm, I'm a gay man in the south, of course I've got religious trauma,

Julie 36:32

um,

David 36:33

And so like, I started really diving deep into all this, to the point that it became a whole other podcast hosted, hosted by Jenny called on Holier. And I'm like, I, I. To do a series on this. I want, I want to have some conversation about this to bring awareness and, and so I, I, I wish I had the sta statistic in front of me, but there, there's a lot of victim blaming oh when it comes to any kind a victim, you know, and I don't know if you know any of my story, but the listeners, unless they knew they do, but again, gay men in the South. 10 years ago, a man broke inside my home and raped me and beat me until he turned himself in for murder. It was a big hate crime kind of thing. Luckily, I was found like 18 hours later, but I had to learn how to walk again. I got down to 98 pounds. And I could really relate to what you said about the bystander guilt because I lost a lot of people that I thought would be by my side and they just didn't know how to. Now, now the man that did this to me I. Did not know him, I would not have been able to pick him out out of a crowd until I started having to face him in court, you know, during, during the trial period and stuff. So there, there, there is that where, where I didn't have people that were connected to him that was like, how do I navigate this? But they just didn't know how to treat a victim. People wanted to immediately start throwing in, oh, you're a survivor. You're a survivor, you're a survivor. Oh yeah, fine, I love that. But it started becoming toxic positivity to me. Yeah. And, and to, to the point that that word used to piss me off, so I guess that's the long way around of, of me saying how I'm able to kind of relate with you. But there was a, a statistic that I think is very important that to mention and but it's that if. Sexual assault happened to you, especially in your childhood.

Julie 38:29

Yeah.

David 38:30

This the, the stats of the, uh, of it repeating itself and happening again

Julie 38:37

Yeah.

David 38:37

Is extremely high.

Julie 38:38

Oh yeah.

David 38:39

And a lot of people think so back to the victim blaming, right? I've heard so many stories from victims or, or even people who are associated with victims saying, well, she's saying she's been raped by three men. Like, does it really happen that way? Yes. Yes. Yes, it does. Because the

Julie 38:55

vulnerability,

David 38:56

right,

Julie 38:56

because of the vulnerability and the isolation. Right, because exactly what you said. Because a victim, I'm gonna say that word, not survivor. I'm gonna say victim of victims', friends of victims', families. And for all of you out there listening when you cast doubt on that person, or you walk away, or you just say, well, it's too much for me right now, and you close the door. You are actively contributing to that person being so vulnerable, right? That what happens is they lose the ability to have a selection standard. That bar, it was high when they were friends with you. It was high when they could rely on you. When they could count on you. Yes, it was high enough that they could turn away whoever and whoever. But now you are not there anymore. And whoever left that bar is now lower and lower and lower with each person that walks away. And then it gets so low. That person is so alone, so isolated that the first person who walks in and says, oh, you know, you poor baby. I wanna help you. I wanna take care of you. You're gonna, you're gonna like, melt right into that. And you could see red flags and that. I've been there, I see the red flags, but I'm so alone. Yeah. That they're saying all the right things and, and I need to hear it. You know? And then, then you become. Yeah.

David 40:20

Yeah. And, and in your case and I can't speak for you and nor am I trying to but what, like the, the lifetime movie that was playing in my head while you were telling me your story

Julie 40:32

Yeah.

David 40:32

Is, you, you were abandoned by your parents. Oh, yeah. Uh, regard what, for whatever reason, I mean, I, I, I think addiction is absolutely a disease. But that, at, at the same time, it's not giving them too much grace or justifying it, you know what I mean? But the but then when you go to school and you fought so hard to get there and the fact that statistics show you probably would've. Statistics show that most people end up like their parents when it comes to abandonment and drugs. You know, and, and, and you didn't, you fought not to. And so now you have this authority figure in front of you that is what you want to be and, and maybe the kind of dad that you wanted to be.

Julie 41:14

Exactly.

David 41:14

And so of course let him pet you one time. Let him tap you on the head and say, I got you.

Julie 41:21

Yeah.

David 41:21

And you're gonna melt.

Julie 41:23

Of course. Of course. And I mean, thank you for saying that. That is absolutely true. I, and it's funny 'cause at the time I didn't see myself that way. I didn't see myself, I thought I was so strong and like tough and could do it all. But I, I think I was also lying to myself like that, that deep down, like, yeah, I really needed parental love that I wasn't getting. I needed family love that I wasn't getting, I needed community love that I wasn't getting about. The only thing that I got back then, to be honest, was like, you know, hit on Yeah. Like, you know, yeah, you wanna go wherever and whatever. And I'm like, no, I don't. You know? And so then as soon as you don't want to, you're disposable about, right? And then at the same time, like, girls in the community would get so vitriolic toward me 'cause their guys all wanted to, pardon my French, fuck me. You know what I mean? And so, like, and I'm like, dude, I don't wanna, I don't care about any of them. I don't want 'em, all I care about is my college degree. And um, you know, so I'm isolated everywhere I fucking go. Yeah. And then, like, you know, of course. Someone throws a lifeline and there's someone respectable in an awe-inspiring position, you know, and oh, maybe they can help me in my career, since all the faculty are ganging up on me, man, they could see they're throwing me a life preserver.

David 42:50

Yeah.

Julie 42:51

Yeah. At that point, that's what it feels like. They're throwing me a life preserver.

David 42:55

Yeah.

Julie 42:55

And then you grab on and find out that you're being lured into the, to the mouth of jaws. Yeah. You know, and you just walk away with limbs missing or try to swim away, I guess, or start singing for that matter. Yeah.

David 43:11

You know, I, I want to throw this out there. And then I have a question but I have been in the place, the mental state that you've been in of, I thought I was strong. I thought I could do this. Um, and I keep reminding myself that. So many things can be true at the same time. Mm-hmm. Right? Just because this ugly thing happened to me does not erase the fact that I'm strong does not erase the fact of that I'm determined. And so I have to keep reminding myself like one thing that I had to tell myself in so many situations, um, at any podcast episode, my listeners probably like, oh, David's probably gonna get that tattooed on him somewhere. Because I always say two things can be true at the same time. Right? Like, I am strong, I am determined, I am these things. I just also have a weakness and I also have a want and a need. And someone knew how to prey on that and that is not my fault. And I will not victim blame myself by then saying that I wasn't as strong as I thought and I wasn't as determined as I thought, or I, I'm stupid, and I keep reminding myself of that.

Julie 44:16

I love that.

David 44:17

Yeah.

Julie 44:17

Yeah.

David 44:19

The question that I have might go into a bit of a different direction.

Julie 44:24

Actually real quick here. Yeah, please. The things is, a lot of times they prey on you because you're strong. Yeah. They like that. Yeah. Then, then there's, that's shiny prey. There's easy pride when there's shiny prey and sometimes there's both.

David 44:38

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it goes into that whole, like, you want what you can't have kind of thing, so you fight for it a little bit more, or, and then, and then sometimes it gets to where it becomes a bit of an obsession and unhealthy where like the stalking starts and the, you know what I mean? Like

Julie 44:54

Yeah.

David 44:55

The it,

Julie 44:58

yeah. Yeah,

David 44:59

yeah, yeah. So you, you said something to me that really stuck out to me. 'cause I, I have been there and I absolutely agree. Um, when we were talking about. People who maybe don't know how to interact with the victim and they step away from Yeah. Yeah. And that plays a role in the victim's state of mind, of, of the abandonment.

Julie 45:24

Oh, yeah.

David 45:25

How is it that we can word that with someone that we care about? Because sometimes people can, and do and will healthily need to step away. Yeah. Sometimes I know that, I know that there were people that have come to me years after and said, the reason I stepped away is because it was triggering me to something that I had suppressed from when I was a kid. And, and it started bringing up these memories, seeing your face, seeing these things, you know, reading the headlines was triggering me. And so, uh, I, I love everything that you said and I agree with it, but at the same time, there has to be a way. Where there's not so much pressure on the person that's supposed to be the support system support system to not step away and without the abandonment. Am am I making myself clear at all?

Julie 46:18

Yeah. I hear what you're saying, but I also think this, that it doesn't take much to be there if everybody stays in it. Right? Like, so if my whole network would've even given me 2% each collectively, I would've had, I don't know, 75% of what I needed and I probably would've been a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. Than seeing them just be like, I can't give you 2%. I can only give you 0% and I'm gonna walk away. And in some cases, not even 0%, sometimes like straight up aggression and hostility towards me. Yeah. Like. You know, you're making this up. Like, come on Julie, you know, stuff like that. And I'm like, you know, then there's violence that comes from them that you absorb as well. So I don't want to say that we as victims have to give our support network you know, we don't have to do work for them to, to make, to help them figure out how to support us, but I can say this like, figure out what your 2% looks like. You know what I mean? Like, and all of you stay in it. Yeah. You know, you can, you can text somebody else and be like, you know, Hey, will you check on dually today?

David 47:30

Yeah.

Julie 47:31

Or check on David today. You know what I mean? You don't have to do it all. But don't just ghost the person and don't, like, don't be hostile toward them either.

David 47:40

Yeah.

Julie 47:40

Like, is what I would have to say about it.

David 47:43

Yeah. I, yeah. I, I love that because when, when, as I. Attempting to ask that question. I'm so glad you figured out what I, what the hell I was trying to say. But, but you know, I, I just kept thinking to myself, like, the people that ghosted me, a lot of them came back years later and had a justifiable reason to it. And of course, I, I forgiven that, but they're not my everyday friends anymore, yeah. A lot of David has changed, you know, like there's a lot that has changed, time has passed, and I just kept thinking like, what would have been different? How, what could have been the outcome if they had just said to me, I don't know how, I don't know how to be here. I don't know how to be there for you. What do you need? And this is what I can give.

Julie 48:34

Yeah.

David 48:35

You know, like, I, I hear what you need, David. Outta the 10 things that you need. Here's the two things I can do and I'm gonna try to do that, but I also need you to be patient with me. If there was that communication, we can be a team and work together. Right. I know that what happened with me was very triggering to people. You know, my little nephews saw on the news what happened to me just passing by the television during dinner, and they were babies and they were like Uncle David. And so that's when they had to be taught about hate crimes. That's when they had to be taught about attempted murder. That's when they heard about rape and when they didn't even know what, they were not even old enough to know what sex was. They had to learn about gay stuff and you know, like, and, and so, yeah, like I understand there can be things that happen that you know, that someone may not be able to fully be a hundred percent, but I don't know that I've ever asked, I've only asked a hundred percent out of what you can give me. If you can give me 2%, I want a hundred percent of that 2%.

Julie 49:41

I mean, it's really interesting when you put it that way. Like, what do I want or need? You know what I mean? Like, or, or just even having been asked, I doubt in my mind at the time in your situation was very different than mine. Mine, I was not hospitalized and learning how to walk again, you know, that, that would've been very different. But, um, you know, I think my list would've been real simple. I think I would've been just like, can you bring me a meal? Yeah. I can't cook today. I don't want to socialize. Yeah. But I'd love if you would drop off a plate of food at my door. Yeah. You know, or like, you know, I don't wanna talk about it. I don't wanna talk about it, but like, just don't just, let's go hang out and do something else. You know, like, or let's. It's, I don't think I would've been asking for like, hours of talk therapy or, you know, I, I wasn't into that. Like, I'm just like, I, and everybody's different, you know, somebody might need that to like, cry on someone's shoulder. And I really, I think in my case, the fallout was so extreme in my social circle. Like so many people just ghosted or kicked me while I was down. Yeah. And I mean, I would've just been like asking them not to do that. Right.

David 50:57

Right. Don't

Julie 50:58

kick me while I'm down. Yeah. And don't just ghost me. Right. You know what I mean? Like, and I'm glad that they did in a way though. 'cause farewell friends, like you guys are gone now. Yeah. And now the people that are in my life as spew and far between as they are. Are the people that I know that actually care about me. Me. Yeah. You know me, really? The me, me, the one that went through all the shit and the one that's fun to hang out with, not just the one that's fun to hang out with.

David 51:23

Right.

Julie 51:24

You know what I mean?

David 51:24

Yeah, Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, so I have one more question then I wanna move to, uh, the book. I can't wait to talk about the blood.

Julie 51:30

Yeah.

David 51:31

So with, and, and I don't want this conversation to go a political route by any means UN unless you do. But with, when I hear the word discrimination right now, I immediately start thinking of DEI and I start thinking of the. Loopholes that people have now. So when this whole thing with DEI all came about mm-hmm. With what you and your platform does with discrimination, is there I, is there, uh, something that like, does this DEI thing playing of into factor with, with what you all do with discrimination and fighting against,

Julie 52:09

okay. All right. Lemme see if I can break this apart. Yeah. Um, academic abuse.com, the platform has a resource about discrimination. That resource does not describe DEI. It is a description of the federal, like basically what constitutes discrimination according to federal policy, and also how to survive it, how to deal with it, what do you do if it's happening to you. And different ways that you might be discriminated against if you're a faculty person or a staff or student. Like there's some examples of what it can look like, so you can recognize it. In case you don't, you know, recognize it, which was, this is basically the resource I wish I would've had. Like, I wish I would've been able to look at it and be like, oh my God, there's grooming, there's touching, there's asking me out in private, there's all this stuff.

David 52:57

Yeah,

Julie 52:57

I wish I would've seen it, you know, but I didn't. I had to learn it myself. So that resource is completely and entirely separate. Now when it comes to the stories that come through the dashboard I, to use this word, don't take a political position on the stories that come through. That's not fair to the audience. You know what I mean? Right. I'm just saying this university was accused of this by the time. Right. And so one of the things that I do is I, um, I have robots that I designed that they're not actually robots. They're computer programs, cls and robots.

David 53:31

Ah, I love it.

Julie 53:33

They, this program will actually categorize stories as whether or not they involved federal action. So that's one way that people can like separate, okay, this was the current administration, you know, deciding that this school had done something, you know, which is different than a victim making an accusation in a public forum, right? So there's, I make that distinction. Now, as far as myself and this whole debate about DEI, um, I'll tell you what, I am a huge believer in affirmative action. Okay? I love affirmative action. We need it now, unfortunately, in higher ed, DEI, in my experience across the board has been grossly misused. The people at the table talking about the DEI are always mostly white, always mostly men. Usually are completely fucking hypocritical. Yeah. Like they can talk about it and pay lip service to it. 'cause it's a buzzword. Yeah. And they can even get funding for it.

David 54:39

Oh yeah.

Julie 54:40

But they don't actually do what they're supposed to be doing with it.

David 54:43

Yeah.

Julie 54:43

So now this whole thing about DEI gotta go whatever, take it out, free freedom of speech. I'm like, well, you know what, you're actually not losing anything to begin with because they weren't actually doing what they were supposed to be doing with, I watched them across multiple institutions. I watched 'em. You can go on any campus and circle the classrooms and see what color and what gender most of the professors are, let alone what their sexual orientation is, et cetera, et cetera. Their ability, their age. Like you can go and look, you can see it. Yeah. You know, so are they actually doing what they say they're gonna do with this money or aren't they? And that's, that's my like very controversial. Cents on the subject because like, you know, nowadays cancel culture. Somebody could be like,

David 55:29

no, I know.

Julie 55:30

You know what, like I'm saying it all, actually I'm saying it all in this book and I'm not blaming

David 55:35

Yeah.

Julie 55:35

Anybody but the people in higher ed for this. Yeah. It's not de i's fault, it's the, the privileged class's fault that is not actually upholding DEI the way they were supposed to to begin with.

David 55:49

Right.

Julie 55:50

Yeah. And I get real fired up about that subject too. So I'm gonna take it down and not

David 55:54

Yeah, I know, I know. Like when I, when I was, you know, going over my notes and, and everything that that your person, uh, your PR person sent me, like, there, there was just so many things that I was like, how with the way that today's America is changing

Julie 56:11

Yeah.

David 56:12

How is this influencing it? Because I feel like certain. Class of people, certain race of people gender of people, white men. And I, and I'm a white man, you know, I, I, I, I know I have privilege. Now you find out I'm gay, I'm knocking down a couple notches, but

Julie 56:29

sectionality

David 56:30

right. But I, but I still lead as the white man, and so it just I feel like there's, um, a, a little bit more leeway given on certain things such as sexual assault. And so when I was thinking of, you know, when, when I was hearing your story, and, and I, I get, I'm so mad about it and, and the fact that like, this is happening right now. You know, this isn't, this isn't a one time hiccup. This is,

Julie 57:01

it's systemic.

David 57:03

It's happening while we speak.

Julie 57:06

Yeah. Wow. I mean, I'm reading a Virginia Giuffre memoir about surviving Epstein. And it is notable how often those who are responsible turned their backs, turned the blind eye. And I also think it is notable how much the media, um, in the early days of her attempts to shine light on the subject were hostile toward her. Yeah. And called her a liar and, you know, defamed her character. And like I am, I've experienced that. And so, like, this is why I'm so grateful that I'm, I'm having an opportunity to tell my story, to engage in this podcast, to like, to reach people because I know that David, you are doing something by doing this. You are doing something that like, pretty much millions of other people won't do.

David 58:04

Yeah.

Julie 58:04

You know, or will do the opposite of, and like, you know, I, I really feel like this is a really great space to say like, um, one of the quotes in my memoir is Silence is violence. And, you know, I want this to be a rallying cry for everyone out there to, you know, stand up and speak. Because if we don't speak, nobody knows. It's, it is, silence enables it, so like this platform that you're creating with, you're elevating victims and giving us for survivors, whatever you wanna call us, I like to call myself a chief investigative survivor. Yeah. I only give it a little bit more ring, like I'm doing more than surviving. I'm doing a whole rigorous research and kind of low key indie journalism ish type thing. Yeah. So like, we call it a little more than that, but. But you know, I find it interesting, like, David, you and I, we've gone through this right? And like, we're the ones doing it.

David 59:05

Yeah.

Julie 59:05

And so it should be other people who wanna support us who lift us up and who do that work with us or even lead that work. You know, so

David 59:16

Yeah.

Julie 59:16

I digress. I really wish, I wish more of us were out there.

David 59:20

Yeah. Yeah. I, I do too. And I noticed that the more I speak, like one of the things I wear with a badge of honor is I have been so many peoples. First time sharing their full story on a podcast, and, and the fact that they trust me and they trust my platform and they feel open and safe with me. And, you know, and a lot of it is women, a lot of, a lot of the victims are women. And and I'm a man, but I'm a gay man. And and that gives them some comfort, and, and to be that person for them. It's almost making me teary eyed. You know, somebody asked me a question. I would love your thought on this before we start closing out, is someone asked me like, what is the biggest obstacle that I'm coming across? And for me it's that, take the Epstein list. Take those victims.

Julie 1:00:16

Yeah.

David 1:00:16

People want to say, well, innocent until proven guilty, or, we don't know if this is evidence, or maybe they're lying. And my question is, would they say that to their daughter? Oh, yeah. Would, would, would if, if their daughter came to them and said, this man has done this to me. Do you think that man should keep his job? Do you think that man should be quote unquote innocent until proven guilty? Or like how can I make them help them see this person, this other victim as they would their daughter? And that's where I keep struggling.

Julie 1:00:53

I have thoughts

David 1:00:54

I would love to hear.

Julie 1:00:57

So tomorrow, actually, St. Patrick's Day, um, which is the anniversary of three of my sexual assaults Wow. And the actual official launch day of my memoir.

David 1:01:09

Oh wow.

Julie 1:01:10

I'm going out to the French Quarter and a graduation cap and gown to represent the graduations that I didn't go to because of what happened. I'm going to carry a sign and I'm gonna carry a copy of my book. I'm gonna be marching around in the French Quarter with all the drunkards and, um, the sign is going to say, St. Patrick's Day, oh 6, 0 7, 0 9 3 sexual assaults, three professors, countless threats, zero anonymous reporting options under Title ix. And people will have the option to sign my gown if it happened to them and all this stuff. Um, I say all this to say the, there are big calls to action, big asks that I have with this book. And one of them is anonymous Title IX complaints. So we're talking about, you asked was, you know, the barrier of due process and being believed. I think that we are so technologically advanced with all of our AI and well, God knows government programs that are doing God knows what with robots and everything else. Okay? Like we have the technology, we've had it, we've had it for decades.

David 1:02:26

Yeah.

Julie 1:02:27

To do a very simple anonymous reporting system, okay? Where now if you picture this right? Okay. And this is again for everyone at home victims do not like to come forward about their story. Okay? Like, we are not like, Hey everybody, look at me a different way than you've ever seen me. Take pity on me. Run away from me. Don't try to work with me anymore. 'cause you might get caught up in it. You know what I mean? We we're not out there benefiting from doing that. So the first thing is like, if we come forward, chances are we've already weighed the risk of all of that and deciding that you know, we're hurting enough. We need to brave that risk anyway, to tell our story and speak our truth. So please try to believe us. Please try to believe us. You know, just on that note. But then again, like we have technology, we can, and I built my own, I built an anonymous database, right@academicabuse.com, or you can go and say what happened to you? And I'm like, well, this whole thing is supposed to be a model for any institution, any go like state or federal level of government to duplicate this process so that hey, you know, and specifically my area is higher ed. But this could also be in corporate. You know, let's say you have a problem with someone and they're, they're discriminated against you, harassing you whatever it is, uh, bullying you, sexually assaulting you you can go and file your anonymous complaint. Keep yourself safe from retaliation. And that gets logged. So then what would happen if like this person was a serial predator, which let's say nine times outta 10, they are right? Like I'm not, I'm not sta a stati sta statistical ex expert on that. Right? But I'm just gonna say from my experience, they are serial predator. So wouldn't it be great if it was like the victim was anonymous, the institution was anonymous, the predator was anonymous, the those reviewing it were anonymous. So we use this higher ed term. It's a double bi double blind review. Right. So we care enough in higher ed about science to keep bias out of the science itself, but we don't care enough about the scientists to have a double-blind review when they're being violated. So, but we can build that. We can have that. And so in the system they would get entered in and get tagged with a number and let's say like multiple complaints starts stacking up against the same individual or the same institution. Then a reviewer comes in and goes, oh, well it's time we investigate this number for this institution. They determine a finding, and then the finding is delivered to the institution without anybody ever knowing, and so there's no bias. They can't be like, oh, this is Stanford. I'm not gonna mess with Stanford. You know? Right. They can't, they can't do that. 'cause they don't know. They just see a number on the screen.

David 1:05:35

Yeah.

Julie 1:05:35

They can't look at it and see, oh, this is Epstein. I better not fuck with Epstein because it's just a number on the screen. Yeah. If we would've had that decades ago that we could've been stopped, like thousands of victims earlier, you know, and this is something I really want to. To say, like, you know, you asked these barriers due process. And I'm like, well, we have the means to get around it. I've already started building it, conceptualizing it. We just, we need the money to do it, you know? Yeah. Like somebody put the money in. Yeah. I'll come in, I'll volunteer my time and I'll be like, set it up like this. No this, this. And, um, you know, I mean, I really believe in that. Like, I, I hope that people watch this. I hope that people share this. I hope that people, when the time comes, I'll have my own petitions and get everybody to sign it and stuff like that. But for now, I mean, back the book, pick up a copy and that's gonna help me get the funding to go and do this. So,

David 1:06:34

yes, absolutely. Julie, before we go as I mentioned, I'm gonna share all the links. My last like, little fun question for you is when I hear the burn list, I immediately go to the burn book in the movie Mean Girls. So, uh, like that's immediately what I think. So what, what helped you with this title and what is your, like reasoning for this title? I love to know like, how did you name your baby, you know.

Julie 1:07:07

Yeah. Okay. David, you're gonna be special here 'cause other people have asked me this and I've refused to answer, but Oh wow. I'm gonna answer for you. I'm gonna answer. I'm not gonna get emotional, I promise. So in the opening scene of the book takes place in 1984. Um, and that was the first time a serial predator broke. Predator broke into our house and brace yourself. Brutally bait and raped my mother for like 10 hours straight. Um, the sun was coming up and he was still at it. And we were upstairs. My brother was downstairs, saw the whole thing, and my mom kept screaming, jump off the balcony, pretend it's like a fire. Go get help. It's like a fire. It's like a fire. And he kept coming back and every time he came back my mom would say, come on you guys. It's like a fire. We have to go. And we. Scramble naked and barefoot to the car in the middle of the night to get away from this guy and just go wherever we could go. So that was my three years old. That was me at three. Like, pretend it's a fire we have to go. And then at some point I, my early twenties needed to start trying to purge these bad memories. And so I had a journal burning party and I had literally like 20 journals. I've been keeping since like fourth grade, documenting every detail of everything and I've set them all on fire. Okay. So that's another fire metaphor. And then, um, I, uh, at some point in the book, in, in my life, in my story, in my third degree and my PhD, I start realizing that what happened to me is that I was blacklisted. Right by my, by the bad actors.

David 1:08:58

Yeah.

Julie 1:08:59

Um, by my hunters. They had blacklisted me, but it felt more like a burn list. Like they wanted me to, they wanted to annihilate me. They wanted to annihilate any possible opportunity of future success. They would torch opportunities and reputations alike. And it wasn't just me, it was anyone that they victimized. And I watched it. And so I realized that I had been put on a burn list and I wanted to be off of it. I wanted to be off of it. So at the end of the book I say, you know, I purging the past in a journal, birding party 20 years ago, it didn't work. Now I'm blazing the silence. I strike the match and hand it to you.

David 1:09:43

Wow.

Julie 1:09:45

Yeah.

David 1:09:47

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing. I'll, all of this with me and my listeners, and I've gotta have you back. I've got to know how tomorrow goes. Just know that, that I'm sending you all the love and thoughts. I know it's going to be all kinds of an emotional rollercoaster tomorrow.

Julie 1:10:06

Yes. I know. I was like, I'm, I'm more scared of the drunkard than I am of like my own traumatic past. Yeah. But I'm just like, I'm just gonna go.

David 1:10:15

Yeah.

Julie 1:10:17

You wanna see something? You wanna see something ahead of time. Hold that. Stay right there. Okay. Okay. In my graduation cap and gown, uhhuh with

David 1:10:34

poster

Julie 1:10:34

book, this is gonna go across my mouth.

David 1:10:42

I love that. Are you posting, um, on social media or going live or anything?

Julie 1:10:47

I have a, a team of the videographer and a camera guy, and they're gonna follow me. I'm gonna ask them to do like some put it on social type thing too, if they wouldn't mind. Okay. But yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna do it. And I'm just like, and the plan is ideally that like, I will do this again and again and again. I will go to different campuses and stand out there. Yeah,

David 1:11:12

yeah. Um,

Julie 1:11:13

during their spring break or their graduation.

David 1:11:15

Yeah.

Julie 1:11:16

And have people sign my gown. I'm gonna travel with this like, so this, I love that. Yeah. This is my demonstration against Title ix, like limitations. I'm like, we need to change it.

David 1:11:27

I love that. Now I live in Knoxville and I live on a huge college campus you know, university of Tennessee. So if you're ever this way, let me know. Yeah. I would, I would go, I would support, I, when I do things that I have to challenge myself with, I just remind myself without trying to make it toxic. Positivity. I keep trying to remind myself that if I survived what I survived.

Julie 1:11:53

Yeah.

David 1:11:54

I've got this.

Julie 1:11:55

Yeah, exactly.

David 1:11:56

You know? Exactly. And, and so that's the kind of energy I'm sending your way. You, you've got this and, and the thought of it helping and saving one person from some fucked up lifetime trauma.

Julie 1:12:09

Yeah.

David 1:12:10

Let's go. Let's go do it.

Julie 1:12:12

Let's go. Yeah, let's do it.

David 1:12:15

Julie, thank you so much. I can sit and talk to you all day. I know,

Julie 1:12:20

I,

David 1:12:22

I know. I was gonna say, I feel like I made a friend. I, um, I'm gonna keep you all posted with the dates and, um, and let, let's let's meet up again. Let, let's have you back. Let's talk more.

Julie 1:12:32

Geez. That'd be fantastic.

David 1:12:34

Yeah.

Julie 1:12:34

Like, happy too. I'm burning the silence down, David.

David 1:12:37

Yes, let's do it. I love a good fire ceremony.

Julie 1:12:40

Yeah.

David 1:12:42

Well do something kind for yourself the rest of today, because tomorrow's gonna be big for you. So, so do something lovely. And thank you so much. And, and we'll definitely be in touch.

Julie 1:12:53

Thank you so much, David. You've been wonderful. You've been my favorite interviewer so far.

David 1:12:58

Oh, wow. Thank you. That means the world. Oh my gosh. I, I adore you. Thank you so, so much.

Julie 1:13:04

I can't wait to see you again. It'll be great.

David 1:13:07

Yeah, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. Thank you Julie. We will see you very soon and I will share all the links.

Julie 1:13:14

Thank you so much.