Define the Narrative

McLaren to Mission: Trading Supercars for Social Change

• Ann Argo • Season 3 • Episode 1

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What drives someone to abandon a successful engineering career with prestigious companies like McLaren to tackle one of society's most challenging taboos? For Jeremy Indica, it was the resurfacing of childhood trauma at age 25 that set him on an unexpected journey of healing and advocacy.

Jeremy's story is remarkable not just for what he gave up, but for what he's building. His organization, Something to Say, aims to break the silence surrounding child sexual abuse through creative approaches that engage rather than alienate. As a former aerospace design engineer, Jeremy approaches this complex issue with both emotional intelligence and analytical precision, developing innovative ways to bring these difficult conversations into the mainstream.

Throughout our conversation, Jeremy candidly shares his evolution from private healing to public advocacy. He describes sleeping on couches, depleting his savings, and facing regular criticism to pursue this mission. What stands out is his nuanced understanding of the challenge—recognizing that while teaching children protective strategies is important, placing the burden of prevention solely on them is fundamentally flawed. His perspective that we must equally address potential offenders represents a significant shift in how we approach child safety.

The discussion takes us through Jeremy's work in schools, where he delivers age-appropriate education about personal boundaries without introducing fear or over-complicating concepts beyond children's developmental understanding. His reflections on managing his own mental health while working with such challenging material offer valuable insights for anyone in advocacy fields.

Listening to Jeremy's vision for turning Something to Say into a household name and eventually creating transformative films that spark widespread societal change reveals the scope of his ambition. His journey reminds us that sometimes our greatest contribution comes not from following established career paths, but from having the courage to address problems others avoid.

Whether you're interested in child safety, advocacy work, or personal transformation, this conversation will leave you reflecting on how breaking taboos and speaking difficult truths can create meaningful change in the world.

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Ann:

My guest today on Define the Narrative podcast is Jeremy Indica. Jeremy was a successful aerospace design engineer who enjoyed life believing he could do anything he set his mind to, and I think he did. At 25 years old, the memories of childhood abuse he'd been suppressing surfaced again. Jeremy shares his story and says that we can all play our part in breaking the silence surrounding child sexual abuse. Jeremy, welcome to Define the Narrative podcast.

Jeremy:

Thank you so much for having me on and that very encouraging introduction. Thank you.

Ann:

The mission of your organization. Something to Say is to break the silence surrounding child sexual abuse. I just want to acknowledge that I think that is really important and normalizing things has been a success story in my life. Having created my child using donor sperm on my own, coming from the Southeast United States, which is a very conservative part of our country, I thought through everything and the one thing I knew before I had my son was that it was about the way I behaved towards him around the topic. Can you speak to that?

Jeremy:

Is that what you have found as you've started this and moved through your journey towards it, because when I first started speaking about what happened to me or the subject in general, it came from a place of worry, fear, anxiety about a number of things on so many different levels personally and also otherwise.

Jeremy:

But then, as I started developing the way that I spoke about my own story and saw how refreshing and enlightening in some way that was, um, I wanted to reach out and find others that were going through this same journey, because many people go through this journey when they start talking about what happened in their childhood. It comes from a place as I described at the start, and then it evolves into something where you know you could say at the start it owns them and then eventually they own it. Say at the start it owns them and then eventually they own it. And it's a wonderful transformation and that's my reason, one of my big reasonings to launch something to say which is a space for others to share their stories. It's a place of inspiration and empowerment and also all the work that I do but normalizing it for yourself and then others yes.

Ann:

Just to also flag the goal of your organization is to put the discussion on everyone's table See this topic on TV dramas and films on Netflix commonplace and common conversation, and I just want to give you a high five on that one. Your start to your journey of grappling with what happened to you. You used creative outfits and that speaks to your belief that we need to get creative, use film, photography, illustration to capture people's attention, because even in aerospace, creativity is co-creation. Right, you started that and you would go to open mic nights and then it kind of evolved and would you say that when it evolved not that you still wouldn't be creative, but when it evolved to you, being more direct and honest that that's where you felt it had normalized for yourself?

Jeremy:

I think before my ideas of going public with my story, I went through a long journey of normalising the story for myself. So the memories resurfaced. At 25 years old, as you mentioned, I spoke out for the first time to a close friend. At 27 years old, which was two years later, and then for the next three years three-ish years I was speaking just to people who I knew about it. I eventually broke out to speak with my family about it when I tried to prosecute this man that did this to me. So in all of this process was the normalising of it on a personal level, the normalising of what happened to eight-year-old Jeremy.

Jeremy:

The creative idea came when I decided on this mission of like. We need to just all be talking about this, right, because we all either have children ourselves, or we have children in our family, or we were once a child once upon a time. So we all have a innate care for children, and you're never going to get anywhere with such a horrific subject like this by just writing reports on it, for example, or blogs on it. You need to be really creative because you also need to kick the algorithm into gear. So you need to create videos that people watch from start to finish, they comment, they engage in a discussion that people watch from start to finish, they comment, they engage in a discussion. And that's when I decided to use, much to everybody's worry. I decided to start using all the money I'd saved up throughout my whole career on these creative endeavors, and they started working.

Ann:

Would you say that that was kind of your point of no return?

Jeremy:

Yes, I would say once I really got this idea that something can be done about this. It's not an unsolvable puzzle, even though it's very, very complicated, and the more I learn about it, the more complicated I realize it is. But I'm an engineer by trade. I've worked in the aerospace industries on designing aircraft, structural components, and also I've worked on supercars most commonly known McLaren here in England, working on carbon fibre parts, electronic systems, etc. So I had a 15-year career working with some of the best engineers in the country and it trained my brain to search for solutions to technical problems.

Jeremy:

And so every time an engineer comes across a problem, sometimes it's a bit of a hindrance because you're always trying to problem solve everything and not everything can be problem solved, but you're looking for the best solutions, and I thought you know what, like throughout my whole journey, I feel like I feel like there are ways to do this.

Jeremy:

There are ways to have people understand it a bit deeper and recognize that it doesn't just happen over there, it could happen closer to home than they would like to think, and just for us all to have the primary concern of the safety of children. And so I'm forever searching for better ways, forever searching for better ways. Unfortunately, I don't release the films and the animations like I used to, because two to three years into this I ran out of money completely, and money is not of abundance at the moment. I plan to have that changed, as I continue to build and build and build, and then we will have surplus money to begin creating incredible content that gets people thinking about this in a time when they would have never really thought about this.

Ann:

And I have been so drawn to your vulnerability online as you process as an educator myself, online as you process as as a an educator myself your desire to reflect. You know they say that learning is not just reflecting on what you did wrong, but it's actually talking about it and making sense of what you did wrong and what you would do differently going forward. And you've been so honest online about it. I I was like I wish this is what I coach teachers to do, and so that was very enlightening. You mentioned working for McLaren.

Ann:

So your journey was you were in engineering and to my 13 year old he I got his attention when I said yes, I'm interviewing this guy used to work at McLaren. It is something that seems to be very recognizable, and you were even approached by Red Bull right, and that's kind of your pivot moment. So you had been processing all of this as you were still working for them. What catalyzed your decision to do? You remember a moment where you're just like I got to do this, I got to cash in because I can when I I know, when I know like I've been thinking about it and I'm doing it. Do you remember a specific moment that you flipped the switch and that was. That was it.

Jeremy:

It's when I recognized that the significance of my career and continuing to climb that corporate ladder and aspire to better cars or better aircraft. I was aiming for Formula One. I wanted to work. That was my big goal, and I eventually got approached by Red Bull Racing and actually a couple of other teams as well. And when that all occurred, it's almost like as the dream started to get realised. I realised that actually it just had become insignificant for me.

Jeremy:

Now, because the draw of researching this topic, I started working late into every night learning about what is sexual abuse and how is it affecting the brain? How is it affecting different age groups? Who are the people that are doing this? What's leading them to do that? I then started reading through chat rooms and social media accounts, with people sharing their stories. I saw how prevalent this was. It was like the balance tipped, you know, and this started to draw my focus and become more important than chasing this engineering career.

Jeremy:

Now I look back at this trajectory and journey and what led me to be able to be so bolshie with a decision like that, you know, just to give up everything that I had, sell everything that I owned, collect all my money and go hit the road. I was living out of my car, sleeping at people's friends and families houses, and that kind of journey is because I had this big cash sum behind me that I collected through my engineering career. So everything supported everything supportive friends, supportive family and then I could really embark on this mission. There was no turning back from that moment. Everything had an incremental change, every step had an incremental change and every step had a realization, and it continues to do that.

Ann:

The crescendo Was there a moment where and based on what you've shared, it could be right now. Was there a moment that you were, oh, like, if this doesn't work, this is done?

Jeremy:

All the time. Yeah, so in the early days, when I had the cash behind me, I was a single man as well. So no responsibilities, no commitments. It was okay, right? People thought I was crazy. I did it for three years, sleeping around friends and family's houses on couches in spare rooms, moving around the country every 10 days, going to open mic nights which was a story in itself and it was when the money started running out that it was a big problem. Like you know, my mates were like what are you going? In itself, and it was when the money started running out that it was a big problem. Like you know, my mates were like what are you gonna do when you've run out of money? And and there was no way I could see how I was going to generate any funds from this- but you knew you had to keep going.

Ann:

I knew, I knew I was fully committed, like you didn't have the answer then, but you knew you had to go forward you just have to keep thinking about it.

Jeremy:

Like you know, you, you follow people online who have made businesses out of what they've got to say. You know that that kind of was my answer to people like, well, how are you going to do this? And? And that was like my answer many people have have, who have got something important to say, have made businesses out of it, so it's possible. I just got to figure out how to do this and so so at that moment, I launched my website, jeremyindicacom, and I opened this donation feature and people had been following me for a couple of years at that point started donating. That helped. I launched some clothing which I'm wearing here on the video, and that helped.

Jeremy:

And then we continued moving and then I managed to break into schools a year or so later. But I'm just in such a fortunate position because I've just got the backing of everyone around me. You know, if this was all, if I was in desperate measures, I've got close family that I can rely on. Right, everybody knows, everybody can see now that this is going to go incredible. Right, it is going incredible. You know, when I speak in schools the most recent school that I spoke at it's a primary school. I delivered to the children, I delivered to the teachers and I had lots of correspondence with the parents. I left that school transformed, like I changed the school's ways of thinking and opened their minds to this, and gave the parents tools to continue the conversation at home when their child goes home after my session. So we're doing incredible things, and something that I really like explaining is, I would say, in the opening three years of me doing this, my friends and my family who care about me right, my friends and my family who care about me right, they're like they, they, they never stopped saying, um, why don't you just do this in the evening and go back to your work?

Jeremy:

Right, you can still build this in the evening, you know, go back to your incredible career, earn loads of money and then, in the evening, just do this. And I mean, how can I, how can I get anywhere just doing this in the evening? You know like this is a tough challenge. But now the conversation. When I make my friends, which I'm doing in a couple of days, the conversation is oh, what's next?

Jeremy:

right, they're loving it like oh wow, I saw that thing that you did and this is incredible. Where are you going next? But you know this is not all sunshine and rainbows. Uh, you know, yesterday I got a phone call from one of the schools that I spoke at and somebody had reported me to the authorities saying that I was delivering inappropriate things in schools and I need checking out. And when I get moments like that, I mean, who's doing that?

Ann:

Do you think you now need to reach out and offer to do some in service to the authorities, because they could be your yeah, yeah, I should have.

Jeremy:

That's how I should have responded, isn't it? Well, let me come and do some training for you. But, but, like one of the things that I did which I'm very pleased that I did and I didn't actually do it for this particular reason, but it seems to be positive for this particular reason too I actually post the full recordings of my sessions on my YouTube channel. And so, after this reporting to the authority which the school that got the report, the claim, replied to this authority and said he was excellent, right, there was nothing of concern. People after that claim haven't got to be like, oh, I wonder what he's doing in schools after somebody's reporting. Well, you can go and watch everything. But you can just go and watch. There's a year five session, there's a year 11 session, there's a year eight session, so there's a wide range of sessions on there. You can go and watch them. Um, but, yeah, I get, I get. You know those.

Jeremy:

These moments are not easy. They're not easy. That's not helping, right, that's not helping. But we could say that me posting about that, which I just did today, me posting about that some people say, oh, it doesn't make business sense to post that because you're actually going to put a bit of fear into the other schools, admitting that you've got a claim against you or somebody's reported you right, some of the you know I've got lots of schools that follow me that are like we really kind of want to get him in but we're just not too sure. So those that are on the fence, they'll see that post and it'll put a bit of fear in them. But my response is I just got to continue being open about the journey because actually that's valuable for people to see that there are people out there that are against this type of education for schools. So this is the type of thing we're up against with general society.

Ann:

Was this the comment about? You're not trained to do this.

Jeremy:

Oh, that was another one.

Ann:

That was another one. So was it a parent? Do you know? Was it a parent or a community member, do you know?

Jeremy:

who reported.

Jeremy:

Who knows? It could be a parent that was unhappy, even though we communicated with the parents before I arrived a lot of communication so they all knew what was going on. It could have been a teacher who was uncomfortable throughout the day. It could just be someone who follows me I get I've got a couple of critics that follow me and they comment now and again. The post that you're talking about is the person who said, um, that I'm untrained and I shouldn't be in schools because I am adjusting what I deliver to primary school children. With regards to good versus bad touch, I now understand that a better terminology is safe versus unsafe touch, so I learned that along the way and I don't understand what people are thinking. Do people think that people arrive at perfect products like immediately? Like the national curriculum here in england is constantly changing because they're constantly learning about mistakes that they made. Like no one's got it perfect. We have to go on a journey and learn, and so when you were in school, at what age did you start changing teachers throughout the day?

Jeremy:

secondary school, so 11 years old okay, your first class.

Ann:

Was it your best class of the day? Because and I've taught all levels, because that's where we try our new lesson you adjust and you get better as you go throughout the day. So I do just want to say kudos to you, because your transparency, your reflection, this is what we need educators to do. I'm wondering too. Being in the United States and the politics as it is, I frequently know that people's political beliefs are my biggest barrier, and I lived in California when I had my child, but in my mind, I think I thought I never would have done it if I still lived in the Southeast, where it's very conservative, because I feel like one of the reasons I left was because I didn't even fit in there of who my truth was.

Ann:

Do you feel like that is a bigger, is a harder barrier? Because it's not about educating people? Or because I know you've mentioned recently wanting to develop what you provide to parents, which I think if we don't start with the parents, parents are not difficult, but even teachers, you teach the way you were taught until you cognitively coach yourself to do it differently and you know math. It's like my own child is in algebra one but can't answer a word problem. And that's a huge evolution in the United States, where people make jokes about common core math, which is circular, conceptual, but it's not that the people that are saying that are people that were never taught math concepts, and so it feels like a big circle. So do you feel a difference between this is someone who is ignorant, uninformed and can grow through education, versus someone who has political beliefs and it doesn't matter what you provide them, they're never going to be okay with it.

Jeremy:

I think it's a matter of people who think I'm going into schools and talking to nine-year-olds about sex. That's what I think. The difference is. There's people who understand what I'm going into schools and doing and people who don't understand. They've just seen a couple of posts or they've heard a bit of my story and they think that I'm going in to speak to these young children about the sexual abuse that I went through, which we're not.

Jeremy:

We are using my story and we're explaining that I kept it a secret and that I didn't tell anyone that I wish I did. And here are the places where you could go. So we use the story because it's a narrative for those young children to hook into. That's necessary and also, I need to bring something to the table that teachers can't do, otherwise they'd just run the session themselves. But the fear is people think that we're teaching them how to have sex, like we're talking about sex. We're not talking to them about sex and we're not talking to them about sex and we're not sending fear inside of them. We're not making them afraid of the world. We're empowering them, making them feel confident, making them know the rules. So I think that's where my split is those that don't understand what I'm doing and what my aims are and the results of the session and those that do.

Ann:

So this really hits on the idea that you are broaching a topic that some would say is a societal taboo to talk about. Would you agree?

Jeremy:

I would agree, and I would also say and add to that that it could be the thing that's the most taboo in our society. I can't think of anything that's more taboo than that. Like you I I mean everybody that's listening or watching I challenge you to think of and I'm not challenging you trying to be right I'm like, okay, please tell me. Like what's more taboo than the sexual abuse of five-year-old girls and boys, for example? Like that is the conversation that isn't getting anywhere. Like we, we just can't have it, we just don't know how to have it and do you think that it's taboo?

Ann:

well, I think of two things. I think number one. Well, my son, when we talk about my son, knew at the age of three how he was conceived. My son knows he doesn't have a father, he's known it and the way that I broached it was a normalization. Our family is made up of this and it's funny because it kind of challenges your own constitution. Right Of like, oh well, when they come up with something, did I go down the wrong road? For example, in preschool or kindergarten he came in and he was crying and he wanted, he was complaining about I wish I had a dad, like so-and-so. But he was also crying because he wished he had a brother, like so-and-so. And in that moment I realized he's not upset because he doesn't have a father. He's upset because someone has people in their life and he wants the same connection. And so you think about ways to normalize the like.

Ann:

That's the challenge. Right Is to come back and say tell me what about that? You are drawn to, and I get it. Our family is this, right? It's not, and I'm very careful. We're not redefining a story. We're not careful. We're not redefining a story, we're not rewriting a narrative, because then you spend your time countering it is let's wipe it clean and let's say what is appropriate to talk about. When we're talking about your body and how people interact with your body, right, and I think, beyond that, the taboo is what happens within a family. Your abuse came from a family friend that spent a lot of time in your home. Your father was a doctor, so it's not even out of poverty, which we know. Poverty indicators compromise people's ability to supervise, to have their own bedrooms, and so that is a higher risk. But it is broaching a subject that puts something in someone's face that they may get defensive about because of their perceived control over the situation. Would you agree of their perceived control?

Jeremy:

over the situation. Would you agree? Yes, and I also think when it comes to children being hurt in any way, right. So we, of course, are focusing on sexual abuse here, but when we talk about physical abuse, when we talk about emotional abuse, when we talk about neglect, when we're dealing with something so innocent and so in some regard helpless um, or or not not of development to be able to get themselves out of that situation they're, they're vulnerable.

Jeremy:

And when we have the conversation of them being hurt, I think it's so uncomfortable for us because we don't like the fact that that's happening on our watch, like in our country, and it's happening so freely and we can't get our head around why anybody would want to do that to someone else. And we just can't understand how anyone would be aroused by a minor, a young teenager, a child. So there you have the complications. We can't understand how you would ever come to a situation where you'd be aroused by that and want to do that. We're seeing that we're not protecting children enough, uh, and it's happening and it has a level of disgust to it and that's just very difficult for people to take.

Jeremy:

I mean, I I come up with this idea a very long time ago. I actually created an animation around it. It's like one minute long and it is one of my pieces of work which I believe stood the test of time, um, and has aged well and the concept. I would explain it slightly differently now with regards to animation, but it's something like this. It's like what do you think the response would be if we showed one of the millions of child sexual abuse videos that are available online in public? So if we showed a 45-year-old man fondling around with a five-year-old girl, but we actually showed the video and we put it on national news, what would the response be? Do you think that it would cause global outrage, that the governments would be able to do nothing but act and sort out the problem, at least on the internet, with the millions of videos that are traded every day? Or do you think it would be so uncomfortable that it would just get pulled off TV immediately and we just have to forget about it?

Ann:

Oh, I definitely think it'd be pulled off TV, but I'm going to push the question. Help me understand why it's okay to show physical and emotional abuse videos publicly on tv, but not sexual because it's sex and because it has to do with intimate parts of our body that we don't talk to others about. Is that the difference?

Jeremy:

um, so we could show a film of, in a film narrative, in a drama. You could show in some respect um, a child or a young person being physically abused at home, emotionally abused. Of course you could have a story arc in regard to that. But with sexual abuse, you would have to indicate that it was happening and then, like, you just have to pass through that scene. Why is that? Because you can have a scene of two people being having a sexual interaction, two adults having a sexual interaction. I suppose you can't have it with the child because it's illegal and we don't want to see it.

Ann:

And it would perpetuate the perversion for people who have a propensity for that. But for all we know, there's people out there with a perversion for watching abuse videos. I guess what I'm saying is behavior that is not okay. You know, when we talk about like diversity, equity and inclusion, one of my coaches told me once from a class she took. She said the biggest perpetrators of inequities and microaggressions are those who had it done to them and they grow up to work in the same institution without addressing and healing it. So abuser, physical abusers grow up and physically abuse, have a propensity to it. Emotion and I get it.

Ann:

I was raised in a, you know, children are seen and not heard. The golden rule I make the gold, I make the rule Very, very misogynistic. When I moved to Cal and yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, yes sir, no sir. When I moved to California, my kids wouldn't say yes, ma'am, and ma'am yes sir, no sir. When I moved to California, my kids wouldn't say yes, ma'am, and I had to adjust and I realized the language people use for respect and appropriateness is different.

Ann:

And that's the piece we all need to reflect on our experiences and do it. And that's a huge task. You're asking parents, educators, children, now children. You're not asking them to reflect, you're hoping to make it so that they don't know anything different, like my son doesn't know anything different than this is his family. And I worked hard for it not to be an exception story, hard for it not to be an exception story, and so I think that's interesting. It made me think because I would venture to say and I get it it's exploitative to put something so personal, but sometimes I wonder if maybe it's exploitative, emotional and physical abuse, anything with children. That's something that's going to keep me.

Jeremy:

Yeah, it's a really interesting thing to wonder about. Obviously, like I, I don't. We don't want to get stuck on this because it's it's slightly we've moved on, slight tangent with this showing a video thing. But what I wonder is one of the responses is you could never show one of those videos because you're re-victimizing the child that's in the video, right, but what happens if I, what happens if I was had been filmed and I gave consent for mine to be shown? I could never show it. I could never.

Jeremy:

On on my social social media pages I am. I do push the boundary sometimes because I believe that they need to be pushed, but I've never explained in explicit detail what actually happened, like, like some of the things that this man used to do to me. I've never explained in public. That's not because I don't want to, it's because people just can't take it right, it's too much. You push people too far. They'll, they'll reject. Um, so to to try to come back with what you were explaining about normalizing the conversation with your son right, explaining that, look, this is our family, we're not redefining, we just are, this is our situation and supporting him through that. So, normalizing the conversation with these young children, right and not normalizing the conversation around sex. This has got nothing to do with sex depending on the age group, obviously, but when we take the real young ones, what we're normalizing the conversation around is their personal space.

Jeremy:

All right, normalizing the sorry sorry um normalizing the conversation around their personal space and that their bodies are theirs, but also that other people's bodies are theirs too, and there are certain things that are we're okay with, and there are certain things that are against the rules, and you're to know that, yeah, and that's what we're aiming for it.

Ann:

It is education. Look for any topic, and when I first really started going deep, it was it is not something that it's an everyday conversation, and here we are sitting having this discussion. I think there is. You know, it's like a descent from the clouds on an airplane that, once you get past the turbulence right, it is a normalization to be able, so that you're not evoking your own emotions in the moment, and I do think that that's the process of education. But it can be daunting. You completely gave up and I just want to ask you this have you ever thought back and maybe wondered if you hadn't already proven to yourself that you achieved or would achieve whatever you wanted to do in the mclaren engineering world, and so you felt like you had done it and you were ready to go on to a new challenge my answer is no, because the big goal was Formula One and so I hadn't done that.

Jeremy:

But if you want to think about like the way sometimes the world works in funny ways, actually, when I made the real decision okay, look, I'm going to pack that all up is when the real offers from Formula One for interviews started coming in.

Ann:

So they were knocking, yeah, because they were testing.

Jeremy:

This is the one way I like to think about it. It was testing me how committed are you? Because it was like one month in and I got like three or four opportunities and I think it was a test and I thought to myself oh, they're short contracts as well, they're like six month contracts. I'll just go and do them. Great money, incredible experience, and I could tick that kind of tick that box. But yeah, I didn't take it. Um, so it is undone. It is undone, but it's okay that it's undone. Um, this is, this is something that really drives me and provides me with energy, and you know, I've been doing it six and a half years and I have not rolled my eyes at an alarm in the morning once.

Ann:

How do you take care of yourself mentally and emotionally, because this is something that is so personal and can be a daunting road you are trailblazing regardless, regardless of your personal connection. How do you take care of yourself?

Jeremy:

yes, and that is important, that sentence that you finished with, regardless of your personal connection, because the personal connection part is hard enough, but it is the life on the internet, battling with stigmas and taboos and differences, that is really tough, and battling against algorithms that just shut your work down. Because you mention the word sexual abuse, even though it's encouraging and inspirational content, there's something to say. Platform that I run, 90% of our videos on YouTube are demonetized, even though it's people sharing their stories in an inspirational way. But these platforms they don't want to play around with risk, right? If you say those words, you're out. If you put that context in, you're out. Like it doesn't matter whether you're educational or whether you're threatening threatening like we're just gonna say no to you. So it is uh, constantly. You know it's.

Jeremy:

It's not uncommon for me to sometimes lose sleep, like where I turn over in the middle of the night and it's 2, 30 am and my brain activates and now I can't get back to sleep and I have to be disciplined myself because I used to just get up, but that's no good for my brain. So I push myself. Even if you're going to lay here, you just lay here until your alarm goes off. I'm not brilliant at it. Sometimes I don't do it. Sometimes I hear my wife's stern word get back into bed, which is useful for me, right? Because if I was on my own then there'd be no one disciplining me like, and then I just you know, yeah.

Ann:

You've got someone to do my own 13 year old last night.

Jeremy:

Yeah, you need that.

Ann:

You need to go to bed, you need to.

Jeremy:

Yeah, you need that. Everybody needs that. We're not meant to be lone soldiers, like, like. We're meant to be in groups with us all checking each other, like and and double checking each other. That's the way we were meant to be.

Jeremy:

So the ways that I take care of myself is, the majority of times my computer goes packed away, it's closed and is away at a certain time every evening, and then I do not open my social media in the evening. I do not open my social media in the evening. I do not open my social media at the weekends. I very rarely work at the weekend. Friday night, everything's off until Monday morning. Now, don't get me wrong, I am thinking about this all of the time. Often when I'm in conversation with friends in social settings, we're talking about topics and I'm relating it back to and learning all the time. So, but that's okay. I was thinking about engineering all the time. Not to that extent, but like, I'm hyper focused in what I do, so that's okay. Seeing friends keeping hobbies, doing a little exercise now and again, family engaging with my own family, is always to stay, to keep on the straight and narrow and keep your feet on the ground yep, the biggest one out of that is going to see my friends you're.

Ann:

Oh, that's good, your passion. Wheels turning right, you're it's grounding yeah, but even all the things you just said. Whether someone's doing what you're doing or not, social media is the cigarette of the modern age and all of those things are things. Even me. I've had to tell myself to stop let me.

Jeremy:

let me just quickly comment on that, because I watched something that was very interesting today and the person said all of us that are building things online or post anything online, we have to be very, very careful because the machine of social media, with its feedback loop, is a substance that tempers with our emotions and our hormones.

Jeremy:

So anyone that posts on social media and doesn't reopen their social media and check the notifications is lying Like. I don't think anybody doesn't check the notifications or doesn't check the notifications and get a little buzz when their posts done really well or get a little lull when their post doesn't do very well. That is the emotional roller coaster that you are on if you post on social media. I'm not even talking about work purposes, I'm talking about even personal purposes. So those working within those social media constraints and kind of handcuffs, which is I am one of those and I do, in the morning, open my social media. After a couple of hours I've started realising a little delay before you get up is a good idea. When my post that I put my heart and soul into doesn't do very well, I do feel a bit sad.

Ann:

They've engineered it that way. I'm trying to normalize it because I enjoy it, but I was like, for me, this is the conflict. Why can't we have Pinterest without all the ads? Right, like I wish I could just see on Instagram the people I follow. But then I see people who, being content creators is their money and I realized we and there may already be people out there doing it we need people to counter the what has been done in the current social media and create something that is ethical, because these platforms have it's cigarettes. It is a vulnerability of our need to connect, but we don't have alternatives, but it is truly unethical. They are changing our brains and you know, I went out to for Mother's Day, to Ikea with my son, his friend and her mother. We all sat there. The friend I had brought, uh, some clay from a trip that we had just taken. We all finished our meal. She opened it up and she was doing her clay and within 30 seconds, the other three of us had opened our own phones.

Jeremy:

In my head.

Ann:

I was like this is my mother lighting up a cigarette after the meal when I was growing up. I'm like this is cigarettes, and I think too and this is the same thing with the taboo of the normalizing and just calling it and accepting it and not you know, you have to take the shame out of it because until you take judgment out, you're not able to problem solve and move forward. So I'll just put that out there. Maybe we'll circle back to this in five years. One of the things that I saw that I love it. I think there's more of this out there is engaging teenagers in conversations about abuse prevention. It can be challenging. She comes up with the four Fs and these are the. These are what would you call it? Like the, the. How do you describe the four Fs? Before I say what they are?

Jeremy:

The pillars.

Ann:

The pillars of these are. These are the four pillars that someone who wants to sexually abuse you will hit Flattery favoritism. Now I want to stop there because I, you know, I guess I just in my fearless way will hit something head on. So I sat my son down and I was telling him about this interview. Sat my son down and I was telling him about this interview and I realized I needed to back up and say I first. I said would you be comfortable telling me if someone touched you inappropriately? And he said yes, and I realized in that moment I've never asked him if someone has touched him inappropriately.

Ann:

And I asked him and he said no. But I went further, of a mentor that supports him in an art that could be his profession. Right, flattering and favoritism are things that you might see happen that are not manipulative. Right, like someone giving accolades for a talent or hard work. Favoritism You're in a club, you're being chosen over others. So I think it's important and I started to scare him and I said, look, we need to be able to talk about people we know are not abusers and question this and say, yes, he might show you flattery and he might show you favoritism, but does he give you forbidden fruits and does he instill fear? And I think that's important, because the first two could be okay, but it's the last two that are the ones that really cross over. Do you discuss these in your talks frequently?

Jeremy:

I just want to add that the four Fs is actually Anna Sonoda's creation. Chrissy McVie had her on her podcast. So Chrissy McVie is great, doing great work. I don't know her work extensively, but I know she's doing great work. I've seen some of her videos. Anna Sonoda for anybody that's listening and interested in this has developed this uh four F's way of uh, understanding the grooming process and she released a book called Duck Duck Groom, which is, um, she's phenomenally knowledgeable on this topic. And do I mention this process?

Jeremy:

When it comes to the grooming process, I do for the older ages. So from age 13 and above, I will go into how the grooming process is trickery, manipulation, and it can start by flattering you, making you a favourite, empowering you, because at that age they can start to understand about coercive control, manipulation, narcissistic behaviour. Now, before 13 years old, I won't go into that and as we get younger, I will get into that less. And one of the reasons why is let's take an eight-year-old. If you start explaining that people who are nice to you could, people who are nice to you, you've got to watch out for everyone in this world because anyone could be out to get you.

Jeremy:

They don't have the development or the maturity in general terms, when you're talking to a hundred of them in one go to be able to they don't have the life experience to be able to distinguish what you're saying, um, that you know somebody who's being kind to you, what that means, that they may hurt me, like they. The brain can't quite understand that. So instead of focusing on that section, what I do is I just focus on if, helping them understand their gut feeling, if something makes them feel uncomfortable, what they can do about it, how they can act, how they can even ask an adult, um, if, if the situation is something they should be, uh, speaking out about. So this is where things get really complicated with different age groups, because this is a really complicated. That is a really complicated thing to explain to young people, really complicated. So that is not easy. So I do cover it, depending on what the age group is.

Ann:

Right, Thank you for redirecting me on that, and it is, I think, at that level of the conversation. I also know that we have to find ways, even if we're not extracting the essence right. So more children's books that highlight examples of what you know, these items that highlight examples of what you know?

Jeremy:

these, these items. Should I just say something to? To add to that, though, we should not be treating teaching of these concepts to children as something that we should celebrate, like this wasn't being done 20 years ago. Right, we're doing it now, but this is not a celebration like oh, look at us, we educate all our children.

Jeremy:

No, no, because what we are essentially doing and I believe a certain level of education needs to be there right, that that base needs to be covered 100 but what we don't want to do is put 100 of the responsibility on these children to come to recognize if something is going on with them and to come forward. It's not the responsibility of a 10-year-old to keep themselves safe, right, that's not their responsibility. Like, we're expecting them to read very complicated situations that are way above their age grade, and that's what we're relying on. No, that's not good enough, because once a child comes forward to us, if they do do that which most of them will not anyway the crime's already committed. So, actually, we're late, right, they're coming to us and they're saying, oh yeah, I did get touched inappropriately, or I have been for the past year. Well, okay, so we're going to sort that, but it's. It's completely reactive and that's for the. You know, one in 50, one in 100 children that would come forward right.

Ann:

I saw an inner an interview snippet with Mel Robbins the other day and she was talking about how, when she was on vacation, when she was nine, she woke up and there was a boy on top of her and that that was her trauma. And as the conversation developed, the question was how would you explain that happening to your daughters? And she got emotional and started talking about how she'd feel and it was pushed back. I didn't ask you how you felt, how would you explain it? And she paused and she said they didn't feel safe, coming and telling me and it was pointed out that that's the trauma and I think this speaks to what you're saying. Is is because that would be fear mongering in children, right In the pandemic. You know we have helicopter parents here in the United States. I taught my child to walk a block and a half to the bakery, but I thought about it for two weeks what happens if the police show up to take me away? Because that's where we are in the United States and I'm like this is ridiculous. I'm like this is ridiculous, but it's this.

Ann:

I think you're right. It's the. You know, kids are kids, but the adults have to be safe and the trauma stuff happens. You get over it because and it's not that simple but I think part of your message is you know it is a hard recovery, but what happened to you is not the only thing that defines who you are as a person, right, and so I think what you're highlighting is really important is do children feel safe going to someone? And we need more of it because I know that a lot of children don't have someone that they feel safe going to and it might be a friend and to that end, what happens? You know, say something. But what happens when you have a very perceptive child who knows they're safe person, that when they go say something it is going to turn their world upside down in ways that they don't want to have happen. What do you do in a situation like that?

Jeremy:

you hope and pray that they'll still come forward, I mean yeah, I think that's a hard one.

Jeremy:

I think that because, I mean, so many of them don't come forward because they don't want that particular person that's doing something to them in trouble. And we are always concentrating this conversation on adults on children. We you got, we got to remember that a third of all sexual abuse or, um, okay, we don't call it sexual abuse in this context, but a third of all sexual abuse is minors on minors, so children on other children. So that brings a whole heap of complication. Um, we don't actually call that sexual abuse when it's a minor on a minor. We call it harmful sexual behavior because we don't want to label a 13 year old who offended against a 13 year old as a predator for the rest of their lives. So so this, this is all brand new, by the way. Like this is all being thought about now. That's where we're at with this. Like some of these conversations are brand new. Like that's harmful sexual behavior, versus calling it sexual abuse for children on children. That's a brand new thing. That's how new we are. We are talking about this like I don't reckon 10 years ago we talked about peer-on-peer sexual abuse. Um, but that really allows me to make my point of we shouldn't only we shouldn't only be going into schools talking about what you can do if somebody, if you feel uncomfortable about something. We should also, in equal effort, be talking to these young people about how to ensure I don't know how to word this, but how to not become an offender. Right, because that's that's the root of the problem, right? So if we can actually talk to these boys right, because it's 98 of all sexual crimes in england are committed by men. So if we can actually talk to these boys right, because it's 98 of all sexual crimes in england are committed by men. So if we can go around and talk to these boys from a very young age, from at least teenage ages, about what is appropriate and what isn't, and what's respectable and what isn't, and what's morally correct and what isn't, and we can instill that in them, then maybe we could stop having so many offenders and then we haven't got to teach the children what to do if someone touches you, because there's no one to touch them.

Jeremy:

Because in every school that I speak at and you can hear my voice change because I feel so passionate about this, but I am we are way off me getting into a school to talk about this Like way decades off. I reckon right and I could put something together, something quite substantial together pretty quick on this topic. But I could never get it into a school. No parents would agree to it. But in every school that I go to, when I speak to an assembly hall of 200 students, there is at least one, at least one that is going through something right now and they're not telling anyone about it. Right, or they or they've been through something already or they'll go through something in the future. But included in that there is at least one of those boys will turn into an offender when they're older. Now they're the people who we need to address, right? They're the personalities we need to address, because if we can stop them first, then we have no victims in the first place. We've got to think about this logically.

Ann:

Here in the United States, sex education like. I taught sex education in seventh grade, which is like 12 year olds, and I would just like to push that it shouldn't just be that teacher that's teaching kids about sex education and again, it's the taboo of sex. You know, I as a teacher, I see things my child interacting with others that I don't think parents acknowledge. So, for example, children go through puberty. Different children are sexualized by their hormones, by their experiences.

Ann:

My first sexual encounter was my brother's best friend and it was only. I thought, oh my God, my crush is touching me. But I found out later he was being abused by an adult male at his boarding school and that changed it for me. But also I think it is because some of this behavior is because they've been abused, but some of it is. Puberty comes and you know, like, for example, a girl playing footsie under the table with a boy and I went up to the parent and I said are they dating? No, I was like she's playing footsie with him and he just keeps moving and she keeps following him and he's not saying anything. Oh no, they're just playing. I had to walk away.

Ann:

But I agree with you. I think that is the conversation that we need to teach everyone about. I don't care, you don't want to cause a problem and tell someone get your foot off my foot, like it is about self-advoc, advocacy and the agency over your own body. You know whether it's sexual or not. I think that's it too, jeremy. I think I think that's it. So thank you for bringing that up. Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for something to say and your broader advocacy efforts in the next five years?

Jeremy:

Okay, so I want to continue driving something to say into becoming a household name. So I want it to be a place of community, which it is. I want it to be a place of inspiration, information, awareness, education, and the thing that I'm really proud of about Something to Say is it's completely community-driven. All the posts come from the community. Those people that follow and submit things, and part of the team create a lot of the posts too, but we create them off the back of what the audience is looking for. People are obviously sharing their stories, but there is a lot more going on than people's stories there. Now, the, the platform is has an incredible variety, in particular, on instagram, which is the platform that we predominantly focus on. So I want that to become a household name. Um, I want everybody to know about it. I want everybody to understand about it. It's going to be really interesting to see how that evolves, because I try my best and resist temptations to go in and control it. I allow it to be and I allow the team to make the decisions. I just steer the boat sometimes when I feel like we're just coming off course a little bit. So it's going to be really interesting. I'm interested to see where that goes.

Jeremy:

With regards to my own platform, jeremy indicates it is a platform which has a different nature to it. It's my personal pursuit, trying to problem solve the crime, trying to make sense of it, trying to establish new and better techniques of how to ensure the protection of today's generation. So I want my podcast to be one of the most watched and listened to podcasts in the country, at the least right. I want it to be seen by millions of people every episode and I want to bring on the best experts who have been in their fields for 20, 30 years to come and explain the various areas of the topic. So we're talking about the people that it happens to. We're talking about trauma. We're talking about the brain. We're talking about the offender. We're talking about the justice system. We're talking about how we bring what happens to offenders when they're released from prison. We're talking about all of those things right um to how we're speaking in schools about it. All of those things and and I want to bring it in front of so many people and I even want I want a studio, I want to bring in people with different ideas and have a round table discussion and then, once I have managed to do, achieve all of those things. This may not be in the next five years, by the way, but just just to give people a thought of vision. And I start to become tired and older, um, and want to just calm down a little bit and with all the information I would have gained, I want to put film together, and I don't know whether you watched adolescence it was actually a british show in here and in on netflix and um, regardless of what your opinions are, with the fact that they're going to be showing it in schools in england, there's lots of debate about that.

Jeremy:

The thing that it did successfully, which is just out of this world with regards to an achievement, is it got millions of parents thinking about their children. Done that's enough. It doesn't even matter if none of them took action. It got parents thinking about their role with the young people in their family. Now, that show was watched 66 million times in the opening two weeks, right In the opening two weeks Netflix's most successful TV drama. Now, can you imagine how much change that film made? How many lives that has changed? How many mothers, how many fathers walked has changed, how many mothers, how many fathers walked into their sons and daughters bedrooms after that show and said are you all right at a basic level? And that is the kind of change on that type of scale that I want and I and I believe it's that medium that you can do it at. And then when I'm lying on my deathbed and my last days, I can look back and be like that was all worth it, and then we're done.

Ann:

Perfect, Perfect. You've just put it out into the universe and I might have a 13 year old that might want to collaborate on the script for that movie. I was going to ask this about survivors, but really quickly, yes. What message of hope or guidance would you offer someone who is a perpetrator or struggling with the impulse of being a perpetrator Because you brought it up earlier and it is something that needs like people are people and you can't pretend like you don't, you are not is something that needs. Like people are people and you can't pretend like you don't, you are not a person that you're not. So what message might you offer them?

Jeremy:

You must resist the temptation to act. Never, ever, give up on that. The temptation may feel so overwhelming at times that you think F it, I'm going to do it. But don't, because on the other side of your action and your offense is a life that you redirect and many people never recover. Many people spiral out of control and that will be because of you. So hold your temptation.

Ann:

Understand that that's something in your brain and it's not to be acted on, please and would you say that they also need to find a safe person to tell, because keeping something to yourself is isolating?

Jeremy:

that's where we fail as a society, because actually they've got nowhere to go yep, so that's some work that we need to work on.

Ann:

Yes, jeremy. My final question what does define the narrative mean to you, and what is the narrative and your narrative from your perspective?

Jeremy:

Define the narrative means to me. At some level, we all have the opportunity to define our pathway forward at some level. I know lots of people have restrictions more than others, but at some level we have some way to influence the way we think about our past, the way we address our present and the way we aim for the future, and I hope that everybody feels some level of inspiration around that. My narrative is to never give up improving and evolving for better solutions, and it's not only about making change to people's lives today. It's about sparking a light bulb in the minds that are going to change the world and people. When we're gone and that's everlasting change, that sounds like infectious creativity.

Ann:

Love it, Jeremy Indica.

Jeremy:

thank you for joining us on Define the Narrative. You so much. I found that really interesting. I appreciate it, thank you thank you.