When Trauma Touches Everyone: A Survivor's Story of Healing

In this episode author and survivor Jessi Bixler shares the story behind her memoir, The Story We Share: How One Sexual Assault Rippled Through a Family and Their Fight for Healing, recounting the assault that occurred in her home in 2013, the immediate aftermath, the failures of the criminal justice system, and her family’s decision to pursue civil accountability.

The conversation explores how trauma can fracture memory, disrupt relationships, and leave loved ones unsure of how to help. Jessi reflects on the role her husband, parents, brother, and friends played in her recovery, and how writing the book opened long-overdue conversations that ultimately strengthened many of those relationships. She also discusses her advocacy work with MOCSA, the importance of believing survivors, and why silence can deepen isolation. Jessi’s message to survivors is clear and compassionate: find your person, seek support, and know that there are people and organizations ready to believe you.

Transcript

Welcome and Content Warning

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Today we're joined by author and survivor Jesse Bixler for an open and thoughtful conversation about how the trauma following sexual assault impacts both the survivor and their families. Together we'll explore Jesse's personal journey, including her decision to publish her story and discuss it publicly. I'm Maria McMillan, and this is Genesis the Podcast. This episode discusses experiences of sexual assault and rape. Jesse, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's great to be with you, and I'm so glad that you reached out to me to share your story and your book. And I want to talk about all of that because you are a survivor of sexual assault, but you are so much more than that, too. Tell us about you.

Meet Jesse Bixler and Memoir

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Sure. So I'm Jessie, and I'm a mom of two teenagers. So send out some prayers and good vibes for me. So I'm a wife to Chad as well. We're going to be celebrating here in a couple weeks our 18th anniversary. Congratulations. Thank you. Like you said, I just authored my first book, a memoir that came out in November. And I run a small digital marketing agency here in Kansas City. And I work with some local nonprofits, specifically Moxa, which is the metropolitan organization countering sexual assault, which is maybe known to some of your listeners. It's the largest rape crisis center in the nation, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

So yeah, that's remarkable. You are for sure a very busy lady. Now, you mentioned your book and the impetus for your book, the story we share how one sexual assault rippled through a family and their fight for healing, was an incident that occurred to you in 2013. Can

The Night of the Assault

SPEAKER_02 1:46

you tell us what happened to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Sure. So in 2013, we were celebrating my daughter's first birthday at our home. So we had some family and friends over for that celebration. And we eventually invited one of my husband's families to stay the night. They lived out of town, and my parents were in town. So we had a big, beautiful home with lots of space. So we were more than happy to share that space with them. So invited them to stay the kids could play and continue on having a good time. So later that evening, the kids went to bed and we were outside on our patio, just kind of enjoying the night air, visiting with everybody that, you know, my family and my parents that were staying the night, and then this other family. And eventually I decided I was pooped from planning a one-year-old's birthday party and decided it was time to go to bed. So I went on to our bedroom, got ready for bed, climbed into bed, fell asleep, had hit the pillow, zonked. Shortly after that, I woke up to hands on my body, which I, of course, rightly so thought were my husband's. But as I started to wake up, I realized that this something wasn't right. The hands felt very rough and forceful. And I just kept thinking, these aren't your hands. And then I felt penetration. And I realized something wasn't right. And I rolled out of my bed and walked out of our bedroom and started to make our way back my way back through our kitchen, which is where I left my husband, the lights were on, out to the patio where we were, and he was still outside. And I opened the door and just began screaming, it's not your hands, it's not your hands. And so he was confused and kind of came to the door to shield me and to comfort me and find out what was going on because he was confused. And he came into the kitchen and I was still screaming, it's not your hands. And he realized slowly that I didn't have any pants on. And we slowly started to make our way back through the kitchen, kind of towards our living room, and then beyond that was our bedroom. And about the same time, my parents came running down because they heard my screams. And at the same time, as when in the book I refer to him as X, which we can talk about a little bit more later, but saw him coming out of our bedroom. And so I think at that time everybody slowly started to piece together what was happening.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Wow. Thank you, first of all, for recounting that for our listeners and sharing that with us because I know that is quite a traumatic experience. And it's it's been some time. It's been what how many years has it been?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

It's been over 12 years.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Over 12 years. Okay.

Aftermath at Home and Hospital

SPEAKER_02 4:52

And what happened after that when your husband confronted X?

SPEAKER_00 4:57

So what happened is, and and again, the the interesting part and the unique part of the book is that it's told from multiple perspectives. So I'll kind of tell you what he shared with me and his account. It's not my recollection. And again, we can talk about that in terms of fractured memories for survivors and things of that nature. So he recalls seeing him kind of adjusting his shirt and adjusting his pants and saying, Let me, let me talk, let me explain. I'm so sorry. I should and I should also mention about that time is when his wife came upstairs because they were staying in the basement bedroom. So my husband was still trying to kind of like shield us and you know keep him away from me. I was still in a state. So he instructed X's wife, you know, get him out of here, take him downstairs. And so he was just kind of trying to figure out what to do next. And it was about that time, around that time, I had gone back into our bedroom, into the bathroom, and just curled up onto the floor in kind of a fetal position and started dry heaving, shaking, convulsing. And at some point around that time is when my mom and Chad, my husband, determined it was it was time to call the police. So they called the police, officers showed up, detectives showed up. He was escorted out of our house in handcuffs, put into a police car, and taken to the station. And also at that time, the officer said that it I needed to go to the hospital and have a rape kit performed. And so my dad was the one that drove me to the hospital. Chad and my mom stayed back. The kids were still sleeping. Chad was trying to remove his cousin, the wife, from our house. So yeah, so my dad was the one, unfortunately, that drove me to the hospital to have that examination done.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

That is a lot for the whole family in such a short period of time, because I could imagine this was less than an hour, right? So the incident happens. You have this wonderful day. This incident happens, and then in an instant, everything changed.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Right.

Dissociation and Fractured Memories

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah, it was it was hard. You know, I think it at the time I I remember feeling so much confusion. Like, did did this happen? Am I dreaming this? This can't be. Like this is my home. It's my daughter's birthday. I had so many feelings of what I later learned of dissociation. So the out-of-body feeling of, for example, you know, being in my dad's car and in the passenger seat and just kind of leaning up against the window and feeling like I was watching myself, like kind of like a cartoon, just watching myself just in the car. You know, those memories are foggy. I'm a very visual person. So it I remember that the feeling was very foggy, you know, lack of color, just just sad and confusing, you know, not understanding where I was, how did I get here, all of those things. So yeah, it was it was tough.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Now, was X charged that night?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

He was not. He I had given my statement to once to the detectives when they were in our home and they took statements from my parents and my husband as well. I was given, I gave my statement to the nurse examiner. I gave my statement once the examination was complete to the detectives outside the examination room to in order to hold him for 24 hours. So he was held for 24 hours after the incident and then he was released, and he never spent another day in jail as a result of what he did to me.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Do you want to tell us now why you decided to refer to him as X in the book?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Sure. So I learned that, and a lot of this was through therapy. I had a really hard time when I was speaking with my therapist, and I will often call her my shrinker. We had that kind of relationship, which I'm really thankful for. But in talking with her, I had a really hard time calling him by name. I couldn't, I couldn't even call him. I didn't know what to call him, whether it was the perpetrator, the rapist, my assailant, all of these things had it left me with kind of that feeling in your throat that almost made you feel like you were gonna be sick or like a knot in your throat. And I didn't, I didn't know why. So she had some choice names for him, which I I I mentioned in the book as well. But I realized in working with her that a lot of times that's not uncommon for survivors. It's it's almost kind of an involuntary reaction to referring to the person by name. So part of it was that, and then also part of it because he I felt like he didn't, he didn't deserve the place in in my story that giving him a name would afford him. So he, you know, giving him a name to me meant like he, I don't know, not that it was like an important role, but that he had he had that that power still. Like X means to me means like we're done, stricken from record, you don't have, you know, authority, power. So I feel like there's so many different meanings to X. And and I felt like that was kind of my unspoken way of like removing any power control that he had over, you know, the story itself.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Yeah, I can definitely understand and relate to that. You mentioned a couple minutes ago fractured memories. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

So for me, like I used the examples of I I kind of like zoned in and out of after the incident. So fractured memories to me was like, you know, be seeing him in front of our bedroom. And then the next memory I had was, you know, being on the bathroom floor. And then maybe the next memory was stripping the sheets off my bed. So they're more like flashes of memories to me. So flashes of memories, fractures, you know, I kind of use those hand in hand. And so for me, and like recounting the in the stories in the book, or not the stories, the story in the book, it's pulling a lot of those things in and it's pulling in the things that I don't remember. And honestly, in in therapy, I learned that I probably won't get a lot of those memories back. And that's just the nature of trauma and our brains kind of protecting us from those traumatic incidents.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Yeah. Then going a little further along in the timeline, what was the process of working with law enforcement and others to try to bring this to you know some form of justice?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

So

Rape Kit Delays and Dropped Charges

SPEAKER_00 12:03

the detectives after the exam instructed us to go to the sheriff's office on Monday because again, this was on a Saturday that it took place. So going to the sheriff's office meant filing a police report. And as we understood it, the the next step would be to press charges against X. So we did, we went to the sheriff's office on that Monday morning. Chad and I both gave our statements to a detective, and she also gave us, you know, our next thing, list of things to do, which was getting a restraining order, going to my primary care physician, and seeing a therapist. So we this whole time were under the impression, like, okay, we're taking the next steps legally to make sure that he doesn't do this to someone else or continue harming people, because as you know, studies and numbers show that this isn't a one-time occurrence. So that was very, very important to us. So we were then put in touch with the county prosecutor, and she shared with us like, okay, listen, so here's probably what's going to happen. We're gonna wait for the results for the rape kit to come back. And when we receive that, we're gonna take probably one of two courses. And and this is where I kind of get them confused, but it was it was either a count of rape or a count of sexual assault. And I think one of them was you know in the first degree of the second degree. So I don't I don't recall how those kind of shook out. So we waited for months. So this was November that it happened, and we didn't receive our the the results of the rape kit until you know mid-June, I think, as I recall. And so we waited for months and months and months and continue to be in contact with the prosecutor. She just kept saying, you know, got to wait till this comes back, wait till this comes back. And so finally it came back. She we were called into her office, and she sat my husband and I down and she said, First of all, I want you to know that I believe you, which at the time I remember thinking, that really pisses me off. That's that's I don't understand. Okay, what what does that have to do with anything? Because in my mind, like I'm very logical, right? So in my mind, I was like, well, that that doesn't matter. Like this happened. What is there to believe? You know, it's very black and white. And so then she followed up with saying that she wasn't going to pursue any criminal charges against him. And her reason was that she didn't believe that she could adequately prove intent. So she couldn't prove that he intended to come in to my bedroom while I was sleeping and assault me. And that is still something to this day that it's hard for me to wrap my head around. No many, you know, no matter how many times I talk about it, how many times I write about it, it's still something that's really challenging. And my husband was even asking her questions like, hold on, if we had, you know, video evidence, if we had a recording, if we had all of this proof, which again, she told us all we needed was the rape kit. You know, if we had all of these things, then what? And she's like, well, that doesn't show, that doesn't prove intent. And so nothing ever came of it. Fast

Civil Court and Financial Accountability

SPEAKER_00 15:30

forward a few years, and we did decide to pursue civil remediation. And our civil attorney did reach out furious, and he was like, What the heck? Tell us, I help me understand why you didn't pursue this. This is an open and shut case. And her response to him was listen, we have a policy in our office that we don't take any cases that we don't believe that we have a 97 to 99 percent chance of winning, and that just blew his mind. And so she didn't feel like she had a 97 to 99 percent chance of winning a case against X.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

That's so disappointing on so many levels, to put it very mild mildly. So, so how did you deal with that? How did you come to terms with that?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Honestly, I don't know that I ever will, just the thought of him out there, not all we ever wanted was to hold him for him to be held accountable. And obviously that was in jail. And if we couldn't have him in jail on a sex offender list, just some way to try and prevent that. So, again, I don't know if I ever came to terms with it, but like I said, the the next best thing that I think that we did was pursue civil suit. And I recognize that not a lot of people have that capacity because it's expensive. I mean, hiring a lawyer is expensive and you don't know what's going to happen, and it takes a long time. Our specific case, we were told plan on being in this for eight years at minimum and retelling your story over and over and over again, and having strangers pick it apart. So I think having the strength to pursue, and I and my husband and I had multiple conversations sitting down before we pursued civil, and we said, you know, are we ready to do this? Can we do this? Are we strong enough to do this? This is a long time. And where we where we landed was how could we not? We would spend the rest of our lives wondering, what if? What if we didn't at least try? And so we did.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Was there a final judgment against him?

SPEAKER_00 17:59

There was a final judgment. He was held liable, so he was ordered to pay us out of pocket for a portion of it. And and I'll be honest with you too, like that. We had a number of conversations with our attorney about receiving monetary compensation because it feels icky. It feels like you know, we're being paid off because of something that he did to us. And and I had a really hard time grappling with that. And my attorney did a really good job kind of laying it out for me. And he's like, Jesse, I can't, my job is not, I can't put him in jail for you, and I can't get him on the sex offender list, but I can hold him financially responsible, which is still going to impact him. And there will still be a public judgment out there against him. So when an employer or you know, if he goes to get a loan or something like that, anytime he is searched, they will see that judgment against him. And so I had to kind of keep that in mind when we pursued the civil, the civil route. And we did have, you know, I'll say our our day in court, and we did, I did get to face him in court, which I think was helpful as part of the healing process too. But it was, it was, it wasn't the eight years, but it was still a long, a long journey.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Yeah, I'm really proud of you for everything you've done to try to bring the situation to some form of closure. And you're right. I mean, I think there should be a judgment against a person who commits a crime like that. If it can't be, if it can't be criminal, then it should be civil. And it's pay and be held accountable for his actions. As a

Trauma’s Ripple Effect on Family

SPEAKER_02 19:50

result of all of this and just this whole process that you've been through and your family's been through, you wrote the book and it details how many of those closest to you were also impacted by what happened to you. And that's a distinction, right? Because you were the person who was the victim of this crime. But then there are so many people around you that care about you and want to help you, and they also experience some trauma. In the dedication of the book, you mentioned your husband stood in the wreckage with you, which I find a very powerful description of the aftermath of this situation. Could you help us understand how you came to terms or continue to come to terms with the fallout from an experience like this one?

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Well, first of all, I should say that my husband is amazing. And I'm so, so thankful to that he was there. He was he was my person, and I hope that survivors and more survivors have their person to stand there with them. Thankfully, he was the constant in the storm. So he didn't have all the answers. He, I mean, we had only been married five years, and so we were still kind of figuring each other out, and he he was just always there. He didn't, he never pushed me, he never tried to fix me, he just stayed constant when I was falling apart. There were times where I would zone out or, you know, another type of dissociation, and he would gently kind of bring me back to the world. There were times when I would snap unnecessarily at the kids, and again, he would gently kind of steer me in the right direction. So it wasn't something that I feel like I understood early on, and and really I didn't have the capacity to care what he was thinking or how he was doing or how my mom was doing or how my dad was doing. So I I never I never checked. But as I became healthier and as I understood what was happening in my body and my mind, and through you know many, many counseling sessions, I started to realize that for me, understanding what they were going through was also helpful in healing for me. And to be quite honest, you mentioned it has been 12 years, but prior to that, there we didn't really have a lot of conversations. My husband and I, Chad and I did. And that was, I think, part of what saved our marriage is just the commitment to communication and constantly talking about it and finding words for what was happening between us or with me. But we didn't have conversations like that with my mom or my dad or my brother or my friend. I think I realized that a lot of the relationships they, and I think this is common, but they're worried about the survivor or not wanting to say the wrong thing or worrying if they say something, it will set them off. So they're so focused on the survivor that it's difficult for them to understand and process what is going on. And so, like only, for example, of all of the people closest to us that I interviewed for the book, only one person, which was my mom, ever went and spoke to a therapist. And she had one session and was not a good experience for her, and hasn't talked to anyone since. So that's kind of a long answer to your original question, but I think it's important. And what I'm realizing, and it was kind of the purpose for writing the book too, is just helping people see that it's it's admirable that you are taking care of and that you want to put all of this support into a survivor, but it's also important to support the survivor by supporting yourself, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Yeah, and you're so brave to write a book like this one, right? Because it's looking at the perspective of everyone's trauma that was in your kind of like your network of support going through this ordeal. Let's talk about some of those relationships and how they were changed for the better or not.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Sure.

Hard Talks That Heal Relationships

SPEAKER_00 24:17

I think, well, we've already talked a lot about my husband, so I don't want him to, you know, have too much of an inflated ego. Just give me a great guy. Yes, he is. You know, I have what I learned too is I have I'm thankful for determining what I need from the people that I love most in my life. And I didn't know that at the time. So one of my best friends, I call her my rainbows and butterflies friend. And she is she is your typical kindergarten teacher. She's happy, she's the peacemaker. And I remember being hesitant to tell her what happened to me because I I I wanted somebody to be mad with me and cry with me, and I knew her, and that she would, she would be more like motherly and just like, oh honey, you're okay. And so it took me a long time to tell her, and then I shared that with her, and she was like, Oh, okay, well, I'll let you go. And we spent years not talking about that, and I harbor, I held on to that because as I got healthier and processed through a lot of things, I felt like I hurt her. I felt like because I said, Hey, you couldn't give me what I needed at the time, and I didn't feel like I could trust you with this, I didn't tell you. And and it wasn't until writing the book and interviewing her that she was like, Nope, that's who I am. That never bothered me. So it's kind of like another nudge to have those conversations, and something I held on to for so many years really wasn't actually an issue. So that's one example. Another example would be my relationship with my mom. There were times that she she pushed to maybe talk before I was ready. One specific incident is or time is it was probably a week or two after the rape. And she asked me to have a group call with her brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles. From her perspective, she was pushing me to do this so that I only had to tell them one. I only had to tell the story one time. For me, it felt like once again a loss of control. It was very important to me in the months that followed to pick and choose who I told, when I told, and how I told, because I then had to face what came after, whether it was how they looked at me, how they acted around me, what they were gonna say, all of those things. So at the time I was hesitant. And it's funny, Chad, my husband, was also very resistant to having that conversation at that time. And again, after you know, many years later, after talking about it with my mom and you know, her kind of seeing the other side of things, I think we have a much better relationship now and can have those conversations. But otherwise, you know, she spent so many years not saying anything because she was afraid that I was going to blow up and, you know, tiptoeing around things. And I spent time not talking to her because I didn't want her to price. So there's a lot of these unspoken, you know, conversations that didn't happen. And I'm thankful now that all of these, all of the relationships and the people closest to me speaking out about it has more than strengthened our relationships.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

So you've had some positive outcomes then about from interviewing and publishing this and talking about this story.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think you know, there's always going to be some negative comments or some backlash when you put yourself out there. There's always going to be that, whether, you know, even from like a creative standpoint or you know, artists when they put the, you know, their creative works out there. But generally, it has been positive. I'm thankful for it. It's still, you know, it's still kind of a weird phenomenon having, you know, more and more people hear about what happened to us and kind of know those intimate details. But I wanted to make sure those intimate details that some people choose not to share rightly so for their own reasons. It was important to me to share those for people to feel maybe less isolated.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Sure. And there was a great section in the book where you talked about your relationship with your brother. Will you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Yeah. So my brother and I have a fantastic relationship now. We didn't always, we just with the age different and just different kinds of places in life. And I think, I think kind of the turning point for us is it was difficult a few years after the rape took place. Once I got to a better place where I thought, like, hey, I want to check in with my mom, my dad, my brother, and just let them know, like, I'm I'm okay. I'm okay. If you want to talk about it, ask me about it. Like, I'm I'm in a good place. And so I did that with my brother. And I was surprised to learn how angry he was. He had been angry for a very, very long time. And he was projecting that at Chad, at my dad, at my mom, at all of the people there, because he wasn't at the birthday party. So he was projecting his anger on them, thinking, why didn't you do something? Why didn't you beat the crap out of this guy? How could you let this happen? So he's all of these like what if statements. And he was harboring a lot of guilt because he didn't come. Because again, he he wasn't in a good place. We weren't in a good place with our relationship. So he felt guilty, like maybe if I was there, I could have done something. So he is the one person, well, one of the people now that we talk about it a lot, and I'll share with him. He's one of my best friends, and I think he would say the same thing about me. So I'm thankful that, you know, together we're learning from each other and and communicating and growing as siblings.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

That's wonderful. It's a shame it, you know, had to come to this to repair that relationship, but I do think that you deserve all the positive outcomes that come your way as a result. You've also become an advocate for sexual assault awareness.

Turning Pain Into Advocacy at Moxa

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Can you tell us about your work, the work you're doing to educate others and raise awareness?

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Sure. So I mentioned Moxa at the beginning when we first started talking. And it's kind of it's kind of an interesting story because if you rewind a few years, well, a couple, I guess it'd be a couple decades ago, at that time I was working for a company and one of the leaders of the company was involved on the board for Moxa. And I knew what Moxa did, but I was a young 20-something year old, and I was like, oh, good for her for helping those people. You know, I was I was projecting like I'll never though it's it's those people that need those services.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

So I remember this was before your ins your intention.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Yes, yeah, yes, correct. Many, many years before. So fast forward to being in the hospital and you know, in the middle of my my sane exam, sexual assault nurse exam, the representative of a volunteer from Moxa came to the hospital and you know, kind of explained what she was there for. And again, I had since that time of being introduced to Moxa 10 years prior, I never had any interaction. And I remember she walked in and she's like, I'm I'm here to be with you. I've brought clothes for you and information. You won't be able to take your clothes home. Would you like me to stay with you and just be here to support and kind of help you understand what's happening? And I said, Nope, I don't want you here. So I I asked her to leave. And I think back on that and I talk pretty openly about that too. I think I think I was still in shock and probably a bit of denial. And in my head, if she wasn't there, this wasn't happening. Her being there made everything more real, which sounds it sounds a little silly because we were halfway through this horrible examination that took hours and hours. But again, like I I didn't know. I had no control over it, but but I thought if I send her away, it makes it less real. And and so again, fast forward another couple years later, as I started to heal, I thought, I want to, I want to, I want to give back. I want to understand a little more about what happened. And I, you know, kind of I was like doing some digging and seeing, am I the only one? Is this it is this common? Like I wanted to, I wanted to understand more about just everything about it. I thought it would help me. I thought I could help other people. So I reached back out to Moxa. I got involved with some of their event programming. So I volunteered my time there. I also went through their 40-hour volunteer training, which was immensely helpful in my understanding just of, you know, kind of like the thought process, the statistics, you know, just everything that that happens there. I did not go, you know, I didn't go to the see the hospital exam room. I didn't feel like I needed to, but I completed that programming and I'm I'm really grateful for it. I then joined the board for of directors for Moxa. So I'm still on the board actually completing my last and final year before they give me give me the boot. So it's been it's been eight years. And last year I served as the board chair for Moxa. And I'm just I'm so proud of the organization that they've grown to be. When I first got involved, they were about 30 full-time employees, and now we're up to a hundred and moving into a new building, celebrating 50 years in the Kansas City community. So I'm just I'm so thankful to have both a survivor perspective on the work that Moxa does, but an inside perspective on how every individual that's involved with the organization lives and breathes and truly, truly cares about the advocacy work. So I'm I'm just so thankful.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Yeah, they do amazing work. It's very it's wonderful that they found you and you found them just at the right moment.

Start by Believing Survivors

SPEAKER_02 35:13

Is there anything that you wish more people understood about the impact of sexual assault and trauma, both for survivors and their families?

SPEAKER_00 35:22

I think I would want people to know that you don't have to worry about saying the wrong thing, that it's it can be more harmful to a survivor to say nothing at all. I think another thing is one of Mox's campaigns is start by believing. So rape and sexual assault, as you know, is one of the only crimes where survivors aren't believed off the bat. So, for example, if I told you, oh my gosh, I was I was just robbed at Costco, you would probably respond and say, Oh my gosh, are you okay? You know, were you hurt? What do you need? And and we're still in a culture where a lot of people will respond when a rape or sexual assault disclosure happens and they will say, Well, what what what were you doing? You know, what were you wearing? Why, why were you there? You know, all of these questioning which puts it back on the the survivor. So I would say those two things are really important. And so making sure that again, that you're starting by believing someone when they disclose to you.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Yeah, absolutely. It's hard to believe that we live in a world where uh survivors are not believed and where tangible pro tangible property has more value than the human body or the human experience. And I hear that a lot from survivors, and also when speaking with prosecutors and others, that if you're robbed, someone steals your money, that is a crime, right? You it's robbery, and then there's larceny, and you know, those things can be prosecuted. If you're raped, it's up to you to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was intent or there was force.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Right. Yeah, and that's what I mean. Like, that's what it's still hard for me to grasp, even you know, having this conversation with you. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with the intent. It's just, I think because I am such a black and white person, you know, I'm a list check it off person. And to your point, like, you know, robbery, larceny, this happened. You don't have to prove intent. This happened, so this, you know, this is a crime. And so to me, I'm like, well, this assault happened, this is a crime. Why do I have to prove whether or not he intended? And it shouldn't matter if he was, you know, drinking or not, or what I was wearing, or what I did or said, or anything like that. So it's still, you know, in my head, and and I think you too, like in our heads, we know that's not right. But why? Why are we having to jump through? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 38:13

I completely understand what you mean. I wish more people understood what you mean, but talking about it and giving voice to these issues over and over again on this show and the work that you do, it's really important to bringing awareness around it and hopefully making meaningful change on this whole issue. For

Finding Your Person and Support

SPEAKER_02 38:31

listeners who may be going through something similar as you had, what words of support or advice would you like to share with them?

SPEAKER_00 38:38

I would say, you know, what was what was so helpful to me, and we talked a little bit about it earlier on, is my advice would be to find find your person. And if you don't have a person, there is wonderful organizations all around the nation. Specifically, obviously, I've gushed on Moxa. Um, so for listeners outside of the the Kansas City area, I know that there are plenty of resources who will believe you unequivocally for what you're experiencing. So I would say, yeah, find a trusted person that can, you know, be with you that you feel comfortable sharing with and that can be there to support you.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Yeah, that's very important advice. Thank you. How

How to Get Jesse’s Book

SPEAKER_02 39:26

can people learn more about your advocacy work? Tell us your website and how to get the book.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Sure. So the web, my website is easy to remember. It's just jessybixler.com. You can find more about the book on the website. You can also go to Amazon or bookstores to find the story we share. We also have a number of resources for survivors, whether it be in the Kansas City area or outside the area for survivors and for those their support systems. We have some blogs and articles that we post too that kind of help again keep the conversation going, but that's a good place to start.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Perfect. Jesse, thank you for the work you do, for sharing your story with us and for talking with me today.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

Genesis

Genesis Helpline and Resources

SPEAKER_02 40:15

Women's Shelter and Support exists to give women in abusive situations a way out. We are committed to our mission of providing safety, shelter, and support for women and children who have experienced domestic violence and to raise awareness regarding its cause, prevalence, and impact. Join us in creating a societal shift on how people think about domestic violence. You can learn more at GenesisShelter.org. And when you follow us on social media, on Facebook and Instagram at Genesis Women's Shelter, and on X at Genesis Shelter. The Genesis Helpline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by call or text at 214 946 HELP. 214 946 4357.