Voices for Voices®

Bullies Don't Graduate, They Just Get Older | Episode 215

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 215

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Bullies Don't Graduate, They Just Get Older | Episode 215

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Justin Alan Hayes tackles the troubling reality that childhood bullies don't simply disappear after graduation—they mature into adult manipulators who continue targeting vulnerable individuals through increasingly sophisticated methods. This powerful examination of modern predatory behavior reveals how digital communication has created new avenues for exploitation while institutions often fail those who need protection most.

The episode features two particularly moving stories that demonstrate how predators operate in today's interconnected world. First, Hayes shares the devastating account of Tim and Tamia Woods, whose athletically gifted son died by suicide after falling victim to sextortion. Despite outward appearances of success—college sports opportunities and popularity—this young man was secretly being blackmailed after sending private photos to someone who had methodically gained his trust online. What began as innocent-seeming messages escalated into demands for money that ultimately led to tragedy.

Equally disturbing is the experience of 2024 Voice of the Year recipient Elliston Berry, whose innocent Instagram photo was transformed using AI into explicit content and distributed throughout her school. Despite having clear evidence of wrongdoing, Berry encountered institutional resistance until her mother reached out to congressional representatives, eventually leading to Senator Ted Cruz championing the bipartisan "Take It Down Act." This legislation represents a significant step toward holding both perpetrators and technology companies accountable for such abuses.

Throughout the conversation, Hayes reflects on our shared human imperfections while emphasizing that we all face daily choices about whether to help or harm others. The message resonates with uncomfortable clarity: predatory behavior thrives when good people remain silent. Whether you're navigating online interactions, supporting someone through trauma, or questioning your own responses to those in need, this episode offers essential perspective on being a voice that matters. Subscribe to Voices for VoicesⓇ and join a community committed to speaking truth when it matters most.

Justin Alan Hayes explores how bullies evolve from schoolyard tactics to sophisticated adult manipulation, and the devastating consequences when vulnerable people fall victim to digital predators.

• Grateful acknowledgment of growing listener base across platforms worldwide
• Discussion of how opinions and advice from others aren't always in our best interest
• Examination of the fine line between seeking guidance and becoming manipulated
• Heartbreaking story of Tim and Tamia Woods' son who died by suicide after sextortion
• How seemingly innocent online conversations can escalate to dangerous exploitation
• Elliston Berry's experience with AI-manipulated photos and institutional indifference
• The bipartisan "Take It Down Act" requiring tech companies to remove manipulated content
• Reflection on the imperfections we all share and the choices we face daily
• How making positive change requires real action, not just repeated behaviors

#bullies #bullying #accountability #adultbullying #socialjustice #mentalhealth #awareness #stopbullying #kindness #compassion #antiviolence #socialdevelopment #characterbuilding #educationmatters #personalempowerment

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Justin Alan Hayes:

Welcome to this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for joining us today on this episode. We have in the books in our catalog, 214 episodes are ready. We're on our way to 300. We rounded the corner at 200, and we're just continuing on. For our viewers, our listeners, for our screenshot takers, for everybody who has taken an interest in Voices for Voices, thank you for joining us. We have grown exponentially from a viewer listenership in the last two months A pretty steep climb and not really sure what the reason behind that is.

Justin Alan Hayes:

There's a lot of things that are going on in the world and so we're just happy to have a platform and a place where we can talk and share and be in a safe spot where we don't have to worry about anything but just talking about what, what's happening, the truth. We we do a lot of organizations do this. So this, this isn't just voices for voices, and I I think maybe we're getting singled out a little bit where some think that we're taking too big of an activist position on various topics. We can't control the minds of others, we just do the best that we can. And so, when the topics and the the like do come up, uh, and, and we do talk about them, uh, we, we know, just like celebrities or our favorite artist or favorite ball player or actor, actress, what have you we know that no matter how popular a person, an organization is, there's going to be detractors, there's going to be people that, for whatever reason, want to hate, and that's not something we can control. It's been quite some time, many years, where, when I was starting to come into my own we'll call it we talk about, you know, with friends and family and colleagues, about all kinds of things, all kinds of all kinds of topics, and a lot of people have an opinion, and that that's we see voices for voices, right. So we we have, we have lots of, lots of opinions, and and that's really the goal, and so, when I harken back to many years ago, when I started to come into my own, part of it was a lot of people were given lots of advice, lots of thoughts in the particular situations that I was going through had gone through. That may be on the horizon, but not all those people are looking out for my well-being, our well-being as individuals.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Uh, as we know, gossip is huge. Uh, you know, there's publications that are out there that that talk about different rumors that go on with celebrities and the like. Uh, you know, we have these reality tv shows. Uh, you know, started kind of with the kardashians with their uh, you know, the sex tape, and then all of a sudden they got this empire and and they're some of the most powerful people in the world uh, for for something that they didn't go to school to perform a sex tape, and so a lot of people have a lot of opinions.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And so where I was starting to form my self was there's a lot of information out there, a lot of people out there, a lot of people out there, a lot of opinions out there, and it's good to take in information, but at the end of the day, we have to decide how we're going to move forward. We have to decide how we're going to move forward. Are we going to? We're going to be, hopefully, on the side of helping others, of being a voice for people, for individuals, for organizations who are trying to do the right thing, and share their stories, share their background, share their experiences. Their story, share their background, share their experiences. How did they get involved with said topic or said thing? And I don't I'm not able to give my opinion on what other people's experiences are.

Justin Alan Hayes:

However, when it comes to helping people, we're talking about helping a lot of people. We've helped a lot of people already, and so, as an organization, we can just close up shop and just say, well, okay, here's what we set out to do and we're we're helping people and we have helped, and and you know, there's different stories and people that can vouch for that, and some of it comes public and some of it doesn't, because we realize that privacy is a big, big deal and with privacy, if we don't have the privacy, then people will seek out to try to destroy an opinion, a topic. And again, there's only one perfect person and that's God, jesus, the Trinity, father, son, holy Spirit. So for anybody that's out there to say, oh, I'm perfect or I'm close to it and you need to follow me. I hate to break it to you, but you're wrong, I'm wrong. And so for me to, for us to close up shop with voices for voices and say, well, you know, we've done, we've done enough. Well, we know we're not perfect and we know that there are a lot more people that need help.

Justin Alan Hayes:

However, that comes about. As we all know, life is turbulent. There's ups, there's downs. There are things we can plan for, things we can in a distance kind of think and out in the back of our mind, and then there's things we can't. And that's a lot of, really, what we're doing here, voices for Voices, what we have and what we are doing. Some things we had planned and some things we don't.

Justin Alan Hayes:

But when it comes to helping people, we're not discriminating on that, saying oh well, we're not going to talk about this, we're not going to talk about that. We're going to do what we can, and I'm only one person out of 7 billion people in the world, same with you. You're one person or family out of around 7 billion or so in the world, and so we can do as much as we can try to do, but we're not perfect. There's never going to be a day where I'm going to say, oh well, I was able, the organization was able to help, impact positively all the people in the world. That's just not going to happen. That's just not going to happen. And so if you're out there thinking and and on the platforms and showing it oh, follow me, I'll, you know, take you to the promised land. And and to compare yourself to Christ you're wrong, the Christ, you're wrong. And that's where, when individuals, for any number of reasons, know they're vulnerable, they're looking for an alternative way of thinking about things. Maybe it's rebellion against parents, what have you? And they mistakenly think oh wow, I can follow, I can be a part of, I can meet with a person who says that I'll take you to the promised land. And so, as I've touched on numerous times, that's just not the case. Just like everybody, right, we all have good qualities. We all have qualities we could, we'd like to change, we'd like to change.

Justin Alan Hayes:

A bully in school is the same as a bully out of school. Taking advantage of somebody in school or as they're growing up, and taking advantage of somebody as an adult, fully functioning adult. There's no difference. It just so happens that each of those events or experiences happen at different points in their lives, so there's no difference. So there's an adult that's bullying another adult, so there's an adult that's bullying another adult.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Bullying a child, a minor, the same as being in school or going to a convention and being told you're worthless, you're never going to amount to anything. You're nothing without me. That's what we're talking about. So, if anybody's out there which there's a lot of people out there and again, I don't take these things lightly with different topics, actually with all topics, but when we talk about serious, I don't. I don't take these things lightly with different topics, actually with all topics, you know. But when we talk about serious, really serious things, it's because there's things that are going on that are very serious. There's people that are being hurt, there's people being taken advantage of, there's people thinking that there's no outlook in life if they're not following said person or reading said material that said person is is putting out there and, as you've seen in our catalog of TV show and podcast episodes, there's all kinds of bullying.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I talked about a couple of the ways. You're no good. You're too fat, you're too dumb, you're too slow. What have you? You're never going to mount anything. Your writing is horrible. You're too slow. You misspell words. You don't have the distribution that I have. I have the power. You don't. Nobody's going to believe you. That's called an abuser Straight up. That's an abuser straight up. That's an abuser. Now you may if you know. God forbid. You're one of these people that are abusing people and you mean, whether you think it's wrong or not, it it is wrong, and that's not me trying to be God or anything, that's just straight up. Abuse is abuse.

Justin Alan Hayes:

One of our episodes we had was with Timmy and Tim Woods, and so they are a couple mother, father and they had a son. He's in heaven now and the son had a cell phone, smartphone, whatever you call it. Somehow someway the son was a great athlete. Somehow someway son was a great athlete. He was, I believe. He was accepted to play sports at various colleges, so successful, but on the outside like a successful person, and what the parents didn't know was there were messages and things going on behind the scenes at the house on his phone, where somebody befriended him on his phone, right, I mean I tried to post a couple of things, but apparently social media doesn't like when you tell the truth.

Justin Alan Hayes:

A couple of messages I've I've received and A couple of messages I've received and they go something like oh, your child left the toy at our house, can you come pick it up, let us know, and you can do that. Or I just got a new phone, wasn't able to. You know the contact, something happened and you know how do we know each other, and so something like that to some people is all right. There's something the farthest going on, so that's that. And then there are people that are vulnerable, like this individual, tim and Tamiya's son, even though he's a great athlete, had a lot going for him some appearances, popular, a lot of friends and he started getting these messages. Some people were befriending him on the phone, right? Not everybody they look at their social media is actually who they are, and we should know that by now. It's not. You know the whole thought of oh well, you know, I stayed at a holiday inn last night, so that makes me. No, it's not like that. These things can happen to anybody. And so they happened to him and to me, his son.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Things were going on and he was asked to send nude pictures of himself to the person on the phone. They were basically extorting him and blackmailing him and saying look, once you have these photos out here, we'll release those if you don't pay us $100 or $200. I'm not sure the specifics of the amount of money, but the fact of the matter was, is he was doing that because he was afraid that, oh, my photos are going to get out. My photos are going to get out. My photos are going to get out. I got to pay the money, and so he was. Somehow he had the control to be able to do it and he was sending money. You know people he's never met in his life, and these can be people that are in the United States or they can be in a different country.

Justin Alan Hayes:

What I've learned over the years is, historically, some of us have had the opinion that, oh, that's happening in a different country, different area of the world. That's happening here in the United States, and whether we want to believe it or not, whether we want to think our neighborhoods are the safest or not, it's not the case. So their son sent the pictures, started sending the money, didn't want photos to come out. One night his dad was going into work and he said hey, I love you, see you in the morning, mom, kind of the same thing she was. I believe she was at home, that she, that she had a day job, and so she was home at night. One of the husband went into work that's kind of how they did things and in the morning they found their son dead. He died by suicide.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So then they started bringing in all different law enforcement agencies and come through the phone and find what I just said to be the case. Somebody texted them out of blue, became friends over somewhat of a period of time. They felt like they could confide in each other, sent the nude photos and then all of a sudden the tune changes hey, you need to send me $100 or whatever that amount of money is. And it just got to the point. And the son, as part of our organization, what we're trying to do is talk to your family about things that are going on, because our son didn't. They didn't talk to the mom, they didn't talk to dad and all outward appearances was everything was okay, so he took his life because of this.

Justin Alan Hayes:

It's called sextortion, it's called taking advantage of people. That's just one way individuals take advantage of others, others, I mean. We're going to spend hours on all the different ways people can be taken advantage of. And you know, another guest we had on was our 2024 Voice of the Year, elliston Berry. She was at President Trump's joint address to Congress and she was First Lady Nelania Trump's guest of honor, and what that deal is.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And again, we have two episodes. We have one with Ellis. We have two with Elliston and her mom, miss Anna, and then we have one, which is the award presentation show that we did, and what happened to her is somebody took an innocent photo that she had on her Instagram account and ran it through a free AI program, turned it into a nude photo, posted it, got out to the school. She shows up the school the next day, doesn't know anything of it and people you know the students were I don't know what they were saying or what, but uh, somehow she found out this, this occurred, and we talk about nice people, not nice people. Unfortunately, what we learned from her mom is the principal didn't want to do anything, didn't want to step forward. That the authorities really didn't want to either. So that's where we talk about good and bad. So we believe all people are good. It's just sometimes decisions are made that are not good. So it wasn't until her mom reached out to all her representatives. Congress told her story.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Senator Ted Cruz took up the story because it didn't just happen to Elliston, there were others across the country. Uh, you know, girls in in high school and kind of the same things was what was happening and and so they were on the show and they were talking about it, and so she got taken advantage of by somebody at her own school that took a picture that thought they're being cute, they're being funny. Um, and it turns out that there are very few people that wanted to support and be on her side, even though she was in the right. She had the proof, she had the evidence. So, no matter what the topic is, you can believe something until you're blue in the face, but when it shows evidence, that's the truth. That's what is real.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, and so Senator Ted Cruz's bipartisan effort in the state of Texas called the Take it Down Act, which goes after individuals who do the photos. So the individual at her school that did it, they're going to be prosecuted as well as big tech is going to have to do it for all people. Big tech is going to have to do it for all people. They're going to have to get in their algorithms and find these things and they're going to have to take it down, I believe, within 24 or 48 hours. And so this is done with people like Taylor Swift. You know he's, you know he's billionaires, he's the high profile people. But now it's on its way to be federal law, because to be able to affect change with big tech, you got to do it from the federal side, not the state side. So there was only so much that could happen in the state of Texas.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Well, the US Senate passed the act and the House representatives either has, or they're going to very shortly uh, the voting on the take it down act. Uh, and then, once and again, this is bipartisan right. You have a child, that this happens to who? It doesn't matter. If you're Democrat, Republican, libertarian, whatever, uh, we don't want people being taken advantage of. And if you're one of the people that are taking advantage of the people, shame on you. Shame on you for doing that. And so once the house representatives signs their votes on and it passes the legislation I believe it was unanimous in the in the Senate so once the House passes it, it goes to President Trump's desk, he signs it, it's law.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And so Big Tech's not going to be able to, you know? Oh well, because Big Tech didn't do anything to Elliston her case until Senator Ted Cruz got involved. And once his people, once he got involved and he reached out, the big tech, all of a sudden, oh yeah, we can change that, we can do this and oh, we didn't know this occurred, um. And so it doesn't matter how big a business is, how big a government, how small government, how law enforcement, we're individuals and we all make mistakes, right? We're not god, we're not jesus. We all make mistakes, we all sin. We don't like to sin, we don't want to sin, we do sin, so that those two stories of the abuse and the bullying that occurred, that in addition to the other episodes we have and you know, if we continue with this, you know we're going to continue talking about it because it's real, it's happening, it has happened, it's going to continue to happen, it's going to continue to happen.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And if you're one of the bad, bad guys, bad girls out there, again, I'm not. I can't make decisions, I can't change anybody. The only thing I can do is try to work on myself, and I know I'm not perfect, I know everything I say isn't might not always be the most eloquent, uh, and I've, like all of us, we've all made mistakes and done, done things, uh, and in the past, and so it's really one of these moments. Right, we have these moments. We can choose the same path, which we call that insanity, where we do the same thing over and over and over and over again, thinking something's going to change. Well, it's not, because we've done the same thing and the result hasn't changed. You're going to have to make a course correction, You're going to have to pivot, you're going to have to change. I'm going to have to change. I'm not any different than than you. I'm not any different from any other human out there. We all have faults and there's, we all have things that we do. Well, uh, and so what? The?

Justin Alan Hayes:

The hope is that if you're a bad guy, bad girl out there, that you stop what you're doing. You stop abusing people Again, no matter where that's at, whether that's in school, whether that's at a convention, whether that's in a one-on-one meeting, whether that's with parents and their children and minors, and what have you and their children and minors and what have you? There's so many different ways and things that can shape an individual, and so what we're trying to be at, voices for Voices is we're trying to be on the side of. There's a voice in all of us. Now, if you're somebody that's breaking a law or is abusing people, well, again, I can't change anything other than myself. I try to.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So, yeah, as an organization as far as who's on the show. That's something that we talk about and we go from there and we go from there. But what we do know is there are things that are innately good and innately bad, which, on the surface, we can say, okay, killing somebody, that's wrong. So Helping, helping somebody who doesn't have the money to purchase a house or rent an apartment and and going ahead and paying for that for a person, that would be more on the positive side, right. So that's what we're talking about. There's things that are just on the surface, bad, not good, not nice, not Christ-like, and then there's things that are on the more positive end. So we all have decisions, right. We all have decisions we can make.

Justin Alan Hayes:

That we do make and we are grateful that we have had, and continue to have, listeners, viewers from all over the world, new listeners and viewers coming on every episode, not only every episode, but every day, and that's really just a blessing day, and that's really just a blessing. That's something that we strive to help. Some things may come across controversial. That's in the eye of the beholder. So all the past episodes we've had, we've had a variety, a very diverse lineup from all walks of life, and what we want to do is to continue that which we are, which we are, which we will, until our time's up.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And that's like everybody, because none of us are perfect. And so, god and Jesus, they'll. It's it's their will to be done, not ours, not mine, not yours. There's things we can like and not like, but it's uh, it's thy will be done, not my will be done. It took me a lot of years to to get that across through my ego, so that's something that we all can think about Still rides on my mind daily. And just to know that there are things that we can control and impact more than others, like, oh, I want to get a shower. Well, if I get up and go to the bathroom, I can impact that more than the weather. So we're doing the best we can with the resources we have.

Justin Alan Hayes:

We thank you for joining in, whether this is your first episode with us or you've been with us the whole journey. We are grateful. If you can subscribe, give us a big thumbs up, like let people know that there's a pretty good TV show and podcast that's been out there and it might be worth their time to a pretty good TV show and podcast that's been out there and it might be worth their time to take a look, to watch it, to listen to it, read the transcript. However you consume it and then, however you consume it from a platform, you know whether that's iHeart, whether that's Spotify, whether that's iHeart, whether that's Spotify, whether that's SoundCloud. I mean, we all have different preferences, so what I may listen and watch, the platform might be different than you. That's okay. That's how we. We have it like that. So thank you for joining us.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Check out this episode as well as the rest of the catalog. We have the voices for voices TV show and podcast. And until next time, I'm Justin Alan Hayes, founder and host of voices for voices. Thank you for joining us and please be a voice for you or somebody in need. Take care.

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