064 Groomed at 11 by My Best Friend's Dad

In this episode, Kobias shares about the years spent homeless, friendless and vulnerable. At just 11 years old, Kobias made a friend. Unbeknownst to them, this friendship would turn their lives upside down. Kobias was pulled into the dark world of grooming by the father of their best friend. What began as a seemingly innocent friendship soon turned into years of manipulation, betrayal and physical and sexual abuse. By 15, they were in a full-blown relationship with their friend's father, which ended on the verge of death. 

Kobias opens up about the early signs of grooming, the emotional toll of being targeted by someone they trusted, and the strength it took to understand and confront what had happened. Their story sheds light on the insidious tactics of grooming and the lasting journey of healing. 

**Trigger Warning: This episode includes discussions of grooming and abuse.**

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

As soon as he saw me as a 13-year-old, he thought I was the most beautiful girl he ever saw. I couldn't have any friends. He was texting Brianna that he was going to kill Jay and that he was going to rape me with the knife just to hear me scream.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hey guys, Jennica here from Multispective and here to share with you a new episode where I interview Kobe who talks about being groomed from the age of 11 years old by their best friend's father. and ended up in this five-year-long relationship with their perpetrator. It was a very abusive relationship. It's a really, really heart-wrenching story. And they go into such detail about what had happened to them in those years. Be warned, it's very difficult to listen to, but I also feel like it's a very important episode. So stay tuned. Don't forget, drop me a message with your thoughts. Drop a comment below letting me know what you think as well. And I am looking forward to hearing from you. Hope you enjoy the episode. So, Kobi, can you just tell us sort of where you are from, where do you live, a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Well, just for a little bit of anonymity's sake, I live in the southeastern U.S. I grew up here. Growing up, I moved around a lot, but I always stayed kind of in this area of the U.S., and I have one brother. His name is Shiloh, and I am super close to him. He's the only other person who like knows what we went through um growing up uh homelessness was like very on and off uh we didn't live in one place for longer than two years and so um it was very unstable very kind of i don't know if volatile is the right word but um our parents would fight a lot and they were so caught up when in their own uh kind of mess that the kids kind of swept got swept under the rug a lot and so um unfortunately when we were kids Shiloh and I actually weren't very close and it took um honestly me going through this experience and both of us kind of going through our own experiences too and growing apart and then coming back together to realize like hey like no one no one knows what it's like honestly and we need to stick together and so honestly I'm really glad that I have my brother in my life these days my parents however um I'm currently low contact with both of them they are homeless again um it is what it is uh me and my brother are both Yeah. That's

SPEAKER_01 2:44

difficult. I mean, you know, sort of being born and raised in a situation, not only in a broken household where parents are not, you know, that support role model for you guys, but also living in sort of homelessness going between those two, having to work your own way out of that kind of situation and into a working individual that is independent and self-sustaining. How did you manage to, how did you find it in yourself to kind of exit that kind of life and do something else for yourself?

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Having like, having an actual support system has really helped. I don't mean to sound like cliche, but when I met my partner, partner it honestly changed my life for the better they and their family and the people they know are so supportive and they have like helped like me realize that I am very capable and I've had a lot of people like that throughout my life very fortunately like for example when I was in high school one of my high school teachers like she was like Kobe you know the stuff that you've gone through like you have the grit and the determination and the work ethic to like get things done and when you grow up in like such an unstable environment where like you're put down around every corner or everything you say is kind of misconstrued or twisted like support just like it's honestly like a game changer for people in those kinds of situations me included

SPEAKER_01 4:20

yeah that's amazing um can you tell me a little bit about like life like homelessness in the u.s what what is it what is that like so where were you guys staying as a family in these situations um how How were you guys getting by in terms of getting food, getting access to things, resources? How does it work there?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

I can't speak for everywhere. I can say that, honestly, being a homeless family, we were actually very privileged in our situation. There weren't any times where we didn't have shelter. We were living in tents. We were living in church food banks. We lived in a bedbug ridden uh hotel for a little bit um and i've noticed that at least in the area that i'm in um reliable help is not always available um to the people that need it unfortunately and it seems to be very easy for um people in these situations to kind of slip through the cracks and go unnoticed um there are resources around for people to get help but at least in my experience um yeah at least in my experience it's a bit hard to come by as for um having to find like shelter and food and everything um i mostly had to rely on my parents a lot through that i did not have a lot of social skills growing up so i have to rely on them for pretty much everything um and so like my dad would like talk to like people he knew uh sometimes some kind of shady people that we'd have to stay with but at least we'd have a shelter and roof over our head my mom would work um usually fast food jobs and she would um we didn't have a car a lot of the time so she would actually walk like 12 miles up into town each day 12 miles there and back to make sure that she at least worked a shift because at the end of the shift they'd give her like a free meal and stuff and they kind of knew our situation and was willing to help out there a little bit so uh there for a little bit for um the biggest homelessness we had was for three years and so like um for that three years and then all the other times in between we kind to just like manage by like that with like the generosity of other people and then just us doing whatever we had to do to kind of make it by.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

You mentioned that your mom was sort of working odd jobs here and there for the most part of it. Your dad, was he not always working? What was the situation with your dad?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

My dad is disabled, so he does get like a disability check from the government every month. But other than that, he has been pretty much unable to work. Back then, he did do some odd jobs here and there. I think he did some busking. He would play guitar on the street corner for a little bit for some tips from people. But for the most part, mom was the breadwinner, I would say. She was the one kind of bringing home the money.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Can you tell me a little bit about what sort of mindset do you feel like you've developed over the years from your childhood and your experiences?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

So a lot of the mindsets that were instilled with me when I was younger, I did tell on that a few minutes ago. I was put down a lot. I couldn't really stand up a lot for myself. So when you're raised like that, the mindsets that you kind of gain are obviously not very positive ones. So for the longest time, I had like the worst self-image, the worst self-esteem, and just kind of like the worst way of thinking about myself. Where does your story begin? So this story begins when I was in middle school I had just started sixth grade. So that's about ages 11 to 12 for people not familiar with how that works. I had just started middle school. My family, we had just moved. So I had just started a new school. I had to leave my friends behind at the old middle school. It's like a very rough transition. And when I went into this new school, making friends was very, very hard. The kids at this new school seemed to be like a little bit more judgy, for lack of better words. I had short hair back then, too, and I had a jacket with a giant rainbow on it. And of course, back then, views towards gay people were not as friendly as they are today. So I was kind of bullied a little bit for that. So when I finally did make a friend, I'm going to call her Brianna. When I finally met Brianna, it was like, oh, thank God, I finally have a friend. You're so cool. Thank you for hanging out with me. And so it became kind of like I latched very hard onto her. At first, things didn't seem amiss or anything. It's normal. Dad stayed in his lot. I hung out with my friend. And that's honestly basically how it started. According to Brianna's dad, what he used to tell me was as soon as he saw me as a 13 year old he thought I was the most beautiful girl he ever saw and obviously he couldn't say things like that because at the time he was a 30 something year old man and so he would actually confide in Brianna and kind of like tell her stuff about how he was feeling but then he would tell her like but you can't tell anyone because I'd get into a lot of trouble and so even like way way way before I knew like anything like that was going on on, Brianna was already kind of keeping that secret for him that he was feeling those kinds of ways about me. I just, I wasn't aware of it at the time.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

And did Brianna ever at any point mention that she found this weird or uncomfortable or awkward, like having to even listen to her dad say this about her friend? Or was this something that was just, it seemed normal to her? I

SPEAKER_00 10:15

do know, I don't know about at first, but I do know like throughout the course of like my time with them she did like voice multiple times like stuff that she would be uncomfortable with him telling her however he would brush it off basically his relationship father was not the healthiest and his basic basically his excuse was to fall back on this is just parents and kids talk about kind of stuff

SPEAKER_01 10:45

do you know if he had some whatever sexual relationship with her? I

SPEAKER_00 10:50

do not it has been asked by like so many people that I've like told the story to or like bits and pieces of the story to because the whole story is really hard to tell and they've always kind of come to that conclusion too that she had been abused by him in some way I want to say no but like he's a despicable person and I've never talked to her about anything like that personally so I really don't know the answer is probably most likely, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah, I guess in the moment it's a little bit hard to tell because you were pretty young yourself and she's coming in really confident and trying to introduce you to her dad in a sense that you're not really seeing. Obviously, you couldn't have seen anything at that point. You were so young yourself. But yeah, I can imagine for an outsider looking in would be like, okay, well, for her to think this is quite normal or for her to... eventually get to a place where she can think this is normal um there had to have been some dysfunction within the house on its own um and so and so yeah i suppose that's kind of a question why a question like that would be asked quite a lot um but yeah so walk me through the the first initial steps of like you being made aware of of this

SPEAKER_00 12:11

um i actually didn't find out until a couple years down the line um in hindsight i recognized kind of the subtle like things that were going on. But at the time, I didn't really know anything was going on until I was about 15. My family was experiencing homelessness again, and we were about to try to move down to a family member's house in Florida. And I think me about to move away kind of triggered him to kind of jumpstart the process into telling me how he felt. So I decided to spend one last night with Brianna. And And he decided he was going to get drunk, which I wasn't, like, unused to because my mother was an alcoholic. So he was drinking. He got pretty drunk. And we ended up staying up all night. Like, Brianna and her sister ended up falling asleep. And so her dad and I ended up staying up all night. He would cry about how lonely he was. And I would kind of try to be, like, friendly, like, hey, man, you just got to get out, you know, meet new people. If you just sit, like, here the whole time. you know, like there's nothing that's going to like happen with it. And he just kept kind of going on like, no, no, you don't understand. And so over the course of that night and into early morning, he just kind of, you know, kept getting more drunk, kind of kept getting more emotional until it actually ended up, he ended up wanting to shoot a gun. I tried to convince him not to. The kids woke up. They tried to convince him not to. It turned into this like whole dramatic thing where he just wanted to shoot a gun because he was drunk. And we ended up having to call his dad to come and calm him down so the dad came calmed him down got him to kind of just sit back down in his chair and I was already like super freaked out just from the night that had just happened so I was just kind of trying to like sit down and calm him down he held his hand out and so I grabbed it just because like I thought he wanted someone to hold his hand and he didn't realize it at first but when he realized it was my hand he kind of smiled and then he started kind of talking into like oh I've never had anyone so beautiful like tell me these things you know because I was like telling him like oh it's okay to be lonely but you know you got to meet new people and stuff like that and it just kept getting like kind of weirder and weirder I was really tired I was trying to get the situation to end and he was getting like really touchy really feely really gropey asking me about marriage how many kids I wanted and in hindsight you would think like this experience happened and you'd want run like far far far away but um in in in the moment when I was like in the thick of it um I was a 15 year old girl um I didn't know I felt like very out of place very alone and I had honestly come to terms with the fact that I was probably going to die alone and not find a partner like that's how bad my mindset was at the time so like when a very older inappropriate man was showing interest in me i kind of was like okay well let's just see how let's see where this goes like they're nice enough i thought at the time so i was like well it's better than being alone i guess and so that's kind of how the very beginning of it started and how i came to realize he had a feeling me

SPEAKER_01 15:35

right it kind of sounds like you know because you mentioned that this all started when you were like 11 12 13 between 11 to 13 years old um and then but then the first time that uh actual moves were made when you were 15. So in that time span that you were going in and staying at your friend's house, it was like some kind of grooming that was happening. It was a slow process of like, you know, instilling this thought in your head, you know, maybe this breaking down of your self-esteem, you know, this instilling this thought of like loneliness and loneliness and I'm here for you kind of thing that when you finally get to the crux of that moment, your mind is almost convinced that, hey, like this could be be a good idea this guy seems to be you know the right person for me in that sense so I mean at the end of the day you're you're 15 years old you're very very young and you're impressionable as well would you would you would you call this grooming

SPEAKER_00 17:11

I would definitely call this grooming you you were honestly right on the mark there when you mentioned like he was kind of a source of safety and my unstable childhood like I would tell him things that like my parents would say or do you that didn't sit right with me and like the other adults that I would have told like in my life they would kind of brush off me like well that's just how parents are you know you'll understand when you grow up and have kids like sometimes parents drop the ball unfortunately but when I would tell him like how it was making me feel and how things were affecting me he would honestly validate and be like hey that's not right your parents shouldn't treat you that way and so he was he became kind of like a pseudo safe space for me that's kind of how like the trust started I guess like getting me to trust him um he started like uh he became very friendly with me like he would like share movie recommendations music recommendations and at the time our music and movie tastes kind of aligned um I was kind of into like metal music and scary movies at the time and uh basically like he just wanted to be friends and get me to trust him and uh since I was a very young and impressionable kid I didn't understand like growth up should not want to be friends with the kid in in any circumstance like that i just didn't understand

SPEAKER_01 18:37

right did you at at 15 when you had that that evening where you were starting to get gropey and touchy and started talking about marriage and stuff i know you you mentioned that you didn't really doubt it in that moment or you didn't really question it too much in that moment but did you after that tell your friend brianna or anyone else about what had happened

SPEAKER_00 18:58

um no um I kind of froze in the moment and I didn't want to tell anyone because I did kind of understand like the severity of it in the sense that I knew that if I told someone he would probably go to jail and I did not want to do that to Brianna I just didn't want to be the reason that she didn't have a dad anymore so I kind of kept quiet about it didn't tell Brianna and then just kind of continued on as normal um and then uh it was a few days after that that uh he reached back out to me because you know he had been drinking for a while so he was pretty hungover and actually couldn't like function for a few days after that but when he came to he was messaging me and asking like hey what did i say what did i tell you have you told anyone and i kind of confirmed like uh this is what you told me this is what happened i haven't told anyone and it just developed from there

SPEAKER_01 19:57

so in a sense he was already kind of getting Well, that was the

SPEAKER_00 20:13

beginning of that relationship. I was moving to Florida, so he actually paid for phone to be turned back on because he didn't want there to be, he didn't want to not be in contact with me. He was very clear from the beginning that he was scared. that I would find someone in Florida that I would want to date. And so honestly, from the get-go, the possessiveness and kind of jealousy was already there. And so we lived in Florida for a little bit with one of my cousins. We talked on the phone every day. I had to be online texting him every day because if I didn't reply back to him right away, he would kind of get upset and scared, saying that he thought I got kidnapped or he thought I was going to leave him. And I kind of thought it was extreme but he had already kind of touched on like before we got involved like um back when uh i wasn't his girlfriend uh for lack of better words um he would tell me about like his ex-wife and like exes that he would have and like how they would supposedly treat him and how they made him feel so at the time i This is probably a trauma-like response, so I will be patient with him. I will deal with it. And obviously, it didn't get better. It never gets better. So something like that. So it was just a lot of constant communication. Very suddenly, basically had to answer to him all the time. Go eat a bowl of cereal without letting him know first. Couldn't take a shower without letting him know first, or else he'd freak out, think I was cheating on him, or gonna leave. him or something and uh it just became like very involved very quickly after that

SPEAKER_01 22:04

did he come to visit you in Florida a couple of times

SPEAKER_00 22:07

no um he was very poor um he also got a disability check every month but uh he was actually kind of like he he didn't really need it and he would spend it on things that he didn't really need including like a lot of like weird drugs and supplements off the internet so he basically never had any money didn't have a car so while I was in Florida we didn't have any actual contact but we had been in Florida like not very long honestly I want to say like maybe like three weeks and like my brother and I we were saying like we really don't like it here like we want to move back up to Georgia and so my dad kind of made like some made some plans with another one of his brothers to let us stay there for a little bit, get back on our feet. So we moved back up. And then that's when kind of the physical aspect of the relationship started because we were physically able to visit each other again. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

So when the physical abuse started, were you 15 still at this point?

SPEAKER_00 23:18

I was still 15. The day we became official in the day the physical relationship started happened less than a month apart.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

How did you feel when the physical stuff started? Were you kind of expecting it to happen? Did it feel really uncomfortable? Were you feeling really off about it? I

SPEAKER_00 23:41

was feeling off about it. I do that, like, you know, when you're a teenager, you're like, well, at some point, like, this will happen. So, like, I was open to the possibility, not so soon, really. The touchy kind of kissy stuff was okay to me at the time. But when it kind of started, like, getting kind of, like, under clothes, taking clothes off, I kind of froze up. Some people have a fight or flight response. My response is usually to freeze or to fawn is another word people use and so I would kind of basically freeze and he either didn't notice or didn't care but he did not really take notice of my nonverbal cues I never explicitly said no I don't want to do this but like I was very uncomfortable through the through the entire thing and um and the whole time I was uh losing my virginity to him uh it was a very uncomfortable experience and then honestly a lot of times after after that it was like the same kind of boat and I just kind of learned to like well it's it's gonna happen like I've said yes I've let it happen like all these other times so like I can't really say no now

SPEAKER_01 24:59

hmm yeah and that's the thing it's like we try to like justify these things we try to explain things to ourselves in our head to make sense of the situation but the reality is it's like it's wrong it's wrong on so many levels but you have someone here who's telling you it's okay you've got other people that are either not paying attention to it and you're by label you're in a relationship with this person so all kind of sense of what's right and wrong what's should and shouldn't be is kind of like being blurred right so you're having this physical relationship with this guy at this point has your friend figured out what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

None of my friends really suspected anything Brianna and her dad I actually kind of worked together to kind of create a fake boyfriend for me you know we told people like hey I've got a boyfriend he goes to a different school his name is Blake these are some pictures of him which were kind of like fake pictures that we found off the internet and Brianna like helped us cover for this kind of stuff so like I had my friend saying like yeah this person's real this is the person she's dating so no one really in my friend group figured it out my brother however since I was the only one with a working phone I would have to share the phone with him and he actually became suspicious first and there was a period of time where he tried to tell our parents like there's some really like shady shit going on and I was in the thick of it like terrified of my friend's dad going to jail so I like defended him and was like I really like fought tooth and nail for them like to just kind of drop the subject and after that it was kind of a hush-hush, swept-under-the-rug kind of subject, and it wasn't really brought up again after that. And this was actually a few months after the relationship had began. So a few months after the relationship began, at least my family was suspicious, but the relationships still continued on for a handful of years after that.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Do you blame your parents to an extent for not getting more involved?

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Sometimes I regret not getting them more involved. Honestly, yeah, I do, especially when I was younger um but uh I don't know I don't really I don't really dwell on that too much it is what it is and it happened um and yeah who did what they could with the information that they do at the time um I don't like really blame them for that because like I said I like defended him really hard and fought tooth and nail to fight for his um undeserved innocence um so yeah there's some regret there but it's it's an Not overly so.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Yeah. So can you walk me through how did this relationship between you and him progress? Did you remain girlfriend, boyfriend throughout? How did it move on over the years?

SPEAKER_00 28:03

All right. So we remained boyfriend and girlfriend. We were involved for five years total in the actual relationship, not including the years beforehand where he was doing... the kind of subtle subtle stuff um after i moved back up to georgia our physical relationship began you know he was still like super super jealous of anyone i talked to um i couldn't have any friends besides like two that he approved of one of them being brianna because he felt like brianna wouldn't try to convince me to leave him kind of stuff um around the six month mark he bought um a ring from walmart and uh decided to propose to me with it so i guess tech technically at the six month mark we became fiances um but it didn't go any farther than that thankfully um but uh yeah just for like the first three or so years it was just kind of me trying to um uh get through homelessness uh finish high school um find a way to like save up and move out when i was old enough because i was planning on saving up to move out into uh Brianna's dad's place and um just like all this stuff going on so I feel like I kind of rationalized and justified a lot of the um shady stuff that was going on then um amidst like the jealousy and the um controlling um he would do um like drugs that he would order off the internet he would get uh uh like prescription drugs from doctors that he would kind of manipulate them into giving him and so he was very like like it was a roller coaster like I never really knew what side of him I would get he wouldn't get help whenever I would try to express myself he would shut it down and so like for the first three years it was basically just kind of like a lot of like wishy-washy stuff that in hindsight was very unhealthy but not overly so um And then when I was 17, I was just about to turn 18. My family got evicted from the house we were living in. And my parents had to move down to South Georgia. They took my brother and I was like, I'll stay up here. I'm almost 18 anyways. I'll fit here where I'm at. And so they allowed me to move in with Brianna's dad, who at the time was living by himself. But they thought that Brianna lived there as well. They thought I was moving in with Brianna they still weren't aware aware of the situation and after I moved in with him that's kind of when like the stuff like really kicked in after I graduated high school and I was there with him all the time the drug use ramped up the crazy thought ramped up he would have like crazy thoughts where like I was cheating on him or like I was doing something and he would get so convinced that it was real and then he would like act as if it was real it was it was very exhausting and it was like that until like the last year and a half two years and that's when like shit really hit the fan for lack of better words and I can elaborate on that for sure if you'd like but that's when it kind of gets into like the really like dark thick of it kind of stuff

SPEAKER_01 31:34

did he ever try to convince you to take any of the drugs or to get into the drug world as well

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Kinda. He really wanted me to stay young and innocent, so he wasn't super into the idea of me doing drugs because he thought women who did drugs were super trashy. However... He did end up convincing me to try this one substance called Finibute, and I don't really know how to describe that. I called it Russian cocaine as a joke at one point because it's like a white powder, it comes from Russia, and it just makes shit crazy. It's like a stimulant kind of thing. But he convinced me to try that because I had been kind of on his case about getting help for the substance abuse issues he had, and he was all like, you just don't understand what it's like. Like, I need this to function. I need something to feel good, blah, blah, blah. And so eventually he kind of like wore me down to like where I was like, okay, I'll try it and see like what you're talking about. And so I did try Finibute. I tried Kava, which is another kind of supplement. It's like a root that comes from somewhere in Asia that kind of gives you some euphoria effects. And other than that, no, he wasn't really like into me. He didn't really pressure me into doing drugs or anything like that thankfully uh however as the relationship went on especially like towards the very end of it i found myself in very dangerous mindset and i was kind of also looking for just something to kind of escape from the situation um i honestly was probably really lucky to get out when i did because i could feel myself kind of slipping down into a slippery slope of honestly potentially alcoholism um i consider myself very lucky that i got out of that situation kind of unscathed with like addictions. My parents have addictive personalities. I'm pretty sure I have an addictive personality. It could have been a lot worse for me, but somehow I managed to get out of there without that being a huge part of my life personally. Once I removed him, that kind of went with it, thankfully.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

You mentioned that the last two years of the relationship is when things got really weird. What were they? Was it physical violence?

SPEAKER_00 34:40

A lot of physical violence um this was like right after i graduated high school um i had to get my first job because i was tired of us not having any money and i was trying to i was trying to think towards the future like i was trying to do my best to better our lives together so like i was like i'm gonna get a job i'm gonna kind of save up to get us a car we'll get a washing machine you know we'll fix up the trailer and when i started working a job it kind of opened up the windows like he was alone most of the day so he would just sit at home and do the internet drugs all day get like really intoxicated and out of it and he would get jealous of people that I worked with and accuse me of um like cheating on him with my coworkers or I was gonna leave him for one of my coworkers especially if they were male um and uh and uh Oh, no, it just... That's, I guess, when it became kind of, like, the stuff started happening that really, like, jarred me and made me realize, like, this is actually, like, a very fucked-up situation that I found myself in. One of them being... He would keep me up all night. I had to wake up for work every day at 7 a.m., and he would glare me while he was high. And one night, I was, like, crying to him. I was like, please, like, you always say you'll do, like, anything for me and that you love me so much, so, like, why... you get help for, like, the substance abuse problem. I'm not asking you to, like, quit cold turkey. Like, I'm not judging you, but, like, you need to get help. And he, like, turned around and asked me, why are you making this all about you? And kind of twisted it into that. And, uh, so, uh, I kind of lost that battle. Um, he would switch back and forth between the Kava and the Finibute. The Finibute gave him, like, a super high libido, so he He wanted sex all the time. So there was a lot of times I wouldn't want to put out and he wouldn't want to take no for an answer. A lot of sexual coercion, sexual assault. The big thing that... This was within the last year of the relationship. The biggest thing that I remember that really caused me personally to spiral... Brianna and her dad actually started messaging each other about me. So I was super depressed. Brianna's dad didn't like that. He didn't like that I was having mood swings. He didn't like that I didn't want to put out. He took it all very personally. And so he would vent to Brianna about this and Brianna didn't tell me about any of this or anything. She would actually respond back and kind of encourage the attacks that he was using against me like for example he would talk about like how he wished like I didn't get the dog because at the time I had just adopted a dog from the animal shelter and like all this other stuff and like how he's like he like really needs sex but I won't put out and it's like not fair and then she actually messaged him to she messaged him that he should have sex with me without my permission. And then she kind of put like LMAO after it to kind of like suggest it was a joke. But his response was honestly considering it. And when I... I know snooping is not good. I am always been kind of very like anti-snooping. I value my privacy. I value my partner's privacy. But when I found those, like it was just like... I don't even know how to describe how I felt. My stomach was in my ass, basically. My best friend, the person I thought I could confide in, and the only person who really knew what was going on was not on my side, apparently. And so many other instances with that context started to make sense. For example, there was one time at work. I worked at the animal shelter. We got in a hoarding case right at the end of the day like I was about to leave to come home and like right at the end of the day we got a bunch of animals in and I was messaging them saying like hey man I'm gonna be late like just letting you know I'm not cheating on you this is me and shit covered dog kennels like I'm like not cheating on you kind of stuff and he was relaying my messages to Brianna and saying like he's so sure I was cheating he's so sure I was lying and like people were helping me cover up for it And he was waiting in the parking lot of my job to wait for me to get out the whole time this is happening. And unbeknownst to me at the time, he had actually brought a machete along. And at one point it was just me and my coworker, Jay. We were the only ones that were left because everyone else wanted to go home. Like someone had to help take care of the animals. So it was just me and Jay. And so that absolutely pissed him off. He was texting Brianna that he was going to kill Jay and that he was going to rape me with the knife just to hear me scream and stuff like that and she was just encouraging it the entire time and kind of getting her partner into it as well she had just met her boyfriend at the time and he was agreeing that like the way I was acting sounded fishy is what they were saying so I I left work that day and got in the car and went home and besides him just being pissed that like I took so long I didn't know about any of this happening it wasn't until after I read those messages and found all that stuff that I realized like he had actually been planning to seriously hurt me and my co-worker that day. So

SPEAKER_01 40:45

can you tell me then what was the starting point for you to turn it around for you to decide okay I'm gonna I'm gonna start reeling out of this conversation out of this relationship and and you know taking the steps to end your relationship?

SPEAKER_00 41:03

That was honestly really hard because being in like the thick of a relationship like that, like, uh, I was very isolated. Um, uh, at the time my brother and I, we hadn't really reconnected. So like, I didn't have my brother in my support system, didn't have my parents cause they were still dealing with off and on homelessness. Um, and I didn't have a lot of friends because he isolated me from them. So for the longest time I knew I wanted to leave. I just didn't have like any, um, sort of way to actually make it happen. Um, but I was trying to make plans I was trying to save up but the situation felt so hopeless to me that I actually didn't I didn't make any moves to actually like get out of there for a long time I don't really know what the actual breaking point was or the tipping point but I remember like the final fight the night before I left he had been drinking he got really violent and he was like waving a machete around threatening to kill himself threatening to kill If I was like going to leave him and stuff like that and I was trying to like hold out till morning because I had work in the morning I was like if I can just get to work like I'll tell him at work okay like I'm leaving like I can't do this anymore but over the course of like that night he just kept getting like crazier and crazier until it reached the point where I was like like there was a voice in my head I was kind of hiding behind the kitchen counter because he was being crazy and there was like a voice in my head that said if you don't get help right now you never will and so at that that point I like messaged my parents and kind of told them what was going on and asked them to pick me up and thankfully they were able to kind of drop everything and come get me at that time but it wasn't actually until after I was out of the relationship and like using like my experience and trying to like heal and in hindsight like that's when I started to realize like just how messed up the entire situation was and how How desperately I needed to get out of there. And luckily, like at the time, even though my parents, my family has not been like the best support system and they have been like very unstable during this time, they were a decent support system. And so thanks to their help, I was able to kind of like, it was able to solidify that mindset. Okay, I deserve better than this. I can be better than this. I can make a better life for myself. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Did he try to get you back at any point after you left?

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Definitely. You know, he threw a lot of tantrums. I still was in contact with him for a while after I left. You know, like I would give him phone calls. I would still text him over Facebook because I still was honestly scared of him killing himself. And I still had that mindset of I don't want anything to happen to Brianna's dad because then it'll be my fault that she doesn't have a dad kind of thing. so I had no feelings for him anymore I was trying to like convey that over the course of like months and months and months after I left but he just kept like I'll never forget you like no one ever loved me as much as you like no one has ever been so beautiful as you like no one ever listened to me like you do blah blah blah kind of stuff until like I can't remember what the first breaking point was but I ended up blocking him the first time and then he ended up going to emails um honestly to this day uh it's been about four years since i left like in at the beginning of the year it'll be roughly four years um and he he is still still trying to get in contact with me uh i had a birthday recently and it actually uh brought him out of the woodworks i had to check my spam email folder for a confirmation code for something and i saw nine emails in my spam because when you block an email address it just sends it to spam it doesn't really like block it where you don't see it and uh yeah so definitely like right after i left the relationship he was trying to get me back and it seems like even to this day he's still desperate for something some kind of a response

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Damn. That's so scary to know that he's still there. He's still out and about. What about reaching out to the police? Have you ever tried to reach out to the police for a restraining order or to have him behind bars? I mean, basically what he did was

SPEAKER_00 46:23

child abuse. Yeah. where I live expired last year for like a lot of the big things so my partner is talking with me and the more we talk the more we think it's a good idea to at least go talk with someone at the police department to see what our options are I'm not sure I can get a restraining order specifically because he hasn't threatened me or done anything to harm me and the reason I say that is because when he would tell me stories about his ex-wife. He had this story he would tell where his ex-wife and her friend and this guy that she was supposedly cheating on him with were driving around in the woods and he caught them and he was going to kill the guy because his wife was cheating on him with him. And so he had a knife and he was knocking on their car window and stuff. He had blocked their exit to the point where they had to drive off the road and into some trees to get around his car to escape. And when they went to the police to try to do something about it they said well he didn't actually say like an actual threat like I'm going to kill you or I'm going to stab you so there's nothing we can do so for that specifically I'm not sure I can get a restraining order for that reason but I am becoming more and more open to the idea of at least making some kind of report because it would be really stupid of me to think that he is just not doing this or trying to do this to some other kid and he's honestly a despicable person and he's super lucky lucky like unfairly lucky that he basically uh he just he gets to sit at home and do nothing but his life is peaceful it's way too peaceful for the things that he's done and so um yeah um i i'm equally scared of reporting and then like nothing happens like they're just like meh nothing we can do it is what it is but then i'm also scared of them like taking it super seriously and then like busting him for something. I'm equally scared of both outcomes, but I think ultimately, with the help of my partner, I will make moves into pursuing some sort of legal action that way.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

Yeah. And the truth is, if his daughter is still a part of his life and still very much a part of this potential ring of maybe even recruiting other kids, there's a chance that she's currently still being abused by him in a sense right or at least being groomed in in a in a weird way um too so i i'm not too sure have you spoken to brianna recently and where where does she stand in terms of her relationship with her dad would you happen to know this

SPEAKER_00 49:17

um i don't talk to brianna much anymore like every once in a while like uh we'll check up on each other um she's got a fiance and a kid now so like i'll be like hey how's the kid um and uh i've asked her to like like i don't want to be in the situation at all but like if your dad says anything like really scary like he's gonna come try to find me like can you please just tell me so I can be aware kind of thing but uh last time I checked she was in at least low contact with him um like she says she doesn't talk to him but I'm sure that they talk at least a little bit because I know how it is like even if your parents a piece of shit that's still your parent sometimes um but uh yeah last I heard she doesn't have a relationship with him which is good, honestly, because she has the kid. I don't have much of a relationship with her. So honestly, for the most part, besides like here and there, unfortunate communications from him, that part of my life is pretty.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

I'm really glad that you're out of it, though. I mean, this is a really difficult situation. So can you walk me through, ever since you've been out of it, how have you sort of processed through everything in the sense that have you been seeking therapy? I know you mentioned your partner has been really helpful in supporting you through it. What are the ways that you process through this trauma?

SPEAKER_00 50:42

A lot of it I've had to kind of do myself. And I don't really have like an explanation for that. I did try counseling right after I left the situation, both for the trauma of that situation and because it was just like I was like super depressed and anxious all the time and then but the thing that I have in my area where I live we have like this sliding scale the mental health clinic and they're really great but their focus was more on let's form healthy routines and healthy habits to foster healthy mental health which is super important but when you're coming from like a traumatized standpoint it's like you need like therapy and counseling for the trauma So unfortunately, they weren't a huge help for me, but when I'm at a point where I'm more financially stable, I do plan on pursuing therapy because even though I'm doing okay now, I have a great support system, and I feel like I'm in a much better place than I was back then, I know that there's still a lot of healing I have to do, and there's probably a lot of stuff that I haven't sat down and processed yet, and therapy would be really helpful for that.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

Do you feel like talking about it, sharing your journey, your story, be it on Reddit, in write-up, or by sharing it with friends, or even on this podcast, do you feel like that helps a little bit as well?

SPEAKER_00 52:17

A little bit. Actually, yeah, definitely. At first, it was super hard. It's super hard to talk about. Until I met my partner, I actually had verbalized a lot of the stuff he did to me. Like on the Reddit AMA, I had texted about it before, but texting about it and actually talking about it are two different things. The first few times are hard, but I am finding that it does get easier And it's easier to process and it's easier to accept like this is what happened. And now what's the next step we can take into moving on and getting better from this?

SPEAKER_01 53:00

Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell me like how did you start trusting in relationships after that? How did you go into trusting that the next partner was looking out for your best interest? And how did you start seeking out healthy relationships after that?

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Something that I feel like a good thing that came out of the whole relationship with that man is that I'm very aware of what red flags are. I'm a little overvigilant, I might say. The relationship that I had between him and my current partner, I was actually in a relationship with a really close friend of mine that I had known for a few years before that. And she was honestly a great help in solidifying the mindsets of what a healthy relationship is and what healthy communication is and what an actual relationship looks like, not one that's between a groomer and a victim.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

Yeah. So how are you actually able to discern? So can you give me an example or explain to me how would you define a healthy relationship?

SPEAKER_00 54:17

Communication and respect are big big big things. So, like, for example, there was just, like, when I got with my current partner, like, our communication has just been, like, on, like, on it, like, ever since we started talking and we didn't know each other. We, like, for example, if we think, like, at all, like, there's going to be, like, any sort of, like, misconstruing of, like, the words we're going to say, we'll be like, hey, like, just so you know, in case it came off this way, this is actually how I meant it. And then also the respect like for example when I was in the thick of it with my abuser like I could not say like hey I am feeling bad I need space right now like I just like nothing against you I just need you to like leave me alone right now like that would have started a fight but with my partner now like I feel like I can tell them anything like I can like express my needs to them even if it inconveniences them in some way or like isn't like something that I can tell them. Yeah, it's like

SPEAKER_01 55:34

involving you in the dialogue, involving you in the decisions, involving you in their thought process as well. And in a sense, I think also part of it is that security of like knowing and trusting that, hey, like if you're going to be out doing your own thing or hanging out with your friends, like go do you sort of sort of thing. that's another sort of aspect what kind of behaviors or mannerisms or language did you find yourself bringing from your previous relationship into this into the group the abuse rather into this that you sort of carried forward maybe subconsciously even

SPEAKER_00 56:10

yeah definitely something that I have noticed is even though the communication is like really good with my current partner I honestly find myself a lot of the time over Because it's a trauma response from not being believed. Like, I can't just give you one detail or tell you, like, this one thing. Like, I need to, like, give this and this detail so you know I'm not lying and everything's, like, fine kind of a thing. I over-explain. I over-apologize. Um... I'm a little bit guarded, not for anything that like my partner has done, but like, like I mentioned earlier, I'm kind of like over vigilant for red flags. And it's to the point, like I am so comfortable with my, I'm not really doing that anymore. They have me with kind of like identifying when I'm kind of falling back into old habits. And if, if they notice that I'm kind of self-sabotaging for lack of better words, like they'll speak up and we'll kind of work through it. um but uh just a lot of like a lot of apologizing a lot of over explaining and a lot of feeling like i have to prove more than i do has been the biggest one

SPEAKER_01 57:28

right and how has your partner been able to sort of um help you through that or do they have to sort of like have you noticed that they would like identify it call it out when you're doing it and kind of like okay like you're over explaining sort of thing or would it be like how were you made aware of this

SPEAKER_00 57:50

um so usually they'll gently bring it up or they'll kind of they'll usually in my experience like ask me some questions to kind of like reframe the situation and they kind of like do it in a way where like they help me get to the conclusion there myself but if they notice like i'm really having trouble like if i'm like in a really weird mindset where I'm just spiraling they will kind of like call me out like hey I think this is what you're doing and I think you're having a trauma response like is are you okay is there anything I can do for you do you need to talk kind of a thing they're very they're very kind and respectful and they listen to me and so when they notice that I'm getting that way they're basically like all hands on deck like what do you need from me and a thing that I really love is that it goes both ways like if I know them kind of falling into trauma responses and old habits that from stuff that they've been through like we just kind of like gently like like like hey man like that's not normal that's kind of a weird way to think like why exactly are you saying it that way and then we can kind of like come together and talk about it

SPEAKER_01 59:03

that's really really good to know because I feel like this can be really useful for anyone sort of listening as well as to like how can I support my friend sibling parent partner in their own trauma, unraveling, unprocessing of their own trauma. Because ultimately, you know, we maybe try to rely on mental health professionals too much for this kind of stuff. But ultimately, we're going back home to our friends. We're spending time with our friends, our family, our relatives, our, you know, partners more. And so, you know, 90% of our time is with them. Probably 10% of our time is with us, professional so it's really important that you know you're surrounded by people that are equipped somewhat at least to be able to help you through that trauma in that moment and it can be really difficult especially when you're spiraling and you know acting out in a certain way for someone else to stop and just be there in that moment okay I recognize this is what's going on this is what you need I'm here for you let's talk about it so that's actually really really useful information Thank you so much for sharing your story on air, for sharing it on Reddit, for getting it out there and raising awareness on on this kind of topic. And yeah, and just, you know, providing such useful sort of information and ways that we can sort of help others that have gone through some kind of trauma. So thanks for being on on the podcast with us today. Oh,

SPEAKER_00 1:00:37

thank you for having me. I really hope this can help some other people. And yeah, just just Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and listen to my story and sharing it in the way that you are. And thank you for doing the same for other people who

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

have been through other things. Also, a thank you to our team who worked so hard behind the scenes to make it happen. The show would be nothing without you. I'm Jenica, host and writer of the show, and you're listening to Multispective.