Breaking the Cycle: From IFB Fundamentalism to Healing & Deconstruction: Jenny Smith Pt 3

🚨 SHE’S FINALLY SPEAKING OUT.

The system is broken, and Jenny has the receipts to prove it. In the explosive conclusion to our 3-part series, we’re pulling back the curtain on the family court nightmare that almost cost a mother everything.

Think the courts always favor the mom? Think again.

Jenny, David, and Ryan sit down for their most raw conversation yet, exposing what happens when an abusive narcissist turns a child into a weapon. From chilling coached voicemails to the terrifying reality of unsubstantiated CPS reports involving child pornography and weapons—this episode is a masterclass in survival against a master manipulator.

⚠️ WHAT WE’RE UNCOVERING:

• The "Weaponized" Toddler: The heartbreaking moment Jenny received a voicemail of her baby girl saying, "I hate you."
• The CPS Failure: How serious allegations against her ex fell through the cracks of a broken system.
• The Church’s Judgment: Why the pews felt colder as the legal battle heated up.
• The Step-Dad’s Role: How Ryan stepped into the line of fire to protect his family.
• 20 Years Later: Where is her daughter now? The shocking realization that changed everything.

This isn’t just a story about divorce; it’s about the financial ruin, psychological warfare, and the ultimate fight for a daughter’s soul.

"They call it 'the best interest of the child,' but in practice, it felt like a ransom negotiation."

#UnholierPodcast #FamilyCourt #NarcissisticAbuse #CoParentingHighConflict #CPSFailures #LegalAbuse #NarcissisticParent #Storytime #SystemicFailure #SurvivorStory #ParentalAlienation #TruthTold

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Before we get into today's episode, let's be clear. What you're about to hear is my personal experience navigating not only the family court system, but two cases that are now closed through the Child Protective Services. This is my perspective, my memory, and how I lived it in real time. I'm not sharing my ex's names for legal purposes. And some of the details may be generalized for that reason. This is not an accusation. It's not me trying to prove anything in a courtroom. It's me telling the truth as I experienced it. That makes some people uncomfortable. That's okay. My goal is not comfort. It's honesty, awareness, and giving a voice to what this process can feel like from the inside. Take it, leave it, question it, but understand this. This is my story, and I'm allowed to tell it. Welcome back to the Unholier Podcast. Today's episode is the I guess part three, because we did part two last week where I talked to David about my upbringing and my thoughts on my relationship with my dad. And then a little bit into what it was like navigating divorce and co-parenting with my ex-husband. So this week is a little bit different. I actually sit down with David and my husband Ryan to discuss what it was like navigating the family court system. This one is definitely an important one to listen to because if you've never been through the court system, there may be aspects of this episode that will shock you. My daughter gave me purpose. And my husband was and continues to be my rock and my protector and my cheerleader. And without him, I couldn't have done it either. Because he took over communication, interaction with my ex. And if you've ever dealt with an abusive person in your marriage, and then you have to navigate co-parenting with them, it is literally impossible to do so. And so he was able to combat a lot of that with just interacting with and allowing me to have that space to heal and be with my daughter and put my focus where it needed to be on my daughter and my other children. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy this episode. So let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

We ended the first episode discussing, I guess the conversation stared into co-parenting. So you were a single parent for what, six years or so? Yeah. So talk about that with us. Like, how is it co-parenting with this person that it was what I mean narcissistic?

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Yeah. A lot of people will say, like, oh, they'll divorce and move on, they'll find somebody else. He was just getting started, like with his whole thing. I mean, he was not letting up whatsoever. His goal was to essentially make me as miserable as possible, I think, for as long as he could possibly do that. Unfortunately, when you co-parent with an abusive narcissist, you have a parent that is not able to co-parent because it's going to be their way or the highway, and they're going to use the child as a pawn, as a use of control and manipulation and all the things that he could possibly use.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

So the web would change.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

Absolutely. Yeah. So he was using her as a weapon. And unfortunately, when you go through family court, the saying over and over again is what's in the best interest of the child. Now, if you've never been through court before, that seems pretty cut and dry. But when you actually are a product of the judicial court system in America, it is anything but justice for the child. So it's typically catering to the abuser, not protecting the victim. And it is a really, really difficult thing to navigate. So somebody from the outside might be looking in and saying, Well, this seems like a pretty black and white case, a pretty cut and dry situation. You should be able to get full custody. No problem. That is so far from the truth.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

So then is it a myth that the court system always wants to put the child with the mother? Absolutely. It's a myth.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

Yes. And maybe in some jurisdictions where you might have like predominantly female judges that are in a certain like we even had like a certain jurisdiction within Michigan where it's like, oh, you were in Livingston County. That's more favorable towards the mothers versus we were in Wayne County, which is Detroit. They didn't want to hear from white suburban couple. Like they were just like, we've heard way worse than what you guys are talking about. So work it out. Like they don't care. Like, be on your way, you're wasting our time, type of thing. Where they might have a parent that's in jail for essay and drug abuse and all this stuff. And so we're coming to the table with like, oh, I have a PPO against her dad who's abusive. And they're like, okay, that's pretty standard. Next.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

But that should not be standard.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

No, but maybe I think it's numb to it. Yeah, the problem is because even as a felon, as a convicted felon, you still have rights to your child. So for someone to say, Oh, we're gonna get you know full custody, it's almost impossible.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

Yeah. So I think a lot of people have like this misconception of it, and and I know that the a lot of the people in the churches did say this. If what Jenny is saying is true about him, if he was this monster, this abusive person, then surely if that was true, he wouldn't have custody of his daughter or partial shared custody of his so people in the church would look at the court's decision based on how they believe you. Sure, they'll look at it. Wow, but never find it that way. Yeah, they would be like, well, if that's true what Jenny is saying, then surely the court would give her full code.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

So that if that's true makes it sound that they're they have doubt. Sure. And I think his side of the story were not as honest or exaggerating because the child still gets to be in his presence. Yeah. Is the way they would look to you.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

So you couldn't bought a you could be a convicted felon and still have partial custody of your child.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Not only that, but it's really hard to prove everything that you're privy to in the court. It costs a lot of money, it takes a lot of time. So if you're right.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

So because that's how some things are able to be entered and some aren't. So they're not getting the full story. But from the outsider, from the church perspective, is this whole full story was presented. Right. And somehow he still has access to his child. So not everything Jenny was saying was the full truth.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Yes, that's what they assumed. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

I've never I don't have children. I've not been through a divorce. Like I've never thought of it that way. You neither tell those. And I'm really mad. Someone, I I'm running a ladder. I'm totally like wait, it gets wow.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

So, like I said, somebody who isn't familiar with the judicial system and they're they've never gone through family court, they don't understand how parenting time is calculated. And you might have a good parent, and then a parent who is a problem, has issues, they're still gonna get rights to their child. And that's what people don't understand unless you've been through it. They don't understand unless they give up their right, which I wish that he would have done that, because I had friends who were single moms. I had a couple of friends who were single moms, and the dad wasn't in the picture at all. And yeah, it's hard as a single mom, but like not having that other party who was basically counteracting everything that they were trying to do constantly. Like you're trying to teach your child one thing, and then they're trying to undo everything you're doing. The hardest part, just a thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So it's like you have to start over every time, every single week.

SPEAKER_03 8:52

It was like, or every weekend we would get her back from him, and it would be just a struggle of trying to get her back in the schedule that we were trying to put her in for school or anything and everything was a struggle, and and that was on purpose, that was by design on okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

So so I want to ask you before we get further away from further away from from this part of the subject, is two maybe two questions. One, did the county that you said that you all were from lean more toward uh the man, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:24

The delinquent parent.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

So did and and of course I don't know what you're all's financial situation, but did it was bad. Was there any like church relation to like the judge or court or or financial church at the time?

SPEAKER_03 9:41

No, no. So when I was going through the initial part where parenting time was determined, one of the things that the mediator had asked me was, Do you think he's a good father? Like it, like determining how much time he would get versus what I would get. So if the parent is providing for them, if they're not abusing them and if they're not neglecting them, then you can't those three criteria are out the window.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

So you can't you have to be objective and say, like, but this one abuses me at all is is where it goes back to what we mentioned that you know, he might want to put his hands on the child, but abusing someone's mother who has a child that's dependent on them is also abusing the child and my than infant methods like and that is true in your opinion, and my opinion, then her opinion, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:30

But to prove it about police reports, physical evidence, pictures, yeah, which I didn't have police reports for me, yeah, right for you, but not been well showing he had done anything to her, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:42

And and okay, and then so my other question is do you think that he would have given up rights if your daughter was uh able to be used as a weapon for you, or do you think he truly wanted to have a relationship?

SPEAKER_03 10:59

No, I don't think he see, given the person that he is and the personality, again, we talked about that in the last episode where he did take the MMPI. It was determined that he either is Jesus Christ in the flesh or he is a pathological liar. So the guy literally thinks he is perfect. So he would always have a reason to think that he deserves this or that. Like in regards to our daughter, he would always have a reason to say, like, I deserve to be her dad. Like I am the best dad. But in the reality of it, he was a terrible father. I can tell you that he absolutely used her as a means of manipulation and control over me to continue the abuse that he wasn't able to do directly to me, but was able to do through her. For instance, and I have witness to this because Branda was living with us at the time. I passed by her nursery, he was changing her diaper, and I could hear him, and Branda also heard it, hear him say to her, Mommy doesn't love you, daddy loves you more than mommy. Like she's an infant. I left when she was six months old, so she's an infant.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

You're already planting the seed.

SPEAKER_03 12:14

Already planting the seed. And there was one point when she was a toddler, and I got a phone call from his phone number at one point. A voicemail was left, and I was at my parents that day, and I listened to the voicemail, and it was my daughter, she's like two or three years old, leaving me a voicemail telling me she hates me. And I could hear him whispering to her in the background, saying what she needed to repeat, like repeat this stuff. And we were just appalled because it was like as a mother, right? You're already in that mode of you want to do everything you can do to protect your child. But when you are forced by law, by the support system, to co-parent with this individual, you cannot do enough to protect your child. Like you have to, by law, give your child up every weekend to this person who is brainwashing her, who is grooming her, who is manipulating her, and how that wrecked me internally. Like the anger and the sadness and the helplessness that I felt was unmatched. Like, I like it's one thing if somebody abuses me, but like uses my daughter. She's she was a baby, she was a top, she was a kid.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

And and and again, not up here, but that is a word you probably could remember maybe the the the first time that your other children used the word hate. Like they're they were I don't even remember well and and the reason I say that is because I say that is because they don't even really know what it meant. Oh well, and that's what I was gonna say is is we we tell babies, you know, tell your mommy love them, tell your daddy love them, you know, whatever, or you know, you don't like it, you don't like it. It's ever like if you're if you're feeding them something, they spit out and they're like, Oh, you hate it, you hate it, you say you don't like, right? So the reason I said you probably know when your your other children start using the word hate is because it's not part of their vocabulary until it's taught to them, right? Like, yeah, and usually they're they're a little older. Yeah. So it's uh because you don't hear kids say, I hate it, I hate it. You know, say, I don't like that, I don't like that that's no good, I don't like it. I mean, they're probably like again, I don't have children, but I've been around children and they're like elementary school age before they learn and use the word hate. And it's usually never toward a parent, it's toward a a thing or a chore. You know, so obviously the point I mean on that tangent is that's obviously something that the word hate is not a part of uh the vocabulary we teach a child.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

So it it's learned. It and it was and honestly, she may not have even known what she was saying. Of course, she was close.

SPEAKER_03 15:12

I don't know how old she was, but she was about three, three or four at the time, yeah. Yeah. And then you look at you trying to tell, you trying to go to Wayne County, downtown Detroit, trying to bring that to the court, and they're like, Okay, now y'all are gonna take co-parenting class because you're not getting along. So then we were forced to take a co-parenting class. I requested that we do separate classrooms because I did not want to be in the same room as him. So they did allow that, thank God. But the court had said, you have to take a co-parenting class because we're not gonna tolerate this behavior. Because that's one it doesn't matter if the person's an abuser, if they're trying to manipulate whatever the situation or whatever, they kept saying, Oh, it's the child's best interest, it's the child's best interest. Okay, if you speak disparagingly to the child about the other parent, that means to get them removed from your home. Not abuse, but like I had to be able to I can I come to the court and say, he's saying this, he's saying that. And they're like, Okay, now you're going to co-parenting class. That was their ruling, that was their um solution to this problem, which I knew that wasn't gonna amount to anything.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Just kind of like a checklist thing, you know, if the severity of the case, you're gonna fall in this category and you're gonna go through these steps. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

So yeah, it's more for the court and it's free law. Yeah, for the court to be able to say, Well, we tried these things so we've tried something, right? For sure. We were proactive. It was never free law.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

Yeah, for sure. So it was just one of those things that we ended up having to do. So I'm just like, this is my life. And I would refer to it as my 18-year prison sentence because I knew that until she turned 18, I was bound by the court system to deal with his punk ass. And that was really difficult for me because again, you have this as a parent, this mentality that you want to protect your child at all costs. Well, when you can't do that, it's a horrible feeling. And I'm like, I have to wait till she's 18 to get her away from him. I have to wait for her to basically be a legal adult to not have to deal with it. Like it was a really, really hard time. So for the first six years of that, I was on my own. And at the time, it was like, and I want to mention this too, because the economy was in the tanker. I mean, we were in the recession. I had started a job that was an hour and a half away from where I lived. Like gas was, you know, almost 450 a gallon. I was scraping by paying for daycare that he was supposed to be paying half of, never did. So I'd be getting calls from the daycare saying he didn't pay his half, so you're gonna have to pay his half. I mean, I was like, I don't think then I'm thinking. No, oh no. See, the thing is, so every time you go to court, though, you have to have your attorney. I I didn't have the money.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Don't say a thousand bucks.

SPEAKER_03 18:17

Yeah, every time you go. So it's like, I didn't he knew I didn't have the money to flight a lot of this stuff. So it's like I would call my attorney up and he'd be like, we'd have to file a show cause, and then we'd have to go in front of the referee, and then we do it at the end of it. Again, it's like every time you go, it's at least a thousand dollars. I'm like, I don't even have 30 bucks in my account at the end of the week. You know, I'm just trying to make it to work and back home. Like, so there was all these dynamics happening at one time, and it was really, really difficult to navigate by myself. I want to mention this because, and I also want to make this disclaimer. This part of the story is uncomfortable, but my daughter is now 20 years old, she's going on 21 in September. I have cleared all of this with her. I have told her all the bullet points I was gonna talk about in this episode, and she has given me her 100% blessing. So I just wanted to say that right out the gate. Like, my daughter is an adult now, she absolutely sees a lot of this stuff that has happened, she recognizes it, and she has given me her blessing to speak on her behalf. So when she was going through the potty training stage, which is about 18 months to two years, she was in daycare because I, you know, was divorced at that point, having to work full-time, put her in the daycare. I started noticing that she started having reactions when I would put her in feminine clothing. She was a little girl. Of course, I'm gonna dress my daughter in cute little frilly dresses and put bows in her hair and give her little pigtails, and that's what we do. Like, it's just I'm a very feminine person, so I'm of course gonna do that with my daughter. It's my daughter. She started having very big reactions. Anytime that I would pick her up from him, she would be dressed like very poorly. Raggedy shirts with like action figures on them, boy underwear, very tomboy, hair would be unkempt and not brushed. Anytime I would try and put her in like a nice outfit that I thought was clean and better or whatever, or do anything with her hair, even brush her hair, she would have a meltdown, like temper tantrum meltdown, like not just it literally happened overnight.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

I was gonna say, because she would be with him what, two days, like a weekend, sometimes weekend, usually. So you had her most of the Yes, I was the primary. So within a span of 48 hours, he was somehow able to break that.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

So I literally found out that when she got a little bit older, he would tell me or she would tell me that he would make fun of her when I would drop her off to him, or he would pick her up from me, and she was in a cute girly little jumpsuit or whatever, had a bow in her hair. He would make fun of her and say she looked ridiculous. Oh, did your mom put you in that outfit? That looks ridiculous. Ha ha ha, laughing at her. So she felt ridicule and she would cry and get upset, and then she would rip the bow out of her hair and mess her hair up. I mean, she would literally like run her hands through her hair and mess her hair up, rip the bow out, throw it, all of those things. And it literally happened overnight. So I'm like, what is happening to my daughter? What are you doing? So going back to the daycare, the daycare didn't know any of this was going on. One day he dropped her off of the daycare after. Weekend of her being with him. And they called me on a Monday at work and they said, I don't know what's going on, but he put her in boys' underwear. Like he brought her to daycare and she's wearing boys' underwear.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

So she was potty training.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

She was potty training. So you would wear, like, if you're almost done potty training, you might have pull-ups here and there just in case you have an accident. But like you're gonna wear underwear at this point. You might have an accident. So you have like a backup. It was only boy underwear. She was in boy underwear. And what I mean by that is like boy underwear where you have like the little slot for the crop, you know, in the case.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

When it comes to underwear, I don't know that there's a unisex, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:40

But I'm saying like yeah, boy underwear and a girl underwear. He had her in boy underwear. And this is not a Christian daycare. This was just a regular daycare. And they were like, why is her dad bringing her as a two-year-old in boy underwear? They were like that alarmed them, and they wanted me to know. They were like, We've not seen this before. So then I was absolutely mortified. Called him immediately, was screaming at him on the phone, like, what the heck is what are you doing? Like, what are you trying to do here? What is your goal? And of course, it was the gaslighting. You're overreacting. You always overreact about everything. It's not a big deal. She likes superheroes, she likes Marvel comics. You know, she wanted these underwear because they had a superhero on them. You are making a big deal out of nothing. Well, it wasn't just the underwear, he had started dressing her like a boy, too. So then as she got older, that never changed. So then people started calling her a tomboy. Oh, you play sports like a boy, they would say. Oh, you throw like a boy. And they would just start saying, like, giving her those attributes all the time. Now she is very athletic. I'll give her that. She has a mad arm on her, like she is amazing. But like all it did when people said that was reinforce what he had already been grooming her to be. Because there's there's a few different facets that you can look at it as. One, he always told me he wanted a son and not a daughter.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah. I want to make sure that I understand this correctly. So when kids her age would say, you know, you fight like a boy or throw like a boy or place force like a boy or dress like a boy, that she took that as a compliment and not okay.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Yeah, but it also reinforced how he was trying to raise her to be.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Oh, 100%. Yeah, but she and and but that she didn't know that, but she took it as a compliment.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

So but because that's like she looked at it as a negative, like, oh, you throw like a girl or you back like a thrill, that's an because he made it as a negative thing. So then she sees me as a feminine person in her life, automatically negative.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Okay, because here's where my mind went, you know, when when he had been, you know, making fun of her and been like, oh, you know, why you're this is really whatever. I thought that when the kids later on was saying, oh, you're a tumble, you're this or that, I thought it was me making fun of her and that it was going to reverse the thing, but it actually fed the demon.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes. So what could I do? Like, what could I can't take this to the court and be like, he's groomy, or I didn't even know the word groom at that time. Like, I didn't even know. I'm just like, he's trying to turn her into somebody she's not, and I knew that it was one, like I said, multifaceted. One, he always wanted his son. Two, he was trying to, I think, create a distance or uh sever some kind of any kind of bond that her and I would have had as a mother-daughter to be able to do those mother and daughter things, she wouldn't be interested in doing them.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:03

But she was interested in wrestling with him or playing sports with him or playing video games with him because he was reinforcing this is what you want to be like. You want to be like daddy, you don't want to be like mommy. She overreacts, she's too whatever.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

When he said, Well, no, she picked up in Zunderwear because she likes what you call it, bar heroes, superheroes. Like, had you ever heard her say that before?

SPEAKER_03 26:27

No, not at the time. Even as a two, three-year-old daughter, you don't take your kid to see a PG 13 movie at that age. Like a lot of that is adult content. There's violence, there's language, there's you know, sexual innuendos, there's all kinds of things. But he would do that. He introduced her to that stuff very early on. And then I don't know if she truly had a fascination for it, or if he I know he for sure encouraged it.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Well, no, I think that you wouldn't like she was with you predominantly, like you would know what she liked, what caught her attention to the television was on, like what commercial or whatever. If the very first time that you heard that she liked uh superheroes was after being with him for 48 hours, like that doesn't like I don't see how I feel like you would know first, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Yeah, so kind of hit it though. She did she kind of hit it, you know, she seeked his approval, so whatever he kind of was into or introduce her to, she wanted to get his approval. And then it turned into, you know, cutting down and being quiet around us, and so that's and she kind of lived almost like a double life, but like when she was with him, she was one way.

SPEAKER_03 27:45

When she was with us, she was a different way. So she was trying to teeter and make both party, yeah. Like it and I felt like she was never able to fully just be her and develop into who she actually was because he molded her and groomed her into what he wanted her to be.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Well, and it caused her to develop a fear for you that shouldn't have existed, right? Because she had to pretend to be this person to him, and then he's saying that all these things that your mom does is you know, grooming and feminine, and all these things, and everything. You are reacting, like you like hair and makeup and and pretty things, and that's torture.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

Yeah, but it is it was, and all the while he's still attending an IB church, so according to people in the church's perspective, he's the better parent. He has her in church, he's making sure she's being taught about God. Here's Jenny off doing whatever she's doing, again, reinforcing that like, oh, her and Brenda are going out clubbing on the weekend, right? And they're drinking strawberry daiquiries, right? You know, they're doing you know what I you know I'm saying. It's not yeah, they were doing they're doing all the ungodly things, right? And all the while he is going to church, he is taking her to church every Sunday. He is very faithful, making sure she learns about God. So he must be in the right automatically. They don't care what's being said, what is the truth. That is the truth they see. Now, I know for a fact that, and I've had people tell me the various IFP churches that he did take her to, there were people that had told me that they confronted him and said, Why do you dress your daughter like a boy? Like you would actually break her to church like that, which is weird because David, I'm not a therapist, and I don't think any therapist could unpack this. But why would you make your wife and enforce this whole ideology of women have to dress like women and men have to dress like men, you are not allowed to wear pants. Uh the freaking house was exercised when I when me and Brenda came in with you know uh short skirts from Forever 21, but then you're gonna turn around and dress your daughter like a boy and take her to church like that.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

When make it make sense when churches would crown upon that, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:15

Well, the IFP.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

So here's what I wonder: not a therapist, not a doctor, not nothing, right? Okay, you know how like they say, like, which I don't I do not believe that's why they said like pot is the gateway drug and other drugs, yes. So I've heard of being described a narcissist, like they need the next level of control, especially if they lose the level of control.

SPEAKER_03 30:40

It's an addiction for sure.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

And so so when when he lost controlling he had ended up that that game was over, right? That game ended. He he probably his mind thinks he won in a lot of ways, it probably did, yeah, right. So the next level of gaslighting and narcissistic abuse and mind control and all these things would see how far he could take of turning someone into something that they're not. Yeah. And I think that I think that's what it was.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Like you've discussed that multiple times.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Okay, so this wasn't a brilliant idea that I just a brilliant idea. He just said it very eloquently. But I always thought, like, with the whole church thing where he would bring her like that, dressed like that. I always pictured him making people believe that he just picked her up to bring her to church. That's what I was looking for. And then he's like, Hey, we'll get you back tomorrow because after that she's coming back to us. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

Because we would always pick her up on a Sunday afternoon. Now, the thing that's really interesting is his family, okay, his grandfather was an ISB pastor. So he had a church for like, I don't know, 50-some odd years. His whole family is in the ministry. His dad's an evangelist, his uncles are preachers, pastors, missionaries, all that. Same with his brothers. His grandfather and his father was so against women wearing pants that whenever they would have something at his grandfather's church or he would go visit his family, he would force Paige to then go into that feminine persona again. Because you got to be around the grandparents. So he would tell her you have to wear a dress, you have to brush your hair, you have to do that, and he would make her wear a dress. Basically, what I was putting her in all this time, and then all of a sudden he's like, Now you gotta snap out of it, and you have to do this to put on a show for my family.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

So, okay, quick question the clothes that you would pack for her and drop her off in, or or however the I would never see them again.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

I would never see those clothes.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

So he would throw those clothes out.

SPEAKER_03 32:36

Oh, I would never see them again, yeah. And um I don't know if he gave them away.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

He would send her home in the boy clothes because he wasn't either in his thrift store garbage clothes that he would buy. So he would just go back and buy another$25 bin t-shirt because that's not even$25.

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Maybe like dollars. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Okay, so and I don't want to move too far ahead, but I'm curious. And if I am moving too far ahead, stop me. But at what point did you come into the picture? Like, where where was how did you fit into this?

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Like, where were where was the uh in this broad in the broad beginning of everything? Um well, I met Paige when she was six, I think. So they were already hot and heavy into this whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

It's almost seven.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

It was in the almost seven. So this had been going on for years before me. Okay. Um, but by this time it was already up and running, and I was starting to question everything. Of course, she would be like, Oh, you know, he's this, he's that, and I'd and I'd tell her, and it would used to make her mad. But I said, Well, let me make my own decision on who he is, and you know, I'll make my own decision about him. It took like maybe two weeks. And I was like, Okay, I did, I made my own decision. And um, but when I stepped into the picture, this was ranting. Everything that she's talking about now. Paige was excited to meet me. We got along really good in the very beginning, and then once I started to see how she operated and how he operated, the relationship changed. I took over almost all the communication and tried to understand where Paige was coming from, and I couldn't wrap my head around it. You gotta understand, I didn't have kids before Jane. Uh I turned into Instandad. And when I met Jen, I didn't know she had a daughter.

SPEAKER_03 34:19

Initially, because our friends didn't tell me.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

My friend failed to mention that.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

Me show from it.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

I'm like, hey, should have mentioned that, but it was fine. Uh we talked about it.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

In our very first phone call.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Very first phone call. Jen laid it all on the table. I was like, okay, all right. Uh, which actually worked. It was good. But I was happy. I was happy about it. You know, she Jen didn't really have a lot of support. I just didn't have a lot of she didn't have a good male figure. So I was like, here's an opportunity for me to be that.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

I knew I had it in me. I just hadn't had a reason to be like that. Right. That makes sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

And I think what's so in very interesting, too, that I'm sure we'll talk about is you don't come from religious trauma at all. Right. And so there are times that you're like, wait, y'all talking about that.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Yeah, the whole aspect of it was formed me. Yeah. I understood a little bit. The only time I've been to church is when, you know, I've said in the past while I had to stay all night at a friend's house. Right. You had to go to church in the morning. And you're not penitent. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was so backwards to me. Yeah. I'm like, wait a minute. Isn't this no signal supposed to go? Okay. So we dealt with it for a year or two, the way it was. And then I think that's when we started going to court.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

So how did you feel coming into being a stepfather? And where how did how did you figure out the role that you could play? Like what you how you could discipline, how you could speak to, or or you see what I'm trying to add to.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

It took me a while to get my footing pull. I was really excited. I was always good with kids. I had small cousins. I love little kids. They're a blast. I'm so a little kid. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

I told Jen, once I hit 12, 13, that's the cutoff. Um, so I was really excited. Uh, I didn't really know how I was gonna fit in. Yeah, but I didn't want to start trying to fit in somewhere where I wasn't going to, so I just kind of sat back and waited and just tried to let her and Jen take a deep breath. Yeah. I mean, before I decided on what my role would be. Yeah. I really never found that until later on, honestly. After I'm sure we'll get into it, but after everything that we went through, me and Paige, we spread apart. You know, our relationship was strained. Um, and I think that's over now.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Finally.

SPEAKER_03 36:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

And so I'm in a really good place. And it's funny because I used to tell Paige, you know, when she was a kid, I said, we'll talk when you're 30, 20, 30 years old.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

But you're not gonna talk for that long, but like just saying like to be able to have a different conversation, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Yeah, and I could be wrong about this, but of course I'm trying to put things in perspective because I've not had children, not step children. Um, but it's like when I met your all's kids, I was like, Hey, Uncle David. So did you feel like you were like having to be in the in the beginning Uncle Ryan versus trying to be pay step?

SPEAKER_00 37:17

Yeah, honestly, my whole mindset was give them a little safety and work until I couldn't work anymore. Yeah, because that would put a little cushion between us and life. And she never had that. Jen was on her own. She didn't really have a lot of support when I met her. I didn't have any kids. I'm the youngest in my family, so I was on my own. So that was my mindset. I was just trying to be cool and feel it out before I decided, you know, I'm gonna do this.

unknown 37:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Okay, Core.

SPEAKER_03 37:47

Is that what y'all were about to get into?

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

Yeah. So we uh had Ava, who is mine and Ryan's daughter together. We have two kids together, but uh we had Ava. Paige was about seven at the time. Ava was maybe three months, and I was a stay-at-home mom at that point. I had quit my corporate job, and one day I get a knock at the door, open the door. He's at work. I'm by myself with Ava, and this CPS worker is at my door and saying, like, we have these CPS allegations, but they wouldn't give me any information. I just immediately my mind went to panic mode. Like he's making up something, and he's trying to like again ruin my life. He knows I've obviously got remarried. Now I have this new baby, you know, things are great. And I that's where my mind went. And so I was like, you well, my husband isn't here, you can't come in my house. Like, we'll well, give me your card, we'll call you later, type of thing. So I call him frantic. Like, this is what's going on. I don't know what he's done, what he's saying about us. Like, I've never had to deal with this situation. Well, what ended up happening was we ended up meeting the guy at his office once we arranged, Ryan got home and we arranged to meet him.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Okay, so when she called me, obviously I was freaked out again. I've never been part of anything like this whatsoever. I've had pretty things happen in my extended family, but not involved with children. Sure. So I called the guy and I said, What is going on here? And he said, Do you know so and so? And I said, Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 39:20

And that was my ex-husband.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Okay, let's talk about it and he wasn't gonna give us any detail. He said, It's not about you guys, it's about her ex. But you spend here investigating.

SPEAKER_03 39:30

But I never had I was never involved with CPS before, so I didn't know how it worked.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Because he spends the majority of time at our house.

SPEAKER_03 39:37

So she so he shows up at our house with a badge in the same and is wanting to question me and not giving me, he wasn't he wasn't like forthcoming with the information at all. Like, who is this? Who the allegations you're talking about about is he saying this about us? Is he trying to accuse us of something or is this about him? So, like I was freaked out because when CPS is involved, I mean, I think CPS, I think they're trying to take my kids away from me, yeah, immediately.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Yeah. And so I think CSC that you already had in court before you got wins.

SPEAKER_03 40:11

So yeah, if it it and and I and there's so many different examples I could give you over the years where there had been major things that we had to deal with that he had created. So this was just another one of those, like, what did he do now? What happened now type of situation? And so when when he got off the phone with the CPS agent and was like, this isn't about us, it's actually about him. I was like, and then I was like, Well, oh crap, what now? What else has he done? It was like we took a breath for a second and then we were like, Great, now what? So we went to the CPS office and we talked to the agent, and he told us allegations were child pornography, child neglect and abuse, um loaded gun where it was within her reach, where he didn't have it locked up in in a safe, unsubstantial like food. Um, there was, they said there was mice droppings everywhere in the kitchen and all over the apartment. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

This is and uh I believe there was a yardstick with nails in it. Yeah, okay. This is someone's testimony.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

So when somebody calls CPS, see, we learned all this, just like the court system. If you don't, if you've never dealt with this, you don't know how it happened. So, like CPS gets a phone call from somebody who is alleging these things against him. Now, the person that's alleging these things remains anonymous. So to this day, we have no idea who called, but whoever it was gave very specific details where things are located.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

So that was obviously uh some kind of signs, a behavioral trait of his.

SPEAKER_03 42:03

And not only that, but when also when we were married and he was the youth director, I caught him with teenage pornography on his computer. So, like when I saw the allegations on the list of allegations, it mortified me, of course, because now we have a daughter that's living with him part-time, but it didn't surprise me at the same time because I'm like, well, he was doing this seven years ago.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:29

Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm like, whoever is making these claims, it's all checking out.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

So and may and may I ask, and this might be a matter of detail that doesn't matter, but when you say teenage, because I it there's a 18, 19-year-old. So you were able to be like, okay, I don't, I don't well, but it was illegal age, obviously, and her illegal.

SPEAKER_03 42:47

Absolutely. I would say if I had to put a uh age on the girls, it would probably be 14, 15 years old. Wow. Yes. When uh what I saw, my personal experience when we were still married. So that was mortifying to me because I'm like, these are the same, these look like the same age of the girls in our youth apartment. Yeah, that's messed up. And of course it was my fault because I wasn't having sex with him. What's what's a man supposed to do, right? What's a man supposed to do? So, anyways, back to CPS. So I'm seeing child pornography, I'm seeing guns, I'm seeing neglect, I'm seeing the uh this how he would threaten to beat Paige with a yardstick. And it was very specific where it was located, what it looked like. I'm like, I knew that whoever this person wasn't making this up. So how it works with CPS, and again, if you've never been through it, you don't understand. You think it's a cut and dry, and we did too. We thought it was black and white. We're like, we're getting, we're gonna get full custody now, like this is over, finally. No, far from it. So what ends up happening is the claims were made, CPS because we were in a certain County, they come to the primary first. They question us. They say, like, have you seen any of this? Have you experienced any of this? Blah, blah, blah. I tell them my part. Well, he did when we were together. He has a pattern on this. So they're like, okay, taking notes, all this stuff. Then he's in a different county at this point. So what they did, I don't know if it was laziness. I don't know if it was because they had too much on their plate.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

They showed up to our house unannounced. No question, no phone call, no nothing. And so when I was on the phone with him asking about what was going on, we built kind of a rapport. And after he went to our house, he called me separately and said, How should I do this? You know him. I said, Well, I know him really well to a certain point. Uh, show up unannounced. He goes, Should I show up unannounced? I said, Definitely show up unannounced. And if you have the ability to see his computer, I'm not gonna tell you how to do your job, but don't give him a heads up, you're on the way. Yeah, and that's exactly what they did.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

They told him he had to.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

Yeah, so like what?

SPEAKER_03 45:08

Not only that, but they remember he went straight from our house to Paige's elementary school. Didn't tell us that either because they don't want you to be able to talk to your kids and like co coach them in any way, even though the allegations weren't about us, they wanted her to be able to give candid responses to their questions.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

And this is my ignorance, but I thought they treated us like we were the ones they treated us like we were the ones that we had a problem. Talk to an underage child without appearing. Law enforcement can't, CPS can't.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

Oh, yeah, is what I understand.

SPEAKER_03 45:40

So I didn't know that man with a badge was going straight from my house to my daughter's school without my permission.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Terrifying for a while.

SPEAKER_03 45:50

So Paige, she was only seven. She's in third grade. She gets the principal comes to her classroom with a man in a badge and says, We need to see Paige in the office. She thinks she's in trouble. She's automatically in like fear mode, like, I'm what's happening? What do I do? She goes into the office with this man alone, and he's like shows her his badge and says, Did your dad ever this? Does your dad have this in the house? Does what do you think a seven-year-old daughter's gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 46:22

Probably think they're gonna be in trouble and lying.

SPEAKER_03 46:25

That's exactly what happened. She was terrified, so she lied and was like, No, no, she was being interrogated. And when we had no chance to talk to her and be like, There's a man that's gonna come, question you about what's going on at your dad's house. We didn't have a chance to talk to her at all in telescope. It's terrible because the system is terrible now. It is so bad.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

I don't think we found out that he interviewed her or questioned her until weeks later. What she so you know, she came over from school, she didn't remember how long, but it wasn't the same day. Wow, yeah, I can't remember.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

So, but that means the situation, intentionally or not, it's gonna be scary and intimidating for her to go mute and and block out. You know, yeah, but the fact that you all that you all didn't know about it, like having dinner with her that night, it was like hey, this man shut up and talk right, yeah, oblivious to it.

SPEAKER_03 47:19

Like, didn't even get like a call from the principal, like, hey, blah blah, whatever. I mean, that's probably like a regular thing that the public school system sees, like CPS workers just coming in and questioning little kids. I guess that's a thing.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Well, and sure, and and maybe the adults are used to that, but the child absolutely not, so it's like super traumatizing.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

Well, it never made sense. So I we thought for a minute, obviously, they thought we made the L shoes because it was anonymous, they didn't even know who it was.

SPEAKER_03 47:45

They no, CPS would have known.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

He never said they knew who it was. He said he made economies.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

Well, because you can send in. Because I actually just had an interview with someone that was talking about how like I mean, you can email anonymously and say, Yeah, I'm not gonna say who this is. So there is a possibility, but but on the flip side of that coin, if they did go and say, Hey, I'm gonna give you this information, but no one can know, then you're not gonna know that they know. Like it's gonna be it. I guess CBS's job is to let you think that it's anonymous even to the day. Yeah, I know that. So I understand that.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

But I understand they for me and her to try and understand it in my eyes, they treated it like they thought it was plus. It was an obvious us. So then they come to our house, they interview Pai, they give him a heads up, the whole thing just recently, and it was us. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:38

So I didn't ever think of it that way, but okay, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

No, it wasn't what her, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:44

That's why we were like, finally, it's not just all we yeah, I was mortified by the information, but I was also like, Finally, we have something tangible that we can take him back to court for and get full custody. Like, we thought it was a whole other one. Like, we were like, This is like we're about to close the chapter.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Yeah, I mean, he's about to be home and safe on found.

SPEAKER_03 49:04

And and I'm not gonna have to deal with his ass anymore. This is how we thought we just started a whole new Oh, it just opened up a whole new chapter of bullshit, is what it was. So we hired the most expensive attorney, basically, that we could find. What we didn't, and I want anyone who is listening to the sound of my voice right now to understand if you are going through family court, get a lawyer in the county that the case is in. Because what we did is instead of getting a lawyer in Detroit that was within the Wayne County court system, which is where the family, you know, uh the whole family court was in was Wayne County. Remember, I told you that. We went through Oakland County where we had they had the they have the big wig lawyers that are expensive, like$350 an hour lawyers, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:53

Just do look the part.

SPEAKER_03 49:55

And I'm telling you, this is it. Yeah, this is a thing because all the lawyers and clerks and judges, they all know each other within the jurisdiction that they're in. They're all buddy buddies, they all go golfing together, they all have you know their parties and stuff together. You bring in an outsider from another county who's like, Oh, I'm a Birmingham lawyer, and you're going to Detroit, they're like, Oh, it's yeah. Oh, you want to spend yeah, no, get out of here. Yeah, it didn't matter. So he had a dirt ball lawyer that literally was driving like a freaking Astro van and like beat up, like look, he looked like Napoleon Dynamite coming into like a thrift shop lawyer, and he's coming in the courtroom. We're sitting there for hours with our attorney.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

We had a court, we had a court bait set for initial hearing. I think we waited for three hours. This guy falls in late, pokes his head in, opens a court, disrupts the court in session, not our court, but other people having it staircases, opens a door and says, Hey, 330 on this date. Then they go, okay. And he shut the door and left. You know, our guy was 350 an hour. We just wasted three hours, thousand bucks. Wow. And he came with the case.

SPEAKER_03 51:11

But this happened multiple times. So another thing that happened was we ended up in mediation. So what we were able to do, we were able to negotiate because again, the court is like, so what ended up happening was CPS went to his house, his apartment, asked about his laptop. He says, Oh, my laptop has a virus, it's not gonna turn on. Well, what about your phone? Because there were things that were talked about in the allegations about his phone and Paige seeing pornographic material on his phone. Oh, I just got a new phone. I don't even have that phone anymore. So they and they also said we never got a warrant to search those items. So if he didn't willingly give them up to let them search them, they wouldn't have been able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 51:55

Why would Sean get a warrant?

SPEAKER_03 51:57

I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

CD US didn't obtain a warrant. They'd have to go up with local law enforcement to get one. And they didn't decide not to.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

They didn't, even though child pornography was on the allegations, like illicit allegations. Apparently, they're okay with that. It makes me so mad. Yeah, oh, it was infuriating.

SPEAKER_00 52:14

It was in my life. It was infuriating in the beginning stages of our relationship. Yeah, we had a kid.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

We got married, and then everything we did.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

We got married, had a baby right away, and then this. And I was like, this is insane.

SPEAKER_03 52:26

Invanity.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

Everywhere you looked, it was dereliction of duty on everybody's part. Yeah, it was hard to believe.

SPEAKER_03 52:32

It was so I couldn't get protection from the court from my daughter because CPS didn't substantiate the claims because they didn't look at any of the devices, and he had a heads up that they were coming, so he cleaned his apartment, got everything put away. Oh, we don't see any guns. Okay, you're good. Oh yard stick? I don't see a yardstick anywhere. Forget it.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

So it was uh he said anonymous sad.

SPEAKER_03 52:58

Yeah, so nothing. Yeah, so we thought this whole time that we could take the CPS report, go to court, and that would be used as evidence to get full custody. The court looked at it and said, Well, CPS said this is unsubstantiated allegations. So we got completely thrown out. We weren't able to use it at all. So now we're at square one. So now what are we going for? At the very least, we want to get more parenting time because we were gonna get full custody, right? They're like, No, we can't give you full custody. So my lawyer was like, let's try to just get more parenting time taken away from him. So how we were able to negotiate that was child support. He hadn't been, he hadn't had his the child support, the prognosticator, which is like a calculation where they take like his income versus my income, and then they calculate it every like 36 months or so. Three years, and and they hadn't done that since the very beginning. So it had been like seven years since they'd done that, they hadn't done it. So his calculation for child support was$86 a month.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

Well, I'm Matt Jen, that's supposed to pay.

SPEAKER_03 54:04

And guess who never paid it? He never paid it. So you know he owed me like$3,800. He was in arrears. Well, I didn't have the money to fight that, and$30 million is still nothing.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

Well, spell in three months.

SPEAKER_00 54:18

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 54:19

But he was like, screw her, I'm not even giving her the$86 a month.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Yeah, there's nobody to she couldn't afford to go after him. She couldn't afford to enforce it.

SPEAKER_03 54:28

So my lawyer was like, Oh, we're gonna use this. He's in a rich keep, the just gonna look at this and say, bro, 86 bucks a month, and you're not even paying that for seven years.

SPEAKER_01 54:39

Because we do have to think of like, I mean, well,$86 a month, especially when it comes to a child that they didn't even pay for school lunches for a month. Like, nothing but even when you think of the value of the dollar changing, it was still nothing, yeah. Yeah, yeah, then pay for the school lunches.

SPEAKER_03 54:56

So we were able to use that as a negotiation tool because we ran a new prognosticator again and showed that he would essentially owe like six hundred dollars and something a month, starting from this point. It was an Ospe plus the arrears, in addition to the arrears. Well, we negotiated it down in order for him to give up a couple of days of parenting time, so we were able to gain more parenting time and give him less of an amount. So it ultimately ended up being$450 a month, because regardless, it needed to be redone because the$86 a month was obviously he was making more than that than he was back then. So they needed to redo and recalculate it.

SPEAKER_01 55:43

Well, and anything would be an increase because even at$86, you weren't paying it. So you were still getting zero. So even if they're like, okay, well,$600, and you're like, okay, well, also for$450, that's still$450 more than what you're already getting plus the arrears. Yeah, plus the end of the year. Plus the arrears and the last time.

SPEAKER_03 56:01

Yeah, yep. Like, I like how so that's how we we had to negotiate that though, because they wouldn't allow us to have full custody. And again, from an outsider's perspective, like my dad would get so angry, he's like, I don't understand why you're not able to get full custody. And I'm like, you don't understand the court system. CPS didn't do their job. So the the hole in one we thought we had got thrown out.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

You know what? Here's what I thought you were gonna tell me because a lot of this is the first time I'll be hearing this. I thought you were gonna tell me that because the call was anonymous and CPS didn't fight anything, you made the anonymous call to set this up, defeat a bunch of lies, to uh to try to manipulate the system to get a jab in it.

SPEAKER_03 56:44

I'm sure that's that he would put a thing out. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

Yeah, but I was afraid that it was going to be deemed by not just him.

SPEAKER_03 56:52

I saw what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 56:53

And I thought that's where you're gonna go with it, and it was terrifying.

SPEAKER_03 56:55

Yeah, let me tell you what's even crazier. When we were in the midst of this court thing, we get another visit from CPS for more allegations from a different source against him, still anonymous, yes, against him. It just goes further. Neglect, I'd be all this stuff over and over, different stories, different allegations, but the same type of thing. I'm like, why isn't anyone doing anything? And again, this time they went even further. It was a woman investigator, but again, we're in one county, he's in another county. They give him a heads up, they met him at a freaking restaurant, they met him at a restaurant, they didn't even go to his apartment the second time, and they questioned him, he denied everything. That's ridiculous. I don't know what you're talking about, and that was the end of it, case closed. We decided not to press any further with that because it had cost us thousands of dollars in attorney fees to try and fight for the custody of my daughter, and it was like okay, between the CPS, the court, and then a year or two later, we start going to church again. So this is where it gets even crazier because we started going to church. Every church we went to, we could be out in the middle of nowhere, and we would walk into this Baptist church and somebody would know who I was. Not I'm not saying I'm a popular person.

SPEAKER_00 58:28

We lived in cornfields where we lived in Michigan, middle of nowhere, 20 miles from the expressway. We go to the church five miles past where we live, and I mean it's like a hole in the wall, a little tiny little building, and there's no homes around it. We walk in, and the first person we see at the door says, Are you a so-and-so? And I said, Wow, I mean, everyone there knew her.

SPEAKER_03 58:52

I couldn't escape the cult, like I couldn't know everywhere I went.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

I know it's all in the same bubble, right? But was it because of how predominant your family was, or was it because of the exact both? It was half and half. They knew the name and they knew the story. But did they think it was that you were like it was almost like a judgmental question of you? Like, are you so-and-so?

SPEAKER_00 59:19

Or not necessarily. They just, you know, okay. They know her name because of her family predominance in the church, but you know, you sprinkle the other one on top.

SPEAKER_03 59:27

Yeah. So I'm trying to like start a new life, have a new chapter, and but like also wanting to get back into a relationship with God. So again, it's that cult mentality, you gotta be in church, gotta be in church, can't have a relationship with God fully unless you're in church. So he was very supportive of that and was like, you know, I didn't grow up this way, but whatever, I'll go with you as a supporter. Yeah, so we end up at this one church. I won't get into it too deep, but basically, the pastor went to Crown College with my ex, knew him and all of that. But he was very kind to me, very welcoming, was like, oh my gosh, it's so good to see you, you know, blah, blah, blah. Seemed like interested in us and was like, what happened with you and so and so? Like, tell me your side, because I heard rumors throughout the years and was very supportive of us and our family. And so, on several occasions, based on various things that Paige was going through as she was going through like junior high, high school, experiencing different things with her dad, we would go to him and his wife for counseling and we would tell them this is what we're dealing with. I mean, there was one point where my daughter found out that he was paying for prostitutes. She got a hold of some very concrete evidence. She shared that evidence with us. We shared that evidence with our pastor. He was mortified. We were mortified. We were like, what in the actual heck is going on? It was almost as if every time we heard information, it was coming from our my daughter, but it was like getting like worse and worse and worse. Like he couldn't get enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

Like goes back to what we were saying in the beginning with the narcissistic behavior. They reach a certain plateau and they need the next high, you know, yes thing. I just looked at some of the stuff Paige was talking about. She showed it to me, and I said, Well, I can't just take your word for it. I don't want to see it, but if it's what you're saying, then I should probably see some of it. It was insane what I was reading and seeing.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:35

So he actually confronted my ex at one point. Wait, and his excuse was that's what he said.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:43

He told Paige.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

He's actually told Paige this, yeah. He told Paige, she confronted him as well. She was a teenager at the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:49

She asked him about it. She knew what he was doing. You know, she wasn't naive to it. And he said, Paige, I'm doing research so you don't turn into a prostitute. That's what's his that's what he said to her verbatim.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:02

So he put it on her. Of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:07

That is it's her fault. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

He's got to do this so she doesn't become one. That's what he told her as a 13-year-old girl. And then our pastor actually confronted him, took him out to lunch, confronted him. He denied it. He said, Look, I have the concrete evidence, I'll just show you. And he goes, No, no, no. I don't want to see it. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did do those things.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:30

Say what you want, but our pastor is the only one who really took any step whatsoever, and actually took him out and looked at him in the face and said, This is what I know. Do you want to see it? And force him to come to reality with it. And he just totally shut down and said, No, I don't want to.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:47

Yeah. Okay, but task forward now, he's attending his church and it's okay. So I mean, it's like you this is a very frustrating. So again, along the lines, we've never gotten any kind of justice. It's like people are like not doing their jobs, or they're like dismissive of it, or they don't want to deal with it, or whatever. I don't even know what to call it, but it's been a very frustrating process. And we went through a really, really tough time with Paige when she was in high school. And we took her out of public school for various reasons. I won't even get into that, but like took her out of public school. She was getting into some trouble. We put her in a Christian school. And then the Christian school wasn't enforcing certain things, and we felt like we were just not backed up by anybody at all. Any resource that we tried to get support from, we weren't getting the support. So I will say, just to kind of wrap up everything, the fact of the matter is Paige had to go through her own evolution. She's still doing that. She, I'm super proud of her. She's 20 years old now, she'll be 21 in September. She went through her own evolution where she put herself into therapy herself when she was 18. Because she recognized, like, hey, I need to talk to a professional about what I've had to deal with in my life. And she's doing really amazing. Like she is now recognizing the behavior by her dad on her own. I'm not saying anything. She says it, she tells me. I think that it's that's gonna be like a long journey for her. I don't think it's gonna stop at 20 or 21 years old. She's gonna have to over time, as she gets older and continues to develop, she's gonna see more and more and be like, that was really messed up in my childhood. That didn't make sense, or start remembering things that maybe she suppressed as a kid and say, Why did you do this to me? Why were you grooming me? Why were you know what I'm saying? And she's starting to wake up to that.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:54

She's made a lot of progress in a short period of time.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:57

She really has. I'm so proud of her.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

And it's it's nice for me personally. I'm happy about it because I don't feel like she feels like she's in the middle anymore. Yeah, we're going through these war, and it is war. Yeah, it was when the child's little and you're trying to fend off whatever. You forget that she's there half the time because you're trying so hard to limit the relationship with the other party, and it lasts forever. It was a very long struggle, but you know, now she doesn't feel that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:28

Yeah, and that's really like I think the dynamic would definitely change when she turned 18. You know, like the bottle of more in her court, and the fact that like the chain between you all and ex-husband is kind of broken. Oh, yeah, and and and Paige is old enough and mature enough and doing the work to figure out things on her own. And y'all are influencing that. Yeah. Or you all are not influencing her opinion on anything. And I I Don't know if I'm allowed to say this and we can we can take it out if we can. Um, but I've never met Paige, but last night she called her FaceTime Doss. And and so that was lovely. Like she was cooking and we talked for a minute, but she could ask me a couple questions about EMDR.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:13

And uh so she so I can see how proactive she is. I've done EMDR, huge fan of it. And um, I would love to continue that conversation with her, yeah, you know, to see how that goes with her. Wow. Yeah, I'm glad that you all made it. I'm so glad that you all found shop. I'm almost happy to be a part of it, honestly. And yeah, because there's a lot of you're obviously the right person because there's a lot of people, and I can't say it's unjustified, but there's a lot of people that would have said, you know, and and I don't know that I could hate them for that. Sure. Um, you're not built for it because but but those arms show us that you're built for it. Allowed to throw in something, man. It's been a it's been a crazy conversation. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:57

I I was happy to be a part of it. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just down for stuff like that. Yeah, and when I met him and heard about what's going on and the way he acted, I'm like to dig in. I'm ready. So yeah, if you were ready for the challenge, ready, and there was a couple times that we thought was gonna actually go down in person, yeah, and one of them was in mediation. I actually walk out of the room myself, that's how control that was. But uh love and discipline, but yeah, I'm glad it's over. Paige has really good friends to support her.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:27

Yeah, they all support everything she does, they're all similar in that fashion, and um yeah, I admire about you is that I've heard so many stories of men come in, and you're like, and the man's like, Well, you might have a father in that house, but I'm the man in this house. Sure. And it doesn't seem like you did that, it doesn't seem like you were trying to to bud in any kind of controlling way, and I think it takes because I mean I even know this in my own house, even without children. I'm like, this is my house, Rich, you're gonna do that to just to my buddy, right? And that's only there too for rarely, and so so for you to be able to have the control to say, you know, like my door is always open to this child, yeah. Um, there was a fight of I have to learn my way. Yeah, there's not a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:17

I stumbled for sure. I didn't know, and the reason I got upset is because I didn't know what to do or say, and that's a lap. And so my go-to was hey, let's yell and scream, yeah, or let's shut down. Or but I've learned a ton through that. Yeah, and I've totally changed who I am, even when I met Jen. You know, when I met Jen, I was a totally different person, but it's turned out pretty good. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:43

Wow, I know, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:44

Wow, there's so much.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:46

There is a lot. It's again like we talked about before, where I had prayed and asked God to give me that open door to leave. And then I was like, don't need you. You got me into this mess, like, don't want to have a relationship type of thing. But even when I was saying I'm shutting you out, he was still there, like throughout. There's a thread you can see through my whole life where uh we met and how we met, and then how he was able to be there for me and Paige and talk about God, yes, being yes, and so I this is one of the main reasons why I'm not an atheist, because I can be an atheist towards the God I was taught because again, I've I've closed off my mind to this God of the tyrant. Yeah, I believe that the real true God is a God of love, is a God who wants you to enjoy your life and experience happiness and to learn the lessons you're here to learn and to have relationships that are fulfilling. And that is the God I've experienced. The God of sear and the God of control is that persona that was given to me and beat into my brain as a child growing up through the cult. And I no longer accept that persona, I have closed the chapter on this, and so it's undeniable for me when I look back and see, even when I was saying, No, I don't even want you in my life, that he was still in the background making moves and making things happen for me. And so I think, in regards to him looking at him as like a father figure, the same thing with me as a mother for my daughter. I would say to Ryan, I have tried to save my daughter and protect her as much as I possibly could through all these situations. And I can't, I could only do so much.

unknown 1:10:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:47

Because ultimately, like we didn't get full custody. We didn't, you know, things didn't work out. People wouldn't, you know, listen to us. We weren't getting the support we needed. Ultimately, what ended up having to happen was she had to come to the conclusion on her own. But there's no denying that through all the years, she saw her mom fighting to the death for her, and her stepfather fighting for her and sacrificing and doing in the through the blood, sweat, and tears fighting for her to have the best life possible. And so I think at the end of the day that God, the universe, whatever you want to call it, was like, I got you and I got her, and she's ultimately gonna come to the conclusion someday, but it might not be in your finding, in any way.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:37

And how hard.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:40

It's hard because you have to surrender that. You have to be like, okay, I'm I'm not sure. Wow. Thank you so much for listening to this episode today. That is a wrap on part three of my personal story. And I really appreciate you guys being here for this because this was um uh over a year in the making. I didn't I didn't want to be flippant with recording the episodes that I've just dropped the last two weeks. I felt like I wanted to really think about how I was gonna do them and think about the points that I needed to cover and also respect the privacy of my daughter. As I stated in multiple episodes, I did get her blessing and I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't gotten her blessing. So again, thank you to Ryan and Paige. I love you guys. I could not have done that last stage of life without you guys. And I feel like the three of us have bonded and become stronger in our relationship since then. And we've learned a lot. I think the three of us have really grown together and grown up in a lot of ways, not just physically, but just in our capacity to handle shitty situations for lack of a better way to put it. And I feel like it's made us stronger and it's made us better people. And I just wanted to say that I love you guys. And for those listening, thank you guys for being here. Please like, subscribe, and share this podcast. It will help reach the masses. The more people that share it, download it, like, subscribe. It helps get us into the algorithm. And if you know anything about the algorithm, it ain't easy getting into the algorithm. So if you guys would just do that, it takes two seconds. It would mean the world to me and to the guests that I have on this podcast. Speaking of, if you would like to be a guest on the Unholier Podcast, please email me at unholierpod at gmail.com or send me a DM on social media. I would love to hear your story and have you on as a guest. If you are interested, please just send me a shout and we will coordinate that and get that set up. Thank you all again for listening and thank you for supporting and encouraging me as I tell my personal story. And we'll see you all in the next episode. Before we close out, I just want to share a quick reminder. The stories told on this podcast are personal experiences and perspectives. They're shared to create awareness and connection, not as medical, legal, or mental health advice. Some of the conversations here focus on abuse, trauma, and other heavy topics. So please take care of yourself while listening. It's always okay to pause, skip an episode, or step away if you need to. And if anything we talked about brings something up to you, we encourage you to reach out to a trusted professional or support resource. You don't have to carry any of this alone. Thank you for listening.