Supporting Survivors With Compassion: A Guide to Understanding Sexual Assault

In this episode of ABC's Parenting Adult Children podcast, host James Moffitt speaks with Tracy DeTomasi, a licensed clinical social worker and advocate for survivor-centered justice. They discuss the pervasive issue of sexual assault, particularly in college settings, and the importance of trauma-informed care in parenting.

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:01.646)
Hello and welcome to ABC's Parenting Adult Children podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I will be your host. So today's episode will contain content about sexual assault that may be sensitive or triggering to some listeners. So this is the place where we explore resilience, responsibility, and the evolving relationships between parents and their grown children. Today, we're honored to welcome Tracy. How do you say your last name?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (00:29.663)
Dita Masi.

James Moffitt (00:31.36)
Okay. CEO of Calisto, Calisto and a powerful voice for survivor centered justice and systems change. Tracy's work has transformed how we think about trauma recovery and prevention, blending encrypted technology with global advocacy to protect and empower from the streets of South Africa to the heart of the nonprofit world and the U S her impact reaches far beyond headlines. So Tracy.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (00:35.647)
list of.

James Moffitt (01:01.208)
Thank you for being here today.

Do me a favor and introduce yourself to the listening audience.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (01:08.265)
Yeah, and thank you so much for having me. I'm excited about this conversation. So I'm a, by training, I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I have been doing work in gender-based violence for 25 years now. And it's something that a lot of people don't understand, but it impacts so many people, an incredible amount of people. And when I saw your podcast about parents of adult children,

I think that the work that we do at Callisto really works with college students. We're working with college students who have been sexually assaulted. And I think that parents are very unprepared for that conversation. And they don't think about taking their kids to college and even thinking about that. Yet it impacts a significant amount of people. And so, you know.

What I want to do in my career and part of this podcast and everything else is really educate folks on sexual assault. There's so many myths, there's so many misunderstandings, and really providing some tools for how parents can have these conversations with their children, no matter the age, but particularly that college age demographic that are adults, but not fully formed adults, and for conversations that are extremely difficult to have.

James Moffitt (02:32.598)
I can imagine so, yes. And that's, that is a topic that is not discussed a lot.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (02:40.789)
It's not.

James Moffitt (03:05.296)
came back when I hit, when I hit resume, Riverside said, you're, you're recording has stopped.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (03:14.601)
I kept recording here, so...

James Moffitt (03:16.836)
Okay, good. All right. So I can, I can edit all this out. So I, at one point I was a, server analyst at the college of Charleston downtown. And, we worked in the bell south building. And of course they had classes all, you know, I think, I think it took up the fifth and sixth floor and the rest of the floor was classrooms. And the first floor was the, where they put up all kinds of promotional posters and stuff for the kiddos, right?

events and stuff. I think that by and large, sexual assault was not really reported a whole lot. Right? I think it was going on more than anybody would like to imagine. there certainly were people that came forward and reported it and police got involved in all that. But I think in a lot of cases, it wasn't reported.

which is a huge problem, right? It's almost as if it was acceptable or accepted as part of the campus life. So the work that you're doing is very important.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (04:23.765)
Absolutely.

James Moffitt (04:31.227)
Alright.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (04:31.989)
Yeah, thank you. mean, less than 6 % of people report to Title IX or to police, less than 6 % of survivors, particularly college students. And it is one of the most under-reported crimes where 2.5 million college students every year experience sexual assault. That's a massive number. Yeah.

James Moffitt (04:51.995)
my goodness. Yeah, that's crazy.

James Moffitt (04:58.62)
So what inspired you to dedicate your career to trauma-informed care and survivor advocacy?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (05:06.547)
You know, in grad school, in undergrad, I was a psych major and I started doing an internship working with adolescent boys in a psychiatric facility and I loved it. And they had experienced a lot of abuse and a lot of neglect and a lot of sexual abuse. And I decided to get a master's degree in social work to continue to help people. And I really didn't know where that was going to lead me. But the more I started talking about sexual violence and domestic violence and child abuse,

The more I heard stories from people and heard people's experiences and I realized how pervasive it was and how many times that I heard, you're the first person I've told this to. And not necessarily in a therapeutic environment. It was, you at a restaurant, at a party, at something else of like if people knew that I was a safe place to talk about it in a way that they've never talked about it before.

And when I first got into this work, I was actually a therapist for adolescent sex offenders. So I was working on the perpetrator side of things. And I really recognized how little we know about perpetrators and how people don't want to talk about that. But that is the solution to these problems where it's such a taboo subject when it shouldn't be anyway. People don't understand trauma.

They don't understand all of that. And so as I continued down my career, I was like, I need to keep talking about this because people aren't talking about it enough. And so I was about 18 years into my career when Me Too happened and the movement happened. And I didn't understand it at first because people kept tagging me on social media of like, look, did you see this hashtag? And I'm like, yeah, but of course I know your story. I know her story. I know his story. I know their story. And what I realized is that

I knew the pervasiveness of this issue. I knew how many people had experiences in this, of sexual assault, of sexual violence, but not everybody else did. And it was a time where people got to really see how many of their friends and family came forward at the first time that they had no idea had been assaulted before or harassed or experienced some kind of sexual harm. And it took me a couple of days and I thought,

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (07:29.649)
wow, this is a watershed moment because my work changed. I no longer had to convince people that it was an issue. And the 18 years before that, was about, here are the statistics. Here's one in four females are sexually assaulted while in college. One in 15 males are assaulted while in college. And people didn't believe those statistics. And now they're like, okay, well, we have an understanding that yes, this happens, but...

The feedback that I get along the way of nobody ever understood this before. You have a way about explaining trauma and just meeting with clients and meeting with people. I ran a domestic violence shelter for a long time as well. And seeing the relief when people come into that shelter and that they're believed and that they're understood and that they have even for a minute a sense of safety is life changing. And I think that we've done a lot in our society to

to support survivors and to hold perpetrators accountable, but we haven't done enough. We have absolutely not done enough. And I think that you can see that in the news cycle that is currently going on with Epstein. I think you can see it in the news cycle a couple of weeks ago with Diddy and how he was not fully held accountable. And I think that there's a lot of confusion as to what sexual assault is.

And so again, that has kind of fueled my career of knowing that I have a lot of work to do and I can do it in a way that people hear it and that people understand it in a way that they've never thought about it before.

James Moffitt (09:10.908)
So tell me about your nonprofit organization, you said, Callisto?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (09:17.331)
Yes. So at Callisto, we have built technology to help empower survivors. And how we do that is that we have an encrypted technology, so it's very secure, and we help survivors find out if their perpetrator has harmed anybody else. So one of the things that I've heard over the years of I reported because I didn't want him to do this to anybody else. I didn't report, but I was always worried.

that he had done this to somebody else. And so even in the Me Too movement, you could see how journalists were connecting survivors. Like if you think about Harvey Weinstein case or Larry Nassar, who was the USA Gymnastics doctor. And once the survivors got put together by journalists, they were able to have a collective voice and accountability happen finally, after years of being reported. Nassar was reported numerous times over the previous decade, as was Weinstein.

and people didn't listen. And so what our technology does is it, anybody in the US and its territories with a .edu email address has free access. And so they can create an account and then they put in something unique, a unique identifier of their perpetrator. So of the person that harmed them. So it would be that perpetrator's social media, email address, phone number. There's about 12 different things that they can put in. And that's what we use to match.

So if two people put in that same Instagram handle, let's say, there's a match. It's not like a dating app, so you're not connected right away. You have a lot of choices and we make sure to put the survivors in the driver's seat in all of this to make sure that they have the choice because we know with sexual assault, their choice was taken away and we want to make sure that we give them choice along the way. So if there's a match, what happens is we are not able to see the information. So we are not a database of just perpetrators and survivors.

It's all encrypted even to us. And so what we do is when we know that there's that match that happens, we assign that to a survivor advocate who is protected legally under confidentiality laws. And that person will reach out to the survivors individually and they will give them the choice to say, did you want to chat? Did you want to know what your options are? If the survivors take the choice to chat with that advocate, that advocate will say, what happened to you? And what can we do about it?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (11:41.133)
And what are your options? What are criminal options? What are civil options? What are Title IX options? What are therapeutic options? What can you do about this and what do you want to do? The survivor does not have to do anything. If the survivors want to connect and want to know their identity, the advocate will go over some risks that may happen if they choose to connect. And then it's that survivor's choice is to connect if they both want to.

And then those survivors connect and they pursue healing and justice, whatever that means for them. So we do not report the crimes. We do not report to Title IX police or HR. We do not investigate what happens. What we're really doing is connecting those survivors because we know that connecting them improves their mental health. It improves their understanding of what happened. It validates what happens. know, I have

A good friend of mine was raped by Jeffrey Epstein in the 1990s. And she talked about how she thought she was the only one. And she didn't understand what happened to her was sexual assault because she froze. And that's not how sexual assault was talked about in the 90s. Until 2017 or 2018 when there was an article written about Epstein and she saw his name in the paper. And she was like, that was the man who raped me. She didn't know his name.

or anything about that, but that was the moment she said, what he did to me was not okay because I wasn't the only one that he did that to. And I'm sharing that story with permission. Her name is Jess Michaels. She's on social media if you want to hear her story. She's got a TEDx talk as well. And so she knows that healing that can just happen, not to mention the accountability that can happen. And again, we saw that during the Me Too movement. And...

A lot of times students, college students, don't know what happened to them as sexual assault. And it seems odd to think about that, but some of the reasons, there's multiple reasons, but most people think about sexual assault is a man jumping out of the bushes or in a parking garage or attacking you. When that is a very small percentage of rapes and sexual assault, most of the time, 80 to 90 % of survivors know their perpetrator. So it's a friend. It's a significant other.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (14:02.087)
It is a classmate, it is a coach, it is a professor, it is a fraternity brother. know, there's, often, and it's coercive, and it's under the use of drugs or alcohol, and so you blame yourself for getting drunk when then somebody else took advantage of you. But taking advantage of somebody is just code language that we've created to say, I've assaulted somebody. I have.

I have raped somebody because what are you doing to take advantage of somebody? You're using a weakness where they were not able to consent into doing what you wanted to do.

James Moffitt (14:40.57)
And I guess that's where the date rape drug comes into play, right?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (14:46.769)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. mean, the amount of times, particularly women, but also men are drugged. But also in college, alcohol can be a date rape drug as well. You know, there's a lot of things in our society that are set up for girls' nights where girls don't have to pay to get into a bar, but men do. Well, that is for girls to drink more, to be more vulnerable.

James Moffitt (14:59.26)
Sure, sure.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (15:15.605)
And a lot of these things set up the vulnerability and you don't think about that, especially when you're in college. know, sorority, women in sororities are much more likely to be assaulted than women who are not in sororities because of the part, I mean, part of it is because the party culture, part of it is because of the fraternity culture. You know, there's a lot of different reasons behind that, but most of them don't report it.

James Moffitt (15:30.961)
Hmm.

James Moffitt (15:43.164)
Yeah, that's crazy. So how has your leadership at Callisto shaped your perspective on creating systemic change?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (15:52.553)
Hmm. You know, I think that that's a great question. I think that at Calisto, you know, what we do is really difficult. People don't want to hear about it. You know, they don't want to talk about sexual assault. They don't understand it. Then they don't understand the technology behind it. And the other part. And so it's like I have to lead through a lot of confusion. Why aren't you going faster? We need this more for people who do understand it. And for people that don't, it's really balancing bringing people along because

We want everybody to understand that they have access to this tool. Also, know, leading survivors. A lot of people on my team are survivors. A lot of people on the board of directors are survivors. I mean, people on all teams are survivors. But when we're dealing with this, where my social media person has to deal with the comments every day about threats to her safety, to our safety, because people in the comments don't like what we're saying.

There's a different type of leadership that has to happen there and a different type of understanding. And sometimes we have to go slower and we have to check in on each other and we have to practice self-care. And it's being patient with all of those where, you know, we also have to think about like in this day and age data is king, you know, and we want to protect the data as much as possible. So how do you lead from that perspective when people are only wanting data and wanting things to go fast and it's

really taking the time to make sure that I as a leader, one, am grounded and stable in all of that, but also making sure to protect my team and to check in in different ways. I think that Calisto has made me a better leader of the chat. I mean, even though I've been in this work for a long time, the challenges that we face is also unique.

James Moffitt (17:44.826)
Yeah, I'm sure it is. How can parents of adult children apply trauma-informed principles in their relationships?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (17:56.659)
That's an excellent question and the one that I'm most excited to answer on your podcast specifically. I think that the number one thing about being trauma informed and being trauma informed really just means that you understand how trauma works and that you do things to help mitigate and reduce the amount of trauma. So things like warning people that this episode was about sexual assault is being trauma informed because

you're giving people a choice on whether or not to listen to that, knowing how that might impact them. And I think with parents, especially in this college age time, a lot of times students, your children are not gonna tell you what happened. And you think that they will. And they probably won't, because they're not sure how you're gonna react. Maybe you don't approve of them drinking and they were drinking. Maybe it was and I told you so. Maybe you...

They know that you're a survivor and that this is gonna really impact you because you feel like you failed them because you wanted to protect them from this, whatever the case may be. But what parents can do to be trauma informed is that if their child comes to them and says, I have been assaulted or something bad happened, they might not use the words, I've been sexually assaulted or I've been raped, because they probably don't want to admit that, but to say something bad happened.

Sit with that and say, believe you. Tell me more. You need to take your own feelings of rage, of sadness, of whatever, and put those aside a bit. Because I think that, especially for dads, so many daughters don't tell their dads what happened because their dads like, I want, like my dad is like, I want to kill him. I want to do all of this stuff. You need to temper that.

and you need to be there for your child who is saying that you were assaulted and not just ask them, well, why did you drink so much? Why did you go to that party? Why did you do this? Why did you not do that? Why like, why did you wear what you wore? Whatever. And those questions don't matter. What do you need? How can I support you? I love you. You're safe. Those are the things that parents can really do to be trauma informed and they don't have to be experts. And part of it is also

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (20:16.713)
doing your own education. There's a really great book by Dr. Susan Sorensen about how parents can deal and cope with their own feelings about and how to respond to their children who may have been assaulted in college. But it's not hiding from it. A lot of times we don't want to hide about it. This is a really difficult topic. You don't understand, but parents can educate themselves. They can get their own knowledge.

and don't put that on their child to educate them while their child is also going through the pain of having been assaulted. There's also warning signs. know, if your child is all of sudden not doing well in school, they're dropping out, they seem to have changed personalities. Part of that is a normal college experience, right? And part of that is trauma, and it's experiencing something that maybe they don't understand or they haven't identified a sexual assault. And so it's just letting your child really lead the way to, of like,

Your first instinct might be, we need to go to police, we need to go to Title IX. Well, those systems aren't always the best and they might not do anything. so they are also sometimes a lot more traumatizing as well. so let your child lead that and be supportive and get your own help. Get into therapy yourself and also support your child and all of that. And we have some things on our website at ProjectCalisto.org that help allies, that help parents.

We've had some series to talk to parents about it. I've got to speak to parents about this and even for parents who have, you know, high school seniors about what to ask at the school, you know, how do you deal with reporting? How many people have been assaulted here? And a lot of people are like, well, if there's zero assaults at that school, it must be a safe school. I'm not a parent, but what I will say is I would never send my child to a school that has zero sexual assaults.

because that's not accurate. What that says to me is the school has a reporting issue and they're hiding the reports and they're not dealing with the reports of when it happens and that is more traumatic and that is more problematic to me. And so it's like learning what to ask, what questions to ask to those schools when you're doing those college tours. And there's a lot of things that parents can do in that.

James Moffitt (22:31.238)
So all of this comes full circle and hits kind of close to home for me. I had a daughter that experienced something like that. And my entire family, including my wife, kept that from me on purpose because they knew that I would have gone full Rambo mode and taken the matter of

into my own hands or they were afraid that I was going to do that, right? And my daughter, well, it kind of messed her up. She wound up in the hospital at some point because she needed a lot of therapy. And so, yeah, yeah, it's kind of ugly. And so, I mean, from that question, how can, how can mom and dad prepare

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (23:02.837)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (23:29.628)
How can they preemptively prepare their college age daughter as they are getting ready to enter into the campus life? What things can, and maybe mom and dad are not equipped, right? Maybe they are not beyond the basics, right? But what can they do to prepare their daughter for the eventuality of this being a possibility?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (23:59.925)
Yeah, and thank you for sharing. know that that's hard and I'm sure that some of my advice that I just gave you may or may not have taken and you may be thinking about all of that and that's normal and that's typical, I will say. But I think how to prepare them, I think that one of the things that we typically do particularly with daughters is like, don't drink too much or don't drink at all, don't go to a party, cover your drink, all these things, which are important.

and that reduces your risk, right? If you do some of those things. But those are also not realistic. We all, know, many of us went to college, we were all teenagers once. We don't always listen to our parents because we don't also understand the risk and we think that we're invincible. And so I think it's more that the better thing that parents can do is say, when this happens, please make sure that you tell me. And this is how I'm gonna react if you do. And I'm not gonna get it right necessarily.

but I want to be able to have a conversation about it because I love you. And I think that it's important for parents to understand that one in four women in college experience sexual assault, one in 15 men experience sexual assault in college. And so, you know, I think that it's important to realize that this is a reality. This is a reality for your child. And that is scary, scary, scary reality.

But the more you're prepared to deal with it and to make sure that your feelings about it aren't coming forward to your child, the better you can and to say this might happen. But part of it is that the trauma that happens and the PTSD and we're starting to call it PTSD, post-traumatic stress injury, because it's not necessarily a disorder, it's an injury if somebody did something to you, is...

circumvented when somebody responds in the right way and you have that support and you have that where you're not questioned and that changes the healing for you. so parents need to continue to remember that and to seek out those resources, but to recognize that you can't prevent it. Because what I would say is that parents need to be talking to their sons about not doing it. We talk about preparing our daughters, but really who is doing the assaulting? 98 % or 99 % of perpetrators.

James Moffitt (26:18.332)
Sure.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (26:23.493)
are men. So even when the victim is a man, so what are you doing to make sure that they're not quote unquote taking advantage of somebody, that they are being respectful for women, that they are making sure that if their friend got drunk, that if their friend got drunk that they are making sure they got home safe without then doing anything to them. You know, and I think that that is a key thing. What are you, what conversations are you having with your sons?

And I know that in this day and age, a lot of people are like, well, I'm worried about my son being falsely accused. And I will tell you that statistically, your son has a greater percentage chance of getting assaulted while in college than they do of being falsely accused. And so these are conversations that you need to have with your sons as well, because they are also victims in college. They are victims by coaches. think about the, there's Ohio State Wrestling Team.

there was Penn State maybe 10 years ago or something like that. They get assaulted in fraternity hazing. They don't recognize it as sexual assault because they label it as hazing instead. And that happens. And so it's doing your best to have the uncomfortable conversations and to prepare yourself to have the uncomfortable conversations that you never wanted to have, that you don't know how to have because you're not trained on it.

I can talk about this very confidently, very easily, because I've been doing this for 25 years, and so it's no longer an uncomfortable conversation for me. But that's not normal. That is absolutely not normal. But it's calling a rape crisis center hotline and saying, hey, I need some advice as a parent. How do I talk to my kid about this? They can walk you through that. They can easily walk you through that. It's getting support and help and following

accounts like Callisto on social media to get those tips and those tricks that can be really important for parents.

James Moffitt (28:29.338)
So as I listen to you say all these things, and it's really good stuff, and I hope that parents that need to hear this are listening and getting something out of it. But, and I'm gonna say something and it's probably coming from the perspective of a baby boomer, right?

James Moffitt (28:51.354)
I remember that when I worked at the College of Charleston and I saw all of the advertisements on the first floor. I want to say that I think that some college campuses are complicit in setting up events that encourage sexual activity. In other words, the college freely passed out condoms and they had sex toy parties.

that the college students were invited to go to. And I remember, you know, okay, you know, I'm, I'm very conservative. I'm a Christian. I'm a baby boomer. So I understand that where I'm coming from is probably not typical of maybe some of the listeners, you know, and I, and I get that. I graduated high school in May of 1980, right? So I was a child of the sixties and seventies, right? And so.

I understand that the glass that I'm looking through may be particularly tinted in, you know, one way or the other. And however, no matter what my perspective might be or where I'm coming from, I still feel like college campuses and the leadership there need to be a little more protective of

of, the kids that are, they're going to school there. Right. And I, and I, I get that we're all humans, right? We're infallible. You know, we have, we have drives that need to be satisfied. And it's very good that you talked about dads need to talk to their sons and go, this is not right. You don't have a right to touch somebody if they don't give you consent or permission. Right. And so you keep your hands off of them. And, and especially if.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (30:46.047)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (30:49.988)
Everybody's inebriated or on drugs or whatever that doesn't give you a license to do whatever you please. Right. And so a lot of that, a lot of that training has to happen way before you have that conversation before they're going to college. You don't have that conversation, you know, an hour and a half before you put them in the car with all their stuff and take them to the, you know, move in day at, at the local campus, you know, you should be teaching them that, as part of life skills and being a good human and, and.

how to treat women, right, or not treat women, you know, how to be respectful, you know, and honoring who they are as individuals, right? And that needs to be taught, you know, probably from the age of eight all the way up to 18, you know, that's a message that should be reverberating in their brains, you know, and should be ingrained in them.

to understand that, right? And so that when you have that conversation when they're 18, you know, they're like, yeah, okay, I understand this training. I know what you're talking about and I agree. you know, and so, mean, parents can only do the best that they can do, right? You know, and sometimes crap happens, you know, despite your best efforts, right? But parents can't be complicit in that.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (32:12.693)
Absolutely.

James Moffitt (32:16.09)
Well, that's a, that's a tough discussion and I'm, don't know what to say or how to, you know, it's like, don't even, I don't even remember, know, the birds and the bees. don't even remember what my parents, if they ever even talked to me about that, I don't think they ever did. You know, it was just, it was just, there was such a stigma and taboo about that conversation. And that's a conversation that only adults have and you know, and, and so you have young people that are

going out into the world, you know, and then all of a sudden they're faced with these god awful experiences and they don't, they don't, they're not prepared for that. They don't know how to handle that, you know, and it happens. And then they then, and then you, then you've got the aftermath and the fallout of all that. And then, you know, they're scared to say anything and it's ugly.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (32:55.007)
Mm-hmm.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (33:06.037)
Well, I will say, yeah, it is. And I will say, you know, to your point about schools being complicit in a lot of this, I agree. I don't necessarily agree with with the way you said that they're complicit. think that they're complicit in protecting perpetrators. They protect professors, they protect coaches, they protect athletes that will be a bad PR image for them if it gets out that that person has been a perpetrator and that they did protect their students. Right.

James Moffitt (33:30.438)
Yeah, and that's horribly wrong.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (33:33.705)
But I will say that sex positivity of passing out condoms, of having sex toy parties is actually a good thing for sexual assault prevention. And I will tell you why.

We have, and you know, I'm a Gen Xer raised by boomers and actually my dad's technically silent generation. I understand of like, I wasn't taught about the birds and the bees either. had like, my mom had one conversation and that was it. And sex was a thing that was shameful. Don't have it. That was it, right? And that, that.

James Moffitt (34:11.707)
Right, right.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (34:14.269)
And when you have that shame and you have these situations of, got drunk and I had sex, but I didn't want to, I don't know the difference of is that sexual assault? Because that doesn't look like what I've been taught about sexual assault. And so now I'm a bad person or I have shame around this because I had sex and my parents don't want me having sex. And so how do I tell them that? And so there's also, it's, you know, I've said this for years of,

We have a difficult time talking about sex with our clothes on. And if you cannot talk about sex with your clothes on, how do you expect to talk about sex and boundaries and consent with your clothes off? We don't know how to do that. And part of that is shame around talking about sex. And so if we have shame around exploring your body and talking about sex and all of that, that fuels the shame around sexual violence and it helps perpetrators get away with what they've done.

because then they can say, it's their fault. they were the slut. They wore two revealing clothes. What am I supposed to do about that? Boys will be boys. All of these things. if, so we need to break some of that, what boomers were taught, baby boomers, because it protected perpetrators. And it's really uncomfortable. And it seems completely counterintuitive to faith.

organizations and people of faith for sure, but it's not because you can still have these conversations and still say, wait till marriage. Those things are not necessarily either or. You can say, here's how you use a condom and here's why you should use a condom, but...

Also, wait until you're in love, wait until you're married, wait until all of this stuff. But we know that college students are gonna do what college students do no matter what, and so it's better to prepare them for that and to have those conversations and for them not to be scared. And I know that the same way you were talking about your daughter, my parents didn't talk about sex. So how would I talk to them about being assaulted, which I wasn't assaulted in college.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (36:32.245)
But I wouldn't have told them because of that, because they wouldn't have known what to say. And even, you know, about three months ago, my mom asked me, and I've been doing this work for 25 years. And she said, I have a question to ask you. And I said, what's that, mom? And she's like, I've always wondered, did you do this because somebody did something to you? It took her 25 years of me doing this work to ask me that question.

because I'd never talked to her about anything. And I was able to say, no, Mom. Have people grabbed me? Yes. Have people touched me inappropriately without my consent? Yes. Has anybody raped me? No. But it took her that long because my mom cannot talk about sex. And I think that that is part of the thing. And so I appreciate you saying what you did.

And I appreciate you saying like, is hard for me and that this is the way that our generation was taught because I agree with that. And I think that parents, even Gen X parents have like, there's a lot of Gen X parents that still believe in this. My sister is one. And so when my sister's girls, like our teenagers and she's like, you go talk to them about this because I'm not doing it. You know, and I think it's difficult.

But find a friend that can talk to them. Find an auntie. Find, you know, that can actually have the conversations. Because if you're not going to do it, that's fine. Like, I get it. It is difficult. But find somebody who can.

James Moffitt (38:06.031)
So.

Coming back to the faith related topic or the faith related issues or perspective, my experience in church has been that church has taken the approach of trying to instill biblical fear into the hearts of young people, basically saying, if you have sex, that's a sin and you're going to go to hell, you know?

abstinence is obviously been a huge talking point in the church and there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with telling young people it's better to wait until you're in love and you're married and all of that, right? And there's some cultural and religion quote-unquote

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (38:48.991)
No, absolutely not.

James Moffitt (39:07.362)
space there that has kind of taught people for generations that abstinence is the ultimate key towards birth control. If you don't have sex, you don't have to worry about having kids. And I'm a parent of four children, so I understand how all that works. And I didn't go into all of that with my eyes closed.

I knew what was going on. But anyhow, yeah, churches.

I don't want to say churches are complicit, but I would just say that some of their teachings was maybe a little heavy-handed, and that they were teaching from the position of fear, you know, versus educating, you know, a little more delicately, you know. And it's not the church's place either. It's the parent's place to have those conversations at home behind closed doors. And what the...

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (40:01.812)
Yeah.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (40:14.623)
Yes.

James Moffitt (40:16.004)
church's teaching, whether it be Sunday school, special sex ed classes, I don't know. Whatever they're teaching there should be reflective of what the parents are teaching as well, right?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (40:29.097)
Yeah. And I think, you know, it gets, it's not all churches, it's not all religions, it's not all any of that. But I do, I think that you're right in the fact that some of those teachings can be really problematic. And you look at the Catholic church, you look at, you know, there's a lot of different churches that have these sexual abuse coverups and, you know, priests are taught celibacy and yet they're abusing children. But people don't want to believe that priests

James Moffitt (40:34.651)
Right. Right.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (40:58.495)
who are these leaders of these faith leaders can do these awful things so then they don't believe the children. And that is part of the system that is set up to cover up perpetrators, which is how some of these priests and other pastors of other religions and everything else have gone on to abuse so many children. And some of those teachings, is a way to teach, like absence only education is not a problem. But if that's the only thing that you're doing,

It is a problem because we know that there are many amazing Christians out there who still had sex before marriage and who are still preaching to their children not to have sex before marriage and nothing happened to them as far as like, know, they weren't damned to hell. Maybe they will be, I don't know, but like it's, you know, like I guess judgment day, you know, but I don't think so. you know, judgment day is on their own, but like, you know,

James Moffitt (41:49.596)
I don't think so.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (41:57.647)
Most people have had sex before marriage. So let's go with the reality of what we are as humans and then figure out how to put your faith around that in a healthy way that keeps people safe because that's the real faith, right? Of love and faith and all of that and we want to protect people, we want to protect children and we want to protect from this and really think about how some of those beliefs do that. And there's a beautiful way.

to use faith to do that. And I think that there's a lot of faith communities that are doing that. And I think that there's a lot of faith communities that are not. And again, if you continue to shame people about this, it's just gonna push people into silence. Elizabeth Smart was, I don't know if you remember her name, but back in the 90s, I think it was, she was abducted in Utah. And one of the things that she had said, and she was,

you know, in captivity and she was young. I think she was like 10. I might be getting that wrong. But you know, she's got a podcast and she's talked about this for years now of she was in the Mormon community and how in that community they talked about the chewing gum thing where if you have sex with one person, then you are a chewed piece of gum. And so by the time you get to your husband, they don't want a chewed piece of gum. They want a fresh piece of gum. And I might be getting that analogy a little bit wrong. But so when she was molested,

by the people that had talked to her, she didn't want to go back to her parents because she was like, I am now a chewed piece of gum and nobody's gonna want me and I have committed the ultimate sin because I let this happen to me. And I think that that is where faith can really get into a survivor's head of I could have prevented this. And a lot of the lists that we give about how to prevent people from getting sexually assaulted, cover your drink, don't go out at night.

don't wear revealing clothing. What happens when all of that happens and somebody still assaults you? The only person, like then it just leads to self blame. The only person that is responsible for sexual assault is the perpetrator. Hands down, hands down. That is it. I could go and walk down the street naked and the only thing that should happen is that somebody should try to give me a blanket to cover up. Nobody should assault me.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (44:19.827)
because that is still the problem with the perpetrator.

James Moffitt (44:22.758)
Right? So, grace covers a multitude of sins. Right? That's what my Bible tells me. However, there are consequences to actions. Right? And if you're a predator, which when I think of the Catholic Church and priests that abused a multitude of boys, you know,

behind closed doors, under the guise of leadership, under the guise of holiness, right? Priests and pastors of churches should be held to a higher standard and we should expect them not to be sexual predators, right? And I mean the thought of that just, you know, is revolting and yet they're human, you know, and they're fallible and

You know, some of them, not all of them, some of those leaders, those religious leaders did things, unspeakable things to children that they should have never done. And the Catholic Church has a huge, huge black eye over the years. mean, for it, it was, I don't know how long it had, I mean, I'm not an expert on this, right? So.

How many, how many of us have never heard about this, about the Catholic church? We all know about it. You know, we all know that it happened. We don't know when it happened. We don't know how long it happened, but every time there was a story that came out about this happening, we found out that it's been going on for years. It didn't just, it wasn't just one isolated incident. Yeah. It's probably still going on. And so what did the Catholic church do? And if you're, if you're listening to this and you're Catholic, I apologize, but

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (46:02.581)
It's still going on.

James Moffitt (46:14.458)
You know, a lot of times the diocese would find out that there was a problem priest and instead of bringing them to justice and kicking them out of the church, what did they do? They moved them to another parish, right? They just picked them up and moved them because they thought that was going to hide the issue. Well, it did for a little bit, but guess what? Sin has always found out. It always rears its ugly head. You can't, you can't.

You can't hide it because especially today with the technology we have at our disposal, right? People talk, people send emails, people are in chat groups, you know, people, you know, it gets out eventually. And, and so what happens is, is that we all look at the, know, what, whether it be the Catholic church or a Protestant church or whatever it is, if we find out that they're, they've been hiding the fact instead of dealing with the issue, however, that might

take place, then all of a sudden you're like, oh, wow, guess what? can't, we can't trust those people. We can't trust that organization any longer. You know, and it's horrible.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (47:22.633)
Right, and I think that it's institutional. So anytime you have institutions, there's a power dynamic. And that happens within churches, it happens within religions, there's a power dynamic there. And it's the same for institutions with colleges. There's a power dynamic. And what you're describing of like, you can go to a different church, you can go to a different area or whatever. We call that pass the trash. And it happens in every institution. It happens in the military, it happens in institutions, it happens in religions.

And it's because they would rather get rid of the problem rather than to deal with the problem and have people know about it. And why is that? And so that happens all over the place. And that is one of the things that we really need to start to really talk about is that we start to focus on individual survivors, which is important. But how do these serial perpetrators get away with it?

they cannot get away with it if the system doesn't allow it. And you know, even with the Catholic Church, and there might be another, I don't know if it's Methodist or Baptist, but there's another church that I can't think of right now, but there's a statute of limitations laws. there's, statute of limitations is when can, like how long ago could the assault happen before you can actually still report it to, for either criminal or civil cases.

The Catholic Church put millions of dollars of fighting ending statute of limitation cases.

That is not the individual priest's issue. And again, it's not like my family is Catholic. There are a lot of really amazing Catholic people. There are a lot of really amazing Catholic priests. There are a lot of really amazing people that are fighting against this within their church the whole time. It is not the religion's issue. It is the institution's issues and it's the people within those places that are problematic that we need to talk about more.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (49:23.593)
and we need to not fear the shame. And I think that's part of the reporting issue that we're trying to do at Callisto is to connect these survivors so they can come forward, so they can fight those institutions together, so we can change the institutions because the institutions are not gonna change on themselves until there's an economic advantage to changing the system. So schools have an economic advantage to actually keeping survivors quiet.

because if they have these cases, their numbers go down, they're in the headlines for bad PR, rather than saying like, look, we had this really bad person, every school has a really bad person, and we're getting rid of them and we're holding them accountable and we're making sure that they don't go to another school to be able to offend again. That is what we should be praising. Not that it happened, it is going to happen. In every school, in every church, in every place, there is going to be sexual assault and abuse.

Any institution, any workplace there's a dynamic, a power dynamic, it will happen. How are we dealing with it when it happens? again, going back to parents, how are you dealing with it when it happens? And that is the most important part is that assume that it's, unfortunately assume that it's gonna happen. Maybe 10, 20 years from now, we can make some changes. And I would love to assume that it's not gonna happen, but.

I know my friends, I know my family, I know the people that I work with, and I know how many survivors are out there. It's happening, and trying to ignore it and pretending that it's not doesn't change that it's happened and that it's still happening.

James Moffitt (50:59.578)
Right. Sadly enough. All right. So we've got, we're at 52 minutes, right? And I, I feel like you and I could probably talk about this for hours, right? There's a lot, there's a lot of questions to be asked. and, I like where this conversation has gone. And so I want to give you like three or four minutes to, to kind of wrap all this up and, and you're talking to parents of adult children. what would you.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (51:12.19)
I'm sure we could.

James Moffitt (51:28.976)
What would you tell them?

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (51:32.053)
I think the first thing I would say is to breathe. You know, I'm sure that there are parents out there like yourselves that have experienced this already and are questioning every decision that they've made. And just take a moment and breathe. If you're a survivor, take a moment and breathe. This is not easy to deal with. And reach out for resources. Go to our website. Contact me, Tracy at ProjectCalisto.org.

T-R-E-C-Y, no E. And reach out to me and ask me a question about it. I would be happy to chat. I talk with parents. I do workshops. If you're interested in getting a group of parents together, through your church, through your community, whatever, I would be happy to come and chat.

Challenge yourself to think in new ways. For some of your listeners, this is gonna be the first time they've ever thought about this issue, especially for some of the dads out there, right? And even some of the moms who have probably buried their own trauma or don't really wanna think about it. so it's take a breath and challenge yourself on one of the ideas. You might not have agreed with everything that I've said. I will promise you that everything I've said has come from research. It has come from

anecdotal experience and it's from talking to thousands and thousands of survivors over the last 25 years. And so, but take one nugget and change one thing and challenge yourself to have one conversation or call out one person and, you know, talk to your kids about this. Open-ended questions, not the do you questions, but the what's going on at your college with this?

How are you handling this? How do your friends talk about this? And be curious, you know, really just be curious rather than judgmental or thinking about what you know is right because maybe it's not and maybe your best intentions. I'm sure all parents have the best intentions to protect and love their children, but sometimes those best intentions fall short. And so pause and figure out how yours might be falling short. And that is.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (53:51.573)
That self-reflection is the hardest thing to do, especially as a parent. The challenge yourself to do that. And again, follow us on social media if you can, at Callisto on Instagram or on LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn as well and go to our website. And we've got a lot of resources there. Callisto dot. Uh huh. Yep. It's Project Callisto dot org.

James Moffitt (54:12.496)
What's the website? I'm trying to find it and I can't find it.

James Moffitt (54:19.26)
project.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (54:19.869)
And Callisto is C-A-L-L-I-S-T-O.

James Moffitt (54:26.918)
Well, I guess it helps when you type the right thing, right? I'm sitting here with all fumbled fingers trying to figure out how to find it. So I want to share it with the, those people that are watching the, the video portion of this and share. There we go. so there's a place that immediately subscribe to the newsletter, what to find out if your perpetrator harmed someone.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (54:30.429)
You

James Moffitt (54:57.304)
else with Callisto you can. So this is the website projectcallisto.org

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (55:13.065)
And you know, I didn't say this at the beginning, but 90 % of sexual assaults on college campuses are committed by serial perpetrators who on average offend six times while in college. And so if we can find those perpetrators after two assaults rather than six, we can actually reduce college sexual assault by 59%. And so, you know, talk to your daughters, but also talk to your sons who might be one of those serial perpetrators again, you know. We don't want to believe that about our kids by any means.

James Moffitt (55:36.879)
Right?

James Moffitt (55:40.956)
Of course not.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (55:42.793)
But it doesn't mean that your sons, your nephews, your people that you love that are, I always say, when I worked with offenders, they were kids, they were 17, 16 year old kids, 90 % of what they did, they were really good people. And then they did these really, really awful heinous things. So you can be a good person, you can be charismatic, and typically you're like,

You get away with it more, the more charismatic you are. And that's what happens. And I could go, we could do a whole other hour about that.

James Moffitt (56:21.072)
Well, I would like to say that I would like to have you back on and we can cover something else, you know, another topic that we haven't covered here. And,

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (56:25.044)
love to.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (56:30.344)
Yeah, you know, and maybe your audience has questions that we could do a Q &A to to get some specific questions that parents have about how to handle this.

James Moffitt (56:38.672)
Yeah, absolutely. So that brings us to the end of another episode of ABCs of Parenting Adult Children. A big thank you to Tracy for sharing her experience, wisdom, and heart with us today. Tracy's insights remind us that parenting doesn't stop when our kids grow up. It simply changes shape. If today's episode resonated with you, be sure to follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you know someone navigating the challenges of parenting adult children, share this episode with them.

It might be just what they need to hear. You can find more resources, past episodes and ways to connect with us at parentingadultchildren.org, which is my website. Follow us on Instagram, at parentingadultchildren125. And if you have a story or question you'd like to share, send us an email at talkpac.proton.me. It's talkpac.proton.me. And more specifically to this podcast episode, if you have questions for Tracy.

or topics that you would like to see covered or hear covered in a future episode, absolutely send me an email and I can forward that on to Tracy as well. So to the listening audience, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time and have a blessed day. Tracy, thank you for being here.

Tracy DeTomasi - She/her (57:55.285)
Thank you so much for having me.

James Moffitt (57:56.764)
Yeah.