TRIGGER WARNING - Interview with Rape Academy Survivor Amanda Willett Complete Interview

62 million visit and so few victims know or come forward. Sex trafficking and how hard to be believed when you escape. Why must you fight to be heard? Discussing her journey to become a forensic nurse after not being believed.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the Can I Brow Your Skin podcast. I am your host, Angeli Clemens, and we're going to end May with a conversation on human trafficking. Now, the rest of May was while some of the topics were very serious, this is probably one of the most serious topics I will cover all year. But it's an important topic. And human trafficking is considered modern-day slavery. Most people hear human trafficking, they immediately think sex work is sex trafficking, but there's also labor traffic human trafficking as well. This is a staggering number to me. Almost 25 million people worldwide are a victim of human trafficking. 77% of those guys are forced labor. Now, when you get down to then the 20%, 23% of them that are sex trafficked, 78% of them are girls and women. And of that 78%, 92% of them are adults. And so we're looking at a fairly large percentage of adult women who are sex trafficked. And it's it's a staggering amount. While there's no US specific numbers, the worldwide stats are fairly consistent over time. And the reason why I'm talking about this today, uh, I'm as a forensic toxicologist, one of the things that I do tests for are people who are victims of drug-facilitated crimes. And a large amount of those drug-facilitated crimes are sexual assaults and sexual abuse. And today I'm actually being joint remotely with a forensic nurse by the name of Amanda Willett. And the reason why I'm talking to Amanda today is because she is a victim of sex trafficking. And her journey with trying to be heard is what led her to her career change and to become a forensic nurse. I want to welcome Amanda here and we'll talk with Amanda. Okay, so as I said uh in my previous recording to set this up, I am joined by Amanda, who is a survivor of sex trafficking. And as much as I spoke about you in my introduction recording, I would never do it justice. Uh, all the amazing things that I know about you. So, Amanda, I'm gonna go ahead and give you a chance to introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Angelique, I appreciate this opportunity. Um, I'm just now coming into being vocal about the things that I've survived coming forward, sharing my story. Um I am, what can I say? I'm a single mom. I'm in San Antonio, Texas. I am a labor and delivery nurse. I am a 100% disabled veteran. I have gone to war for this country. Yes. Um, I uh I'm a single mom of three boys who I store like active mom boy mom through and through. And I I feel the need to preface this story by saying these things. And this has been my fight for the past 1,121 days and trying to get justice because of the ways that I have been treated, because of the ways that I have my my the crimes that were committed against me have been dismissed, minimized. Um, I I really just I want to get into it and I want to talk about all this stuff. So love it.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

So let's jump right in. And one of the things I want to first talk about is the fact that your crimes are dismissed. And we've spoken about this on previous episodes of my podcast. Me myself being a victim of sexual assault, not just from someone I knew, but also by a physician. It is so common, unfortunately, for victims of sexual assault to be dismissed. And I would love for you to talk about one, your journey to get justice. And then we'll we'll take a step back and talk about the crime and the science later. But I want to I want to give you a space to talk about the fact that as a victim, you are usually the one put on trial when you go to report.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Absolutely. The burden of proof is continuously placed back on the victim. Um I I believe that I have a unique scenario where I'm I'm pushing 50 years old. I have enough life experience to know good systems. Thank you. But I I have this is this is one of my main talking points because I have enough life experience. I, you know, I have a prior military career, I know how to go up chains of command, I know how to navigate around a lot of the BS that you're gonna encounter. And I can honestly say, and when you find out the details of the things that I have survived, this is a pretty bold statement. And I can say this, I'm saying it with my chest. I don't know what has been worse. The things that were done to me on the back end by criminals or the ways that I have been treated by people in paid positions to help. And um, this has been the most dehumanizing experience that I have ever encountered in my life. Um that says a lot. Yeah, I've I've been through a a lot of things. I have been through a lot of hard things. I have um I'm very well versed in making it through really hard things. And um this has almost taken me out at times. Um, and it's been it's been three years. It's, I mean, I count. And and there's this is one of the first things that I want to say. I count the days because this feels like a prison sentence. And I need for people to understand. If you go back and you look at my social media posts, I'm always, you know, whatever I did post when I finally got you know, enough courage or the bravery, everything. Like, I don't know if you've if people fully understand what it takes to come out and start speaking about these things, given the way that society receives, you know, and looks at us. And um, and it it's just been this has been my experience that I count the days because this feels like purgatory or something. Like I am trapped in this crazy long isolation isolation season where I know exactly, and let me make this clear first and foremost, I know exactly what was done to me. I know it's not, I'm not searching for validation, I'm not searching for people to get on my side, and believe me, I am here to share my story, and my story is powerful. And um that yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

You you are a beacon for other people who've been through it. And I think for me, that's one of the reasons why I finally said I I've gone through this as well. Like I was I was um sexually assaulted by an uncle when I was in high school, um, senior year in high school, and I was lucky that it was um not penetrative. Um, but then you get to college and you know, frat party this is, and then dealing with what I dealt with with a physician when I was going through a medical crisis, to have that courage because one, you walk into it knowing that Olivia Benson and Stabler, and like those that is a wonderful program, and it has absolutely helped more women step up. But let's be clear it's not like that. You don't have police officers holding your hand and hugging you tightly and on your side and you know, banging tables for you. You're the one sitting in that room telling your story, crying, and having them say, Are you sure? Are you sure? Give me proof. And it's one of those things where it is it is hard. Like I and my husband can attest to this. I was like, I walked out, I was crying, I was like, fuck this shit, we're leaving. And I was one of those people, I'm still one of those people that I am baffled by the way that as a police department it's handled. And as a taxpayer, this is what we allow. So, you know, and I I I I am aware of your story, and you went through so many more leaps and bounds than I did too. I did like I I went to the local police department, I reached out to the hospitals, and after hitting brick wall, hitting brick wall, I said, fuck it, and I gave up. Yeah, you you didn't do that, and I I am so amazing. You are admirable for fighting for yourself. So let's walk through that.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Thank you. And that the way that you described it is exactly what it feels like when you try to navigate getting justice for the things that were done. Like I'm I'm the victim here. These things were done to me. I didn't ask for any of this. And and the crimes that were committed against me, it's not just some little petty, no, these are. I have, I'm just gonna come out and say this that it wasn't just um I am a I am a survivor of the rape academy.

SPEAKER_03 9:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

I was drugged long term by the man that I consider to be my boyfriend, the man that I loved and trusted. Um, and you want to know how it happens? I can tell you exactly how it happens. I can, and and that's one thing that I can't wait to get into with you. And this is this is where my journey into forensics nursing has come into play because I refuse, I refuse to be the the amount of doors that have been slammed in my face.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

And let's talk about those doors and then we'll pivot to what actually happened because I love I I love that you can stand up and say, you know, I too was a victim of Rape Academy, and we'll talk about that because it is currently in the news, and you know, a lot of people didn't know it existed. I'll be honest with you. I I as as a survivor, I didn't know it existed. And when that story broke, I was like, son of a bitch. So you you you went through every chain of command you could go through, and I I commend you, and I can clearly tell by the limps that you went that you're military. You were like, Okay, okay, okay, so talk about next.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah, um waking up, and and there's there I want to get into it more, we will, but waking up and realizing, and it was a slow wake up, um, but you run to all the places, and and this is what I want to really, really hit home because you run to all the places that we're trained to go to from a very early age.

unknown 11:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

There are three places that we're trained as little kids. If you're ever in trouble, time of emergency, of crisis, if somebody is coming for you, or if you know you need help, you can go and it doesn't matter what it is, you can go to one of these three places and you are gonna get help. You're gonna get the help that you need. And there is this myth that you know, we what I watch first 48, we watch SVU, we watch all these shows where it's like, oh wow, these things happen. And then there are detectives, there's people in place who are gonna actually investigate. You would think that an investigator, like part of your your job title, it's in the job title of what you're supposed to be doing, and you would think that some sort of investigation would have been would have been done. And I first of all, it was a fight, even with mounds of evidence and the fact that nobody is doing anything about this, and I am still fighting for justice, and just talking about the the walls that you you talk about running into brick walls, this is exactly what it feels like. Every single time that I would go um to one of these organizations thinking this time somebody's gonna listen to me. This time I'm making it this I have what this journey for me looked like was first of all, um, you know, running to the police, I had to beg and beg and beg for them to do anything other than a police report.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

I presented from the very from the jump, I have evidence that needs to be tested. Right. I have a lot of evidence. Um I was drugged and some really horrible things happened to me. Right. And I was told by police, this is I'm in San Antonio, Texas. And if you understand um the demographics of what goes on down here, um there's a lot, this is a very big hub for sex trafficking. Okay, and so it kind of with it in understanding that you would expect law enforcement to move a little bit different. Because there was especially early on, it took me, it took me, it took me eight months after the initial, you know, big huge impact for me to even understand, oh wow, I why would the man that I was in love with who had access to me, who could have sex with me whenever he wanted to, why would he have been drugging me? Right. You start asking questions, and it's and that's where the whole rape academy thing comes in.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

And for those who don't know, um in in March of February, March of 2026, uh, there was a big story that was broke by CNN, and it came out that this woman, Giselle, over in France, learned that her husband was going to this porn site. And when you go to this porn site, there's a whole site within this porn site, and it's it was motherless.com, I believe is what it morphed into. And there were men, husbands, boyfriends, etc., that were drugging their significant others so that they themselves, and or they themselves and other men could have sex with her without her knowledge. And um this website got tens of thousands of views every single month, and so it was absolutely despicable. And the the woman herself, Giselle, who helped break this case, um, it was proven that she was um raped. So sex was being had with her without her knowledge over 200 times by 70 different men, including her husband. And he was advocating for this. And not only did he advocate for this, he was actually posting self-help tips. Like, if you give this or if you do that, if you do this, you could do that, um, you'll be more successful. And there was even a part of um this rape academy where they were suggesting different substances to use and the durations and how to use it, and how how you would go about raping your spouse or your significant other. And it got so bad that they were actually posting videos of of these sex acts, which is one of the reasons why people started to get prosecuted. I know that there have been prosecutions in France and in Poland and um a few other places in the EU. I don't believe that there's been any arrests or prosecutions that started to happen here in the US, which is bullshit to me because the US were there were a lot of um just on IP addresses, there were a lot of people visiting the site in the United States, and um it was it's it still bothers me. And you know, when this started to break in February and March and in April, here we are at the end of May, and their IP addresses. There, there are CNN is an American-based news station, and they've been able to prove that Americans not only have been visiting this site, but they've been posting to it. And so you have to ask if all these other countries, I know North Africa places in Northern Africa have done prosecutions. Um, I know Australia, there have been some prosecutions in the country continents of Australia. So as you start to see more and more places, one ban the site, two, start to prosecute people on this site. Where's America?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Where's America?

SPEAKER_01 16:32

I'm gonna tell you where we're at and I'm gonna tell you what I've discovered. And yeah, let me let me just um I also I feel like I need to throw this out there that I thank God I had a team of professionals. When when everything first happened, I couldn't be left alone. I am terrified out of my mind of the things that I've survived. And I thank God that I have had some amazing people in my life to help me heal from this. And now it's taken three years, it's been over three years now, where I can finally come forward, tell my story with 100% certainty. Nobody can come tell me a thing about anything that I have survived and the things that I have been through. This is my story, it's powerful, it needs to be talked about. And going to you know, the the rape academy, the motherless.com, the 6.2 million. I don't I don't know if people understand 6.2 million 62 million, your decimal ball. 62 million. Okay, 62 million hits and and people discussing these things. One moment, yeah, and the but this is the thing that um like one of the things that we need to talk about. This is happening right up underneath your nose. Right here, right here, and you don't have to go to these underground websites to go to go look for this. This is not dark web. This is no, it's right here.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Let's talk about what happened to you.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Um, in a nutshell, and I am I have a a forthcoming book.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Yes, yeah, so what you want to share because first and foremost, I I I would love, love, and I love the fact that you are talking about your book here now because we don't have enough information out there for women to talk about like we we train young girls, and I was one of the young girls, you know, dress a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way, don't go around that family member, don't go around this person, don't be left alone with that person. And you know, there are a lot of influencers right now say the onus should be on people training the boys, but it's not, it's always on the young girl. Don't show your stomach, don't show your lead, don't you know, don't flirt with the guy you like because he might take it the wrong way. You might want to hold hands, he might want more. Like, I I love the fact that not only are you writing a book and talking about your experiences, but in that book, and also today, you're saying this is what it felt like for me. This is, and we're gonna get specifically into some medications and into some of the drug testing and what things look like, and I'm here for it. We're gonna hurt out today. I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yeah, yeah. So, um, in a nutshell, and I'm I'm I go into full detail, and when I say full detail, full disgusting, intimate details of the things that I have survived, and I can come forward and uh that shame doesn't belong to me. I love through through my healing, I've that's not mine to hold. That's somebody else's to hold. And I'm and by the time that I'm done with doing everything that I'm doing, right? It's no here, take this. This is not mine to hold. It's not mine, it's not mine. And I love that. Yeah. Um I got involved with a man that I had known for a while. Um, to me, he felt like a well-respected person in my community, uh, somebody that I could trust. We had a history. Um 2021, we got we entered into a romance, a romantic relationship. Um and from the jump, I know, I know, and I there's when you read my book, you'll understand all of the details and how everything just was intertwined. Um, he was drugging me without my knowledge or consent. Wow. From the jump. From the jump. From the jump. And um a lot of the things, this is this is what I'm so happy that you and I are here and you can kind of shed some light on the forensics part of it. I'm just coming, I'm just coming to this fight. And I don't care how long it takes. Like, I have no problem confront, you know, confronting anybody, calling people out. And that's exactly what I'm doing. And by writing my book, by sharing my story, by going public and speaking about the things that were done to me, um, I am number one, I'm reclaiming my power. Yes, and and number two, I know that enough. Yeah, but I am this is what you're doing. You're stopping the bleed, you are exposing the evil that is happening right where it stands. And I love that. By the time that I'm done doing everything that I'm doing, the everyone is gonna know the things that these men did to me.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah, and I love that. Yeah, absolute accolade standing on a chair clapping for you, I'm here for it. Thank you. I absolutely love that. So let's talk, Sue. And I I apologize for cutting you off. You had the evidence, you went up that chain of command, and you hit every brick wall there was to hit. And because you did not have people listening to you, and you still have the evidence, which I love. People don't realize there's some things which Like, and I think I talked about this before in one of my episodes, with your half-life. Yeah, there are some things that have very quick half-lives, which is why they are used for sexual assaults. Drug facilitates sexual assault is what it's called. DFSA. They have very, very quick sexual assaults, and that's why they're used for that. But your but that's only in urine. Um, so you can actually test um drugs in several mediums. So most people know about urine, they know about breath because of roadside breath testing. Some of them know about saliva because you can use saliva on on roadsides, but you can do hair in a living person. You do vitreous, which is the eyeball jelly, and people who are no longer living. You can do stomach content and both living and non-living people, you can do liver testing, and they usually only do that in the deceased because it is painful to get a liver sample, but you can get a liver sample. Pretty much anywhere you can biopsy, you can biopsy to get a drug sample. So they have this thing called drug distribution. So depending on how the drug acts in the body, it can redistribute in certain areas. That's usually only commonly studied in what's called post-mortem testing or looking at dead people. And that's very common when you have a crime, and it could be a drug-facilitated crime, it could be um an accident on the roadside, it could be an overdose. There's a lot of different ways where they will test the contents of a deceased person. And so that's where you get into some of that post-mortem redistribution. And I wanted to mention that because luckily Amanda's still alive, but she is going to talk about her testing on some different matrices, is what we call it. So hair's a matrix, blood's a matrix, oral fluid is a matrix, and there is a difference between saliva and oral fluid. And I'm not gonna nerd out that hard. So we're just gonna say taking from the mouth. Um, you urine, obviously, you can get certain cells. You can actually scrape certain cells. Usually it's the mouth, but you can do um for most drug-facilitated crimes, they will take cells from the vagina as well. And so we're gonna talk about that. So floor back to Amanda. So you got some, and obviously drug paraphernalia as well. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Yeah, and so um this is another issue. That how does this happen, right? Um, this man and I have relied heavily. I have PTSD, I've been to war, I've experienced a lot of trauma in my life and not on any medication, thank God. Oh, wow. Yeah, congratulations on that. Thank you. But I relied heavily on cannabis um for you know at night to be able to sleep through the night. Um PTSD stuff. And so this guy and I bonded on that early on. And so understanding that that was absolutely an avenue where, believe it or not, we does get laced. Police want to say that it doesn't, um, people have put this back on me, and I'm gonna get into that in a second. But that was kind of the catalyst for everything. And so, over a two-year course relationship, I was drugged long term without my knowledge or consent. Um, and I believe that now, like not only am I survived a survivor, I am a medical professional. I have clinical knowledge and understanding of pathophysiology, of pharmacology, and you know, everything that I experienced, I can now put um medical jargon, the terms, you know, all the terminology to it. To understand exactly what I went through. And so um leading up to what happened when everything came to a halt on the 25th of April 2023, I was assaulted. He assaulted me, and that was bad enough in and of itself. Uh, broken nose, blunt head trauma, concussion, bruises and scratches all over. I fought back. Yes, I fought back. I have a story to tell, and it's powerful.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Um just too because not everyone who listens to this is going to be a medical professional. She got a lot of bruising and scratches. She got hit in the head enough where her brain actually went back and forth, and the brain itself actually bruised and needed time to heal. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

So there was that was one thing that was the assault. Yes. But the next day on the 26th of April 2023, I was murdered. And I say that because um this was he absolutely came back and tried to take my life. And uh I am a survivor of a near-death experience where I and I can describe it to a T, we can get into that, because I faded away. Yeah, I was um he came through at the end. And there's a reason why, when you understand the whole dynamics of everything, why would he come and try to murder me at the end? I'm gonna get to that in a second. This happened on the 26th, uh, late night hours. Um, and by the grace of God, I woke up on my cold kitchen floor in the early morning hours of the 27th of April 2023, face down. I was completely cyanodic. By the time that I got up to go look at the body.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

It was turned blue and she had yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

I would my face, my skin was blue, my face was blue, my lips were even bluer.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

I have never deprived of oxygen and she was very near death. So your body needs oxygen in order to move the blood. A lot of people don't realize that blood inside the human body is actually blue. And so if your body is actually completely blue, it means that your body is actually not circulating your blood. And so to be synontic, it means your body's not circulating the blood. And the only way the body circulates the blood is for your heart to be. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Yeah. So going back to the symptoms that I started, we do you want to get into that now for for the bigger?

SPEAKER_00 28:19

We can absolutely get into the symptoms of what she felt like when she was near death and when she was drugged. Please, Amanda.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Yeah, yeah. So going back to the long-term drug, and during the course of the relationship, I believed I was drugged with three substances something to keep my brain fuzzy, um, brain fog off the charts.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Like I couldn't even so, yeah, let's talk about the symptoms and we can actually talk about some of the drugs specifically because I actually have some pretty specific idea about what it was, which I don't know if you know, but a pretty goodness.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Um I'm ready to get to it.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Um, yeah. So let's talk about some of your symptoms and let's first talk about what happened to you when you were murdered, and then let's go back and talk about some of the symptoms that you felt. So you were on your kitchen floor, you're synodic.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Yeah, uh, came to um immediately. I was just like, I'm still here because I I faded. This let me tell you what it's like to die. Um, and this is a horrible death to die when you it feels like I was drowning above water. Oh wow. My airway in the moment, this is how I described it. This is how I described it in police reports and everything that I have shared with law enforcement, um, everything that I have written down. I have journaled throughout this entire process. Um I it's it's crazy how it happened, but initially there was um hallucinations. Okay um it felt like buckets of water started pouring out of the top of my head. I'm looking, I'm in my bedroom, and the the colors on my duvet cover started coming to like to life and coming up off the duvet cover. I'm seeing them flow. I'm understanding in the moment that I'm hallucinating.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

I don't understand what's happening. My vision got extremely blurry. Okay. Um at this point, I'm I was getting ready for bed. I had gone outside. The assault happened on the 25th. Um, it was the night of the 26th, and I'm just trying to take the edge off just so I can go. I go back and I'm like, I'm just gonna roll up a little baby joint, just smoke a little bit just to take the edge off and be able to sleep. Um I need to go to the hospital tomorrow. I I knew I needed he broke my nose. I heard it when it happened. I knew, you know, the my injuries, I needed to go get checked out. But also, my at that time, 13-year-old son was upstairs asleep. And so, me being the practical mom, of course, this is what, especially single moms, is what we do. We put our children ahead of us, we put everybody ahead of us.

SPEAKER_03 30:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

And um, I'm like, I'll just I'll go tomorrow. So, what do I do? I'm I'm gonna go, I go to this, the, the little, you know, stash box of keep everything locked up in in a certain area. And I go and he had wiped me, wiped me clean, like when he left of everything except for there was a very small amount of cannabis still left, already ground up, swept off to the side in like a little line. And it was something inside of me saying, Don't, don't smoke that, girl, you better not smoke that. And then I'm just it's crazy what we brush off. Like, I just almost gonna take the edge off. I go outside. When I tell you, and my tolerance, just so you know, he and I, I mean, we were smoking a lot of weed together. And so my tolerance for cannabis was already like through the roof. I literally, I went outside, I listened to one Alex Isley song. I looked up at the stars, I'm crying. It was one song, and that was all I needed. I probably took maybe like four puffs. I didn't even want to smoke, I just wanted to take the edge off so I can go to sleep. And I go back inside. I am going to like wash my face, get ready for bed. Um, I am texting back and forth with my oldest son because I needed my kids to know the assault happened. And if he tries to come back around, he's not welcome. Blah, blah, blah. And as my son and I are texting, that's when all these symptoms started. And so this is about 15 minutes after I smoked. I'm back inside. The hallucinations, I'm recognizing immediately, I'm taking note of what's happening in my body. I have um, I have, like I've mentioned before, I've been through a lot of really hard things. I am very good at staying really, really calm in some really crazy, crazy situations. Well, yeah, you run war. Yeah, yeah. I've I've been through some things. And so I know how to talk my mind, I know how to calm myself down. Um, this is important for the ways that I was treated later on. It's important to take note of that because then what do I notice? My heart rate is beating out of my chest.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

So you're having palpitations, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

I mean, heart racing, but my breathing became more and more shallow. And I started realizing, like, oh my God, I'm not, I'm trying to breathe like normally, and I can't get oxygen. So I'm my breathing is getting really shallow. So I'm sitting down. Um what do you do? You know, I'm like, oh, let me focus just right now, calm down. I don't know what's going on. Um, there's some things that happened, um, and I'm gonna save some of this stuff for the book, right? But it was some back and forth with I really went at at some point it progressed to the point where it literally, and this is how I described it initially before I I went to nursing school. Now I can describe it in a completely different way. Well, let's use let's let's use the non-nursing school because while I'm a physician and you're a nurse, not all my people are it um it felt like you know, you you see scenes on a spaceship where they gotta go into one chamber and they wait for a door to close and then they can go into the other chamber and it's completely cut off. My oxygen was completely cut off. This was not me having um an asthma attack, a panic attack. This was not me uh you know shut down. My I was not getting any oxygen whatsoever into my lungs. What do you do in a situation like this when I can't speak? I immediately the things that went through my head of you go into life preservation, right? And um, I tried some interventions. I tried, I really I was like on some.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

You were using your military training to try to focus to stay alive.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Yes, I was. And I don't know how long it took. Um, I'm suspecting a couple minutes, if that uh before I got so weak in my last attempt to, you know, I was trying different things. And in my last attempt, my body became so weak I couldn't even lift a cup up. Um I was trying, trying to have some some grape juice. Um, I don't know why my um sugar, like maybe if I get some sugar, it'll it'll help. I couldn't even, I couldn't even lift the cup up to take a drink. And I faded away into I I describe it, and this is important for me to talk about because this is such a huge part of my story that I can't leave this out. I faded away into a void of nothingness and I had an encounter with God. I there's a lot of, you know, um, me coming forward and sharing my story, I am opening myself up to ridicule. I am opening myself up to the comment section with nature. I promise you, and just go back and think of the things that have been um talked about, discussed, current affairs, news, everything that's happened over the past three years regarding drug facilitated, sexual assault, sex trafficking, the Epstein stuff, all the Diddy stuff. There's a lot of stuff intertwined, you know. It's just a lot of stuff. And I can assure you one thing there is not one thing that is discussed in the contents of the things that these you know survivors have survived. There's not one thing that I'm triggered by. I'm triggered by the comment section. I'm triggered by absolutely people coming and speaking on things that they number one don't know anything about, and number two, they would never experience it. I have when I picked bear. Oh my goodness, picking bear was like asking for it. No, I I'll take bear any day.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

Yes, I think most of us would, and it's like asking for it, yeah. So, one of the things that I want to talk about and uh want really want to try to cover, what were your symptoms when you were being drugged? Because I want to get because I want to nerd out a little bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

No, this is important to talk about too, because um right off the bat, and and going back to the I believe that I was drugged with three different things, something to keep my brain fuzzy, to elicit the the brain fog and the confusion and to keep me, you know, just in this very confused state for and that that opened the door for other things to happen. Something to to cause libido off the charts. And girl, when I'm talking off the charts, I experienced things that I didn't even know were humanly possible. Yeah, and I'm talking about I'm talking about um having sex every single day with this man four, five, six hours straight. And I'm not exaggerating, uh, back to back-to-back orgasms with very little um effort put into that. And I mean, it was just it was just happening over and over and over again. And then, you know, it got to a point where we're not even in the room anymore. We're floating in a galaxy far, far away.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

And there are several different medications that are um prescribed. I'm not gonna get into that in detail, but these are called excitatory neurotransmitters. You've heard of some of them before, so it's your adrenaline or epinephrine, your noradrenaline or norepinephrine, but then you have your dopamine, you have your glutamate, you have your acetylcholine. So those are your five big ones. And with those five big ones, they act on several different receptors and the the drugs that they prescribe for seizures, the way they modulate these excitatory neurotransmitters is a little bit different. But their goal is to take these excitatory neurotransmitters and make them do certain things. So when you're talking about, and they call them date rape drugs, but they're drugs that work in so many different ways. And one of the main things that all of them do is they work on the excitatory neurotransmitters. Their job is to take these five neurotransmitters and make their action either greater or less great, and how they do this dictates the action. And I'm not gonna get into specifically, yes, I know. I started it, I'm gonna finish it. So everyone knows benzodiazepines. If you are looking to do something in, I hate to say this, but the date break genre, chances are you know, benzodiazepines or benzos or bz, and there's several different kinds of benzodiazepines, and they were there's the slow acting, the fast acting, and the medium. And the slow, the fast, and the medium is not based on how quick they act on the human, it's how quick you can detect them. And so this is important when you're doing drug tests. If you think you've been drugged and there was sexual activity that happened to you, um, most people use slow acting. And so these are CNS depressants, these are usually your seep sleeping pills, and so you get into your restoral, your verset, your helicon. And I, you know, I'm using the name brands because if I say things like, um, your medazolam, your triazalam, most people, they're not gonna know what I'm talking about. I want to say very clearly, yes, I am mentioning name brands. I am not mentioning these name brands because they do anything wrong or they've done anything wrong, they've developed very nice pharmaceuticals that have a very good place. And I am not talking anything about what this company or companies have done. And as someone who used to work for pharmaceutical companies, there is a very great place for pharmaceuticals. And while in some places I will mention a brand name drug, it is in most places not the only brand name, but just like we will say Kleenex for facial tissue, or we say Vaseline for petroleum jelly, it the the pharmaceutical has done so well at its job that people just switch out the the generic for the brand name. And so I want to make it very, very clear that the pharmaceutical that I may mention by brand name, and in some places I will mention both the brand name and the um the generic just because I want people to know that even if it's not the brand name, it is the same substance, and so I I have to give that just because um I don't want people to think, oh, it it's not versatile, but if it's Medizalam, it is the same drug, yeah. And so I want to say one, there are a lot of benzodiazepines that are very short-acting and they are used very often for drug facilitated crimes, and they're they will disappear in the body within a few hours, yeah. And so people have to be very aware of that. Like one of the original uh date rape drugs, uh flanassotram, is a benzodiazepam. Usually speaking, for someone that may not know any um pharmaceuticals at all, if it ends in a zapam, it's a benzodiazepam. And so we are cognizant of that. Most benzodiazepams are actually used for um your central nervous system uh depressant. So their whole job is to make it so that your brain and your nerves do not work. So that's why they're used for drug-facilitated crimes because it makes it so that your body doesn't work the way it's supposed to. You don't speak, you don't walk, you don't fight. Um, sometimes you don't know where you are. And that's with a lot of sleeping pills, is if you overdose on those, you won't know where you are. And so that's why with a lot of sleeping pills, they come with a lot of warnings that say, take one, take one, do not take more than one, do not mix with this, do not mix with that, because their whole job is to make you sleep, but be aware and conscious so that you wake up. If you overdose on them, which doesn't mean that you're not gonna wake up, it doesn't mean that you're going to have pain. What it means is it may take you longer to wake up. You may wake up and not know where you are, what happened to you. That's what overdose means with a lot of the benzodiazepines. And so that's very, very important because in a lot of those places you have that brain fog, you may not remember what exactly happened to you, or you only know bits and pieces. It's because you may have taken more. Whether you knew it or not, you've taken more than the prescribed dose.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

And I also need to mention because a lot of people, especially when you're talking about college age people, frat parties, and things of that nature, you may be on this, you know, medically prescribed the way you're supposed to be. You're taking it the way you're supposed to be. But you're taking you're drinking alcohol in and of itself is a drug. A lot of people treat it like it's not a drug, it is a drug. Ethanol is a drug, and so when you start taking a benzodiazepine with an alcohol, you're actually making it act more than it's supposed to. You are compounding the effects. So even if you're taking your whatever the way you're supposed to, but if you drank beforehand, or and I will say I'm horrible at this, but I'm not on a benzo, I will take one of my I know I have to take X, and I will just I'm drinking, I was just having a bourbon, I'll drink it, take my last shot, my last sip of bourbon with the drug, and I go to bed. You can intensify the effects of said pill because of alcohol. Alcohol is very, very common as a forensic toxicologist and as a forensic nurse and magnetic will tell you this when you're looking at you know fatal cases, you're looking at overdose cases, you're looking at problematic um cases, alcohol is usually on board. Yeah, so and then another category of drug are gonna be your Z drugs. And Z drugs are you normally or usually for um are for insomnia, and these are gonna be your non-bizodiazepine and so insomnia drugs. And so they're called or antidepressants, and they're called Z drugs because most of them start with the Z. The only brand name that starts with the Z, and I will apologize, is going to be Zoloft. Then you have Zopodin, which is Ambien, which Ambien itself they had to reformulate in a certain way because people were seeing the dead chick, the chickens, and they were fighting the chickens, and they didn't remember anything about the big blue chicken. And so that was actually used for drug facility facilitated crimes for a very long time until people started to get injured because people were fighting the big blue chicken. Um, then you have azopidin and you had uh zeppelon. And so those are gonna be your four big Z drugs. Um, anticonvulsants, your gabapentins, your pregabolins, and if I'm talking about what things do, you have CNS depressant, CNS depressant, slash antidepressant. These are gonna move into a different category because these actually work on a specific receptor in your brain. And now we're moving into things that specifically act on a receptor. And the other one is gonna be benadryl. And I have to mention benadryl and what is it? Uh dihap di what is it? It has a name. Crap, what is benadryl? Uh diphytahydrimin. And that one's actually very important. And the reason why it's very important because when you're looking at some of your Z drugs and specific was yeah, specifically for you, Amanda, when you were talking about cross-reactivity, and so what cross-reactivity is for people listening, if you think you've been drugged, you go to the hospital or you do a self-test and you get one of those 12 panels or 24 panels, six panels, whatever. Because before they send anything off to a lab, they're gonna have you pee in a cup. And depending on what it is that comes up when you pee in a cup, they either are gonna send it off to the lab, they may, you know, blame you, argue with you some more. But for a lot of things, especially for the some of the benzoles, they don't actually come up for benzos, they'll come up for what's called a tricyclic um antidepressant. If you're not prescribed an antidepressant, or and if you are, it becomes even more difficult. So benadryl comes up for TCA. I'm sorry. Um and if you and it also comes up for methadone. So benadryl is actually used for some drug-facilitated crimes because you can mix benadryl with alcohol and it intensifies their effect. One of the things Benadryl does is it knocks you out because it wants your body to stop reacting to whatever allergen you're taking. And so when it knocks you out and makes you stop reacting to whatever allergen it thinks you're taking, it's gonna knock you, it's it's gonna get you down. And most people, when they see a TCA, they'll assume Benadryl. And so they're not gonna act on it because it's Benadryl. People take Benadryl. Benadryl's an over-the-counter, it's very, very common. So it was mentioned earlier in some of the things that Amanda was saying that they used to smoke weed together. Marijuana is actually one of the most common things that's used as a media for drugging, and so is alcohol. So once you get away from the drugs, weed and alcohol that are used, you have other drinks, you have some lotions and some oil. So there are some drugs that really like liquid, like water-based, and then there's some that are oil-based. And so you can't put this oil in water because it's just gonna flow. People are like, What's it in my cup? And then they're not gonna drink it, so they'll put it in an oil. So if you're with someone and they decide to get really into massaging you at night, there may be something in that oil. So going more into some of the drug tests where you get um compounds that will make you not only more sexually aroused, but also get you real um drugged, you have to look at some of the things like um Evelyn or amnitryptaline, um, palore, uh, no, palomore, which is noramnitryptamine, and then sequel is a huge one. Um, because SQL is actually very easy to get prescribed for you, and it actually gives you false positives above both on TCA and methadone. Most people see you take methadone, they assume you're in a treatment program. There is a lot of um embarrassment around being in a treatment program, but methadone is considered you getting better, and so they won't necessarily, most patients won't actually necessarily ask you if you're in a treatment program. They'll just be like, okay, they must be in a treatment program. So when you start getting seroquil, um they just assume you're in treatment and they don't do anything about it. The problem with seroquil is it is a very good depressant on its own. So, and it's actually a good oil, it will mix with weed, but it won't make it burn differently. Some of the drugs will actually burn differently. And so when you start looking at your drinking something, or if you want to do an oil, if it's not gonna be a massage and you want to do an oil, because the active ingredient in THC, if you remember from weeks ago, is an oil. And so you want an oil to mix with an oil, and it's gonna give false positives because uh seroquil will give a false positive in both TCA and methadone. So if it's one of those drugs, that's a really good one to do because one, it's common enough where people won't think anything of it, and two, it actually soaks into the um marijuana leaf very, very well. It won't change the way that it burns. And when it comes up on a drug test, it's not something that will raise an eyebrow real quickly. It won't go, huh? And so a lot of people don't go down that further path. And so one of the side effects actually of Seroquil is drowsiness, dizziness, and it actually opens some, it will increase your dopamine, which increases your sex drive. And so when you start looking at things that will increase your sex drive, you think about blood flow, which a lot of you know, GABA receptor agonists will do, a lot of depressants uh will antidepressants will do. And so you get into this place where you're like, okay, so anything you take that's gonna be an antidepressant is also gonna increase your sex drive. That's what it's designed. Well, it's not designed to make you want to fuck, but it's gonna make you want to go that way because it's designed to make you feel happier. And I don't know anyone who's happy that doesn't want to have sex. And so when you start looking at all these things and you're taking several different things, and you know, based on some of the things you were telling me in your story, it it sounds like you know, this person was probably using Benadryl, a real easy over-the-counter thing to get, and that will show up in a drug test as something fairly harmless, if not at all. So, and I hate to say this because I am not advocating for people to try to use it. There are some places now, um, as a standard, we'll actually test for uh diphenhouse. I suck at drug names. Benadrill. Um and actually, there are some places. I know in some countries it's actually regulated now because it can be used for drug-facilitated crimes. But between that and Serroquil, um, based on the things that you were finding in some of your tests, that is probably something that if I were you, I would make sure that they test for. As we're moving forward, there is one thing that we have not talked about, and I apologize because I I did see you crying, and I don't, and I hate that because I I did not want to um go that way. Is you know, there are a lot of biases when it comes to drug-facilitated crimes. And one of the things I will talk about when it comes to when you are being fed a substance against your will, there's gonna be withdrawals. There's withdrawals with every single substance that you can take, whether it's alcohol, whether it's coffee, whether it is marijuana, even venadril, they all have withdrawal symptoms. And, you know, you were with this person for several years, and so you were fed something probably daily.

SPEAKER_01 55:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:16

Let's let's talk about, you know, withdrawal if there was one.

SPEAKER_01 55:21

Yeah. So the assault happened on the 25th, the near-death experience, uh, the murder, the attempted murder happened on the 26th. I woke up on the 27th, and about 48 hours later, my body started going into excruciatingly painful withdrawals. And I can describe this to a T. And for someone who has never knowingly touched anything other than weed in my whole life, never had a desire to, weed has always been my drug of choice. Um, if you even want to call it a drug. Like I need to, this is part of what I want to get into as well, and the medicinal effects and how I have relied on cannabis to heal from the trauma that I've endured. And um, and then the ways that I have been treated, been been treated like a drug addict by medical professionals, by people, you know, anybody that I went to go run to for help, they found out oh, the some of the things that are, and I have written, you know, things that were in statements and medical documentation and ways that I was treated and ways I was dismissed. And they the it was like doctors just heard that, and then all of a sudden, oh, she's a drug addict, and I don't know if I can trust her, and she's having a panic attack. And this was the whole thing. Like, no, I went through whether and like I said, I believe that he was um drugging me with a concoction of something to keep my brain fuzzy, something to increase libido. And then towards the end, like the last six months of the relationship, when we lived together, he had full access to me, and I started experiencing periods of blacking out. And I'm talking about being wide awake. He would make a drink, make a nightcap, we're have the lights on, put a show on. I'm wide awake, ready to turn up. And then I'm out. And I wake up the next morning and I'm naked, I'm wet. Like we had, I don't, oh my God, I don't even remember having sex. And the things, again, this is one of the things that I really, really, really need for people to understand is when when these things are happening, um, and I was back in and out of doctors' offices and out of hospitals. I'm going, you know, I'm I'm telling my doctor all of these crazy details of the sex and everything that I'm experiencing. It wasn't just that, it was um crazy kind of uh tremors, like feelings of electricity going through my body, um, just chronic tachycardia. And I normally, that's something that I want to talk about because I normally stay in the gym working out the pretty much the entire time that I was with him. I couldn't because my heart was just racing all the time. I had this severe onset of vertigo, this crazy, it it wasn't even like the room was spinning, it was like my head continued to spin when I turned over in the middle of the night, like from the pillow. And going anyway, what I'm saying is I was in and out of doctor's offices. I am saying this is happening to me. Can you help me understand? I thought that I had early onset MS. I was being, you know, given referrals to neurology and um brain MRI, cervical spine MRI, all the labs, you know. I mean, I say all the labs, but just trying to investigate these things. I'm I'm going to the doctor. I'm doing everything that you're supposed to do in these situations. Something as amazing as this sex was that I was having, it didn't make sense. I couldn't make sense of it. And I start firing off um emails. I'm I'm I'm a very, you know, have medical background before the interior design, my military career. And so I'll go online and find studies and I'm finding doctors and wherever they were, different countries. I fired off, found their emails. I'm firing off emails to doctors all over the world. Okay. You know, I don't understand what's happening to my body. If you have any studies, I don't know if I'm a medical anomaly or whatever, but um, you know, I this doesn't make sense. This doesn't make sense. Yeah. And now going back and looking back at all of these, these were my cries for help.

SPEAKER_00 59:00

I want to talk about that. And I want to talk about that in a very nerdy way. So, you know, to kind of drive home the the point that you were making of all the things that you went through and all of the pain and all the the panels that you had taken and your your stride for justice and you know, quitting cold turkey and what that looked like. I, you know, I want to wrap up with um, you know, one talking about your book and you know what your fight for justice actually looked like. And you know, because I want to give you a plug. And um, I think we covered everything else, so let's accept uh a few biases about um I guess we'll we'll start with your biases about how most sexual assaults from professionals actually look like sex workers.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

Yeah, so that was one of my as a newcomer to SOFS, and I which is a society of physic toxicologists, yeah, and I I couldn't wait because you gotta understand before I even met you at that conference for the previous 900 something days, I had studied on my own NPS, and um novel cycle active substances, sorry, yeah, and no, no, no. I this is what I've studied because this was like you know, getting into it, and I'm I'm getting into all of this in my book, every detail. You don't if for people who have questions and don't understand how it can happen and how it can go um, you know, missed, and this is my story, and this is exactly what happened to me. And the the withdrawals were real, the things that I experienced and the ways that they were dismissed as this is what happens when a woman goes and and you're crying for help and you're you know, you're hysterical because hello, I'm traumatized. Do you not understand what I have just survived? I was drugged long term without my knowledge or consent. I have, you know, that opened the door for even more evil crimes, physical assaults, sexual assaults, um, two attempted murders. I've I've survived now two attempted murders and a near-death experience. And of course I'm traumatized. And the the person that I was three years ago, I pro I was I was hysterical, but I was viewed as hysterical, which is what a lot of people are gonna do. They you they see a woman crying. They absolutely do. And instead of getting the answers, so here I am, I'm trying, I'm trying to solve my crime because I did all the things. I I ran to police, I did everything that I was supposed to. I cooperated, I gave evidence, I got a protective order, I pressed charges, like I'm doing all of the things. I'm being forthcoming with my part in this as well. Like I live in the state of Texas and we were smoking weed and you know, all the ways that that that can be criminalized, right? And so I'm I'm moving forward and I don't care about any of that. Do you like do you not see what happened to me? And going and trying to get justice and continuously being treated like, I'm sorry, I I like this is what I need for people to understand. I was told we're not gonna test your evidence. What do you mean you're not gonna test my evidence? I have a lot of evidence, and you know, things are gonna come out in the book where it's just like, oh, you there is no denying what happened. This is exactly what happened. And for police to tell me that, okay, cool. Well, guess what? I don't care how much it costs, I don't care where I got to go to, where do I need to go to a reputable forensic crime to get this done? And was continuously told by police, I'm sorry, I don't know, you're gonna have to figure that out on your own. And that began my journey of figuring it out on my own. And I have reached out when you you want to talk about being resourceful. I have reached out to um Bear County Sheriff. Let's not name many. Yeah, I won't, I won't name, but but just the organizations that I have gone to and trying to elevate my story and to get the help that I deserve and and to get somebody to look into this, somebody to investigate this. Bear County Sheriff's Office, Texas DPS, Texas Rangers, FBI, DEA. I I'm telling you, and most of my cries for help have gone unanswered, which is unfortunate. It's I mean, like not even a phone call back, not even an email back. And it's just this is my life. This is my life and my life. My life is worth something. I'm still here to tell my story, and I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:24

And I I actually call it the uh what's her name, Marissa Hardegee heart attack effect. The fact that she was able to get all 50 states to agree to test their rape kit backlog, to me, that's important. And then right after that happened, I'm here in the state of Michigan, in the city of Detroit, they actually formed a task force where they're now searching every empty lot, every vacant home in the city of Detroit for missing women. Like that's amazing. Um, that task force was right after you know that that decision. And I I do know that that was in process before the decision by the by the Supreme Court, but to me, I'm I'm still saying that she was probably part of it because she she has been advocating around this country for years, and I'm hoping that her effect, the the Olivia Benson effect, you know, really pushes people to not only start testing things, but to reform how they talk to victim survivors. I don't want to say victim to survivors. That that is important to me. Um, we've been talking for almost an hour and a half, so uh I I want to get your final thoughts, your final takes before we go.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:48

Um I have a lot to talk about, and I need for people to start listening to me. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:57

Do you have a name for your book?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:59

I I do. I'm gonna hold that tight just for a moment because I'm working through just the the publishing aspect of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:04

Yeah, but it's publishing is hard and the editing and all of that. So when you get it, please let us know. I will publish for you. Uh not publish, I will politicize, I will like put it out there for you. Um I don't want to cut you off. Anything else you want to say?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:24

This is um this has changed me to and I I think that anybody from the outside looking in in my life, people have wondered where have you gone? What are you what what's going on? They they've known, you know, for the people who are kind of outsiders just looking in. I before this happened, I was life of the party. I was social butterfly and going here, going there, having this time in my life, like full of life. And this has been a fight to come back from the hell that I like I have been to hell and back, and I have a story to tell. And it's changed my world, it rocked my whole world, it's affected me. My children, my family, um, just for people, the people that I love to see me go through the things that I have gone through. And I promise you, nothing, like nothing that I have gone through that I have survived is in vain. And this has changed the whole direction of my life. Um, and even now, I know I told you I'm a labor and delivery nurse now, but I got to get my two years' bedside experience before I can get my SAIN certification, sexual assault nurse examiner. And this is my pathway into forensics. And I'm not stopping. Like this is just one more stepping stone to where y'all don't want to do things the right way. You don't want to treat victims the way that they need to be treated.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:40

Because this story is not over. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

Yeah, yeah. And I will be that person, the first responder, the one who does things right, the one who doesn't miss it, and the one who, through my lived experience, I have a breadth of knowledge in this whole uh game that people who go to school for this, go into training for this, they're not gonna be able to see the things that I see. And my my story is powerful. And I'm just I'm really excited for where this is gonna take me and um the conversations that need it's long overdue that we we have these conversations, but not only that, everything that I'm bringing up, I promise you I'm coming with a solution as well. I'm not just here to complain. I'm not here just to call people out. I have identified gaps in the system. And it seems like every it felt like every crack imaginable that you can come across as you're being funneled through um the justice system. Mind you, it's a it's a system that was never designed to protect me in the first place. Um and then, you know, we go to court and what's everything is aired out. I understand the risk that I'm taking by coming forward and sharing my story. I understand the ridicule that I'm coming up against. I don't care.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

I don't care. There is nobody to care about your life being something, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:51

You're not a number. And this is, I need to I need to make myself clear. I'm not doing this for nothing. This I have set very clear intentions for this book. Um, obviously, I want to raise awareness. I want to share my story, the things that happened to me. I want justice. I do know in my heart that there are other victims. I not even know in my heart that you want to be a stepping stone to others. I need to I need to get a message to others that you want to talk about running into brick walls and what that feels like. Baby, I'm knocking through these things. Like I you can't stop me. At this point, uh do you know how many times I have gotten up, gotten knocked down, and I keep getting back up. And I know you just their shoulders off. Man, I'll I'll tell you this. There, why, why me? You know, you go through you go through uh uh this whole stage in the grief. Like, why me? Why what did I do to deserve this? Why not me? I'm gonna tell you something. I will fight anybody. You come from me, I'm listening you got a problem on your hands. And number two, I have no quitting me till my dying breath. And even, you know, in this scenario, this man murdered. Even after that. I came back from the dead to expose him and the things that were done to me. You're not about to play up in my face like this. And so moving forward, what am I doing? I'm sharing my story. I need there's there's some women out there who I know that um uh because this is what I'm facing now. And I went through this whole, you know, 1,121 days and counting through a justice system. And this is where I'm at now after an internal affairs investigation and having a very, you know, long, drawn out, detailed conversation with people in positions of power within San Antonio Police Department and understanding what do I what do I need to do? What is it gonna take for you to go and do something about this and do like an actual investigation? I've had to fight. It took two years for me to fight just to get an investigation, changing laws, changing the the process when when from and I'm talking about from start to finish. And um this is my you know, the the question that we hear constantly, and it it's it's not just with sexual assaults, it's it touches on a lot of different areas where people are treated differently, treated and humanely treated less than, and um, you know, certain things come about and the the question gets asked, who's policing the police? And I I can speak of my experience. I I I want it to be different. I was raised differently. Like my mom taught me that you leave people in places better than you found them. And my experience, it it's filled, y'all's house is filthy up in there. It's filthy, it's dirty. You got you know, stuff hidden off in the in the corners and the way that things are being done. And I don't care how you gotta spin it or you know, sugarcoat things to to make it sound okay, to to fit into your guidelines and to make sure you don't get sued and this and that, it's wrong. The way that you're treating people, you're the way that you're treating survivors, it's wrong. And there is a better way. And that's that's like what I'm everything that I'm doing now is to show that there is a better way for this to be done. And there's no reason that we have to continue doing it the way that we've been doing it for for so long because it's not getting us anywhere. It's not it's not helping to get justice and it's not helping to heal. And they're both, those are two of the most important things that you need when you're coming out of a situation like this. No, this is not, this is not the end of this. This is not where I'm gonna leave this. And I need for this, this is a large part of what I'm doing with sharing my story, reclaiming my power. This is my story. And like I said, and I I stand on this firmly, can't nobody come and tell me anything about the things that I've survived. This is what happened, and I need people to start listening to me. And um, and and that's just my my hope in that sharing my story, people people can understand that I got got, and no matter no matter how you want to spin this, of the naivety involved, or you know, being vulnerable, being broken, whatever, you know, whatever that's you can't call it naivety when you trusted the person you love.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:07

Oh, absolutely. And that's one of the things with Rape Academy that every single victim of that stated, I can't believe this person that I loved could do that to me. And this is why consistently so many women chose bear. Because with the bear, there were two reasons that were always given for choosing bear. One, if a bear attacks me, people know, and I don't have to defend it. And as someone who's a victim of a rape or a sexual assault, you are put on the offensive and you have to prove it. And two, the other reason why people choose bear is because I can't hide from a bear, I can hear a bear, but and I don't I know that I shouldn't trust the bear. But if I love this person, if I love this man and I trust this man, then what? And then you have things like Stockholm syndrome. I I I was an avid reader of Anne Rule before she retired after she was on the Seattle Police Department, and she encountered Ted Bundy, the I Vive Killer, the Green Mile Killer, just like all these different serial killers from the Patent Northwest. And reading her book, so many of the victims trusted these people. Oh, and it's like when you trust someone, you approach things so much differently. And uh it is it is very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:56

That is a key point of you know why I I needed to to go write a book about this because I need I need people to understand all of the intricate details of the story because that was this is what people like this um rely on. It's building trust um so that the the victim will let their guard down. And then it's the abuse that sets in and the brainwashing and all the grooming that takes place. And when you understand that there are people out there and they're called Romeo pimps, they're called boyfriend pimps, where they will come in and they will pretend to be in love with you, they will play on that, on your emotions and all of that. And it it feels so good. You want it to be true, and and I had for no reason not to trust them. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And um the the other point that I want to really, really touch on is you know, people can talk about me, they can come up with, you know, it it's just it's like everybody, everybody knows, like you watch a movie and you're watching and it's the character she's getting um taken advantage of or whatever, and you're you're sitting in the audience and you're watching it, and you're girl, wake up! How could you be so when you were caught in the middle of it, when you're caught up in the middle of it, it and and this is this is the other part. I don't care how big and bad you are, I don't care how book smart, how street smart, how thick, you know, how much how put together you think that you are, and how you, you know, how tough you are, how you feel like this could never happen to you when drugs are involved, it's a completely different ballgame.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:29

But it doesn't even have to have drugs involved because you know, spousal rape is real. Yeah, you know, which is which is what the rape academy was. It was all spousal rape, whether it's drugs or not, whether it is a medical issue or not, whether it is just like you know, those men who convince their girlfriends or their spouses that they love them, they just want to try the threesome, or they just want to try this kink, or they just want, you know, those those things are real.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:02

And as a person, whether you are a man or a woman, because I don't want to go through this whole conversation without saying that men are also victims of this thing and both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. When you are in love with someone, your brain chemistry is altered. That is what drugs do. They alter your brain chemistry. And when you are in love with someone, your brain chemistry is altered, and you do things that is not necessarily the definition of who you are. So you're gonna give yourself to that person in different ways. That's the whole point of knowing love, being in love, expressing love. Yeah, you can be the hardest, meanest, baddest bitch on the planet, but you just fell in love with someone and you want to show them your softer side.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:00

And then they get that softer side and they tell you, well, if you truly loved me, then X. And you're like, but I do truly love you. Fuck, I don't want to do X, but I guess I gotta do X. And you spend that time convincing yourself that X is the only way that you're gonna prove that you love that person. And so I I hate when people say, Well, if it was me, I could point out to you many ways you did things that you say you would never do, but you're doing now, and therefore your if it was me is now invalid. Absolutely. So it's one of those things that I I despise. And you know, with with Stockholm syndrome and with so many, so many different things, you fall into this place where you would not do it otherwise. Drugs are not.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:58

Yep. Yep. And when you trust somebody, and I think that's that's the the biggest takeaway. Drugs are not when you trust the person that you're with, the way that my mind would not even go there, and not it wasn't even a possibility, and the way that you you also have to understand the psychology behind this and the way that your mind is constantly scanning and searching to make sense of what you are explaining. To make it make sense, absolutely to make it make sense, and the things that my mind came up with, and the you know, and then the medical gaslighting on top of that, you know, it's not just it's not just the grooming and and the abuse that happened within the relationship. I'm running to help and I'm saying this is happening to me, and every all of my symptoms are being dismissed. I'm being made to feel crazy. You need a mental health intervention.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:46

Yep. And and unfortunately, that happens a lot for women. And me being a person of color and a woman, it happens even more. And it's one of the reasons why you know women don't necessarily, you know, let's let's go one step backwards. You're going to your doctor and you're saying, Well, this is not working for me. This is, I think this is wrong. I need help. And even if they believe you, then they go to your significant other. In my case, I am married, and they will go to my spouse and say, Well, what do you want? I don't give a fuck what he wants. This is me and my body, my autonomy. But it's not treated that way here in the United States. It's not, it's not, and it's and it's unfortunate. It's absolutely unfortunate. So, anything you want to add, I I do know that you had, you know, reaching out to some people, you didn't always get the help that you needed, but we do have national hotlines. Whether in like the Polaris Resilience Fund and Global Modern Slavery Directory, was there one that you reached out to that actually gave you the help or some resources that you needed?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:07

Absolutely. And I will say um the National Sex Trafficking Hotline. Um I have Which is 888-373-7888. Yeah. Um, I do have some things that I would like as a survivor to to address, and I will at the appropriate time. They're doing some amazing things, but I believe that there's ways that they need to increase their access to care. Um, but I will I will say that I kind of had hit some some speed bumps and some situations that didn't seem quite right, and something told me, call back, call back. And I did. And there was a woman. Uh I hope to one day, I hope to one day meet this woman in person.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:52

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:53

And um, her name is Willow. And Willow sat on the phone with me for over three hours and listened to every detail of the things that I was just begging for people. Just can you just listen to me? If you would just listen to me to me, you would understand the things that I'm that I'm, you know, that have happened to me. And to this woman who was so kind, and she told me she shared with me that she's been doing this for over 20 years, and she shared with me why she was doing it. And um I would love, I want to give this woman a hug one day because she just had this profound, it was just like that little that spark that I needed something in that moment, and she gave it to me. But what she did was compile it. They I was told that the National Sex Trafficking Hotline has a team of the you know, the highest professionals, the CRT, I forgot what it's called, but it's a team of people that she escalated my case to, and they then reviewed everything and funneled it back into SAPD. But now it's coming from higher-ups, it's coming from where now my case was handed to a different investigator. They they had to treat it a little different. They couldn't ignore me because of this. I love that. Unfortunately, it you know, things didn't happen the way that they should have happened, in my opinion. Um yet. But but but it's you know, I do, I I because I'm I promise I've I have been very vocal about all of the ways the door slammed in my face and the ways that I've been treated and spoken to. But there have been bright lights on this journey who are doing this because it's it's in them. This is their purpose in life. They love what they do, they they realize the the need for this, and they're they're doing their part, and they need to be, you know, acknowledged and and this just this the this whole situation just needs um it I feel like it needs some new energy. It needs it needs um more people standing up, but it needs more survivors. And I don't know, I don't know if you found any other survivors besides Giselle um Pelicott, you know, coming out and speaking. Any of the the survivors of the rape academy, especially in the United States, has anybody come out and shared their story?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:03

I have not heard anybody in the U.S. from the rape academy. I do know there are several people um from the rape academy who have come out and shared their story. Um, and a few of them are online on the CNCN website. Um, but like besides the the national hotline, they also do text. And it is you could do help or info at 233-733, which is be free. And they do help, they do chat as well, so you can email them. Um, but in terms of funding and help, because usually when people come out of sex trafficking, they they don't have money, and so like I said, there is the Polaris Resilience Fund, um, there is the Global Modern Slavery Directory and the National Human Trafficking Hotline. Um, I do not know that there are a few after the rape institute came out, the rape academy. There have been some private organizations as well that have set up funds. Like I said, I have not heard of anyone in the U.S. that has come out specifically. I have not heard of any prosecutions, which is very unsettling to me, but I also have not heard of any prosecutions of the Epstein file besides Epstein and uh his right-hand woman. Uh and it's frustrating because we have people here in the US in high positions who are allegedly um responsible for rape and sexual assault drug facilitated or not. And I think it's time that as a country we do better. I honestly do. I think that we need to do better, and that is my opinion. Thank you, Amanda, for your time. Um, one of the things I wanted to do at the end of this episode was to provide some resources. There are a lot of resources for people who are victims of human trafficking. If you feel that you are in a human trafficking situation, there is a national hotline. And they can be contacted at 888-373-7888. Or you can text help or info to 233-733, which is be free. You can also chat at chathuman trafficking online.org. If you need resources after surviving human trafficking, please contact the Polaris Resilience Fund or Global Monitoring Monitor Slavery Directory, and also again, the new National Human Trafficking Hotline, which is Hotline Referral Service, on their website. I will also be putting these links down in my comments. If you want to assist someone or if you have some information or you are brave enough to share your story, please also add that down in the comments. I am always here to listen and be supportive. Thank you very much for joining me here in May. I know this last topic was very sobering, but it is a topic that we need to talk about being here in Michigan. We are a border state to an international country. And I did some work with the Detroit office of the FBI uh back in 2014. And the state of Michigan actually rescues people from human trafficking every single day. And this is both girls, boys, men, and women. So there's some great information out there. And if you want to continue this conversation, please do so. Thank you. Like, subscribe, bye.