WEBVTT
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Hi Warriors, welcome to One in Three.
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I'm your host, Ingrid.
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If there's one thing we've learned over the years, it's this.
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Never underestimate the resilience of a survivor.
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Today's guest embodies that resilience.
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She not only survived years of abuse that began at the young age of eight, but also faced her abuser in court, enduring the pain of being re-victimized, before bravely sharing her story with the world in her memoir, Carpenter Road, Sentenced to Silence.
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She didn't stop there either.
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Her prequel, Carpenter Road, The Inadmissible Years, was recently released as well.
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Her mission is clear and powerful to ensure victims, specifically children, are seen, heard, protected, and empowered to prevent abuse before it happens.
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It's my honor to introduce you to Morgan.
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Hi, Morgan.
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Thank you for joining me.
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Hi, thank you for having me.
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Um, so before we get into our conversation, could you give a bit of a background just so we can get to know you a little bit?
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Oh, absolutely.
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Um I let's see, my background in um my professional life has been caregiving for the elderly, especially with dementia and Alzheimer's.
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And I worked in that field for a very long time and did private caregiving for a long time.
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And then unfortunately, my health went south due to the abuse, and I haven't been able to work since then.
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Um, I'm still undergoing a lot of procedures and so forth.
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And but all that time I was loving to write.
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I was writing my story, I was mainly doing it for myself, but then I thought, you know, maybe this could help others, maybe this could help survivors, um, especially when I added in the trial.
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I thought, wow, this could really be beneficial for people to see what it's like to go through a trial.
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And I just kept foraging ahead with my memoir and decided to actually publish it.
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And it that has gone very well.
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Um, I live in the Midwest with all of my furry friends and animals and family, and um just kind of lead a quiet life and have a ball.
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And I graduated from Western Michigan University back in 2005 with a master's in gerontology, which is significant because I wasn't able to read until I was in my mid-20s, beyond a fourth grade level, because once my abuse started, my education stopped.
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And so that was quite an accomplishment for myself.
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And your abuse is uh you detail it in your book that you were referring to is Carpenter Road uh Sentence to Silence.
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Right.
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And that and that chronicles the abuse, but not the beginning of the abuse, correct?
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Starting at the end.
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Yes, correct.
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That is, and I did that intentionally.
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Um, I started Carpenter Road Sentence to Silence at the age of 14 when I'm entering high school.
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And I did that because somebody asked me, what was the very first time you tried to wave the white flag to get help to get out of the situation?
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Because until then, uh I was absolutely terrified to even consider telling anyone anything.
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And so I left a note under my teacher's door and I did not sign it.
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And I wrote it anonymously and sent her that I needed help.
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And uh that is when that is, excuse me, that is where the book starts, is basically my leaving that note under the door, and then it kind of follows me through high school and still trying to get out of the situation.
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And then ultimately I reported the abuse and a trial ensued.
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And so Carpenter Road, Sentence of Silence, goes back and forth between my time of dealing with everything and the court transcripts.
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So you actually get to read the entire uh trial throughout the book.
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And from what I understand, I did read the book, is that you didn't even go into full detail of the level of abuse that you suffered.
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That is yes, that is correct.
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Because uh mainly because I wanted to follow what happened with the trial and plus the time frame of the book at the very beginning.
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I'm still um enmeshed in the abuse, but for like another eight months, and then it's all about me trying to um get out get my feet under me and try to have some sense of life and try to deal with what happened to me, and then and then ultimately trying to help the children that were still left behind in that house get out from under it.
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And so when I started it at um the age of 14, I was almost out of the abuse.
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So I left out so much, and the other reason I did that was because the trial itself, due to statute of limitations, would only permit me to talk about abuse that happened from mid-age 12 until it ended.
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I wasn't able to even talk about or discuss the abuse prior to that at the trial.
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And I also wasn't allowed to speak about what he did to other family members in the house because they were so reluctant to speak up and tell or testify or even admit what had happened, they were silent, and so nothing could come into the trial except for you know certain instances after the age of 12, either physical or sexual.
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And so I left out 80% of what happened in the house out of the first book, and then I had a lot of people ask me, why would you go back over there?
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That wasn't your house, it wasn't it wasn't my family, I wasn't related.
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Why would you go back over there?
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And I was a little stunned by the question, but yet it was valid because why would a child intentionally go over to their friend's house knowing what was going to happen?
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And I thought, we have to be more educated in trauma and in the grooming process and what happens to children when they get caught up in these situations.
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And so I instead of you know explaining that or explaining myself to others, I decided to write a prequel and I started it at the beginning of the abuse, and it then ultimately meets up with Carpenter O'Set into Silence.
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And so I devolves absolutely everything that happened to me, and it it is quite the bombshell, and and both are very, very important and critical to read because the first one I think is really helpful for survivors to read, because you're you're on this journey of emotional battling, trying to overcome what you went through and survive that.
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And then this next one is more slanted towards anyone working with children, because you actually see and feel as I write this from a child's perspective, what it was like to go through such a traumatic experience for that many years and what that what that did to me emotionally, physically, spiritually, um, sexually, everything.
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And so um the two together, I think, are a really good sounding board for people to understand what trauma does to children.
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Well, and I I like how you wrote Carpenter Road, how it would go from, I mean, not present day today, but present day where you were in the in the courtroom and then flashing back to what was going on a few years prior to that.
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It's honestly really heartbreaking to understand one, that a child was being abused, but two, that you started it at 14 and that's much later, that's years after the abuse even began.
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And there are a lot of factors that play into almost this like perfect storm for you to be the victim.
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And uh one of those things, am I wrong?
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It's like a generational trauma.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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In my in the second uh book, the prequel, I talk about my family a little bit more because so many people were like, How did your parents not see this?
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How did they not understand what was happening?
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How did teachers miss this?
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But in my instance, um my mother was abused by her father.
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He was drafted into World War II unexpectedly.
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He was thinking he was headed off to Western Michigan University with a basketball scholarship.
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And the next thing he is dragged onto a plane going to Okinawa at 18 and having no clue what's going on, and came home four years later so destroyed by World War II and not having met my mom until then, because my grandma was pregnant when he left, he didn't bond with her and he treated her horribly.
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Um, he was also dealing with his trauma by drinking and tormenting my mom, and he really signaled her out because um I I think he just didn't bond with her, and so then he ultimately started sexually abusing her.
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And at 18, my mom left the house and met my dad, and then they got married, but she did not deal with her trauma, she did not ever seek help or anything.
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She drank, and so, like you said, the perfect storm.
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You know, I've got a mother who is drinking way too much, she's drinking outside of the house, she's never home.
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My father's working endlessly, and here I am just kind of floating along by myself and you know, experiencing some neglect and some abuse at home.
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And then I meet a family who has a mom who never leaves the home, but that was for a different reason.
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You know, six kids, food on the table, dinner every night.
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It wasn't very much, but it was more than what I was gonna find at my house.
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And so I just boom got caught up.
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But, you know, you kind of link it back to my mom's drinking and why that happened and um why her father was abusive coming off of a war like that.
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It just, yeah, it was just like a snowball going downhill and a perfect storm for uh me being set up into that situation.
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Well, and then it would be almost understandable if you continued that yourself, if you just continued into that cycle because you've been so traumatized for years, and you still uh if you hadn't taken the steps maybe to um legally seek action, you could have potentially continued in this snowball effect, but you you did have a few advocates for you finally show up in high school.
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And those helped.
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I always love thinking of people who are on this path, and it just takes one person to bump them and change the entire trajectory of their lives and hopefully in a better way.
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And I feel like it came late for you.
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I think there were probably quite a few opportunities that could have come up prior to you leaving a note under your teacher's door at the age of 14.
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And and with I think those those adults who finally did advocate for you and look out for you, and then along with your own personal strive to survive, you've you already survived the the physical trauma, but now to survive the psychological trauma and recover from that, that's a huge undertaking.
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Yes, it is.
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I mean, I advocate for us, every survivor, to take that journey because ultimately it leads us back to being as whole as we possibly can.
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You know, it'll interrupt that cycle of generational trauma.
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Um, but we owe it to ourselves to heal and not be silenced.
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And so I really advocate for taking the journey, even though it is grueling and painful and very difficult to recover from, because that type of abuse, you know, the sexual abuse of a child is just destroys, destroys you.
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And it's very hard to come back from.
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But your alternative is much worse.
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So I'm a big proponent of get into therapy, get into counseling, whatever that looks like for you, but do the work so you can heal that, if not you know, for yourself, but for the rest of your family.
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Because, you know, it people sometimes um have that thinking that, well, if she's abused, she's gonna abuse, you know, the next person down the line.
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That's not always the case in the same way, but you can spread your toxicity from your trauma in other ways.
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It could be at work, it could be at home, it could be wherever, but somehow, some way, if you haven't dealt with that trauma, it's going to seep into your life and onto others in some form or fashion.
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And we, I mean, we've seen that for years and years.
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I mean, we've watched it, you know, unfold with um people that we've known that have been abused, whether it's in our own family or in the community.
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I mean, you you can see you can see it happening when they you can tell when someone hasn't dealt with their trauma.
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For sure.
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And so Carpenter Road takes us through your journey of therapy and dealing with your trauma and while still having the legitimate fear of safety for yourself.
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And it really showcases your strength because you eventually don't stop there at just healing yourself.
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You feel this obligation to look into legal action because you did understand that there were still younger children in the home.
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And it takes us then through the psychological trauma then of the re-victimization of the court system.
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So, do you want to talk a little bit about the whole legal system and that process and how difficult that's this is a light way to say it, difficult to maneuver through.
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Yes.
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I hope, I hope, and pray that it's different today than what I experienced, but I haven't really uh paid a huge amount of attention to what what that's like for survivors now.
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And I know a lot of laws have changed since my trial in '92.
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So that some things have improved for victims and survivors.
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Um, but I would say that the judicial system is still set up to protect the perpetrator, not the victim.
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I mean, no matter what the crime is, that is the case.
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And so I wish we could kind of take a look at that and say, you know what, let's take care of the victim.
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And these the people that are doing the perpetrating, um, maybe shouldn't have as quite as many rights as we as we think, because in my case, um just being put into the same courtroom with him was extremely traumatizing.
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I could barely function, I could barely mentally operate.
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I was expected to sit on a stand less than 10 feet from him.
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And then at one point, they expected me to draw the layout of the house five feet from him.
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My legs were shaking so bad I could hardly stand up.
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They, you know, no one took into account how horrific it was for me to be sitting in front of him describing all of these details about what he did to me sexually in front of a courtroom of people.
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And, you know, I know they allow smaller children to testify via video, but I really think even if you're an adult and you're, you know, a survivor, you should be able to do that too, because that almost made me physically, physically sick and vomit every day I was there, knowing what I was walking into.
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Well, even your own uh legal representation, and I know that she was trying to help you win your case, and and you know, but even even she would sometimes she didn't understand actually some of the interactions that you had with her.
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It was um almost like a lecturing for not doing what you're supposed to be doing.
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Yeah, it was shocking.
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The first time she screamed at me, I I just my mind completely shut down.
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I was not expecting it, but I understood it later.
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Um, I was being very um evasive and I was reluctant to talk.
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Um, my parents at that time were sitting in the courtroom and she was asking me questions about, you know, the neglect and alcoholism in the house, and my parents are sitting there, and I'm well, yeah, it wasn't, yeah, it was, yeah, that was kind of hard, and that was it was it wasn't very good.
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And I mean, she and it's like pulling teeth.
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And then after that, she didn't allow them in the courtroom.
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But I was just being evasive and reluctant to talk that she was gonna lose moving forward.
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And she took me in the hallway and screamed at me a couple times, and and then the other times during the trial when uh they pulled me back in for rebuttal testimony.
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They had I had just woken up, I had been sleeping in another room, and she started showing me pictures of the basement, and my brain was just going all over the place because I'm look now looking at pictures of where I was abused, and then they throw me on the stand and start, you know, arguing about semantics.
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There were no locks on the doors.
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What are you talking about?
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And you're lying, you weren't locked in a closet because there's no locks on the doors.
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And I'm my I couldn't even come come up with a rational reasoning of trying to explain that if he put you in there, you would be an absolute idiot to open that door and walk out on your own because he's gonna beat the daylights out of you.
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And so if he put you in there, you were locked in the closet.
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I'm sorry that I used the word lock when there were no locks on the doors, but that's how it was.
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And but the whole time my brain was just trying to, you know, pull this information.
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But the minute you start yelling at me or challenging me or calling me a liar or all the all these things that went on during the trial, uh, survivors' brains just start, you know, going haywire.
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And so the whole trial itself was extremely traumatizing, but I would never change it for a minute.
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I am so, so grateful that I walked that that journey because, you know, spoiler alert, he was convicted.
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And it was a tough conviction to sell because it's uh almost eight years later.
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And you know, I it was basically my testimony and others that testified in my behalf versus him and his people testifying.
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It was like, who do you believe?
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And that's what won her the trial was why would this individual come in here, make these claims, go through an entire trial?
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She's like, Was this fun for you?
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No, ma'am, this was not fun for me.
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You know, I'm I'm not here because I'm bored.
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And so she kind of when in her closing argument explained that to the jury as to who had more to lose, who was who was facing a bigger fallout.
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And so, you know, the the jury saw through all of the manipulation and lies from his testimony and and really how sincere I was, and the fact that why would I be sitting here explaining all this if not if it didn't happen?
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Well, right, plus your actual physical reaction to some of the questioning.
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Um and that's one thing that's so frustrating about the judicial system is the lack of trauma-informed individuals who are working there to understand what is happening to the victim.
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I mean, if you go to therapy and you have a therapist who's in a room with it's just the two of you, and you are talking about if we're going back to this memory, you have a way to keep yourself grounded to know where you are presently.
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But in the courtroom, they're asking you, I want you to go back to that basement and I want you to detail everything while he's sitting right there, and then to not have any understanding of why you wouldn't be able to think clearly and why you would be freaking out.
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Yes, I agree.
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It was really, really tough.
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And that is not the best approach at all for survivors.
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And I've I was even asked to speak to uh a college health and human services about trauma-informed health care.
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I mean, not to go down another different rabbit hole, but that in itself also is very difficult for people who have been abused to navigate the health system and to deal with what that brings.
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And so both of those need to be looked, everything needs to be looked at in terms of trauma-informed for when you know we have women, men, children who are that traumatized.
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And then you're expecting them to kind of perform normally, and it just doesn't work out that way in many instances.
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Going to the grocery store can be you know triggering for me.
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Um, going into any kind of crowds or any any anything.
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I mean, sounds, smells are very often triggering to me when I'm out in public.
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And I keep myself very secure and closed in because I eliminate triggers that way.
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And so just going to the dentist, I mean, I cancel my appointments more times than I actually show up because it's so hard for me to get there and be in that in that type of position.
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It's horrible.
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I mean, I'm just my hands are gripping the chair the whole time.
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I'm almost hyperventilating, and I'm just like, just get it done, get it done.
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And so there's a lot of things that we don't think about when people are abused at that level of how they deal with just very basic day-to-day life.
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Right.
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And even outside of the courtroom, there's not very much support in general for survivors, just the day-to-day, a lot of individuals could look at a survivor and question, like how you were mentioning why would you keep going back over to that house instead of holding the perpetrator accountable for why would you abuse a child?
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It's why asking, why would a child go back to that house?
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Right.
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Yes.
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Yeah, we always looked at we always look at the victim first.
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I don't know how we've gotten there in society, but yeah, I mean, I never asked for any of that.
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It I came up upon it happenstance.
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I walked in on an ab on him abusing his daughter, and then bam, I'm pulled into it.
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Whether he was intending to pull me in before that or not, I have no clue.
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But I was I was pulled in before I even knew what was going on.
00:25:42.460 --> 00:25:47.180
And before I could even think of a way of getting myself out of it, it was already too late.
00:25:47.420 --> 00:25:49.099
I mean, he was threatening me.
00:25:49.259 --> 00:25:54.220
He was threatening he was threatening in every possible conceivable way.
00:25:54.700 --> 00:25:58.380
And half the time they were contradicting and it didn't even make sense.
00:25:58.619 --> 00:26:02.299
But I'm eight years old and I'm have no clue what's going on.
00:26:02.700 --> 00:26:10.859
And so, you know, it's we forget what an eight-year-old mind is doing.
00:26:11.660 --> 00:26:16.619
And so to an adult, my returning to that house does seem insane.
00:26:17.339 --> 00:26:21.339
But again, you're you're not thinking from an eight-year-old's perspective.
00:26:21.660 --> 00:26:21.819
Right.
00:26:21.980 --> 00:26:34.700
Well, and then even in uh victims of domestic violence as adults, the the victim a lot of times will return back to their abuser, and it's there's a psychological connection that brings them back to it.
00:26:35.019 --> 00:26:44.619
And even despite just being questioned of why would you stay so long or why would you go back, there's always the questions too of like, well, did that really happen?
00:26:44.859 --> 00:26:47.819
That sounds awfully exaggerated.
00:26:47.980 --> 00:26:55.660
I mean, there's because and I get it, as human beings, we don't want to believe that other human beings can do that to another person.
00:26:55.980 --> 00:26:56.859
Right, right.
00:26:57.019 --> 00:26:58.059
Yeah, but you're right.
00:26:58.140 --> 00:27:02.779
The question should be, you know, why is your husband beating you?
00:27:03.180 --> 00:27:09.180
Let's look at that first before we ask her and question her or doubt her story.
00:27:09.259 --> 00:27:14.380
It's like, why does he think it's okay that he knocks you down because dinner was 10 minutes late?
00:27:14.700 --> 00:27:15.740
Exactly, exactly.
00:27:15.819 --> 00:27:19.259
We need to start turning our focus more on the perpetrators.
00:27:19.500 --> 00:27:21.980
Uh so you mentioned a second book.
00:27:22.059 --> 00:27:24.299
What do you have a title of the second book?
00:27:24.619 --> 00:27:36.700
Yes, it's it's still called Carpenter Road, but it's the inadmissible years, because everything at trial, which is a legal term, was inadmissible.
00:27:36.940 --> 00:27:43.660
And so it is called Carpenter Road, the inadmissible years, and it does have a different cover than the first one.
00:27:43.900 --> 00:27:47.420
And so being that it's a prequel, I kept it very similar.
00:27:47.740 --> 00:27:48.539
That makes sense.
00:27:48.859 --> 00:28:11.500
And so, like you discussed, that one goes into more of what happened when everything initiated, so the reader can understand the grooming process more, and it gives professionals who work with children an insight as to what clues to look for in children who may be getting abused at home.
00:28:11.660 --> 00:28:12.700
Is that correct?
00:28:13.019 --> 00:28:14.059
Yeah, absolutely.
00:28:14.220 --> 00:28:24.220
If you read it, uh you will probably be thinking to yourself, what especially in my grade school, what are those teachers thinking?
00:28:24.380 --> 00:28:25.019
What are they doing?
00:28:25.180 --> 00:28:26.700
Why are they not helping her?
00:28:26.940 --> 00:28:34.059
I mean, I came in with excellent, I switched schools in third grade, and that's how I met the family.
00:28:34.380 --> 00:28:43.900
And so coming into this school, I'm coming in with very good academic records, attendance, and behavioral, no behavioral issues at all.
00:28:44.220 --> 00:28:48.220
Eight months later, I'm barely passing any class.
00:28:48.380 --> 00:29:04.460
I'm absent more than I'm there, and I have horrendous behavioral issues within eight months of stepping into that situation, into that school, and not one teacher tried to help me, tried to reach out, tried to ask me questions.
00:29:04.619 --> 00:29:09.259
I was visibly bruised and in pain quite often.
00:29:09.740 --> 00:29:11.819
You know, none of that was addressed.
00:29:12.220 --> 00:29:28.940
And so that that was a really unfortunate situation, and um I give all credit to when I went into high school that those teachers um intervened.
00:29:29.099 --> 00:29:53.660
It was really scary at first because I wasn't used to it, and I knew that it was gonna cause some sort of um exposure to what was happening, which was my biggest fear, which again is part of that whole grooming situation of what I'm thinking of being caught is like the worst in the world, even though I want out of the situation desperately.
00:29:53.819 --> 00:29:57.900
Getting caught was as worse as the abuse itself.
00:29:58.380 --> 00:30:10.539
And I give them all the credit for you know, helping me get out of the situation, um, making my family put me into therapy, early intervention for therapy.
00:30:10.700 --> 00:30:16.619
I I wouldn't be where I am today had the teachers at that school stepped in.
00:30:16.859 --> 00:30:19.900
But my grooming process was violent.
00:30:20.460 --> 00:30:23.259
And I don't really I mean, I don't know what the percent.
00:30:24.059 --> 00:30:34.059
Are on grooming or abuse when it's done in a way that's, you know, very methodic and almost kind at the beginning.
00:30:34.220 --> 00:30:42.380
You know, they're paying special attention, they're giving them treats, they're focusing on a talent that they might have.
00:30:42.619 --> 00:30:48.539
Um, and they're kind of taking them along the process of ultimately when that line is crossed.
00:30:48.779 --> 00:31:10.859
In my situation, he was violent right from the beginning, but I would still say that there was a lot of grooming that took place because I didn't have a clue what he was doing, and I didn't understand for the longest time that he would ask me questions like, Where have you been?
00:31:12.059 --> 00:31:18.140
And, you know, I'm I didn't know if he meant five minutes ago or if he meant a week ago.
00:31:18.299 --> 00:31:21.339
I didn't I didn't understand what he was getting at.
00:31:21.500 --> 00:31:30.859
But what he was ultimately teaching me was that I better get my ass back over to that house as often as I can.
00:31:31.339 --> 00:31:39.420
And when I'm summoned by my friend, who I she was inviting me to play, but really what that meant was you need to come over.