S19 E12: (1/2) [Jennifer Khalifa, CPEDV] The Absence of Trauma is Choice
41:58 Share

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive. Most of you aren't just listening right now. You're driving, cleaning, and even exercising. But what if you could be saving money by switching to Progressive? Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Multitask right now. Quote today at Progressive.com, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.

Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Maybe you'll find inspiration in the incredible true story of black female mathematicians at NASA in Hidden Figures, or the

fantasy world of Throne of Glass. There's more to Imagine when you listen. As an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. That's audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500.

Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences, as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder. Content warnings for each episode and confidential resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes. Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes.

Pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, or Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. Thank you so much for listening.

You think you know me, you don't know me well.

First, I just want to say it's such an honor and a privilege to have the chance to even be in conversation with you. I've listened to the podcast for a very long time, and I have always just deeply resonated with the stories that have been shared, but always deeply impressed with the way that you have centered survivors and their voices. So just even giving me the time and the space to be here is such an honor. Well, thank you. Seriously, you are a badass. I feel very much the same.

I am so glad we're coming together today, and I know our community is going to benefit so much from hearing the things that you have to share. I would love to learn a little bit about your background.

I am a survivor and I identify first and foremost as a survivor. It's funny because I never in my life thought that that was something, a title that I would hold, nor did I fully understand what being a victim of IPV is, intimate partner violence. The more common term is domestic violence. I never in a million years would have fathomed that I would have been in this work. When I was a little kid, I loved to like

design and play on video games. And I thought I was going to grow up to be an architect, to be honest. It's interesting because as I've come into my own adulthood and been on my own journey of reconciling my advocacy along with my survivorship, it's looking back at our histories and realizing a lot of this stuff started way before being with an abusive partner. My background definitely grew up in a household where there was a lot of turmoil and a lot of trauma. I

I was your classic latchkey kid of late 80s, 90s. And so for a lot of the time in my childhood, I was just left to my own devices and helping care for a younger brother. I had a father who was in and out of prison and a mother who worked very far away from the home and wasn't very present. A lot of her weekends were spent with friends and there was a lot of substance use. And so

My childhood, there were a lot of things that I saw and experienced that I didn't fully understand or would have recognized as being traumatic, but they very much were. What I've come to learn now and something that I truly stand by is the opposite of trauma is not the absence of trauma because we all have it, whether it's big T or little t traumas.

But the absence of trauma is choice. And when we've either grown up in a dynamic where there hasn't been a choice in the surroundings, where as a small child, you should be cared for, right, by your primary caregiver.

When those needs aren't being met, that's eliminating a lot of the choice that we have. And so it's only natural that for a lot of us who are victim survivors, we find ourselves playing out this exact same dynamic in our romantic relationships later on down the line. So that's definitely where I found myself

I ended up joining a very strict religion, but at the time it seemed like there was a lot of stability that I saw there with the families and the friends because I had grown up around a lot of drugs, alcohol, community-based violence. I thought there was a lot of stability there. So I really jumped in with two feet as a 15-year-old.

But during that time, my younger brother was struggling a lot with his friends. He was struggling with the school environment, getting kicked out of school, starting at age 12, hanging out with folks who were getting involved. And around the time that I was 20, my brother was incarcerated and facing a murder charge of murder one. So I felt like my world at that time as a 20-year-old and as a young adult, it was really falling apart.

It was very synonymous with my early childhood experience as well, where there was just always chaos and turmoil, and it was hard to predict what was coming next. In an attempt to try to control my own world, I guess, I decided to go embark on, it was missionary service, but in my mind, I found it has this way to almost escape and be able to give back. I equated to, well, if I'm doing something that's productive and helping society, then that means my life will be fine after this.

I was very young. I was like 20 years old and went on this mini sabbatical. I really don't know what else you'd call it. But this time of really trying to be in service and find my way and find my path, I had finished going to college and I got a degree. Actually, one is in mathematics science because, again, I thought I was going to be an architect.

And the other one was in humanities. It's something you said early on, Tiffany. I feel like this work finds us because it was nowhere on my purview. Nowhere. And when I was doing, I guess I would better call it welfare service work during that time. I was out in communities helping folks learn how to clean their water.

I felt lost. There's no other way to frame that. And when I came back from that experience, my brother was fully sentenced to prison. He had a murder one charge. That's a whole nother story for a different day under the felony murder rule in California. So even though he was not a part of the homicide, he was charged for it.

And then a month later, after his sentencing, my dad passed away. I had just come back from this experience. So you can only imagine the level of vulnerability was at an all-time high. And that's when I met my first abuser. I was in my early 20s. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life and how to get back into a four-year college when I met this guy through my church group. And so my automatic assumption is that because he came from that environment, that that meant that he was safe.

When I met him, there weren't really all these red flags that we talk about going off, but there were a few in retrospect. When he first approached me, I knew that he was dating a friend of mine. So it was an automatic no. But what I noticed from him is that he really spent the time trying to build a friendship with me. What I didn't recognize is he was also using that time to wear me down a little bit and interject himself into my life.

One of the first things I remember is when I was getting ready to go to college, he had asked me to help him with college applications, which I did. I thought, oh, this guy just wants to be my friend. It's totally fine. So I'd helped him apply to school and he ended up getting into school where I was going to school. I went up there one weekend. It was out of state in Utah. I went up there to go look at housing and I had friends who were already up there going to school.

I was signing a lease at an apartment with one of my best childhood friends, and he decided that he was going to move into that apartment complex as well with his cousin. I made the move, and he made himself very present in my life. When our semester had started at school, eventually he had ended up dropping out of his classes and rolling into mine. Coming from an environment where...

I would have thought I had experienced love or stable love. It really wasn't the case given my childhood. You know, a lot of the time I spent alone. So with him, I felt like here was this person who cared for me, even though the dynamic shifted really quickly to being very unhealthy. I equated that to I had this person's time, this attention. I must have some level of value. And it was my first dating experience. I had never dated before him. I was very, very shy and had never really been in a relationship before.

He would ask to come over and, oh, can you help me with my homework? Can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? Little by little, things started to get really bad as to where he would start making sexual advances towards me. I had never had sex before. I was a virgin. We were part of this very strict religion where that was looked down upon.

Lots of purity culture type vibes. Yes, 100,000%. Do you think your childhood attracted you to that sort of sanitized environment? I don't know if that's the right adjective, but like an illusion of safety, I guess I would say.

Absolutely, because it looked so stable to me. It looked like, here are these people that have happy, cohesive families. They have parents who are present. I was such an anxious kid. I mean, now looking back, I'm like, well, of course, there was so much anxiety. I struggled with OCD starting at age nine, a lot of mental health issues, but no one would have called it that at that time, nor would I. With those folks, I felt some sense of peace and the anxiety was gone. I felt like I had some sense of control. And

And in those environments where there is this heavy, whether it's purity culture or just really strict religious parameters, you look at the 10 commandments that they teach. It's like, I can follow this recipe and therefore I am set on this path to like go to heaven or whatever you want to call it. It was the opposite of what I had come from. I was like, oh, well, this must be me doing something good in this world.

in school wasn't the first time. There was a time I recall when we were first hanging out and being friends, air quote friends. He had asked me for a ride to his work to pick up his car. What's funny is I had had friends who knew him before I did who were like, hey, this guy is bad news. I really

really wouldn't listen to what he says. Don't put your eggs in one basket. But I was so inexperienced. And this is the first time there was a guy who had shown interest, whether it was genuine or not. I did not have the barometer to help me decide that. I just knew that it felt good for someone to seem invested in you.

So he asked me for a ride to his work to get his car, of which I obliged. And so I drive him down there. We get his car and he tells me he's going to take me to McDonald's to get ice cream for doing this for him. We get his car. We drive back. We end up at a McDonald's. He has me park my car. I get into his. He drives us through the drive-thru and we sit there. And as I'm eating, he locks the doors and he starts touching me, touching my legs, touching my breasts.

aggressively like sexually assaulting me. I would have never called it that. It wasn't in my purview. I'm like, oh my gosh, I couldn't make sense of it at the time because here you have this religious undertone. I don't equate it to what it actually is in that moment. I just feel so disconnected from everything. But I also knew it didn't feel safe and it didn't feel like it's something I wanted, even though it still felt good. I don't know if that makes any level of sense.

No, totally. It totally does. And we hear this a lot from victims, especially because it's very confusing when your body responds to things, but you're not consenting. Those physical reactions can still happen. I'm so sorry you experienced that. The culture definitely plays a piece for sure. And it's so prevalent even now when I'm working with young people. One of the things that we tell them and have them repeat is that consent is the presence of a yes, not the absence of a no.

And we will say, say it with me now. The Lord's work. And this is why we also need legislation to codify consent because, you know, yeah, that's a whole other conversation. But it's very confusing and it sounds like you felt

before this, that this person was potentially a safe person. Absolutely. I just appreciate so much how you conceptualize and can name it for what it is. Even look now and we'll get into where I'm at and what it is that I do. And still looking back on that experience, it's so hard to describe when I'm going back to the emotion and how it felt to be in that situation. So I definitely appreciate you naming it because it is all of those things

I remember he put my seat back, got on top of me, kept trying to kiss me. But then he would say, Oh, I can't kiss you. I can't kiss you. But kept touching me. He kept telling me, you need to get out of the car, you need to get out of the car. So I would grab the handle and I would open it and he would reach over and slam it shut. And I would open the handle and he would slam it shut.

This is kind of the start of multiple and many experiences with him like that. But it was a huge mind fuck because I'm like, I'm trying to get out. This man's on top of me. And that repeated over and over again until he finally stopped himself. And he was like, you need to get out of the car. But what he told me was you are unworthy. You're dirty. You're a temptress, essentially.

So I walked away really thinking and believing that. I remember going to my friend's house and I broke down and cried and I'm like, well, I should have got out of the car when he first told me because I do believe he said when we were sitting there eating the ice cream, like you need to get out of the car, you need to get out of the car. I

I'm just so attracted to you. And so when I first tried to get out is when he slammed the door and put my chair back. And that pattern just continued until he finally let me go. What I didn't realize is that during those experiences, I was 100% being groomed because I didn't realize my own self-esteem and the way I felt about myself and all the ways I was now questioning myself and my value and my worth was slowly diminishing. And in these relationships, that's what we see, especially during

Those early stages where these patterns and behavior, because intimate partner violence and gender-based violence, they are patterns and they're behaviors. They're there for folks to be able to assume this coercive control, but they do it by diminishing our own self-efficacy and our own self-esteem. We just don't know that that's what's happening to us. We feel crazy. And that's where you hear the term crazy-making, because here I have this duality of sin, air quotes sin,

I felt like I did the best that I could, but what I didn't realize is that he was making a choice. And that in this scenario, I was the victim. He's the aggressor or perpetrator or person causing harm.

This happened numerous times. And I remember going to my church leader explaining, and they had said that they knew there were multiple women who had had experiences like this with him and that he's wishing that they would come forward. That was another betrayal trauma that I held was that my own ecclesiastical leader in these instances knew that this person was doing this to women, but there was nothing being done about it.

What I heard in that was we don't have value and there's not enough worth. And the responsibility is on me to stop the behavior. When those things would happen, he profusely apologized, tried to be my friend. I go to school. He goes to school. I move into my apartment. He moves into that apartment. I register for school. He starts. He drops his classes. He's enrolled into mine and meshing himself into my world.

It's that skillful enmeshment. And again, this is on the heels because I went up to school six months after my brother had been sentenced. He went up to Pelican Bay, which is a level four facility. Oh, my dad went there. He did? Okay. See, so much in common, Tiffany. So much in common. I love how he said he went there like it's college. My dad was in San Quentin. I think my dad was also in San Quentin for a time. They probably hung out. Oh my gosh. I'm sure they did, Tiffany.

Okay, most Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions. But get this, the real number is closer to $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which you've probably forgotten about. Thankfully, Rocket Money can find a bunch of subscriptions you've forgotten all about and then help you cancel the ones you don't want anymore. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions,

monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features.

Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash wondery. That's rocketmoney.com slash wondery. Rocketmoney.com slash wondery. She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Jennifer and I have a lot in common, if you guys can't tell. So much. So much. But yeah, you're walking through all of that. I mean, it's so isolating. Not only your brother, his incarceration. You lose your dad. I'm so sorry for your loss. You're stepping out of all this trauma. Yeah.

out of childhood. And then it's like, okay, just go be an adult. Exactly. And here you're trying to seek safety and refuge. And again, you're being victimized, but in a completely nuanced and new way. Absolutely. 100%. 100%. It's interesting because like you said, Tiffany, I thought I was doing what was right. I thought here I am in this religious institution at this religious school

I'm checking all those boxes. And yet I'm being faced with another form of violence. But I didn't realize is that my childhood had completely teed that up for me. It completely set the stage for this type of relationship to happen. With this young man, things escalated. I would go over to help him study and he would pretend like he's playing games with me and he would pin me down and hold my arms.

And I could feel the capillaries bursting in my arms as he did this. He would pretend to spit on my face, just all of these things. And so I would end the friendship. I'd be like, hey, I don't like this. I don't feel comfortable with this. And again, it would be, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'll never do it again. You're helping me be a better man. But it was so weird because he would never say that I was a girlfriend.

But at the end of our relationship, when I was trying to get out, he's like, well, we were together and you knew it. A long history of these mind fucks with this young man. And that's funny because it wasn't until I was married to my kid's dad. He was like, why do you have bruises? And the pictures from my 25th birthday party, it was when I was in school. It was during that time period.

And there's photos. I didn't even realize, Tiffany, that I had bruises on me. But you can see them on both of my arms. And in one of them, that young man is behind me. He's standing right behind me. It's so wild because even looking at that girl, I'm like, she had no idea. She had no idea that she was a victim of abuse. We had not had sex. We hadn't been intimate, but he would pin me down. He would grope me and do all these things. Then I would usually end up leaving and crying.

I was so ashamed. I didn't want to tell my roommates. One of my roommates was my very best childhood friend and they disapproved of him. They hated him. Your real friends were like, no, fuck that guy. Oh, yeah. And they would say it just like that, too. One time I remember I was hanging out with them and they saw him go out with this other girl, like take her on a date. And my roommates told me, you know, we saw him hanging out with so-and-so.

So I asked him about it and I'll never forget when he said, well, those aren't your real friends. If they really liked you, they would have never told you that. They would have wanted you to be happy. Why are they trying to meddle in our relationship? Eventually, I went to my college campus to the counselor and I was like, look, the only way I can describe this is I saw this train coming and I'm tethered to this track and I don't know how to get off. I

I knew something bad was going to happen because something wasn't right. But I had no way of being able to say what's right because I was carrying the shame and guilt. Well, if I hadn't hung out with him, if I chose to distance myself, these things wouldn't happen. Or he was telling me,

if I had followed the rules more, the religious rules that we had, if I was a better person, that I'm bringing these things on myself. I'm a temptress, X, Y, and Z. I did go to my college campus because those things would occur. The advice that I was given on campus was it is okay to end a friendship. And that was it. What does that even mean? I don't even get it. I would love to know. I still don't know. I walked out of there and I was like, what do I do? What the hell?

How invalidating. I'm so sorry. It's disgusting how often we hear of colleges doing nothing in the face of sexual assault and a lot of times prioritizing, unfortunately, their reputations over the safety of young women, especially whom are victimized at the highest rates during those years. The institutions that we are trusting our children to are not doing their job to protect them and to hold people accountable.

It's true, Tiffany, because we look then at the institutional harms. This school, they have a very, very strict honor code. And so that was the other piece to it, because that honor code said I wasn't supposed to be in his apartment past a certain time.

Sometimes these assaults would happen after midnight or whatever that I can't remember now that curfew, whatever it was. So I was at fault. In all actuality, if I had come forward, there was a chance I could have been expelled. They told me that and in lieu of giving me a safety plan or connecting me to resources and this timeframe, this is like mid 2000s. You know, if you look at domestic violence 20 years ago, we weren't even talking about this stuff. You look at teen dating violence or dating violence with young adults 10 years ago,

We weren't talking about that stuff. Things that happen and stayed behind closed doors, like what happens at home stays at home. We don't want to air our dirty laundry.

And I'm so thankful now at the conversations that we get to have so that other youth can feel empowered to understand and name these experiences. But yeah, I was told you can end a friendship. I told him we can't be friends anymore. But again, he was so enmeshed in my world. Being in my classes, he would show up where I was. What he started doing when I had ended our friendship, he would hang outside of my window in my apartment and he knew where my bedroom was. And he would be out there and be like, Jennifer, Jennifer.

Jennifer, and just be very jovial. He did that a couple of times to where it wore me down. I was stuck with this duality of, well, he's paying attention to me and maybe I'm the problem or maybe I'm overreacting or maybe it's not that bad or maybe this is what intimacy is, right? So it's like that programming that we have that internalizes all of these things and reinforces it.

Again, I gave him another chance. And one night we were hanging out at his house. We went past honor code. That honor code also said you weren't allowed to go down a hallway, even to use the restroom if it was down a hallway, because that's in violation. We were hanging out. It got very late. I tried to go back to my apartment. The door was locked. I didn't have my key. And my best friend was actually traveling. And my other roommates weren't home. I think they were all out partying or at a club or whatever they were doing. No one was home. I had no other choice but to go back.

This is pre-smartphone. I'm sure I only had whatever flip phone at the time. I for sure did not have an iPhone. I had tried calling the few folks I knew who had a cell phone and there was no luck. So I had no other choice but to go back to his apartment. It was that or sleep in my car. And so I was like, I'm so sorry. I am locked out. And it just happened to be that his cousin who had originally moved there with him, he only lasted about six weeks and he had moved home. So he had an empty room in the back.

He did have a roommate. The roommate was asleep because again, very religious school, the roommate could have reported that I was there even. So he gave me a place to stay. And so I went in the back room and that was where he full on raped me. That's the first time that I had ever had sex. And

As it was happening, I was just so confused, so confused at what was going on. The only thing I can think at that point in time was what's my role in this, which is so sad.

After it was over, he gave me a big hug. I didn't even know what emotion to feel. And he's like, it's okay. Just don't have sex for a year and God will forgive you. Because my immediate feeling was the guilt that I had broken some kind of law, right? Like religious law. So sorry. I appreciate that, Tiffany. I do.

There is this misconception that folks who are survivors of sexual assault, that they make it up. And we know that realistically, and the data tells us that is very, very rare. And when a lot of folks ask me now, even in the field and in my role, what can I do to support survivors? The only thing I tell them is believe them. Believe them. I had no idea who I was going to tell. My roommates hated this man. I also had the shame and stigma of now breaking this commandment. I felt so impure.

I also felt even more attached to him in this really weird way. If I couldn't get out before, I definitely wasn't getting out now. It gets worse. I was actually working for the university, a separate campus, but it was definitely tied to that university. I had worked so hard to get that job. So after that happens...

There would be intimate relations, but I would never call it consensual. I don't think it was ever consensual for the duration of that relationship because it still was so tied to that first experience. Otherwise, it never would have happened. I will never forget one night we were sitting in his car. And after that, it was just this wave of abuses. The emotional abuse ramped up. The physical abuse ramped up.

I felt 100% stuck in here. I was with this narrative that I needed to meet certain measures as a woman to keep a status within this religion. It's taught since a young age, your purpose is to get married and to bear children and to do all these things. I felt like I was tainted now if I were to ever try to have a relationship with another man other than this one, because that was my first sexual experience.

I can remember going to an ecclesiastical leader who had actually called me into his office. And I think he had just watched this dynamic played out because we were going to church at the time. He called me in and these words stuck with me. He's like, you are an attractive young woman. You deserve so much better. You are a smart young woman.

I couldn't even listen to what he was saying. And he wasn't saying it in a weird way that was pervy or like trying to come on to me. Like, if you need the support, I'm here. If you ever want to tell me what's really going on. I was like, it's fine. It's all fine. And I was not going to tell a living soul what was going on.

I was struggling immensely with my mental health. I knew what my mom was going through with my brother, so I didn't have her to go to and tell this to. I couldn't go to my friends because I felt like they were going to judge me. I felt so alone and the only person I felt like I had was him.

So one day he tells me, I just want to let you know that I am married, that he had gone and served a mission for this church. It was outside the country. He said that after the conclusion of that, that religion, they're notoriously known for getting married very young, that there was someone he had met there, went back and married them.

He was there for about six months and he decided to move back home and left them there. I don't know if that's true or not. I still to this day don't know if that's true, but he told me that. I felt like I couldn't go any lower. Okay, so now I'm an adulteress and it's coupled with all these other things. The reality is this man was very, very, very sick. He told me, I told you that so that you would stop having sex with me. I

I was supposed to go into work at this job that I loved and I drove off. I remember I drove to Salt Lake City and I'm like, I just need to clear my head. I don't know what to do anymore.

We were there during the spring and summer. At the end of the summer, we were supposed to come back for fall. I went to go visit a relative. I have an aunt who lives up in the Pacific Northwest. He goes home. He asks if he can borrow my phone because he didn't have one. While he's home visiting, his dad dies. He has a heart attack and he's in the hospital. I eventually come back home. He tells me that one of my other best friends who still lived in California, which is where we're from, she and I had gone to go visit the dad in the hospital and

We call each other sisters to this day. We've been friends since we were sixth graders and she knew him as well. She disapproved and hated him as well. But I had not yet told her everything that had transpired with him up until this point. Fast forward, his dad ends up passing away. He decides not to move back to school. And the mom, I remember, didn't work.

He had asked me to rent a room in this house. And I know this is going to sound crazy. I couldn't fathom the idea of going back to school without him because I felt like that's all that I had as fucked up and as toxic as it was. So I decided to stay and I decided to rent a room from them in this house that they had. Little did I know I was moving into the house of horrors.

The abuse continued, but it was more in secret because his mom was very religious. She thought that I was just this friend. What's wild is even as I'm recounting and telling you this, I am telling myself, this is so wild. Who would believe you? That's still there. And now I'm like a 40-year-old. Sometimes we're our best gaslighters to ourselves. You know what I mean? It's almost like the imposter syndrome of trauma sometimes.

But that's because our abusers have programmed us. And really, he groomed you and programmed you in so many ways. You said earlier the car incidents, which, by the way, so fucking weird and bizarre and harmful. And then the escalation, the way minors are often groomed. Send me a picture of your puppy. They test and they break us and they test and they break us. And then they find that perfect moment, right? Yeah.

I'm just very sorry you went through that alone. Tiffany, everything you're saying is 100% facts and valid. As you were speaking, I was remembering he used to tell me things like, I'm the only person who's going to love you. I love you. I have these, I don't even mind confessing this on here, these abnormally long toes. I've always hated my toes. But he would find insecurities like that. He would tell me, I'm the only person who is going to love your toes. Or I'm the only person who's going to accept you for this.

His mom is super religious. So when we move back in, this is a big part of the story. He's like, we're not having sex anymore. And I was like, okay. And he goes, we're not together. I remember feeling this immense amount of relief. He's like, but you're going to live here and we need you to pay rent. I did have a job that I was able to go back to. So I went back to that job. I had friends there.

All of my friends hated this man. He had had a prior history to me even meeting him of doing really shitty things to women. My best guy friend hated him. And when he found out we were involved, he even stopped speaking to me. I continuously felt like I was doing something so wrong. I had no idea how to get out. And the best way to describe it

I had a therapist tell me this once. It's like you're walking through spiderwebs and he would spin this narrative of those people don't really like you. I remember he'd be like, what are you doing? And I would say, oh, I'm hanging out with so-and-so. And he'd be like, you're a loser. Those people are losers. I really internalize that, which is so...

So... Negging, right? Yes. And that continues now. Even for like our young people who are trying to navigate relationships, we see the increases in rates of these things that are substantially high with these unbalanced and unhealthy dynamics. Because at some point you are learning and you're navigating. We all have our pain stories that are like driving this bus. Yeah.

And so it is on us to create awareness and education and help folks feel empowered, especially young people by being able to name what it is that an unhealthy and a healthy relationship is and help them feel some sense of empowerment.

If we can just help the young people to feel like they matter and they have value and we're reinforcing that narrative, it's not going to wholeheartedly prevent it, but it definitely helps having some sense of stability and security, which is not what I had. I was always looking externally for validation and supports and like, how are they wearing their hair? How are they doing things? Because my world, it felt like everything was so wrong. And I always felt like the steps I had taken as a kid were wrong because they were always met with some level of detriment.

Whether that was like a parent yelling at me or a parent disappearing on me. But fast forward, I move into the house under these new parameters. I'd go to church with the mom. She was interesting. So he was the youngest and he had an older brother and sister who were out of the house, married and had kids. And the mom babied and coddled him. But she was very hard on me.

One time they went somewhere and she had told me, Jen, I need you to mop the floors and you need to sweep the floors before I come back. I didn't do that. I remember a friend had asked me to go get my nails done with her. So I did. And I thought, okay, well, I'll just come home and sweep the floor. But I don't remember. I think I didn't hear her say mop. I don't know. But I did it. It wasn't up to her standards. So I'll never forget. She came in and she's like, oh, why didn't she do that? She was very hard on me. Very, very hard on me. And she didn't know the relationship I had with her son.

One time I was trying to hide from her quiet in a closet because I didn't want her to know that I was home because she was going to come tell me what chore I didn't do or needed to do. She was very nice at first, but I think once she recognized that her son and I were not what he was saying that we were, things shifted completely and it got horrible.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once a facade falls away.

We've covered stories like a Shark Tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment but soon faced mounting bills, an active lawsuit filed by Larry King, and no real product to push. He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs.

acts. To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Giudice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.

It was just the three of us and they had built on this extra room, which was the room that I was renting because she didn't have an income. I had essentially dropped out of college, went back to my old job, and I'm helping support him and his mother in this house, which was in a very rural area of Riverside County in California. Long after this experience, I couldn't drive down that road and see that house because it would give me knots in my stomach for the longest time.

I remember coming home from work one day and their dog, they had a German Shepherd who was so nice, was just barking, barking, barking and going wild and berserk. There was a man on the property. It was a mobile trailer home. It was older and they had a lot of dirt on this property. And the dog was going wild because they would frequently have people come in and do work and projects and things like that.

That was always weird to me because I never knew where they got the money. He did go back to work too, but I couldn't figure out how they would pay. And there was a man outside and this dog was going wild. And I could tell there was something with the man that that dog didn't like.

I went to open the door and they had yelled at me, close the door because the dog had been trying to get to this man. And the dog bit my right wrist and one of the teeth punctured on the right side. I still have the scar from it. One tooth went in on one side and his bottom teeth went in on the other side.

I was stunned and I'm trying to make sense of what's going on. And it's just chaos at the time. I'm bleeding from the puncture wound on the top. It's not deep enough to need stitches. It definitely hurts and it's bleeding. They were going to run an errand and I was having car problems at the time. So I asked them, hey, can you take me to like Walmart or can I get some first aid supplies to bandage this up at least?

We do that. And I remember I'm in the backseat of the car and I think he had a relative over because I was in the backseat. So was he. The mom was in the front and the relative was driving. And he tells me, he's like, well, we can have sex, but there's no strings attached. And I'm just like,

what is going on? I'm trying to make sense of my injury. I'm like, why is he having this conversation with me? His family's there. It is important to note his mom was a monolingual Spanish speaker. I'm also bilingual Spanish English. And he was telling me that in English in the backseat, that this can be our new relationship. And I was like, no, that's not happening. I get it bandaged up. And the next day, I remember waking up

I can't feel anything from my wrist up. Well, I can feel it, but it's numb. It feels like you've been sleeping on it. So I knew something was off and wrong with my hand. And so I called a nurse line and they were like, well, you need to come in and get checked. It sounds like the puncture wound could have done whatever. I needed to get my insurance card, which was at my mom's house in Orange County, California.

And so I had asked him, he was home that day. I said, hey, can you give me a ride? I need to get the insurance card and I need to go to an urgent care. He's like, yeah, I'll give you a ride. And it's important to note that he had two cousins that also lived in Orange County, not too far from my mom. So he's like, I'll drop you off and I'll go visit them. I was like, okay, that's fine. So he drives me to my mom's. No one's there. My mom worked in LA County and she was out there. I get the insurance card.

He comes in the house and he full on sexually assaults me, gets on top of me. He's bigger than me. I'm trying to make sense because I just remember holding my hand up on the right side. I can't feel my hand. It still has the injury. And he rapes me as he's in the middle of it. It's so weird. It was like an out of body experience because I remember yelling and I had not done this the first time, but I remember saying no, no.

No, no. And the words just kept coming out of my mouth, like repetitive, no, no, no. To this day, I cannot handle hearing a man whisper the words, what's in my ear, because he kept whispering it. And if I hear that word at a whisper level, I can't do it. It still puts me into like a trauma response. He kept whispering that in my ear and I will never forget him saying, it's too late, it's already in. It's too late, it's already in.

The only way that I can describe that, it's like I died, but I was not lucky enough to die. I was a shell of a human at this point. The folks who had known me before would have told you like, Jen is so funny. She's really personable. She's always cracking jokes. She's always positive. That was not me. And I know that my friends recognize that later. But after that happened, I was confused.

completely numb. I never even went to the hospital to get treatment for my arm after that. He puts me in the car, says he's going to his cousin's house, of which I go and I make them lunch. I remember cooking spaghetti and I'm numb. I'm looking at him, looking out the window, giving them food. I don't feel anything the rest of that day. I feel nothing from then on out.

My first thought was not to notify law enforcement because my brother had gone to prison. And I kept thinking, feeling bad for this man. If I call the cops, which now I know that's a fallacy and not true. He's going to be arrested. This is going to crush him. This is going to ruin his life. This is going to ruin his mom. Looking back, if I knew them what I know now, I would have called in a heartbeat. But I understand why victims don't. It was not my first thought. It was not my first thought at all. Also, I...

felt so shameful and so guilty. I thought I let this happen. This was my fault. That's the only narrative I have with this is my fault.

From that point on, I stayed at the house. If I wasn't going anywhere before, I definitely wasn't going anywhere now. I started working from home. He ended up getting hired on as a subcontractor. I worked for a property preservation company at that time, and he was a subcontractor. So sometimes I would even go out with him. And it was like we were together, but in secret from his mom and primarily just so he could continue to have sex with me. That was it.

but I'm sure she caught on. But in the midst of that, there were times where he would keep me in the house to have sex with him all day long and not let me leave. The room I was in didn't have a TV and he brought me this little tiny TV that could only get, I think it was NBC. It's whatever channel Ellen was on. And that's what I would watch. I would stay in that room, not wanting to come out because I didn't want to see him. I didn't want to see the mom. I would stay in that room. And my whole life felt like a bunch of nothingness.

When everything started with him, I was 25. I think I was 26 at this point. I can remember thinking, oh, it's fine. I'll just, I'll make it to 27 and then I'll be 28 and then I'll be 29 and this will all be okay. It'll get better. The religion I was a part of, definitely not pro-choice by any shape or form. He used to tell me all the time, if I get pregnant, he is going to murder me or he will kill the baby. He's going to create this cocktail that I'm going to have to drink.

One time he accidentally did come in me and he woke me up, drove me to a clinic. At that time, you couldn't get Plan B over the counter at the Walgreens or anything like that. So we get a prescription of Plan B. I

I didn't know how I felt about plan B. I didn't even know what it was. And at that time, you had to take two pills and it was like a specific time apart. He forced me, he stood over me, made me take the first one. I went to sleep and he came into my room and I intentionally was going to hide the other one because I didn't know if it was like an abortion, if I was doing something wrong. But he woke me up and forced me to take the other one. I don't consider any of the sexual interactions between us consensual because I had been worn down to nothingness at this point.

He would have sex with me wherever he could, whether that was in a car parked on the side because a lot of it was hiding from his mom. And again, the threats of if you're pregnant, I'll kill you. I'll kill the baby. A few months before I was able to get out. And I've always said, Tiffany, I remember thinking this a few years ago. I would love stories of how people are able to leave because to me at that point in time, I felt like that's what helped me when I was finally able to go. But I didn't know. I didn't know what a restraining order was.

I didn't know what domestic violence program, I had no idea because I was so young and it was never something that was on my purview. I remember thinking when I was in my late teens, "Oh, if someone ever hits me, I'll leave in a second." That couldn't be farthest from the truth for a lot of us, for most of us, because this relationship isn't you go on a date with someone and they punch you in the face. It's wearing you down. It's the emotional abuse and it's very cyclical.

That was the constant narrative. You're nothing without me. This is what I can do to you. But at that point in time, anything could have happened, Tiffany, and I would have been so unfazed. And it's not that I was unfazed by that in any way, shape or form. It's just the level of shock and fear that I had. I didn't know how to leave without dying. He would hold me down, strangle me, let me go right before and say he's just kidding. I had no idea how I was going to survive. I had no idea how I was going to get out.

Next time on Something Was Wrong.

He goes, that man knew exactly what to say to cover his ass. That was my first time ever seeing a preventionist in action. And I was like, whatever she's doing, this is what the world needs. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe, friends.

Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram, at SomethingWasWrongPodcast. Our theme song was composed by Glad Rags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much. I take my time every day

If you like Something Was Wrong, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.