S7 E2: The Perfect Shitstorm
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Licensed therapist Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT, writes in an article for Psychology Today that sibling abuse is the most common but least reported type of abuse in the family. Prevalence is higher than spousal or child abuse combined, which is why it is so common

with consequences well into adulthood similar to parent-child abuse. Up to 80% of youth experience some form of sibling maltreatment, yet it's often called the forgotten abuse. Usually, the perpetrator is an older child, often the eldest, exploiting the emotional dependence and weakness of a younger sibling. Girls are at a greater risk of abuse, generally by an older brother.

When a brother abuses a sister, it often involves physical or sexual abuse. Lancer continues, sibling rivalry and abuse are different. Squabbles, jealousy, unwillingness to share, and competition are normal sibling behaviors.

Fighting between equals can be two. Rivalry is reciprocal and the motive is for parental attention versus harm and control. Rather than an occasional incident, abuse is a repeated pattern where one sibling takes the role of the aggressor toward another who consistently feels disempowered.

It's often characterized as bullying. Typically, an older child dominates a younger or weaker sibling who naturally wants to please them. Unlike rivalry, the motive is to establish superiority or incite fear or distress.

The effects of sibling abuse mirror parent-child abuse and have a long-term negative impact on survivors' sense of safety, well-being, and interpersonal relationships. Victims of all ages experience internalized shame, which heightens anger, fear, anxiety, and guilt. Both victims and perpetrators often have low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.

Children may complain of headaches, stomach aches, and bowel, eating, and sleep disorders. Some have developmental delays or social and academic difficulties in school. They may run away or stay for periods at friends' homes. Victims may engage in substance abuse, self-harm, or delinquent behavior. Abuse causes fear of the perpetrator that may lead to PTSD and produce nightmares or phobias. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is

Something was wrong. You think you know me, you don't know me well at all. You think you know me, you don't know me well. You think you know me, you don't know me well.

Here's Amy. They say perspective is everything. And time has definitely offered me some of that, a good deal of that in digesting what happened in my family. And, you know, I've had these points in time where I can look back and say, this is where abuse started, this type of abuse started. But I can look back and think even these fond family memories I have that I've banked are somewhat tainted in retrospect. Like mom...

She loved to tell people that from a really young age, Rory had this drive to make money. And now I see it was to make money off of people, a side hustle of candy. But like even before that, at three years old, my mom must have been carrying me like I must have been strapped to her chest. Rory would draw treasure maps and tell her he wanted to take them to the grocery store to sell to people.

And obviously they're like fake treasure maps. They don't lead anywhere. But he had it in his very young mind. He was going to make money off of people and basically use them in almost the most innocent way he could consider at that age. And I don't mean to laugh because that's obviously not very funny if I'm talking about a child showing signs of manipulation super early. But I might laugh at inappropriate times, unfortunately, especially as I still digest these things.

It was always about making a buck, but also at the same time, it was always about putting people in their place. The number of... The instances of abuse are so numerable if I think back. Even in middle school, I think it's taken me time to even realize this was abuse. He forced me to, in so many words, sell Playboys at school. He found a school directory and would call...

kids from my classes, you know, I would say like a homeroom on it. He would call kids from my classes or have me call them and ask boys, mind you, if they wanted to buy Playboys. And he would force me, blackmail me again to bring them to school. I did it a couple times. I never got caught, thank God. But in retrospect, it wasn't even about selling Playboys. It was about getting me in trouble. And now that was the dichotomy that kind of unfolded as our

As lives unfolded, as we grew up, you know, he could tell I was going to do everything to be, and I hate to say it, not to polarize myself even more, but the good kid. And it's not like I wanted to compete with him. It was more like I wanted to be good for mom. I wanted to make parenting easier because I could see what a struggle it was.

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Mom was in a tough situation parenting two very, very different children. And she had to be two different, very different parents to each of us. And I think that's kind of something we don't really talk about in parenting. I'm a parent now. I get that. But it's weird to think about. Like, I kind of resented her at times because I knew that Rory got away with more things. But I got more freedom. Basically, Rory would...

break things in the house and he might get grounded for a week, but he'll sweet talk her into, you know, getting TV privileges again, or, you know, I might miss a homework assignment or, and that would get me in trouble. And I think that she knew that the standard, she had different standards for us because we had different capabilities. And that probably almost

Even though Rory was getting kind of the better end of the stick sometimes, I think he resented me even more for that and wanted to get me in more trouble. He kind of just developed in his ways of like manipulating me. He, again, didn't have very many friends. And again, I...

I think I said earlier I was a nerd, sensitive to that statement. I didn't mean it in an insulting way even to myself, but my priorities were school, number one, family, number two, and friends. And I didn't have a lot, but my friends that I did have, we bonded over trauma, number one. Even in middle school, we were pretty open with each other. And again, he resented that. So he would find ways to

One of his abuse techniques that I realize now, he didn't have friends, so he would find ways to get included on my plans and eventually sabotage those plans. Like, I was going to have a play date. A play date. I mean, I would have a sleepover. Which...

With my – now as a parent, I say play date because my kids are too young. But I was in middle school wanting to have sleepovers and he would be like, oh, have it here. Just so he could have the company and the female company. And obviously, I didn't want to. That was a very, as I explained before, difficult, tenuous, stressful, almost –

situation and time for me. And he definitely, even when he couldn't take advantage of me physically, he tried to take advantage of my friends, I guess you could say. I remember an instance where I had a girlfriend over and he told her she had a cute butt. And like, again, nine...

the 1990s, 96, 97, maybe 98, I guess that could slide from an older brother. And she kind of laughed at him. And then he took a lighter and lit it under her ass. And of course, she went home and told her parents, as she should. And my mom was extremely embarrassed and punished him. But my friend was no longer allowed over my house. And at that point, I think that might have been when I started seeking

way more opportunities. And when I found I could seek those opportunities, mom would give me the freedom because she was realizing that nobody should be around.

Rory, nobody should be facing this kind of abuse. Even if she didn't know the depth of the abuse I faced, she knew there was abuse going on because she was facing it. And as his abuse towards her increased, she definitely gave me that freedom to get out even more. And that was when things got way worse. To be honest, I'm going to be brutally honest, in Calabasas, everybody's houses, I was

raised by a single mom. We were kind of always moving. Our house was not the house to be at anyway. So I generally didn't host many things. I didn't want to have my friends over. I wanted to go to the fancy house with the water slide and the mom who was always willing to make us snacks at any point and home all the time. So as much as my mom probably pained her to let me get out more, I probably didn't host many. And then that one or two, I was like, yeah, never again.

Mom was an entertainer by nature. She loved a good party. She loved having her friends over, showing off the fruits of her labor, especially eventually when she got her dream home and worked her ass off for it. She loved to have parties. But Rory was always this loose cannon. Who knew how he would act?

He was diagnosed so early in the 90s and we know so much less about mental illness. And I pause on that because, you know, just personally, the word illness, I think has such a big stigma to it. And when someone receives a label like that, that label in and of itself can be pretty traumatic. And I don't even know if his labels are correct. You know, and with retrospect and perspective, it surely seems they weren't. But I think that

Mom knew with his imbalance, whether it was a result of a correct diagnosis or not undiagnosed personality disorder, we just couldn't do that. She couldn't bring that joy into her space. So she let me go seek that joy outwardly. And that kind of became the time, you know, I started seeking myself, figuring out who I was. And I kind of could. Unfortunately, our family went through a really devastating occurrence.

Mom had an accident at one of her schools, at her school, I'm sorry. Actually, oddly enough, it was the day of my IQ test, now that I'm thinking about it. I was on her campus getting an IQ test when the fire trucks came up and the psychologist took me for a walk. And years later, I would find out that that walk was so I wouldn't see the paramedics taking her away on a stretcher. She fell and died.

tore a couple ligaments in her ankle and as a result had surgery. But that surgery, they gave her a medicine she was allergic to and she ruptured two discs in her back from throwing up for 18 hours. It was just like the worst Murphy's Law series of events that caused her to be disabled.

wheelchair bound at best for about three years. And that was at that very time. This was when Rory left high school. You know, again, he just didn't connect with any schoolmates. He didn't connect with any teachers. And at that point, the school system, I think, just was pretty much done with him. They asked him to leave and he worked with minimal effort to get his GED, which is, I think, I don't remember exactly what it stands for.

stands for, but he could exit high school with the equivalency test. So he left. Mom had this accident and it was the perfect shit storm for our family. She was denied benefits. She wasn't given a nurse to do basic things. She had a hospital bed in our house. It's just, I laugh again inappropriately, but looking back, it's just almost ridiculous and preposterous how much was going on for us in our own little tiny world, in our little rental house in Calabasas.

I think mom's accident aligned and all the incorrect surgeries and everything and her actual extreme, the most extreme points of her disability were around when Rory was 18 and I was 15. And Rory was legally old enough to get out of the house. He was angry all the fucking time.

You know, at us, at the world. He was angry he didn't fit in school. He was angry he missed out on things. He was angry about everything. And this is probably around the time when he started collecting weapons. He started getting into, you know, he started to try to get a job, try to start his life. He would take a couple classes at the local community college, but he couldn't really sit in class and listen. He'd always be like, I'm smarter than the professor. Right?

The professor doesn't know anything or he would make excuses every semester and drop out or complete a class and then nothing else. So he would try jobs. Nothing would stick. I think he had one job in his entire life that lasted over a year. And that was when he was like 16 at a movie theater.

He couldn't hold anything down. He couldn't make any money to pay mom rent. He was punching holes in walls. He couldn't fix any of the things. He was destroying our home, destroying our home life. And mom had no way of caring for herself. And they were kind of stuck in this disgusting...

nurse ratchet misery type of situation where Rory had to take care of her. If he wasn't taking care of her during the day, he had to be home. He had nowhere else to go. He had no job, no car, no license. He had to do things to take care of her or he was out. But when he did that, he did them miserably and meanly and

I think he started resenting mom even more at that point because it was like her disability, the limits that she was facing, they became her, his limits too, in a way, not because they had to be, you know, I guess he could have gotten a job. Mom could have figured it out, but I don't know. He tried to get SSI, which is insurance from the government to help if you can't take a job. And he, he was deemed competent enough. So to work. So it was just this triple edged

quadruple-edged, sordid situation where nothing was working for us. Meanwhile, mom was still trying to find him outlets, like therapists. She even found him a Tourette's camp to go to, to find community. He got kicked out of that. I think it was for relatively abusive language directed at people. Meanwhile, here I was. I spent my four years in high school donating 3,000 hours of my time

to the sheriff's department in Calabasas. And I guess, I suppose, I was always compensating to a certain extent, trying to get out of the house and also compensating for my brother's inability to prove himself, perhaps. That was when the abuse got bad, but also Rory turned to

You know, he realized he wasn't going to make it in the world by doing things the way we all do them or by following, you know, society's rules, if you will. And he started trying to just basically run scams. Now, if you can remember when Craigslist was first popular, man, like people were like, whoa, you can use it for this. And that was what he did. You know, he would find swords. He would find guns. I don't know if any of his guns were real. He definitely shot me with a BB gun at one point, but

But he had means of getting anything he wanted. And now in retrospect, that scares the shit out of me. I definitely think that he, especially with all the animosity that was building inside of him, he kind of became that kid who, you know, he was only 18, 19 at this point, that kid who would have

shot up a movie theater or a school, it's kind of mind blowing to think about. So many people ask, well, what type of parents do those kids have? And we always kind of want to look at the parenting to try to figure out what isolated experience created that person. But I really do think that it's just, as I said, a perfect shit storm of things.

On top of obtaining illegal paraphernalia, guns, swords, knives, whatever he kind of wanted to get, I think there was like a grenade, fake or almost like used grenade he had. I don't know if that's possible or an empty grenade. Perhaps it was a replica and he just wanted me to think that it was, but part of it was instilling fear in others. And I think that that's what people miss out on is that like we always want to look at the parents for the issue or like isolate the terror and the hatred, but...

These people are results of a lot of things, you know, and society enables them to a certain degree. Like Rory on Craigslist. I mean, he couldn't hold down a job, but boy, he sure could find some opportunities on there. Like scoring a bunch of absinthe. I remember one time he came home with bottles upon bottles of absinthe.

What he said was absent. It was labeled in a different language. And he, you know, had gotten it for cheap off of somebody from Craigslist and now was going to turn it and make a profit. Well, absent at that point was illegal. I don't think it's illegal now, but at that point it was. And, you know, he didn't care. And he lied to mom and said something else. And the story was to me. And he, like, proved that it could be lit on fire or whatever the test was. But there was always a manipulation in his scam, in his next scheme plan.

I remember he brought a plant home and said he was going to grow it in the backyard.

He told his friends it was marijuana. He told mom it was Chinese elm. He didn't even tell me. I found them. And I remember this was not the day of the app where you could point your phone at something and figure out what it was. But I could Google at that point and I could find pictures of things. And I wanted to know what he was doing, this man with no green thumb. And it was Chinese elm. It was not marijuana. I had never seen marijuana at that point. Never had any experience with it. But

So he was actually just growing a plant that looked like it. And he had planned to grow that in mom's backyard and then sell it to his friends and say it was marijuana.

I know he also obtained pills somehow. Now, you know, eventually in the MySpace days, he'd write on his MySpace profile, you know, pharmaceutical distributor as his job. In essence, no, he was getting illegal drugs from Craigslist. It was actually prescription medication that he was reselling.

I'm sure some of it was his to a certain degree, you know, who's getting obtaining it and not taking it at times. And then also just seeing what he could find on the internet, you know, that place is a deep, dark place. I think in his head, he was thinking, I'm going to become this big mob man. Like I'm going to be the mob man of Calabasas. In his head, he was going to be larger than life always by climbing on top of other people.

And when he realized he couldn't really get farther than mom's front door, you know, sometimes he'd get kicked out of it, but he'd always crawl back. He would tell mom he was staying in his car. Now I've learned since that wasn't probably the truth. At times it was when Lauren's brother and Rory had falling outs, which, you know, they both were kind of young, tough guys that had issues to like pick up with each other, but

So that happened. You know, maybe he stayed in his car once or twice, but he told mom he was always out there. And so he was always appealing to her and her heart and her heartstrings. Here's Amy's close friend, Lauren. I just remember at one point he wanted to go into the army. And I knew that Rory had an exceptionally high IQ.

And he learned how to fake a lie detector test. I don't know any normal sane person that takes the time to figure out how to fake a lie detector test.

And that just really stood out to me. Hey, why? Why would you do that to go into the army? And then he came out of the army. It just sort of seemed like everything he said, you didn't know if it was the lie or the truth or what the truth really was. And I think that that started to be a really big red flag for me. You can host the best backyard barbecue when you find a professional on Angie to make your backyard the best around.

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physically stronger than she was, I would say. Now, we're all little people, but we're all kind of strong people, too, from strong stock. The first time he was arrested, I want to say, although those words are... that term is very loose in this situation, was probably when he was 16, 17. You know, as I said, the violence just got worse, you know, from environmental abuse, it got physical towards us. Again, mostly mom, but he would...

She asked him to do something around the house. You know, we were older by then. We had to pick up after ourselves. We had chores occasionally. My friends called me Cinderella because in Calabasas, I guess that wasn't quite normal to have chores. And Rory sure resented mom for that. So, you know, fights would occur when a chore was asked to be done.

And it would escalate because mom didn't really quite know how to diffuse the boundary or to explain to him how he wanted, why he had to do chores and why she couldn't just back down about it. And he'd punch a hole in the wall. So she'd call the cops. Eventually the turmoil would became he'd shove her when they were fighting or slap her and she would call the cops. And I think around that time he was taken to the Calabasas drunk tank and

Where they might take somebody who was weaving, you know, the worst tumult they were seeing was probably like a traffic violation. You know, he would get held there in the sheriff's station for a few hours, maybe half a day, a day. And because I don't.

I guess I don't even know why it wasn't worse at that point because he was a juvenile. There was less they could do. He was being hospitalized in between. And I guess mom, maybe she could have pressed charges perhaps, but I don't know if she wanted to see him away that much. I think she wanted to try and try as much as she could. So he would come back within a few hours, maybe half a day, a day again. He didn't really...

transition to jail time until I was in college. So that was about, gosh, five years of just taking him in. And maybe my time limit is off on that, but five years taking him in, hoping he'll cool down and then just sending him right back out to us. So we would go through this vicious cycle of

We would see in Rory like instantaneous mood swings. He would be absolutely calm one moment or just like walking by us and then like slap mom out of nowhere. It was almost like he was reverting into being a child. Like he's like, I'm allowed this anger. I'm allowed to just hit you. He just forgot all social graces in our home. I think that Rory absolutely weaponized Rory.

And, well, he used his diagnosis in a couple ways. You know, it was interesting. I saw in his manipulation, he would have these explosions. He'd have these episodes of extreme violence and causing damage to our home or even to mom. I mean, she was disabled and he was shoving her. So it could have gotten worse.

way worse at a certain point and perhaps maybe some of her disability was exacerbated by a fall with him who knows all I know is that he definitely used it as a crutch you know when he would ask to come back when he would say mom it was just you know I didn't take my meds that day I I forgot or I just thought I didn't need them I promise I'll take them when I come back and

It was an excuse that he could use to say, look, it wasn't me. It was my bipolar disorder. Now, that's not what mental illness is. I know that. I've studied it. Minimally, yes, I have my VA, but just in general –

Part of using that, those, you know, his bipolar disorder, his OCD, his Tourette's as, you know, excuses, if you will. You know, mom was sensitive to it. Of course, she's his mom. I'm a mom now. I tell my children I will love them no matter what. And they give me all these circumstances like, even if I, yes, baby, even if you. Because I know, I have seen the strength of a mother's love. But I also know that she was an educated woman. She had her master's in education.

She was a teacher. She had taught actually kindergarten through 12th grade throughout her lifetime. So she had seen every stage. She had been present for everything, even in Rory's life and in other lives and other troubled youth. And she just, she couldn't give up on him. And she, I guess, enabled, that is the word, that's the term, she enabled him, you know, that sick cycle of abuse to persist. Yeah.

One of my biggest, I try not to live with regrets, but one of my biggest regrets is not telling my mom about the extent of the abuse I faced at Rory's hands. Because I think sometimes I stop myself and think, you know, like, what if I had done that? She would never have let him back in. And that would have changed everything, changed our whole lives.

But I didn't. And I can't really play woulda, coulda, shoulda because that's life. I just try to learn as mom. You know, I think mom taught me like learning was the whole point in life. Mom, you know, she wasn't one to mince words. She always said...

One of her favorite statements, which she had a lot, but one of them was, if, pardon my bluntness, but it was mom's words, but, you know, stupid people never learn from their mistake. Average people learn from their mistake and smart people learn from other people's mistakes. So Amy, learn from my mistakes.

So I think that she was just always thinking she was there to be a teacher, like for me, for Rory. And she could never give up on that. It was always her purpose in life to teach us, to mentor us. And she was kind of like that with everybody. If she took you under her wings, you would always be there no matter what. My mom never really fell out of love with my dad even. She never dated again in my entire life ever.

If that doesn't tell you anything. Mom, she believed a parent should be a best friend. I know authoritative versus authoritarian parenting and all that kind of different. But in essence, a parent is supposed to be a mentor, right?

you know, someone, a guide, somebody to be there as a resource and loving and kind, right? And with boundaries, that's a friend in essence as well. So mom and I were going through a lot together. And I think at that point in life, we realized, we used to say the three of us were best friends, but that wasn't really true.

And we, the two of us, realized we were really best friends, especially because we were going through this shit, this really dark, deep shit that no one knew about, especially in our community, together.

With me, she gave me more freedom. She knew I needed to get out more. So that was when I started kind of finding my own way. Like I found dance. I found this. I found that. And she supported all of those things. I remember going to my first mosh pit, my first concert in like maybe ninth grade. And I came home with torn pants and I was like scared. This is the person who got blackmailed for a yearbook picture. And she was like, did you have fun?

and then told me my dad played at the Troubadour. That was his first gig and that was my first concert venue. There was also a polarity in mom, I guess you could say. Not in moods, but in just parenting. And I think that I was allowed just a different avenue, a different path in life. I saw, it wasn't that she allowed me that, she showed me that path, that what we were going through, there was always going to be more outside of it. And I think that's what

saved me. Rory liked to tell stories. He was like my dad in the sense, you know, my dad really liked a story. He liked to make things a little bigger than they were sometimes. Same as Rory, although most of the time, if not all of the time. So when he said he went to the military, got into boot camp, that would obviously imply he somehow lied about his mental stability because he had diagnoses and you have to reveal them. And I think that that

With all of his history, not his labels, but his police history by that point, that would have been impossible. So when he started trying to go down the route of the military, the army specifically, I just remember him going away to a hotel for a couple. I don't even know if this is the process. I have never joined the military myself, but I remember him going away for a couple of days to a hotel, supposedly, then flying to boot camp and flying.

Calling mom crying, saying, I can't stay here. You know, it was almost like his phone calls, not to laugh again, but his phone calls from the jail. And yes, he had been in the jail and the drunk tank by then. So he was still somehow getting himself into the military, even with that history. I believe that most of it was like covered up because he was a juvenile to a certain degree. They couldn't see it, I think. I don't know what they have access to.

know if this is all a lie. Literally Rory could have found a woman on the internet and just took up with her and tried to live with her and then found out it failed. I have no clue. But from our perspective, he was going, trying to write his life. And mom was so proud of him. You know, like he was finally just going to try something. She almost felt like the military, even though like

I don't know if she would have wanted him to go there. The danger of going into combat, she supported it because she was like anything that would have given him promise, anything that would have given him a future that he couldn't find here with us. You know, obviously we're stuck in a cycle that wasn't healthy. We all could benefit from that healing space, but it never worked. You know, the first time he called home, I was shocked.

I believe he said he was being targeted. He's got tattoos. I can't remember them exactly. It's been a while, to be honest. But I know he has got a devil on one side, on one shoulder, and a devil on the other, as to imply he doesn't have an angel balancing anything out on him. And his devil has wings on one side and a halo on the other. So basically, he can fake it till he makes it, but really, inside, he's the devil. But he's not.

But he also has a Jewish star somewhere on his body. I can't remember. I think it's on his shoulder. And appealed to mom by saying, I'm being picked on for being Jewish. Get me out of here. I can't stay. And whether that was true or not, mom again wanted to save him because he was getting beat up and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I don't know what the truth is and what was not. But he came home. And the abuse continued and got worse.

And then he tried the military again, supposedly. Again, I don't know how you would have gotten into the military for a second time and what kind of manipulation he would have had to do to get that or to like swing that. But his story to us was he went back.

Maybe to the Navy. I'm trying to remember. I think I remember picking him up somewhere else this time. But Rory had tried the military again, gotten sick. Oh, gosh, he had pneumonia this time. And Lord, his cough was so bad. And like, oh, the medics wouldn't treat him. And oh, he was, you know, it was always like a sob story. He always had an excuse outside of himself for mom. And mom was always trying to believe that the excuse was true. So she let him back in again.

And that is the cycle of abuse. The release, the sob story, the welcoming back in. He realized he couldn't keep making his way back into our lives as openly. You know, mom started having a little bit more rigid boundaries. She started seeing the reality of her future, I think, like

If the military didn't work, well, shit, maybe nothing will. And so she started, you know, if he wanted to come back in and he was even slightly argumentative or abusive in any nature, she would kick him out hard. So he started thinking, well, shit, well, if I can't get it from mom, can't find a place to live there, I need a girlfriend. At that point, he was a relatively attractive guy, I guess you could say, by society's standards.

And he used that. He could charm somebody and talk them sweetly. And he always kind of went for women who he targeted. I, as I stated before, I am a sexual abuse survivor, not just isolatedly in this situation too, unfortunately. And as my therapists have helped me realize, abusers, people that hunt these victims down, they look for certain people. And people who have been abused before, unfortunately,

And that's what they look for, people who have boundary issues, I guess you could say. And that's where the grooming can happen. And I guess he found girls to groom. Yeah, he started finding girlfriends, I guess you could say. He had one consistently long girlfriend, actually a few now that I think about it. And they were always women with very low confidence, self-confidence, and

would give him anything immediately, basically. You know, they would give him money. They would let him live in their house within a week. He would tell them what they wanted to hear. I love you. You're going to be my, you know, my future wife. And oh gosh, welcome in. And then he would treat them like shit to make them think that they didn't deserve the good behavior from anybody else. And then he'd give them the good behavior, just like us. And he found, you know, that comfort or that safe zone, I guess you could say,

the manipulation zone elsewhere occasionally when he could. He had a serious girlfriend in Arizona that he went and lived with for a bit that gave mom and I a little bit of freedom. But then he came back because who wants to stand for getting abused physically, emotionally, or verbally at all? And his hatred just grew towards women, towards people, towards the military, towards everything. And our abuse was compounded.

Personally, you know, I think how I survived those several years. Gosh, when I really like checklist it, it's just too much. But, you know, mom's disability, Rory's getting kicked out, Rory's attempts at suicide, Rory's hospitalizations, Rory's...

Jail time. I think I found that there was so much more of a world outside of my home. My home life had been so consuming. I really used the opportunity in high school to figure out what I needed to find my own balance so I could be the best person ever.

best person possible, but also within my home. So I could diffuse and mitigate as much as possible. You know, I found dance. I was on the dance team. I made websites. I told you I was a nerd. I made a fan fiction website. I wrote fan fiction for Corey Feldman in 2000. Like who does that? I, you know, I just did anything. I threw myself into pop culture. I was picked on in school as well, to be honest, you know, a lot.

But I guess I just – life had been so harried already that it rolled off my back. Like being picked on wasn't that big of a deal, I guess, in relation to everything else I had experienced. So I just –

I found what made me happy internally, stained glass. I found stained glass at that time. You know, I took stained glass all four years. I did whatever I could to find joy. I knew I had to cultivate it. Mom told me it was out there. So I looked for it and I found it everywhere I could. However, I couldn't really get that far.

the nature of an abusive relationship. Even mom and I had boundary issues too. Obviously, if I'm going to be mitigating some of that, that's a boundary issue as well. Especially as I got older, I didn't even have the tools to be like, hey, this is not a role I should be taking on. I just took it on. So I couldn't really go away to college. I was limited in that. Mom made it clear, not in a mean, abusive way. And I guess in retrospect, it was probably my

privilege that made me think it should be any other way. But mom said when it was college time, like, hey, you're paying for college yourself. Have fun. You know, you can get loans. You can apply for scholarships. You have I had a three nine eight GPA like I had worked my butt off. I had four thousand hours of community service in the end. I could have gone anywhere, I guess.

I'm thankful I didn't, but you know, I stayed local. I went to mom's alma mater, my dad's alma mater too. And I really just threw myself into my studies and understanding what had just fucking happened in my past.

What is Rory's life looking like at this time? Because I imagine he sort of hated that for you. My wins were his losses. I never really saw it as competition. I was never trying to beat him. It wasn't hard to beat him. Like he failed out of school. It was, I was just trying to be the best me. He just represented every bit of toxic masculinity possible.

Rory's life was going nowhere. Right when I finished high school was probably around what he tried to enter the military for the first time. Now, by that point, he had no driver's license. You know, he still was really limited on his freedom. So when I said he couldn't get out of our house, like he really couldn't leave much. He had a moped a couple of times, but he crashed that. I had my license. I had inherited. My first car was like,

the last first car you'd ever want in Calabasas. The joke is in Calabasas, the teacher parking lot is in worse shape than the student parking lot. Meaning like the student cars are pristine and Beamers and Mercedes and you know, the teacher's cars are modest. And it's true. You know, there's a point of privilege. As I said, Rory didn't think he should do chores. We were being called Cinderella for being doing chores, you know, which is crazy to me now as a parent who juggles a lot. So I think that from a point of

privilege. He was seeing these wins and he was thinking, where am I? By the end of high school, I'd gotten some honors awards. I ran for student body stuff and lost every single time, but I had grand ideas and I attempted them. I guess I didn't let it knock me off course. Every time that happened, I guess you could say Rory allowed it to knock him off course.

one instance that really slapped Rory in the face. I was 15 and he was 18. So this was actually going back a little bit, but I had just gotten my permit. And if this doesn't illustrate what type of woman my mom was, I don't know what to tell you, but she made me get all of my permit hours done in class first. Then I had to get all of my instructor driven like hours done with the instructor in the car before I could drive with her. It was like by the book, 100% all the time.

So I got my permit just in time for mom to have her last surgery. And I remember driving mom and I drove her all the way to San Francisco to the specialist, you know, as a permanent driver. That was my first drive all the way to San Francisco. Rory was with us and he was just miserable and awful to us the whole time.

It was like I was becoming mom's partner almost, you know, I was becoming the other adult. And as I got older, Rory got emotionally younger, emotionally like younger in responsibility, younger in capabilities. And it was totally his own limitations.

But that's how he saw it. Not only did the world hate him, but the world receiving me well was also hating him more. And I even see that in my kids right now. I have little ones, an eight-year-old and a five-year-old. And I'll say, I love you to one of them. And the other one will be like, well, do you love me? And I'm like, I'm very careful to say, yes, of course. I didn't know you heard. But my saying I love you to one doesn't mean I don't love you. It's just...

Here's Amy's close friend, Lauren.

After school, the neighbors, all the kids would go outside and play. We never really had to worry about theft. We never worried about kidnapping. We never really worried about anything like that. It was a very nice neighborhood, a lot of money. And now it's turned into a lot of older money.

Really nice communities, houses that go all the way up into $20 million. It's where the Kardashians live and Justin Bieber lives there and Britney Spears. And Calabasas has really turned into a very elite, exclusive place. When Amy and I were younger, it wasn't as much, but it was a very nice place to grow up. Here's Amy.

of Rory's anger, part of his volatility, part of his just extreme displeasure with life and how things were playing out was because he felt it should be different. He was purely entitled. Now, in retrospect, even I was entitled. Calabasas is a weird place. Like,

I remember telling my mom I wanted a red Beamer for my first car. My mom just laughed. She was like, do you know how much that costs? Go look it up. Then find out how much the insurance costs. Then go and see. Do you want to spend your $800 a month you make from your job to go get a red Beamer? No, I don't. So coming from there, there's just no real perception of reality and how much things cost, how much we should really actually be using.

given or work for. And I think that Rory always started from a point of, I am do this. I'm so smart. He saw everybody else get everything. They didn't have to work for it that hard.

There is no way that where we grew up did not have an impact on him and what he expected out of life and what he expected from mom. I think he was angry that we came from a single parent family, that his dad wasn't there and paying child support. So we didn't have the means to get everything we wanted. He was due more.

Even Rory's friends, again, because he targeted them, he would generally target kids who had more money, who had the flashy cars he wanted to drive in that he couldn't have himself. I think that who he chose to surround himself with were kids who probably got a lot, were given a lot. And he kind of did that on purpose so he could get stuff out of them.

Clearly, if he's living at Lauren's dad's house, he's getting some out of his friendships. He's using people and he's picking people he can use because he thinks he deserves it. He deserves. Gosh, you know, he hasn't gotten it up until now. He should just take it from someone else if they're willing to give it, even if he's using manipulative means.

Here's Amy's close friend, Lauren. And the fact that he stayed with my dad, there was one time actually that my dad called me and he said, I don't know if Rory's on drugs or what's going on, but I'm scared of him. He seems not well. And Rory really looked at my dad as a second dad and as a father figure because he didn't really have a father figure in his life. So for my dad to call me and say,

there's something not right here that really imprinted in me that things are wrong. Things are just not right.

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

Something Was Wrong is produced and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. Music on this episode from Glad Rags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. If you'd like to help support the growth of Something Was Wrong, you can help by leaving a positive review, sharing the podcast with your family, friends, and followers, and support at patreon.com slash somethingwaswrong.

Something Was Wrong now has a free virtual survivor support forum at somethingwaswrong.com. You can remain as anonymous as you need. Thank you so much for listening. They think they know me, they don't know me well.

you think you know me you don't know me well at all

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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.

You know, 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+.