Resilience Development in Action
Discover practical resilience strategies that transform lives. Join Steve Bisson, licensed mental health counselor, as he guides first responders, leaders, and trauma survivors through actionable insights for mental wellness and professional growth.
Each week, dive deep into real conversations about grief processing, trauma recovery, and leadership development. Whether you're a first responder facing daily challenges, a leader navigating high-pressure situations, or someone on their healing journey, this podcast delivers the tools and strategies you need to build lasting resilience.
With over 20 years of mental health counseling experience, Steve brings authentic, professional expertise to every episode, making complex mental health concepts accessible and applicable to real-world situations.
Featured topics include:
• Practical resilience building strategies
• First responder mental wellness
• Trauma recovery and healing
• Leadership development
• Grief processing
• Professional growth
• Mental health insights
• Help you on your healing journey
Each week, join our community towards better mental health and turn your challenges into opportunities for growth with Resilience Development in Action.
Resilience Development in Action
E.109 Walking through Fire: Lynn Kee's Battle Against Childhood Sexual Abuse
We're privileged to have an extraordinary guest on our show, Lynn Kee, who makes the brave decision to share her life's most challenging experiences. Lynn, a survivor of childhood sexual trauma, offers a chilling recount of her ordeal, unfolding her family's struggle as they grappled with the aftermath of her trauma. Coupled with her own healing journey, she bravely articulates the contrasting paths she and her sister took towards recovery.
Lynn's story doesn't shy away from the complexities of her relationship with an older mentor who manipulated his way into transforming a platonic mentorship into an inappropriate sexual relationship. Lynn's courage to speak about her own experiences of childhood sexual abuse brings to light the deep-seated guilt and shame she had to confront, and how writing offered a safe haven during her darkest days.
The conversation takes an introspective turn as Lynn provides a critique on the justice system's handling of rape cases, based on her own painful experiences. With her family's quest for justice leading to re-traumatization, she discusses the disparity in how her grooming case was handled compared to her sister's violent rape case. Lynn's story continues to inspire as she tackles the impact of the sex offender registry board on her life, her sobriety struggles, and the empowering impact of her advocacy work. Join us for the powerful continuation of her story in episode 110.
Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. The goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your quick tip. Here's your host, steve Bisson Woohoo.
Speaker 2:I don't know what to put here. This is literally like the 12th take of this intro. But welcome to Episode 109. If you haven't listened to Episode 108 yet, I hope you go back and listen to it. It is what we call informally as a supervision group, the mental men, with Dennis Sweeney, dr Robert Cherney or Bob Andrew Kang and, of course, pat Rice. These men have had a great influence in my life, in my work, and I hope you go back and listen. We'll have them on again, for sure. But Episode 109 is with Lynn Key.
Speaker 2:Lynn Key is a survivor of childhood sexual trauma, advocate and activist working to strengthen protections for fellow survivors in memory of her sister, amanda Hernandez, who passed away in January after a long and hard fought battle with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use. She's in long-term recovery herself. She's committed to sharing her own experience in hope to get the message that trauma is the true gateway drug, and I'm sure we'll get to that. I want to make sure that you guys know that there's going to be some very sensitive subjects here. If you have trauma, particularly sexual trauma and grooming, please do skip this or maybe pay attention to your own signs.
Speaker 2:But here is the interview. Well, hi everyone and welcome to Episode 109, finding your Way Through Therapy. I'm just very excited because this is something that I've wanted to talk about for a long time, not because it's a fun subject, but because it needs to be talked about my work in the criminal justice community justice system for about 15 years of my life and I have seen some of the difficulties. But Lynn Key is someone who contacted me and told me about even bigger stuff that I did not know about. Some of it I knew, some of it I don't, and she wants to share a story. She wants to talk about different things. I'm very excited to have her on Someone we both know had recommended for us to meet and I'm very happy that we're meeting. So, lynn Key, welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy.
Speaker 3:Hey Steve, how are you today?
Speaker 2:I am doing very good, but what's funny is we always try to do a pre-interview. Our pre-interview was cut short because of Wi-Fi issues and all that.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:But I'm just an honest guy with my audience but, yes, truly interested in hearing more of your story. I read your story. You sent me some stuff, obviously very excited, but they don't know. So just so we get that, this is just not a Massachusetts podcast, so remember that sometimes people may not know. People were. If we say Lester, they don't know what that means or spell it, frankly. So how about you start off by introducing yourself?
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks, Steve. So first I want to say thank you so much for giving me the opportunity and the platform today. I truly appreciate it. This is going to be my very first podcast of any type Definitely my very first.
Speaker 2:Exclusive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely my very first recorded, first time on video. I'm going to take you and me shooting the breeze kind of almost like we're in a therapy session approach to this. I'm sitting in my comfy chair in my living room because it's a lot, steve. So I am a survivor of childhood sexual trauma. I have, or had, unfortunately, a sister, a younger sister. Her name was Amanda Hernandez.
Speaker 3:She was also a childhood of sexual trauma and unfortunately, although both of us did receive convictions in our cases, we experienced a lot of secondhand trauma at the hands of the criminal justice system. And that's not due to the fact that the people in it are bad or don't want to help, because by a large and vast majority they really are good people that want to help. It just is by nature of the system itself. So through that process I uncovered that trauma is really the gateway drug both for myself and my sister, and we both went on our own separate healing journeys over the past 20 years. Unfortunately, my sister lost her battle with CPTSD and substance abuse back in January. She left three beautiful children and a devastated family behind her and that really was the catalyst for me to start getting out there and doing some advocacy and activism to spread the message maybe help some people. I'm in Massachusetts, born and raised, and that's about it.
Speaker 2:Well, sorry for your loss. First and foremost, which is very important to talk about Born and raised in Massachusetts, you grew up in Central Mass.
Speaker 3:Yes, so I'm from a little town called Northbridge. It's right outside of Worcester. My family is originally from the Ashland or Framingham area. My father, bill, was the fire chief in Ashland for a lot of years almost 20 years, I believe as chief on the department for about 30. So we have deep roots here in the community.
Speaker 2:Well, northbridge is somewhere I know very well. I worked in Framingham and Ashland for many, many, many years and so you know it's kind of interesting when we know all these little towns in Central Mass where the dragons live past 95, or those in Boston. That's where we live. But I want to hear more about your family's story because I think that you know, when you say trauma is the gateway drug, I think it's absolutely 100% true. But would like to hear more about your family story as well as maybe more about the trauma again, just in general, what went on, because I think it's important to share that.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, thank you. So that's the whole point of this podcast.
Speaker 2:Military people called me sir. Sir is my dad and he's dead.
Speaker 3:It's so bad. So I come from a military family, a family with a strong public safety background. As I said, my father was a firefighter and fire chief in Ashland for 30 years. He also retired or is in the process of retiring as a sergeant major in the Army National Guard. He did two tours of duty overseas and he comes from a long line of military men before him. My grandfather was in the military. My father's brother was also in the military, went to West Point. My grandfather's brother was also a West Point graduate.
Speaker 3:It runs really deep in our family. We're basically blue collar middle class. Like I said, my dad came up in the town that he ended up working in, met my mom, who was also a small town girl, and they got married, had me moved out to the North Virginia, built a house when I was about five years old because that was the trend. There was land and it was way less expensive out in this area, so there were a lot of transplants and it was also within distance that he could quickly get to Ashland in the event of a call or whatever. So my sister and I really had a pretty idyllic childhood. I like to say it was all puppies and rainbows early on. My mother was a stay at home mom with me. When I was about three and a half years old, my sister was born. Like I said, we moved to Northbridge and things were great for a long time. I have very fond memories of childhood.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, when I was about eight years old, I suffered what I consider to be my very first major trauma, and that is discovering or being told that my mother was an alcoholic. I didn't even know what an alcoholic was. I had never heard of it, I had never seen my mother drunk and I was blindsided. So I'll go a little bit more into that if you'd like, please. Yeah, so at that time, like I said, I was about eight years old, my sister was about four years old and the way it unfurled was I was basically trying to sleep over a friend's house In the morning. I went to wake my mother up before school. She was a waitress at night and so she would often sleep in the morning. I was a pretty self-sufficient kid. It was the 90s so basically I woke her up before school, asked her if I could stay the night at a friend's house. We got into a major fight. It was crazy, like she was just in a terrible mood and she was so mad at me for even asking, and I just remember being really upset when I went to school. But she said that, yeah, I could sleep over Ashley's house. So I did, and the next morning I can't remember if it was before school or if it was a weekend she called and she told me that she was sick and she needed to get some help and that she was going to be going to a couple of meetings with a couple of friends and that I was going to be staying another night at my friend Ashley's house. And that was my introduction into the world of addiction. Essentially, like I said, I had never even seen my mother drunk before. That I can recall.
Speaker 3:So from there the real trauma began, because with early recovery comes a lot of guilt, and my mother obviously had a lot of guilt, and unfortunately she made the decision that she wanted to leave my father. She at the time said that she didn't love him anymore, and that was very confusing for an eight year old kid, more so confusing for my four year old sister, though she had absolutely no idea. Yeah, she had no idea what was going on. All she knew was that mommy and daddy had a fight one day, and this was about six months into my mom's recovery. Mommy and daddy had a fight one day and daddy was gone. Now my father was never far, but to a four year old kid, right, he was gone.
Speaker 3:Now for me, I was just angry at my mother. I had no idea what the hell had happened. To be frank, you know, you're an alcoholic. You go to these meetings. All of a sudden you don't love daddy anymore and he's gone. And things got worse when her first AA boyfriend moved in later that year. So it's you know from the get, steve, it's pretty, it's pretty intricate and there are pretty significant moments, but I can't go into all of it, so I'll just fast forward and say that that particular gentleman was about 20 years older than my mother, who was about 30 or so at the time. He lived above a funeral home and when he moved into our home he promptly got throat cancer and had to have and that's not a laptop matter. He survived and he's still alive to this day, but he had to have his voice box removed. And there was a man with that situation being nursed by my 30 year old mother in what was once my parents' bedroom. So I developed a lot of anger pretty early on and that just continued over like a 10 year period. There were constant battles between myself and my mother.
Speaker 3:Now, the way that I was, I was the type of kid that was a straight, a student. I was very straight edges. I like to say. We were not a religious family, but we were a Christian family. My grandmother, my nanny, as I called her, would bring us to church every single Sunday. We spent weekends at my nanny's house even prior to my parents' divorce, because my parents worked. My mom was a waitress and my dad worked odd hours as a firefighter. So essentially over that next 10 years I just doubled down on school and there was a real distinction between myself and where my alliances were Right and my sister and where her support or alliances were right. My support came from my dad, my dad's side of the family, outside of the home. I was constantly at war with my mother in my own home and my sister was Kind of in the background watching that and she clung to my mother. I say all the time that that really set the stage for what I believe played out for those reasons early on, just snowballed over the next 20 years.
Speaker 2:But all this change at that age is a lot for any kid, yeah, and then tried to adapt and trying to figure it out and, like you said, dad might be down the street but mm-hmm, he's away right, and it feels very much different and it kind of changes. You talk about the. I go back to something it's gonna be a theme. I think here is the trauma as a gateway drug. I think that that probably is the start of feeling a little bit different, feeling a little bit like shame, feeling like I can't talk to anyone about this because it's shameful. I don't know, it's just my thought, yeah no, definitely for my sister.
Speaker 3:Now this is another key, just the way that things are structured. A lot of my success versus my sister's Unfortunate right her ending right comes from, I think, who we were, just naturally as people, right? So I, as the older child, had a broader understanding of what was going on and I was always encouraged to be Vocal from when I was a little girl. My dad sat me on his lap literally I remember this conversation said, lynn, there's nothing we can't work through together. Honesty is the best policy. Anytime you have an issue, no matter how big it might seem, as long as you come to me with it, right and I always want to hear it from you first, we can work through it together. And I really took to that. So I had a lot of people that I felt solid talking to.
Speaker 3:Now I didn't, like you know, yap outside of my home, but I also didn't feel shame about that. I had anger towards my mother and I didn't understand why she was so sick, how she was sick, because, again, I never saw it play out in the day-to-day. I never saw her addiction. I just saw the aftermath of her sobriety, believe it or not. My sister, on the other hand, was very introverted during this time. She didn't talk to anybody about anything. She was kind of, again, she clung to my mom and she really was kind of lost in a lot of ways. Now that's not for lack of effort on the part of my dad and my dad's family, but again in her mind as a four-year-old child, her father left, so despite his efforts, I think she always felt alienated from him, whereas he and I were super close and I clung to him when I started Warring with my mother. So that was like the basis for a much broader issue that developed over time. It's also funny how my sister Tended to act out early on.
Speaker 3:She got in with the wrong crowd and was just doing like dumb kid crap, you know what I mean, like where makeup she shouldn't have been closed, she shouldn't have been smoking cigarettes, like experimenting with pot, experimenting with alcohol. Now, this is later on, obviously, when she's like 10, 11 years old, and I was just super straight-edge, like terrified To do anything, because I sat in meetings with my mother and I watched, you know, and I was never gonna be that I can, could not imagine how that happened. I had no concept of the disease theory and I don't. To be completely honest, I coupled the disease theory with a broader frame of thinking. That's how I get my recovery and I don't know if this was mentioned yet, but I personally am a woman in long-term recovery myself.
Speaker 2:How long is your sobriety.
Speaker 3:Currently I have about 18 months.
Speaker 2:Congratulations, that's big.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Prior to an accident I had back in 2017 where I really broke like broke a leg, like had six or seven surgeries over a two-year period, I had seven years of sobriety. However, it was sobriety, not recovery, which I hope we'll get into later.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, you're talking my language here. Trauma, sobriety, recovery, and how the differences are 12 step versus non 12 step. I mean, that's all my language I speak. Yes, I speak those languages.
Speaker 3:Yes, and you know that's why I'm here, steve, that's why I said I'm trying to take a real laid-back approach to this. So I think where I left off was how my sister and I coped with the situation right and early on I was in therapy real early on. When I was a young kid I always had big emotions and strong opinions, right. So I would war with my mom early on like about nothing, like I remember distinctly having like a almost like a chore chart but for behavior at home with my mom, like good day you got a star. Like good in the morning star. Good in the afternoon, star, good in the evening, star three stars, special treat. Like week of all good days, like McDonald's, I remember distinctly. So I was in the therapy and for your mom or for you.
Speaker 2:Right, Right please go ahead. I'm sorry yeah.
Speaker 3:No, that was great. So, essentially, like it was, it was both myself and my mom and, like us together in therapy very early on. My sister, on the other hand, didn't have that. She was too young at that point to require therapy. I mean, I think they put her in just when my parents got divorced to like have playtime with the therapist a few times, but she just had no interest and my parents were very much about allowing us to follow who we were as human beings, as long as we were Maintaining like honest contact with them and doing the next right thing for ourselves. That's what they were about nurturing. And that's a hard balance to strike when the rubber meets the road and there's some turbulence in a in a child's life as heavy as the turbulence that my sister and I were about to face. So that's where I'll leave off on that. That was our early childhood traumas for both of us, real early childhood, right.
Speaker 2:There's only one question I have about that, if you don't mind me asking no, go ahead. You talked about going to meetings. Did you ever end up going to anything like Alan on?
Speaker 3:I did not, and I think that would have been really helpful, steve, because I didn't know a single other kid that had a mom that was in Recovery or dad that was in recovery. I didn't see other kids at the meetings. Even then it wasn't that common to bring kids to meetings. But I would say sitting in the meetings really benefited me as far as keeping me away from drinking and drugs and Self-destructive behavior, until I hit my own personal breaking point. You know like, logically, I knew always from a young age that that was just not the answer. It caused this problem for this person and that problem for that person, and now they have to go to these meetings every couple of days.
Speaker 3:You know, it was just the thing in that sense that strengthens the stability of my early childhood right.
Speaker 3:So let's talk more about what happens after that, because there seems to be a big event that occurs for both my sister and I and it's weird because there have been so many synchronicities and strange like timing occurrences in in my life with my sister in relation to my sister right in the life of the key family. It's just, it's incredible. Too much to encapsulate in one conversation, to be honest. But essentially what happened was I Was about 13 years old. I was really in the music. So I was in the school and I was in the music. I was a singer.
Speaker 3:I got into Singing in the chorus and in talent shows and at like family events, funerals and the like, believe it or not. When I was about seven or eight years old, I had a music teacher that heard me singing in class and was like, oh, you should try out for the talent show. And I was often running. My dad had wanted me to start playing guitar because, you know, as a singer you should probably have an instrument to back yourself up. So he'd gotten me lessons first at a place here in town and then at the music nook in Milford, massachusetts. I don't know if the music nook still exists, believe it or not?
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. I drive by it every well, where it used to be.
Speaker 3:I drive it's like a store for music still, but it's definitely not the music nook. So essentially I was taking lessons there and at a certain point my teacher was going to leave and we need to find a new teacher, right? So my dad, being a fire chief at the Ashland fire department, had a bunch of guys working for him and, as firefighters do, they kicked around in the day room or in the dispatch area because they worked like 12 24-hour shifts, whatever, I don't know it was. It was just they hung out like they were at home when they weren't actively on a call of some sort. Right, we're doing maintenance.
Speaker 3:Essentially, my dad, being that he was a fire fighter and was at the department with the guys all the time had this gentleman that worked for him that he had actually known for quite a while.
Speaker 3:He had known this kid since he was eight years old and this kid looked up to him as kind of a father figure, and actually my father apparently was part of the reason that this kid decided to become a firefighter in the first place.
Speaker 3:So he was like kicking around playing guitar in the day room and my dad came across that a bunch of times and eventually, in passing, had told him that I was looking for a teacher, and this gentleman asked him to bring me by and just said, like why don't you bring her by and we can play and See? You know, if we get along, maybe I can give her some lessons. So at that point my dad started bringing me by and I came by, like maybe once every couple of weeks. We'd sit, we'd play guitar, I'd sing again just in the day room at the fire department, and eventually it was decided that it was working out and this gentleman, this kid, would start giving me lessons. So my dad had it set up where I would come to the department and we would do a lesson once a week. Now, that would have been fine, if that's, if that's how that continued to work out. However, over time, me and this kid and I'll call him a kid he was not a kid, he was 23, 24 years old.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was at this point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was at this point, 13, 14. Yeah, he was 10 years older than me, a full 10 years older than me. So essentially I developed a relationship with him where I looked up to him as a mentor in the music world and basically as a friend, and eventually I developed a girl, a girlhood like childhood crush on this man. Now I'll reiterate I had a pretty straight-edge demeanor at that point in time. I had a strong Christian upbringing, although we weren't like religious. I went to church every Sunday and at that time believed that it was appropriate for me to remain a virgin until I was married. So I had no experience with boys. I was a true kid. You know what I mean with a childhood crush. Unfortunately, as I later found out, I was dealing with a predator, to be quite frank. And this kid, he saw that I had taken the liking to him and he started to groom me. And when I say groom me, I mean he took advantage of the fact that we were close and I looked up to him and was developing this crush and started to drive the conversation towards him and I being a thing. Now, again, at this point in time I was, I had just turned 14, right. So over a six month period of time roughly, it transitioned from he simply brought this up and started to steer the conversation in that direction to we moved into having a sexual relationship and that was a very intricate and long and drawn out process. So I mean it started with just gaining my trust as a human being, as a guy that was on my dad's department, that my dad had obvious respect for and that respected my dad as a successful musician, because he was a talented musician who would bring me to his band practices and let me play at his shows. He would come out to the open mic nights that I was starting to sing at, I was getting into the blues genre and it was just like a really special time in my life. So that's how the relationship started out.
Speaker 3:It was very kosher, like wholesome, right, and then it started to be a thing where I would just as young kids do teenage girls do ask him advice on like what was going on in my life with my friends and with guys eventually. And then he started to give set advice and it got pretty graphic, pretty quick when it came to that piece of the grooming. So he started saying things like I understand that you don't wanna have sex before marriage, but in all reality, no guy is gonna wanna be with you if you don't put out in this day and age. Then he said there are several different types of having sex. It's not just having sex, there's having sex, there's making love in this fucking right. And I was just eating this information up because at that point, again, it was just in general about boys and it made me uncomfortable the knowledge that, like, perhaps no guy would be interested in me unless I would put out. I didn't wanna put out but, like you know, it was good to know. I didn't have any other like older, trusted male to ask this stuff. So eventually it steered into like so who's the oldest guy you've ever liked?
Speaker 3:That's the moment that I really, truly remember, and I did admit at that point that I had a crush on him and he said that he had similar feelings. And this is the other thing I remember. What he said was unfortunately, even though, like I genuinely have feelings for you and, like you clearly have a crush on me, right, we can't do that. It's wrong, it's illegal. And I specifically remember him saying it's illegal. We might understand it, but it's illegal. And he started right then to talk about the consequences of doing something like that and I don't even think this exists anymore. But he was like you and I would both be working at Christie's for the rest of our lives. Like, forget your like career aspirations, your hopes and dreams. Like forget your father's career. Like everybody would think you're a whore. Like you know what I mean. My relationship would be ruined because, again, he had a relationship at that time.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And I knew this woman and I liked this woman. I looked up to her as like an older confidant. So I felt weird about my feelings for him to begin with, but never did I think in my crush that he would be interested and never did I expect it to go that way. If that makes sense Now, I'll never forget that at that point my dad really like trusted me with him.
Speaker 3:We'd been having lessons for at least nine you know nine months a year. He'd been in this grooming process with me for like what I now know to be grooming anyway, for like six months, right.
Speaker 2:Right. Unfortunately, they hide that really well in the grooming process is not something that most people notice until it's too late.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it starts off with like wow, you're just like really mature for your age. It's like easy to talk to you, you know, or like most girls aren't like that, and like you know what I mean, like it's just so anyway. So basically, I remember my dad had allowed us to have lessons privately. Now he would drop me off at this man's apartment. I would go to band less band practices with this man. So on the way to band practice one night, he like reached over and like put his hand on my leg and I remember like being so just the feeling of just not knowing what to do, and I didn't say anything and I think that was the thing that gave him the go ahead to like really move it to the next level. He asked me to sit on his lap, and I don't remember the timeline if it was that same night or if it was another night, but he asked me to sit on his lap.
Speaker 2:The freeze response in trauma is something they count on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he asked me to sit on his lap at the studio, his band studio one night and I remember he got an erection, apparently, but I didn't notice it and he said, see what you do to me. And I was like genuinely like no, like what are you talking about? And he was like well, you didn't know it.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. Like it was just it started getting weird real quick after he put his hand on my leg and I allowed that. So and see how I say I allowed that Like I was a child, bro, Correct, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:If I was your therapist I would have noticed that immediately, but thank you for catching yourself.
Speaker 3:No self-awareness man, and it's years of therapy. It's years of therapy and language is key. You'll hear me say survivor instead of victim. A lot. That's a thing that I've been trying to retrain my brain on because, again, language is important.
Speaker 2:You're a survivor of something that happened to you.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:It's not something that you had any control over, because this person should have known better.
Speaker 3:So so at the end of the day, right, that was really the moment that it started to go self for me. I feel like, in that situation, right, I had no idea what to do with any of that. It was simultaneously shameful and scary and exciting, and I didn't know what to do and, for the first time in my life, I couldn't talk to anybody about it.
Speaker 2:I was going to say it's a secret, right.
Speaker 3:Not a single soul. For the first time in my life, anything right, anything that ever happened, I could go to specifically who my dad with and this particular situation. My dad was the last person I could go to with any of it. I couldn't tell anybody, not a friend, not a family member, not somebody at school, because he made me very well aware that people can't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think they count on secrecy and there's a difference between secrecy and privacy, and secrecy is something bad.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he definitely probably groomed you into keeping that secret.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the other thing is it was weird, like in public he would like ignore me, almost right. But everybody knew we were super close and I remember thinking that's weird, bro, like you're making it weird. You know what I mean, even at that young age. It's just the lengths these people go to like. Now, looking back on it, it's insane. And at the time you have to remember this is the late 90s, early 2000s the only type of rape that exists is the creepy uncle or the guy jumping out of the bushes with a gun to your head. That's the only type of rape that exists.
Speaker 3:In my mind at that time this was before the Catholic pre-scandal, this was before all of that, right, right, so essentially right. I remember that it was getting to the point where it was obvious like we were gonna make out like something was gonna happen that's in my mind what I thought was gonna happen and we had this plan to do it at practice guitar practice before we were gonna go to a blues jam, actually, and we were gonna have dinner with my father and this kid's fiance, right. So I chickened out at the last second. I didn't wanna do it, right, and I told him that I didn't wanna do it and I spoke up, right. And he actually gave me a positive response to that. He was like you know what? You're right, like this is a bad idea. Like thanks for like being the voice of reason. And he kissed me on the forehead because I'm a child, right. And he said gold star, like these are the things that stick out, right. So we went to the studio instead, had band practice, whatever, whatever.
Speaker 3:And I thought about that moment the entire time. For some reason, I'm like why am I such a? Why do I suck so much? Why am I such a bitch? Like, why can't I just like sack up and do this right? And so eventually I was like you know what, let's just go back to your place. Now, again, I'm thinking that we're gonna like make out.
Speaker 3:What ends up happening is he brings me in the bedroom, we start kissing, right, and he takes my pants down and he performs oral sex on me. Nothing I was. I didn't know this was coming right. I had no idea. I was staring at the ceiling, thinking about how I was about to go to dinner with my dad and his fiance the entire time, and when he was done because again, I'm not moving. I'm not saying anything. He's like okay, I'm done, you can pull your pants up. And then we proceeded to go to dinner with my dad and his fiance, and I think that's the best way to describe what ended up happening for the next year, around the time that I was turning 15, shortly before it progressed into like an actual vaginal sexual intercourse, right, and I remember he said that if he got engaged we would stop.
Speaker 3:That happened, we didn't stop, and I'm just feeling more and more guilt and more and more shame, and I'm getting more and more like I'm not talking to anybody about this. I'm writing, though, and that's key. That's clutch for me, right? I'm writing, and I still have these notebooks, steve, of all the lyrics and poetry and just random thoughts that I wrote down. That was my venting, and I truly believe that's why I'm able to do anything else to this day. Like. I really believe that's the foundation of my sanity, the difference between why I was able to remain relatively sane and some other people or I could have broken. Like, truly broken, and I don't mean that to be disrespectful. Like. Trauma affects everybody different.
Speaker 2:Trauma, trauma.
Speaker 3:Yeah, luckily I had that outlet. So at a certain point it came to critical mass and I straight said to this man because once this started happening there were no guitar lessons. At no point did I ever receive a guitar lesson. It was just strictly business. Right, and it was strictly business. I mean, this man made the comment that I was like a dead fish in bed and I'm thinking in my 14 year old head I don't wanna be here having sex with you. I'm having sex with you because that's how I keep you around.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:You told me yourself that's how I keep you around, right. So eventually I say to this man I thought we were. First it was, I thought we were gonna stop. When you got engaged, then it was, I thought we were gonna stop, like what is going on? This is about July of the year I was 15. So that would have been July of 2001.
Speaker 2:So that went on for a long time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it went on for a year a year at least once a week One incident happened in the actual fire station. There was another near miss in the fire station where we almost got caught in the fire station.
Speaker 2:Jesus.
Speaker 3:My best friend to this day, who was another firefighters daughter, remembers that she brought it up. I had forgotten, but now was like with the second. She said remember the time my father and I almost caught you. I went Jesus Christ, yes, I do Holy shit Cause it was a. It was.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So essentially I just got sick of it. I couldn't handle it anymore. I felt so guilty, I felt so shameful, I was so confused, I was so sick of doing something I didn't want to do. The Christian thing was a huge thing of the shame. My father and I, our relationship was suffering. I was starting to not be able to like get to school on time. School was super important to me. I had come out the side of my neck a little bit and talked to one or two friends about it and finally, right, I just reached a critical maths. I reached a breaking point and I said that was actually the time I had the second conversation with him where I said are we really like going to stop this? Like seriously, you said we were going to stop six months ago. Like it hasn't happened. I don't know what to do, I can't do this anymore. And his whole thing was always don't worry, like when you're old enough, I'll ask your dad if we can be together. And this other relationship is just a cover.
Speaker 2:And Wow, really like all this stuff. That's just creepy and wrong yeah.
Speaker 3:So essentially, I remember vividly when I asked him that second time he said I just can't resist you. And I knew in that moment when I went to camp that summer I was reporting it. I couldn't fucking do it anymore, steve. I just couldn't do it anymore and I was gonna snap. And that was that. So I planned that was the last time I saw him and I planned at camp I'm gonna tell somebody. And in my mind it was it's gonna stop, I'm gonna make it stop.
Speaker 3:Now I will touch on the fact that I had actually told my mother three months prior, and that was because I was so bottled up inside about it and I had nobody else to turn to. And my mother is the most fucked up human being I know, right, and she wants to get on my good side, right? So if I ask her to, she'll keep this information and she'll give me some frigging advice, right? So I did. I said hey, mom, I've got like something big to talk to you about and I need you to promise me, like on God, like right now, like you will not tell a soul, on all things Holy, like I swear I will never talk to you again. I need you to keep that.
Speaker 3:Now people might judge my mother for that. I needed that in that moment, steve, because what my mother did was she provided me a sounding board to get it out. She made me understand that I was not. She didn't have the reaction of, oh my God, you're being raped. What she had, the reaction was, oh my God, that's awful. You can't be doing that. That is not good for you or him or your dad. We need to make it stop Now. You have to understand. My mother, at 16, had a 26 year old Hell's Angel boyfriend at dinner with her parents, like it was a different.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:People didn't understand. And that was also grooming and rape, but again different time. So what?
Speaker 2:happens at the camp.
Speaker 3:What happens at the camp is I'm actually there. That year with two of my best friends. I had brought them to camp for the first time. I've been going to this camp it's Christian camp in New Hampshire since I was eight years old Brought them up to the camp.
Speaker 3:I decided halfway through the two week camp, like I targeted, like the pastor, I was gonna confess my sins to cause. This is the way I viewed it. Right, I truly mean that, steve. I really thought like I need to get this off my chest to God, cleanse myself of my sins and make it stop. Woof, I haven't thought about that aspect of this in a really long time.
Speaker 3:So, anyway, I go to this gentleman after nightly worship. My friends like file out of the church and I had told one of them what was going on and I had told her that I was gonna report the situation. So I told this guy what was going on. I was like listen, this is what's going on. I don't know what to do. I feel so guilty. I'm sinning. You know I need to make it stop. I know if I come here and I tell you you as a mandated reporter, like have to make it stop. And you know, he just was like Lynn I know you don't understand this, but that is your being raped and I was like what are you talking about? Bro? Literally had no concept. What are you? Yeah, okay, buddy, just make it stop. I have no idea what you're talking about. Like no, he never held me down. No, I never said no. You know what I mean. Like no concept whatsoever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the concept of consent is something I talk about for just about everyone and it needs to be talked about more often. But when we don't know, we don't know right.
Speaker 3:Right, it was weird. It was a weird moment for me, but all I knew was right, it was gonna stop, and so the way it was gonna stop was my dad was gonna become involved, and that's what you have to understand here is this was the thing that I couldn't go to my dad with, but my dad was the person that I went to with stuff, so I didn't know this was like a guy that was close enough to him that the day I left for camp they went for beers. They were super close. So what happened with the camp? Called my mom because I said, look, you're gonna wanna call my mom first. My mom already knows.
Speaker 1:And they were like what?
Speaker 3:And I was like, yeah, that's a long story. I explained it, whatever. Whatever, my mom was cooperative from the get. She believed me. She redeems herself fully for whatever perceived wrong. She committed by not immediately telling someone. So essentially, she told my father. My father touched base via phone and said that he was gonna center himself and come up tomorrow, but that everything was gonna be okay. We were gonna work this out just like we always do, right? Like thank you for sharing that type thing, right? So I waited with bated breath for my dad to get up to New Hampshire. Now, behind the scenes, my dad was freaking out. He's like there's gotta be some mistake. This can't be what the heck. You know what I mean. Like he freaking out, right?
Speaker 2:Wow, that's denial. That's not a norm for people who go through this. I'm not supporting it, I'm just noting it.
Speaker 3:No, you're 100% right. You're 100% right. That's what the picture I'm trying to paint. I'm glad I'm doing an okay job with that. So, essentially, he comes up and I'm sitting in the office at the camp and I'm waiting, and I'm sitting there and I'm trying to like this and I've like got my head in my hands and my dad walks in and I don't look up. I'm like terrified and ashamed.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna say the shame is a powerful, powerful emotion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and ashamed and terrified is really the order of operations there, Cause I wasn't afraid of what my dad was gonna do. I just didn't know what was gonna happen you know, Did I yeah.
Speaker 3:So I'll never forget this and this is a key moment. He picked my head up in his hands, like, got down on his hands like on his knees, picked my head up in his hands and went baby, don't ever hang your head in shame. I don't ever wanna see you hang your head in shame about this ever again. You did nothing wrong and you have nothing to be ashamed of. And he said that in the moment that he walked in and he saw me. He knew right then. This is not a mistake. Something happened here. So to me, it was over. It was over, it was over. Hallelujah, it's done. You're gonna stay the rest of camp. These are people that support you. That's the best thing to do in this situation. We'll talk more about it when we get home. Right, and little did I know. That was just the beginning, steve. That was just the beginning. So when I say this is like such an intricate story, that's just the first piece of my personal story.
Speaker 2:But just that I wanna hear. Not that I don't wanna hear more, but I might ask more direct questions, because it's an interesting time. Do you end up having to do anything with this? Go to court or what have you?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So essentially, my dad set up a meeting with a detective in town and I sat with that detective and I told him what happened. In this gentleman, this detective explained to me that what I experienced, whether I realized there or not, was rape, and that people like that don't just do that one time, and that it was in the best interest of myself and everyone around me that I speak to the DA. And I was not about it. I wasn't about ruining someone's life for a dumb decision that I made. That's how I felt, and blaming yourself, yeah. And the way the detective put it was and this is a formative moment as well he said listen, lynn, your sister is about the age that you were right now when you met him, right, I said, yeah, he goes.
Speaker 3:How would you feel if this happened to her? And I was like fuck you. I literally said fuck you. No, you have to remember I've been the one that fights all the battles. I fight all the battles. I'm against my mom and these men in the house and my sister's over here. She's protected. That's my sister.
Speaker 2:You don't fuck with my sister right, so they go through the investigation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so essentially what happened was I had a, I had, it was a lot, and then it stopped. So I had a white room, as my friend calls it, like interrogation or interview deposition with the, with the DA. The DA made the comment that I would have had to go to school and get a degree to make up a story like that, because the level of grooming was so intense in that there was no way that this man was a first time offender and that they were 100% going to pursue it. And then things just kind of ground to a halt. I had trouble getting restraining order against this man. I had to fight that every three months in court. That was because I couldn't check the box. That said, I was in a relationship with him.
Speaker 3:At the time the harassment order statute did not exist. And the really key thing here, steve, to know is that about a year after I reported, my sister was violently raped by the 26 year old boyfriend of her friend's older sister. The friend was 16. This boyfriend was 26. He was a gang member and a drug dealer. He lured her with alcohol away from the house and together they violently raped her.
Speaker 2:So basically, you go through your own rape several times. You go and speak to the right people and suddenly your sister gets rape also.
Speaker 3:Yes, and that was the one thing I was trying to prevent, in a sense, when I went forward with my pursuit of justice, of healing through the justice system, as I like to try to call it right.
Speaker 2:Good luck with that.
Speaker 3:I know, because to me it's re-traumatizing. But they do their best and I did receive justice. I mean, I received a conviction. My sister received a conviction. That's more than a lot of women get, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:But with conviction and all that stuff, there's consequences on the people, you know people. What I kind of explained with the criminal justice system is that what we see is there's a conviction took place, or they went to court or what have you, and then it's over. Well, no, that's not at all how that works.
Speaker 3:Not at all and unfortunately in the case of my family it wasn't how it worked at all. So with my sister's case that went quick because it was a violent crime, right. My crime, you have to remember, was an odd situation for the time again before the Catholic pre-scandal right, when this type of rape became more mainstream in the mainstream awareness, because it's always gone on.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So it's, in fact it's the most common type of rape. Is that type of rape?
Speaker 2:100% yes.
Speaker 3:But anyway. So with the violent situation my sister was in, that went forward very quickly and she went through a very traumatic trial. She was on the stand for a few hours Now. She was 12 at the time of the event. She was 14 at the time of the trial. They were grilling her on consent because part of hers was the forcible part. So they were like, okay, they had sex, but was it forcible? And they're grilling this 14 year old girl on consent. This man sodomized my 12 year old sister at knife point with his 16 year old accomplice and they're grilling her on consent.
Speaker 3:I was both, fortunately, and fun Fortunately not there. I had descended into my early stages of my first round of addiction, right, and I was actually at rehab. This man was told that there the jury was coming back, right, my sister's offender and he told his lawyer he was going to go downstairs to pray. So he was granted time to go downstairs to pray. So 20 minutes later, when the jury came back, they were looking for her offender and he wasn't back. So the judge apparently granted him another 20 minutes to come up from praying and 20 minutes later they determined that he had run from the courthouse.
Speaker 3:Now, through a series of events he was not apprehended until a couple of years later by America's most wanted I believe he was there 900 capture and it was around that time that my case was finally going to trial. It took about four or five years for my case to get to trial because a DA that worked for the middle sex district attorney's office Apparently this is what I'm told had just kind of put some of the more difficult cases on the back burner and when my family looked into it he was found to have put a bunch of cases like that on the back burner and he resigned. So I'm told I could be wrong about that information, but my case was not.
Speaker 2:But this is the other problem too is that you go through whatever it again. To me, violent rape versus statutory, or like grooming To me that's all rape. I put it all on the same page.
Speaker 2:for me personally, yeah, I mean it is number two People do these things and then they don't get a day in court for a year or two. You don't grill the person who did it, you grill the victim of it, and that pisses me off to no ends. The criminal justice system is just not like it. Like I think that you mentioned it, I don't think on here. Yet we talked about the secondary trauma of justice system.
Speaker 2:It is absolutely unbearable. I didn't know half your story, obviously, but I do know about this and I've been working in. I worked in courts for a long time and it's just unbelievable what people go through so it is, and that's the thing is.
Speaker 3:that's why I started with the rape itself and then moved on to and it was really just beginning for me because it was just again originally fighting for the restraining order, just to get him to not be allowed near.
Speaker 2:And you weren't getting it.
Speaker 3:And I wasn't getting it every three months until finally he was indicted, at which point I got a lawyer and we got a year to year restraining order and there was a stay away order attached to the all arraignment not not indictment, but well, indictment and then arraignment, because it did go to Grand Jury in this particular case I learned a lot about the criminal justice system and the terminology, steve, sorry.
Speaker 2:And then the cases hold away different than getting a restraining order, because that's like two different things.
Speaker 3:Exactly so at that point. At that point it's like this court date, that court date, they made a mistake and didn't collect DNA off of my first deposition. And when I said, hey, we have DNA evidence, you didn't check the fire department where he left DNA evidence. I could point out where he left it. I said that in my original deposition. I thought you guys checked that. Yeah, no, they had it. Like I had to point that out myself and they got that. And in, I believe, a 50 by 100 foot room, I pointed out a five by five square foot area and they found his DNA on it. And then it was just just court date after court date with nothing happening, at which point my sister had already been raped and she was coming to the summation of her case and then he ran and it was just insane. So when I finally got assigned a new ADA and this was the head of the Child Sex Abuse Division in the county at the time, because they were serious now they were like we're not messing this up again.
Speaker 3:It had been a while, it had been like four years. My sister's person was still on the run at this point in time and then my first trial was a mistrial. And when I say it was a mistrial, they pulled the jury after the fact and one one juror would not vote guilty. And they sent that jury back three days, three whole days, three days of deliberations and one juror would not vote guilty. So they had to call a mistrial. So that was a fun time.
Speaker 3:That was terrible. It was awful. I was devastated. I had waited four long years for a trial and One juror. So then they offered him a plea bargain and they offered him no jail time whatsoever and one count guilty, the other three hanging over his head. He wouldn't take it, which I was pissed. They offered him no jail time but in the in the eyes of the state they wanted to wrap this up. At least he'd be a registered sex offender. You know what I mean, right? So we went back for a second trial and at that trial he was found guilty. I could go into the way that that trial was a circus. His whole defense rested on the fact that he had a lovely and Talented and intelligent fiance. And he did. But that has nothing to do with whether or not you're raping your 15-year-old guitar student.
Speaker 2:You know that. You know, as podcast goes, we, you know, I want to make sure I tell everyone here that it's not more about not wanting to hear more because I think that's so important, but because of a kind of a time limitation. I tell people. I tell people that on average, a human being has a 45 minutes to 60 minutes Attention span. Yes and we're getting close to that hour, right now already.
Speaker 3:I know so it almost really does have to be broken. I'm sorry, like it just is the nature of this story.
Speaker 2:It almost I don't look and into parts like, like, if you, if you, got apologized to me, you've got all wrong.
Speaker 2:I'm apologizing to you just because I think that will probably have to do a second part, but you know, maybe what we can do to just wrap up this first part, because this is kind of like what happened to you, what happened to your sister yes, the conviction and then maybe we can talk about the secondary trauma of, yes, legal system, your Issues with sobriety and recovery because of all that, among other things. Obviously, I don't want to singularly blame it on one thing, because it's never that easy. But, yes, what I'd like to do right now is to just if you could tell me a little bit about what would you change about the system. If you could, right now, like today on, we're in June of 2023, this comes out in July what could you do? What could we do to change the system so that the victims feel supported? Because I know about victim advocates, I know all that stuff. But if there's still like a lot of like cracks in the, the foundation here, so many, so many.
Speaker 3:So I Would say the number one thing is early intervention with adequate trauma treatment. That is the number one thing. And if we're talking about the original trauma of going through the secondary trauma of the justice system, right, because there's two pieces to this, steve's, that's how intricate. This is right. Yeah, that's the most important thing. Also, just connecting with a good advocate my advocate is still working with me to this day, 20 years later is absolutely critical, but it's early and adequate access to Trauma treatment early I didn't have that I didn't have that, to be Honest.
Speaker 3:I mean, I did have my regular therapist. That wasn't. That wasn't gonna cut it for this. I I did have a rape crisis center that offered, I think, three appointments. That wasn't gonna cut it for this. I needed a holistic and individualized and trauma informed approach and that was just not the case. That wasn't available at the time.
Speaker 2:Essentially, so then I'm gonna invite you to come back. Okay, I definitely think we need to continue this story. Okay, I'm gonna. I didn't want you know, I don't want to seem abrupt to you or any audience, people who know me. I like to listen to people's story. I want to tell your story, but we'll probably need to do a second part.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, this one is a lot. It sprawls because this is the. If this was it, this would already be a lot, because we're nearing the end, you know.
Speaker 3:I never get a conviction, and my sister did get a conviction, even after America's most wanted right. We wrapped it up in a nice neat little bow. That's part one. Part two comes over the next 20 years, and then how the consequences that these offenders are supposed to have and the protections that survivors are supposed to have Actually play out in the real world. So that that is all stuff. That is a whole other. Another piece of this and that's why I always start with it's it's something you couldn't write if you tried. Like if there was a movie being made right and the director got and the producer got a script With all the twists and turns and plot plot twists really right, they'd be like no way too much. We've lost credibility and believability, you know, but it's just. Unfortunately, sometimes life is stranger than fiction and this one is just. It's been a, it's been a web man. I've got a web between mine and my sister's lives.
Speaker 2:Some people have asked me about my. You know my work as a therapist for years. I work a lot with trauma, worked on a crisis team, worked in the community Justice system on all levels that you can imagine, and I people ask me what type of stories would you give? I said none of them would make TV because they'd say it's too unbelievable. Yes, and so I fully understand that, and your story is not over, so how about we put a pause on it? I want to thank you for the first part today. Thank you so much, and I hope you have. We're gonna have you back and have the second part, where we're gonna talk about 20 years later and what happened during those 20 years, including the sobriety recovery, the, the struggles with that, the struggles with the sex offender registry board, or SOARB as they call it in Massachusetts, and all other things. But I wanted to thank you for today, today's time. I really truly appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Oh no, thank you. No, seriously, I'm honored and so grateful for the opportunities to and I will definitely find some time, so thank you awesome, thank you.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's all I have to say. I hope you enjoyed this episode. We're gonna have her back for episode 110, because her story is just starting, and I hope you join us then.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States. You.
