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Anina Swan: Recognizing Signs Of Serial Predators · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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defending biblical Christianity, no topic off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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Hello, welcome to another episode, friends, I get to talk to such wonderful guests.
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And this topic today is very important and we don't discuss details on it.
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I'm going to leave you hanging just for a minute before we get into it.
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But I'm going to give you a website, and then I'm going to tell you a little bit about
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Freedom Project Academy.
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The website I want you to bookmark is alligator in the ocean.com.
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There it is.
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You have no idea what it is right now, right?
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Unless you have the book already, alligator in the ocean.com.
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So before we introduce our guest to you, I want to remind you that right now Freedom Project
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Academy is enrolling students for the fall.
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And for 16 years, FPA has delivered a fully accredited classical online education, rooted
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firmly in Judeo-Christian values for kids in pre-kindergarten through high school.
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They offer live anytime in homeschool courses to fit your child's needs.
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So you can visit freedom4school.com and save 10% on tuition when you use the code, David.
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Again, use the code, David, and save 10% at FreedomFOR School.com and check out the courses
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at Freedom Project Academy.
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OK, so today's guest, her name is Anina Swan.
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She's a retired art teacher, child advocate, women's advocate, author, blogger, and public
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speaker.
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Her professional background focused on teaching art as well as writing art curriculum,
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for both private and public schools, kindergarten through 12th grade, she attributes her passion
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to encourage children through after-school activities, coaching gymnastics, soccer and
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skiing, teaching at summer programs as well as serving on staff at a children's cancer
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camp, to her own traumatic experiences as a survivor of life-threatening childhood abuse
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and healing to thrive after crisis.
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Anina currently speaks and advocates for women victims of crime at women's conferences,
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focus groups, and she's got a blog, I already gave you the website Alligators or Alligator
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singular in the ocean.com and that is the name of the book.
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We're going to be talking about which tells her story, but she's here to talk about it.
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Anina, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
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Welcome.
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Thank you, David, for inviting me.
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You're most welcome.
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Now, yours is a heavy story and you bring a lot of hope to young people to anybody actually
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that's been through anything remotely horrific is what you had to experience, but also for
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people that haven't gone through it just to raise awareness and look for signs on how
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you can find and discern these people who might take advantage of young children.
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So before we dive in a little bit more to your story, the book title is interesting.
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Also, the cover is that you on the cover, talk about the title and then the cover, please.
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Yes, so we believe my sister and I had three sisters and in our living room, there was
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an ocean skate painting and in one of the waves, there was a shadow that looked like
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an alligator and we used to play a game.
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My sister's an eye that the alligator was there coming up from the water to kill us, our
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harmless or kidnepis.
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So we played this game that if we chanted and twirled and jumped on the furniture that
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we would be able to subdue the alligator and push him back in the ocean forever.
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So that was a fun and enjoyable and happy time in my life.
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However, the alligator did represent the man who abused me.
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His name was Ivan.
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I called him Ivan the alligator.
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He was a man in our community that my family and my community trusted because he worked
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with families in his career.
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So this was my way of battling the alligator by using that painting as, yeah, as my target.
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So and then there's a hidden metaphor behind it.
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Alligators don't live in the ocean, crocodiles do.
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So alligators lack the salt glands and if they do make their way into the ocean, they deteriorate
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from within, which is what evil does to us.
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We deteriorate from within morally.
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And so that's the metaphor hidden there.
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Okay.
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I want to mention the subtitle because this is very important friends.
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So the name of the book alligator in the ocean, the subtitle, one family's fight to stop
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a serial predator and their determination to heal.
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And I'm guessing Anina, not having experienced anything like you have that it's taken decades
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and decades and maybe you're still processing certain things or dealing with certain things
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or still finding ways to completely heal.
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I don't know if there can be a completion this side of heaven.
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Tell us a little bit about that process and how long it's been.
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Well, when I was a child, the abuse lasted about four years from the age of four to eight
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approximately.
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So it was just a span of time and it didn't happen daily.
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And so I'm very lucky in that way, blessed in that way that I didn't wake up every morning
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to abuse and I know some people do.
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And so after we moved away, we moved from the town that I was abused in, the abuse stopped
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and I was able to enjoy life for about 13, 14 years after I had my third child and was
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married, the abuse that I had experienced I forgot.
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And that's called traumatic amnesia.
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And I didn't know that even existed.
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And so I lived in many years of my life just enjoying life and feeling healthy and I was
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a Christian woman.
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I'm a Christian woman and carried on until I started having reoccurring nightmares.
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And with those nightmares, when I would wake up, I would feel abdominal pain, incredible
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fear and difficulty breathing.
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So because they didn't go away, I knew there was something wrong.
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And I asked a friend for help and she suggested I go to a good counselor, talk about it, he
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would help me process it.
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And what ended up happening was the counselor, Dr. Barone, he noted that I wouldn't talk
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about that part of my childhood.
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I wasn't even aware of it, I just passed over it.
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And little by little, I started sharing with them these bits and pieces and fragments
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of abuse scenes that I couldn't explain through my life.
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And as I started feeling safe with him and trusting Dr. Barone, I would be able to talk
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more and more about these abuse scenes and the shadow of a man I couldn't see his face
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that would pop up as I talked about the abuse scenes in my mind's eye.
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And eventually, as I pray, God, show me the truth.
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What is this?
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What is happening?
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And eventually I saw the face of the man, I recognized him.
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I knew him well, my family knew him well.
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And we also knew that he was still working with children in another state in a career that
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he had access to children and families.
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So what has been, and I and Dr. Barone decided since statute of limitations was over.
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At that time, there was a limit to when I could give a report to the police.
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We called the head to the town, to social services and to the police and to the place
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he worked and said, we need to let you know this man may be a child predator because of
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what I experienced.
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And so from there, God took it from there and this man ended up admitting three children
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at the time came forward.
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It was an incredible display of God just revealing this wicked man.
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And he did go to prison eventually.
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First it was state jail or county jail.
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Then it was state hospital and then he was moved to state prison, which I talk about
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in detail in the book.
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Thank God there was a little bit of justice, even though your healing is probably still
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ongoing in all of his victims.
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But I understand when you were explaining traumatic amnesia or disassociative amnesia, I hadn't
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really thought about those terms or heard those terms, I it makes sense because you want
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to block it out because the trauma can be so horrific and a lot of people probably can
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relate.
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But I want you to talk a little bit about this Anina.
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You say that your abuser had more than 200 known people, he had sexually abused and he
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camouflaged himself as a person in that the community could trust.
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That is probably far too common that most of us want to acknowledge or realize.
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Tell us more about that aspect.
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It is and that's where parents need to be vigilant and listen to stories like mine and
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other stories and understand that the Bible tells us about these wicked people and in
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Psalm 10, I love sharing Psalm 10 because it's timeless.
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Okay, the Bible was written many, many, many years ago and then we have what I experienced
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with this perpetrator and then now we have digital perpetrators, online perpetrators,
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but their pattern of behavior is the same.
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And we can hear it in Psalm 10 and I'm going to read just parts of it to you.
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In his arrogance, the wicked man hunts down the weak who are caught in the schemes he
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devises.
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In other words, he's planning, the wicked is planning, strategizing.
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He's targeting the weak intentionally so he can subdue him and do what he wants to them
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according to his desires and his wicked behavior.
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Next, his mouth is full of lies so we subdue any hunts and he's strategizing using lies
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and deceit.
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Trouble and evil are under his tongue.
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He lies in weight near the villages.
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So he takes his time.
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He lies in weight.
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From ambush, he murders the innocent, his eyes watch in secret.
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That is our online predators, his eyes watch in secret for these victims.
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Like a lion in cover, he lies in weight.
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So he camouflages himself.
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He catches the helpless and drags him off in his net.
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His victims are crushed.
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They collapse.
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They fall under his strength.
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Today when we talk about violence against the weak, they call it now power-based violence.
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They generalize it into that category and there we go in Psalm 10, verse 10.
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His victims are crushed.
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They collapse.
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They fall under his strength.
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That's power-based violence.
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This is who we have to watch out for.
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Not to be a slave of fear, not to be terrified and certainly not to ignore it.
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And that's why I'm here to just share my message.
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So when you first came out and maybe started talking about this, were there people who
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blamed you for either speaking about it or maybe accusing you of not remembering accurately
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or having false memories?
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Tell us about that.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And I think that's normal.
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And my husband I knew once we turned him in and he was in the public eye.
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The newspaper reports exposed him, his name and what he did.
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And eventually, you know, small-time town talk, they knew that I was the one who turned
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him in and started the ball rolling.
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And yes, basically my church accused me of lying and bellishing and wanting attention.
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I had family members accusing me of lying and just causing trouble in the community.
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And you know, the truth is the truth.
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And God gave me a piece to move forward with confidence because I knew that this man
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did what he did.
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It took me a while to understand and to grasp the truth of it.
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But once I did, I said, God, go before me, do to Ron and me.
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God, go before me and show me.
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And I grabbed onto that and I moved forward and it did take courage.
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It did take the unknown and being humble and trusting in the God and something that
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I didn't see ahead of me.
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But believing that God was going to expose this man, give me strength and wisdom to
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move forward as it was all exposed and protect me and my family.
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So did you get any apologies from some of these people when others came forward and validated
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your story and said, yeah, he abused me as well.
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Did you hear any, did people change their tune?
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Yes.
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And that was a huge blessing.
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What a great question.
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There were many people in my church and community that called me and apologized and
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humbly and lovingly and wow, there's the reconciliation.
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And it was such a blessing.
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And I'm just grateful that I got to experience that part because I'm sure some people never
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hear that apology and receive that love from others that have accused you of lying about
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something so serious and so dangerous.
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So let's go back to the process of you're an artist, right?
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You created this book, so to speak.
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And it took you said 14 years.
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Tell us about how that came to be.
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When you've decided you're going to tell your story in book form, so meaning you're
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going to get detailed, but you also intended it to bless and help a lot of people and give
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people hope.
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Share that please.
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Well, healing from trauma and atrocity and suffering and pain as I did and many of your
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listeners or people they know, it takes time and it's unique to who we are.
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We are individuals created uniquely.
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And so maybe my experience healing and the time it took may be a little different from
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some of yours, but that doesn't mean you can't get there.
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God has created us as individuals and unique.
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And I trusted that.
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And so I didn't know how long it was going to take, but I was in counseling for three years
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and I dedicated my life.
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I changed my life to work on healing and address each and every one of those memories I had
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forgotten and the post trauma stress and emotion that attached to that.
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So as I was healing and remembering and slowly, many of the memories came to my conscious
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thought and I was under the guidance and care of a wonderful man, a wonderful licensed
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counselor and continued to go to church and feed myself that way scripturally.
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But what we did do is we stepped back from our church and for a little while went to
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another church.
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We became very private and minimized the people that we spent time with family and friends
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to address how much time I needed to heal.
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And so little by little, I took on those tools that my counselor gave me.
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Creative journaling was one of the most amazing ones, taking long walks, very simple.
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But I had a lot of energy, rage, depression, there's all these things that come with it.
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And with that, you have to address that and do something about it to attend to that
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energy and those needs and the emotion that you're swamped with.
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And so just little by little, I went to counseling once a week, I wrote in my journal, I had
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my prayer time.
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And then there were times in the day, throughout the day that I was a mom, a wife, I compartmentalized,
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I didn't let, you know, what was happening to me and my family consume me.
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So that was really important in my healing journey.
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And that took about three years approximately.
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And then after about four or five years of just living freed from those past pains and
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those past memories and those fragments of horror, I just decided after going to a college
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reunion, it happened near the place where I went to college.
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And so they were aware that I was the person who turned this man in.
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And my husband, I attended a college reunion and we were just, we had so much love given
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to us by these people that were following it behind the scenes.
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I wasn't aware of that.
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And I had a wonderful college professor ask what happened.
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How can this happen?
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You know, tell me more and there was too much to tell.
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So my college professor, my husband and I decided we were going to correspond by email.
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And that meant I had to go back and get into the box where all my journals were, all the
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documents were court documents, newspaper articles.
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And when I opened the box, I thought, oh my goodness, God, am I going to re-insure myself
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doing this?
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And I prayed, Lord, if there is something here, according to your will that you want from
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me, I know you're going to give me the strength.
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I know that you will help me to be able to write this out through the eyes of a healed
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woman and with your strength as my God.
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And that is exactly what happened.
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I ended up reading through everything, organizing all the documents.
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And then it took me a year to do that.
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And then I reached out to my professor at the college that he was teaching at.
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And when I sent the first email, somebody gave me a call from the college and said, he
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had died.
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And we were never able to correspond and exchange that information.
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So I asked my husband, what do I do now?
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And he said, I think you need to write the book.
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Write the story and offer that hope and encouragement to other victims and their families.
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So that's what I did.
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And that took me approximately 14 years, seven years of going to writer's conferences, three
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years of stepping back and then two years of actually completing the third manuscript.
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And it was, it was a wonderful journey.
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Well, kudos to your husband.
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And I'm sure you're, you're still thanking him in some ways today.
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But friends, if you just tune in, I want to give you the website, it's alligator in the
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ocean dot com.
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And it's the true story of survival, justice and the courage it takes to confront evil.
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And then heal from it.
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So were there times, I mean, a lot of Christians, when we go through just hard times in life, let
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alone somebody doing something to you, like you being a victim, we tend to blame God.
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And maybe your story is very similar.
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Were there times where you blamed God for not protecting you and what did you do with
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that?
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How long did that last?
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Well, it didn't last long.
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Thank God I, I did blame God and I even was so bold to say, God, you, you pick the wrong
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person to go through this and, and to heal from this.
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And some kind of good is going to come out of this that reveals who our wonderful God
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is, our sovereign God and that healing is real.
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And it can happen.
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And we become steadfast and strengthened by this.
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And there, there's a wonderful, wonderful verse in the Bible.
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First Peter 5 and it says, and the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory
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in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you
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strong, firm, and steadfast.
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That is what I had to look forward to.
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That is what I've experienced and want to share with others.
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We will suffer.
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The Bible says we will.
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We know that from our day to day lives.
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There's some form of suffering every day, some more than others like me, but God is going
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to restore us.
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He's going to bring us people in our lives like He did me.
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He's going to align us.
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We have to listen.
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We have to use our common sense.
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We have to move forward in faith and trust, which is sometimes really difficult to do.
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And we're hurting and when we're suffering, but that has an expiration date.
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And on this earth, we will be restored so we can help others and we get to know our God
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better.
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And intimately, and we have the strength where we can move forward.
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We get to enjoy life also, day by day, we get to enjoy it, not just the suffering that
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happened to us in the past.
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And then even more so, guess where we get to go in eternity.
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And we get to go where there's no more tears and that is a lot of glory through Christ.
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And we are going to end up in heaven.
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And there will be no more tears, but here on earth, yeah, when we suffer, we blame God.
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But we also have to trust Him if we want to move forward and heal from that suffering.
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Amen.
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This life is a bit of vapor and it goes by and everybody goes through something.
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God is sovereign.
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And one of my favorite verses is when Jesus said, in this world, you will have trouble,
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but take heart.
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I have overcome the world.
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And before that, He said in me, you can have peace.
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And you know, we're running out of time.
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I need to ask you, you confronted your abuser, well, how did that go?
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And then when you, later on, years later, when you found out he died in prison.
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So can you squeeze both of those answers in the last couple of minutes here?
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Yeah, because statute of limitations was up.
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And I was in safe hands and hundreds of miles away.
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We decided it would be wise to just confront him with what he did to me.
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And so I wrote him a letter to start things off.
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And he ended up calling me on the phone.
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And that is where I understood by the sound of his voice and the things that he said to
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me, which is in the book, that he was indeed, he was my perpetrator.
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And he did the things that I remember.
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And my husband took the phone and said, you have a chance to go ahead and admit to the
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things you did.
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And if you don't, then we are going to come after you with the full measure of the law.
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And again, my husband was the strength that I didn't have.
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I couldn't even think of something like that.
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I was too afraid for my own life because he did attempt to kill me as a child when I tried
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to tell.
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So I knew how rigorous this man was.
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And then I really didn't have to do much after that.
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Everything unfolded with the three victims that came forward at the time.
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And then the DA taken on the case and then he had many to 200 victims.
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So him dying in prison, I sent him a letter before he died.
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And that's in the book also.
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And I had to, as a Christian woman, I had to consider, well, this man has many sins against
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me and others.
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Can I forgive him?
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And what does that look like?
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And what is the Lord's mercy when it says to forgive others?
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And how do we do that?
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Does that mean that he's excused of his sins?
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Know what it means is God is the final judge.
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Because God forgives us.
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He wants us to forgive others and trust him.
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Trust in the Lord and give that onto God's shoulders, crush shoulders dying on the cross.
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Sometimes that ends in reconciliation with the person who sinned against you.
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Of course, in my case, it didn't.
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But God, God, you know, he died for us to reconcile us to him.
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That was his perfected love.
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Sometimes that doesn't happen when we forgive others.
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Sometimes the reconciliation doesn't happen till maybe after we get to have and maybe
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never God knows them.
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So alligator in the ocean.com, friends, Anita, what was your emotional response or reaction
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or feelings when you heard he died in prison?
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Well, I cried because I believe in life and I wish that he had chosen a better life.
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I was also relieved because if he would have gotten out of prison, my life would have
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been in danger.
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And I also hoped that somewhere in his life and his knowledge of God that he would have
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genuinely and deeply like our Saul Paul and the Gospels, he would have genuinely received
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the Lord as a savior and been forgiven for all the horror that he cast out on so many
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people on this earth.
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So those were my emotions.
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Wow.
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What a story.
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Friends, it's, gosh, 270 pages, pick it up and just get it for someone that you know
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probably needs it more than you do, you might need it too, but alligator in the ocean.
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Anita, Swan, what a blessing to hear your story and that you shared it.
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You got it down in book form, congrats on the book.
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It's on Amazon as well, friends.
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We appreciate your time today, sister.
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Thank you.
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Thank you, David.
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You're welcome.
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Friends, thank you again for sharing the podcast and for your prayers and support.
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God bless you and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
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See you next time.