Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / Anna Nasset: A Journey Through Stalking and the Fight for Change

Transcript

Anna Nasset: A Journey Through Stalking and the Fight for Change · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: In every dark tunnel, there's a glimmer of hope.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: In every painful moment, there's a strength to heal.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on today, david.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: My name is Anna Nasset and I am joining you all from the Green Mountains of Vermont, where I reside.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I moved here seven years ago now to Flea Stalker as the quick version of it.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: I was living out in Washington state on a small town of Port Townsend, washington Nice little liberal rural community, and owned an art gallery where a man I don't know targeted me and began to stalk me and really uprooted my entire life which is what we're going to be talking about today and I would end up closing my business and then moving across the country.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: He continued to stalk me, luckily never came out here to Vermont, but eventually was prosecuted in Washington state in 2019.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: And is currently serving the largest sentence in our country's history, which is 10 years for the crime of stalking.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: He got the maximum for aggravated felony stalking and felony cyber stalking and even prior to that trial, I really started to look around and see how little was known about stalking and how I had one of the few cases where every victim, service provider, advocate, law enforcement, prosecutor, for the most part really showed up and believed me and supported me and was there for me.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: So, even though it took us eight years to get to this trial, it really still had this good outcome, and I just realized I couldn't be the exception.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: This needed to be the standard, because stalking is so overlooked, under reported, it's so intersectional with other gender based violent crimes of domestic and sexual violence, and the results can be life ending.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I know my life has been altered forever, but I am sitting here and I shouldn't be, and it was because I was believed by so many people that I am.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: So I started a business called Stand Up Resources where I provide training to law enforcement advocates, military universities, all that and got very involved in my state as well, doing different campaigns and platforms, and just wrote a book.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I'm really just all about how can we educate people about stalking, because the more who know, the safer we're going to be.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad to hear of the outcome because unfortunately we don't always hear the outcome of even the community support.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that you were able to shake the system a little bit and make things happen.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I feel like the word stalking gets used so loosely and after having a conversation with a guest when I first started that it woke me to that to, and so now I'm choosing my words a little differently.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's a big problem.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: We see it in media, we see it in movies, we see it in books, we see it on greeting cards, we see it in the language.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: We say you run into somebody two times in one day.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: You're like oh, are you stalking me?
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: And we've all done it right?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Sure, and one of the things I always say is that until we recognize that it's a problem, I don't really fault people because they didn't know that's the intent.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: I was just with some friends the other day and one of them used the word stalking in an inappropriate way and they're like oh yeah, I was stalking this person on Instagram.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Were you now, were you really stalking them?
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: And they're like oh yeah, oh crap, it's okay.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: And they're like I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm like it's okay, but the more you're going to keep reminding yourself when you say it, that's not an appropriate use, because stalking isn't funny, it's not just a random coincidence, it's actually a crime.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: And just for your listeners to go over, the DOJ, department of Justice definition of stalking is and I'm paraphrasing, obviously but stalking is a course of conduct that causes a reasonable person fear for their safety, the safety of others around them, or severe emotional distress.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: And when they say course of conduct means repeated things, but that's only two or more things.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: But if you have two unwented messages from somebody, or two times of them following you, two unwanted gifts, whatever it might be, that qualifies as stalking and it is a crime in all of our states.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: But so often we don't realize that.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: So often I talk to people all the time they're like, oh my gosh, I was stalked by an ex, or oh my gosh, I was stalked by a coaker.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: And because it's so diminished, because we were told we're overreacting, it's not a big deal, it's not that bad, we don't realize that it actually is a crime and that it is really bad.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: You had mentioned, you shut down your business and moved away.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that's because you felt like you've had to for your sanity and safety.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: And there was a case I would either covered with a guest and forgive me it's been so long but either covered with a guest or it was a documentary that I was watching something.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Either way, the person had to keep changing their cell phone number and when they would call and report this, they were told to we'll just change your number, we'll just change your number.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Why should you have to change your number?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Why should you have to uproot and leave?
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Why does that fall on your shoulders?
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that people realize that is also part of victim blaming.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: It is and it's, I think, was stalking similar to domestic violence.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: The ownership falls on the victim.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: So much to change those things, to relocate, to change phone numbers, to change our appearance, to change our roots, to change our jobs All of those things are put upon us because we have to keep ourselves safe.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And within these crimes where, especially with stalking, where until there is a physical wound it's very hard to prove a psychological crime, right, right.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: And so much of that gets put on the individual, like for me with my business, and this is the truth for so many people the last place you want to be is where the stalker knows you are.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: So here I am trying to keep this business running, but I had a gall at work for me one or two days a week, but other than that I'm always there.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: So that's not where I want to be.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: So I was closing all the time.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: I couldn't focus on work, similar things that other people feel after an assault or if they're in that domestic violence situation.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: You're staring out the window instead of concentrating on your work.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: The amount of work that is lost for stalking victims is pretty big and the amount of people that move is really big as well that we're doing whatever we can to keep ourselves safe, and it's really unfortunate we're such a long way away from being to get the appropriate services and needs in place for victims of stalking to be able to live safely.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear that, because not everybody has the financial means or the resources to just up and leave, and I also.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: I also we've been very honest that I don't have children, so if I had children to protect as well and that additional financial obligation huge, but in the end I was able to.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: I had to go to my family for support to relocate, but it took me till I closed my business in 2013 and it took me till the end of 2019 to pay off my loans.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I know and you hear about these college students that they are.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Their family has paid for this education.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: You can't just up and leave that the university is not going to write you a check that day.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: And with students, when you look at like college students or military members, there's such a more complexity to it because even with the protection order, you're still on the same base, you're still on the same campus and how you navigate around that is so challenging.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: It's that extra barrier to be like okay, the stalker is in building over here, I'm in building over here.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: We need to be 500 feet from each other, like how do you navigate that?
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: And that's where the real psychological toll comes in as well, where it's that lifetime psychological toll that I still deal with.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: I can safely walk in this world right now, but do I ever feel that way?
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: No, so start where you want to and whatever you feel comfortable telling us of how this all transpired.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: So essentially it was 2011 and I'm just working in my art gallery.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: I was getting it ready for a gallery walk the next day, so it was evening.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: I was working on a window display.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: This guy who I didn't know just walks up and knocks on the door until I popped down and he tells me he wants to show artwork at my gallery and he gives me the gift of a small painting.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: I gave him my business card.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: The conversation lasted less than five minutes.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Now, what I didn't know and wouldn't realize for years is that he'd probably been watching me since 2008 or 2009.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: And he actually had popped into my gallery before, but I just hadn't recognized him because it's a bit open business, like we just don't do that.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: After he gave me that gift of a painting, he started messaging me when I rejected showing his artwork and then he started sending me face messages.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: We weren't friends on Facebook, but you can send a message pretty easily and pretty quickly.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: My radar went up because he started to comment on my appearance.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: He started to say things like it was nice to see you today.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: I'm like, who is this person?
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: I'm not seeing them anywhere.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: What's happening?
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: So very quickly, my radar went up within that and luckily, I was in a very rural community too, and so one of the things I want to be really clear about is, if I was a different gender, a different race, if I didn't hold a position of like ownership of a business in my community, if it was a big city, if he and I were the same gender, any of these things were different, I don't know if I would be sitting here today.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: I'd like to think I would be, but we all know there's a good chance I wouldn't be, especially not in 2011.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: But I had a friend who I could call, who worked with the police sometimes and stuff like that, and I talked to my friend and I told him the stalker's name and he's you need to go to the cops right now.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: This guy has a history of stalking in the community.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: He does, unfortunately, have a mental health diagnosis and, to be clear, not all stalkers have a mental health diagnosis, but he does happen to have a very rare form of schizophrenia that has manifested into stalking.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: So I would go to the police and because the police knew who Jeffrey was and that's the name we're going to use for the stalker they knew who Jeffrey was.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: They were able to start explaining things to me and let me know that he does this for short spurts of time how to keep myself safe.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Talking to me about changing up my pattern, which is really hard in a small town when there's basically one main road and you work at the business on it.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Talking about keeping evidence logs so logging everything that Jeffrey would send me and that's once again, ownership on the victim to keep that evidence.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: And with stalking and with domestic violence as well, you are your own investigator, you are your own detective, you are your own collector of that evidence, because if you don't have that evidence to turn over, they have nothing to build on.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: And so I really just educated myself.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: There was such little information out there about stalking online at the time, but I just tried to educate myself because, for me, when everything feels like chaos, the more I can know about my situation.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: That's just, for me, a little bit more empowering, and so I kept giving over my evidence and doing all of those things, and they would actually end up prosecuting him in 2012 and he would plead down to misdemeanor harassment.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: It's a very long story.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: I'm giving you a very short version, sure sure.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: So he would serve a year in jail and I thought, okay, great, this is over, I'll move on to his next victim.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: I feel bad for them but we're done here.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: And unfortunately I wasn't.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: He continued after he got out of jail to not directly threaten me, because I had protection orders, but to do it in a more nuanced ways, where he would write letters about me and send them to law enforcement and prosecutors and all sorts of people, and he always knew how to skirt the line just right, which is very common with stalking.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: They know how to walk a very fine line, and so time would go on with this.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: There'd be times I would run into him, things like that, and maybe he would leave because I have this protection order.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: But it was that unknown variable of where would he go, and that was the part that was so challenging for me, especially with these letters that he was writing.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: He would write about all these different ways in which I should be murdered, and very graphic and descriptive ways.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: This was becoming not only a psychological threat to me but a very physical threat to me, and so, as time went on at that time I had good support from friends, but I was very quiet about it in my community because we still you and I were just talking about, we didn't have the understanding around stalking.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: So if I would tell someone about it I'd be like, oh, that's not a big deal, you're overreacting.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: And, to be clear, I've also experienced many other forms of gender-based violence, starting from the age of three years old.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: So I would have people like, oh, you've experienced a lot of other stuff, so you're just very reactive.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: And in hindsight, one of my friends who works in the violence prevention field, she read my book and she's honestly, I think every trauma you've experienced in gender-based violence from the age of three is what saved your life and made you so aware that this was a problem.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do too, and something I'm still unpacking in my head.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: That really hit me.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: And so I just had to keep following my gut and my business was crashing around me because I wasn't present.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I was leaving all the time.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: I'd see him on the street.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: I closed my business.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I saw him the evening before when I was trying to go out to dinner.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: I went home.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I couldn't sleep all night I was staring out the window.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: So then I'm hoping my business late.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: And so from the outside, my community thought oh, this girl just doesn't care about her business.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: And, trust me, I had no trust fund or anything like that when I started this gallery, so this was my everything.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: So I just, and I didn't have the language.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: So eventually I closed my business.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: It was humiliating, embarrassing.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: I don't feel like I did it in a real upstanding way, but I did it.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: I got through it and have made my apologies over the years for just becoming an ostrich who ducked her head in the sand, and time would go on.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: I stayed in my community because I really loved it.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: I went to work for a high-end lumber company as their marketing director, which seems like a really big jump from gallery owner.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: And yet there's the obvious reason.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: I sat in a room with a bunch of old lumberjacks who had concealed carry permits and were older, and I felt safe there, you know.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: And so eventually I would decide to leave Washington and relocate, and that decision really came.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: I'm from Ohio originally and my father was diagnosed with cancer and we knew it was not going to be a long battle.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: So my boss gave me a leave of absence from the lumber company and I went to Ohio and was with my mom as we walked my father through that process and in that short timeframe of my father passing away, eventually, within about nine weeks, I was the family errand runner.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: I was the family.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: I was always running around town picking up the things we needed, whatever it might be, and I started to realize how even the smallest things that I was doing while in Ohio were things that were plagued with fear when I was in Washington.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey loved to be at the grocery store, so going to the grocery store was a huge challenge for me.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: I'd go to the one out of town, I'd go at different hours.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: So here I am in Ohio and I can go to the grocery store without fear.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: I would take a little walk on my parents' trails at night and I hadn't walked alone in the dark in years or I'd go into town and meet a friend for dinner Same thing.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: I'd park my car and walk two blocks without fear.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: And so, in this really tragic loss of my father, I got to actually see what freedom looked like and went back to Washington with this knowledge that I was going to have to go.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: And I spent some time thinking about that and ended up moving here to Vermont and thought, okay, great, I can disappear, it's all good.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: And that didn't really work out.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: As I said, jeffrey began to message me again and there's just so many messages and they're so chaotic and they would come in just like flying in one after another and I'm here and I don't really know anybody and it's terrifying.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: And eventually he got to the point where he said he would come to Waitsfield, vermont, to be with me, which is the town where I live.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: I never posted that publicly anywhere.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I was going to say how did he know that?
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: You can find out anything if you go deep enough.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really the correct answer for me is you can find out anything if you go deep enough.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: That was really for me just like.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: The gut punch was like I've moved across the country.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: What am I going to do?
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I kept filing.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I had one officer I worked with all these years.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: I kept filing reports with him and it took a really long time but eventually a prosecutor.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: This is getting really like legally nuanced so I'm going to skip over that part.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: But eventually, when they did research into where all the messages he was sending me were from coming from, they weren't coming from my county I originally lived in Washington, which would be Jefferson.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: They were coming from the next county over Clalem County, washington.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: This prosecutor picked up the case and he was like I know that stalking is impossible to prove, but I'm going to go for this and I'm going to go big.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: It took us two years of building that case and just it was massive to get there and there's, like I said, a lot of legal nuances behind it and we're doing all the trial prep me here in Vermont, them in Washington.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: I had an advocate here in Vermont who worked with me to really encourage me and get me there, and then I got on a plane and flew back to Washington and testified for a day and a half.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: It was a very intense experience, especially because Jeffrey opted to defend himself, which is legally allowable, so he defended himself, which means not only is he objecting every time I open my mouth, he also then got to cross-examine me, and I think it's really important that people understand that stalkers and abusers will use the criminal justice system to be able to talk to their victims, because if we have these protection orders and I've got several protection orders against them, including a lifetime one that's how they can legally speak to us.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Right, and he did that to me several times in Washington, or once in Washington as well, where he tried to get a protection order revoked.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: So I had to go to the court and I had to speak to him, and it's just.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: It's something that is really horrible about our criminal justice system is that they can do that, but also they have legal rights too.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: It's such a hard one.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: I try and hold that balance of well, that is his human right as well.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: There's such a hard pill of swallow, though, Like you're the monster under my bed.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: You're the bad guy.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: How is it that you know I found and not trying to hijack and make this about me at all, but there was just so many things that just resonated with me that you were saying, because I felt that my attacker, he was a white man and he was a military man.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I'm a gay man in the South, he is a picture perfect Southern and I'm everything the South hates.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: And so he had even confessed that he originally had told the police that I sexually propositioned him and that's why he did what he did.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: That led to murder.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: They took him through McDonald's drive-thru, they stopped and got him a pack of cigarettes, all while my body is still missing somewhere and thinking that they were thinking I was dead right.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: And then in court he confessed that he knew that if he said that, they would go easy on him no handcuffs or nothing.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: And so I was like how did he have more protection and rights than I do?
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: I think so often and obviously I have this positive outcome.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: So I have a lot of love and grace for the people who've worked on my case.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: And yet we have a system where they are innocent until proven guilty and we, the victims, are lying until we're proof truthful.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: And if it had been different law enforcement, different judges, different prosecutors, any step of the way, it'd be very different.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: So let me ask you do, because you had mentioned that maybe if your gender or your race or sexual orientation between you and the stalker had been different than maybe you wouldn't be here today, and so of course that was referring to assuming that was referring to the stalker's actions, do you think?
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: And also how I was perceived.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, that's what I was going to ask is do you think that that also played a factor into the representation that you got and the assistance and resources that became ready to you within your community?
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Yes and no.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but yes I do.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: I think that definitely one thing I should have said at the beginning is most people who are stalked know their stalker.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Most people are stalked it's a former or current intimate partner, it's an acquaintance, it's somebody they work with.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: And if I had gone in there and I had dated Jeffrey, how would I have been perceived?
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: If I had gone in there and I didn't have the name of that person who I called that first day, who told me to go to the police, who also held a position to power my community, how would I have been perceived so I was able to come in there as a confident young female business owner who hadn't dated him.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: I had all of those things and yet still because 2011, we still had little information about stalking.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: There was still a lack of resources and they actually did tell me to go to the advocacy center in my town, but I optically was like that's for domestic and sexual violence.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Where does stalking fit in?
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Now I tell anybody because I get a lot of emails I'm like go to your advocacy center immediately.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: That's your first place to go.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: I know it doesn't say stalking on their side, but they handle stalking as well, and I think that's really important.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: That's good to know.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like the first place you want to go is to there, and I think that we're making a lot of strides and we have a gajillion miles to go.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I feel like we've gone, we've made it about a hundred miles and we have another gajillion to go.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: So, absolutely.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Like what we were talking about in the beginning and maybe even before we hit record.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, we've got a long way to go, but people like you and I and the community that we're now a part of and building like we're all leaving our mark and our stamp on it.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I know that, with my case being out of the norm than what that my community is used to, and I still have people writing me telling me that their mind had changed on so many things that they didn't think about things I had no idea of what would be available to me until it happened.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: And then I'm relying on someone else to tell me what's out there, because we don't wake up one day and think what if I'm stalked today?
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: What if I'm a victim of a hate crime today?
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: What if someone?
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: What if I'm on a morning jog and someone pulls me into the woods?
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: We don't think that way and with the state of mind that I had brain injuries, I got down to 98 pounds.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I barely recognized who my family members were, and that legitimately.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: And so to think, to call that state advocacy center.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: My mind would never have worked that way and we start making these resources known before someone needs them.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I think the simplest thing that I would ask and I asked this especially if I'm on like a military base or a college campus I'm like, please, just if you do this once in your lifetime, post a resource on your social media, Because that reach from that kid sitting there who's yeah, I can do that is reaching so many other people that I can reach or you can reach.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: It just keeps that ripple going out, and I think that's the biggest thing is we're the pebble and we just need that ripple to keep going and we need people like my business is called stand up resources.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: We need people to stand up beside us and we need people to be putting that information out there.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Whether they think it makes them uncool, I don't care.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I think you're a lot cooler for doing that and it's just continuously doing that following.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: If you're for your listener, follow the advocacy center in your area on Instagram, do that and don't be hesitant to share those resources that are coming out.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: And I think that you speak to something that's so true.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: When we're in that place of trauma, we are not thinking clearly, we are not seeing things, we cannot understand what's being told to us.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: I always encourage law enforcement advocacy centers to have very clear printed, very easy to read.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: I also do trauma informed graphic design, which is very nuanced, so I'm very big into trauma informed literature that can be handed to us when we're in that place so that we're not just counting on our ears to hear what those people are advising to us.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: We've got something concrete we can look at and start to follow through and that it really takes into account a brain injury.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: It takes into account our trauma processing.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: It takes into account those things We've got so far to go.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: But just those really small things can make a world of difference.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I want to do my part and I want my platform to be a part of that.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I would like to ask the listeners please get on our socials and share that resource information for your state.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: If we all did it for the town or city or state that we lived in today, we would cover miles of miles, Right.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do a lot of work with Spark, which is our federally funded stocking prevention resource center, and they're also a great resource.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: They don't provide direct services, but they are a great resource of tools at stockingawarenessorg.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: And while we're talking, I'm going to look up their social handle because I know it, but I want to make sure I know it before I say it?
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I definitely want to post that.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: So Spark SPARC in their social handle is follow us legally and they put out stuff all the time and all you have to do is hit share to your story.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: That's pretty easy to do.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: One thing that I have ran into and maybe you'll have some advice for myself and for my listeners.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: But because of the subjects that we talk about, I proudly wear shirts and say surviving abuse podcast.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: This is my baby.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I'll promote it at Walmart.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Wear it, Dollywood, I don't care.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: But Dollywood, yeah, I'm only 30, 45 minutes away from it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, total aside, but my dog's name is Dolly Parton, so anyhow.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I always somehow slip into it, like I'm.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Like you said, dolly, I got to take a sidetrack here.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, continue.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: So you'll wear your surviving abuse podcast to Dollywood.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, and no, I love little things like that.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: So, please, sometimes it's nice to just break in and smile about something because we talk about some deep, dark, heavy stuff.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: But that's my point.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Is people saying I want to share these things, I want to wear these t-shirts, but I'm afraid that as soon as I do and I'm walking with my husband through the local grocery store and it says surviving abuse, are they going to think he's abusing me and not realize that maybe it's just an ally shit.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's just me trying to target that one person that needs to see it.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And I understand that, because there's so much forgive me, but there's so much shit that comes.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: And if you talk about or if you research, if you watch a documentary, and someone sees that you're watching a documentary or something on that, then they think that you're a victim of that and that your husband or your spouse or partner is that bad guy, or that your mom or dad did something, and so it makes people want to not talk about it because they don't want to project that they're going through or went through something.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Do you have anything that you could help me say to people that could maybe help change that mindset?
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: It's a challenging one, because I think that we need to do what we feel comfortable with, right and so, wherever that person is in that process of being like, okay, I don't feel comfortable wearing the shirt, but I feel comfortable sharing a resource on Instagram Awesome, because that sharing of resource might lead you to wearing the shirt.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: So it's, I think, it's us, and one of the biggest things I think is really important, and I've seen over the last years that чтобы أب muốn أن نراك, لم نراك أن هو مقدير النوب.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: I think that, with the last president that we had and the really horrific language around treatment of women and people that we saw, and treatment of all people really that are white and male identifying, we all got a lot louder.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: That's what I started to notice is, ever since 2016,.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: These conversations that we were having real quietly, with the whisper, we're talking about a little bit more.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: I can be sitting at my local bar with a friend having a drink and we are not whispering about this stuff anymore.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: We're talking about it and doing that.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: There's other people listening in and I think that's a huge part of it is normalizing these conversations and not shying away from them, and that can be such a big thing in and of itself.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: To that person who may not want to wear the t-shirt, but normalizing these conversations, saying, hey, I was watching this documentary and this is this thing I learned.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Or I was listening to this podcast and did you know that 13 million people in our country are stocked every year?
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: But it's just talking in that way that we're not hiding this, and that, to me, is such an important component, because the louder we are, the more educating we do, the more people who are going to come forward.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: And that's something that's always really important to me is, if I'm on a college campus or I'm on a military base, I want their report numbers to go up after I've left, because we know those things are happening there.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: So that's a big thing for me is just, we got to normalize it, however, we feel comfortable doing so.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: And I'm trying to think of different ways to brand the allowship of victims and survivors, and so maybe that's where I started is the t-shirts of I believe victims, or I believe you, or I'm a safe place, or I support, and maybe just starting out like that and I feel like I'm asking a lot of my listeners today, but you've got these wheels turning with me, so thank you for that.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so if anybody there's a survivor or an ally out there that has a suggestion of something that they would feel comfortable wearing or presenting or doing, let me know, because just reaching that one person can really change everything for them.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: It can Like one of the.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: I'm on the board of and Violence Against Women International, which is an organization that provides a lot of training to law enforcement advocates on how to respond to sexual violence with trauma-informed practices, and out of that organization came a campaign called the Start by Believing Campaign, which is find it everywhere.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: It's awesome and that's a really good place to go to just to like.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: It's such a simple concept.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: It's three words start by believing right and that right.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: There is such a big thing.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: And when I look back through all of this from the first years where I was so quiet, it was because, other than my very close people, if I whispered this, I was not met with belief.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I was met with.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: What did you do?
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: How did this happen?
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Couldn't you have done something differently?
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: What if this, what if that?
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: But if I had been met with, hey, I believe you.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry this is happening.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: How can I support you?
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Totally different.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: The media released a story that pretty much said gay man me goes to straight bar, takes straight man home for sex and gets beat up.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: That's not what happened.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: And so I started getting death threats.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I people wanting to finish the job, people were blaming me.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: People would write me or even see me out in public and say I'm so sorry this happened to you, but hopefully this taught you less and did not take someone home.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: And that's not what happened.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: And when I remember, when I was in group therapy that I was telling you about and one of the this big, burly, alpha, straight male, when I was talking, touched my hand, he said David, I believe you.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: And it changed everything and I'm getting teary I think about it now.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: That was seven years ago.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Like it changed those words and so I actually made I had a moment remembering that a few months ago I made a little TikTok video about this is a safe place and I believe you, because I think that's so important to hear.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: And to believe people and not put your own agenda on them just to sit in absolute belief.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: And I think that all too often, when someone discloses something like this to us, our tendency is like okay, here's what we're going to do, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to do that.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: And that's continuing to take that power away from the person who's sitting in victimhood.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: And the way we get to survivorship is by making our own choices and making our own decisions and taking back any little bit of control and power we have.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: And so that's so important to me as well is, if someone discloses to you, to, yes, do exactly what that guy did, take a hand or whatever, and start by believing.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I try to think of better ways to ask questions and what I wanted to hear and when I would ask or when I would be asked what do you want to the outcome to be, what do you think we can do, and where?
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: They're putting that ball back in my court to where I'm now getting to say this will make me feel comfortable.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: And so I try to be very calculated on my questions and trying to make them second, because I don't think people mean harm by these questions.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: It does hurt when you're in that vulnerable place, when it brings that doubt, when you've lost that control, when there's no safe place anymore.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Like you, like this was happening at your job.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: I should feel safe at my job.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: You should feel safe at your job.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: This was your business, your baby that you should have.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: That should have been an amazing, blissful place for you, and it was stolen, which means your bed or your bed where you lay your head down to get your rest, your home, that thinking is that window locked, is that blind, closed?
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: This is your home, and now you're a stranger living in your own home and it's.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I hate it.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: I hate it, but I'm so glad to hear what you've done and what you're doing.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I feel like I could talk to you all day.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: But what I would love-.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: I know You're in the same way.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: I know I find so much motivation in this and I've got a lot of projects to do today and I feel so motivated, so thank you for that gift.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I would love to ask you to tell us a bit about your book, if you can.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: I would love to.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: So I have a book.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: It'll be out by the time you hear this podcast, which is very exciting.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: It's called Now I Speak, and so you can find it on Amazon.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: All that and I'm very excited to have that out.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: So it is the story of me being stalked from 2011 to 2019, but interwoven within it is.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: I almost allow each chapter to trigger me to a different memory from my past.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: So interwoven throughout the book is just these plopped in other stories, because that's how triggers work.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Right, you hear a song and you're back in this moment.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: So I allowed that book to do that.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Some of those triggers are good, some of them are not good, so it really covers a lifetime course of gender-based violence, and I start each chapter off with a different stalking fact as well, so that we can really learn more about stalking as we're hearing this story, because, before we start recording this, I don't like to answer the voyeuristic questions and I like to point to that educational place wherever I can, and I really feel I'll just read the last.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: I'll read the back of my book, because I think it's really for me what this book is about.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: I write Now, I Speak, now I Give Over the Words.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: It's not that there is anything particularly significant about my life.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: I've experienced what countless others have experienced a lifetime of gender-based violence, which, for me, happened to be at the hands of men.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: I'm not special, I'm not unique.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: I am set apart in the fact that I have the privilege to share my story when millions of others cannot.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: My only hope is that my words will allow others to not only have a voice but have a life, and that, for me, is the point that, yeah, so it's available on the Amazons and all of that, and your listeners can't see the cover, but it has white sunglasses on it, and in my background you see a lot of white sunglasses.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: So throughout the story, by the end, you realize why I have hundreds of pairs of white sunglasses.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, I love that.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, I love that.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to find out.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm definitely gonna read it.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: So I do have a fun little question for you, but since we do have a couple more minutes left, I would like to get your opinion before the fun question on how you feel about protection and restraining orders, because I feel as if there's an unspoken one for everybody in the world.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Anyways, right, don't come to my house and sign about you.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Don't touch my body unless I ask you to.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: If I give you permission to touch my body in five, 10, 20 minutes later, I don't care how long I tell you to get out, you don't, then that's assault, right.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: And so I had that mindset of this.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Restraining order doesn't mean anything to me, it didn't provide me with anything.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: And then I was interviewing someone who has now become a great friend and she said how I think of it.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: David is.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: It was validation, that people believed me, and I was like, oh, that changed everything.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: So that's pretty much how I felt.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, I was gonna ask what's your?
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: thoughts.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'll share a quick story here.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Back in 2012, I was given a three year protection order 500 feet.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey served his time.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: He got out of jail.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: He ended up what I thought breaking that protection order.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: One night, when I was out with friends, I went to the police.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Next day it turned out that protection order had been miss filed.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: It wasn't three years, it was only two years.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: So he was fine.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: So I had to go back to court and in Washington state, like many other states, the offender gets to stand right next to you while you're standing in front of the judge, and the judge her name's Judge Landis.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: We've become very good friends now that she's retired.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Just an absolute amazing human.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: She took accountability.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: She was just like I'm so sorry, we messed up here, which is really big, like we all mess up at our jobs, and so some clerk, whoever it was, miss filed it, and within the legal system, that's really hard to take accountability.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: And she did.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: And I was just like cool, all right, you know what?
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Let's not deal with this again.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Here's a lifetime protection order.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: And I was like, ooh, all right, okay.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: I'll take that.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: That same validation right, and yeah, sure, I know it's just a piece of paper.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: And then, right before she retired, there was a very legally nuanced thing I'm not gonna get into, but she had to make an amendment to that protection order and she changed it from.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: It still stayed with the lifetime protection order, but she changed it from 500 feet to 150 miles.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Now that's some validation.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: That is some validation, wow.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: And so I know it's just a piece of paper and that if when he gets out of prison, like I know it's just a piece of paper, but to me it's a pretty sacred piece of paper and I get really pissed off when I get emails from all sorts of victims of stalking that get their protection orders denied by judges, get real ticked about it, who have mountains of evidence they go in with and I am obsessed with you and I'm obsessed with you.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, good, I was gonna say, but in a good way.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: In a good way that's not stalking.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: Being obsessed in a loving way is great.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I cannot wait to continue to follow you and read your book and learn about you.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: And, like I've said three or four times now, I'm so pumped and inspired.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to send you some pictures of the projects I complete today, because your fingerprints are gonna be all over it too.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: So I love that.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: That's so cool how we carry these meetings and all of this with us into our day, and yeah, yeah.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: It's been a rough week.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: So my cat had been missing for two months and then last week was my birthday and we were terrified with my mom having a cancer scare, which that C word as you talked about like that is the ugliest word ever.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: And we're not completely out of the woods with a cancer scare.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: But we did get some great news the day before my birthday, because I was terrified that we were gonna get this bad news on my birthday.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: And that was gonna be what I remembered every birthday.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: And then my cat that had been missing for two months came home two days before my birthday and I was like, oh my God, this is the best birthday ever, yeah.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: And.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately we had to put my baby down.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: On Monday she came home and she had liver failure and was just miserable and we did everything we could.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: But the vet like their yelp review that I'm leaving them because she is amazing, she was.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: She said so many animals go away to pass, but yours came home to pass with you and that shows you how much she loves you and she knows how much you love her.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: And I was like you probably have to say that to everybody, but that is the best thing I've heard I was thinking that as well.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: I was like she came home to say goodbye.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it gave me closure too, because I was following every lead, I kept increasing the reward and when.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: So it gave me a piece of mind, too, of knowing that she's not out there somewhere.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: But the point of me saying all that is I've had a rough week and I was looking forward to getting into some projects, staying productive and keeping my mind off things, but this has been such a great gift, so thank you for that, miss Anna.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, david, yeah, so the fun question that I have for you is with your books, with your story, with all the things, all the awareness that you're bringing, all the resources you're providing, there's gonna be a movie about you one day.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Who would you see playing you the best?
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: So even though she's generally comedic, I've always thought it'd be really interesting to see Zoe Deschanel, because we look a little bit alike.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: I think that's who I had.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: I think it'd be so interesting to see her take on like a dark, serious role with her quirky charm.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: So there you go, yeah.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: That's funny because that's exactly the name I wrote down.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I was always trying to write down before I asked that question and I hardly ever get the same person, but I can see that and you're right, I think that she would really.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Even though she's comedic, I think that she would really just kill that role, because I'm really goofy too.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: So that's the thing is, I'm still a sparkly goofy human.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of dark days, trust you me, but I'm still that sparkly goofy human.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: So yeah, Zoe Deschanel.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: As soon as your camera, as soon as you popped up on Zoom, I was like oh my gosh, I love her style, I love everything about her already.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Please tell all of us.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: I know that we had mentioned it throughout, but just as a refresh or reminder, tell us where we can find you, follow you, learn about you.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so easiest way.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: My website is onanassetcom or standupresourcescom and all my socials are listed on there.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: My Instagram, Facebook.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: I try to do the Tik Tokies.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not good at it, I'm old.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: You can buy my book on there, so that's where you can find everything.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: I want to extend my deepest gratitude to our incredible guests for sharing their transformative journey with us today.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Join us next week as we dive into the healing process and share more incredible stories.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: That triumph and resilience.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I can never get back.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go on to the end.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: I'm rolling down just to begin again.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: I can't be any longer.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: I'm back.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: I'm making good things in the back.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: Goodbye, now I'm back.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: I'm back and I'll pray for you.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: I'm done, I'm done.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: I'll pray for you.