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Caitlin Avery: Surviving A Life of Cyn · 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 anyway what I thought I could never get back.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Surviving Podcast.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I came across a video with Caitlin Avery.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I messaged her.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: She messaged back immediately.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: We connected and I'm so excited, caitlin, to have you.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: I'm super happy to be here.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: So thank you so much for reaching out, and I look forward to talking to you.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I get so inspired with people who are taking back their narrative and taking back their control and accepting what has happened to them and what they can do to hopefully change it for someone else.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I went through your TikToks.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Like you've worked in movies, you're an author, you've got a brand new.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's brand new at this time, but you recently just got a new kitty.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Like you've got some fun things going on, so give us an introduction on it yourself.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Avery.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I am an author.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I actually just published another book my fourth book two days ago, so that's really exciting.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: I did get a kitten on New Year's Eve, so he is really exciting.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: And, generally speaking, I was an actress for about 15 years in Hollywood and I'm also a personal trainer for about 30 years.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: I've been doing that to support my art, essentially, and I am in the best place of my entire life.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: If I'm frank, I just turned 50 a year ago and I just feel like I have really come into myself, and a big part of that is just that I have completely embraced the concept of authenticity and just being real and not being afraid to share who I am, what my history is.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It's a rocky road for me to have gotten here.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I went through very dark times in my life numerous times and so, like you, I will probably get very lit by this conversation and it's just thrilling to be able to talk openly and honestly about these topics.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Try to help other people get comfortable with their own dark secrets, yeah.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're definitely doing the work.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the best place to start, cause I feel like they're like I was sitting and watching your TikToks and stuff.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Just to refresh my memory, before we logged on I was like okay.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I can go in this direction or this direction.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: So I finally just settled on the fact that we're just going on a rollercoaster ride together today and fast air seatbelt.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: But I think that we're going to laugh and have a good time along the way too.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: So start wherever you feel comfortable with telling us what your niche is with trauma.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: I experienced a trauma of sexual assault when I was 17,.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: The year before I was a senior in high school.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: When I was 17, the year before I was a senior in high school and I did call it what it was to some degree to three people in my life.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: That did not include my parents or any kind of authorities, but I knew at the time that what had happened was seriously wrong and I was innocent in what had happened and, unfortunately, because I didn't go move forward to share it with the cops or anything like that, nothing was ever.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I didn't pursue anything in terms of coming after the criminal or the guy who assaulted me.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: So what happened was throughout the years after high school, I caught wind of a couple of other women in my high school who, I heard through the grapevine, had some sort of seriously bad interaction with this person.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: And I got to know one person who she told me that an assault had happened at her house.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: It did not happen to her, but she was well aware of an assault that happened at a party at her house and for many years we contemplated, even joked around, about what might be done about him all these years later.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: So throughout the years, I went through all these different levels of what I wanted to do about it later, like after I had missed the opportunity to report him to the cops, but in 2015, I actually decided to out him on Facebook, and now this was 25 years after the assault and part of what motivated me to do that there were a couple different things that happened in my life, but I was hearing a little bit about some well-known women outing, being very outward about their discussion of their assault, one of whom was Lena Durnham.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: She was the executive producer and the writer on Girls, the HBO show, and I think I caught wind of her actually on social media talking about her rape from when she was younger, and I thought that she was super courageous because no one did that at that time.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: This was before Me, too, and it made me think that after all these years, I'd been wondering what I could do with him and I had full access to people on social media.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: That was definitely something that was in my realm where I could just say, hey, this happened to me and I'm pretty sure it happened to a couple other people.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: So I just want those people, or people in general, to know that if you were involved in a situation like that, then it was what you think it was and I just want to put it out there.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: So I did make a statement in the form of a paragraph in 2015 on Facebook.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: I was generally speaking to my former high school friends and alumni because I had a very big web of.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: I was really connected still with people from high school again 25 years later.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: So I posted this quick blip on Facebook and I did not use his full name because I was terrified of legal retribution.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what the legality of this was, but I used his initials and I will say that within 24 hours of my post, I heard either directly from other women or people who knew definitely that other women had been assaulted, and I got the name nine different people within 24 hours and again, this was based on just his initials.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: So the reason everyone guessed who it was is because that's the kind of person he was and he not.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Since that time, I've learned that he not only sexually assaulted and raped so many women in my high school, but he also was very abusive to many of the guys, both physically and bullying type of stuff physical abuse, whatever.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: He was just a terrible person.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: So I got you know, found out really quickly about all these assaults by the same guy in my high school and it blew up among alumni.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: What happened was over the course of about a week I heard from all these people.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: One woman raised her hand and said I want to stand with you and speak out against him.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: And she wrote a blog about him and explained exactly what he had done to her when she was 16.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: And aside from that, nobody really wanted me to share their name or speak for them or anything like that.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to, but it made it clear that nobody really wanted their stories to be out there.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: But I was able to come back on and say all right, now I know that there were a total of nine of us, just so you guys know.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: And there was somebody who got in touch with me, who was a lawyer at that time, who I went to high school with, but he basically volunteered to give me free counsel on what I was getting into and what kind of risk I might be in if I was continued with this.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: So the main thing he said was Libell is only really chargeable if you are not telling the truth, if you're making stories up and exaggerating stuff to hurt somebody there, to affect them in some way negatively, then you can get in trouble.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: But because I had so many people who had come forward and said, yeah, that happened to me too, that really wasn't the issue.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: But what the lawyer said was that if you keep going after him and saying these things and bringing it up, at some point he's going to have to do something, he's going to have to respond.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: He may send you a cease and desist letter from a lawyer, but, whatever it is, you're going to draw him into your life by talking about this.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So you have to just be prepared for that.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: And the minute he said that, it like raised the hair on my arms.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: I did not have any interest in having anything to do with this person.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: I knew that it was way too late for him to get in trouble with the law, so there was no hope for me that I was going to get taken to court or anything like that.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: At the time the Cosby thing was still developing and we were watching like 75 women come forward with Cosby and it still wasn't happening that he was getting charged.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: So I was like that's definitely not going to work.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: So what essentially happened was I talked about it a little bit online for a few days and then I shut the conversation down because I was scared.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I was scared of either his retribution through a lawyer or coming after me because I knew that he lived in just the neighboring town from me.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: So I started to get really paranoid and I started driving around with a bat in my car and then I had a panic attack and wound up in the emergency room and those two things were basically assigned to me that I had to stop.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I had said my piece, I had put his name out there and put the shame on him and basically taken the shame off of me, and I was like that's enough, I can't handle any more of this.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I was getting all this input from other women who'd been assaulted and it was like that's enough, I can't handle any more of this.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: I was getting all this input from other women who'd been assaulted and it was like really intense hearing everybody's stories.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: I basically started going into a really negative mental space.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: It was not healthy.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: So that's what I did I shut down the conversation and I thought that's that the woman published the blog.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: A bunch of people over the course of many months after that were in touch with me and saying, oh my God, I heard what happened and this is terrible.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: And he's so awful.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: And the only thing that really happened to him was, because of all the hubbub, he actually was forced to tell his fiance what was happening, what I was doing, and she ended up ending the engagement and leaving him.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: So I was like, yay, save yourself, sister.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: But to my knowledge, that's really the only bad thing that happened.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: And then Me Too started.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, so a year and a half after I made my post, me Too came alive, like all of a sudden exploded and all these women and men and people who had been assaulted across the country were coming forward with stories being so open and vulnerable.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: And on the one hand, I was like super proud and impressed and excited that people were standing up for themselves, but I also was super angry because I felt like it was good and healthy for them to be doing that and for us to be making this conversation happen.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: But I also knew that the criminals were not getting in any trouble.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Even now, that had been a fear about my guy for a long time.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: I figured if he assaulted nine girls in two different grades.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: By the way, we were all younger than him, so who knows how many from his grade?
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Who knows how many?
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: When he went to college, it just seemed like he was another Cosby to me, like he probably has hundreds.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Um, what I decided to do at that point was I'm an author and I'd already published a couple of books, and so I decided that I was going to essentially rewrite my story and write a story about a woman who goes after her rapist 20 years after the fact and manages to do everything that I wish we, like the collective, we could have done to ours.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: And so that's how my last published book, the one that came out last year, came to be.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: It's called Life of Sin, and it's Sin as in Cynthia, because that is the main character's name, as part of my marketing as I prepared to launch that book last year.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: It actually is really cool how it came full circle, because the whole story had died down.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: I was all talking about it, and then, in 2015, and then it fell quiet again, and then just so happened that I was getting ready to publish this book.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: That related to it Excuse me, and that gave me a totally legit reason to start talking about it again and naming him again, and this time around, it became my shtick to keep pushing the boundaries more and more, saying his name more often in different locations online, whatever, and I wasn't getting in trouble.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: It turns out I never got even a talking to.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Instead, I had a huge rally cry behind me where people were like this is so awesome.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: A huge rally cry behind me where people were like this is so awesome People that I went to high school with, and strangers around the world.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: So I started getting hearing in my socials and when I did podcasts and various interviews for literally from men and women around the world who were just like, oh my goodness.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: In one case, I heard from somebody who said that they had never made the connection to the fact that they had struggled with alcohol for all these years to the fact that they were assaulted when they were in their twenties.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Now, part of my story is that I'm also sober, and sobriety is another aspect of my healing process.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: That got me to a point where I could be this honest about what happened to me.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: You made the decision to put it all out there and you're doing it and you don't fear or hide from it, and there's power in that.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Like every video of yours I watch, I'm like she is every woman.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: But what is also so scary is nine people came forward forward and then so 10, including you at least came forward to you that said something.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that was all of them.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, and I've learned about more since.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: So that was in 2015.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I've been talking about this now for a year and I'll hear now from.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I've heard from two women in his grade, finally, who hadn't heard the story before, like they hadn't heard me in 2015.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: This spread even more this time around.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: It's crazy.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: In the last year or so, I've learned of more people, and that's also when I learned about guys contacting me and saying obviously your situation is worse than this, but I did get punched by him in school or whatever.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: He was just a total loser and what I had started to say is that the cool thing is that, even though my actions have not directly affected him literally, but back when I outed him in 2015, he was a really successful commercial real estate guy.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: He lived in a $2 million home in a town relatively close to mine a $2 million home in a town relatively close to mine and since then I don't know exactly the series of events, but he has been diagnosed with apparently a pretty serious mental illness, although I'm not sure what it is and in the process, he's also had numerous run-ins with the law.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: He got arrested last year for trying to steal a boat.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I think he's really lost his head and he's getting in routine like regular trouble with the law now.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: So I think he's literally spiraling out, like spiraling out and I didn't have a big hand in that, but I don't know if it's just like the guilt or like you live as a criminal for as long as he has getting away with stuff.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's finally karma, who knows?
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: You had mentioned you were sober.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: And yeah, you had.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I believe, or at least what I was taking from what you were saying, is that other people had reached out about connecting maybe their drinking or whatever abuse substance abuse they were using to numb a sting and realizing that it was connected to trauma for me was that I was in high school and I got assaulted.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: And in the year after the assault, while I was still in high school, I had previous to the assault.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: I was like partying like most jocks.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I was a jock and on the weekends or whatever, after my assault I just was in so much pain and rattled by what had happened that I was really needing to numb out.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: And just it happened in the form of major drinking all the time, multiple times a week, blackout drinking.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: So the bottom line is I actually had to quit drinking.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: I went to an outpatient rehab center before I went to college.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: I set foot on my college campus completely alcohol free, which is crazy.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: But and from that moment forward I really needed to face my demons, because once you take out the numbing agent, it's all feelings all the time and there were several things I did.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Obviously, a 12-step program offers all kinds of solutions for stuff that goes beyond just drinking.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: But I sought out therapy and I've always been a writer and I wrote a lot of poetry to get it off my chest, whatever.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: But it was not like a.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: I was sober through college but then I did go back out again thinking that maybe it was just a maturity issue or whatever.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I've had ups and downs throughout my life and there were definitely some very dark times that I've gone through.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: It's cyclical, but I definitely think that the cycle may have been stopped by the fact that I did get rid of that, for is a deadly addiction essentially, and when I got rid of it, I've just the basically is I have to do the work to stay healthy or else, if I'm going to bother to do the hard work to stay sober.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: I want to do everything that I can to live a good life and feel good and stuff.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: So I don't know, it just begets more like wellness essentially.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: I would love for you to touch on it, because so many people reach out to me and they say, david, we see your TikToks and you're laughing, and how they almost feel guilty when they're addressing theirs and they're not crying.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: And my response, my silly response, that is, I'm tired of crying.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I've done that for years and I choose to laugh, but it's my way of getting back that control.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I used to say so many things were robbed from me.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: My humor was robbed, my belief system, my trust, my home parts of my body was robbed, and I realized that that was the wrong word.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: They were, they were put on hold.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I still have them, and so I would love for you to touch on that a little bit, because I, when I watch your videos, you're talking about these devastating things that some lead some people down a very unhealthy path, and you, there's a light with you, and so I would love for you to touch on that, if you would.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think some of the light has been that just by trying to talk about it.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: From day one, as I said, I actually talked.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: I basically told my best friend, I told my boyfriend and I told somebody that I worked with the day after the assault and every time I've ever spoken about it even though it might be hard to get to the point where I talk about it but after I've spoken about it there's always a weight lifted off my shoulders, because so often what happens is you find out that the person you're talking to it happened to them or they their best friend or whatever.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: It's a very common problem in our society and in the entire world society.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Right, it happens to a lot of people.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: There's definitely it's refreshing to find community when you talk about stuff like that, but the bottom line is the fact that I feel free now to speak openly and in great detail sometimes about the situation that happened with me and about the person who did it.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: It really feels like I am empowered and I'm taking his power away.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: I literally took the shame off my own shoulders and put it on him and I've made him to look like the demon that he is at this point and I no longer feel guilty.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: The one thing I held guilt on about was that I did have a sense that I was one of the first, one of the early people it happened to, and if I had gone at the age of 17 to the police then maybe he would not have managed to do it to others.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: And that was a hard pill to swallow to understand that it was not my fault what happened to me.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: But did I play a role in any of the other ones by not being strong enough at that time?
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Now I do not have guilt about that anymore.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: I was very young and in that era it was like we never saw any examples of women succeeding when they took a criminal to court like that.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: So there was just no hope for me to win in a court setting and I didn't want to be humiliated like they typically do to women on the stand, or I should say victims.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: I had to get over that.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: But by coming out and basically sharing with the world what he had done, I was able to take away some of the pain of the other victims, because when they heard my story some of them really did realize for the first time it really was what I thought it was, because it can get a little bit muddled, especially in party settings and stuff like that.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: So for me it wasn't muddled just because it was more like aggravated assault.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: It was not a date rape.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: I had never spoken to the guy before he assaulted me and I did in certain ways try to fight him off, both verbally and physically.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: So to me it was really clear that it was just absolutely him taking advantage, attacking me essentially.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: But I don't know.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: The whole thing about it is if all it is talking, which is free, right.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: If I just talk about this repeatedly and I start to feel better, I feel like that's something that most people have access to.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: I suppose there are certain circumstances where people have a hard time communicating, but for most people that is a free and solution that you can do in your own home with people who you feel comfortable with.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: It's not complicated and we make it so complicated by thinking that it's a shaming thing to be assaulted.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to put it out there that it's absolutely not shameful for the victim.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: It's no more shameful for the victim than if I got mugged in my hometown and then I found out over the course of some time that 10 other people were mugged by that same person.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: I would definitely be open about sharing the story, warning people about that person if they still lived nearby and no, I would not feel shame, I'd be like I was completely.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: A crime was committed against me, obviously.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: It's no different.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I'm glad that you got over the guilt that you were speaking about a few moments ago, because that is so common and victim blaming is a real thing.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought that about myself For years.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: I knew exactly what shorts I was wearing and they were short shorts, they were short cutoffs.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: The thing that I also tell women and other victims I'm sorry, I will try to stop saying women, because it encapsulates all kinds of different people the thing about it is that I could be walking down the street drunk and buck naked in the middle of a town and if, as long as I don't cross paths with a rapist, I will be okay.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: In fact, several people will probably try to help me out and get me where I need to go so I don't get attacked by somebody.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying?
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: The majority of people out there are good people.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: It's if you cross paths with somebody who has a tendency towards rape that you have to worry.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: People who have worn culottes, people who have worn seven layers of dresses back in olden times, got raped.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: It has nothing to do with what you're wearing.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: It's a power trip.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: It's basically it's like violence with a weapon.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: In some ways it has nothing to do even I don't think with sexual.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: It's not even sexual half the time.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: It's just trying to exert power over someone.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: And I don't care if you are married to somebody for five minutes, five years, 500 years, if you consent and you all are having sex and with consent, but then a few minutes into it you change your mind.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I don't care if you're married and you tell them to stop and they don't.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Minute that something is not consensual and it doesn't have to be from.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: You can change your mind in the middle.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: You can change your mind at any point and say I'm done with this.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And gosh, I get so heated with this.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Would you care to tell us a little bit about what your form of attack was?
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: So I was at a party in a neighboring town to where I was living in New England and I was there relatively early.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: It was like a summertime party, but it was definitely sunny.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: When I got to the party, say three o'clock or something like that, and I remember having one drink and then I was in the middle of having a second drink.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: And the reason I share this is because I don't know if I was roofied, but there's all kinds of signs that point to that, and I only started putting that together many years later, as I got older and heard about roofies and stuff.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, because it never made sense to me why I actually was completely unconscious after only one and a half drinks.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Now I was young, but it was only one and a half drinks.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: So anyway, bottom line is, the last thing I remembered was having the second drink and talking to someone.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: And then the next thing I know who knows how much time had passed, it was dark and I was on the ground and I woke up literally out of being completely blacked out to having sex with somebody and I was only awake for an instant and then I was out again and the next time I woke up I was in a tree by myself in this backyard and I was like my shorts were in my hand, I was in my underwear and I was like hiding in a tree.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: But I don't know how I got there because I came out of a complete blackout and an unconscious blackout.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Bottom line is I went back in the house and I was discombobulated and extremely upset and somebody saw me and thought I was wasted and I don't know what I was at that time.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: I think I may have actually been coming to from being roofied, but anyway, somebody basically shuffled me upstairs.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: I was at that point, I was in clothes and they shuffled me upstairs and said go, sleep it off.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: They assumed I was drunk.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: So I went upstairs and I was walking up the stairs.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: I do have a distinct memory of a bunch of guys at the top of the stairwell jeering at me and elbowing almost like a check her out, and again this was like in retrospect.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: I thought about their actions.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: So I went up the stairs and I went into an empty room and I closed the door and lay down on the bed to pass out again or rest, and one of the guys came in after me and had his way with me, so it was a different guy had his way with me, so it was a different guy.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: So it was two guys in the same evening, but I don't have any idea how long, how far apart it happened, how many hours were in between the two incidents, because the first one I have almost no recollection of, except for that one tiny moment when I woke up and realized what was happening to me.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: So what happened was the next day or the next day.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: I basically told people what I remembered, which was the guy who I fought off, the guy who came in the bedroom.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: I actually tried to fight him off and I told him no and all that stuff, and I repeated that information to people, but I did not reiterate any of the other guy because I didn't have any memory of it.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: It started to come to me as the days, like the days following, I started to remember that there was a first guy, and then I don't remember the order of this who called me first, but I think it was the first guy who I was completely unconscious with.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: He called me and he asked me out and then he apologized in tears for what had happened and he basically said that he really did like me and he was really interested in me and he wanted to see if I would go out with him.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: But he was very much upset.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: I think he was.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: I think he sounded like he was buzzed to me, but he was being emotive and basically owning up to the fact that what happened was not cool.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: And again, I still didn't know exactly what happened, but I knew that I had sexual intercourse with him, and not by choice.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: So therein lies the difference.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: So that is the main reason that I over the years, did not go after him, because he apologized and, I'll be honest, it made a big difference.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Now the other guy also called me that week to ask me out and when he called he had this total arrogance, ownership almost of me.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: He'd already staked his claim and let's continue this thing or whatever, and I was horrified and basically hung up the phone on him or something.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Again, this is 30 years ago.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: It's a little hard to remember the details, but it was in the few years after that that I heard about two other people, two other girls from my high school and that second guy.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: So he's the one I started hearing multiples about.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Now here's the thing about the first guy.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: I have left messages to him on two different occasions throughout the years and I said I don't know if you've heard, but I have been basically telling people that so-and-so raped me at that party.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: I have never heard of any other offenses by you, but I will say that if I ever hear about any other people that were attacked by you, I'm going to out you too.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: And I told him that I haven't and I'm going to.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to keep that to myself for now because I'm just putting it out there.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Apologies matter to a question with.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Something that I personally have been battling with here recently myself is the word forgiveness and what that means to me.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: I think the greatest, so this is really interesting.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: So when I was writing my book Life of Sin, basically for the character arc, I needed her to actually get better.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: She gets really bad and out of control and vengeful and she's going after the guy and I needed, as a character, for her to improve by the end of the story, right To go through a journey and actually be transformed by it.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: So I started to investigate what forgiveness meant.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Should I have her forgive him?
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: And the thing that resonated with me the best and I completely embraced was forgiveness means letting go of anger and therefore it's really just about your own healing.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: And I don't know if there was literally a point where I said, okay, I no longer am mad about this or it just happened, but I did start to recognize the fact that, with all this talk and all this empowering of myself and feeling like I took the power back and made him the weakling, made him the vulnerable one, at some point I realized I'm not only not angry at him, but I actually don't wish him ill will.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Now do I think I'm entertained by the fact that he has brought ill will to himself in recent years, but I do not.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: For instance, last year I was told by somebody that he was going through a time where he was, people were afraid he was going to commit suicide, and when I found that out it was before the holidays.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: I was heavily promoting my book it was about to release.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Right after Christmas and I said, okay, I'm going to take a break.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Then I'm going to stop going after him, and it's partially because I didn't want to be blamed for him killing himself if that happened.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: But it was also that, oh no, I want him to stick around.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Please get through this bad time so that you can stick around and you can hear me talk more and more, because he never knows now when I'm going to do this again.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: He doesn't know when I'm going to stop and he doesn't know when I'm going to start, and so therefore, it is a life sentence.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: It's the only life sentence he's going to get for my crime, but I think that's good enough, and so I'm actually almost entertained.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: You were talking about how you can laugh about it.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: I am almost entertained now about the full circle situation that has happened for me, because I don't have any emotional response at all when I talk about these things I'm actually sometimes a little bit more concerned with, like how to say something so I don't trigger others, like where I'm being thoughtful about how I put it out there because I don't want to upset people that might remind them of what happened to them in some way.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: But I do not get riled up when this conversation is over and I close my computer.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: It's going to be left right here.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to walk around the house with it.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: I'm not angry.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: I have no anger about it.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: The only thing that.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: What scares me with my attacker is he is not a registered sex offender and I don't know that he has even done this before.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know that.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: But either way, it only takes that one time.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: He's not a registered sex offender.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: It was swept under the rug because it was a gay thing and no one cares, especially then.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Swept under the rug because it was a gay thing and no one cares, especially then.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: But what scares me the most is it happened at a time where you can Google anybody's name and find all kinds of information.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: He has three kids If one of them is gay and or thinking that maybe they are or have curiosities or think that they're just different in some kind of way, and we all Google our parents and hate crime pops up and the thought of one of his children thinking my dad will never accept me, my dad would want me dead, just like he wanted this other person dead, and that's going to cause them to hide who they are.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: That can lead them to bad decisions and substance abuse and that terrifies me.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: The devil, you know is better than devil.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: You don't know.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: If their dad is a devil and they find out ahead of time instead of finding out directly from him, I don't know, that's not a terrible thing.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: You were, I don't know, not the sacrificial lamb, but they you could.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Possibly your situation could possibly prevent them from being attacked by their dad.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: If they know ahead of time, then they know they better watch their back around him, which is definitely a good thing.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: The guy that I outed had a teenage daughter in the house when I outed him and I thought, man, I got to tell people in Wellesley about this because there could be people sending their girls over to have sleepovers at his house.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I haven't thought of it that way, so thank you.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: The last question I have for you to start wrapping this up and maybe bringing it to an end, although I feel like I can sit and talk to you forever is you have children.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: I have one son, one son.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: How does this affect your parenting?
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: How did you take this and use it in a way to teach lessons?
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: We have been talking to him about the issue of consent since he was probably like kindergarten, first grade.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: We started with really basics, like talking about how if you keep your hands to yourself, you don't have the right to touch other people.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: And there was one really poignant moment that I had with him and a bunch of boys when he was in fifth grade.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: We were taking them a carload of boys to some birthday party.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: It was his birthday party and so I think we had five boys in the car and they were getting.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: It was getting close to fifth grade graduation, so they were talking about before they left that school.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: They were egging my son on that he should actually kiss the girl that he had a crush on.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: But it started to get to this sort of vibe in the car they were.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: It was like you combined, Like you should do it, Chase her down, grab her.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: You should totally do it before the end of school, Grab her on the playground or something like that.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: And I said well, nobody is grabbing anybody.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: If you guys want to try to kiss a girl on the playground, that is completely okay.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: You just have to ask first and make sure that she's into it, and if she's into it, then you can do it.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: I don't have anything.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: I don't have a problem with that.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: That's normal for your age group.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: I said, and all it takes to ask a girl is to say can I kiss you or can I take you out, Can I hold your hand?
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: But if you're not brave enough or old enough or ready to say those words, you are definitely not old enough to do the kissing.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: So check in, make sure that you know how to talk to the girl first and ask permission.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: And if you get permission, then all the power to you, have fun.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: And that's what I told.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: I told the whole carload because it was this total.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Suddenly it felt like this, I don't know, it was like animalistic and I'm like whoa, no, this is not how we do things.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: I think that things are going to get better with more and more women's lib, because when the sexual revolution came about in the 70s, suddenly it was okay for women to admit that they like sex, that women like sex.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: They want sex.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Right, it's not just the men, but in the history of time, women always had to play the coy role, Like they were like oh no, I don't, I'm not into that, not until we get married.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: That's not even necessarily what they were thinking, but that's what they had to say, and so, as a rule, the men always had to be the aggressor.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: They always had to be the ones who asked or pursued the woman pursue.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: That's a negative connotation unto itself, and so I think that if we really start to put the vibe out there that kids need to learn how to ask these questions and talk to one another literally with words, it first of all will make early sex so much better, because the awkwardness is really.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: The reason for it is because no one says anything.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Nobody knows what the other person wants or what's happening in those early stages, right?
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: So I think that sex in general will get better for everyone involved if we can say this is what I like, this is what I don't like, this is what I'm good at, whatever.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Just be frank about it.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: And there's no way, there is no way in the history of human beings that we are going to stop having sex because it gets scary, because suddenly somebody has to ask permission.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Hell, no, we'll figure it out.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Everybody wants to try to get from A to Z, right?
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: So if we just use language and get there, I think it's going to be more fulfilling experience, wise, and then we won't have to worry so much about crossing some line.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: I know that sometimes things can get a little bit hard to read, and so if guys learn and girls learn to talk openly, it'll be much safer for the guys to to not cross the line that they didn't intend to cross.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: I had to take the position a couple times where I literally had to divulge the fact that I was an assault victim.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: That's not sexy, that's not great foreplay.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: No-transcript.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: We're I think we're both pretty obviously comfortable with the scenario, the conversation, if imagine what would happen if people around the world could be this comfortable talking about their assaults.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: I think it would really cut down on people who assault others thinking that they could do it easily and get away with it.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: We're going to be part of the change and it's one thing that I always tell people that has helped me.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Heal is talking about it, because that is making it not so in vain anymore.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: But it's.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: It's really just not a complicated thing to do.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: If you can get past the fear of opening your mouth, it's available to most people is what I should say.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I tell people all the time that you know, I didn't have a choice.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: My attack was public.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: It was on the news and coverage before I even knew what happened to me.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: But I also wonder if that didn't happen, how long would it have taken me to speak out?
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: If that didn't happen, how long would it have taken me to speak out?
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: I would like to think that I would immediately open up about it, but I can't guarantee that.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: So I ask myself that question all the time.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: And so for me it was a blessing that it was so public, because I didn't have the choice to have secrets, and that ended up being what healed me, didn't?
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: have the choice to have secrets, and that ended up being what healed me.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do tend to look at the fact that it's a blessing now for me that my life blew up in several different directions when I was so young, between the assaults and then also the alcoholism and having to get sober and all that stuff.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: I went through so many struggles in my first 35 years that I am really smooth sailing at this point.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: And it's crazy because this is really I'm at the age now where a lot of people who are middle-aged are really hitting the skids in terms of facing the things that have been gnawing at them for years and they are having to face it now.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: I did that a long time ago.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: I'm like it's, I'm well-practiced at trying to fix shit and look at myself and see what part of the street, my side of the street, I need to work on.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Right, I can't be good.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: I can't do anything to my assailant really, aside from talk about him, but I can do all kinds of things to make myself better mentally, emotionally, physically, whatever.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: So I try to focus on that and I feel blessed because I don't know like I feel.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: I definitely feel like a survivor and a thriver.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: I'm not just surviving, and so by knowing that I have a hundred percent survived what I've gone through in life, it gives me a pretty good sense that I'll be able to get through other stuff too.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Caitlin, my goodness, I I've enjoyed following you.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited to continue to follow you.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Happy anniversary.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I know it was what 1227, I think was the anniversary of your book.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Life of Sin was released, yeah, a year ago, on December 27th, and then my latest book just released two days ago.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that was going to be the next thing I congratulated you on.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: I just I'm a fan and I love what you do and I can't wait to continue to follow you.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: So, if you don't mind, will you tell everybody any information that you want to share and of course I'll post all the links as well.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: But whatever you want to share about where we can find you and follow, and all those great things.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely I'd love to.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: So I am always on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram as Caitlin Avery author and I also have a website by that same name, CaitlinAverycom, and basically my books are all available on Amazon.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: I have four.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: The memoir that I wrote when I was in my late 20s actually details my assault.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: It does bring that situation up and talk.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: I talked a little bit about it during our conversation but it basically discusses it in full detail.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: That book is called Lightning in my Wires, and then I have an adventure fiction series.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: The first book is called the Last Cruise and then its sequel just released.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: That's called the Last Con.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: And then Life of Sin is really the book of my heart.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: That is the book that is a Me Too story and it has actually taken off more than my wildest dreams could have imagined.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: People really got behind it and I think at this stage, that is the one that I am the most proud of.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, if you have any interest in the subject matter, it's Life of Sin and it's C-Y-N because it stands for Cynthia.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, my name's Caitlin Avery and it's been really great talking to you and what a lovely conversation.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, same, and I'm ordering the book tonight.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited about it so I will have to keep you posted on when I get it and read it.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: So I will have to keep you posted on when I get it and read it.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: I will definitely be keeping my eyes out for your podcast and my ears out for your podcast, really, and your TikToks and whatnot, so yeah, it's great meeting you.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: I want to extend my deepest gratitude to our incredible guests for sharing their transformative journey with us today.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Join us next week as we dive into the healing process and share more incredible stories of triumph and resilience.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Bye.