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Truth-Telling, Healing and Resilience with Kristin Louise Duncombe · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Thepor's podcast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: My name is Gimickerson and I interview incredible people who
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: share the story of how trauma has shaped their lives.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: to my guest.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: And our sponsors.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: So five four, three, two and one, Our folks, welcome
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: back to the podcast. Very excited to talk to my
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: guest today, Kristen Luise Uncombe.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Kristen, Welcome, Thank you so much, thanks for having me so.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Kristen is an American therapist, a couple's counselor, life coach,
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: and author who's been living and working in Europe since
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: two thousand and one. With a global perspective. Shape by
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: growing up across Africa and Asia as a child of
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: US diplomat, Kristen spent her career supporting international makes, patriot
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: individuals and families. Her latest book, Object, a Memoir, is
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: a powerful and courageous account of the US State Department's
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: protection of a serial pedophile and the deep lasting impact
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: on as many preteen victims described as devastating and enthralling.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: A bombshell of a book, Object is a testament to
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  Speaker 2: truth telling, healing, and brasilience.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Down. Thank you so much, and honestly, you want to know,
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: it's so funny. Guys.
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: Sometimes when I hear someone else describe what my book
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: is about, I still have that feeling of, oh my god,
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: I can't believe that that is what happened in my life.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: To be part of a US government cover up. But
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  Speaker 3: I was, and I am.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: All right, we're going to get into that. Yes, we
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: do share with the listeners. We're from originally where.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: You are currently?
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  Speaker 4: Okay, So I am originally from Washington, d C. For
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: anyone who knows the DC area, I was born in
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  Speaker 4: Sibley Hospital in nineteen sixty nine. But like many people
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: in the DC area, my dad was a foreign service officer.
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: So even though I did live in the Washington DC
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: area for a few years as a child, I spent
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: most of my life moving around the world as part
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: of a foreign service family, and that kind of set
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: the stage for me to continue living internationally as an adult.
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: And I am speaking to you from Paris, France, where
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: I live permanently.
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  Speaker 2: Now, all right, so we're gonna be talking about the
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: book Optic Memoir.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: How does all this start? How did all this start?
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  Speaker 3: Okay. So the starting point.
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  Speaker 4: Of the story that would become the book object is
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: that when I was ten years old, my father was
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: posted to the USMB embassy in the Ivory Coast.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: At the time.
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  Speaker 4: Since then, there's been some revolutions and a lot of upheaval.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: The country's back in peaceful.
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: Times now, but at the time that my family moved
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  Speaker 4: there in nineteen seventy nine, it was a very quiet, peaceful,
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: kind of sleepy, small West African country. And shortly after
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: we arrived there, one of the senior diplomats at the
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: US embassy. He was one of the senior USAID people.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: A lot of people have heard of USAID in recent
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: history because of what's happening in the Trump administration with
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: dismantling USAID. I think a lot of people didn't know
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: that USAID is part of the State Department. So at
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: the embassy, it was USAID people and State Department people,
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: and one of the senior USAID diplomats who was also
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: the father of my best friend. In my fifth grade
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: class at the little international school we went to, he
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  Speaker 4: started sexually molesting me. I was ten years old, totally
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  Speaker 4: pre pubescent, and I absorbed this man's.
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  Speaker 3: Constant assaults on me.
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  Speaker 4: Now I say assault because it is assault, but that's
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  Speaker 4: part of what the problem is is that this was
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: the quintessential pedophile, always buying ice cream and presents and treats,
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: and he was fun and he played with all the
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: kids in the pool and everyone loved him. He played
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: Santa Claus at the US Ambassador's Christmas party every year.
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  Speaker 4: And so when he started doing the things that he
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  Speaker 4: did to me over the course of two years, for
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: me as a ten year old, eleven year old, and
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: then twelve year old kid, it was extremely confusing because
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: I knew it was weird, I knew it was wrong,
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  Speaker 4: but I also knew that everyone held him his name
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  Speaker 4: was mister Mulkay. He held him in super high regard,
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  Speaker 4: and as happens to so many children that are sexually abused,
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  Speaker 4: I just internalized it and thought that it was my fault.
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  Speaker 4: I thought that it was something about me that made
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  Speaker 4: him do that to me and just jumping me. Of course,
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  Speaker 4: there's so many things to say, but I want to
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  Speaker 4: tell you about the dual trauma here, because of course,
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  Speaker 4: for those couple of years, I was absorbing what he
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: was doing to me. But then when he did it
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: to someone else who dared tell on him. See, because
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: I never dared tell anyone. A new family arrived at post.
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  Speaker 4: He molested the daughter. She was eleven years old. She
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  Speaker 4: called her dad, and within three days the State Department
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  Speaker 4: whisked mister mulkay He back to Washington. But once he
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: was back in Washington, the powers that be at the
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  Speaker 4: State Department told the families back in the Ivory Coast,
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  Speaker 4: because as it turns out, there was seven of us
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  Speaker 4: girls that were victims. They told us that they need
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: that our parents needed to stop talking about it, that
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  Speaker 4: mister mulkay He's civil liberties needed to be protected, that
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  Speaker 4: he had diplomatic immunity, and at the time at least
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: that there was no federal law against pedophilia, so there
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: wasn't even.
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  Speaker 3: A crime to charge him with.
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  Speaker 4: He did not lose his job, He did not get prosecuted.
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  Speaker 3: Ten years after.
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  Speaker 4: That fact, when I so, you know, many other things
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  Speaker 4: happened in a life, in my life, but when I
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: was twenty two years old, it's when I really started
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: manifesting the fallout from that trauma, and I ended up
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: in therapy. I was living in Seattle, Washington at that time,
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  Speaker 4: I had just graduated from college and I ended up
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: seeing a therapist at the Sexual Assault Center, which is
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: part of Harbor View Medical Center for anyone that's in
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: the Seattle area, and she really encouraged me to get
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: the state department to pay for my therapy bills. So
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: I contacted them and it took like two sentences of conversation.
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  Speaker 4: I'm exaggerating a little bit, but just like that, they
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  Speaker 4: had me fill out what they called a torte claim
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  Speaker 4: and then they cut me a check for twenty thousand
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  Speaker 4: dollars to pay for therapy and to never bug them
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  Speaker 4: about this matter again. And at the time, you know,
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: this was the early nineties, I was twenty two twenty
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: thousand dollars.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Wow, I thought I was rich.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: I thought I even went through this thing, and I
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: talked about it a lot in therapy, feeling like I
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: didn't deserve that money, because I mean, I didn't do
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: anything to earn it. I mean, the whole thing was
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: just so crazy. But fast forward.
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  Speaker 3: Another ten years.
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  Speaker 4: By then, I'm married, I have my first child, she's
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: three years old. At the time, I'm living in Paris, France,
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: and I get an email from someone that I have
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: not spoken to four years. A childhood friend named Francesca,
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: who was also one of the victims at the hands
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: of mister mulcahey. And she writes to me and says,
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: is this the same Kristin Duncombe that lived in the
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: Ivory Coast from seventy nine to eighty three. Yes, And
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  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh my god, it's so great to hear
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: from you.
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  Speaker 3: How are you?
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  Speaker 4: Blah blah blah, And she said, there's obviously so much
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: to catch up about. And I'm sorry I'm not more
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: conversational right now. But the reason I'm writing to you
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: is the following. Please click this link. So I click
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: the link. It's an article in the Boston Herald that
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: says x US Foreign Service officer turned Eucharist minister arrested
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: on Cape cod for raping an eight year old girl.
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: And so once again, so it's like, in these ten
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: year increments, this story just keeps appearing. And so finally
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: mister mail kay Heat was stopped and arrested. And when
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: that happened, people started coming.
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  Speaker 3: Out of the woodwork.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, obviously, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to
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  Speaker 4: know that he didn't just stop molesting and raping people.
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  Speaker 4: When he was removed from the coast, he continued doing
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  Speaker 4: that for all those years, and he did go to jail.
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  Speaker 4: He went to jail for five years. He only got
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  Speaker 4: five years for all of those kids that he raped
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  Speaker 4: and molested.
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  Speaker 3: He was only given a five year.
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  Speaker 4: Sentence, and then he was released and he died shortly thereafter.
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  Speaker 4: So he's actually no longer alive and with us. So
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  Speaker 4: that's the gist of the story. I realize I'm going
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  Speaker 4: on and on, But there's something else I'd like to
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  Speaker 4: add that I think is really a critical piece of.
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  Speaker 3: The trauma story that I'm sure you'll find interesting. You know,
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  Speaker 3: me and I.
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  Speaker 4: Do want to talk about how all of that affected
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  Speaker 4: my life, because many things happened to me in my
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  Speaker 4: life that are a direct.
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  Speaker 3: Sequel of that abuse and the cover up.
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  Speaker 4: But once he was arrested and jailed, I didn't experience
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  Speaker 4: that as some great, big moment of liberation. I continue
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  Speaker 4: to just kind of feel like silenced, like that I
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  Speaker 4: wasn't like it still didn't feel okay to talk about it.
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  Speaker 4: Then a series of things happened which ultimately led to
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: me writing this book. And so the thing I wanted
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  Speaker 4: to tell you is that when I sat down and
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: started writing the book, I said to my father, who
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: has since died. Unfortunately, my father died four years ago
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  Speaker 4: in August, so it was five years ago in August
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  Speaker 4: when I started writing the book. And when I said
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: to him, Dad, I have decided I am going to
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: tell the story of mister Mulkay he and the State
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: Department cover up.
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  Speaker 3: And you want to know what he said.
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  Speaker 4: He goes, you can't use mister mulkay He's name. You
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: have to change his name. And I said, Dad, why,
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  Speaker 4: I said.
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  Speaker 3: First of all, it's all public record now and he's dead.
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  Speaker 4: And so that I'm telling you that because that shows
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  Speaker 4: you the incredible power of a cover up and a silencing.
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  Speaker 3: Because there was my dad. He was eighty three years
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  Speaker 3: old at that time.
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  Speaker 4: And you know the State Department, if you work for
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: the State Department, it's like a paternalistic organization. So the
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: parents of us child victims, it's like they were silenced
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  Speaker 4: by their father State Department. And it shocked me to
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  Speaker 4: discover that even all these years later, and even with
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: everything that had happened, you know, he had been arrested,
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: it was named publicly, and he was even dead, that
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  Speaker 4: my father was still holding on to this idea that
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: we weren't allowed to talk about it. I thought that
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: was a remarkable thing.
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  Speaker 3: So that's the story.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for sharing. It's it's chilling, actually.
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  Speaker 2: Yes it is. And you know a lot of people
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  Speaker 2: listening to this are therapists themselves in the mental health
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: field and are probably familiar of.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: With a you know, it's one thing to read.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: About this stuff, you know, when you're in this field,
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  Speaker 2: it's one thing to be oh, how does trauma impact?
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  Speaker 2: But you know, to listen to you share this, I
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  Speaker 2: can't I just can't imagine going through this and taking
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: that in, not being able to tell anymore, and the
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: power that everything's silenced.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: You mentioned how this impacted you. I'm curious, how the
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  Speaker 1: hell did you get through this?
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Did it?
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: How did it impact you?
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Well? You know what's really interesting.
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  Speaker 4: I mean I think that's as it's it's a totally
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: understandable question, like, oh my god, how could you have
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: gotten through that?
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: And this is part of what the problem is.
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  Speaker 4: And I think this really is a great segue into
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: a discussion of complex trauma.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: Because I got through through that.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: I'll start with the frequent and ongoing molestations, like when
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: I filled out the torte claim, you know, when I
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: was twenty two, they had me quantify how many times
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: I had been molested in how many different ways I
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: had been molested. It was hundreds and hundreds of times
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: of different acts. Because this man had regular access to me,
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: and there was more invasive molest stations, like when I
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: found myself alone with him, But then there was more
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: sort of casual in public malestations like when our family
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: would go out for dinner together. We used to go
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: to this Chinese restaurant often on Sunday nights, called The Dragon.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: And he would be feeling me up under the table.
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  Speaker 4: So this was so frequent and ongoing that the way
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: I dealt with it was to simply.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Make it normal for me. It was a normal part
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: of my weekly existence. I wasn't scared of him because
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: he was kind to me, so it was very confusing.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: I didn't want.
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  Speaker 4: That type of relationship, but I never felt like, oh,
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: you know, he's going to stab me with a knife
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: and kill me. It was it was something very very insidious,
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: and that is the problem that I learned at that
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: very formative age.
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  Speaker 3: To accept things.
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: That are wrong and that I know are wrong, and
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: to totally suppress my own instinct and capacity to say
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: no or to question. I learned to just accept. And
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: so what I can tell you happened to me in
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: those years when the abuse was ongoing is is like
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: I kind of lived with a split, you know. I
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: mostly was just going about my life, being a goofy,
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: rambunctious ten eleven and twelve year old girl. I was
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: having a happy, fun life. I played soccer, and I
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: with my pedophile's daughter Rose, she was my best friend.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: Oh my god.
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: We used to dress up like Pat Benatar and play
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: you know, air guitar with the tennis rackets, and we
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: did swimming less. I mean, we did so much stuff.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: It was a normal childhood except for that thing that
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: was happening. And when that thing would happen, I would.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Freeze, you know, the fight flight, freeze fawn.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: I was a freezer and a fauner because I was
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: so afraid that I would be found out that I
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: wanted to just always play.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: The role of the one that nothing's wrong.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: And so in terms of the trauma that befell me,
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: I can tell you that in a way, and I
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: write about this in the book. When this other kid
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: told on him and it came out that actually, mister
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: Mulkay he was this rampant pedophile. My parents fell apart,
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: All the adults in the community fell apart, and that was.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: An acute trauma.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: It was traumatic at an acute level to have all
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: the adults screaming and crying, and my father used the
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: word rape and I had never thought in those terms,
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: and it was just so awful.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: And then just as quickly to have it wiped away.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: And you know, I was from the type of family
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: and this was also a different era, but it was like, you.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: People must sweep this under the rug.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: And my parents said, okay, So we swept it under
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: the rug, and just as quickly as it blew up,
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: it was over. Then my family, as foreign service families do,
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: we left the Ivory Coast and moved to Egypt and
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: lived in Egypt for two years. That was when I
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: was fourteen and fifteen. And by the time those first
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: two years in Egypt were done, I had bulimia. It's
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: not because it was Egypt. I'm just talking about my transition.
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: I had blimia. I had become a chain smoke or
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: you know, some teenager smoke like a cigarette here and
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: there to look cool.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: I had a serious.
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: Nicotine habit when I was a young teenager. I'd smoked
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: two packs a day. It was like a compulsive.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: Smoker binge drinking. But the worst thing.
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: Is the boundarylessness with guys I had, you know, as
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: so many girls do. I had guys coming after me,
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: and I had no capacity to say no. It was
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: really one of those things like if you like me,
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: then I like you. Like you choose me, and therefore
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: I have to accommodate the fact that you have chosen me.
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: So even though I don't think you're cute, even though
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: I don't think you're nice or interesting, even though I
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: don't want to go out with you, you.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Chose me, so I have to do it.
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: And so that's the piece that regresses back to what
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: I was telling you, you know, when I was getting
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: molested on an ongoing basis.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: It's like just accepting.
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: And just the last thing I would then add is
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: from Cairo, my family moved to New Delhi, so another move,
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: and that's where I did my last two years of
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: high school. And then from New Delhi, we moved to Indonesia,
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: So all this time I'm not having a permanent or
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: stable home base either, which you know, lots of international kids,
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: you learn to be very adaptive. That's a strength. I'm
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: not saying that it's it's not a strength. But what
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: I wanted to point to is the fact that because
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: of how I was functioning, I got into so many
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: situations of repeat victimization, you know, date, rape situations, unwanted
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: sexual situations. Not many situations like that, but not many
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: that I can say, oh, yes, it was rape, it
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: was assault, because I can assure you I did not
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: say no.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: I just froze and accepted.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Let me ask you something, so do Let me just
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: remind me when I'm speaking with Christian Louisa Home.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: The book is.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Called object a Memoir. So during this time, with these moves,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: you were what fourteen fifteen, sixteen seventeen, there was okay,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: there was no or was there any sense from your parents.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Of we need to get her some help. Zero, nothing
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: that was not.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: Even that was not even no, no, no, not at all.
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: And I just want to be clear, I'm not saying
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: that to demonize my parents. That was just not the
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: culture of our household, nor was it the culture of
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: the day really, you know, like I graduated from high
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: school in nineteen eighty seven. I don't know state side,
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: like how many teens saw a therapist in the eighties,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: but I can tell you that, like if you were
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: an American teenager in New Delhi, India, in the American
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: embassy community, you didn't see a therapist.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: It was just like not just it wasn't part of
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: our normal culture.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So as we kind of wind down here, why did
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: you write the book?
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: So I wrote the book because, like so many people,
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: when the Me Too movement really took off, and there
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: was the stories, you know, the Larry Nasser stories and
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: the Harvey Weinstein and the Dominique strass Cohn and all
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: of those guys, those high powered abusers.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: That had been systematically.
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: Protected by the institutions that they worked.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: For, it just made my blood boil.
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: And you know Trump getting elected the first time, Bret Cavana,
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: oh my god, the Christine Blaze Ford, I mean, just
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: so many things just like made my heart rage. And simultaneously,
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: what happened at that time is that I left my marriage.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: I was married for.
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: Twenty years to someone who I always want to clarify.
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: He's the father of my two children, and we're still
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: good friends. I don't hate him, nothing like that. We
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: have a decent friendship. But we should never have been married.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: Why you'll find this detail very interesting because the person
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: I married, he's Argentinian. He hates Americans and he hates
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: American culture.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: So look at here's the faunor that I am.
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: I met this guy who pursued me like crazy. He
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: was madly in love with me, so he chose me.
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: And even though he told me that my culture is
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: unacceptable and that if we're to be together, we never
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: live in the United States ever. Again, I did not
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: have the internal resource to say what I would say
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: to someone like that today. I'd be like, well, I'm sorry,
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: I don't think we're the right match for each other.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: I did what I always did, I'm like okay, and
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: off I went. And for twenty years we had a
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: relationship that required me to erase a part of myself.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: And then I had my children and life went on.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: I you know, developed my successful career working with lots
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: of people with complex trauma, and it was like there
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: was just too much dissonance between what I had come
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: to understand about myself and the way I was living.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: So I left my marriage.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: Then there was you know, the Trump era, Cavanaugh, all
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: of that stuff started, and I just realized.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: Why am I not talking about this?
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: Like that seal of silence somehow melted off when I
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: watched the Christine blazy Ford trials and I just sat
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: down and started writing, Yeah, that's what happened.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, your story is incredible. You are incredible. You're
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: so inspiring.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the truth. Chrisin and man, I who would
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: you say the book is for?
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: Well, you know what, I'm going to tell you who
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: the book is for. And I'd like to show you
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: the picture the book.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: I dedicate the book to girls everywhere, but the first
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: dedication is.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: To Rose, and this is Rose. Rose is the pedophile's.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: Daughter who I was finally able to have contact with.
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: That's me and that's Rose, and after she is because
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: that's the other major travesty of what happened when the
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: State Department whisked her pedophile for They're back to Washington
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: and then covered up the crime. They whisked his twelve
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: year old daughter back with him, and no one thought
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: to say wow, he's a pedophile. I wonder what he's
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: doing to his own child. And yes, indeed she was
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: a victim. And one of the great painful parts of
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: this story is that I was forbidden to ever speak
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: to my best friend ever again, and that poor kid Rose,
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: she lost her community all at once. And now that
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: we're back in touch as adults.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: What she has revealed to me.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: And there is one more detail I'd like to add
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: to you about this, the government cover up. Her family
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: believes that this is not the first time what happened
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: in the Ivory Coast, it was not the first time
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: his crimes had been covered up, because he had been
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: posted before that in the Philippines and in Vietnam, and
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: he had left.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: He had been removed from those places quickly.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: Also, so his poor kid Rose had a track record
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: now of all of a sudden losing all of her friends.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: I mean to talk about a trauma on a child.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: What I wanted to tell.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: You is, since this book came out, I had a
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: meeting with someone at the State Department, and what I
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: said is, I want to know what happened. I want
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: to see the files from behind closed doors from all
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: those years ago. I was referred to this portal called
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: the Freedom of Information Act, and I sent multiple requests.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: I did get an answer, I got multiple answers. But
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: what I have been told is there is absolutely no
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: record at all of Bill mcahey's crimes, nor is there
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: a record of the twenty thousand dollars check that they
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: cut me in nineteen ninety two. And there just seems
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: to be no trace at all of this story. And
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: I have trouble believing it, and truthfully, I'm planning to
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: go further with looking into that.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: But you see what happened as I was doing this is.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: Then Trump came along and dismantled usaid and so once
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: again it's kind of like my story sort of like
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: I think it's going to. It's really hard now to
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: get anyone to answer or anything.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, isn't that nuts?
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: So yeah, this book is for girls everywhere, and it's
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: for my old friend Rose, the poor kid.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: It's awful.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, Kristin, how do people learn more about you by
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: the book? What's the best way?
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: The best way is, you know, like in this day
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: and age of internet, is to go to my website.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: It's Kristin donecom dot.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: Com and there you can find everything about my my books.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: This is actually my third book, so there's you can
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: read about my other books.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: You can read about the work that I do. You
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: can email me.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: If you want to contribute any thoughts or have any questions.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: I'm always happy to hear from listeners and readers.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you so much being here. You're a delight
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: to talk to and you're you're so inspiring. Love to
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: have you back at a later date.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I'd love to come back.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: You so much.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much. It's great to meet you. Bye.