Latest / Rachel Oates / I'm Not Sure This TradWife's Marriage Was Legal

Transcript

I'm Not Sure This TradWife's Marriage Was Legal · Rachel Oates

0:00
OK I have a request please. Can we please stop romanticising
0:04
grooming? It's that simple.
0:08
I recently saw a small trad wife Instagram account being posted
0:13
on the trad wife snark subreddit and I decided to go and have a
0:17
look at her profile for myself and found myself completely
0:20
appalled by how much she normalised grooming and child
0:24
abuse because of her story about the way she was groomed as a
0:28
teenager and how she romanticises it and writes about
0:32
it as being this like big epic love story.
0:35
Now, I was in two minds about whether to make this video, and
0:37
I've kind of gone back and forth and been working on this for a
0:39
few weeks. Because The thing is, this woman
0:43
is a content creator. Her name's Kendra, by the way.
0:46
She is a content creator as in she makes reels.
0:49
She is trying to get engagement. She's using hashtags to, you
0:52
know, get people to view her stories.
0:56
She is actively trying to reach a larger audience.
0:59
She's not just an individual posting family photos.
1:01
You know, she's actively making content with the intention of
1:05
having the public view it. However, she is a very small
1:09
account with only about 1000 followers.
1:11
That said, her reels have been getting at times 10s of
1:14
thousands of views, but she's still not exactly well known
1:17
yet. She's not like a larger creator
1:20
like, you know, Girl Defined, Paula Morgan, Chrissa Collins
1:23
and the others I speak about. I'm also very aware that with a
1:25
channel of my size, even though my views fluctuate, you know,
1:29
sometimes they can be in the millions, sometimes they're just
1:31
in the 10s of thousands. So I never quite know how many
1:34
people are going to see my videos because like with any
1:36
channel, I go through peaks and troughs.
1:37
That's normal. That said, I know I have the
1:40
potential to be influential in sending more people to view her
1:43
content, so I want to be really careful in how I speak about
1:47
her. I also think it's really
1:49
important to acknowledge that while her content is incredibly
1:51
problematic in that she's trying to normalise and romanticise
1:55
really damn harmful behaviour, she is also the victim in this
1:59
situation. She is the one who was groomed
2:02
by an older man, and it's kind of not her fault that she thinks
2:06
this way. So I think there's a way that we
2:08
can be sensitive to her as a victim and still call out the
2:12
content itself for being dangerous.
2:15
In summary, I think it's important to talk about this
2:18
topic and debunk her content. However, I don't want to risk
2:23
sending hate her way as an individual.
2:25
So I have decided throughout this video not to include her
2:28
username or any identifying features like that.
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I am just going to call her Kendra because that's her name.
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And I'm not going to give you her username or direct you to
2:37
her Instagram account or anything.
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Because at the end of the day, this is a real woman's life and
2:42
while she is posting publicly on the Internet, we still need to
2:45
be. So let's take a look at the
2:47
actual content and discuss this. Kendra has had her Instagram
2:50
account for a while, but she only recently decided to start
2:53
using it, along with a Facebook page she created to start
2:56
talking about her life as a stay at home mother, wife and
2:59
Christian. She's posting public content for
3:01
other mums, other Christians and generally.
3:04
That sounds fine, right? At first it all looked pretty
3:07
normal. She seems like a good mum from
3:09
what I've seen, which is more than we can say for some
3:11
fundies. Krista Collins, She's definitely
3:14
not promoting harmful parenting advice like say for example
3:17
Michael and Debbie Pearl do. She doesn't seem to be forcing
3:20
her kids to be constantly in her content, again like Carissa
3:24
Collins. So that's all good there.
3:27
Her Christian content is not my taste but didn't seem too
3:30
harmful. You know?
3:31
It's mostly just her posting little videos of her on tated
3:34
Bible, sharing Bible quotes in a few of her posts.
3:37
Again, all good there. Nothing, nothing really
3:40
problematic. And unlike a lot of fundy
3:42
content creators, she doesn't at this moment seem to be
3:46
homophobic or transphobic or racist or overtly misogynist.
3:50
Like, you know, Guild defined Paul and Morgan and so on.
3:53
So what's the issue? The issue is that her husband
3:56
groomed her when she was a 15 year old child.
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And she's writing about this experience like it was this epic
4:01
love story and other people should aspire to have a
4:04
relationship like this. And it's completely normal.
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And yeah, it's OK if adult men groom children.
4:10
So her Instagram bio describes herself as a young mum with five
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kids and 10 years of marriage. She calls herself a real
4:16
creator. She says she is 26, a wife of
4:19
almost 10 years. Yes, make a note of that.
4:24
Lost a daughter, found my purpose.
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Homeschool, creative, married and flirting.
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Raw faith, a little spice and a lot of grace.
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I kind of do get a little bit of wannabe Bethany Beale vibes, but
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there we go. So far she hasn't actually
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posted any sex related content, so I'm not going to comment on
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that. But yeah, the thing to take note
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of there is she is 26 and she has been married for 10 years.
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And this is where the concern around her content arose because
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she started making content about her marriage and basically
4:56
bragging about how she was groomed by her now husband from
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when she was just 15 and he was in his 20s.
5:02
She is just to reiterate, even though she's a smaller creator
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now, she's really trying to push and become a bigger content
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creator while summarising her content as, hey, if you're into
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messy motherhood, spicy but modest marriage talk, Jesus,
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homeschool chaos, all the fact that I got married at 17.
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Welcome, you're in good company. So along with trying to be a
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public figure and make public content like this and she is
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really pushing to try and normalise grooming teenagers and
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child marriage, which is super, super concerning.
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You know, I was start thinking while I was researching this
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video because I've just got back.
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Well, not I just got back a week ago.
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I got back from photographing Tram Lines, which is a music
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festival in Sheffield, three days.
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It was really damn amazing, really damn intense.
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I was doing it all with the sprained ankle, so it was a lot
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of pressure and a lot of pain. But I got some amazing photos
5:54
which I'm still going through and editing.
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But I started researching this video before I went and then I
6:00
went, had my little break and I've been working on it again
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since I got back. And it gave having a little bit
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of time off gave me time to like, really think and question,
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just be like, well, the question that was like on my mind was,
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yeah. So it seems to me that a lot of
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these, like trad wife and fundy influencers are victims of
6:16
grooming. Kendra is not the only one.
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I've seen story after story after story of this.
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And I start to think why? What makes them such vulnerable
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targets? But then I realised it's not
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that trad wives are more likely to be groomed.
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I think it's the other way around.
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It's that children who are groomed in this way in a very
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religious setting are more likely to become trad wives,
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right? And are more likely to become
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online influencers around that content.
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Because they were vulnerable in the 1st place.
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They were easy targets. And once they became the targets
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of these groomers, they were often stopped doing things like
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finishing their education or being able to get a job or
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anything from literal childhood. All they could do was be
7:01
someone's wife. So in the nicest way, a lot of
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them didn't get a chance to develop any of the skills or
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actually get an education or do anything else with their life.
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So they have no choice but to become these fundy influencers
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because it's kind of all they have in their life.
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It's the only skills they have. It's the only experience they
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have. And that's really damn sad.
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But yeah, take Kendra, for example, right?
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So her husband met her at church when she was just 15 years old.
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He was in his 20s and he spent the next year grooming her.
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He proposed to her when she was just 16, and then he waited
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until just after her 17th birthday to actually marry her.
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From meeting her at 15 to 18 months later when she just
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turned 17, he groomed her and married her.
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She finished being homeschooled while she was married a whole
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year of that, and so education really wasn't a priority for her
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at that time at all. She never got a chance to get a
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job outside of working for his company and him, and she never
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got a chance to go into further education because the adult man
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who groomed her, who is now in his mid to late 20s got her
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pregnant and while still a teenager she had to deal with
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pregnancy and becoming a mother. She then very sadly had to deal
8:17
with baby loss when she was still basically barely an adult
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herself, which is horrific and heartbreaking.
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Now she's 26 years old and she's got limited education, very
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little work experience, no skills outside of her husband
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and kids. She's got 4 kids to look after.
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She has very little time for anything else.
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In the nicest way, what else can she do?
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Create content online about her life like this Because she's not
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really hireable it. And again, I don't say any of
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this to insult her, I say it from a place of concern.
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That said, there is a little confusion about her working
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status because all of her like reels and online content and
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social media stuff is all about like I'm a stay at home mum in
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me me me me. But at the same time, she's also
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listed as working for her husband's concrete pouring
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business. Apparently that's the whole
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business. The website says that Kendra is
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the Co Finder of this business and is the organisational
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powerhouse behind the scenes. As the Operations Manager,
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Kendra handles the financial aspects of the business ensuring
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everything runs smoothly and efficiently.
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Kendra's commitment to the business success is evident in
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her tireless work to keep everything running smoothly.
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So which is it Kendra? Are you a tireless worker and an
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organisational powerhouse operations manager or are you
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just a stay at home mum who spends all day playing with her
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kids wearing a blanket? Because you're trying to portray
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both in different settings and something isn't adding up.
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I also did have to laugh at the businesses website where they
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claim their core values are family and integrity from the
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man who groomed a 15 year old. So I say all this to kind of
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good context because I'm not sure how much the whole trad
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wife thing is a persona for her because she knows it has the
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potential to make her a lot of money off, you know, right wing
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extremists who love to see women oppressed.
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But what we do know is that whether she really is a trad
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wife or an organisational powerhouse doesn't really
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matter. The truth of the matter is she
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was groomed at just 15 years old.
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That was very real. It happened and she doesn't even
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seem to understand how problematic it is.
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And she's now trying to normalise this for others with
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content that she is trying to reach a large audience with.
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You want to make the main focus of this video looking at a
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selection of her posts talking about this relationship and how
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she was groomed. And I'm going to bring in some
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stories from other victims too and take a look at what experts
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say on this topic of grooming. And hopefully we can use this as
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a moment to learn and educate ourselves and others about this
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really damn serious topic. So the very first thing she
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posted was the beginning our story with the caption.
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And this is just the beginning of our story.
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Can't wait to share more with you all.
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She says we met May 11th, 2014. I was 15 at the time and Isaac
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was 21. Red flag, red flag, red flag,
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right? A six year age gap may not be
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that huge when you're my age or when you're 40.
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You know, if I'm, I'm 32 and I'm day in a 38 year old, not a big
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issue, not a big age gap at all. If you're 40 and eight and a 46
11:30
year old, not a big issue. If you're 15 date you're 56 year
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old, not a big issue, right? But at these young ages of 15
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and 21, that is huge, Huge. She was still a child, she was
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still in school. She was still living with her
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parent. Well, not in school, but home
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schooling, still in education. She was still living with her
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parents. And he was a fully grown man
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running his own business. The differences in life
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experience, in maturity, in physical development, in mental
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development are insurmountable. And what could they possibly
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have in common? How could there not be a massive
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power imbalance here? You're in different stages of
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life, different stages of physical development.
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It is just inherently wrong. There is no world in which this
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is not problematic and harmful to the child involved.
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Her next slide reads Got engaged May of 2015, so literally one
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year after they first met and got married November 2015.
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OK so they got married within 19 months of meeting each other.
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That's quick for anyone, never mind for a literal child.
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So he waited until she was 16 to propose and then very quickly
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married her when she was just just 17?
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It's horrifying. And the rest of this post is
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just about her listing off her numerous pregnancies.
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She got pregnant within the first year of marriage I
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believe. Yes, she did, but sadly that
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baby passed away when she was just over a week old.
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Absolutely no one should have to go through that.
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And she has nothing but my sympathies for dealing with the
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loss of a child. Like, you know, it's horrifying.
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It's you know, it's absolutely horrible.
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And I just, I know you will be, but I just ask her that you're
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all respectful about that in the comments and I'm sure you will
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be. So the thing that is a little
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concerning to me though, is right.
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She says our first daughter was born February 27th, 2017, then
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passed away March 8th, 2017. Our rainbow baby was born
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February 2018, which means she got pregnant in May 2017, just 8
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to 12 weeks after giving birth and just 7 to 11 weeks after
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losing her baby. That that just cannot be good
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for her body, right? Like I understand she was
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grieving and I don't want to say replacement baby, that's not the
14:05
right word. But you know, the idea of a
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rainbow baby a second chance, like wanting to rush into that,
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I understand emotionally. Absolutely do not judging her
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for that at all. That's not the issue here.
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My concern is how she was just 18 years old, barely barely an
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adult, and she was putting her body through this much stress
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and trauma of going through one pregnancy which is traumatic
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enough, giving birth, then going through the trauma of baby loss
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and then eight, 7-8 weeks later getting pregnant again and going
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through a whole of the pregnancy.
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That sounds dangerous as hell for her body.
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The strain and stress that must have put her through.
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God my heart just breaks. Absolutely does.
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And then over the next few years, she had four more
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children. And July 2019, again, she got
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pregnant just once after giving birth.
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Bless her. And October 2020, Oh my God,
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these are barely a year apart. And OK, no, thankfully she had a
15:06
break here with March 2023. And this year we'll be 10 years
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together as husband and wife. That's our story in a nutshell
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so far. Marriage, kids, growth, God,
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it's a wild ride and I'll be sharing more of it here and I'd
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love to have you along for it. Like and follow to catch the
15:22
rest in one of her next posts. She'd actually, no, let me.
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There's another post I was going to talk about later, but I think
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it's better to talk about it now.
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Give me one second to find it. She she wrote point of point of
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view. You've been pregnant for roughly
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1400 days out of 2557. The poor woman and the strain
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that must have put on her body. Just my uterus wants to shrivel
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up just thinking about it. I just, I can't imagine what her
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organs have gone through like for over half of that time.
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Her organs will have been smushed and moved and pushed
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around. Like the strain on her bladder,
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the strain on her downstairs bits, the strain on her.
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God, pregnancy. One pregnancy alone can cause
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hair loss, tooth loss, lack of bone density.
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Like if she was puking and had mornings.
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Like all of this stuff like this poor, poor woman.
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And we will come back to this later because there is a point I
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want to make about pregnancy. But let's let's cover the actual
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relationship first. OK so this post was called
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Meeting him Part 1. And this is the story of how
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they met. Or rather as I like to put it,
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the story of how he groomed her. This microphone just does not
16:41
want to sit still. I'm stressing today.
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This was a terrible idea for a setup.
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Screw me being comfy in a chair. OK, so she writes.
16:50
I couldn't find anyone at church to sit with except my friend
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Claire, so I sat with her with a tiny secret agenda because Isaac
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was sitting in the row in front of us.
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He took his suit coat off during church and I could see his
17:01
muscles through his shirt. That was truly my first time
17:05
ever seeing stuff like that. Take note of that.
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We got to talk after church where he told me he thought I
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was 21. I was 15 at that time.
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We ended up knowing so many of the same people and had a lot to
17:18
talk about. And here's the thing, it is
17:20
sorry if you can name my washing machine.
17:22
It is very normal for teenage girls to have crushes on older
17:25
men, but it is not OK or normal for these men to reciprocate.
17:31
If you have made a mistake about someone's age, that's fine, But
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the minute she said to him, I'm actually 15, he.
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That should have been his cue to get out of there.
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You know, he should have been like, that's it, I'm gone.
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You're a child. Or if he does want to stick
17:43
around and talk to her, step into a parental older brother,
17:47
supportive mentor type of role. Not I'm going to keep flirting
17:51
with this child. Yeah, I've said it before, but
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as the adult in this situation it was entirely his
17:59
responsibility to look out for her well-being and her safety
18:04
and not continue to pursue and take advantage of a child with a
18:09
completely normal crush. You would be surprised how many
18:12
abusers do not understand this though and somehow blame the
18:16
children in this situation. It's insane.
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So Sonia Orchard wrote about this, and she wrote about her
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experience of being groomed by an older man in his 20s when she
18:24
was just 15. And her memoir Groomed, a memoir
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about abuse, the search for justice, and how we fail to keep
18:31
our children safe. In this book she not only talks
18:34
about the man who groomed and raped her as a child because,
18:37
let's be honest, that's what it was because she was unable to
18:40
consent because she was a child, but she also talks about how
18:44
normalised this behaviour was back then when she was a
18:46
teenager. So she writes, another factor
18:49
that helps enable child sex abuse is if inappropriate sexual
18:53
behaviour between adults and children has been normalised for
18:56
the child. It is fair to say that
18:58
inappropriate sexual behaviours between adults and children had
19:01
been normalised. Normalised.
19:02
At my school. Teachers were fraternising and
19:06
in a couple of instances, having sex with students.
19:09
And the other adults who might have stepped in to let us know
19:11
this was this was not OK Didn't. Maybe they thought that girls
19:16
like us drinking at nightclubs were old enough to make our own
19:19
choices, that we were asking for it?
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By the time I met S, the man who groomed her at 15-2 of the
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crucial elements found among child sex abuse sufferers were
19:28
already in place. I was isolated from my family
19:31
and sexual behaviours between adults and minors were normal to
19:35
me. So when S turned up looking like
19:37
the good guy, the caring guy offering safe harbour, of course
19:41
my mum and I saw him like my many good school grades, as a
19:44
sign that after a difficult few years I was now thriving.
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She goes on to give an example of meeting an old teacher from
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her school when she was much older, like I'd like in her 30s
19:53
ish, and he remembered her in this way.
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A man who'd been a casual teacher at our school when I was
19:58
a student turned up. The connection was quickly made.
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Sonia Orchard, I remember you, he exclaimed in front of
20:04
everyone. You used to think you were so
20:06
hot, didn't you, strutting around in your little school
20:08
dress? He sashayed about, batted his
20:11
eyes mockingly, rising to the guffaw of the audience.
20:14
It wasn't a little school dress. It was my school uniform, and I
20:18
wasn't strutting around. I was going to school.
20:21
What was I meant to be wearing and doing?
20:23
But he wasn't listening. He was still carrying on with
20:26
his entertaining stories of being a young male teacher at a
20:29
Coed school and I was being humourless and touchy.
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And for those listening on, his tales were more amusing.
20:35
It was the party after all. No one wants to hear from a
20:38
jaded Lolita. And that's the thing, isn't it?
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It's so common for these older predators to see literal
20:44
children as instigators and it's completely wrong.
20:48
They tell themselves if they're attracted to a child, then that
20:50
must mean the child has some sort of power over them, and
20:53
it's absolute nonsense. As Sonia went on to write,
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things look different from different perspectives.
20:59
From my point of view, I was a shy kid with a difficult home
21:02
life, doing well at school and with an active social life.
21:05
I was starting to get a lot of attention in a way I hadn't been
21:07
used to getting nothing more. He, her abuser, saw something
21:11
different, a teenage girl making the most of her much
21:15
mythologized teen girl power. And the fact that that's what so
21:19
many of these men see when they look at school, a school girl,
21:21
is a problem that society has barely started to grapple with.
21:26
Teenage girls are vulnerable. They are children and they need
21:30
to be protected, guided and educated by the men in their
21:34
community, not preyed upon. I couldn't have put it better
21:38
myself, She goes on to write. And because girls start to
21:41
believe this prop, this propaganda themselves, they
21:44
start to think that they're actually powerful and that
21:47
they're on a great thing. I thought I was on a great thing
21:50
because attention, especially for girl, isn't getting a lot of
21:52
it elsewhere. Feels good.
21:55
I've spoken to many women who are abused during their teens
21:57
and often found that they only start to question the stories
22:00
they told themselves decades later.
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Stories about how powerful they'd been, that they'd wanted
22:05
and consented to all they'd experienced.
22:07
And that's it, isn't it? A child is never, ever asking
22:12
for it. A child is never the one to
22:14
blame. As an adult, if a child ever has
22:16
a crush on you, the only way to respond is to shut it down.
22:21
It is that simple. There's no oh, but what if, oh,
22:24
but no, no, you do not reciprocate.
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You do not leave them on. You don't none of it.
22:31
It's not that difficult child, no matter how they may feel or
22:35
how much society has lied to them, never has power in that
22:38
situation. That is just a lie predators
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tell themselves to excuse their predatory behaviour.
22:44
And look at how Kendra worded her experience.
22:47
This was truly my first time ever seeing muscles on a man.
22:51
She wasn't just a child, she was a naive and inexperienced child.
22:55
There is no way we can read this and not see that his 21 almost
22:59
22 year old man took advantage of a naive child.
23:03
I don't care if he thought she was older at first, the minute
23:06
he found out she was 15 and he did that day in that
23:09
conversation, he should have shut it down.
23:12
He should have walked away. So after meeting at church, the
23:15
adult Isaac did what a lot of groomers do and he started to
23:19
befriend and groom her family and then he gave her an excuse
23:23
to be around him more by offering her a job.
23:25
This is textbook groomer behaviour.
23:28
My brother worked for him the next two days and then I started
23:31
working for him too, cutting trees and pouring concrete.
23:35
So he's like let's get the family on side by offering the
23:37
brother a job. Let's get her on side and around
23:40
me by offering her a job. In her book Grooming and in her
23:45
book Grooming and the Sexual Abuse of Children, Anne Marie
23:48
Mccalladen writes that trust plays a key role not in the
23:51
offenders interactions with the child, but also with their
23:54
family and within the local community.
23:57
And who's more trusted than oh such a a good local businessman
24:02
offering these teenagers a job? What a good guy.
24:05
She goes on to write that sex offenders, to avoid suspicion,
24:08
find ways in which they can legitimately have contact with
24:11
children and acquire power over them.
24:15
Sex offenders not only groom children, but also their
24:17
families and the local communities, perhaps as the
24:20
means of beginning in association with the child.
24:23
The grooming of the child's family also has a dual purpose,
24:26
securing the confidence and trust, and thus the cooperation
24:30
of the carers in gaining access to the child and reducing the
24:34
likelihood of discovery by creating an atmosphere of
24:37
normality or acceptance. Kendra often says that Isaac was
24:41
different, special and not like the other predators.
24:45
But in reality, reading her experience, he displayed all the
24:50
textbook grooming signs. He gained the trust of her
24:53
family. He gave himself a legitimate
24:56
excuse to be around her by offering her job.
24:58
However, that also put him in a position of power and authority
25:02
over her. And while he has all of this
25:04
power imbalance going on and he's grooming the family in the
25:08
community and making them trust him too, he uses this as an
25:11
excuse to seduce her and prey on her.
25:13
It is textbook groomer. But that's the thing, isn't it?
25:16
People didn't notice because so often predators don't look like
25:20
predators. I mean, what?
25:21
What does the predator even look like?
25:23
You know, they use these legitimate reasons to be around
25:26
children while they're grooming and abusing them.
25:29
So it makes them even harder to spot.
25:31
They look like nice normal guys. All, all women.
25:35
Let's not forget women as well. And Salter wrote a book called
25:38
Predators and she is someone who has throughout her career
25:41
interviewed and worked with and given counselling and therapy to
25:45
hundreds if not thousands of predators, including plenty of
25:49
men who have sexually assaulted numerous children.
25:52
She wrote a whole book about this experience and it's
25:54
honestly one of the hardest, most difficult things I've had
25:56
to read, but it was really eye opening.
25:59
In her book Predators, she writes that we give permission
26:02
for children to be around the people grooming them, because we
26:04
don't recognise these people as predators.
26:07
Because we think sex offenders are monsters.
26:09
And surely we'd recognise a monster, wouldn't we?
26:12
That nice young minister who runs all the youth programmes,
26:15
The ones with the crooked smile and the thatch of brown hair
26:18
over his brow. The one who visits the elderly
26:20
and gives the poor money from his own funds?
26:22
Surely not him. He couldn't be a child molester
26:25
with 90 victims while he's still in his 20s.
26:27
That good looking, polite young man who just wants to see the
26:30
motorcycle for sale in your backyard?
26:32
Surely he couldn't be a rapist with a knife in his hip pocket
26:35
waiting for you to turn your back to pull the cover off.
26:38
She goes on to write that sex offenders are notorious for
26:41
bonding with a child and using that relationship to manipulate
26:44
the child into having sex with them.
26:46
And that is exactly what an adult man who pursues and
26:52
seduces a 15 year old child is doing.
26:55
And that is the behaviour that Kendra is normalising in these
26:58
posts. Not just normalising,
27:00
romanticising, glamorising. Putting on a pedestal is the
27:05
pinnacle of a love story. And it's not a love story.
27:08
It's a story of abuse. And when she paints her
27:10
experience as a love story, When she when she thinks that
27:15
marrying the man who groomed her and having kids with him is a
27:19
happy ending we should all aspire to.
27:21
When she repeatedly posts about how handsome he is and how hot
27:25
he is and how he's not like the other guys.
27:28
She is sending out an incredibly dangerous message to other young
27:32
people. If he's hot, he couldn't
27:34
possibly be a predator. If he marries her, he couldn't
27:37
possibly have groomed her. If he has kids with her, then
27:40
no, it wasn't really statutory rape, was it?
27:42
Except all of that is lies. As Anna Salter writes, the fact
27:47
that she loves him doesn't mean that he's innocent.
27:51
Groomers and child abusers often make their victims think that
27:55
they love them. It is literally part of the
27:58
grooming process and that's what makes it so hard for so many
28:02
victims to even realise that they are victims in the 1st
28:04
place. It's the same for Allison Wood,
28:06
who recounts being groomed and abused by one of her teachers in
28:11
her book Being Lolita. That's one I've recommended and
28:14
spoken about a lot on this channel and it's a difficult but
28:17
fantastic read. Horrifyingly familiar.
28:21
And again, like as Sonia Richard wrote herself, it's not uncommon
28:24
for people to hide abuse from themselves and ignore the signs
28:28
of trauma. She herself wasn't able to
28:31
recognise the signs of abuse until she was in her 40s.
28:34
But the negative effects that the trauma had been having on
28:36
her life, her mental health and her relationships had always
28:40
been there. She just didn't know what the
28:42
cause was. She didn't know how to name it,
28:44
she writes. It's surprising that it took so
28:46
long until my early 40s, after my father died, for me to re
28:50
evaluate this relationship I had when I was 15 to reframe it as
28:54
abuse. Surprising, but not unusual.
28:58
If you read up on the many stories of grooming that are
29:00
published in the papers each month, you'll notice that not
29:02
all. You'll notice that not only are
29:04
the stories usually from adults reflecting decades after the
29:07
abuse, but it's also not uncommon for these adults to
29:10
report that they did not realise the experience was abuse at the
29:14
time. Many people, especially
29:16
teenagers like me, considered their abuse to be a regular
29:19
relationship, whatever that is. So just because a person like
29:23
Kendra for example may be currently saying oh this is
29:26
fine, it hasn't affected me negatively, this is a wonderful
29:28
experience. That's not to say what he did to
29:32
her wasn't inherently wrong and has likely caused some drama
29:37
that she may re evaluate in the future.
29:40
We can't know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if Kendra
29:44
had certain signs of trauma that she isn't even currently aware
29:48
of. And The thing is like you can
29:49
tell from how she writes, Kendra thought she was so grown up.
29:52
She was ready for this relationship.
29:53
She's not like the other kids. She didn't realise how young and
29:58
vulnerable she was at the time. She still doesn't realise.
30:00
And so, to quote Sonny's book One more time, the fact that
30:03
habitual, especially fawning, behaviours can kick in when a
30:06
person feels under threat helps explain why many women and
30:09
children are highly vulnerable to sexual assault and abuse, as
30:12
these two groups have traditionally been conditioned
30:16
to appease powerful people. During my childhood, children
30:20
were raised to always defer to adults, to be obedient and not
30:23
talk back. These behaviours around adults
30:25
became habit, especially when under stress.
30:28
These habits of childhood though are not just taught to children.
30:32
Appeasing adults is like clean evolved behaviour.
30:34
Clearly though, in the wrong circumstances, with the wrong
30:37
people looking after them, they become highly vulnerable to
30:39
abuse. After being assaulted by an
30:42
adult, their response may be to simply smile back and promise to
30:44
never say a word to anyone. Or, in the case of Kendra, say
30:48
this is what she wanted. She was the one pursuing him.
30:50
Yeah, this is totally fine and normal love story.
30:53
This is why sex between an adult and child must always be
30:57
considered abuse. There is a power disparity
31:01
between the two, and a child being dependent upon adult care
31:05
is highly likely to place pleasing the adult, especially
31:09
an adult they're attached to, above their own feelings of
31:12
discomfort. A child's intimacy needs in
31:15
relation to adults relate to attachment and care, not sexual
31:19
gratification, and their drug to fulfil these needs can be easily
31:23
manipulated. And this is what I mean, right?
31:26
Even if Kendra thinks it's OK despite having been groomed by
31:30
an adult, their relationship was still wrong.
31:33
He is still predatory. A 20 something year old man
31:37
pursuing a 15 year old child is always inherently wrong and
31:42
harmful. There is always a power
31:45
imbalance that will cause harm. Meanwhile, in Kendra's story,
31:50
she goes on to talk about how he was absolutely the one pursuing
31:53
her. She says he definitely expressed
31:55
interest before I did, but this was the first time a guy had
31:58
showed interest in me. So it was new territory for me.
32:01
Of course it was new territory. You were a child.
32:04
You were a naive, inexperienced child and this man took
32:07
advantage of that. And again, she's admitting he
32:10
was an adult pursuing a child. This is predatory behaviour.
32:14
She says. My parents caught on to the
32:15
attraction so they quickly kept me from working with him anymore
32:18
and this is how it started. It was scary, magical, exciting
32:22
and so many other things. And I would say good for these
32:25
parents because keeping her away from him, great, wonderful.
32:28
We'd love to see that. However, they didn't actually
32:31
manage it, as we will go on to see in her next post.
32:34
We can't know for sure how exactly the parents came around
32:38
to being OK with this adult man pursuing their child.
32:43
But as we mentioned earlier, what a lot of predators and
32:45
groomers do is also groom the family and the communities and
32:48
build trust with them in order to get more access to the child.
32:52
So did he just win the parents over by acting like a good guy?
32:55
Was he manipulating the parents in some way, you know, to make
32:58
them falsely believe that his pursue of a pursue all of a
33:01
child was somehow normal? I don't know.
33:03
We can't say because we don't know exactly what changed.
33:06
We just know something did change.
33:08
So in Part 2, this is meeting him.
33:10
Part 2, in the caption she writes, there's so much I could
33:14
say about that year we talked. I want to be as real and honest
33:17
with you guys. I was inspired by one of my
33:20
friends to share our story. I personally didn't think it was
33:22
that unique but I will share it anyway.
33:25
To me it was almost like that's just how it was.
33:27
So we started talking in the evenings on the landline phone.
33:30
My parents had talk about no privacy so.
33:33
So despite her parents trying to keep her away from him at first,
33:37
he was still pursuing her and having private phone calls with
33:40
her. And again, I'm sorry but I have
33:41
to ask, what adult man running a business of his own has anything
33:46
to talk about with a 15 year old child for that long?
33:50
No, I look back to how I was at 21 and I was an entirely
33:54
different person to who I was at 15.
33:56
I wouldn't have anything in common with a 15 year old at
33:58
that age. No, again, textbook grooming and
34:02
it goes on. Occasionally I could talk my
34:04
parents into having him over in the evenings where we could get
34:06
a little private talk. And I remember as things
34:09
progressed between us thinking how did I land this guy?
34:11
Why would he pick me? Because you were a child, you
34:14
were vulnerable, You were an easy target.
34:16
Do you want me to go on? He got to travel with us to a
34:18
few vacation spots during the year.
34:20
We talked one time we flew to Colorado, and that was the first
34:23
deep conversation we've ever had.
34:25
He was always so sweet to me. Bought me.
34:28
He bought me a huge birthday card and flowers at random.
34:31
And he was such a gentleman. So clearly he was going down
34:34
there. He's such a nice guy route.
34:36
Nice guys can't be predators and I just find hearing this so damn
34:40
concerning. It's so common for people to
34:42
turn a blind eye to predatory behaviour because that the
34:45
predator seems nice on the surface or he seems respectful.
34:48
Oh, he bought us something, you know.
34:51
Also the the big gifts and stuff like that.
34:53
Feel a little love bommy, don't they?
34:57
But as Anna Salter writes and warms should I say, niceness and
35:02
likability will override a track record of child molestation any
35:06
day of the week. Likeability is such a potent
35:08
weapon that it protects predators for long periods of
35:11
time and through almost and through almost incomprehensible
35:16
numbers of victims. It is a misconception that child
35:20
molesters are somehow different from the rest of us.
35:22
Outside their proclivities to molest, they can be loyal
35:25
friends, good employees, and responsible members of the
35:28
community in other ways. And this is what I mean.
35:31
We can't just ignore his behaviour because he said you're
35:33
a nice guy, he's got a job, he seems really sweet.
35:36
I don't care how nice someone is, nice men don't pursue
35:41
children. And the other scary thing is
35:44
that being a nice guy can protect these predators even
35:47
after their behaviour is called out as abuse and grooming.
35:50
Because people don't want to ruin the life of a nice guy.
35:53
Oh look, he's got a job, he's got a family.
35:56
He's so sweet. You don't want to ruin his life.
35:59
What about the life of the child that he ruined already?
36:02
No one care about that. No, no, they don't.
36:05
In her memoir Groomed, Sonia Orchard writes about her
36:08
experience of going to the police, about the adult man who
36:10
groomed her when she was 15. And she.
36:13
She did this. She reported it.
36:14
The police took it seriously. And she finally told one of her
36:17
friends about it. And this is the conversation
36:19
that happened. I told her weeks earlier about
36:21
calling the police, but at that stage, I was unsure about going
36:23
further with it. So I explained excitedly what
36:26
I'd just done. There was silence on the other
36:28
end of the phone then. You sure you want to do this?
36:32
Yeah, Why not? Well, it was a long time ago, so
36:36
when is too long ago to matter? Well, that's just it.
36:39
I don't know. We all did stupid stuff when we
36:41
were young. This isn't just stupid stuff,
36:44
it's criminal stuff. Yeah, she said sceptically.
36:47
We did a lot of illegal stuff back then and I knew you then.
36:51
You were pretty mature. You wanted to be doing those
36:54
things. I could feel myself pristling.
36:57
I didn't know what I wanted. I was a child.
37:01
It's just a really big thing to be doing.
37:03
Do you know anything about his life now?
37:05
Not really. He's in Melbourne.
37:08
Has he got a family? One kid, I think, maybe a
37:11
teenager. Jesus, son, it'll destroy his
37:14
life. I struggled to come up with a
37:17
response. Everything she was saying was,
37:19
as far as I could tell, all true.
37:21
But I also knew it wasn't that simple.
37:24
There was more to this than what she understood.
37:26
Yet I didn't know if I had the ability to explain, if I even
37:29
understood myself. I feel like you're more worried
37:33
about him and his well-being than me and mine, I said.
37:36
I mean, do you always worry about the welfare of criminals?
37:39
Do you worry about burglars and murderers getting in trouble?
37:43
Just because someone's broken the law, it's no reason to not
37:45
have compassion for them. Which is kind of horrifying,
37:49
isn't it? Like, in some cases, Yeah.
37:50
I mean, like, I have compassion for some criminals, right?
37:53
Like, if someone steals food for their family, I have compassion
37:56
for that. I'm not going to blame them for
37:58
that, but if someone's molesting a child, there's no good reason
38:02
for it, there's no excuse for it, and a person reporting that
38:05
isn't ruining their life, them committing the crime or in their
38:08
life, and that's their own fault.
38:10
There was another example of this in her book as well.
38:12
So she wrote, I tried to explain to a friend who didn't
38:15
understand my motivation, it was child abuse.
38:18
I told them, well, legally, yes, they conceded.
38:22
But was it really? Yes, it was.
38:27
I'm sorry, you hadn't mentioned abuse before.
38:30
I didn't know what else to say, how to explain.
38:33
And this is the thing. Why do so many people just not
38:35
believe victims? Why is it all?
38:37
Was it really? Was it really?
38:39
You don't get this with other crimes, do you?
38:42
And why do people always have so much more compassion for the
38:44
predators than those they abused?
38:47
I constantly see men online talking about why we should
38:50
never believe victims of sexual assault straight away, because
38:53
what if a woman is lying? It'll ruins a man's life.
38:56
And. And sure, I admit, false
38:58
accusations are incredibly problematic, but they're also
39:02
incredibly rare. They do not happen very often.
39:05
And secondly, let's be real, most people accused of sexual
39:08
assault legitimately never even have their life ruined, never
39:12
mind with a false accusation. So let what?
39:15
OK, Like did you know only about approximately 5% of all rapists
39:20
ever spend a day in gaol and fewer still spend any
39:23
significant time there? According to Anna Salter, it's
39:27
always. But what about the abuser?
39:29
Why are you trying to ruin their life?
39:31
What if he didn't do it and never?
39:33
But what about the victim whose life has already been ruined and
39:37
now by not believing them, by questioning them, you are re
39:41
traumatising them all over again.
39:44
What about them? Sonia Orchard questioned why so
39:46
few people report sex crimes in general, and she found that when
39:50
female rape victims who do not report were asked about their
39:53
primary reason for not reporting, 33% responded that
39:56
they did not regard the incident as serious enough, 26% felt
40:01
ashamed or embarrassed, 22% didn't think there was anything
40:04
the police could do, and 22% did not know or think the incident
40:08
was a crime. She goes on to say, in general,
40:11
there's a sense that these women don't want to create a problem,
40:15
don't want to be seen as a problem, don't want to be a
40:18
problem. They want to manage it
40:20
themselves because they feel that this way they can just make
40:23
it go away. They feel that bringing it out
40:25
into the open won't help. If anything, it'll make it
40:28
worse, which is something I completely relate to.
40:30
Like I get that completely. And I think when we repeatedly,
40:34
because I, I, I've been the victim of certain crimes and
40:39
decided not to pursue legal action any further because one,
40:42
there's nothing people can do to take it away.
40:44
You just want to bury your head in the sand and pretend it's not
40:46
happening. You don't want to be questioned
40:48
and blamed for the crime that happened to you.
40:50
Like it's, it's re traumatising, it's horrific.
40:53
And I think the problem is when we repeatedly tell women, but
40:56
he's such a nice guy, why would you want to ruin his life by
41:00
reporting the actions that he did to you?
41:03
We are just making it all worse. We're making it harder for
41:06
people to report, harder for people to get justice and easier
41:09
for these people to go on and victimise other people.
41:12
So Sonia went on to write, It's worth acknowledging that many of
41:15
the elements of the legal system that I found most excruciating
41:18
to deal with were there explicitly to avoid miscarriages
41:21
of justice. The Black Stones principle, that
41:24
is it is better that 10 guilty persons go free than one
41:28
innocent suffer, is the central principle of our legal system,
41:31
and it's often wheeled out when discussing the laws around sex
41:34
crimes. It's a proposition that few
41:35
people would argue with. However, there's little doubt
41:39
that such a dogged, dogged embrace of this idea makes
41:42
getting a successful prosecution difficult.
41:45
There's another problem with society's easy acceptance of
41:47
this principle. Innocent people are suffering,
41:52
there is more than one way to suffer, and getting convicted of
41:55
a crime is just one of them. Sex crime victims are innocent,
41:59
and when we refuse them justice, they may not go to gaol, but
42:03
they suffer tremendously. Further, an unpunished abuser
42:07
carries the potential and likelihood of reoffending,
42:10
therefore punishing more innocence.
42:13
So how far are we as a society willing to push Blackstone's
42:18
ratio? How much are we willing to
42:21
punish victims who come forward by failing to take their crime
42:24
seriously, making them endure horrific judicial processes,
42:28
thereby discouraging discouraging others from coming
42:31
forward? Providing protective measures to
42:33
the accused that hamper A prosecution's case, and making
42:36
the bar for prosecution obscenely high in order to
42:40
protect the suffering of a person accused of a sex crime?
42:44
And that is something that I really, really want you to think
42:47
about because it's such a damn important point.
42:52
Kendra went on in a post saying we grow closer and started to
42:55
get serious. I was still 16 at this time.
42:58
I honestly never felt that young though.
43:00
But you were that young. The saddest part of us talking
43:04
was how many people tried to keep me from a relationship with
43:06
him. Now looking back I understand
43:08
some of their concern, but he's proven so much better than I
43:11
could have ever imagined. He tells me I was perfect for
43:14
him and I tell him that ain't no one could have put up with me
43:17
like he has. I'm so glad that I pushed all
43:21
the negativity to the side and pursued him anyway.
43:24
He loved the Lord and loved me and was so hard working.
43:27
I find this so damn concerning. There were clearly people around
43:31
her trying to help her, but this guy just manipulated Kendra and
43:36
her family and everyone that mattered.
43:38
I remind you by quoting Sonia Orchard, Grooming can be used to
43:41
manipulate. If a victim is vulnerable,
43:44
grooming can become brainwashing.
43:46
Grooming is about using one's charm, one's power, to win
43:50
someone over. Someone less powerful than you.
43:53
When you've groomed someone there under your spell, ready to
43:56
be manipulated if you've done a good job.
43:58
They don't realise they've been groomed, they think it's
44:01
something else. I thought it was love.
44:03
I was a child and thought this adult male loved me as an equal.
44:07
There was love involved, but not the love that I thought.
44:10
I think he loved that I was a child.
44:12
Easy to control, available to him.
44:15
And sadly this is exactly what I see in Kendra's post too.
44:18
Can you imagine if people spoke this way about other?
44:21
Can you imagine if people spoke this way about other crimes?
44:24
You know, this idea of the victim asking for it, you know,
44:27
being mature for her age, so it was OK, all this sort of thing,
44:31
you know, And, but what if, like, it was someone saying
44:36
people tried to persuade him not to be the homeless man, but he
44:40
said the homeless man was special.
44:41
He said he was different to other homeless people.
44:43
He was actually asking to be beaten up.
44:46
And, you know, Isaac was such a nice guy.
44:48
After all, it's not like he'd intentionally hurt anyone or
44:50
commit a crime. So maybe the fact that he did it
44:53
this time is OK, right? Maybe he should be up, this
44:57
innocent homeless man. I haven't even heard the
45:00
innocent homeless man complain about this.
45:02
So he must have liked being beaten up and it can't have hurt
45:05
him that much. And besides, the homeless man
45:08
was strong for his age. He could take it, right?
45:10
Do you know what I mean? Any other violent crime against
45:15
a vulnerable person would be taken seriously.
45:16
People wouldn't be using these arguments.
45:18
But the minute it's a violent crime against a child or a
45:22
sexual crime against a child, people still somehow find a way
45:25
to blame the victim. Anyway.
45:27
Kendra has continued to postpone her relationship on Instagram,
45:30
now moving on to their engagement.
45:32
He proposed when she was just 16, exactly a year after they
45:35
first met. This post was our engagement
45:38
Part 1. Today was exactly 1 year since
45:40
we met. I was told that Isaac's family
45:42
was having a picnic at Norris Dam and there was some of and oh
45:46
and some of the church people and some other friends were
45:48
going to be there. I was so oblivious to
45:50
everything. Then Isaac roadworthers out
45:52
there everything seemed normal. No hints or anything I would
45:55
have noticed then. Oh shake my head I know what
46:00
that means I'm down with the kids.
46:03
I am. I remember talking and waiting
46:06
for food to finish. Then it came time to pray.
46:09
My dad prayed. Big mistake.
46:12
Good thing I was oblivious. So much of this just goes over
46:15
my head to be honest. And in his prayer he asked
46:18
special. In his prayer he asked special
46:22
blessing on me and Isaac. I remember thinking this was a
46:25
smidge weird, but it also kind of seemed like something my dad
46:28
would say, so I went with it. I'm sorry, but her writing is
46:35
why. Her writing is evidence of why
46:39
apparently homeschooling does not work.
46:41
Her grammar is so poor. She's not a good written
46:44
communicator. I just wish he'd had more of an
46:47
education and not been groomed by a man.
46:49
And skipped out on her education.
46:51
You know? Isaac told me later he couldn't
46:52
believe my dad said that and was so scared I would catch on what
46:55
was about to go down. We ended up just eating and
46:58
chatting and nothing weird happened.
46:59
I mean why would it? It was just a family picnic.
47:02
Isaac told me some of them were going up to the lookout and
47:05
asked if I'd like to go. So we loaded up in the van.
47:08
He said he wanted to get some pictures with me and that few
47:11
was beautiful. I'm sorry but the fact her
47:13
family was so OK with an adult man proposing to a 16 year old
47:17
child is insane. And that they're all there to
47:19
support it. Like do better.
47:21
It's hard because I kind of know the family.
47:24
It's it's hard because I kind of know the family were manipulated
47:26
too. But again, they're adults.
47:29
Do better. Protect your children.
47:31
So she made a Part 2 to this. This is kind of hard to read.
47:34
It's orange on a grey background.
47:36
We drove up to Lookout, just me, Isaac, and two of our friends.
47:40
We got out and the friends started snapping some pictures.
47:43
I remember walking towards the other side of the lookout and I
47:46
looked down in the grass and saw a cute little sign.
47:49
I said, oh look, there's a will you marry me sign.
47:52
When I turned around, Isaac had gotten down on his little knee.
47:55
I was kind of in shock. My first thought was, do my
47:57
parents know what's happening? And of course they did.
48:01
Again, shame on these parents. Do better for your child.
48:04
And of course her first thought was do my parents know?
48:07
Because she was a child, of course she's going to be
48:09
thinking about what her parents think.
48:11
If he proposed to an adult woman, that probably wouldn't
48:14
have been her first thought. Because, you know, she's an
48:16
adult. And I'm sorry, but even if he
48:18
was another 16 year old proposing to her, this is still
48:20
too young for anyone to be getting married and committing
48:23
their entire life to someone, especially someone you've only
48:25
known for a year. You don't even know who you
48:27
really are at that age. You are definitely going to
48:30
change. Your partner is going to change.
48:32
It's completely OK to wait for a few years if you think you're
48:34
going to be with someone long term at that age and just see
48:37
what happens. I was so happy as I entered into
48:40
this new phase of life. Isaac was exactly who I needed
48:43
and I wouldn't understand that until a few years later.
48:46
Maybe because you're a child and you couldn't possibly know the
48:50
full extent of what you were agreeing to.
48:52
There is no way she could give informed consent to this.
48:55
We ended up driving back down and went for a walk to take more
48:59
pictures and it was one of the best memories of my life.
49:02
Haters will hate and say this or that, and concerned readers will
49:06
be concerned about your well-being.
49:08
Social media only sees what I post.
49:10
They don't know us or our heart. Our story is a rare one, but one
49:16
that I pray God can use to encourage others to follow the
49:18
Lord and not give in to societal pressures.
49:22
True, we can only see what you post on social media and what
49:25
you do post is damn concerning. I'll remind you again, there is
49:29
no context that we can see outside of these posts that
49:33
makes an adult man seducing a 15 year old child OK.
49:37
There is no context that makes that OK.
49:39
A Sonia Orchard writes. There's another reason why
49:41
children are so much more vulnerable to grooming and that
49:44
is due to another biological dynamic that they're in the
49:46
grips of a behaviour that can be very easily modelled with
49:49
courtship and grooming then need for care.
49:52
Children and teens are not simply mini adults.
49:56
They have wired in specific needs very different to those of
49:59
adults. Children and teens are highly
50:01
dependent beings, unable to fully resource, provide for, or
50:05
fend for themselves in the world.
50:07
This makes human children completely different to other
50:09
young ape primates who are either fiercely and usually
50:12
physically attached to their mothers or once weaned, very
50:15
independent. Humans are unique among the
50:18
primates and that the young require over a decade of ongoing
50:21
care after weaning. These care requirements are well
50:25
beyond what one or even really two parent or adult care parent
50:30
or adult carers could comfortably manage.
50:33
The age at which children become adults is not clear cut, she
50:36
writes. It's a gradual process which
50:39
will vary between cultures and between individuals.
50:42
Some individuals may never become fully independent and may
50:46
remain on the lookout for and ready to attach to carers
50:49
throughout their lives. What's clear though is that
50:51
while a person is dependent, needing care and resources from
50:54
another in order to survive, they will be hyper alert to the
50:57
presence of potential carers and ready to attach to them if
51:00
triggered with attachment behaviours, and this will be
51:03
especially true if they are lacking stable attachments.
51:06
So basically, she was super vulnerable, he took advantage of
51:09
this, and there is no possible context which she would give
51:13
that would change the fact that she was a child and in no way
51:16
ready to be in a romantic or sexual relationship with an
51:20
adult. It's impossible to say when
51:23
Kendra would have definitely become an adult or when she did
51:27
become an adult or if she's become an adult, to be honest.
51:31
But what is very clear and what we can say with no uncertainty
51:34
is that when they met when she was 15, she was not an adult.
51:39
When he proposed to her at 16, she was not an adult.
51:43
She was absolutely not in a developmental state where she
51:48
could fall, where she could fully give informed consent
51:51
about what was happening to her, what she was agreeing to.
51:54
This is just a fact she wrote in a post.
51:57
It's OK to be different. After all the Bible just say if
52:00
the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated
52:05
you and I again and again. I asked that she please stop
52:09
normalising and romanticising this and making everyone think
52:12
that this is OK if it happens to you.
52:14
By normalising grooming in this way she's literally putting
52:17
other children in danger. She says to be in the world but
52:20
not of the world. It's hard but we have a duty to
52:24
be a light in the darkness. Follow along for the rest of our
52:27
story. Thanks for tagging along.
52:29
She also made a post about what it was like to be married in
52:32
high school. Now this is a little different
52:34
because she was home schooled so it's not like she was around her
52:36
peers every day. In fact, it seems that when she
52:39
got married she was even more excluded from people her own age
52:43
and her education was neglected as a result, she writes.
52:45
I got engaged and married while still in high school.
52:48
I was home schooled. I had that flexibility the whole
52:51
year we courted. I would get up early and my
52:53
school would take around 4 hours.
52:55
Then by noon I'd be done and would spend.
52:58
No I'd be done and would help my mum around the house and yard
53:02
and then spend time with Isaac in the evenings.
53:04
We got engaged in my senior year by May of 2016.
53:09
Being being married, being married and still in school was
53:13
fun. It's so poorly written.
53:15
I'm sorry. This is not an advertisement for
53:17
home schooling. Isn't being married and still in
53:19
school was fun? It was like I was part of two
53:22
worlds. I would go be with my best
53:24
friend every day, but when he would go to work, I'd do my
53:27
school. It worked, it was awesome.
53:30
It's not normal, but sometimes normal is boring.
53:34
Hashtag young wife life. Hashtag married at 17.
53:39
Hashtag faith over normal #unconventional, but right.
53:45
Oh, oh, hashtag wife before diploma.
53:50
No, I don't like that. I don't like that at all.
53:54
Oh #homeschool to homemaker. I don't like that either, no.
53:58
I do wonder if she'd been around people her own age, would she
54:02
have been more protected from him or would he have just
54:06
isolated her from them further? I don't, I genuinely do not
54:10
know. Sonya Orchard actually wrote
54:12
about how dating adult men kept her isolated from her peers
54:15
while she was in school. And she wrote, by year 12 I was
54:18
no longer seeing S, but was in a relationship with another older
54:21
man Added and had already start to distance myself from many of
54:24
my school friends, friends who'd been like family.
54:27
For the past six years. I was regularly smoking
54:29
marijuana and drinking heavily every weekend.
54:31
I didn't attend the school dances or at the school events.
54:34
How would I take a man older than some of my teachers to a
54:37
school dance? I didn't feel I belonged to the
54:40
world I'd been part of until recently.
54:42
My family, my friends, my school.
54:44
I told myself that this was OK, that I'd moved into a more grown
54:47
up world and was no longer among children who who didn't
54:50
understand me. Why would I want to go to a
54:52
silly school dance anyway? She goes on to say.
54:55
When friends reminisce about fumbling through a teenage day,
54:58
going to the school dance, hanging out with their friends
55:00
at university or kicking off their careers, I feel like I'm
55:03
talking to someone from from another Galaxy.
55:05
I didn't do those things as a child who'd never ventured far
55:09
from my neighbourhood, never experienced much more
55:12
entertainment than going to a cinema or roller skating, rinked
55:15
drink, living off pocket money, going to school each day.
55:18
Then almost overnight I was catapulted into a very adult
55:21
world of all night parties, live music, drugs, sex, binge
55:26
drinking, all those little baby steps that take that you take
55:29
each day as you move through adolescence to build up your
55:32
confidence, your sense of self, your voice, your understanding
55:35
of relationships. I missed them all.
55:37
Drunk and stoned, I moved around the shadows of this adult world
55:40
where I didn't belong. I survived it, but my years of
55:43
teenage growth stopped. Or rather, never happened.
55:46
As they should. And as another example, Allison
55:48
Wood writes about how she was already isolated from a lot of
55:52
her peers and excluded from a lot of the people she went to
55:54
school with when she was that age.
55:58
And that's what made it easier for her teacher to groom her in
56:01
the 1st place. So while Sonia's story and
56:07
experience is very different to Kendra's and Alison's, the theme
56:11
throughout it or the thing that connects them all, is all of
56:14
them have been isolated from their peers.
56:16
And like, call me crazy, but hearing a 16 year old girl say
56:20
that she did isolated homeschooling the morning, would
56:23
do chores for her parents in the afternoon, and then spend the
56:25
evening with her husband is a little bit scary isn't it?
56:29
Or fiance at the time. I guess they all editing me here
56:34
because I can't believe I forgot to write the script.
56:35
For one of the most important posts that I found and I just I.
56:39
Completely forgot about it because I'm a silly goose, but
56:42
he or she. Put on a post saying point of
56:45
view. I think she misunderstands the
56:46
whole. Point of view trend.
56:47
But that's not the point. One of you, you got married at
56:49
17 and people online were saying you were groomed.
56:53
But what they don't know is he's never abused me.
56:56
He tells me he loves me every single day.
56:58
He works hard, we travel, we laugh, we're best friends.
57:01
We've been married almost 10 years and the love just keeps
57:04
getting better. No secrets, no control.
57:07
That's not grooming. That's what happens when God
57:09
writes your love story. And the caption for this is,
57:12
we've been married nearly 10 years.
57:14
I was 17, he was 23. That's when they got married.
57:17
They met when she was 15. Remember that the Internet calls
57:21
that grooming. Because it is.
57:23
I call it grace. He's never once abused me.
57:26
I'm. Sorry, but wait, an adult man
57:29
pursuing a 15? Year old girl is abuse.
57:32
That that is abuse, he tells me. How beautiful.
57:36
That I'm his dream girl. That's what grooming is.
57:39
He works hard, protects us, provides for us.
57:40
He's not controlling. I've never felt more free.
57:43
We laugh before. We have fun.
57:44
We're growing together in love, faith and family.
57:46
Don't let the. World define your story when God
57:48
is the one who wrote it. So again, this just summarises a
57:54
lot of what I think I was saying in this section about her not
57:56
being aware of how wrong it was and normalising grimly and
57:59
saying well it's just go through.
58:01
Which is so. Damn dangerous for other teenage
58:05
girls and children who might be reading this and seeing it, and
58:08
just other women in general. It's a misunderstanding of what
58:10
gruelling is and a misrepresentation of it in a
58:13
really dangerous. Way and I just.
58:15
I can't believe I didn't include it in the script.
58:17
Because I'm silly, I just. Yeah, I thought I should show it
58:20
you. The final post I want to touch
58:22
on is the one that we mentioned earlier in the beginning, the
58:24
point of view. You've been pregnant for roughly
58:26
1400 days out of 2557. And like I think I I said
58:31
earlier, this reminds me so much of Carissa Collins and I can't
58:34
help but be concerned for her health.
58:36
She first got pregnant at about 17 or 18 ish.
58:39
And at that age, pregnancy can be so dangerous because despite
58:44
what some men claim, that is not a woman's peak fertility.
58:48
A girl's body at that age is absolutely not developed enough
58:52
to have a safe pregnancy when you're that young.
58:54
Again, to quote Sonny's book. For those fond of evoking
58:58
biology in these discussions, the justification for many men's
59:01
longing for young female virgins is that a females youth is a
59:04
sign of high fertility. It's an argument that's been
59:06
used for decades. Unfortunately, however, when
59:08
we're talking about teenagers, it's simply untrue.
59:12
A woman's fertility peaks around her early to mid 20s.
59:15
When a girl gets her first period, she might not even be
59:17
fertile and she may remain infertile or with low fertility
59:21
for a year or two before her fertility slowly starts to
59:24
climb. So if a male were really
59:26
attracted to the most fertile partner, it would be a woman in
59:28
her early to mid 20s. Funnily enough, it's what
59:32
Isaac's age was at the time, not one in her teens.
59:36
Secondly, if we're talking about biological drives to procreate,
59:40
there's a lot more involved in reproduction than simply finding
59:42
a fertile heterosexual partner, especially when it comes to
59:45
offspring who require so much looking after.
59:48
To ensure the survival of your genes, you need to make sure not
59:53
just that you have offspring, but that your offspring survived
59:56
to maturity. Given how to face to raise
59:58
humans, the ideal reproductive partner will be someone not just
1:00:02
fertile, but also good at nurturing and providing.
1:00:05
Again, this rules out teenagers. She goes on to write that babies
1:00:11
born to teenage mothers are also at greater risk of preterm
1:00:14
birth, low birth weight, stillbirth and neonatal death.
1:00:19
The list of disadvantages continue.
1:00:21
And again, I want to be incredibly sensitive when
1:00:23
talking about Kendra's own loss of her first baby not long after
1:00:26
she was born. But I do think it's important to
1:00:29
point out how incredibly this, how incredibly common this is
1:00:32
amongst teenage mothers. And I can't even begin to
1:00:36
imagine how hard that must have been for someone so young to go
1:00:38
through that. And I have nothing but sympathy
1:00:42
and empathy and love for her for going through that.
1:00:47
I just think it's another example of why this situation
1:00:50
was so damn unfair on her. She shouldn't have had to go
1:00:53
through pregnancy at such a young age, and she shouldn't
1:00:56
have had to suffer from all the dangers that come with that.
1:00:59
You know what I mean? But yeah, I think this is where
1:01:06
I'm going to end this video. I know today it's been a really
1:01:10
heavy one and a deep one. And I, I use Kendra as an
1:01:14
example because she is a public figure talking about this.
1:01:18
But honestly, this could happen to anyone.
1:01:20
And I kind of the thing that I want you to take away from this
1:01:22
mostly is understanding what grooming is, how it can happen
1:01:26
to anyone, why it is so harmful and dangerous, how to spot the
1:01:30
signs. And if you do spot them, reach
1:01:34
out and help people so they don't have to go through this.
1:01:37
Yeah, I think that's that's pretty much everything for now.
1:01:41
But thank you so much for watching today.
1:01:42
Thank you so much to everyone who helps support my channel and
1:01:45
my work through Patreon and channel memberships and
1:01:48
everything like that. I could not do this work without
1:01:50
you because so often videos like this will be demonetized and
1:01:55
your help and support just helps keep a roof over my head, keeps
1:01:58
allowing me to spend time researching and making these
1:02:01
videos and talking about such important topics.
1:02:04
So I thank you all. I have nothing but love and
1:02:06
respect for you and I really, really damn appreciate it.
1:02:09
For everyone else who's just been watching, thank you so much
1:02:11
for your time. Please leave your comments
1:02:13
below. Try and be respectful and please
1:02:16
don't send any hate towards Kendra.
1:02:19
Yeah, and I think that's that's pretty much we've done for
1:02:21
today. Thank you so much for your time
1:02:23
and I'll see you again soon. Bye.