Transcription
[music] Last year, uh, honestly, it's been a year, just a couple weeks short of a year, I discovered that my partner was selling child pornography on the internet.
>> God, I turned him in.
>> All right, let's sit on that for a second. Husband, boyfriend.
>> It's complicated. Um, he was my first husband.
>> Okay.
>> And I divorced him. Um, we'd been together for about 3 years. Um, and I divorced him because he'd been cheating on me basically every second of it.
>> And I couldn't take it anymore, so I left him. And then even after the divorce, we were still involved and I needed to get away from that. So, I literally packed what I could into a couple of hockey bags, got on a plane, and moved 5,000 mi away.
>> How'd you find out?
>> Um, about the child support.
>> Yeah. [laughter] I had in our long history of on again off again over the course of more than 25 years um I had pretty much discovered that if he wasn't a full-blown narcissist he was real close and I had some situation in my life that made it so that I didn't really have anywhere to go and my family kind of dumped me off on him but He was, you know, the beginning stages again, right? Everything was all love and roses and everything's fantastic. But then about a year and a half in, things start kind of cooling down a little bit and I'm trying a little harder and I'm like, you know, just make it work until you can figure something out and you can go elsewhere. But things started to get worse. They started triangulating me with another individual. And I needed to know how much time I had. And so I did something I've never done before. And part of me kind of wishes I had never done it at all. But I went into his phone.
>> And when I was doing that, a couple of notifications popped up for messages on X. And I saw the preview for what the messages were and I was like, "What the is this?" And at that point in time is when I discovered the text message in that particular conversation. He was talking about having had a sexual relationship with one of his nieces.
>> God, he was asleep at the time, but I heard him like wrestling around and I was like, is he waking up? And so I turned everything off and shut it all down. And then I spent like a week or so going, okay, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? And finally, I decided what I was going to do was gather whatever proof I needed, send that proof off to both his sister, both of his brothers, and the woman that he was using as the third in this little triangle that he had created in his brain so that everyone was aware of the situation. And then I was just going to work on getting out as quickly as I could. But then about a week later is when I got an opportunity to get back into his phone. And then I when I went looking for that conversation, I couldn't find it. But what I did find were conversations in a lot of groups on X, on Reddit, on um Telegram, on Kit. All of them listed in groups under listed under consensual incest where he was in
>> Hold on. Take a breath. Take a breath. Take a breath. Take a breath. You're getting on a train yourself. You're heading on down track. Take a breath. Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> Listen to me. You're going right back to that moment when you're holding that phone and that moment's over and you're sitting with me right now. Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> You're good now. Okay.
>> Okay. [clears throat]
>> Exhale. You're good. [sighs]
>> Yeah. So essentially they were initially just conversations just where he was kind of encouraging people to act on impulses with family members whether younger or older until in one conversation the person asked do you have child porn that you would be willing to share with me and his response was I do but not here and not for free.
>> And at the time I was using my phone to record the screen of his phone as I was going through everything. Like I started on the his conversation with her to kind of [clears throat] prove that this was his phone, that I wasn't making it up,
>> and then kind of went through the rest of it. But once I got to that, I just kind of froze.
>> Yeah. and freaked out for a second. And I remember looking over at him and thinking, I could kill you right now and I would feel no regret.
>> And then I just shut down.
>> Did you call the police?
>> Yeah, actually that afternoon um I left to go to the grocery store and it was on a Sunday and I called the non-emergency number and I asked to make an appointment with a detective because I believe that I had evidence that my partner was selling child porn online and they asked me if I thought I was safe and I said I'm safe as long as he doesn't know I have this and they said then wait until you have time and just walk into the office. we will leave your information at the desk. Just walk in. They will have someone ready for you. And I said, "Okay." So the next day that he went to work, which was the following Tuesday, I as soon as he left, I got dressed and I immediately went to the police department.
>> Can I just stop right there and tell you I'm a dad with a nine-year-old little girl? And I want to say thank you. There is nothing on this earth more innocent than the soul of a child.
>> I agree.
>> And the idea of people destroying that on
>> purpose. I'm with you. And also, this is only allowed to continue the way it does because people won't report their boyfriends and their husbands and their sons. And you did. And I want to tell you, I'm proud of you. And I'm from the bottom of my heart. I'm grateful.
>> Thank you. It honestly, it floores me that there would be people who wouldn't.
>> I know. I know. But I'm not going to spend one ounce of energy on them right this second. I'm just going to spend a moment in gratitude to you. Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> And I'm getting the sense that's not even why you called. What's the What's the What's the thing beneath that thing?
>> Um Well, I mean, he died in jail 60 days later. He had stage four colon cancer and he didn't know. Well, I suspected he refused to go to see a doctor.
>> Doesn't matter,
>> right?
>> He's gone. He can't ever hurt anybody again. But I just feel dirty.
>> Yeah.
>> Like there's this darkness in me that every time somebody touches me,
>> it rubs off on them and they're carrying that evil that was mine. And I can't get past it. I am. It's not like I don't have two therapists. I do. one who specializes in EMDR and one who just does talk therapy and everybody tells me the same thing that I did the right thing that that's not the thing that's not the thing.
>> Can I tell you what I think the thing is?
>> What? [clears throat]
>> I'm going to say this as someone who is grateful for you. Okay.
>> Yeah. You were with this guy for 25 years? Is that right?
>> Pretty much off and on. I mean, we both married other people in the meantime. We some went 10 years without talking at one point in time. Just Yeah.
>> But there's the single greatest the single most profound loss of trust in this whole thing is you. You don't trust you.
>> Oh, no. I haven't trusted me for a long time. Because either you're asking yourself, how do you miss this? How did I go to bed? How did I remarry a guy like this? Or there was some inkling in your spirit for 25 years that this guy's not right. And either you saw this text thread and puzzle pieces started coming together and you wanted to vomit or you were so stunned that this happened underneath your nose that you wanted to vomit. Either way, the reason you feel gross and and is because you're untethered to yourself.
>> Yeah,
>> definitely feel that. the the the path forward is re-establishing trust with you. Not in trying to forget or unwind him. But the first person you have to forgive here is not him. It's you. You don't like you.
>> Not particularly you. And maybe you've made a whole bunch of mistakes in your life and you've had a whole bunch of things that you want to go back and solve and wish you could do over again. I want to tell you again as the father of a 9-year-old girl, you did right. Thank you.
>> I never doubted I did the right thing. Honestly, I had a moment because when I initially reached out to his sister and his third wife, the the other person involved in the triangle to let them know that he had been arrested, I did not initially admit that I was the one who had turned him in.
>> That's okay.
>> There's not a playbook.
>> And everyone was like super supportive. And then the minute his sister found out that I was the one who turned him in, she turned on me
>> like a sniper.
>> Good. She lost her vote in your life.
>> Oh yeah, I blocked her. I mean, the night he died, she messaged me on Facebook said, "He died at such and such a time. Karma will come." And I said, "It already did." And I blocked her.
>> It already did come. You know what you're getting now? Peace. It's not there yet, but it's coming. No, I mean I felt initially I was just relieved because I didn't have to be afraid that they would release him and he would kill me,
>> right?
>> But then it just became so much because nobody wanted to deal with everything else that he had left behind.
>> That's right.
>> Nobody wanted to deal with the mess. The news called me out so everyone knew. It took two months to find a job because nobody wanted to hire the girl who lived with the pedophile.
>> Of course, there's a there's a radius blast to this. Those girls that he abused, their lives are for ever altered. you, his family, his sister, his parents, everybody's life is different because they were touched by evil.
>> I know it's
>> And listen to me, you've packed up and moved 5,000 miles away before. And I'm not saying that's what you have to do. I'm saying you have proven to yourself in moments of desperation, in moments of great need that you can advocate for yourself. You have to believe you're worth advocating for again. And that's hard when you've been in multiple abusive marriages. When you've settled to be the girlfriend of your exx-husband and his wife, his third wife.
>> You've settled for all of these things and you've made choices that you look back and would never recommend 19-year-old you make. And yet here you are,
>> right?
>> Yeah. And so the question before you is not what happened, what did sister do, what did family do, what did employers do, none of that. None of that can you can affect here. The only you can affect is will you stand up today and love Molly enough to do the next right thing for her. Nobody else is going to.
>> Yeah,
>> that's it.
>> [sighs]
>> And you're going to have to grieve this deeply. I want you to pick up a copy of David Kesler's book, Finding Meaning. It's about losing somebody, but the person you lost here is you.
>> Yeah.
>> And how do I grieve this? And more importantly, who am I going to become now? You want to learn how to reestablish trust in little micro ways? I want you to start recklessly tipping people when you go out to eat.
>> Comically so.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> Once a week, I want you to get a trash sack and some rubber gloves and I want you to walk go for an hour walk by yourself or 30 minute walk, whatever your health will allow and I want you to pick up trash in your neighborhood. I want you to knock on the door of a local church and say, "I'm not well. Can I come in?
>> Oh, I did that right after he was arrested.
>> Okay. And some churches will say, "We don't want you here." And then you dust your sandals off and you go to the next one. Here's what I'm saying. You can't sit at home and just look out at the world and say, "Why aren't they look what they're doing?" You have to say, "I'm going to become a person that I can trust." And that means you have to have a backlog of trustworthy actions. And you don't trust yourself because of the actions you've taken in the past. So, we're going to create a path forward. I'm a person that gets up and doesn't look at their phone right away. I have a cup of coffee and I watch the sunrise. I'm a person who goes and gets a dumb little dog or a great little dog and I'm going to take care of it.
>> I got a beautiful kitty.
>> If If you're Oh god, you didn't have to say you're a cat person. That changes the whole thing. Just kidding. That's [laughter] great.
>> I am I am an animal person. There you go. There you go. But my current space is relatively small having a dog.
>> I'm just messing with me. But like I'm going to take care of this thing.
>> I got the kitty by accident. But she's the sweetest thing ever and she's definitely helped.
>> There's no such thing as a sweet cat, but I'm going to let that one go. I'm just kidding. Totally kidding. [laughter] Totally kidding. Just trying to start some internet drama. But here's the thing. I'm going to create a series of actions. Very small steps. Once a day, I am going to write down three things I'm grateful for. Once a day, I'm going to find somebody at work, at the restaurant that I go to, the little diner I frequent, the trash guys that drive by. I'm going to write a thank you note to somebody. I'm going to hand it to them maybe once a week. I'm going to begin doing a whole bunch of little bitty things to begin to prove to myself that I am trustworthy to myself. And you're going to wake up and it's going to feel like a chore. I don't want to do this stuff. And you're going to wake up in six months and have six months of proof that I'm the kind of woman who takes care of the waitress. I'm the kind of woman that gets up and takes care of this cat. I'm the kind of woman who sees people and I say, "Thank you. I'm the kind of woman who's willing to blow up my whole life to protect innocent children." And that's how people change. That's how they begin to trust themselves. The person you got to forgive here is you. And for all the mistakes you've made, you did a really big good and great thing. You are not tainted by his shadow. Although it is cast long over you in three months and five months that we might talk about, are we going to move out of this community and get a fresh start somewhere? Or maybe the smoke clears on this thing. And if people want to blow you off, they want to talk crap about you, that's they get to carry those bricks. I'm not carrying them for you're not carrying them for them. You did the next right to carry hard thing. And it cost you everything. Cost you your family, your friends, your partner. Cost you everything. And you did the right thing. I'm going to ask you, don't give up on Molly. reinvest in Molly because Molly's the kind of person that keeps kids like my kids safe. Thank you for being you. Today's day one of building, building trust. Thank you, Molly.