(00:00:04.577):
I called the police on my abuser after he strangled me in front of our children.

(00:00:09.239):
And the first thing that happened is that they arrested me.

(00:00:12.740):
Hi, I'm Zawn Villines and this is the Liberating Motherhood Podcast.

(00:00:16.761):
This short haunting vignette hints at our subject today,

(00:00:20.263):
which is how the carceral system is weaponized against abuse survivors and

(00:00:23.564):
especially against women who defend themselves against abuse.

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The vignette reflects what the data tell us.

(00:00:29.809):
Several studies have shown that when regions pass mandatory arrest policies

(00:00:33.671):
requiring someone to be arrested during a domestic violence call,

(00:00:37.252):
the number of victims arrested skyrockets.

(00:00:40.494):
Before we get into today's topic, a few administrative updates.

(00:00:43.955):
First, storytelling is critical to the success of this podcast.

(00:00:48.257):
If you would like to share a story of abuse,

(00:00:50.138):
misogyny,

(00:00:51.038):
motherhood,

(00:00:51.779):
or anything else you think might be relevant to the podcast,

(00:00:54.952):
You can share a vignette that might be read in a future episode.

(00:00:58.556):
To learn how to do so and to access a wide range of other podcast resources and

(00:01:02.361):
information about my work,

(00:01:03.963):
visit liberatingmotherhood.org.

(00:01:06.926):
Second,

(00:01:07.707):
as anyone existing as a woman on social media or frankly in the world knows,

(00:01:12.533):
women are under attack online.

(00:01:14.545):
Social media platforms ban feminist creators from merely existing,

(00:01:18.147):
fail to promote our work,

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and make it difficult to build or sustain large audiences.

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We must push back by aggressively staying where we are not wanted,

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steadily colonizing these spaces for feminist and anti-racist work.

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One of the most important ways we can do this is by giving social media algorithms

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the engagement they want.

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Engaging with feminist content.

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You can help this podcast succeed and continue to exist by leaving a positive review online,

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You can find all the books I mention on the podcast at the Liberating Motherhood bookshop page.

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bookshop.org slash shop slash liberating motherhood as always however you found me

(00:02:23.535):
thanks for being here I am so excited to welcome today's guest Justine Vanderloon

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who will be talking about her new book unreasonable women three stories of violence

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imprisonment and extraordinary survival Justine thank you so much for being here it

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is an honor

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Well, it's wonderful having you.

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Before we get started, I want to read your bio so listeners know a little bit more about you.

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Justine Vanderloon is a journalist,

(00:02:47.727):
author,

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and creator,

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and host of the acclaimed podcast Believe Her.

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Her work has appeared in the New York Times,

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the New York Review of Books,

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New York Magazine,

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Harper's Magazine,

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and The Guardian.

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She has received fellowships from New America,

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the Emerson Collective,

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and Penn America,

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and more.

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Justine brings both deep investigative reporting and a thoughtful,

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engaging interview presence to conversations about violence,

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justice,

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and survival.

(00:03:13.246):
So I'm so glad you're here, and I finished your book last night, and I really loved it.

(00:03:18.108):
It's truly masterful storytelling, which is hard to come by.

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I'm hoping we could start with an overview of how you came to write the book and

(00:03:27.213):
also what the book is about.

(00:03:29.855):
Well, thank you for reading it.

(00:03:30.996):
You're one of my very earliest readers, so that's great that you had that reaction.

(00:03:38.145):
The way I came to it,

(00:03:39.867):
okay,

(00:03:42.330):
quite quickly,

(00:03:43.452):
one part that I haven't sort of mentioned when I've been talking about this book is

(00:03:46.335):
that I actually read a report.

(00:03:49.122):
that came out, I believe it was around 2015, 2016, called the Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline.

(00:03:55.765):
It was put out by Georgetown University and an organization called Human Rights for Girls.

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And it looked at the ways in which girls in the juvenile justice system have often

(00:04:08.050):
been severely sexually abused before they are funneled into the system.

(00:04:12.943):
and I thought that connection was really fascinating I was interested in reporting

(00:04:18.344):
on it but it's really hard to report on children and also children who are in a

(00:04:25.946):
system so they don't have necessarily an advocate a mother a guardian that you can

(00:04:30.327):
contact so that's where I kind of like got this interest in this larger topic and

(00:04:37.208):
then I came to learn about criminalized survival and that's what the book is really

(00:04:41.369):
about it's about

(00:04:43.874):
To quickly define it,

(00:04:46.235):
criminalized survival is a phenomenon in which people,

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and it's really usually girls and women,

(00:04:53.037):
act in ways to protect themselves or a loved one from abuse or assault and are

(00:04:59.379):
subsequently arrested,

(00:05:03.140):
prosecuted,

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incarcerated for the actions they took to defend themselves or to protect

(00:05:08.202):
themselves.

(00:05:09.122):
So I was interested in that topic generally

(00:05:12.128):
and there was a case,

(00:05:13.349):
I don't know if you've heard about this case,

(00:05:14.749):
a lot of people have by now,

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that was happening in Poughkeepsie,

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New York at the time and was being,

(00:05:20.913):
the group Survived and Punished,

(00:05:24.535):
which is a group that works with criminalized survivors,

(00:05:26.756):
was not advocating for this.

(00:05:28.497):
They didn't have like a campaign for this particular case,

(00:05:31.338):
but they sort of mentioned it and I heard about it.

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It was about a woman named Nikki Adamondo who was from Poughkeepsie, New York and

(00:05:41.093):
was at the time that I came upon the case in 2018 in legal proceedings.

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She had killed her extremely abusive partner,

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that's what she said,

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in self-defense in 2017,

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I believe.

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And there was a lot of evidence of that.

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It was wending its way through the court.

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The county,

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the district attorney's office,

(00:06:04.425):
was prosecuting her for basically cold-blooded murder,

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going extremely hard on her.

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And I went up and I met some people that knew her, her sister, her friend.

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It couldn't be Nikki herself.

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I mean, I met, I sort of saw her in the distance.

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She was on house arrest.

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She couldn't talk to media.

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And the story that I was being told by the people who knew her and the story that I

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was beginning to report out had really nothing to do with what happened in the

(00:06:32.863):
courtroom.

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And I'm happy to talk about more, you know, that case more.

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But basically seeing how

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There were two different narratives going on here and seeing how the narrative that

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I believed,

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and not only that I believed,

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but that I was able to back up in my reporting,

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had absolutely really nothing to do with the narrative that the district attorney

(00:06:53.801):
was spinning in court,

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calling this woman a master manipulator,

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you know,

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saying she planned this,

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she was a killer.

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And then Nikki got 19 years to life.

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And that really got me started on this whole larger project of trying to understand

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how common is this?

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Are our prisons filled with NICIs?

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What is really going on here in our legal system when it comes to women?

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Yeah, it's really scary.

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So I had a piece a couple of years ago I wrote that quickly became one of my most

(00:07:26.405):
popular pieces.

(00:07:27.885):
And I called it Violence Against Women is Legal, We Just Pretend Otherwise.

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And

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This piece was about how no matter what you think women need to do to document

(00:07:39.580):
their abuse and to get help for it,

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in most cases or in many cases,

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nothing they do works.

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They call the police over and over again.

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They seek restraining orders.

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Their partner's molesting their children.

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They get CPS involved.

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No matter what,

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it seems like they're always blamed and there's always some area that they come up

(00:07:59.790):
short where they're not the perfect victim.

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In light of that,

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it's kind of easy to see how women get packed into a corner where they really feel

(00:08:08.862):
like they have no choice.

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And I think that that's something that people who have not been in an abusive

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relationship or not known someone who is in an abusive relationship really may not

(00:08:18.589):
realize is that there isn't support for women who are being abused and leaving.

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And there's not

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An Easily Accessible Just Family Court And The Fact That Your Partner Abuses Your

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Children Does Not Mean They'll Be Protected From Him So You Know I Think You're

(00:08:36.314):
Kind Of Addressing What Happens On The Other Side Of This So I Would Like To Hear

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More About This Case And Tell Listeners More About This Case Because I Did Follow

(00:08:44.799):
It And It's It's Enraging But It's Also Interesting

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You know,

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when you said violence against women is legal,

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that just made me think of a quote I had been looking at recently by Catherine

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McKinnon.

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And that quote is,

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the way the crime of rape is defined and what we have to prove to be believed do

(00:09:03.419):
not fit our experience of the injury.

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The reality is that not only married women,

(00:09:07.881):
but also women men know or live with can be raped at will.

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Men know this.

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Rape is not illegal.

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It is regulated.

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That's from like the 1970s.

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But

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that really made me think about it the way yes rape is not illegal it's regulated

(00:09:22.808):
violence against women is not illegal it's regulated and so Nikki's case yes

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Nikki's case I ended up writing an article called The Evidence Against Her and then

(00:09:38.298):
doing a podcast on this case but basically what happened here is that she was a

(00:09:44.903):
young mom

(00:09:46.867):
She had been sexually assaulted by a neighbor when she was five and that had never

(00:09:52.271):
really been dealt with or acknowledged or treated.

(00:09:55.653):
And so even though she had the sort of outer trappings of being in this middle

(00:09:59.896):
class community,

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you know,

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good grades,

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preschool teacher,

(00:10:06.240):
gymnastics coach,

(00:10:07.261):
she was like a pretty wholesome person.

(00:10:08.762):
In fact, she did not know who Prince was.

(00:10:10.563):
I recently learned, I'm like, you didn't know who Prince was?

(00:10:13.325):
She was just like really living in this sort of,

(00:10:16.548):
quite wholesome existence and but she had this trauma that I think was following

(00:10:25.878):
her and was you know her ability to navigate for many reasons healthy relationship

(00:10:33.305):
was compromised so when she was and she also I you know she she hated sex she had

(00:10:40.378):
so traumatized by what happened to her that that had really been taken from her the

(00:10:45.281):
ability to enjoy it but of course she understood that it was quote unquote required

(00:10:50.104):
as an adult so that was something she had trouble navigating so she met this guy I

(00:10:54.867):
believe she was 19 I think he was 20,

(00:10:56.648):
21 his name was Chris and he seemed really gentle to her they were friends and she

(00:11:05.954):
was grateful that he allowed that he was patient

(00:11:09.725):
So they got in a relationship and you know it was complicated the way that these

(00:11:15.868):
abusive relationships are obviously didn't start like she once said to me yeah it

(00:11:19.850):
started with him burning me with metal spoons I probably wouldn't have stayed but

(00:11:24.252):
it started normally and then it really unraveled and by the time that it had gotten

(00:11:34.778):
extreme they had a child

(00:11:37.477):
And Nikki was a total, like all her life she dreamed of being a mom.

(00:11:41.178):
She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

(00:11:42.619):
She wanted to be able to be with her kids.

(00:11:44.039):
That was her whole, I mean, I'm not like that.

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You know, that's not what I ever wanted.

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And that she just was, that was her experience of being a woman and mothers.

(00:11:56.583):
That's what she wanted in her life.

(00:11:58.203):
And she just wanted to be able to stay home with them and be with them every second of the day.

(00:12:02.360):
So six weeks after she gave birth to her first child,

(00:12:06.442):
her son,

(00:12:09.124):
when she told her partner that she was pregnant,

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he said,

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okay,

(00:12:11.665):
it's all going to be different.

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Just move in with me.

(00:12:13.466):
I'm not going to hurt you anymore.

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And he kept that promise for the length of the pregnancy.

(00:12:18.168):
So she was kind of lulled into thinking, okay, it's going to be better.

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And when...

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She gave birth,

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the doctor said,

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as they say to us all,

(00:12:27.499):
no sex for six weeks postpartum,

(00:12:29.603):
but as many people know,

(00:12:31.265):
like very few people are ready six weeks later.

(00:12:34.070):
And so at the six week mark, he said to her, all right.

(00:12:39.252):
um I want to have sex now and she said no and that you know things just he he

(00:12:43.835):
slammed her against a door put her on the floor he raped her and thus began like

(00:12:47.657):
the next um series the next years of abuse so he abused her in a lot of really

(00:12:53.140):
weird ways like he I think that he was probably addicted to internet like to to

(00:12:57.583):
sort of torture porn and so he started putting her online bound with um

(00:13:05.769):
4 Hours of Toys and Torture at Night captions and he started abusing her physically

(00:13:11.775):
she had a second child she was pregnant when she was trying to think of leaving so

(00:13:16.981):
one of the reasons that she couldn't get out of this relationship was A,

(00:13:21.105):
she didn't feel she had anywhere to go but B,

(00:13:24.228):
she was really concerned that he would take

(00:13:27.407):
These Images That He Had Of Her And Paint Her As A Quote Slot You Know Say Hey She

(00:13:36.173):
Wanted It She's A Bad Mom She Was Afraid Of Like You Know As You Were Saying Family

(00:13:40.176):
Court She Was Really Afraid Of Losing Her Children So She Was In This Relationship

(00:13:45.840):
Also People Weren't Noticing The Violence Against Her But She Had Started

(00:13:49.182):
Documenting The Violence Bit By Bit Um

(00:13:53.294):
with an eye to one day getting out and being able to have some evidence to show

(00:13:59.339):
that she had been abused and that she wasn't this like you know I mean I would

(00:14:07.206):
never use the word slut but that is what she was scared of she was so scared of

(00:14:11.850):
that or an unfit mother so she was anyways so she had all of this evidence

(00:14:18.329):
Everybody in town kind of saw what was going,

(00:14:20.490):
sort of saw,

(00:14:21.171):
looked away,

(00:14:21.751):
et cetera,

(00:14:22.031):
what was going on.

(00:14:23.633):
She was talking to one trusted friend and they were trying to get her out of this,

(00:14:32.038):
this relationship is getting worse and worse.

(00:14:34.520):
When somebody made a CPS call that said this,

(00:14:40.363):
we're worried about the children in the house,

(00:14:42.445):
we're worried that they are seeing domestic violence.

(00:14:47.260):
The CPS call, I think, made him very frightened that he was going to be exposed.

(00:14:54.521):
So that night,

(00:14:55.482):
after they tried to deny everything,

(00:14:57.062):
after they smoothed over everything with CPS,

(00:15:01.623):
he basically got out his gun,

(00:15:04.383):
he cleaned it,

(00:15:06.224):
it's a hazy series of events,

(00:15:09.304):
but essentially after the kids were asleep,

(00:15:10.964):
he raped her,

(00:15:12.185):
he took out the gun,

(00:15:13.025):
they struggled over the gun,

(00:15:14.908):
And when he said to her She had the gun in her hand It was his registered gun And

(00:15:20.595):
when he said to her I think he said You're going to give that gun to me You're not

(00:15:27.422):
going to do anything

(00:15:29.029):
That's how he felt.

(00:15:29.949):
He controlled her.

(00:15:30.630):
That's the degree.

(00:15:31.330):
He said,

(00:15:31.510):
you're going to give the gun to me and I'm going to shoot you and I'm going to

(00:15:33.591):
shoot myself and then your kids will have no one.

(00:15:36.032):
And that is when she stepped forward,

(00:15:38.833):
shot him in the head point blank,

(00:15:40.494):
grabbed her sleeping children ages two and five and ran.

(00:15:43.675):
She said it was self-defense immediately.

(00:15:46.056):
Immediately the state didn't believe her and thus began a multi-year prosecution of

(00:15:52.819):
Nikki Adamondo and her incarceration.

(00:15:58.845):
Everything about this story just kind of follows the pattern.

(00:16:02.527):
Abusers always have something they weaponize.

(00:16:04.447):
They always have something they use to control you.

(00:16:06.448):
It's usually the kids.

(00:16:07.868):
It's just like textbook.

(00:16:09.169):
And it's so upsetting that something can have all of the flags of textbook abuse.

(00:16:14.650):
And then the woman is still dismissed as either crazy or evil.

(00:16:18.392):
And usually both.

(00:16:21.006):
So I want to get to the stories in your book,

(00:16:24.889):
but before I get to the three women who you covered,

(00:16:29.252):
I want to talk about how you narrowed the stories down because one of the things I

(00:16:33.796):
found most fascinating was how many women you surveyed in advance of the book.

(00:16:39.500):
Can you talk a little bit about that and about what you learned and saw through those surveys?

(00:16:44.404):
Yeah.

(00:16:45.565):
Yeah so after I saw what happened with Nikki I saw her get 19 years to life I

(00:16:49.448):
reported that story and I knew that it was just one of like a totally upside down

(00:16:53.571):
world I thought okay you know she is white she is small she's conventionally

(00:16:59.095):
feminine she has obeyed the rules of society as to how you're supposed to perform

(00:17:05.739):
being a woman um and yet and she's what like an hour and a half from Manhattan um

(00:17:14.056):
If this is happening to her, all she did, she didn't die, though.

(00:17:19.180):
That's how she erred in being a victim, right?

(00:17:20.962):
She fought back.

(00:17:22.203):
So I just thought, what happens?

(00:17:24.745):
This is weird.

(00:17:25.606):
Is this happening all the time if it's happening to her?

(00:17:28.888):
I started calling people and everyone who in this space,

(00:17:32.111):
who had been working in this space forever,

(00:17:33.692):
said,

(00:17:33.893):
yeah,

(00:17:34.213):
of course.

(00:17:35.274):
Our prisons are full of women like this.

(00:17:36.755):
This is who we lock away.

(00:17:40.578):
And then I said, okay, so...

(00:17:43.503):
Where's the data?

(00:17:44.223):
Like, how do we know?

(00:17:45.364):
How can I just prove it?

(00:17:46.224):
I'm going to write about it, but I just want, you know, send me to the data.

(00:17:48.645):
And they said like, no, there's no data really on this.

(00:17:51.046):
There's data on how women,

(00:17:53.447):
we know that like up to 94% of women in prison have been abused before prison,

(00:17:57.989):
but there's no data on

(00:18:00.165):
Women who've been imprisoned because they were abused.

(00:18:04.568):
And that's what I wanted to know.

(00:18:05.709):
But of course,

(00:18:06.429):
as with Nikki,

(00:18:07.049):
like if you looked at Nikki after,

(00:18:09.131):
you know,

(00:18:09.671):
if you hadn't followed that whole case and you looked at her in a database,

(00:18:13.093):
like the state database,

(00:18:14.234):
you would just see a felony murder conviction,

(00:18:17.216):
an inmate number and a mugshot.

(00:18:19.557):
And you would just think, oh, I guess that's that, you know.

(00:18:22.619):
So of course, it's not recorded anywhere, the actual context or claims of self-defense or

(00:18:28.731):
the life of these women.

(00:18:32.614):
And I was talking to an attorney in Illinois named Rachel White Domain who works on

(00:18:37.818):
these topics.

(00:18:39.119):
I said, how do I figure this out?

(00:18:40.480):
This is happening everywhere.

(00:18:41.881):
She said, well, you know, you could just ask them.

(00:18:43.942):
I was like, oh, that sounds great.

(00:18:46.805):
I could just ask them, sure.

(00:18:49.166):
How would I do that?

(00:18:50.182):
She said, well, you just get their names and their mailing addresses from the state.

(00:18:53.884):
You can make requests and then just write them.

(00:18:57.526):
So at the time, it seemed reasonable, reasonable.

(00:19:03.689):
In retrospect, this was an immense undertaking.

(00:19:08.031):
I didn't know it at the time.

(00:19:09.272):
Like, I just really wanted the numbers.

(00:19:10.753):
I really wanted the numbers.

(00:19:12.301):
A friend of mine who was a Yale political science professor who had helped me with

(00:19:16.786):
some immigration articles I'd written with some data.

(00:19:19.609):
I said to her, hey, Tanya, could you help me make a little survey to assess this?

(00:19:24.535):
And I went over to her apartment.

(00:19:26.417):
It was a real grassroots effort.

(00:19:28.479):
And we sat there for a day and we made the 16...

(00:19:31.638):
Question Survey that was very broad because we didn't want to prime people.

(00:19:35.780):
We didn't want to say, hey, are you a criminalized survivor?

(00:19:38.621):
Hey, did you get domestically abused?

(00:19:39.981):
Just because that can suggest to people like what I'm looking for.

(00:19:44.103):
And particularly when we know this is a population of people that is going to be

(00:19:47.965):
subject to so much skepticism already,

(00:19:50.706):
just didn't want to prime.

(00:19:52.466):
So I never mentioned abuse.

(00:19:53.907):
I was just asking,

(00:19:54.987):
can you tell me like about your life,

(00:19:56.588):
about the crime of conviction,

(00:19:58.089):
a little bit about your relationship with the person that you're convicted of

(00:20:00.990):
killing?

(00:20:01.932):
Why do you think that you're in prison?

(00:20:03.433):
Those kinds of open-ended questions.

(00:20:05.894):
And I ended up sending it to 10,000 women in prisons across America.

(00:20:10.597):
And I ended up getting 1,000 responses,

(00:20:13.799):
which I thread throughout the book and I use the data that I pulled.

(00:20:17.441):
But from those responses,

(00:20:18.862):
I also identified three remarkable survivors and then deeply reported on their

(00:20:26.667):
cases to kind of tell the larger story of criminalized survival through these

(00:20:31.148):
Deeply Personal Stories of Three Women Tanisha Williams of Michigan TC Brooks of

(00:20:36.810):
California and Gemma Heffernan of Missouri Yeah so let's okay I want to talk about

(00:20:46.394):
the individual women whose stories you told and I I know you probably want to hold

(00:20:52.417):
some back because like we want listeners to actually buy the book so please buy the

(00:20:57.139):
book um

(00:20:58.871):
It's told like a novel, but not in a sensationalistic or disrespectful way.

(00:21:04.633):
And I feel like that's a challenging line to walk where you have to make their

(00:21:10.616):
stories compelling without making them into caricatures.

(00:21:13.177):
So you just do that really well.

(00:21:15.578):
Can you tell us a little bit about each of the three women's stories and how they

(00:21:20.460):
found themselves where they ended up?

(00:21:23.495):
I appreciate you saying that,

(00:21:24.976):
that it reads like a novel,

(00:21:25.856):
because I was very aware that the material is like so intense and hard.

(00:21:31.858):
And there's so much like trauma and drama going on that I was really conscious that

(00:21:39.080):
I didn't want to make it an Eat Your Vegetables book.

(00:21:41.201):
I just thought,

(00:21:41.761):
let me at least give the reader that propulsive quality so you can,

(00:21:47.363):
so that,

(00:21:47.924):
you know,

(00:21:48.144):
there's like a

(00:21:49.742):
A Level Of You Can Move Through This I Wanted I Pared Down A Lot But The Question

(00:21:56.144):
Is To Tell Me About To Tell You About Each Woman Yeah And Before You Do I Say This

(00:22:01.486):
Because Like You Know As A Reader I Think This Feedback Is Helpful So There's This

(00:22:06.468):
Really Intense Quality To The Stories Where It Does Have That Propulsive Quality

(00:22:11.850):
And It Does Read Like A Novel Again In Like A Respectful Not Kind Of Soap Opera-y

(00:22:16.792):
Way Which I Think You Know It Could Have Gone That Way

(00:22:19.655):
and then it just it sort of ends where things are different for you but they're

(00:22:26.177):
still kind of found where you found them and there's this you want something to

(00:22:33.379):
have happened you want some big dramatic ending you want everything to be reversed

(00:22:38.380):
and that's not like really how it goes and so you kind of walk away from the book

(00:22:43.741):
with this intense weight of oh wow this is

(00:22:47.405):
It's read like a novel, but this is real and there are no loose ends being neatly tied up.

(00:22:53.632):
If only there were, right?

(00:22:55.274):
Can we get it tied up?

(00:22:56.695):
But there is a great deal of hope at the end, I think, in several different ways.

(00:23:03.823):
But there is no happy ending.

(00:23:05.576):
There's a, you know, there is some happy ending for some people.

(00:23:08.637):
I'm not going to say there is no happy ending,

(00:23:10.197):
but like the large scale issue is certainly not anywhere near solved.

(00:23:13.758):
Yeah.

(00:23:14.118):
We're just like, I think as readers, we walk away from it with a like mandate to do something.

(00:23:19.900):
I think it really pushes that.

(00:23:22.180):
That would be great.

(00:23:23.141):
That would be amazing.

(00:23:25.021):
I hope so.

(00:23:25.561):
I mean, it's online.

(00:23:26.461):
I get this feedback,

(00:23:27.482):
which I wasn't,

(00:23:28.102):
you know,

(00:23:28.462):
I'm a newbie to social media,

(00:23:30.262):
but if there's a lot of feedback of people who want to

(00:23:33.400):
who do leave wanting to do something, who want to help.

(00:23:37.043):
So yeah, so thank you.

(00:23:39.625):
If you want me to tell you a little bit about each woman, I'm happy to.

(00:23:42.527):
I would love for you to.

(00:23:43.768):
Please do that.

(00:23:45.169):
So I would say that kind of the first woman that I report on and the woman that I

(00:23:49.553):
think maybe is weighted most heavily in the book is a woman named Tanisha Williams

(00:23:55.697):
from Saginaw,

(00:23:56.498):
Michigan.

(00:23:58.039):
And, you know, her story is

(00:24:00.854):
Really Deeply Reported In The Book I Went To Saginaw I Met Her In Prison We Talked

(00:24:06.919):
So Much Like On Maybe Thousands Of Hours I Don't Even Know Hundreds For Sure And I

(00:24:11.963):
Got All Of Her Documents But Her Story Is It's A Wild Story She The Reason I Was

(00:24:21.811):
Interested In Her Is Like I Remember Getting Her Letter Early On In The Process It

(00:24:25.274):
Was Typewritten She'd Written On This Typewriter That I Later Learned Was Like A

(00:24:29.117):
Prison Typewriter So

(00:24:30.838):
It's all clear so that you can't put contraband in it.

(00:24:34.402):
So I have this image of her with this giant Russian or I don't know if it was

(00:24:38.566):
manufactured there,

(00:24:39.366):
but I feel like maybe she told me that.

(00:24:40.828):
But this giant sort of clear typewriter that's communal that she lugged to her cell to write me.

(00:24:46.213):
Interestingly, also, I had sent this letter out to all the women in her facility in Michigan.

(00:24:52.100):
And I know I sent it to her, but it never got to her.

(00:24:54.321):
She never got the letter.

(00:24:55.621):
Because in prisons, things get trashed.

(00:24:57.462):
They don't make it to people.

(00:24:58.562):
It's very common that stuff just gets lost.

(00:25:01.803):
But somebody else down the hall had gotten the letter because they also had a

(00:25:06.065):
murder conviction and they didn't want to answer it.

(00:25:08.666):
They just weren't interested.

(00:25:10.514):
and she said give me that letter you know I want to answer so it was a lot really

(00:25:14.796):
like fortuitous all of that hers is trashed but someone mentions it and she takes

(00:25:18.879):
it so she fed it into the typewriter and she wrote me this letter and she just said

(00:25:25.583):
basically that she had taken part in a crime but she had only done it while a gun

(00:25:29.685):
hung over her and that she was essentially forced to

(00:25:36.778):
Deal With The Aftermath Of This Man's Attack On Another Man And That She Cried And

(00:25:42.763):
Whispered I'm Sorry As She Basically Taped Up This Man While A Gun Was Being

(00:25:48.508):
Pointed At Her And Then She Had Come Forward And Helped The State Make That Case

(00:25:53.932):
And She Was Rewarded With 20 To 40 Years In A Maximum Security Facility In Michigan

(00:26:01.858):
So I Was Just Like That's A Wild

(00:26:05.952):
Story and got in touch with her right away she called because Tanisha is like the

(00:26:09.855):
most enthusiastic open sort of I wouldn't even say bubbly person I'm always I'm

(00:26:14.259):
always the person in our relationship who's like more sedate and she's like calling

(00:26:18.001):
from a prison and she's like yeah like this is gonna be amazing so so she so her

(00:26:25.107):
you know her story is basically of

(00:26:28.524):
Total State Failure For Both Her And Her Mother Growing Up In Poverty She Was

(00:26:36.347):
Sexually Abused Multiple Times Like Almost Every Man That Came Across This Child

(00:26:42.450):
And Then Young Woman Violated Her Or Hurt Her In Some Way And Ultimately When She

(00:26:51.294):
Was 19 Years Old She

(00:26:55.383):
was she didn't have a home because she left from her boyfriend's mom's home and she

(00:27:02.005):
was basically selling drugs not doing them selling them and she got sick she didn't

(00:27:09.868):
want to ask people to crash she didn't have enough money for a motel and she found

(00:27:13.489):
a car in a field and decided to sleep there and that was not great and it was a

(00:27:19.471):
summer and she thought I can't do this in winter it's a Michigan winter so she met

(00:27:23.213):
a guy in a bar

(00:27:25.082):
And he said,

(00:27:25.962):
hey,

(00:27:26.143):
I'm just getting divorced and I have a free room,

(00:27:28.984):
do you want to be roommates?

(00:27:30.925):
So she, sure, yeah, like, I mean, what was her choice, sleeping in a car or this?

(00:27:37.768):
This seemed like a great option.

(00:27:39.569):
Got back into being a roommate,

(00:27:40.949):
she was a sex worker and obviously that's not easy when you're not housed,

(00:27:44.471):
so she really was proud of that work because she felt,

(00:27:47.012):
I'm not hurting anybody and I'm making an honest day's wage.

(00:27:51.117):
So she went back, was building back her business.

(00:27:53.819):
But this guy that she was living with didn't like her getting successful.

(00:27:57.683):
He wanted to own part of her.

(00:27:59.684):
He wasn't with her.

(00:28:00.345):
They weren't together.

(00:28:01.185):
He just wanted to own her and take what she had.

(00:28:06.930):
And so he really started abusing her really quickly.

(00:28:10.633):
But of course, her option was a car.

(00:28:12.735):
So she was trying to get her life together and find a way to get out safely,

(00:28:17.039):
but also to have somewhere to land.

(00:28:19.382):
And when she was in the midst of that,

(00:28:21.843):
in that apartment one night,

(00:28:23.204):
he attacked another man for reasons like no one's ever really figured out.

(00:28:27.306):
She was literally just there.

(00:28:28.667):
She wasn't even in the room when it happened.

(00:28:30.428):
She came out.

(00:28:32.049):
She screamed at the top of her lungs.

(00:28:34.370):
He pushed her against a wall.

(00:28:35.771):
He put a hand to her neck so hard that she felt her windpipe would crack.

(00:28:39.333):
He put a gun to her cheek so hard that she thought the bone might break.

(00:28:43.595):
And he was about to kill her too.

(00:28:46.177):
I have talked to him and he says, yeah, like,

(00:28:49.596):
Maybe you know he said he doesn't really remember he's in prison as well now he

(00:28:53.438):
said but I you know the guy that I was then would have done that and he absolutely

(00:28:56.900):
says he forced her and so he basically forced her under threat to take part in the

(00:29:03.544):
aftermath of what he'd done and she did then she came forward years later to help

(00:29:08.167):
the police because she felt like

(00:29:11.402):
How can I leave this man,

(00:29:13.003):
you know,

(00:29:13.284):
the victim's mother without knowing what happened to her son?

(00:29:17.407):
And from there,

(00:29:18.808):
the state that had been absent all of her life and had no resources to offer her

(00:29:24.733):
turned around with great vigor and competence and put her away.

(00:29:30.637):
That is a word and a sermon right there about the state refusing to help her and

(00:29:35.922):
then immediately jumping in to put her in prison.

(00:29:39.882):
And like when I was reading her story,

(00:29:42.643):
the thing that stood out to me is she got pregnant for the first time via statutory

(00:29:47.645):
rape at like 14,

(00:29:49.266):
13?

(00:29:50.266):
One of those.

(00:29:52.267):
She had the baby at 14.

(00:29:53.407):
She had the baby at 14.

(00:29:54.307):
Okay.

(00:29:54.748):
And then another one at 17.

(00:29:57.329):
And like you said, it was just the story of horrible men.

(00:30:01.510):
And so I have to imagine to her...

(00:30:04.231):
When she first encountered this guy who offered to be her roommate,

(00:30:07.474):
like here's a guy just being nice to her.

(00:30:09.956):
Like he must have seemed like a saint after everything that she had been through.

(00:30:14.981):
And so of course she just gets roped in.

(00:30:18.344):
I'm not even sure he seemed like a saint.

(00:30:20.466):
Or just like, I don't know.

(00:30:21.467):
I think he seemed like her only option.

(00:30:23.869):
Yeah.

(00:30:24.269):
And of course they met in a club.

(00:30:25.831):
It was like a cocktail club.

(00:30:27.032):
And he was like, you know, she remembered he was dressed all fresh and looking good.

(00:30:31.255):
And he had all this money and she was,

(00:30:33.176):
you know,

(00:30:33.536):
he was struggling with all these like mental health issues at the time.

(00:30:37.338):
Like he's in prison now and he talked to me for hours.

(00:30:41.501):
He had all sorts of things.

(00:30:43.101):
He was an alcoholic.

(00:30:45.743):
He had, I don't know if you're allowed to say alcohol anymore.

(00:30:48.004):
He had a serious drinking problem.

(00:30:49.405):
He did drugs.

(00:30:50.465):
He was in the middle of a divorce.

(00:30:52.446):
Yeah.

(00:30:54.068):
and he was on a downward spiral.

(00:30:55.929):
She's like sleeping in a car,

(00:30:57.269):
but when they meet in the club,

(00:30:58.389):
right,

(00:30:58.649):
he's like in this fresh outfit.

(00:30:59.910):
He's got all this cash in his hand because he was selling drugs.

(00:31:03.170):
And he's like, hey, like you could do your hustle.

(00:31:05.951):
Like I could do my hustle.

(00:31:07.752):
You can help me take care of the house.

(00:31:09.192):
I could give you, let you borrow my cars.

(00:31:11.613):
And she's like, like she thought of herself as an entrepreneur.

(00:31:13.993):
That's what she always wanted was to build her own life for herself.

(00:31:17.014):
She was only 19 years old.

(00:31:18.415):
So I don't even know that she thought he was

(00:31:20.463):
a nice guy it wasn't a boyfriend situation it was like yeah we're gonna we're gonna

(00:31:25.386):
have our thing and we're gonna live together and make it work and she thought great

(00:31:28.868):
a room a bed a bathroom done yeah just it's and it's just so sad and like yeah just

(00:31:39.173):
the way that she was completely abandoned and the way we abandon these children in

(00:31:44.056):
our system and then a few years later they bubble back up and we have so many

(00:31:48.018):
resources it's just

(00:31:50.550):
I don't even know what to say about it except how deeply upsetting it is.

(00:31:56.533):
And if she'd had,

(00:31:57.334):
right,

(00:31:57.574):
like just because she was estranged from her family,

(00:32:00.476):
she wouldn't have been in any of these situations if she had just had a little bit

(00:32:05.078):
of supportive family and a home to land in at,

(00:32:08.680):
you know,

(00:32:09.041):
19 when she needed a place to go.

(00:32:12.022):
That's all she needed, you know, to not be in this situation.

(00:32:15.965):
But she didn't have that.

(00:32:17.178):
And she was so young She was 19 This is where most privileged people are going to

(00:32:24.861):
still be living at home under some control of their parents Or in a college dorm

(00:32:31.583):
But I will also say I think when you've gone through because she had gone through

(00:32:35.504):
so much trauma as a child I think it also you aren't like

(00:32:46.659):
Not as equipped as your privileged kid who had all of this support and all of this guidance.

(00:32:52.901):
I think she also never felt like she understood how to be a woman.

(00:32:56.462):
That's what she said to me.

(00:32:57.842):
She was always trying to figure out how do you even navigate the world as an adult

(00:33:02.364):
because she didn't have models.

(00:33:04.364):
She had this one boyfriend.

(00:33:06.936):
It didn't work out between them but when she was a teenager and she would just,

(00:33:10.920):
his mother was a nurse and she had a car and she had a house and she would just sit

(00:33:14.723):
there looking at this woman trying to figure out like how are you supposed to be in

(00:33:18.526):
the world?

(00:33:20.008):
So she was really figuring it all out on her own.

(00:33:22.189):
She was really on her own.

(00:33:23.751):
And it's so sad and it's just like the kind of person who's thinking about that

(00:33:28.435):
stuff is the kind of person who really deserves help and can make the most of it

(00:33:32.899):
and we just gave her nothing.

(00:33:35.425):
so tell me about your other two so Gemma is from Missouri Gemma is kind of like

(00:33:43.194):
criminalized survival 101 a little bit comparable to Nikki in that she essentially

(00:33:48.520):
acted in self-defense against her abusive husband but kind of the the lead up to um

(00:33:55.718):
Her Crime of Conviction Was That And All Of The Women Almost All Of Them That I've

(00:34:03.080):
Reported On Not Just In This Book But In General There's A Pretty Straight Line

(00:34:08.901):
From Like Childhood Sexual Abuse To Adult Domestic Violence Relationships To

(00:34:14.162):
Criminalized Survival So Gemma Was

(00:34:18.448):
What looked like from the outside a pretty wholesome American dream.

(00:34:23.552):
Her dad was with the Air Force.

(00:34:26.414):
Her mom taught preschool or was staying at home with the kids.

(00:34:30.476):
And they had, I think, you know, the American flag in the house in Missouri.

(00:34:37.001):
But early on,

(00:34:39.362):
It became clear that there were these really murky patriarchal ideas circulating in

(00:34:46.627):
the house that were going to sort of alter Gemma's trajectory.

(00:34:54.532):
So a bunch of things happened,

(00:34:57.034):
but early on she was lying in a basement in a sleepover with her brother's friend

(00:35:01.417):
and he...

(00:35:04.011):
put his hand down her pants woke her up from sleep and when she told her parents

(00:35:13.196):
the kid got a little bit she felt she was in trouble she felt she got in trouble a

(00:35:17.919):
little bit she felt she fell from her father's favor that he no longer looked at

(00:35:22.162):
her the same and then further the boy was made to leave the house but he was

(00:35:27.665):
allowed back in within a year

(00:35:30.072):
And nothing was ever spoken of, but she was told to go to her room whenever he would come over.

(00:35:34.696):
So this first puts a message in her head about her worth and what men can do and

(00:35:42.242):
are allowed to do.

(00:35:43.884):
And so she was really struggling with that, but there was nowhere to put that, right?

(00:35:47.247):
Like so many girls, just these things happen to...

(00:35:53.384):
Little Girls.

(00:35:54.425):
And if there isn't someone there to acknowledge it and get accountability for it,

(00:36:00.368):
it can just keep going.

(00:36:02.370):
So she later was,

(00:36:03.690):
a few years later when she was,

(00:36:05.912):
I'm going to,

(00:36:06.672):
again,

(00:36:06.872):
now I'm like,

(00:36:07.473):
was it four,

(00:36:07.973):
13?

(00:36:08.373):
I think when she was 13,

(00:36:10.094):
she gets in a car with a local guy who's 21 and he's known for taking teenagers to

(00:36:16.338):
go get their cigarettes and taking them to go do the things that they're not

(00:36:19.780):
allowed to do.

(00:36:20.761):
So she and her friend get in the car and

(00:36:22.906):
He pulls over on the side of a road.

(00:36:25.128):
He says to the friend, and he also has a friend, go for a walk.

(00:36:28.530):
And his friend and her friend get out and go for a walk into the countryside.

(00:36:34.894):
And he basically rapes her in the car.

(00:36:37.016):
And then his friend and her friend come back and he drives them to get cigarettes

(00:36:40.518):
and he drives them home.

(00:36:42.900):
And she's just sitting there.

(00:36:46.956):
like what just happened you know did I just and she says to her friend I he had sex

(00:36:53.321):
with me and her friend says oh you're a woman now you know and she's thinking was I

(00:36:59.345):
did I get raped into being a woman like am I a woman because of that she tells her

(00:37:04.809):
mom and her mom and dad are like law-abiding you know military people

(00:37:09.987):
They're horrified and they go to make a claim to bring a case but what happens is

(00:37:16.572):
what we see in so many cases of rape which is that first the DA doesn't even want

(00:37:21.436):
to take the case they finally get a DA to take the case and they can only get

(00:37:26.280):
statutory rape and obviously it was forcible rape but they can get statutory and I

(00:37:32.845):
think that the guy who did it got little to no time

(00:37:39.570):
And also the town,

(00:37:43.331):
because he was well known and popular,

(00:37:45.391):
totally turned against her and her family.

(00:37:47.392):
They harassed them, and she had to leave school.

(00:37:51.472):
So she went into adulthood with this background of the authorities don't help,

(00:37:58.674):
and people can do what they want to me,

(00:38:01.635):
and there's nothing...

(00:38:04.675):
I don't know that I deserve anymore.

(00:38:07.117):
She got into a bunch of abusive relationships.

(00:38:08.758):
She had two kids.

(00:38:10.719):
She was having issues with her family.

(00:38:13.760):
And she was on her own when this guy that she knew through some friends came to the

(00:38:19.484):
door,

(00:38:19.824):
essentially came to her door and said,

(00:38:21.445):
hey,

(00:38:22.505):
can I stay?

(00:38:23.726):
She thought he was a friend.

(00:38:26.087):
They had a decent friendship.

(00:38:28.589):
She was a single mom, so he immediately was helping her with the kids.

(00:38:32.733):
She had one white child from her,

(00:38:35.695):
she's white and her first child was white Her second child was her,

(00:38:41.600):
the father was black and she had felt like her family hadn't maybe fully accepted

(00:38:49.446):
her black child in and when this,

(00:38:54.350):
her new,

(00:38:55.211):
the new guy came to the room,

(00:38:56.232):
his name was Javon,

(00:38:57.112):
he's a black man

(00:38:58.503):
He really accepted her daughter with such love and compassion as his own that she

(00:39:04.567):
kind of like loved him immediately for that he made himself indispensable I think

(00:39:09.090):
that was a genuine feeling he had for this little girl but quickly he became super

(00:39:16.516):
abusive to her and they basically had this 10-year relationship they got married

(00:39:22.600):
and um

(00:39:25.159):
The abuse just went on for 10 years,

(00:39:27.480):
but it's complicated,

(00:39:28.940):
like all of these abusive relationships,

(00:39:30.801):
why she couldn't leave,

(00:39:31.961):
how he kept coming back.

(00:39:33.982):
And in the end, when she did finally leave him, he broke into her house and that is undisputed.

(00:39:40.764):
So the whole thing is so ridiculous.

(00:39:43.145):
He broke into her house, slid into the window, lay in wait until she was alone in the home.

(00:39:48.487):
And when she was alone in the home,

(00:39:50.657):
He Attacked Her For Hours And When A Gun Came Out And There Was A Struggle Over It

(00:39:55.440):
She Shot Him And Then She Got 10 Years In Prison She Had A Restraining Order Out On

(00:40:00.843):
Him At That Time Yeah I Mean It's Just Unbelievable Because It's Just So Clear

(00:40:08.028):
Self-Defense And The Message There Is That What Was Her Other Option Was She Just

(00:40:14.232):
Supposed To Let Him Kill Her It Seems Like That's The Demand Of Women

(00:40:17.913):
Yes, that's what I've had.

(00:40:19.554):
I've asked about Tanisha once as an expert.

(00:40:22.915):
I said, so what was she supposed to do?

(00:40:25.317):
And she's an expert on clemency in Michigan.

(00:40:27.958):
She said, oh, to die.

(00:40:30.219):
That was her choice.

(00:40:31.279):
Okay.

(00:40:32):
Yeah.

(00:40:32.720):
I mean,

(00:40:33.060):
I would,

(00:40:33.901):
you know,

(00:40:34.141):
in all of these cases,

(00:40:35.061):
I would love to talk to the prosecuting attorney and say,

(00:40:37.462):
like,

(00:40:37.722):
what should she have done differently?

(00:40:39.563):
But I'd be afraid of the answer, honestly.

(00:40:42.385):
Yeah.

(00:40:44.182):
they don't seem like they feel like they have to justify themselves it's it's just

(00:40:48.145):
so well their story is oh you don't understand you don't understand what happened

(00:40:53.129):
yeah we understand it was a killing because his body was positioned in this way

(00:40:59.313):
whether it was or not they're going to say it oh he was turned away oh he was lying

(00:41:03.637):
down and because of that

(00:41:05.998):
It was a cold-blooded killing Yeah And even if you can Even if you say like he

(00:41:09.721):
wasn't necessarily There's no proof of that You know that maybe he was But he also

(00:41:15.064):
wasn't And also does it really matter It doesn't matter to them Yeah it's It seems

(00:41:20.348):
like often the argument is like Well she could have killed him differently or

(00:41:23.690):
better Or she could have you know Attacked him and not killed him It's just so She

(00:41:29.694):
should have let him get a little bit closer to killing her She needed Yeah There

(00:41:34.117):
needed to be one more second

(00:41:36.702):
Closer to him killing her and then and then she should have done but but it's all

(00:41:41.843):
it's all nonsense because no matter what they're gonna they're gonna go for her

(00:41:45.044):
yeah and she's supposed to also know all of this in the moment and think about this

(00:41:48.805):
in the moment to be an expert in the area of imminence and self-defense law yes

(00:41:53.966):
this factory worker sex worker preschool teacher they are all supposed to be deeply

(00:42:00.947):
deeply educated about how self-defense law works yeah

(00:42:05.218):
And also be held to a much higher standard than police who kill people,

(00:42:08.179):
by the way Yes,

(00:42:10.059):
yeah,

(00:42:10.299):
I mean,

(00:42:10.880):
they are absolutely right There's,

(00:42:12.980):
what do police,

(00:42:14.481):
also,

(00:42:14.801):
I mean,

(00:42:16.201):
I don't want to get too far off track,

(00:42:17.441):
but didn't people successfully use,

(00:42:20.602):
like,

(00:42:20.742):
a gay panic defense,

(00:42:23.303):
right?

(00:42:24.023):
Yeah Right,

(00:42:25.203):
yeah,

(00:42:25.423):
and police officers who,

(00:42:27.404):
well,

(00:42:27.704):
I saw him holding a,

(00:42:29.084):
I thought it was a gun,

(00:42:30.785):
was a phone,

(00:42:31.825):
you know,

(00:42:32.105):
but I was in fear for my life I mean,

(00:42:33.546):
they're always in fear for their life

(00:42:36.130):
Yeah, but women are never in fear for their lives.

(00:42:40.212):
Okay, so tell me about your third story.

(00:42:45.294):
When my editor and I had,

(00:42:46.994):
we went through a lot of options for the third,

(00:42:49.695):
I really wanted to be emblematic of a different facet of criminalized survival,

(00:42:55.338):
and my editor and I

(00:42:57.333):
because we knew we had Tanisha and Gemma another woman that was we had a couple

(00:43:01.237):
other women that I thought would be a good fit but it wasn't quite working and then

(00:43:04.701):
we sort of sat there said the perfect woman who would be the perfect and we were

(00:43:09.205):
laughing because we made up this hypothetical perfect third woman who would be from

(00:43:14.070):
this coast or this coast because we wanted you know geographic diversity and would

(00:43:19.416):
um

(00:43:21.354):
We wanted to look at people who kill their childhood abuser, right?

(00:43:24.836):
Somebody who abused them in childhood.

(00:43:28.358):
And of course, I needed the person to be what I needed.

(00:43:31.940):
There are many worthy cases that I could have covered.

(00:43:34.261):
One thing special about these three women that I did cover is that they're super

(00:43:37.503):
verbal and enthusiastic,

(00:43:38.903):
which is really necessary.

(00:43:40.751):
when you're reporting from somebody who's living behind bars because you can't just

(00:43:44.813):
hang out with them and report on their life.

(00:43:47.014):
You might go to meet them a few times, but you're not going to be able to be there day to day.

(00:43:50.076):
So you need people who are really able to talk to you and to write to you and provide you.

(00:43:56.099):
Also, I needed a lot of documentation for these stories.

(00:43:59.541):
And so we kind of

(00:44:00.659):
Envisioned this woman and we were like laughing about how ridiculous it is that our

(00:44:04.401):
whole you know we're making up a person who's perfect obviously we're not gonna get

(00:44:07.942):
that person and a few days later in my database I came upon like a tagged note from

(00:44:12.864):
a research assistant who was like look at this woman she's she's so interesting and

(00:44:16.646):
I look and I start reading and it was exactly what we had dreamed we would find in

(00:44:22.289):
TC and her story is remarkable um

(00:44:27.014):
Her story is really the story of generational trauma.

(00:44:31.879):
I think in many ways they all are, but her story really tightly hues to that.

(00:44:40.787):
Her mother was abused all her life.

(00:44:44.491):
Her mother was in foster care.

(00:44:46.113):
Her mother was...

(00:44:49.019):
Released from foster care with a sixth grade reading level and no money at all.

(00:44:55.001):
And so got together with several abusive men,

(00:44:58.122):
sexually and domestic,

(00:44:59.623):
you know,

(00:44:59.883):
sexually abusive,

(00:45:00.543):
physically abuses,

(00:45:01.403):
everything.

(00:45:02.584):
She didn't know how to survive.

(00:45:03.744):
She'd been given no skills and no resources.

(00:45:06.505):
And she got together with TC's stepfather.

(00:45:09.457):
who sexually abused TC from the time she was four until she was 14 violently and relentlessly.

(00:45:16.121):
Her mother did not know about that.

(00:45:17.562):
He also abused, she knows now, he also abused the mother

(00:45:22.578):
Domestic Violence As Well As Sexual Violence That Got Worse I Think When He Sort Of

(00:45:27.041):
Stopped With TC So She Had This Really Siloed Dysfunctional Family Situation She

(00:45:34.465):
Always Adored Her Mother But The Household Was Totally Chaotic And Bleak And She

(00:45:41.449):
Ended Up

(00:45:45.393):
Aging out, you know, becoming an adult, trying to make a life for herself.

(00:45:49.475):
She had not been treated for the trauma and she never talked about what had happened to her.

(00:45:53.556):
She was obviously living with like a lot of PTSD, but she never talked about it.

(00:45:57.298):
But after she left the home, her mother was more and more abused.

(00:46:02.380):
And eventually her mother...

(00:46:06.888):
Wanted to leave this husband,

(00:46:08.769):
didn't feel that she had the money to do it,

(00:46:10.149):
didn't feel she had the resources,

(00:46:11.130):
and then TC,

(00:46:11.790):
who always really thought of herself as her mother's only protector in this world,

(00:46:15.971):
went over to confront the stepfather on a New Year's Eve in,

(00:46:21.394):
I think it was 1989,

(00:46:24.455):
and there was a confrontation,

(00:46:27.256):
and she beat his head in with a metal bar,

(00:46:33.938):
a lot.

(00:46:35.479):
Um...

(00:46:37.535):
and the authorities didn't believe her.

(00:46:39.497):
I mean,

(00:46:39.757):
they had denied it,

(00:46:40.798):
like nobody could find who did it,

(00:46:41.979):
but they ended up getting,

(00:46:43.440):
she ended up getting caught.

(00:46:44.861):
They believed that she and her mother had plotted this out or what have you.

(00:46:48.964):
And she ended up getting,

(00:46:49.985):
I think she ended up getting life in California and none of the abuse was ever

(00:46:54.849):
brought out.

(00:46:55.430):
And they were totally painted as these women who did it all for the money.

(00:46:58.952):
And the money was really just not much money.

(00:47:03.405):
and he was painted as this lovely old retired man who just loved just being quiet

(00:47:13.874):
and gardening and why would this ever happen to him yeah I mean isn't it

(00:47:20.339):
interesting how women victims are always crazy and manipulative and conniving and

(00:47:26.183):
like what did she do to cause this and

(00:47:29.559):
Men who commit egregious acts of violence are always painted as completely undeserving victims.

(00:47:35.841):
The stories we tell about men and women are just so radically different.

(00:47:39.763):
I don't even think they believe these stories.

(00:47:42.924):
With Nikki's case,

(00:47:43.684):
they found a picture of her abuser in a tutu because he was joking around wearing a

(00:47:50.507):
tutu.

(00:47:50.907):
And they put that at the trial so much.

(00:47:53.228):
This goofy guy.

(00:47:54.709):
But they also had the pictures of her bound, bruised,

(00:47:59.043):
Screenshotted from Pornhub and they were like she was maybe like into kink so uh so

(00:48:04.728):
even how does that even work so he's in his little tutu but he's and then we erased

(00:48:11.374):
the fact that like if you believe that she was into kink he was doing it yeah but

(00:48:15.598):
but you know somebody online actually was like by the way um why does the BDSM

(00:48:21.182):
community get such a bad rap in these like cases even like

(00:48:26.161):
Even if you're into kink, no one's allowed to rape and hurt you.

(00:48:29.864):
She definitely wasn't.

(00:48:30.964):
Like for avoidance of doubt,

(00:48:32.025):
Nikki was not at all into this and it was completely not consensual and he was

(00:48:36.248):
essentially trafficking her.

(00:48:37.309):
We think he made like $5, but I think that counts.

(00:48:39.930):
But nonetheless,

(00:48:41.031):
even if somebody were into that kind of thing,

(00:48:43.273):
you actually are not allowed to hurt them and rape them.

(00:48:47.195):
So that was an interesting point somebody made.

(00:48:50.097):
Yeah but you know it's we always do this thing of kind of like vague vibes with

(00:48:53.919):
women of like she's a little bit nutty and she's a little bit slutty and like let's

(00:48:58.281):
sprinkle some other seasoning of this on her and then like misogyny does the rest

(00:49:04.085):
we already have these scripts in our brains about women and so it's super easy to

(00:49:10.108):
activate them and then somehow justify whatever happens to them.

(00:49:14.727):
And by the way, you know, it's like they would say about, oh, she just wanted attention.

(00:49:19.451):
Well,

(00:49:19.611):
yeah,

(00:49:19.871):
I think maybe if somebody was trying to kill you,

(00:49:23.594):
you might want a little bit of attention.

(00:49:26.657):
And yeah, like, is she unhinged?

(00:49:28.258):
Well, I personally am a little unhinged myself.

(00:49:31.981):
You know, I'm not being brutally assaulted every day.

(00:49:37.506):
So I don't even know what the two things have to do with each other.

(00:49:40.788):
It's kind of like,

(00:49:42.014):
Zawn Villines za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za

(00:49:45.796):
nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za

(00:49:48.878):
nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za

(00:49:52.160):
nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za nisem za

(00:50:07.165):
Yeah, I mean, thank you for that.

(00:50:08.887):
Like, it's so true.

(00:50:10.928):
But, you know, we expect perfect victims.

(00:50:12.490):
And then even when we get them, we just pretend that they're something that they're not.

(00:50:16.193):
Because women just,

(00:50:17.574):
even though all of the data show us that women are victims,

(00:50:19.976):
they're just not ever allowed to be victims.

(00:50:23.299):
Yeah, I think there's that saying.

(00:50:24.560):
I think somebody said it's like, if the abuse was so bad, you should have left.

(00:50:30.485):
And if you didn't leave, then it wasn't so bad.

(00:50:32.887):
You know, it's impossible.

(00:50:34.729):
Yeah.

(00:50:35.261):
I see that a lot with the women I work with who are often in violent relationships

(00:50:41.446):
and what happens is if they leave then the fact that they were able to leave and he

(00:50:47.610):
didn't immediately murder them means that she's lying and if they don't leave then

(00:50:55.316):
she's a bad mom and CPS is going to take custody of the kids and I've even seen

(00:50:59.939):
cases where the father molests the child

(00:51:04.300):
The mother reports the molestation and seeks help.

(00:51:08.423):
And then over time, the mother is depicted as crazy for being with a child molester.

(00:51:14.206):
And this ultimately leads to the child molester getting custody because at least

(00:51:20.390):
he's not a crazy woman.

(00:51:23.072):
And this is not one person I'm talking about.

(00:51:25.614):
This is a replicable pattern that I've seen happen many times.

(00:51:30.056):
So they just...

(00:51:31.821):
They just say he's not a child molester?

(00:51:33.842):
That's their...

(00:51:35.382):
You know,

(00:51:36.163):
sometimes it's like...

(00:51:36.983):
Or they say he is and it's okay because it's better that...

(00:51:40.884):
Sometimes, yeah, that's it.

(00:51:42.285):
It's like,

(00:51:42.605):
well,

(00:51:42.825):
you know,

(00:51:43.125):
she allowed it and maybe if he weren't with someone who allowed child molestation,

(00:51:47.207):
it wouldn't happen.

(00:51:48.627):
Sometimes it's more like,

(00:51:50.288):
well,

(00:51:50.568):
you know,

(00:51:50.828):
he's been caught now and we've talked to him,

(00:51:52.929):
so he'll probably stop.

(00:51:54.990):
As molesters always do.

(00:51:56.670):
As molesters are known to do.

(00:51:58.659):
And sometimes there's,

(00:52:00.600):
like,

(00:52:00.900):
not really any coherent story,

(00:52:02.781):
and I think that's the most common situation.

(00:52:05.102):
It's just,

(00:52:05.442):
like,

(00:52:06.143):
we don't believe her that the molestation happened,

(00:52:09.364):
but also she's an unfit mother because the molestation happened.

(00:52:13.226):
And she seems a little frantic.

(00:52:15.027):
Let's have her calm down.

(00:52:16.768):
Yeah, she seems... She's a little worked up.

(00:52:20.090):
She's a little worked up.

(00:52:20.930):
Ma'am, calm down.

(00:52:22.291):
Just like my six-year-old's being raped.

(00:52:24.192):
It's like, ma'am, calm down.

(00:52:25.512):
Okay, she's really unfit.

(00:52:27.363):
Yeah,

(00:52:27.583):
I mean,

(00:52:28.564):
as you know,

(00:52:29.424):
Tanisha had said,

(00:52:30.665):
there's a,

(00:52:31.105):
you know,

(00:52:31.625):
at one point she said she was running from the police.

(00:52:34.607):
She was running from this abuser.

(00:52:36.848):
She was hiding from everyone.

(00:52:38.349):
She was hiding from herself.

(00:52:39.530):
She was dipping in and out of her children's lives.

(00:52:41.671):
She didn't know, you know, she couldn't, she felt like her presence would make them unsafe.

(00:52:46.014):
And she said, my people thought I was crazy.

(00:52:48.355):
She said, well, I was.

(00:52:49.496):
I was.

(00:52:51.197):
Because who wouldn't be in a complete state if you were put in these situations?

(00:52:56.720):
So

(00:52:57.735):
you're put in these situations it makes you completely I mean you're not a common

(00:53:05.820):
like collected person because your child is being molested or because you just

(00:53:10.323):
witnessed a murder or because you've been relentlessly abused and then your very

(00:53:14.866):
human reaction to what you've endured is used to prove that like there's something

(00:53:21.431):
wrong with you and um

(00:53:24.528):
And so probably everything you're saying you endured didn't really happen.

(00:53:27.935):
I mean, it's an upside down world.

(00:53:31.121):
That's what I always call it.

(00:53:32.504):
But I do have a theory that

(00:53:37.003):
and I write about this in the book that there's a whole purpose for this because

(00:53:42.988):
the existence of women like this and some of the women you're talking about because

(00:53:47.812):
I think that what's important about this book and this topic is that we all exist

(00:53:51.115):
on this spectrum so some of us are much luckier than others but we all do.

(00:53:57.121):
The reason that this is done is that

(00:54:00.800):
These women and what's going on with them really expose the failures of our systems.

(00:54:06.963):
They expose how futile the carceral system is,

(00:54:11.265):
how useless the criminal legal system is for women.

(00:54:14.666):
They expose how dangerous, I guess, in your case, these family courts can be to children.

(00:54:22.052):
If you believe them,

(00:54:23.112):
then you have to understand all of these systems are either broken,

(00:54:27.474):
is one way to put it,

(00:54:28.575):
or functioning exactly as intended,

(00:54:31.056):
which is to be cruel and punitive and punish marginalized people.

(00:54:36.278):
And if you accept that, that's a terrible thing.

(00:54:39.439):
How do you contend with the fact that there is no justice for these people?

(00:54:42.841):
So we are really motivated

(00:54:48.708):
to maintain the status quo by putting all of the individual responsibility on these

(00:54:53.689):
particular women,

(00:54:54.629):
painting them as bad and manipulative and crazy.

(00:54:59.791):
And if we can just officially say that that's their specific problem,

(00:55:03.972):
then we don't have to contend with and confront the true problems at hand.

(00:55:09.953):
Yeah.

(00:55:10.373):
I mean,

(00:55:10.673):
I think,

(00:55:11.433):
you know,

(00:55:11.713):
I was thinking about this while you were saying this,

(00:55:13.414):
that I do think it's the system working as intended and that a big part of the

(00:55:17.215):
system is that

(00:55:19.118):
Women in these abusive situations have no out because if women are dependent on and

(00:55:24.561):
beholden to men,

(00:55:25.462):
then men can just continuously extract resources from women.

(00:55:30.244):
But in some ways,

(00:55:32.085):
the explanation for why this happens,

(00:55:34.186):
I don't think matters so much as just getting it to not happen anymore.

(00:55:39.109):
So my question to you is to people listening to this who are kind of new to these

(00:55:43.331):
issues and want to do something,

(00:55:45.632):
what do you recommend?

(00:55:48.290):
I wish I had some perfect answer because people have been asking me this a lot you

(00:55:52.652):
know since because I I quite honestly believe it's like this giant systemic problem

(00:55:58.294):
and the book goes into how like the history of it like how it's baked into our laws

(00:56:02.216):
but what I have seen work um or at least be a positive thing is um

(00:56:15.211):
I watched a TikTok algorithm delivered to me a video that was the hopeful end of

(00:56:23.754):
every leftist nonfiction book and it was making fun of the fact that the world is

(00:56:28.216):
burning and you're just like mutual aid but I will say and it's like everything's

(00:56:32.757):
terrible but community but honestly what I have seen with Nikki for example I have

(00:56:38.419):
seen a community rise up around her

(00:56:44.133):
and it's not a spoiler like she got free because of this a community rally around

(00:56:49.036):
her like starting one person at a time just to support her and to get her case

(00:56:53.960):
known and I've seen that really work it didn't work right away it's a long process

(00:57:00.926):
so I do think supporting one survivor who's incarcerated and trying to make you

(00:57:06.711):
know actions around them helps there are organizations that do that and on my

(00:57:11.795):
website just

(00:57:12.395):
InvestingVDL.com.

(00:57:13.716):
There's a button called Free Tanisha.

(00:57:15.497):
If you click on the Free Tanisha button,

(00:57:17.698):
there's a list of good resources,

(00:57:19.659):
which is organizations that do this work.

(00:57:21.860):
And if people live in those particular states, they might be interested in those.

(00:57:29.443):
I have ways to work on Tanisha's freedom,

(00:57:32.905):
which I think is something that's a goal of mine for people to connect with her and

(00:57:36.387):
to support her.

(00:57:37.407):
Um,

(00:57:39.665):
And then,

(00:57:41.386):
not that I think that individuals can necessarily do that,

(00:57:43.707):
but I will say that even if we say the system is disastrous,

(00:57:47.988):
nonetheless,

(00:57:48.709):
reforms do help people.

(00:57:51.450):
And there are these survivor justice laws in different states that are actually

(00:57:56.712):
becoming more and more popular and are oddly bipartisan,

(00:57:59.613):
like in Oklahoma and Louisiana,

(00:58:01.814):
they're sponsored and supported by Trump-like MAGA Republicans as well.

(00:58:07.116):
So these Survivor Justice Act

(00:58:10.755):
They'll allow,

(00:58:12.096):
once they get written into law,

(00:58:15.417):
and there are some in different states,

(00:58:17.979):
those allow for people going through the system to

(00:58:25.443):
have their abuse considered when in sentencing so that they can sentence them

(00:58:30.466):
potentially to alternatives or to lesser time is also retroactive.

(00:58:35.508):
And that's so important because women who are on the inside,

(00:58:39.170):
people who are on the end survivors have no apertures to get out,

(00:58:43.132):
no little opening,

(00:58:44.353):
no little legal anything.

(00:58:46.214):
So they're also retroactive.

(00:58:47.334):
So anyone who has that case from a long time ago even can try to get their case heard again.

(00:58:51.977):
So supporting those laws, I mean, that is a very vague thing.

(00:58:55.207):
but they really are the kind of thing that helps and then I just think narrative

(00:58:59.711):
and awareness I mean I really obviously I'm biased but I really believe in the

(00:59:03.794):
power of knowing the stories understanding them and I do think that can create a

(00:59:08.618):
wellspring of renewed awareness and support and people in power who pretend that

(00:59:16.845):
they don't care what people think and

(00:59:19.808):
feel or pretend that they do but don't do anything about it,

(00:59:22.609):
I think they really do respond to sort of cultural shifts as to what's acceptable

(00:59:27.430):
and what's not,

(00:59:28.691):
even if for just self-serving reasons like getting reelected.

(00:59:32.172):
I mean,

(00:59:32.452):
I think we definitely see those shifts even in a really dark time,

(00:59:36.313):
how it's become much less normalized that we just put people in prison forever and

(00:59:40.554):
it's become much less accepted that like the police and prisons can do whatever

(00:59:44.276):
they want.

(00:59:44.956):
So I

(00:59:45.855):
I think folks like you are playing a big role in that and I'm just grateful that

(00:59:49.337):
you're out there doing what you do and I'm really excited about your book and I

(00:59:53.140):
hope it does awesome thank you so much so thank you for coming on it was a great

(00:59:59.184):
conversation I love talking to you and your community that you've built well

(01:00:04.647):
listeners I hope you'll order Justine's book and please leave great reviews for it

(01:00:09.110):
and tell people about it I just have to say that the way we show publishers that we

(01:00:14.094):
want more

(01:00:15.133):
Feminist Books And More Books About Women And More Books About Justice Is to buy

(01:00:19.382):
those books And show that they're valuable So thank you so much for listening Go

(01:00:23.991):
buy Justine's book And I will be back next week