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12. Lorena, Our Queen (feat. Jill Zawisza from WOMAN, Inc.)
3 Plays3 years ago
CW: domestic, sexual, physical violence, bodily harm, racism, xenophobia
On June 23, 1993, Lorena Gallo (then, Bobbit) would come to be known as the woman from Manassas, Virginia who, in a rage, severed her husband’s penis and threw it out the window of her car. What was missing from this story, in all of the sensational media coverage, is the extreme abuse she had endured from him the years leading up to this. In our first collaborative episode ever, Shaena and Jill Zawisza*, Co-director at WOMAN Inc., cover this incident, and most importantly, Lorena’s story.
Join in as we uncover the details and political context of this case, break down dynamics of domestic violence, and the role we all can play in supporting survivors.
*Jill Zawisza (she/her/hers) currently serves as Co–Director at WOMAN Inc. She has been in the anti-DV movement since 1996, and has been with W.O.M.A.N., Inc. for 13 years. In addition, Jill has served as an anti-Sexual Assault advocate and counselor. She represents W.O.M.A.N., Inc. in the community, aids in program development, provides mentorship to staff, and participates in active community outreach. Her current focus is offering counseling and advocacy to survivors, and delving into how to share power & dismantle white supremacy culture within the leadership structure at W.O.M.A.N., Inc., and beyond.
WOMAN, Inc. is a San Francisco-based nonprofit that has been serving the city and larger Bay Area since 1978. They support survivors of domestic violence and their loved ones on their healing journeys, building value-rich networks designed to address intersections of violence. Learn more about WOMAN,Inc. at womaninc.org (@woman.inc)
Support the Lorena Gallo Foundation here: https://lorenagallofoundation.org/our-programs/
Learn more about Survived & Punished here: https://survivedandpunished.org
Find a local domestic violence program near you at https://www.domesticshelters.org or call the 24/7 National DV Hotline at 1.800.799.SAFE (7233) TTY 1.800.787.3224
Sources
Outro last updated April 2023
FYI: we've recently unpublished older episodes as we are in process of re-editing for a smoother flow & audio experience. they will be available again as we finish.
Thank you for listening to our passion project <3 You can find us on social media here! We're a team of 2 people & have always been ad-free. If you are enjoying, please consider supporting our sustainability on Patreon or by making a one-time contribution via CashApp $unpacktheeerie.
- your grateful hosts
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Transcript
Bizarre Search for a Dismembered Appendage
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So everyone was just like scrambling for this dick for like 24 hours.
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I can't think of any other appendage, especially if it wasn't connected to a man.
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The whole story was about this dude's dick.
Introduction to 'Unpacking the Eerie' Podcast
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Hi, I'm Akshay.
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And I'm Shayna.
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And you're listening to Unpacking the Eerie.
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A podcast that explores the intersections of our dark and morbid curiosities through a social justice lens.
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You're welcome.
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Hello.
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Hello.
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Welcome to episode... What episode is this?
Collaboration with Woman Inc for Episode 13
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I think it's 13.
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13?
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13.
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So this time we're doing things a little different.
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This episode is a collaboration with a San Francisco-based anti-domestic violence organization called Woman Inc.
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that I, Shana, have been involved with for many years.
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I think seven years this year.
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Yeah.
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I...
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I'm not going to be on this episode, which is different than normal, but we will have a guest who will be on this episode in replacement of me.
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Shana can tell you a little bit about our special guest, who we share a lot of gratitude for coming on the podcast.
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Yeah.
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And Jill's a patron, so.
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Oh, amazing.
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Amazing.
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Our patrons are amazing.
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We are.
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As are our listeners.
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Yes, yes, yes.
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Um...
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And me and Jill have always bonded over true crime stuff.
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So it felt like an awesome intersection.
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So a little bit about Jill.
Introducing Jill from Woman Inc
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Jill currently serves as a co-director at Woman Inc.
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She's been in the anti-DV movement since 1996 and has been with Woman Inc.
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for about 13 years.
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In addition, Jill has served as an anti-sexual assault advocate and counselor.
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She represents Woman Inc.
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in the community, aids in program development, provides mentorship to staff, and provides
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and participates in active community outreach.
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Her current focus is offering counseling and advocacy to survivors and delving into how to share power and dismantle white supremacy culture within the leadership structure at Women Income Beyond.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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Amazing.
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So before we transition into that episode, we want to do a quick Patreon shout out.
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So thank you to our brand new patrons, Takuisha, Vern, and Meredith.
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Yay.
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Thank you.
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We appreciate you.
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So much.
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So, so much.
Shayna's Dual Role and Commitment
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Okay.
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Without further ado, here's the episode.
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Hello, everybody.
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Hi.
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This is going well from jump.
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Okay.
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So my name is Shana and I'm here on two fronts.
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On one front, I'm a co-host of Unpacking the Eerie, which is a creepy podcast with a social justice lens hosted by me and my friend Akshi, two social workers in the Pacific Northwest.
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On the second front, I'm here with Women, Inc., a San Francisco-based domestic violence organization that I've been involved with since 2014.
Shared Values in Social Justice and True Crime
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And I'm here with Jill Zoiza, who is a co-director at Women, Inc., and will be collaborating on this Unpacking the Eerie Women, Inc.
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episode.
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Jill, would you like to introduce yourself?
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Well, I'm Jill Louisa, one of the co-workers there at Woman Inc.
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Hi.
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Yeah, just doing anti-domestic violence work since what seems like forever and love unpacking the eerie.
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I'm a proud patron, patron, Patreon member, supporter.
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And sometimes help out with Women Eats podcasts.
Jill's Leadership at Woman Inc
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Well, Jill, why did you want to do this collab?
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Well, it seemed like a good idea.
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given Shana was really the driving force behind Woman Inc.
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having a podcast and Unpacking the Eerie is happening.
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And that's also clearly a podcast that relies on Shana's chutzpah and family.
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research capabilities and akshis, of course.
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And there's a lot of intersections between the values of Woman Inc.
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and our philosophy, and it feels like the values intrinsic to unpacking the ERIs coverage of crimes and social justice and
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issues and topics and the intersections thereof.
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So it seemed like a pretty natural crossover and I thought it would be fun.
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And certainly this topic, we have a lot of, a lot to say about.
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So, but I'm really excited about it because we talk a lot about, I think on most episodes we talk a lot about, especially like with, you know,
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a lot of serial killers and a lot of like famous quote-unquote crime stories we hear a lot about undercurrents of domestic violence that often just kind of get swept under the rug no one ever takes a lot of time talking about how that's such a integral part of the story and the survivors always kind of get sidelined and pushed aside as like a has like a
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I know an accessory and not a center piece of the story.
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And so I think that, you know, this collab is really cool because we get to we get to do that today.
Lorena Bobbitt's Story: A Shift in Perspective
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Shall we get started?
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Let's do it.
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Okey dokey.
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So on June 23rd, 1993, sometime between 3.30 and 4.30 a.m.,
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a woman then named Lorena Bobbitt, which moving forward, we're going to name her by her, her name, Lorena Gallo, cut off the penis of her husband.
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His name is John Wayne Bobbitt moving forward.
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We're going to call him JWP because he doesn't deserve any more airtime than he already has in Manassas, Virginia, which is a small town about 30 miles west of Washington, DC.
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She fled with the penis and with the knife, threw the penis out the window as she drove down the street before making her way to her friend's house.
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So that's like a very condensed version.
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And this story was popularized on this incident only and really centered this whole story
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cutting off of the penis, going on a search for the penis.
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Everything was about this dude's penis.
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And today we're going to talk about Lorena.
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And this was Jill's idea.
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No, it wasn't.
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It was your idea.
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Okay.
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Great idea.
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Yeah.
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Let's rewind and talk about Lorena for a bit.
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So Lorena was born Lorena Leonor Gallo in Buque, Ecuador in 1969.
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She grew up in Caracas, Venezuela with two younger siblings and her parents.
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She described her upbringing as poor but
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overall happy.
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They were, she, she has a fond memory of her childhood.
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Her family couldn't afford a quinceañera.
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So a trip to the U S was a present for her 16th birthday in lieu of that.
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And after this, she, she really kind of fell in love with the country and wanted to come live here.
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So in 1987, she obtained a student visa 18 and she moved to Manassas, Virginia,
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where she stayed with a family friend, the Castro family.
Lorena and John's Tumultuous Relationship
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She studied at Northern Virginia Community College.
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She worked as a nanny for a single mom who owned some nail salons.
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And she also got trained and acquires a job there.
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So she's working two jobs, she's studying community college.
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So in 1988, shortly after she moved, she meets JWB at a dance hall for enlisted military men in Quantico.
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I wanted to spend some time kind of like highlighting the relationship because if you hadn't guessed a big sale, like a salient part of this story is that this incident didn't happen in a vacuum.
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She was in a domestic violence situation.
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I thought it would be an opportunity to.
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kind of outline how this relationship evolved and how it echoes so many other DV relationships, how they start in this honeymoon phase and kind of escalate and fall into cycles.
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This is pulled from this Lifetime movie that Lorena was a part of.
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So I assume it's pretty close to, if not identical to her own story.
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I also pulled other stuff from, you know, podcast interviews and then the
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prime documentary too.
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So they met at a dance hall.
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She said that she thought he was very handsome.
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She said, blue eyes, a man in uniform.
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He was almost like a symbol, a Marine fighting for the country.
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I believed in this beautiful country.
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I was swept off my feet.
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I won my American dream.
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And so I'm sitting here thinking like, you know, he's this poster guy for the all American man, something that, you know, she, she,
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like a lot of people are told they should want to attain success.
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You know, this big American dream, which I don't want to go down tangent about how that's a farce, but it's, it's something people strive for.
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Right.
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And at this point, she's 19.
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And.
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I guess for a background, she comes from like a pretty like traditional family who had very traditional views about marriage, about dating and things that you needed to do to like build a family.
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Right.
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So there's all of these messages she's getting about who she should be, who she needs to be to be a successful woman.
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He was a Marine.
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He had just came back from Okinawa, which is.
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Tangent, in an Unpacking the Eerie episode, we cover the Setagaya murders.
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And Akshi actually shares about the impact of the U.S. occupying space in Okinawa, how much violence there was, both like in general, but specifically sexual violence towards Okinawan and Japanese
Impact of U.S Military Presence
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women.
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I guess I can insert that clip here if you want to recap.
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It's estimated that between 1954 and 2000, over 200,000 violent crimes involving U.S. troops were recorded on Japanese soil, according to proceedings carried out by the Japanese House of Representatives on July 1st, 2005.
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But when I learned that I melted,
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lit up some, some connections for me and I couldn't help, but wonder like what he did when he was there.
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If, you know, knowing, knowing what we know about who he is.
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Probably nothing good.
00:12:44
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No.
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Yeah.
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Um, but in this, in this lifetime of you is portrayed as charming, highly complimentary, really flirtatious, which is common.
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We hear this all the time about people who use abuse.
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They start off like, it's almost like weaponizing this idea of chivalry to groom someone and get them in.
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Um, I don't know, like a,
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almost as if they're like trying to lay a trap to like capture somebody.
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But yeah, anyways.
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So she meets him.
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She's kind of swept off her feet.
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This is how she describes the interaction.
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They dance.
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They have a good time.
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Speaker
At this time, she's living with a family friend, right?
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The Castros who are pretty cautious about like, quote unquote, letting Lorena date.
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Um,
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the family friend is also pretty strict or conservative, not, not conservative as in politically conservative, but conservative as in like, you know, I think at some point there was, they were like dating one month in and she was like, no kissing, you know?
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I mean, she had, she had to be chaperoned on her dates.
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She couldn't be alone with him.
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Right.
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Which really works in his favor, I think.
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Yeah.
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Speaker
You know?
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I mean, the way that he talks about her, about how she was so sweet, very shy, it just seemed like he knew that he could take advantage because he was like counting on her naivete.
00:14:27
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Totally.
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To just like, you know, be whoever he wanted to be.
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Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:34
Speaker
Teach her the way that men are in this country.
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Speaker
Right.
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:40
Speaker
And this was his, this was her, you know, first time dating.
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So she had no, there was nothing that she could compare it to.
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Um, except, you know, her parents and her parents, like she said that she never even saw them argue, um, her parents.
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And so like,
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Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:07
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You're going to learn about red flags, especially if like talking about dating wasn't even on the table, talking about sex wasn't even on the table.
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She's just like learning as she goes.
00:15:16
Speaker
And is also kind of starstruck by this, like this symbol that he represented for her.
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Speaker
It's, it's, I, I kind of like throughout that documentary, at least.
00:15:26
Speaker
one thing that kind of kept coming up for me, not to jump too far ahead, but I can see hit, like, it sounds like he was also doing the same thing where it was like really undermining who she was as a person because she was very soft-spoken and, you know, Oh, she's so innocent.
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Oh, she was so shy.
00:15:46
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And it's like infantilizing her.
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And that started, um,
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Speaker
Well, who knows when it started, but certainly I think he did that to her.
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And then that got picked up throughout the course of this larger story.
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At some point, people were commenting on that.
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Speaker
So.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah, she's just my little like.
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Speaker
Protege here.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to.
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Speaker
Teach her what dating is, teach her what love is, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:16:24
Speaker
yeah, really gross.
00:16:26
Speaker
And this just reminded me of like, I don't know, you know, that stat that we use in our, I mean, I'm not crazy about stats, but in like the teen dating violence presentation, we talk about like, we ask people why it's
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noted to be most common to get in a abusive relationship between the ages of 18 and 24, especially for young women.
Cycle of Domestic Violence
00:16:53
Speaker
And it makes sense because like everyone's just like learning how to date, not really sure what to compare to, not really sure how to look for red flags because what else is there to look for?
00:17:03
Speaker
And then in like popular media, popular culture, you get all these messages about like what things are sexy or what things are desirable, like
00:17:13
Speaker
Obsession isn't cute, but for some reason, like that's something that, you know, indicates to people like, oh, this means this person is really into me.
00:17:21
Speaker
They're jealous because they, they love me.
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:28
Speaker
That's just how men are.
00:17:30
Speaker
Right.
00:17:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:34
Speaker
It's, it's these, these two, you
00:17:36
Speaker
something else that was kind of like striking me, especially at the beginning of this relationship, like hearing again, she was 19 years old and he was something like what?
00:17:45
Speaker
22, 21.
00:17:45
Speaker
He was also, they're very young adults, very young adults.
00:17:51
Speaker
Like it's that didn't really, I don't think that really entered into the conversation after what happened happened.
00:18:03
Speaker
And I think also,
00:18:05
Speaker
to tie it to the conversation around the cycle of violence that was happening informed that to an extent yeah like we're learning about what it is to be in relationship and especially if you're chaperoned all the time and this person can't really show you exactly who they are because there's a third or fourth party in the room um
00:18:30
Speaker
Like you said, I think it probably makes it incredibly difficult to even present a red flag and to catch a red flag, all of these things coming together.
00:18:40
Speaker
Right.
00:18:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:46
Speaker
That's a good point.
00:18:48
Speaker
But also though, in the, in the, well, both in the testimonies of like witnesses and stuff and in this lifetime, um,
00:18:58
Speaker
movie or whatever.
00:19:00
Speaker
Um, it shows this scene where they're like about eight months into their relationship and their friend or her friend who I think is a daughter of like a daughter from the Castro family expresses concern.
00:19:16
Speaker
And it's like, I don't know what you see in him.
00:19:19
Speaker
He drinks a lot and he always conveniently forgets his wallet when they go out.
00:19:24
Speaker
Um, and, and she's like, you know, like,
00:19:29
Speaker
oh, you don't like him, but he's so nice to me.
00:19:35
Speaker
Why can't you just be happy for me?
00:19:37
Speaker
Kind of just like, I don't know, just hoping, like seeing the best intentions from him because she loves him.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:48
Speaker
And you can tell in this reenactment though, that like when, like after,
00:19:56
Speaker
the friend goes to like get another drink.
00:20:00
Speaker
He makes a fat joke about her and then like compares the two of them and is like, well,
00:20:07
Speaker
not like you you're hotter anyway with your little body or something like that um but I feel like a lot of things were happening in that dynamic like not only is he being a total dickhead um but I think that this was like a beginning of isolation like trying to see how far he can get to kind of build a put a wedge in between the two of them with the comparisons um it would be a perfect place for him to be like oh well you know so and so doesn't like me so
00:20:38
Speaker
why are you inviting them?
00:20:40
Speaker
Um, I think he can sense that he, she sees right through him and that's why he's being so mean.
00:20:45
Speaker
Um, and I was just like, you know, putting a pin in that, which I think those are something that's something you see in hindsight.
00:20:55
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And it's easy to write it off to like, Oh, he had been drinking.
00:21:00
Speaker
Maybe he was just kind of drunk and surly and he's like being a guy or whatever.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:09
Speaker
And then after it, he brings out this like promise ring, which then I think becomes like the engagement ring.
00:21:17
Speaker
Some ring he found at the bottom of a pool.
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:22
Speaker
Put a lot of thought into that one, didn't he?
00:21:26
Speaker
And then, um, in the, in the movie, he's presenting it.
00:21:31
Speaker
Like you just got this great job at the salon.
00:21:33
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I don't want another guy to scoop you up.
00:21:35
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I want you all to myself, which was another like red flag that in the time is presented as like love.
00:21:42
Speaker
And to me, I'm looking at it.
00:21:44
Speaker
Like he's threatened by the, the prospect of her success.
00:21:49
Speaker
And you see like the initial glimmers of possessiveness in that moment.
00:21:55
Speaker
Um,
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:58
Speaker
Uh, and then 10 months into the relationship, they get engaged.
00:22:02
Speaker
And, um, in this movie, they also interview with Lorena and she was talking about how she was like, I built fantasies of us living our lives together, living around the world, making a family.
00:22:14
Speaker
I was 19.
00:22:14
Speaker
I had never dated anyone.
00:22:17
Speaker
John was my first love.
00:22:19
Speaker
Um, and at this point she's 20 and he's 22, very young.
00:22:28
Speaker
And then shortly after, obviously like things take a turn, which is super common.
00:22:32
Speaker
We hear this all the time.
00:22:33
Speaker
Like I didn't really see the abuse.
00:22:36
Speaker
Like I didn't notice the abuse until like a year in or after we had our first baby or after we got engaged or got married.
00:22:43
Speaker
So like,
00:22:46
Speaker
I don't know in DV presentations, I always want to capitalize on how this really starts in a honeymoon and takes a really swift turn in an unexpected way.
00:22:56
Speaker
And this is after someone has gotten attached, has fallen in love, has built trust for this person.
00:23:00
Speaker
They're like, I mean, they weren't like this five months ago.
00:23:05
Speaker
So what did I do to change them?
00:23:07
Speaker
Um, yeah,
00:23:10
Speaker
And this is where he's like getting out of the military.
00:23:14
Speaker
He can't keep a job.
00:23:15
Speaker
And so she's sustaining them financially at this point with her nail salon job.
00:23:20
Speaker
I'm thinking about how you're tying, you know, that cycle in.
00:23:26
Speaker
It takes time sometimes for the abuse to start.
00:23:30
Speaker
And specific to the situation, I don't think that it's...
00:23:37
Speaker
coincidence that they moved it up and were married less than a year into their relationship especially because he couldn't get total access to her without being married you know like I like we said she had to be chaperoned on all these dates which again like kind of a
00:23:58
Speaker
a good scenario for him in a way.
00:24:00
Speaker
They probably wanted to be alone together and couldn't be.
00:24:06
Speaker
And it built probably some curiosity and longing up in her to be alone with him.
00:24:12
Speaker
And also he probably, you know, again, it was easier for him to hide kind of like these parts of himself that were abusive and abusive.
00:24:24
Speaker
We see that a lot, that quick involvement, you know, right?
00:24:27
Speaker
We see that quick, deep involvement a lot.
00:24:30
Speaker
And I just think, again, the fact that they were married so quickly is just another...
00:24:39
Speaker
example of the cycle of violence very specific to this situation but it can look the details might look a little different but the vibe is the same as a lot of these other organization relationships that are abusive and I guess really kind of like the common denominator is the person using abuse and
00:24:59
Speaker
like seeking out that power and control of the relationship and that other person is very mindful, kind of like you're saying, like setting a trap, like always a little bit, like three steps ahead, you know, which is when it's abuse and not just violence.
00:25:18
Speaker
It's like, I'm thinking about this.
00:25:20
Speaker
I am crafting this.
00:25:21
Speaker
I am crafting this scenario where I have control over this person and I need to do A, B and C to get there.
00:25:28
Speaker
So I thought that was pretty salient in this.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:33
Speaker
Maybe this is a good time to define domestic violence, Jill.
00:25:36
Speaker
How would you define domestic violence?
00:25:39
Speaker
Well, I would define domestic violence.
00:25:42
Speaker
And, you know, Shana, I'm so glad you asked that.
00:25:47
Speaker
Domestic violence is a pattern of behaviors and behavior that
00:25:53
Speaker
with the intention of getting power and control over your partner.
00:25:58
Speaker
And typically we see different types of violence used to maintain or gain and maintain control.
00:26:08
Speaker
So it's not about specific types of violence, more it's about like, what's the intention behind use of violence or what's the intention behind even
00:26:23
Speaker
statements that are used or, you know, we see a lot of verbal abuse with the intention of pulling someone down, making them feel less than about themselves and that kind of keeps them where they're at with this person.
00:26:37
Speaker
So it's kind of this ongoing degradation of who the survivor is, who they are and who they can be.
00:26:46
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, it takes on a lot of different forms.
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:51
Speaker
Physical is probably the most talked about or at least the easiest to see.
00:26:56
Speaker
So it gets a lot of attention.
00:26:57
Speaker
But of course, we know there's emotional, verbal, sexual, financial, spiritual, all kinds of ways that someone might use violence to threaten, intimidate, tear someone down and keep them in that cycle with them.
00:27:19
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that, Stevie.
00:27:21
Speaker
What do you think, Shana?
00:27:22
Speaker
Thank you.
00:27:23
Speaker
That was perfect.
00:27:26
Speaker
And I guess also to piggyback on the only hearing about physical abuse, I think also and I'm just going to keep referencing these DV workshops because we do them all the time.
00:27:38
Speaker
You may as well.
00:27:39
Speaker
You know, and I think when we're defining domestic violence, I always bring up like, you know, we only ever talk about domestic violence when we're looking at isolated incidents of extreme violence where someone has already been hospitalized, when someone has been like, like completely unbathomated.
00:28:01
Speaker
You can see the extreme harm on them.
00:28:05
Speaker
Or if someone has died, you know?
00:28:09
Speaker
And I think by doing that, we really don't, it makes it easier to miss signs like the ones that are showing up earlier on in the relationship because we're not even looking for that because we're not even considering what abuse actually constitutes, which is not just like, you know, individual incidents of rage.
00:28:29
Speaker
It's like a pattern.
00:28:32
Speaker
like Jill said, of intentional behaviors.
00:28:34
Speaker
It's systematic.
00:28:36
Speaker
It forms a dynamic.
00:28:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:38
Speaker
You know?
00:28:39
Speaker
So I think that's important.
00:28:42
Speaker
And I don't think it even talks about that.
00:28:44
Speaker
Well, it's so nuanced that it makes it difficult to pinpoint.
00:28:52
Speaker
But unfortunately, that's where a lot of that harm lives is in that nuance.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:58
Speaker
And I'm sure you've heard this again and
Complexities of Abuse Dynamics
00:29:00
Speaker
again.
00:29:00
Speaker
I know I have like working with survivors.
00:29:02
Speaker
It's like, yeah, you know, I could get over.
00:29:05
Speaker
I'd almost rather that they just hit me and get it over with.
00:29:08
Speaker
But what happens is I get these insults and I, you know, I get told who I am and I berate it.
00:29:16
Speaker
And that's really hard to come back from, you know, so but we don't make a lot of space.
00:29:22
Speaker
when we see things as black and white, like illegal, legal, you know, a crime.
00:29:27
Speaker
Oh, that's not a crime.
00:29:29
Speaker
When we are very, you know, black and white, we don't make that space for the nuance or that real like harm or healing.
00:29:39
Speaker
But this situation, this case is, you know, like, like you're saying, like the, the way that this relationship moved forward is very nuanced, you know, in terms of,
00:29:52
Speaker
the way that he navigated it and the ways that he showed up that were abusive before he ever hit her, um, the way he showed up as controlling before he ever raped her.
00:30:06
Speaker
Um, it's nuanced.
00:30:10
Speaker
It's not, it's not easy to pinpoint.
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:15
Speaker
And even in that moment where he's like fat shaming,
00:30:18
Speaker
basically her friend, she like says, that's not nice.
00:30:22
Speaker
He doesn't even acknowledge that's not nice.
00:30:24
Speaker
He kind of like brushes off the whole thing entirely, which I feel like is like kind of tantamount to gaslighting in a way.
00:30:32
Speaker
It's like testing the waters of how much I can make you question your own sense of what's right and wrong, what your own reality is, or even what just happened a second ago.
00:30:44
Speaker
I feel like that's significant too.
00:30:46
Speaker
Cause like,
00:30:48
Speaker
Just like everything else, the gaslighting starts small, but we only ever hear about the gaslighting that's big.
00:30:53
Speaker
And by the time we're talking about that, people are like, how could you ever think, you know, like if someone hit someone, they're like, I didn't do that.
00:31:00
Speaker
How can you believe, like if someone hit you and you were like, you hit me and they were like, I didn't do that.
00:31:06
Speaker
How could you internalize that that was true?
00:31:11
Speaker
You know, like we're not looking at all the little ways that this person has been making them question themselves from the beginning.
00:31:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:20
Speaker
It's like grooming before there's gaslighting.
00:31:23
Speaker
There's almost grooming.
00:31:24
Speaker
There's like a, like you're saying, it's a sussing out period.
00:31:27
Speaker
And it's like, I'm going to suss out what I can get away with.
00:31:31
Speaker
And then I'm going to basically chip away at that to the point where I can gaslight this person.
00:31:39
Speaker
And I know I'll be able to get away with it.
00:31:41
Speaker
It's, it really, like you're saying, it does start so small.
00:31:46
Speaker
Um,
00:31:48
Speaker
And it's just, it's like little psychological battles that are happening, you know, little attacks that eventually move to like full one war.
00:32:01
Speaker
I totally think that that's, that was him.
00:32:03
Speaker
That's a good example of the way a lot of people show up.
00:32:07
Speaker
A lot of people who use abuse show up where it's like testing the waters, testing the waters constantly.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:16
Speaker
Anyway.
00:32:17
Speaker
Things start going sideways very shortly after they get married, right?
00:32:25
Speaker
Like you can't keep a job.
00:32:26
Speaker
She is the one sustaining them, which I think also like hurts his pride, which is probably where the escalation happens.
00:32:32
Speaker
It's almost like he has to assert power in another way because his own manliness is being challenged or whatever.
00:32:38
Speaker
At least that's what I was picking up on in the, in the movie.
00:32:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:45
Speaker
And there's a scene in when she's like, I got my first paycheck.
00:32:49
Speaker
I would love to go to a nice restaurant for a date.
00:32:53
Speaker
And at this point, like his cousin is living with them and he does this all the time.
00:32:57
Speaker
He'll be like, my friend's staying with us for a couple of weeks.
00:33:00
Speaker
My cousin's staying with us for a couple of weeks.
00:33:02
Speaker
He like, I don't know what that's about, but it's just like always what he wants on his terms.
00:33:07
Speaker
Really, I think it's just like about him having a drinking buddy.
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:12
Speaker
And making her feel like, oh, these are his people.
00:33:15
Speaker
So I have to manage myself, you know, like I have to be a certain way because I'm, those are his people.
00:33:24
Speaker
Like making her feel outnumbered.
00:33:26
Speaker
He does this all the time.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:29
Speaker
So she comes home and she was like, I would love to go on a date.
00:33:32
Speaker
I want to take us to this nice restaurant.
00:33:34
Speaker
I got my paycheck.
00:33:35
Speaker
And he like totally steamrolls her and insists that he and his cousin and her go to the bar, this place called Chelsea's, which is, I guess, it's like water and full.
00:33:46
Speaker
And when they get there, he's just like a total drunk asshole.
00:33:51
Speaker
He's being...
00:33:53
Speaker
obnoxious and totally disrespectful when she's like, you're drunk.
00:33:59
Speaker
I'm not having fun.
00:34:00
Speaker
Like I want to go home.
00:34:02
Speaker
I want to do something nice together.
00:34:05
Speaker
And then he like takes the keys from her and he insists on driving when he's like drunk.
00:34:14
Speaker
And then this is the first time he gets violent because he's like swerving.
00:34:19
Speaker
She tries to
00:34:21
Speaker
you know, get the car straight on the road.
00:34:24
Speaker
Cause they're going to crash.
00:34:25
Speaker
And like, he gets physical with her and like, she starts crying and he's like, I didn't even hurt you that much.
00:34:33
Speaker
Stop crying.
00:34:34
Speaker
And then he continues the violence in the home.
00:34:36
Speaker
And so like, you can see where she's just like shocked and confused and like, what the hell the police come and respond to this.
00:34:46
Speaker
I don't think anyone, did anyone call?
00:34:48
Speaker
I don't know.
00:34:49
Speaker
It didn't show anyone calling it.
00:34:50
Speaker
Maybe it was a neighbor or something, but like the police come, they ask if like everything's okay.
00:34:56
Speaker
Clearly things are not okay.
00:34:58
Speaker
Right.
00:34:58
Speaker
And he was like, this police officer was like, well, would you want to, do you want to stay here?
00:35:04
Speaker
Do you want to leave?
00:35:04
Speaker
Do you have somewhere else to go?
00:35:05
Speaker
And she was like, I don't have anywhere else to go, but I want to leave.
00:35:08
Speaker
So she leaves and she like drives to the nail salon where she works and she sleeps in her car.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:16
Speaker
fucking horrible well and it's that incident I think all these incidents kind of lead up to what eventually happened like number one
00:35:28
Speaker
The fact that this all happened in front of another person and this person didn't step in a real way to be like, hey, you can't do that, dude.
00:35:41
Speaker
Number one, the message is, well, my family or our friends or whatever, they're not going to protect you or they're not going to code this as inappropriate behavior.
00:35:54
Speaker
And then the cop comes and nothing happens to the point where I know like in the documentary when she was kind of unpacking this incident, he became a quote unquote different person when he answered the door to talk to the cop.
00:36:13
Speaker
So he was able to find his little calm center.
00:36:16
Speaker
Just be like, what?
00:36:16
Speaker
What's going on?
00:36:18
Speaker
And the cop is like, well, maybe you should leave to Lorena.
00:36:24
Speaker
Do you have a place to go?
00:36:27
Speaker
Clearly, I mean, she did the right thing in that moment.
00:36:30
Speaker
It protected her from getting hit anymore by this guy.
00:36:36
Speaker
But it's just another example of how these systems, these outside people are supposed to
00:36:48
Speaker
step in, right?
00:36:49
Speaker
And be like, hey, that's not okay.
00:36:51
Speaker
And one night she's told the police and our family and friends are basically okay with this.
00:36:59
Speaker
They're not going to intervene in any meaningful way.
00:37:02
Speaker
They're not really going to protect you.
00:37:04
Speaker
And I can do this.
00:37:06
Speaker
And this is just a message that throughout her relationship was reiterated by a growing number of people.
00:37:15
Speaker
which I think partially is why she wound up doing what she did.
00:37:21
Speaker
I mean, it's just, yeah.
00:37:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:25
Speaker
I was thinking about that too.
00:37:26
Speaker
When I was watching, I was like, man, there were so many points of intervention, so many, so many, and they just like, didn't happen.
00:37:36
Speaker
Um, and you can see in the, you could, you could see in the movie at least, um,
00:37:42
Speaker
the way that she kept trying to suss out what was normal and what wasn't.
00:37:45
Speaker
Cause everyone was acting like not abnormal.
00:37:49
Speaker
And he was acting like it wasn't abnormal.
00:37:52
Speaker
He was like, everything's fine.
00:37:53
Speaker
So you should act like everything's fine.
00:37:56
Speaker
And I think she was just like, maybe that was a one-time thing where he was too drunk and he was being a jerk and it won't happen again.
00:38:03
Speaker
Which is so common.
00:38:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:08
Speaker
So common.
00:38:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:12
Speaker
Yes.
00:38:12
Speaker
So the next day she returns home and she's cooking when he comes back from work and he does the classic reconcile thing where he's like, I feel terrible.
00:38:23
Speaker
Everyone makes mistakes.
00:38:24
Speaker
It wasn't me.
00:38:25
Speaker
It was the alcohol.
00:38:26
Speaker
I think you're being overdramatic.
00:38:27
Speaker
This won't ever happen again, but you really shouldn't have grabbed the wheel.
00:38:31
Speaker
This whole thing could have been avoided, which is just fucking classic minimizing, denying, blaming.
00:38:37
Speaker
He's basically, he knows her well enough now.
00:38:41
Speaker
He's like chipped away at her enough now.
00:38:44
Speaker
He knows what she needs to hear now.
00:38:48
Speaker
And he gives her enough of an apology.
00:38:52
Speaker
And then also takes the opportunity to chip away at her, you know, Hey, I'm sorry.
00:38:59
Speaker
I feel really bad.
00:39:00
Speaker
And also you shouldn't have grabbed the steering wheel.
00:39:03
Speaker
You're being a little dramatic.
00:39:04
Speaker
It's not that big of a deal.
00:39:06
Speaker
Right.
00:39:07
Speaker
You know, I was drunk.
00:39:09
Speaker
Like,
00:39:10
Speaker
He's just very well aware of what she needs to hear from him to get her to stay after that one incident, but also to get her to stay and reframe the way she sees these things.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:27
Speaker
So he can do it again.
00:39:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:31
Speaker
That's kind of my take on it.
00:39:32
Speaker
No, for sure.
00:39:34
Speaker
I was sitting there like, man, this guy is so textbook.
00:39:37
Speaker
I'm like, did they...
00:39:39
Speaker
When I first started like doing DV work, I was like, do these people get a manual in the mail?
00:39:43
Speaker
Cause it's like, so yeah, it feels very manualized.
00:39:50
Speaker
Like the phrases are the same.
00:39:51
Speaker
The behaviors are the same.
00:39:53
Speaker
They show up differently in different, like, I don't know, permutations, but like, yeah, they're the same.
00:40:01
Speaker
I'm just like, man, what the heck?
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:05
Speaker
And there are things that I would never think to do to somebody, you know, like they're so far-fetched things.
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:11
Speaker
So weird.
00:40:12
Speaker
I feel bad when I accidentally step on someone's toe.
00:40:15
Speaker
I think about it all day.
00:40:17
Speaker
I just like, don't understand the other side of this coin where someone could be so violent and be like, ah, that didn't really happen.
00:40:24
Speaker
And it's not like a deal.
00:40:27
Speaker
My bad.
00:40:28
Speaker
I don't, you know, I don't know.
00:40:30
Speaker
I mean, clearly, yeah.
00:40:33
Speaker
This person can't feel super great about who they are.
00:40:36
Speaker
And maybe it's just too hard of a mirror to look into.
00:40:39
Speaker
And they really just are in the space where if they look into it a little bit, they're just going to, they don't, they're not going to know what to do.
00:40:47
Speaker
I don't, I don't know, but you're right.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:50
Speaker
The vibe, the spirit is the same.
00:40:53
Speaker
Like the details, like you said, might be different, but the spirit behind this stuff, it's, it is alarming how similar it is.
00:41:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:03
Speaker
I mean, the escalation probably is about that, right?
00:41:06
Speaker
Like having to lie to yourself so many times about how you're actually not that bad and like the shame builds.
00:41:12
Speaker
And so like you act, what does Brene Brown say?
00:41:14
Speaker
She says like the more, the more you are in shame, you engage in behaviors that exacerbate that shame.
00:41:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:25
Speaker
And you just like, whatever.
00:41:28
Speaker
anyway.
00:41:29
Speaker
Well, I think there's something like that.
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:31
Speaker
It's, I mean, that's, that's, you know, that's like the thing I, I, I think about, like, not only are they kind of figuring out a person who's using abuse is not only just kind of figuring out what they can and can't do with the survivor and what they need to like put in place in order to do it and kind of continue with this vibe of
00:41:50
Speaker
abuse and power over dynamic, I feel like they're probably doing that for themselves too.
00:41:56
Speaker
It's like, what am I willing to do next?
00:42:01
Speaker
Or what am I okay with doing?
00:42:02
Speaker
Or, you know, it's like, they're both getting broken down.
00:42:07
Speaker
as they're in this cycle together, I would imagine at the very beginning of this type of relationship that someone who's using abuse would be like, oh my God, no, I would never kill her.
00:42:19
Speaker
Or if we're dealing with JWB, if you were to pose this question around like, hey, would you ever like rape her and beat her to the point where she's got like bruises on her face and hang her over the balcony?
00:42:35
Speaker
And would you ever do that?
00:42:37
Speaker
that might've sound horrifying to him at one point in his life, you know?
00:42:41
Speaker
And yet all those things happened.
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:45
Speaker
And he allowed himself to do them.
00:42:47
Speaker
So I think, yeah, that's a very long wind winded way of saying, I think they're both parties in that cycle are getting broken down over time.
00:42:57
Speaker
And the boundaries are just, where are those?
00:43:02
Speaker
What are those?
00:43:03
Speaker
What are boundaries?
00:43:04
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:05
Speaker
I don't think JWB knows what those are.
00:43:08
Speaker
No, sure doesn't seem like
Rehabilitating Abusers
00:43:11
Speaker
it.
00:43:11
Speaker
Boundary free zone.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, yes.
00:43:15
Speaker
I actually was reading an interview or, yeah, an interview with a therapist who works specifically with people who are mandated to take the batteries intervention program.
00:43:29
Speaker
This is a woman that was like, well, kudos to you.
00:43:32
Speaker
I don't think I could do that.
00:43:33
Speaker
But she'll ask them questions like, okay, like similar to the question that you were posing, like, so this happened.
00:43:43
Speaker
And then did you ever think about doing X, Y, and Z to her next, you know, which were like escalating.
00:43:50
Speaker
She was just trying to figure out where the escalation stopped and started, what they were willing to do.
00:43:57
Speaker
And like her conclusion was like, these people feel justified in doing what they're doing.
00:44:03
Speaker
They'll always say, oh yeah, I would.
00:44:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:06
Speaker
I mean, I, I, I pushed her around, but like, I would never like hit her with a blunt object.
00:44:13
Speaker
That's too far for me.
00:44:15
Speaker
So there is like a point of like, oh, I would never do that.
00:44:18
Speaker
Um, which obviously can't trust anything these people are saying, but to them, they're feeling justified in what they have done, thinking that whatever, like that there's, there's limits or something.
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:32
Speaker
Somehow reinforces in their own moral compass or something like that.
00:44:35
Speaker
I have no idea what that is for them, but that just really like stuck with me.
00:44:39
Speaker
How do you foster the conditions that make accountability possible when someone is saying, yes, I did that, but they also feel like what they did was something that they were allowed to do.
00:44:54
Speaker
Like it was a justifiable action.
00:44:57
Speaker
Like there's nothing wrong with it.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:00
Speaker
I don't, I don't know.
00:45:01
Speaker
I sit in attention there.
00:45:04
Speaker
A VEX diagram, if you will.
00:45:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:09
Speaker
I mean, I worked in a batter's intervention program for a couple of years.
00:45:13
Speaker
It's not anything I would ever want to do again, but I'm, I learned a lot.
00:45:19
Speaker
And I did an interview with someone who had been through these, this program specific program, I believe it was like three times.
00:45:29
Speaker
which wasn't uncommon, whether it was with the same survivor or a different one.
00:45:35
Speaker
And part of it, when you graduated, quote unquote, graduated the classes was a conversation, just like we tried to figure out like, how, how'd the group go, you know, ask for input on the process and the content.
00:45:54
Speaker
And I remember just being like, wow, you've been here.
00:45:57
Speaker
Like,
00:45:57
Speaker
through this three times, like, what, what do you think, what have you, what are you learning about the way you're showing up in, in your like romantic relationships, essentially.
00:46:08
Speaker
And he said, I learned that I just love too much.
00:46:12
Speaker
Yikes.
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:16
Speaker
It was very eerie.
00:46:19
Speaker
And I was like, I mean, I asked some follow-up, you know, questions around,
00:46:26
Speaker
how he felt that his partners perceived the way that he loved too much.
00:46:33
Speaker
And it was basically always went back to, well, they're the one calling me.
00:46:38
Speaker
They call me or they come back to me after I do this stuff.
00:46:43
Speaker
It's really not that big of a deal.
00:46:46
Speaker
At any rate, you know, it's hard to, it's hard to say it's again, there's like a, there's a tension point around finding compassion for them as people.
00:46:56
Speaker
Right.
00:46:56
Speaker
And like, clearly the, the hurt that they're going through and also just being like, uh, how do I, how do I sit in this room with you?
00:47:07
Speaker
You know, like I want my sharing space with you.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:12
Speaker
a lot of minimization.
00:47:13
Speaker
And I, you know, what I saw anyway in those groups was a lot of blaming, you know, well, they did this to me and, you know, it was a struggle sometimes with these particular groups to get them to use like the survivor's name.
00:47:35
Speaker
I guess where I'm coming from with that is to, you know,
00:47:40
Speaker
validate that finding of they really, they really do.
00:47:44
Speaker
There is a sense of entitlement behind it.
00:47:46
Speaker
And this, the person that they're engaged in this cycle with, there is a dehumanization of who they are and how they are impacted by the abuse.
00:47:57
Speaker
And almost both people, it's not, I don't want to say you're getting numb to it because it's
00:48:03
Speaker
They aren't.
00:48:04
Speaker
And also there's a numbness around just surviving, getting through the day, you know, that that inertia can, can take over really easily.
00:48:12
Speaker
And, and, and from what I've seen, it doesn't always take a long time for that inertia to take over.
00:48:20
Speaker
Disturbing.
00:48:20
Speaker
Just like, um, a growing disconnection on the person who's abusing part and like a growing, like,
00:48:31
Speaker
no desperation for connection with someone that they thought really like loved them.
00:48:36
Speaker
Like what the fuck, you know, it makes sense that if someone,
00:48:41
Speaker
Like this guy, JWB.
00:48:43
Speaker
I'm sure he love-bombed the shit out of her.
00:48:46
Speaker
Oh, God, yeah.
00:48:47
Speaker
I'm sure he made her feel like the, you know, the shiniest person in the room in a way that she had never experienced before.
00:48:55
Speaker
We hear this all the time.
00:48:57
Speaker
All the time.
00:48:57
Speaker
I've worked with so many people who've been like, I don't understand how this happened.
00:49:02
Speaker
You know, they were the most... Chivalrous is usually the word.
00:49:06
Speaker
The most chivalrous, which...
00:49:09
Speaker
I could go on a whole tangent about how chivalry has always been a tool of patriarchal control and ownership over women.
00:49:19
Speaker
A transaction, but I won't go there because it will take too long.
00:49:25
Speaker
But like always the most chivalrous, most generous, what surprised me in these very grandiose ways was like somebody that you see in movies, never in real life.
00:49:36
Speaker
And it's like,
00:49:38
Speaker
Yeah, that wasn't real.
00:49:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:40
Speaker
Being real.
00:49:41
Speaker
But like the the fantasy is there.
00:49:44
Speaker
Right.
00:49:44
Speaker
And like.
00:49:46
Speaker
Society tells you you should want that.
00:49:48
Speaker
And when someone's offering that to you, you want to believe that's real.
00:49:51
Speaker
Sure.
00:49:53
Speaker
So like, I don't know, especially like when you're like, oh, 20 years old.
00:49:57
Speaker
What the heck?
00:49:58
Speaker
I know.
00:50:00
Speaker
So susceptible.
00:50:01
Speaker
Yes.
00:50:02
Speaker
And when you're engaged in those patterns and all you're getting is like
00:50:06
Speaker
the abuse and that time in between those, that violence shortens like it did with Lorena and in JWB.
00:50:17
Speaker
you know, it's really hard to pull out of that whirlpool when you, when you're like, you're saying like kind of alluded to when you're craving that love bomb again, you know, it's really hard to pull out of it before you get that.
00:50:34
Speaker
That's a lot of the time.
00:50:36
Speaker
I think what keeps people where they're at, because it's like, well, I know it's on the other side of this and it's really lovely.
00:50:41
Speaker
And I, this is the person we love.
00:50:45
Speaker
Um, and unfortunately what we see with abusive relationships is that person disappears.
00:50:53
Speaker
And was that person ever really there truly, you know, I don't know, but, um, yeah, the cycle, man, at this point, these two are in it.
00:51:06
Speaker
They are in that cycle of violence.
00:51:09
Speaker
Yeah, and this is just the beginning.
00:51:11
Speaker
This was the first incident.
00:51:14
Speaker
And she says in this, in between this movie, they like have interviews with her.
00:51:20
Speaker
And she said, the first thing that Jay did was plant a seed in my head that everything was my fault.
00:51:26
Speaker
And for a long time, I believed him.
00:51:31
Speaker
It's horrible.
00:51:32
Speaker
Broke my heart.
00:51:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:38
Speaker
So...
00:51:39
Speaker
Oh, I was going to share this stat real quick too.
00:51:42
Speaker
So this person, a military man, I was making the connection to Okinawa earlier, but also I looked up really quick to see what the domestic violence rates are with people who are in the military, particularly men in the military, because we know how men in the military are socialized, what that environment is like.
00:52:07
Speaker
I don't know if everyone does, but
00:52:09
Speaker
You should.
00:52:12
Speaker
So in just between 2015 through 2019, there were more than 40,000 incidents of DV, including service members, spouses or intimate partners, according to an analysis of the military services data conducted by the GAO, the Government Accountability Office.
00:52:34
Speaker
And of those incidents, 74% of those were specifically physical abuse that were documented.
00:52:41
Speaker
And like, this is just what was reported between 2015, 2019.
00:52:46
Speaker
We know that domestic violence is like one of the most underreported quote unquote crimes ever.
00:52:54
Speaker
in the country.
00:52:55
Speaker
And we know like the military has like a long history of kind of covering up the violence that really exists interpersonally with service members.
00:53:06
Speaker
And also this is like more than 20 years after this story.
00:53:10
Speaker
So I can only imagine what the rates were at the time and the normalization of that violence.
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:19
Speaker
I mean, is it, is it even reportable if it's just part of the culture and not seen as wrong?
00:53:26
Speaker
It's not surprising if you know anything about domestic violence that over time, these incidents escalated and continued and Lorena attempted to leave and did leave and came back.
00:53:37
Speaker
And, you know, he showed up in that love bomb phase and got her back in, into the relationship.
00:53:45
Speaker
Um,
00:53:48
Speaker
There were what I think is also really interesting that might have, again, led to the incident in part is over time, her coworkers knew about this violence that was happening for neighbors.
00:54:03
Speaker
She disclosed to neighbors, family, the Castro saw an incident of physical violence.
00:54:14
Speaker
And
00:54:16
Speaker
And where I think a lot of folks actually were trying to be helpful and trying to connect her with resources.
00:54:24
Speaker
Unfortunately, what had gotten deeper into her like psyche and kind of like what had what the message that really stuck was the messaging from him.
00:54:38
Speaker
which was even if we get divorced, I can still rape you.
00:54:42
Speaker
Even if you leave, I know where to find you.
00:54:45
Speaker
You can't leave.
00:54:47
Speaker
You can leave, but you're not really gone.
00:54:50
Speaker
And I still get to have sex with you and all these things.
00:54:53
Speaker
So in the documentary, there was a police officer that was interviewed and she said that they were called out at least six times, if not more.
00:55:05
Speaker
She was a little unsure of the number.
00:55:08
Speaker
And I didn't hear like a clear number, but six is a lot.
00:55:12
Speaker
There's plenty of documentation backing up physical abuse.
00:55:20
Speaker
It sounds like over time, incidents of rape were increasing and she was also sodomized by him, by JWB.
00:55:31
Speaker
And she,
00:55:36
Speaker
She just really felt very hopeless, I think.
00:55:39
Speaker
And there did seem to be like a turning point with her where she went to file a restraining order.
00:55:47
Speaker
She was actually even moving things out of their apartment.
00:55:50
Speaker
And it sounded like the vibe was basically like, I'm leaving.
00:55:56
Speaker
I just need to get my shit in order and I'm out of here.
00:56:00
Speaker
Which, you know, I think she was trying to get the timing right for everything.
00:56:05
Speaker
And of course, JWB has another person just like crashing in their apartment, goes out drinking one night, gets loaded after extensive abuse, physical, emotional, sexual abuse.
00:56:21
Speaker
Financial, you know, this is another thing with this particular situation where it's like, yeah, I'm the man, I should be the breadwinner.
00:56:28
Speaker
So he's like drowning in the toxic masculinity of it all, but he seems perfectly happy to not work and let her go and bring in money to the point where we see, I think it's important to note just to, sorry, like little sidebar here.
00:56:48
Speaker
um Lorena admitted to it was referred to as embezzle money from the nail salon where she was working because they couldn't make their bills and he just couldn't hold down a job and she felt really horrible about it and told him finally that what she was doing which of course he like judged her for and
00:57:14
Speaker
freaked out over, but still continued to allow her to support this, their family, you know, and she came clean to the owner of the nail salon who knew her well enough to know like, this isn't, she didn't want to do this.
00:57:27
Speaker
She's in real trouble.
00:57:29
Speaker
So we see this happen with survivors who are still either with their partner, sometimes out of their relationship where there's some sort of crime happening, quote unquote crime like this, like shoplifting, taking money, that sort of thing.
00:57:45
Speaker
And it's truly, it's truly, I just kind of categorize it as survival where, you
00:57:51
Speaker
the resources that they have at their feet are so limited.
00:57:55
Speaker
And even if like in instances where you don't have limited resources, you're thinking you do.
00:58:02
Speaker
I mean, I had a client who in shelter, I'll never forget this.
00:58:06
Speaker
She was really sweet, but she was very traumatized.
00:58:09
Speaker
She came into shelter and we talked about like, she wanted to get an apartment, but she's like, I don't have any money.
00:58:16
Speaker
I don't have any money.
00:58:17
Speaker
And it turned out she had over a million dollars in her bank account.
00:58:20
Speaker
But he had told her enough that like, no, that's my money.
00:58:26
Speaker
You can't come and get it.
00:58:28
Speaker
You know, you don't, you don't, you're not allowed to draw money from it.
00:58:32
Speaker
And she, she literally had over a million dollars in her checking account.
00:58:38
Speaker
The heck?
00:58:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:40
Speaker
I've never seen it before or since, but clearly, you know, we see, we see survivors resources being stolen from them all the time.
00:58:50
Speaker
paychecks taken, that sort of thing.
00:58:52
Speaker
So it's just to say, it's important to see these types of acts in context with what other things are going through as a result of this relationship.
00:59:03
Speaker
So in this instance, Lorena taking money from her place of employment, certainly not the most awesome thing.
00:59:11
Speaker
And also if the employer was able to see it for what it was, let's back off of our judgments.
00:59:19
Speaker
when I was watching the movie, because the movie was very gratuitous.
00:59:22
Speaker
I don't recommend watching this Lifetime movie if you have any connection at all to domestic or sexual violence.
00:59:31
Speaker
It was really hard to watch, but it really outlined in detail what happened to her.
00:59:35
Speaker
You see the trajectory of that experience.
00:59:37
Speaker
But something that I noticed he kept doing and saying backhandedly was dangling her immigration status over her.
00:59:48
Speaker
Being like, well, if you divorce me, then you're going to be deported.
00:59:51
Speaker
Or who's going to believe you?
00:59:53
Speaker
I'm an American citizen.
00:59:54
Speaker
You're not.
00:59:54
Speaker
And she had a student visa.
00:59:56
Speaker
A visa was not connected to him at all.
00:59:58
Speaker
But he made her think that it was.
01:00:01
Speaker
That her citizenship rested upon him.
01:00:04
Speaker
And he kept doing this over and over and over.
01:00:07
Speaker
Something else, too.
01:00:08
Speaker
Like, not only did he rape her, he also forced her to get an abortion.
01:00:12
Speaker
So, like...
01:00:14
Speaker
When people think about sexual abuse, they're like idea that's very narrow.
01:00:19
Speaker
But like, not only was he like forcing himself on her all the time without protection, when she got pregnant and wanted to keep this child, he forced her to have an abortion.
01:00:28
Speaker
And then when they were in the clinic, he was like taunting her, talking about how big the needle was, how painful it was.
01:00:34
Speaker
And everybody in the lobby was staring at him like, what the fuck?
01:00:37
Speaker
And one of like the, I don't know, maybe Planned Parenthood, whoever was,
01:00:43
Speaker
It seemed like a Planned Parenthood kind of place.
01:00:45
Speaker
The person who, the nurse who was checking her in told him he had to leave, asked her if she actually wanted to get this procedure.
01:00:52
Speaker
And clearly she was concerned, but didn't know how to approach it.
01:00:54
Speaker
This is like what I was like reflecting on when we were talking about multiple points of intervention.
01:00:58
Speaker
Like so many people saw this behavior and like towards the end, he didn't even try to hide it.
01:01:05
Speaker
It was like,
01:01:07
Speaker
when someone's being that horrible in public to me, that just says what goes on at home is so, so scary, you know, and dangerous.
01:01:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:17
Speaker
And he was, he would talk about those intersections of violence, especially when, well, the person using abuse is closer to like that center of power and has more privilege and power just given to them.
01:01:32
Speaker
But then, especially when, um,
01:01:35
Speaker
compared or relative to the survivor's access to power and he really leaned into that in a big way in all the ways and clearly was very racist and made cracks about her being from South America and even like in interviews he was like just oh well you know she's this fiery fiery Latina which is just like
01:02:05
Speaker
such a gross stereotype.
01:02:08
Speaker
And at the same time, you know, tried to, tried to portray her as this like innocent, sweet, naive person.
01:02:17
Speaker
And it's like, he just really leaned into all the ways he could get the community society to see her as a person to blame for all of this and minimized his own behavior and
01:02:37
Speaker
I agree with you.
01:02:38
Speaker
Like when people come in with like a black eye and we've, okay, I've been doing this work for a really long time.
01:02:44
Speaker
Like Bob, see as a visa.
01:02:46
Speaker
I've seen very few black eyes.
01:02:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:49
Speaker
Someone comes in with a black eye.
01:02:50
Speaker
That's like, they don't care anymore.
01:02:54
Speaker
Like they're not even targeting the hitting.
01:02:58
Speaker
And to me, it's really fucking scary.
01:03:00
Speaker
Like, yeah.
01:03:02
Speaker
And he's just doing this shit in public.
01:03:04
Speaker
Like it's nothing.
01:03:05
Speaker
I totally, I agree with you.
01:03:06
Speaker
Like think of how much that escalated and how much physical danger she was in at that point.
01:03:13
Speaker
People don't realize it either.
01:03:15
Speaker
Everyone needs to just change their domestic violence photos.
01:03:19
Speaker
It's not some lady with a black eye.
01:03:21
Speaker
If you look up domestic violence photos on Google, all you see is a bunch of white ladies with black eyes, which is just like, first of all, it says a lot about who you think is worth your concern.
01:03:33
Speaker
And also, it's just like not accurate because of the targeted hitting.
01:03:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:39
Speaker
Well, and excuse me, Shayna, but they're also cowering in a corner crying.
01:03:42
Speaker
Okay.
01:03:43
Speaker
You forgot.
01:03:44
Speaker
I'm so sorry.
01:03:46
Speaker
I forgot.
01:03:48
Speaker
Which I'm just going to say, I tie, oddly enough, to chivalry.
01:03:56
Speaker
Right?
01:03:57
Speaker
We have to portray women as victims, beat up.
01:04:01
Speaker
fragile in a corner.
01:04:04
Speaker
And that's when, that's when we step in because that's not chivalrous.
01:04:08
Speaker
That's not gentlemanly to do this.
01:04:11
Speaker
Like, but we need women to be weak in order for them to be saved.
01:04:16
Speaker
If they protect themselves, then something throws that balance off.
01:04:20
Speaker
It's like, we'll protect you from the monster, but until you're, you show that you're able to protect yourself and then you become a monster.
01:04:30
Speaker
Right.
01:04:31
Speaker
Because now we're, now we're messing with every man's integrity as a man, even the ones that think they're so great and they want to be saviors.
01:04:41
Speaker
Right.
01:04:43
Speaker
We're like defining that, that masculinity is actually toxic.
01:04:50
Speaker
And we can't, that throws everything off that throws the power center off too hard.
01:04:55
Speaker
I just don't think it's a coincidence that all these people and these jurors and stuff.
01:05:00
Speaker
I mean, thankfully they did what they did.
01:05:02
Speaker
I don't want to jump ahead, but I think that's so key to the way she was perceived by everyone, not just men, but also by women.
01:05:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
01:05:13
Speaker
So, so that's that.
01:05:15
Speaker
It was real bad.
01:05:17
Speaker
That relationship was real bad.
01:05:19
Speaker
And I don't know if you've seen the court, the testimony where she actually tells,
01:05:27
Speaker
She goes into detail about these incidents of violence.
01:05:31
Speaker
It broke my heart.
01:05:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:34
Speaker
That wasn't an easy thing to sit through.
01:05:36
Speaker
We've heard a lot of these stories, but he was completely dismissive.
01:05:41
Speaker
What happened over time
Biederman's Chart: Psychological Tactics of Control
01:05:42
Speaker
was JWB was completely dismissive of her personhood and her humanity.
01:05:47
Speaker
And he did whatever the fuck he wanted to do to her so that he could feel powerful and maintain his toxic masculinity.
01:05:57
Speaker
Did you want to go into that or I?
01:05:59
Speaker
OK, yeah, go right ahead.
01:06:03
Speaker
I also made a note about Biderman's chart, but we don't have to do that.
01:06:06
Speaker
I just remember like when I did DV training, I remember it being like, like, oh fuck.
01:06:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:13
Speaker
I don't know.
01:06:13
Speaker
I think it's really compelling, but also I think when I was taking 40 hour training, when they outlined it to me and was like, actually this chart was created to describe the experiences that prisoners of war had.
01:06:34
Speaker
Um, and describes why it's so hard to like get your site yourself psychologically out of the situation, not just physically.
01:06:42
Speaker
Um, and so I thought I would share that with you all today.
01:06:49
Speaker
Here it is.
01:06:50
Speaker
So isolation, obviously, we're already seeing that happen.
01:06:54
Speaker
Monopolization of perception, where the entirety of the survivor's perception is kind of concentrated on the person who's using abuse, what they want, what they say they need, what they might do or might not do.
01:07:11
Speaker
because it keeps you safe to be always be calculating what you can do to avoid harm is going to keep you safer in the longterm.
01:07:21
Speaker
So like monopolizing your perception is like, yes, something that keeps the cycle going, but also something that keeps you safer in the moment.
01:07:29
Speaker
It's about survival, induced ability and exhaustion.
01:07:33
Speaker
There were totally times in this movie where he would be playing the,
01:07:38
Speaker
like watching TV really loud.
01:07:41
Speaker
And she'd come out and be like, can you turn that down?
01:07:43
Speaker
She'd come out and he's like watching porn hella loud, which is like another, I think, intentional slap in the face, especially her coming from a family and a culture, which that wasn't like something that was...
01:07:57
Speaker
She just wasn't comfortable with it playing.
01:08:00
Speaker
She just wasn't comfortable with it being there.
01:08:03
Speaker
And he wouldn't respect any of her wishes.
01:08:06
Speaker
And she needed to work in the morning.
01:08:08
Speaker
So he's like sabotaging her work life.
01:08:12
Speaker
Threats, occasional indulgences, which usually happen in the honeymoon phase.
01:08:16
Speaker
And it keeps the survivor hopeful that maybe...
01:08:19
Speaker
Things can go back to normal.
01:08:21
Speaker
Things feel really good right now, which he did until he didn't, which as Jill said, those usually the honeymoon phase disappears slowly as the cycle kind of goes quicker in your life.
01:08:33
Speaker
falling deeper down this vortex, or I like the illusion of the whirlpool, because that's totally what it's like, you know, lazy river on top, and then like slowly you're just like whipped around all over the place.
01:08:45
Speaker
Demonstrating omnipotence.
01:08:47
Speaker
So throughout the movie also, she would like say things like, I feel like he's everywhere.
01:08:51
Speaker
I feel like he watches me all the time.
01:08:53
Speaker
He knows everything that I'm doing.
01:08:54
Speaker
I feel like he knows what I'm thinking.
01:08:56
Speaker
I feel like I can't make a move without him being there, which was part of the reason she said that she was so scared to like
01:09:03
Speaker
Tell friends because she knew her friends would be like, will you stay with me?
01:09:07
Speaker
She didn't want him coming to their house because he also said, I'm going to kill you.
01:09:10
Speaker
I'm going to kill your friends.
01:09:11
Speaker
So she was trying to protect the people in her life from him also.
01:09:15
Speaker
Degradation, as we see, and enforcing trivial demands, which really is just like a long winded way of saying like,
01:09:23
Speaker
Like, you know, you know, you don't, I don't like it when you wear dresses like that.
01:09:27
Speaker
Or you know that I expect beer on, like this kind of beer in the refrigerator by 5 p.m.
01:09:33
Speaker
today.
01:09:35
Speaker
Things that sound ridiculous because they are, but like the survivor, because the perception is monopolized, doesn't know like when she can say no or when they can say no without receiving like an escalation of violence.
01:09:50
Speaker
So it's like,
01:09:52
Speaker
It's a way of like keeping someone's attention scattered and making that, like making sure that they don't know what's important, what's not important to like meet, like what demand can you meet or not meet today?
01:10:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:04
Speaker
Anyways, I thought I'd share that because we always talk about this in like TV workshops and I think it's, yeah, compelling.
01:10:10
Speaker
I think it illustrates a lot of this really well.
01:10:13
Speaker
It's textbook, this relationship, right?
01:10:16
Speaker
Yes.
01:10:17
Speaker
Do you have anything to, did I miss anything?
01:10:20
Speaker
I don't think so.
01:10:21
Speaker
I mean, other than just to say, like, you know, when we talk about how people use abuse and in this instance, clearly JWB, he's closer to the center of power just based on his identity, you know, and some of it just intrinsic to who he is, his, the fact that he's a white cisgender man with access to resources,
01:10:46
Speaker
That puts him closer to that power center and gives him more privilege than she has as a cisgender woman who's not from here, whose first language is not English.
01:10:58
Speaker
It creates barriers for her, whereas for him, there's these barriers.
01:11:03
Speaker
you know, empty, easy to travel roads to access.
01:11:07
Speaker
So what happens, I think a lot of times when, when that, that power center is so off that access to power and privileges is so off between two partners and there's abuse happening.
01:11:18
Speaker
There can be that, that access to power and privilege can be off and you can still have a meaningful, loving relationship between two partners.
01:11:27
Speaker
People don't need to lean into their privilege.
01:11:29
Speaker
Men don't need to lean into their privilege.
01:11:31
Speaker
It's not in your DNA.
01:11:33
Speaker
to lean into privilege you know but unfortunately a lot of times people do and JWB did for sure and what happened was is like instead of you know JWB got to center his power and Lorena had to center him yeah and you know to to the
01:11:55
Speaker
detriment of everything else that's meaning was meaningful in her life, her belief system, you know, her values, access to friends, family, and outside life.
Societal Power Imbalances in Abuse
01:12:05
Speaker
It impacted her work, which she loved.
01:12:08
Speaker
You know, she's, she was still doing this type of work for a long time after this.
01:12:12
Speaker
She loved doing that work that was put in jeopardy, everything because he was centered.
01:12:18
Speaker
He created the circumstances through this chart of coercion and
01:12:24
Speaker
the cycle of violence where he was centered forefront of her entire life.
01:12:30
Speaker
So the day that she decides to leave.
01:12:33
Speaker
So I guess it's important to note that like at one point in the relationship, she left and then he came back to her like a while later, like a long time.
01:12:40
Speaker
Like once she finally was like kind of at peace and came like and found her, which kind of adds this whole omnipotence thing, like
01:12:49
Speaker
He's like everywhere.
01:12:49
Speaker
And it's like, I went to counseling.
01:12:51
Speaker
I talked to people.
01:12:52
Speaker
I know I made a mistake.
01:12:53
Speaker
I want to make it better.
01:12:54
Speaker
I promise it won't be like before.
01:12:56
Speaker
And, you know, she wanted to, she wanted to believe that was true.
01:13:01
Speaker
He was offering something that was, you know,
01:13:04
Speaker
something that she wanted and had experienced the beginning of the relationship.
01:13:07
Speaker
So this is when she moves back in with him and period between that time and the time that the incident happened is very narrow because she's learning really quickly that he's going to be who he's going to be forever.
01:13:18
Speaker
And she said, people ask why I went back.
01:13:20
Speaker
It's really hard to explain.
01:13:22
Speaker
I was 22 years old, a Catholic, a virgin before I met him.
01:13:26
Speaker
I believed so much in marriage.
01:13:27
Speaker
When he came back, I thought, what if, what if he's changed now?
01:13:31
Speaker
Now I know that the cycle of, now I know that this is just a cycle of abuse, hoping it'll get better when we know it won't.
01:13:37
Speaker
So I wanted to, I wanted to share that.
01:13:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:44
Speaker
So the day she decides to leave, he gets physical with her and she actually, she records it because this is when she's like thinking about putting the protection order together.
01:13:53
Speaker
And then she comes back to the house when she thinks he's out with his friend who's staying at their house.
01:13:58
Speaker
She tried to leave.
01:13:59
Speaker
He blocks her and then the tape recorder falls out.
01:14:02
Speaker
And so he's like super pissed and he threatens her before leaving.
01:14:07
Speaker
She, again, she doesn't go stay anywhere else because she's scared that if he goes and finds her, he's going to flip out and he's going to harm her friends.
01:14:15
Speaker
So she stays at the apartment sometime between 3.30 AM and 4.30 AM and comes back drunk and he rapes her.
01:14:24
Speaker
And she's like asking him like, why do you keep doing this to me?
01:14:26
Speaker
And he's like, I don't
01:14:29
Speaker
He basically just like mumbles and is like, I don't care about your feelings.
01:14:32
Speaker
And this is like the peak of like severe trauma where she's just like, she's had it.
01:14:39
Speaker
This is like, this is it.
01:14:41
Speaker
I don't know how much bodily trauma anyone can take before they're just like, this is it.
01:14:47
Speaker
So she said she remembers going to the kitchen for a glass of water to calm her down.
01:14:52
Speaker
And the fridge light is the only light that's on.
01:14:54
Speaker
And she says it illuminates this knife.
01:14:57
Speaker
And at this point, she says she doesn't really have memory of the actual incident, which is super common that trauma blocks memory to protect your brain from something extremely traumatic.
01:15:08
Speaker
But she just remembers grabbing the knife.
01:15:10
Speaker
And we know that she chops off his dick, right?
01:15:14
Speaker
She goes in there, chops it off.
01:15:16
Speaker
He's so drunk.
01:15:17
Speaker
He's just laying there for a while.
01:15:19
Speaker
Doesn't really notice what's happening.
01:15:21
Speaker
This is how wasted he is.
01:15:23
Speaker
And she floods the apartment.
01:15:26
Speaker
She drives down the road in shock and notices that she's still holding the penis and she's still holding the knife.
01:15:33
Speaker
So she's like, she throws the penis out the window and some grassy knoll by a 7-Eleven.
01:15:41
Speaker
Grassy knoll.
01:15:42
Speaker
Some grassy knoll.
01:15:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:44
Speaker
And then gets to the nail salon, like I guess autopilot to the nail salon, gets out of her car, realizes her hands are bloody, throws the knife away in the trash can and is realizing no one's at the nail salon.
01:15:56
Speaker
And then this is where she drives to her friend's house who owns the nail salon.
01:16:02
Speaker
It's her boss and her friend who actually was like, I don't know.
01:16:07
Speaker
I really liked her.
01:16:08
Speaker
Like looking at interviews and like at least how she was portrayed in this movie.
01:16:12
Speaker
She was just like, what do you need?
01:16:14
Speaker
ask no questions, you know, after she comes over and she's like, I did this thing.
01:16:19
Speaker
She was like, okay, what do you need?
01:16:23
Speaker
During this time, this is from the Prime documentary, which I'm really glad that I watched after the Lifetime movie, which was, which wrecked me.
01:16:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:36
Speaker
And because the Prime documentary is a little more balanced and like, I don't know, interweaves like some storytelling, some important context, but also like, it's like glimmers of like comedic relief almost, you know?
01:16:51
Speaker
And not to the absurdity of it all kind of thing.
01:16:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:56
Speaker
And I guess in the 911 call, everyone's just obsessed with finding the tip of this dude's dick.
01:17:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:03
Speaker
Because he calls 911.
01:17:05
Speaker
He's like, I'm bleeding out.
01:17:07
Speaker
And the guy says, we have to go and find it to salvage this man's dignity.
01:17:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:14
Speaker
Another guy goes, it was cut very clean and was like kind of obsessing over how clean it was cut.
01:17:20
Speaker
This other guy was like, it was lost in action.
01:17:22
Speaker
We needed to find it.
01:17:23
Speaker
So everyone was just like scrambling for this dick for like 24 hours.
01:17:27
Speaker
I can't think of any other appendage, especially if it wasn't connected to a man who would, it would have happened.
01:17:35
Speaker
The whole story was about this dude's dick.
01:17:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:38
Speaker
I mean, there's a part of me that gets that because, yeah.
01:17:42
Speaker
pretty extraordinary.
01:17:43
Speaker
I've heard stories about people's like fingers getting cut off and losing toes.
01:17:50
Speaker
I know this is not a story we hear every day about some guy getting his dick cut off.
01:17:57
Speaker
That's not that's not an everyday one.
01:18:00
Speaker
That's true.
01:18:01
Speaker
That is a remarkable it's remarkable.
01:18:04
Speaker
It really is and clearly the entire country if not world agreed.
01:18:08
Speaker
Yes.
01:18:10
Speaker
True.
01:18:11
Speaker
One of the people who was in the hospital at the time, so her friend takes her to the hospital to get a rape kit.
01:18:17
Speaker
She was like, he raped me.
01:18:18
Speaker
But JWB is also brought to the hospital at the same time.
01:18:23
Speaker
So one of the people that was there said all the police were crossing their legs in a protective stance.
01:18:28
Speaker
They were so shook by this situation.
01:18:31
Speaker
And there's this scene in the hospital where there's a police officer who's there and she thinks he's there to take a forensic report on the fact that she was raped.
01:18:42
Speaker
And he just keeps asking about his dick, where his dick is, as she's like about to get a rape kit.
01:18:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:49
Speaker
He's like, we need to find it.
01:18:50
Speaker
We need to find it.
01:18:51
Speaker
My favorite quote is it was lost in action.
01:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's...
01:19:00
Speaker
That's a memorable quote for sure.
01:19:05
Speaker
Anyways, so they administer a rape kit, which I kind of wanted to go into the cruelty of rape kits.
01:19:12
Speaker
Oh, God.
01:19:14
Speaker
So both of us have worked in sexual assault situations.
01:19:19
Speaker
I guess both have done medical advocacy.
01:19:24
Speaker
I don't know how that process differs for from from place to place.
01:19:28
Speaker
But basically, in my experience, through SF Women Against Rape, actually.
01:19:34
Speaker
volunteers and people who were then asked to be on call medical advocates were trained to kind of be there to support survivors when they opted to go to the hospital after an assault.
01:19:45
Speaker
And we were only there overnight and on weekends because that's when social workers weren't available.
01:19:50
Speaker
And so basically if a nurse would let them know that that was an option, if they wanted someone to come and support them, I'd get a call and go out and be there.
01:20:02
Speaker
And it didn't,
01:20:03
Speaker
It didn't mean that they had to go anyone which way.
01:20:06
Speaker
Sometimes I was there for like 20 minutes because someone just wanted someone to get connected to services and also like wanted to make sure that they, you know, got the things that they needed to make sure that they were safe.
01:20:18
Speaker
Antibiotics, blood tests, whatever.
01:20:21
Speaker
And then some people opted to get a rape kit.
01:20:24
Speaker
And then some people opted to get a rape kit and talk to the police.
01:20:27
Speaker
So some or all of those things happened.
01:20:30
Speaker
And so sometimes I'd be there for like four hours.
01:20:33
Speaker
sitting with people who are getting reinvaded.
01:20:37
Speaker
Like it's an invasive process.
01:20:41
Speaker
People are poked and prodded talking to a bunch of strangers about like probably the most, one of the most, if not the most traumatic experiences of their life and then have to get talked to the police who like interrogate them.
01:20:55
Speaker
I've literally sat there and watched the police talk to survivors.
01:20:57
Speaker
Like they're the person who is on trial or something.
01:21:01
Speaker
I was like, what the hell?
01:21:03
Speaker
It's horrible.
01:21:04
Speaker
Anyways, just, just to say, it's just to say the cruelty of rape kits.
01:21:08
Speaker
And then there are so many places with like rape kit backlogs, which I know are being, some places are trying to clear the backlogs now, but for a long time, people would get calls 10 years after the incident happened.
01:21:25
Speaker
They were like, I put it behind me and get told that their rape kit was finally processed.
01:21:29
Speaker
There was a hit.
01:21:30
Speaker
Would you like to go to trial?
01:21:32
Speaker
And even if you like go to trial, the chance of conviction is so low anyway.
01:21:36
Speaker
Like the rate at which people get rape kits after sexual assault in general, I want to say probably pretty low.
01:21:44
Speaker
And then for people who are in relationships with people who are sexually assaulting them, do they ever go at all?
01:21:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:52
Speaker
At all?
01:21:53
Speaker
Because like we don't legitimize that as like a sexual assault.
01:21:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:56
Speaker
Ever.
01:21:58
Speaker
Well, yeah, we don't.
01:22:00
Speaker
I mean, this is during a time when I don't think every state in the country had marital rape laws.
01:22:06
Speaker
And I will probably get into it deeper with the court case, but there were so like specific as to residents, you know, like, are you living with them or are you not living with them?
01:22:19
Speaker
Because a lot of the definitions hinged on that.
01:22:22
Speaker
So, I mean, this is a time when
01:22:27
Speaker
I'm shocked, frankly, that they even brought this to trial, that they brought this marital rape case to trial.
01:22:33
Speaker
I know I'm jumping ahead.
01:22:36
Speaker
I mean, I imagine that my experiences doing medical advocacy were probably not as shrouded.
01:22:46
Speaker
as yours just because of the whole like it's a different pathway to get there more options i guess um like the people that i worked with were like do you want to talk to the police or not like do you want to file a police report or not and if they didn't want to which a lot of times it didn't because they were there for hours yeah they could get a rape kit not have to talk to the police that day you know it's it's not much better but it's um
01:23:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's one step.
01:23:15
Speaker
It's a lean.
01:23:17
Speaker
Yes.
01:23:18
Speaker
Towards offering broader options.
01:23:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's what that is.
01:23:22
Speaker
It's not a step, it's a lean.
01:23:24
Speaker
A lean, yes.
01:23:25
Speaker
Towards less horrible.
01:23:28
Speaker
I was going to go on a tangent about Brock Turner and I'm like, even when all the evidence points to like this person is a rapist, they got a rape kit and the DNA was there and like there's all this evidence he still gets like, what?
01:23:43
Speaker
nothing nothing like truly a future like oh god and like juxtaposed with so many men of color who are criminalized for far less like smoking marijuana or selling marijuana i'm just like what the fuck it's disgusting yep anyway that's a whole nother tangent it's just to say they talked about administering rape kit and i wanted to name how cruel they are
01:24:10
Speaker
And how hard it is to work, to do that work.
01:24:13
Speaker
And then also to like be on the phone with someone who had just been raped and to let them know that they're going to ask them, I had to advise them not to shower.
01:24:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:23
Speaker
That's the first thing you want to do.
01:24:24
Speaker
Right.
01:24:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:27
Speaker
It's the first thing you want to do is go take care of business.
01:24:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:34
Speaker
Get clean there.
01:24:34
Speaker
Why would you want someone's evil shit?
01:24:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:40
Speaker
on you.
01:24:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:41
Speaker
It's just, Oh God.
01:24:44
Speaker
And the way that you have to tell them to like, put your, their garments and a paper bag because it keeps more of the evidence on there.
01:24:50
Speaker
And like, it just felt really gross to have to do.
01:24:54
Speaker
And like, it's, you know, a lot of both ends because I'm just like, if people have to go through that process, would you not rather have someone there to support them through it and let them know what, you know, what's available to them?
01:25:07
Speaker
Like, yeah, you know,
01:25:10
Speaker
Well, yeah.
01:25:11
Speaker
And, you know, I just think it's important if like you're listening to this and this is the first, like you've heard of it.
01:25:20
Speaker
Some of, I mean, we could go deep into traumatic details, but this is just some of the really difficult and traumatic elements of going to get a med legal, which is the portal to quote unquote justice, right?
01:25:35
Speaker
Your court, quote unquote justice.
01:25:38
Speaker
Know what you're
01:25:40
Speaker
You need to do homework and you need to read up.
01:25:42
Speaker
If you're someone who's telling a survivor of rape,
01:25:47
Speaker
to report to the cops.
01:25:48
Speaker
You need to know if you're going to refer your responsibility to understand what it is you're referring to, and that is what you're referring to, is like, even if you can opt to just get a med legal or a rape kit, that in and of itself is so traumatic.
01:26:07
Speaker
It's so traumatic.
01:26:08
Speaker
So it's not fixed because we offer this option to survivors.
01:26:14
Speaker
It's not fixed when
01:26:17
Speaker
you know, even if a survivor decides to go through that traumatic process, their kit just sits there and, and does, it doesn't get tested.
01:26:27
Speaker
And then potentially in the best case scenario for these people, they get re-triggered 10, like you're saying, like 10 years later, like, and, and also I understand the need and importance of having this evidence, right.
01:26:44
Speaker
Without it,
01:26:45
Speaker
golden state killer wouldn't be the golden state killer the golden state killer would be the visalia rapist ramsacker and the east area rapist and the original night stalker and you know like it's a both and i get it but if we're dealing with intimate partner violence versus some fucking rando breaking into your house in the middle of the night and like raping you as a stranger like those are right those are kind of two different things
01:27:15
Speaker
using the same method of violence and intimidation.
01:27:18
Speaker
Like know what you're referring this person to, do a little homework and don't just think that it's done and set and fixed.
01:27:26
Speaker
Cause it's not, it's not.
01:27:29
Speaker
So we need to do better.
01:27:33
Speaker
We need to do better clearly as a society and we need to do better as natural helpers and connectors.
01:27:41
Speaker
And at least just know the pros and cons or do our best to like kind of get some knowledge base and understanding around why someone does not want to enter into that process.
01:27:54
Speaker
Whether that's a survivor of rape or domestic violence, because, yeah, maybe with domestic violence, you might not get a rape kit, but you're going to go through another onslaught of bullshit with the police department.
01:28:05
Speaker
You know, it's just, you're still going to get photographed.
01:28:08
Speaker
You're going to sometimes have to show them parts of your body that you don't want to have to show them.
01:28:15
Speaker
You know, a lot of, it's just, it's all traumatic.
01:28:20
Speaker
It's on fix.
01:28:22
Speaker
No.
01:28:24
Speaker
So, and also like.
01:28:27
Speaker
I mean, Lorena said, I'll call the police or the police were called multiple times.
01:28:32
Speaker
I even reported him to the Marines.
01:28:35
Speaker
My friend sent photos of my bruises to, I don't remember.
01:28:42
Speaker
I don't remember where they were sent to, but basically nothing came of it.
01:28:45
Speaker
And when he found out that those things happened, he just escalated in violence.
01:28:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:50
Speaker
And so like, yeah, it's like not a fix it.
01:28:56
Speaker
There's a litany of like situations that we could outline where the intervention that the general public goes to as the solution is not, you know, all of these, even us, you know, people reach out to Women, Inc.
01:29:13
Speaker
and want support and we're not able to give them the support that in these particular situations would make enough of a difference that they're able to leave then and then and now, you know, like we're not,
01:29:28
Speaker
we're not, not a part of that scenario, right?
01:29:33
Speaker
We're not because we are like, but when basically as a survivor, you try everything that there is to try, you call a hotline, you call the cops, you talk to a friend and you're still in it because this is like reached into every element of your life.
01:29:52
Speaker
At this point, this person has, you
01:29:55
Speaker
control over everything and you're afraid and basically creates roadblocks to each of these solutions.
Justice System's Inadequacies
01:30:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:06
Speaker
I'm surprised that more, more like people who use abuse aren't killed or maimed.
01:30:14
Speaker
I really am.
01:30:17
Speaker
I mean, maybe they aren't, it's just not covered that way.
01:30:20
Speaker
It's that's, I think you're right.
01:30:22
Speaker
I think that like,
01:30:24
Speaker
there probably are more situations than we know about, or at least definitely than the general public are aware of.
01:30:38
Speaker
What's the statistic?
01:30:39
Speaker
Something like over 90% of women in prisons are survivors of domestic and sexual violence or something like
Survivors' Retaliation and Complex Trauma
01:30:46
Speaker
that?
01:30:46
Speaker
Really an outrageous percentage.
01:30:49
Speaker
And I'm just like, how many of those people are people who retaliated against the person who harmed them?
01:30:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:57
Speaker
I know that a lot of those cases, like survived and punished does good work with helping incarcerated survivors.
01:31:05
Speaker
And I was talking to someone, one of my friends, and they were like, well, if they weren't in danger in that moment, they shouldn't be allowed to kill that person.
01:31:16
Speaker
And to me, I'm like, okay, well, at face value, I can understand.
01:31:20
Speaker
But that really is like a very...
01:31:24
Speaker
it doesn't make sense.
01:31:25
Speaker
Right.
01:31:25
Speaker
You know, I'm like, I get, I get that we don't want the go-to to be murdering someone.
01:31:31
Speaker
You know, I don't think anyone is like advocating for that as a response that we all want to like embrace.
01:31:39
Speaker
And also to think that in every, in like every moment where there's violence that a survivor is going to be able to react in a way that protects themselves by, by,
01:31:51
Speaker
you know, overcoming physically a person using abuse is just, it's wrong.
01:31:59
Speaker
So I think like a lot of times we see survivors almost like starting an altercation when it feels safer for them to do it, when they might have a little bit of an upper hand because they know it's coming anyway.
Challenges Accessing Rape Kits
01:32:15
Speaker
So I'll do something I know that's going to piss them off in public so that we can start this fight here.
01:32:21
Speaker
Maybe I can get through the worst of it.
01:32:24
Speaker
And in cases like this with Lorena, you know, when we're dealing with complex trauma, we're dealing with PTSD and we're dealing with battered women's syndrome, which came up in that documentary.
01:32:38
Speaker
And it's something that we hear about a lot now at the time we didn't, but to think the whole, the whole premise of that is that you're not in the,
01:32:49
Speaker
this like logical space anymore.
01:32:51
Speaker
You're not present.
01:32:54
Speaker
So to think that somehow a survivor would be able to implement logic into that moment.
01:33:01
Speaker
I'm like, what?
01:33:03
Speaker
Oh my God, you're asking these people to be like super, superpower, have superpowers, you know, like to be able to withstand abuse and then also be in complete control of their faculties when
01:33:18
Speaker
The person they're with is like eating the shit out of them.
01:33:22
Speaker
I just don't get it.
01:33:24
Speaker
And dehumanizing them.
01:33:27
Speaker
It's torture.
01:33:28
Speaker
It really is.
01:33:30
Speaker
So I don't know if that made any sense.
01:33:33
Speaker
It's not something that I'm like super, isn't crystallized, but I just think that I'm just surprised we don't see it more.
01:33:40
Speaker
I really am.
01:33:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:43
Speaker
I mean, yeah.
01:33:44
Speaker
I don't know.
01:33:46
Speaker
Could be that survivors are criminalized far before that can happen.
01:33:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
01:33:52
Speaker
Like we know.
01:33:52
Speaker
Check out Survived and Punished.
01:33:54
Speaker
They do amazing work around criminalized survival.
01:33:58
Speaker
One last thing about rape kits.
01:34:00
Speaker
I also learned when I was doing that work that rape kits aren't always free.
01:34:08
Speaker
They're free at SF General, but they're not always free.
Media Portrayal of the Trial
01:34:11
Speaker
It depends on where you are.
01:34:13
Speaker
So like if you're someone who doesn't have the money and doesn't feel like being re-traumatized by the hospital and by the police and have their rape kit sitting and not being tested anyway, why the hell?
01:34:26
Speaker
Like what kind of option is that?
01:34:28
Speaker
You know, and also I've worked with people who came to the hospital thinking they can get a rape kit there because they live in San Francisco, but it didn't happen in San Francisco.
01:34:38
Speaker
So they need to go to a different hospital to get that done.
01:34:42
Speaker
Also, not all hospitals perform rape kits.
01:34:45
Speaker
You have to have a sexual assault nurse.
01:34:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:50
Speaker
to do it, which SART nurses are amazing.
01:34:53
Speaker
They have to get a lot of extra training to do it, but there's not enough of them.
01:34:59
Speaker
And so like, it's really not an accessible thing most of the time.
01:35:05
Speaker
No, it's really not.
01:35:07
Speaker
It's really not.
01:35:08
Speaker
That's all I have to say about that.
01:35:11
Speaker
Anyways.
01:35:12
Speaker
Me too.
01:35:12
Speaker
That's a great enough.
01:35:16
Speaker
So they administer a rape kit.
01:35:18
Speaker
After this, she gets interrogated for like 14 hours all night.
01:35:21
Speaker
She's so tired at this point, so traumatized.
01:35:25
Speaker
She's never offered a translator.
01:35:26
Speaker
She's never offered an attorney.
01:35:28
Speaker
And she has no word for rape.
01:35:30
Speaker
She didn't know how to phrase it.
01:35:32
Speaker
And the way that she tried to explain what happened, you know, was used to incriminate her.
01:35:39
Speaker
They really ran with this.
01:35:41
Speaker
phrase that she used to try to describe what had happened to her.
01:35:46
Speaker
I'm going to pass it to you because now we're into the trial.
01:35:50
Speaker
It's, I don't even know how to, how to present the media coverage.
01:35:57
Speaker
It was insanity.
01:35:58
Speaker
Plus like it was court TV was a new thing.
01:36:03
Speaker
So they weren't allowed in JWB's trial for marital rape, which was one trial.
01:36:11
Speaker
where he was able to basically talk about the entirety of their relationship.
01:36:18
Speaker
So like their courtship, their actual relationship, he essentially denied any wrongdoing.
01:36:26
Speaker
He was confronted numerous times throughout this trial with,
01:36:32
Speaker
Like, well, but the cops were called out.
01:36:34
Speaker
Oh, and you actually answered this questionnaire that you had been physically abusive.
01:36:42
Speaker
And his go-to answer, I don't remember that.
01:36:47
Speaker
Oh, no, I don't remember seeing this.
01:36:50
Speaker
Oh, no, uh-uh.
01:36:51
Speaker
And when there was really no other option, it wasn't really an option for him to lie.
01:36:57
Speaker
He would kind of give in a little bit.
01:37:00
Speaker
One of our friends told me one time that someone had a loose relationship with the truth.
01:37:06
Speaker
I think that applies here.
01:37:10
Speaker
So the trial for that marital rape case was actually pretty short and he was found not guilty.
01:37:20
Speaker
Everyone.
01:37:22
Speaker
And basically, um,
01:37:25
Speaker
The fact that she cut off his penis was because, you know, she didn't have English is not her first language.
01:37:33
Speaker
She said things like he never let me orgasm.
01:37:38
Speaker
Things that, you know.
01:37:42
Speaker
Probably are because she didn't have English as a first language.
01:37:48
Speaker
And so that's like you were saying, Gina, those are the things that like the media and the court really kind of latched onto.
01:37:55
Speaker
And she was portrayed as this scorned, fiery Latina pissed off because she didn't like her sex life with her husband.
01:38:03
Speaker
So she cut his dick off.
01:38:05
Speaker
There was conversation about her not wanting him to be with other women because that was another thing.
01:38:12
Speaker
Of course, he wasn't faithful.
01:38:13
Speaker
He had a lot of affairs.
01:38:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:17
Speaker
So that was also another thing that's, that was seen as the, the kind of catalyst for her cutting his dick off.
01:38:26
Speaker
So.
01:38:28
Speaker
You're reminding me of, you are reminding me that somebody did tell me a story about, I think it was this story.
01:38:37
Speaker
She was like, or he was like, I don't know who he, she, not sure.
01:38:42
Speaker
Somebody told me.
01:38:43
Speaker
Someone.
01:38:44
Speaker
oh yeah, that story where this lady was just like pissed off about her sex life and was over it one day and chopped off his dick.
01:38:52
Speaker
I think it was this story.
01:38:54
Speaker
And I remember at the time, I think maybe being a teenager and being like, I wonder like what else was happening there.
01:39:02
Speaker
Like I wonder like what he did, like what he had been doing to make her do that.
01:39:10
Speaker
It just...
01:39:11
Speaker
Flash bulb memory.
01:39:12
Speaker
Sorry, go on.
01:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, no, yeah, no.
01:39:15
Speaker
I totally remember it being portrayed that way.
01:39:18
Speaker
First of all, it was a big joke.
01:39:20
Speaker
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
01:39:22
Speaker
And all roads went to the involvement of his dick.
01:39:27
Speaker
But yeah, there were people bought into it, essentially, that she was just unhappy with their sex life.
01:39:34
Speaker
And that's just how those Latinas are, you know?
01:39:39
Speaker
At the same time, again, infantilizing her.
01:39:44
Speaker
So it was like, which is it people?
01:39:47
Speaker
Which is it?
01:39:48
Speaker
Virgin whore dichotomy.
01:39:49
Speaker
Exactly.
01:39:50
Speaker
She's both.
01:39:51
Speaker
She's all the things.
01:39:53
Speaker
And so that basically ended with him getting off of those charges and
01:40:07
Speaker
One thing I think is interesting, like we discussed briefly, marital rape laws have come.
01:40:13
Speaker
I mean, I think that the first one was like in the 80s, but there were a lot of questions around residency.
01:40:19
Speaker
And so the jurors said, oh, no, we believe that he raped and abused her.
01:40:25
Speaker
There was enough evidence to show that he raped and abused her, but it didn't meet the statutes of marital rape.
Defense Strategy and Court's Decision
01:40:33
Speaker
And a big thing in question was he raped her while they lived together.
01:40:37
Speaker
And in Virginia at the time, the law was you could not reside together or else it wasn't rape.
01:40:44
Speaker
Like if you live with them willingly, they cannot rape you.
01:40:48
Speaker
As I understand it, that was part of the issue with that trial.
01:40:53
Speaker
Interestingly enough, the same prosecutor who tried JWB for Marilyn to rape
01:41:03
Speaker
also tried Lorena for malicious wounding, which is what they charged her with.
01:41:12
Speaker
And that trial was,
01:41:14
Speaker
was, well, she wasn't allowed to talk about the entire history of the relationship first thing.
01:41:23
Speaker
So whereas he, JWB, was able to like talk about, like I mentioned, like the courtship and all of that, she had to focus on the five days leading up to this quote unquote malicious wounding.
01:41:35
Speaker
And so she wasn't able to paint this whole picture of how complex and reoccurring this trauma was just about the five days leading up to and, you know, the day of this incident.
01:41:49
Speaker
So that's one thing that really kind of, I think, probably stymied that case for the defense was
01:41:56
Speaker
At the time, a lot of the state's witness around, they were trying to see whether or not she could be deemed as temporarily insane.
01:42:07
Speaker
And a lot of the state's witnesses were finding that, no, she wasn't.
01:42:11
Speaker
The defense had doctors saying, yes, she actually was.
01:42:15
Speaker
And we're kind of, we had done a lot of work with trauma survivors and
01:42:21
Speaker
Interestingly enough, one of the state's key witnesses changed in the middle of the trial his opinion and assertion that she was temporarily insane.
01:42:31
Speaker
That's the court's language.
01:42:33
Speaker
The reason he changed his opinion, we found out in the documentary, was a client of Lorena's.
01:42:43
Speaker
Lorena was doing her nails and did her eyebrows.
01:42:45
Speaker
And I guess essentially she broke down in the midst of
01:42:49
Speaker
this appointment numerous times.
01:42:51
Speaker
She was trembling out of nowhere.
01:42:52
Speaker
She was crying and then she would like kind of be on task and present and just kind of was vacillating wildly with the way that she was presenting.
01:43:01
Speaker
Sometimes she had like a really flat affect.
01:43:03
Speaker
All of these are signs of PTSD.
01:43:06
Speaker
And, um,
01:43:08
Speaker
This woman had no, she had no idea that the woman, this mystery woman who cut off her husband's penis that she'd heard a little bit about was Lorena, this woman who did her nails until she was watching TV and saw her like on TV with JWB.
01:43:28
Speaker
She's like, oh, shit.
01:43:30
Speaker
So she calls the courthouse to try and get in touch with the prosecutor of the case so that she can with the prosecutor of this marital rape case with JWB to see if she can aid Lorena at all.
01:43:43
Speaker
And the prosecutor was like, oh, well, shit, you know, I can't use you anymore here.
01:43:50
Speaker
Here's a number to Lorena's attorney.
01:43:53
Speaker
And that's how this woman who, after having testified to her experience with Lorena, kind of changed the course of this trial and basically was the catalyst of one of the state's key witnesses saying, actually, no, I think she was temporarily insane and did not maliciously wound this person.
01:44:14
Speaker
So that was very pivotal to that court case and is a really good example, I think, of how someone within a system,
01:44:24
Speaker
The system itself is not really set up to center always those impacted by violence and oppression.
01:44:34
Speaker
A lot of times it's there to, again, uphold the power center.
01:44:37
Speaker
And individuals that work within that system hold a tremendous amount of privilege and power.
01:44:44
Speaker
And so at any moment, they can choose to lean into centering a survivor or centering that power center of that system.
01:44:53
Speaker
And in this moment, he decided to center Lorena.
01:44:59
Speaker
He didn't openly discuss it, but that happened.
01:45:03
Speaker
So she provided really heartbreaking testimony about having been raped by him.
01:45:15
Speaker
It was horrible.
01:45:15
Speaker
It was horrible.
01:45:18
Speaker
really hard to watch, but basically, again, didn't always have the language, but said he, he hurt me.
01:45:24
Speaker
He was hurting me.
01:45:26
Speaker
And I bled and, um, talked about him having sodomized her and just, you know, um, trash.
Feminist Reactions and VAWA's Impact
01:45:36
Speaker
So, um, the jury, interestingly enough, in this documentary, the jury foreman was interviewed and he was the last holdout.
01:45:47
Speaker
Um, but,
01:45:49
Speaker
He was saying basically that they weren't sure that she met the statute of temporarily insane, quote unquote, temporarily insane necessarily.
01:46:03
Speaker
But they didn't want her to get into trouble because this guy was a piece of shit and raped her and beat her and just she hit her limits.
01:46:16
Speaker
So they found her not guilty of malicious wounding.
01:46:20
Speaker
And she was then sent to 45 days of basically like being observed and in a local like mental health facility.
01:46:34
Speaker
I don't remember the exact term they used, but basically she was being.
01:46:41
Speaker
analyzed and observed and was in therapy with a psychologist and also a psychiatrist and um it's like a maximum security psychiatric ward which is essentially a prison but yeah exactly yes
01:46:59
Speaker
It's interesting though, like her telling that story on the documentary specifically, like she was having flashbacks to the abuse and she thought he was there and he was going to find her.
01:47:11
Speaker
She said, it felt like I was in a horror movie.
01:47:13
Speaker
I felt like he was there and was going to find me.
01:47:16
Speaker
So again, it's like that omnipotence.
01:47:20
Speaker
Um,
01:47:21
Speaker
She was in a place that was quote unquote safe, right away from him at any rate, but she was certain that he was there hiding.
01:47:29
Speaker
We were going to find her and kill her.
01:47:31
Speaker
So, you know, she had her, her take on that time was actually, she thought, why am I the one having to go away?
01:47:42
Speaker
He's the one who's was raping me, you know, and really saw it as,
01:47:50
Speaker
not a just outcome for her.
01:47:52
Speaker
She thought, well, I was found not guilty, not guilty.
01:47:54
Speaker
So why do I have to be locked up still?
01:47:58
Speaker
And also shared that it was actually very helpful having that trauma therapy and doing what a lot of, you know, a lot of us do in therapy, just basically unpacking and processing trauma.
01:48:13
Speaker
And that really kind of helped her.
01:48:14
Speaker
And it's interesting because they found she was not a danger to herself or others.
01:48:20
Speaker
At the end of that 45-day period, she was released.
01:48:24
Speaker
The court hearing was very quick.
01:48:27
Speaker
she looks like a completely different person.
01:48:29
Speaker
Like her face is lifted.
01:48:31
Speaker
Her eyes are like brighter.
01:48:33
Speaker
She looks like a completely different person at the end of that period.
01:48:37
Speaker
When contrast to like the woman who showed up in court for the malicious wounding case.
01:48:44
Speaker
But that's.
01:48:44
Speaker
Can you talk about the feminist response or the DV?
01:48:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:48:49
Speaker
Yeah, that was really interesting.
01:48:52
Speaker
That like, okay.
01:48:53
Speaker
So the whole narrative around, and I remember this.
01:48:57
Speaker
I think I was like 18, 20.
01:49:01
Speaker
I'm not that much younger than her.
01:49:05
Speaker
And I remember like you're saying, Shayna, like the first thing you hear is, oh, she cut his dick off and threw it out a window.
01:49:14
Speaker
And that's the story.
01:49:15
Speaker
And it was like on SNL and David Letterman and all over, all over the place.
01:49:20
Speaker
And I remember being like, but why, why did that happen?
01:49:24
Speaker
The narrative around like the domestic violence component and the sexual assault component, it just got buried.
01:49:31
Speaker
And so this all coincided.
01:49:36
Speaker
It was very timely because in the 90s, early 90s, is when Biden and Hatch tried to, they were cooking up VAWA to try and get some federal funding to support survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault by Biden.
01:49:53
Speaker
funding programs and with, with federal money, which had never been done in the past.
01:50:00
Speaker
So this is happening.
01:50:01
Speaker
It's also, if you think about it, it's really not that far off like the second wave of feminism and the DV movement that like
01:50:11
Speaker
was catapulted out of that, you know, was a catalyst for the domestic violence movement, informed greatly by like the civil rights movement and a lot of other movements that had come before.
01:50:21
Speaker
So like the feminist response, right?
01:50:25
Speaker
was to trying, like they were like now and the National Coalition to End Domestic Violence were sending out all these like press releases about the prevalence of domestic violence and sexual assault, how poorly trained police officers were, how these laws were archaic and basically like created pathways to this type of situation essentially.
01:50:50
Speaker
And so it became very political, I think.
01:50:53
Speaker
And, you know, in some regards where it was like trying to harness the situation to gain some political power and shifting around laws and just the way that domestic violence is perceived.
01:51:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:51:11
Speaker
And then there were a lot of like marches and protests that basically were very Lorena focused in support of Lorena that were also like could be construed as feminist response that were, you know, bringing, bringing attention to the larger issue of domestic violence and sexual assault and marital rape, but weren't as necessarily connected to like, like trying to impact laws and procedures and
01:51:40
Speaker
And all of that.
01:51:42
Speaker
So the feminist response was pretty varied.
01:51:45
Speaker
One thing I read, I believe it was in time, we can link the stuff on the show notes, like maybe the sources, right?
01:51:52
Speaker
One thing that really kind of struck me back then and now I reread it and I remember reading it way back then was basically, it was like, you know,
01:52:02
Speaker
we have all these feminist talking heads who are like pushing for legislation and stuff.
01:52:06
Speaker
And these women who are actually experiencing domestic violence in their homes feel left behind by this movement.
01:52:13
Speaker
You know, you're trying to like get a law and passed or you're intellectualizing this issue, but yet we're sitting here getting our asses kicked in our own house.
Public Perception and Cultural Biases
01:52:24
Speaker
So how do we fit into your movement?
01:52:28
Speaker
Um,
01:52:30
Speaker
which I think is still a question we can ask today, you know, um, but, um, it was really interesting.
01:52:43
Speaker
And so it was in the documentary, they show great scenes from like outside the courtroom.
01:52:49
Speaker
And there were a lot of women who showed up and a lot of the interviews of, of
01:52:54
Speaker
like with women that they showed outside the courtroom and, you know, around the time were very supportive of Lorena and basically saying like, we all at our breaking point, you know, and there was a lot of discussion around people writing her letters and,
01:53:13
Speaker
calling in on radio shows basically saying, yeah, you know, she did what I was afraid to do to my ex or my husband who beat me up and raped me our entire relationship, you know?
01:53:24
Speaker
So it really struck a chord with a lot of women who were feeling very dehumanized in their relationships.
01:53:32
Speaker
So it really, I think, I don't know that without, okay, so this incident happened in 93, right?
01:53:41
Speaker
And Nicole Brown and Ron, oh, I'm so sorry, sir, I don't remember your last name.
01:53:48
Speaker
Her friend who was, were murdered.
01:53:51
Speaker
That happened in like 94.
01:53:54
Speaker
But I don't think without these two very huge cases in the media that really shined a light on how shitty the response was, especially of the police, you know, um,
01:54:08
Speaker
If that light weren't shined, I don't think VAWA would have passed.
01:54:12
Speaker
And we're still like always changing VAWA.
01:54:15
Speaker
But it's like, it's basically without that funding, you know, a lot of hotlines, a lot of shelters, a lot of intervention programs.
01:54:24
Speaker
And at this point, like programs that help with immigration benefits for survivors who don't have documentation, that sort of thing.
01:54:37
Speaker
Without that, you know, I don't know where we'd be.
01:54:41
Speaker
So...
01:54:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's not perfect.
01:54:44
Speaker
And yeah, you know, we basically created a pathway to be co-opted by these systems.
01:54:50
Speaker
And I think we need to do all the systems change work when do we need to change these systems or do we need to like tear these systems down?
01:55:00
Speaker
We owe a lot.
01:55:01
Speaker
Whether or not, like Lorena was like, this isn't about feminism.
01:55:05
Speaker
This isn't about men and women.
01:55:07
Speaker
This impacts everyone.
01:55:09
Speaker
Very, very much entrenched in the gender biome, clearly.
01:55:12
Speaker
It is, you know, it is and it isn't.
01:55:15
Speaker
For her, it's not, right?
01:55:17
Speaker
She's talking about her reality.
01:55:19
Speaker
For us as like a movement, a domestic violence movement entrenched in feminism and all of its different ways of showing up, it is very much a feminist issue.
01:55:30
Speaker
But what do you lose when you frame it that way?
01:55:34
Speaker
You lose the voice sometimes of like an individual survivor.
01:55:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:55:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:55:39
Speaker
I mean, we can't legislate out oppression or violence, you know?
01:55:48
Speaker
And so, I don't know, every time, now I'm going on a brain tangent, but I'm just thinking about like how anytime anything really horrible happens, that's like what people need to springboard into this, into making something happen out of like, like,
01:56:06
Speaker
legislative level but in doing so people pay like political chess with people's lives and that's fucked up also like you know we know that VAWA has so many tensions like
01:56:21
Speaker
Is there more funding for a lot of things?
01:56:23
Speaker
Sure.
01:56:23
Speaker
Are there so many strings attached?
01:56:25
Speaker
Yes.
01:56:26
Speaker
Like who gets to qualify for federal funding for anti-violence programs, but also like what happens when we prioritize criminalization as the pathway to quote unquote legitimizing an issue?
01:56:40
Speaker
Like this is like totally...
01:56:43
Speaker
impacted the most marginalized of survivors in a negative way.
01:56:47
Speaker
Mandatory arrest laws, failure to protect laws.
01:56:49
Speaker
All of this came from this move too.
01:56:51
Speaker
And I think, I don't know, it's just really hard to hold all those tensions of like, it just speaks to your point about how the system's fucked up and there's really no, the reforms offer small concessions, but it's like what we have right now.
01:57:06
Speaker
So like, what do you think of that information?
01:57:09
Speaker
All things can be true at the same time and they are.
01:57:12
Speaker
You know, like, right.
01:57:15
Speaker
And also what happens, I think, when we are able to kind of stand in that gray area and understand that, yeah, I perceive this to be a feminist issue.
01:57:27
Speaker
I perceive this to be a larger issue around the way that our culture works.
01:57:32
Speaker
sees violence against, in this case, violence against women and how that intersects with like racism and immigration and, you know, the military, you know, like I see it as this larger issue.
01:57:49
Speaker
And also I see that the most important thing in this instance, but this particular case for me is that her voice not get lost in all of that.
01:58:00
Speaker
Like, to me, that's what needs to be centered.
01:58:03
Speaker
And so at Woman Inc., I hope that that's partially supported by the design of who we are as an organization, right?
01:58:12
Speaker
Like we center the survivor, what the survivor wants us to do.
01:58:15
Speaker
And there's ways that we can speak truth to power and still center that voice.
01:58:21
Speaker
And I don't think that that would be as powerful if this case didn't exist.
01:58:26
Speaker
It clearly wouldn't be for me because I remember even back then, like feeling like her voice was lost in this rhetoric and what happened to her was lost.
01:58:37
Speaker
And seeing like little clips of her testifying, like was lost in the sensationalized media response to the fact that there was a dick involved.
01:58:49
Speaker
Like,
01:58:52
Speaker
you know, like, so, um, eclipse the whole thing.
01:58:58
Speaker
Yes, it really did.
01:58:59
Speaker
And unfortunately now she wanted, she never wanted to be at the center of this media hype.
01:59:09
Speaker
You know, when she had the chance, she fled from it.
01:59:13
Speaker
Um, and yet she's,
01:59:18
Speaker
We will always want her to be Lorena Bobbitt, but she's Lorena Gallo and she has a foundation and she does all this amazing shit.
01:59:25
Speaker
Anyway.
01:59:27
Speaker
So I'm partially so glad that documentary is called Lorena.
01:59:31
Speaker
Yes.
01:59:33
Speaker
It was good.
01:59:34
Speaker
I appreciated it.
01:59:35
Speaker
So good.
01:59:37
Speaker
She's all over it, which made me feel good about it.
01:59:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:59:40
Speaker
And it was like, I don't know.
01:59:43
Speaker
It just kind of made me, um,
01:59:46
Speaker
It made me chuckle.
01:59:48
Speaker
There's this part where she's reflecting on the situation.
01:59:51
Speaker
Now she's so far from it.
01:59:53
Speaker
And she's talking about it all the time.
01:59:55
Speaker
There's like a lightness to her.
01:59:57
Speaker
You know?
01:59:57
Speaker
Like she owns her story.
02:00:00
Speaker
And she was like, yeah.
02:00:06
Speaker
It was lost.
02:00:07
Speaker
They had to fight it.
02:00:09
Speaker
It was in the grass.
02:00:11
Speaker
They had to wipe it off.
02:00:12
Speaker
Some firefighter found it.
02:00:14
Speaker
And she's just sitting there like, oh my gosh.
02:00:17
Speaker
Like still shocked at herself.
02:00:18
Speaker
Like, wow, that really happened.
02:00:20
Speaker
That happened a lifetime ago.
02:00:22
Speaker
Remember that one time?
02:00:27
Speaker
Casey's thing happened to me once.
02:00:31
Speaker
Want to hear about it?
02:00:33
Speaker
Oh, you have heard about it?
02:00:34
Speaker
Wow.
02:00:35
Speaker
Oh, shit.
02:00:38
Speaker
Yeah.
02:00:39
Speaker
Okay.
Lorena's Advocacy and Healing Journey
02:00:40
Speaker
I just, I, yeah, I appreciate, especially after watching that like horrific reenactment of all the things that was so heavy and horrible, just like made me feel like, I don't know, kind of warm to see her be able to just like
02:00:56
Speaker
I don't know, kind of chuckle and reflect on something that really was like a horrific thing.
02:01:02
Speaker
Yes.
02:01:04
Speaker
Where everyone made her a walking punchline.
02:01:07
Speaker
And it's like, almost like she's using humor to reclaim her own story.
02:01:12
Speaker
And I think that's really powerful.
02:01:16
Speaker
That moment.
02:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's, I think being able to find humor in things and reflect on them, you know, that's a sign of healing.
02:01:31
Speaker
Like that being able at this point for her to be like, wow, I had this community of people around me.
02:01:40
Speaker
Like we talked about earlier that there was a huge turnout of like the Latinx community, different Latinx communities at her trial every day.
02:01:51
Speaker
And they would like give each other cab fare and stuff to show up to the trial to support her because they heard about how racist he was and how he berated her for not being from America.
02:02:07
Speaker
okay, buddy, you were born here, dude.
02:02:09
Speaker
Like you had no say in that matter, you know, like calm down.
02:02:16
Speaker
At any rate, it was just a thing he used to dehumanize her.
02:02:19
Speaker
And that came to light and this community showed up for her, you know, it's like, okay, dude, screw you, you know, I'm here for her.
02:02:32
Speaker
Yeah.
02:02:34
Speaker
It really, it
02:02:36
Speaker
Those things, and that was amazing.
02:02:39
Speaker
And she talked about that a little bit in the documentary, that that was incredibly meaningful for her.
02:02:45
Speaker
And that made her feel like a million bucks, which just meant a lot.
02:02:50
Speaker
And then, of course, can we just mention the fact that there were also men who showed up and rallied against
02:03:00
Speaker
like not against, rallied for her and against violence, against women and marital rape and that sort of thing.
02:03:06
Speaker
So we were talking about earlier, there's nothing that says as men, you need to be toxic with your masculinity.
02:03:17
Speaker
There's nothing that like informs the way you show up.
02:03:22
Speaker
You can show up as not total shit birds and as allies and support things that are right.
02:03:30
Speaker
Like the dudes who were like testified in her trial seemed genuinely disturbed about their interactions with JWB and bragging about how he liked to rape women and make them bleed and make them uncomfortable.
02:03:44
Speaker
And some of those kids, like they were really young at the time.
02:03:48
Speaker
They grew up with that in their own homes and they were like, yeah, that's bullshit.
02:03:52
Speaker
You don't do that.
02:03:54
Speaker
So it catalyzed that.
02:03:56
Speaker
certain people and some men.
02:03:59
Speaker
So we have these examples, right?
02:04:01
Speaker
We have these really horrible examples of toxic masculinity.
02:04:04
Speaker
And then we have these examples of people just being like, no, that's wrong.
02:04:08
Speaker
We don't get to lean into our privilege and rape women or our wives and be good people.
02:04:16
Speaker
So it's like those men, I think it was men at DC, men against rape or something like showed up.
02:04:25
Speaker
Yeah, that really stuck out to me too.
02:04:28
Speaker
It stuck out to me in general that there were so many people that were interviewed who started off just like talking about the situation, like as neighbors, as witnesses, but almost all of them disclosed their connection to domestic violence, which I thought was significant.
02:04:43
Speaker
Like that really struck me.
02:04:44
Speaker
I'm just like, you know, that shit's so common.
02:04:48
Speaker
It's like,
02:04:50
Speaker
painfully ordinary yeah that all of these people were like yeah I recognize this yeah yeah and you know I don't I don't think that like men deserves cook deserve cookies for showing up on the right side of things like white people don't deserve cookies for not leaning into white supremacy culture all the time it's what we need to be doing it's what men need to be doing
02:05:20
Speaker
And also like, I just lift that up as an example.
02:05:26
Speaker
You don't, there are other ways of being there.
02:05:30
Speaker
There are other ways we can show up with our privilege because they, they, you know, I felt like they were actually like, for what you could see, they were being respectful, spaciously in terms of not trying to be right up front.
02:05:43
Speaker
These dudes, they were towards the back of the line with the different people that were there supporting Lorena.
02:05:51
Speaker
But they got a lot of attention because they were men.
02:05:55
Speaker
Like how sad.
02:05:57
Speaker
Like they got a lot of attention because so many men were coming out against her.
02:06:02
Speaker
The bar really sits very low.
02:06:04
Speaker
It really does.
02:06:05
Speaker
Yeah.
02:06:06
Speaker
Yeah.
02:06:07
Speaker
Like I'll just say us white people and men in general, we have to do very little to get a little pat for it.
02:06:14
Speaker
And it's really wrong.
02:06:16
Speaker
So anyway, anyway.
02:06:18
Speaker
Anywho, actually Jordan Peele, who was a part of producing the Prime docuseries, is quoted saying that, you know, there's a third character to this story besides Lorena and JWB.
02:06:30
Speaker
It's us, it's society.
02:06:32
Speaker
And it's what we did with the information we had available to us.
02:06:36
Speaker
I thought that that was really well said so true so true so uh post-trial freaking JWB I won't spend a lot of time on this but like he did go like on tour and was like really lauded as some public figure they had like look-alike competitions they had like
02:06:58
Speaker
He's just like a big laughingstock.
02:06:59
Speaker
And he got hired at some bunny ranch too, where then he like met someone and abused one of the women that was working there as a sex worker.
02:07:07
Speaker
He was just like really horrific.
02:07:09
Speaker
And it just, it shouldn't have shocked me, but it shocked me how much media attention, how many like partnerships he got, how much money he was sitting on.
02:07:17
Speaker
He got into porn.
02:07:19
Speaker
It was just like so gross to see that.
02:07:22
Speaker
Just the succession of just like him just getting whatever the fuck he wanted.
02:07:26
Speaker
It's very Jack Unterweger vibes.
02:07:30
Speaker
If you listen to Jack Only Likes Jack.
02:07:33
Speaker
Unpacking the Eerie did cover Jack Unterweger and had the same energy, the same like gross white man being a rapist.
02:07:44
Speaker
I mean, Jack was a murderer, but, you know, I could see JWB doing the same shit.
02:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean.
02:07:51
Speaker
And just being such a narcissist, thinking he's like the center of the universe.
02:07:56
Speaker
Anyways, and people let him think that too.
02:07:58
Speaker
Yeah, well, there was money to be made and he has none of it now.
02:08:04
Speaker
So, Lorena, on the other hand, our queen.
02:08:08
Speaker
Cochina.
02:08:11
Speaker
Queen Lorena, where does she sit on her throne now, Shana?
02:08:15
Speaker
Okay.
02:08:16
Speaker
So after everything happened, she got released from psychiatric evaluation.
02:08:23
Speaker
She obtained citizenship and was like...
02:08:29
Speaker
with her father, mother, brother, and sister who were there to witness this.
02:08:33
Speaker
She went back to work at the nail salon and she noticed that she would talk to clients and learn that they too experienced domestic violence.
02:08:40
Speaker
And so like here, she's like, you know, I really want to build a community of survivors.
02:08:45
Speaker
She was like, that's when I realized that what happened to me could have happened to
02:08:50
Speaker
anyone in a desperate situation.
02:08:52
Speaker
She had dreams of opening up her own shelter, which is coming to fruition because now she has a foundation, which I'll get to.
02:08:59
Speaker
She also got into like doing hair.
02:09:02
Speaker
She got into real estate.
02:09:04
Speaker
She's living a normal ass life.
02:09:05
Speaker
She's thriving.
02:09:07
Speaker
She ended up going to domestic violence shelters to share her story, trying to build this community and says storytelling has been a huge part of her healing process.
02:09:16
Speaker
And
02:09:17
Speaker
Um, and she names like, you know, I wasn't always this confident.
02:09:20
Speaker
This relationship really drove my self-esteem to the ground.
02:09:23
Speaker
And I think it's important that survivors see that you can be at both places where you can feel like total shit because this relationship just tore you apart.
02:09:33
Speaker
And also look at like, here we are telling our story, building community healing, strengthen vulnerability, rest and resilience.
02:09:45
Speaker
Yeah.
02:09:47
Speaker
She reconnected with her faith, built a community around that.
02:09:51
Speaker
She went to community college.
02:09:52
Speaker
She met her current partner.
02:09:55
Speaker
And now she has a 13-year-old daughter.
02:09:56
Speaker
She lives still in the same area, Manassas, Virginia.
02:10:01
Speaker
And people ask her why she didn't leave.
02:10:03
Speaker
And she was like, I live here.
02:10:05
Speaker
This is my home.
02:10:06
Speaker
Why should he have the last laugh?
02:10:07
Speaker
I'm going to stay.
02:10:08
Speaker
I don't have to leave.
02:10:09
Speaker
And I just thought that was so like, uh.
02:10:12
Speaker
He can get the fuck out if he wants.
02:10:15
Speaker
Yeah, goodbye.
02:10:15
Speaker
And he did.
02:10:16
Speaker
Yeah.
02:10:17
Speaker
Goodbye.
02:10:18
Speaker
And she opened, she started a foundation, the Lorena Gallo Foundation, founded in 2018.
02:10:25
Speaker
The mission is to expand domestic violence and sexual assault prevention education, emergency response resources, and community engagement activities that will improve the outcomes for survivors and their children, which we'll link in the description.
02:10:39
Speaker
Yeah.
02:10:40
Speaker
A part of that foundation is also I think they're working on opening up a shelter so people have a safe place to go when they're trying to get away from domestic violence.
02:10:50
Speaker
Do we mention that he still like sends her stuff and she laughs at him?
02:10:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
02:10:57
Speaker
That's another thing that we need to understand.
Community Support and Activism Importance
02:11:01
Speaker
If we're trying to fix it for people, just because someone's out does not mean that this is like a finite thing.
02:11:08
Speaker
It's a process.
02:11:09
Speaker
Leaving is a process, just like everything's a process.
02:11:13
Speaker
And just because someone's out does not mean
02:11:16
Speaker
that the person using abuse against them is in any way, shape or form prepared to let them leave and might stay in contact with them for months, weeks, years.
02:11:27
Speaker
In this case, decades later, you know, still sends her letters.
02:11:32
Speaker
He showed up at her salon with flowers and candy after all this bullshit, trying to get back together with her.
02:11:38
Speaker
Delusional world.
02:11:39
Speaker
Yeah.
02:11:40
Speaker
Live it.
02:11:41
Speaker
Yeah.
02:11:42
Speaker
I just appreciate the way that she like nonchalantly brushes him off.
02:11:46
Speaker
She talks about how he like still reaches out to her through her foundation, posting comments and bad reviews on the foundation's Facebook, like some petty, what the fuck.
02:11:56
Speaker
And she's like, so he's still controlling and mentally abusive over 20 years later.
02:12:01
Speaker
But she ends with basically this man needs help.
02:12:03
Speaker
So good riddance.
02:12:05
Speaker
Yeah.
02:12:06
Speaker
And then she like goes home and hangs out with her family and engages in healthy relationships and has a career that's fulfilling and a full life and helps others as she helps herself.
02:12:24
Speaker
And does good things for the planet, man.
02:12:27
Speaker
She really does.
02:12:28
Speaker
And she's got her own docuseries and also recently engaged in a project with Amanda Knox.
02:12:36
Speaker
Their interview together too.
02:12:38
Speaker
So like, I don't know.
02:12:39
Speaker
And in that too, she's like making all these connections, you know, like my story exists, but also like, look, this is like, look at Anita Hill, look at Monica Lewinsky, look at Amanda Knox, look at, look at all these stories then and how it gets portrayed in the media and twisted in the media.
02:12:53
Speaker
And like,
02:12:54
Speaker
I don't know.
02:12:55
Speaker
It was like a kind of solidarity message.
02:12:57
Speaker
Yes.
02:12:58
Speaker
And it sounds like she's in contact with Monica Lewinsky, actually.
02:13:01
Speaker
Yeah.
02:13:02
Speaker
She was like, she was like, we love Monica.
02:13:05
Speaker
I was like, wow, they're chatting it up.
02:13:07
Speaker
So I love to see this community of, you know, people who were, you know, villainized for their own victimization, really.
02:13:17
Speaker
Yeah.
02:13:19
Speaker
For sure.
02:13:22
Speaker
God, she was 22, 23, 24.
02:13:24
Speaker
And everyone was like, what the hell?
02:13:27
Speaker
Yeah.
02:13:28
Speaker
In that article, in that interview with Amanda Knox, she said about Monica Lewinsky, this was a 19 year old girl seduced by the president of the United States.
02:13:42
Speaker
Like the way she framed it, I was like, yep, that's the framing we need that we never got.
02:13:47
Speaker
You know, it's the same with her.
02:13:50
Speaker
So she's taking control of this narrative by like being choosy about where she shows up and how she shows up and like not getting down in the like, like gross tabloid media, like basically taking her autonomy back.
02:14:08
Speaker
And now she's an expert at it.
02:14:11
Speaker
That's true.
02:14:12
Speaker
So we love you, Lorena.
02:14:16
Speaker
It would be very cool if she listened to this.
02:14:19
Speaker
Well, if she listened to this, I would probably cry.
02:14:27
Speaker
She might be 90% why I got into this work.
02:14:31
Speaker
So she would, she, this is why she is our queen.
02:14:36
Speaker
She is one of my queens.
02:14:39
Speaker
So all hail.
02:14:43
Speaker
I'll throw rose petals out for her, bitches.
02:14:45
Speaker
Okay.
02:14:51
Speaker
Well, it's a good place to end.
02:14:53
Speaker
Jill, do you have a call to action for the listeners?
02:14:57
Speaker
Well, call to action.
02:14:59
Speaker
Let's just say this, friends.
02:15:01
Speaker
Support your local DV organizations.
02:15:05
Speaker
whatever they may be, wherever they are.
02:15:07
Speaker
And I would say, listen, don't try and fix help.
02:15:13
Speaker
So if you're going to give a resource, maybe do some homework on it and maybe just type into the Goog, you know, pros and cons of, um,
02:15:24
Speaker
have conversations about what might be helpful for a survivor.
02:15:30
Speaker
If we don't know, like we have a lot of expertise in supporting survivors, that's why our organization exists.
02:15:35
Speaker
If we don't know how to best support a survivor before we listen to them talking, like, hey, everyone always refers to us as the experts.
02:15:44
Speaker
I'm just going to say, listen to someone with expertise and engage in listening.
02:15:48
Speaker
Yeah.
02:15:50
Speaker
and bolster up your local DV orgs so they have funding that isn't attached to coercive systems that replicate harm in a lot of ways and can lean into community donations and support, not just money, support, like get to know what might be supportive for these orgs and get engaged.
02:16:15
Speaker
There's room for all of us in this community.
02:16:20
Speaker
Yay.
02:16:21
Speaker
Boom.
02:16:21
Speaker
There it is.
02:16:25
Speaker
Well, thanks so much, Jill.
02:16:26
Speaker
Thank you.
02:16:27
Speaker
This is a lot of fun and rage at the same time.
02:16:30
Speaker
Thanks for listening and for supporting us.
02:16:33
Speaker
You can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Unpacking the Eerie, on Twitter at Unpack the Eerie, and on our website at www.unpackingtheerie.com.
02:16:46
Speaker
Yes, and special thanks to all of you who subscribe to our Patreon.
02:16:51
Speaker
As we've mentioned before, we do all the research for this, we edit, and we don't have any sponsorships or ads.
02:17:00
Speaker
So Patreon support is super helpful in just keeping this project sustainable, keeping the Buzzsprout subscription going, paying for the website, all the stuff.
02:17:10
Speaker
So thank you so much.
02:17:12
Speaker
Sari, Liz, Clifton.
02:17:14
Speaker
Jill, Victoria, and Lindsay.
02:17:16
Speaker
Lauren, Vivian, Valerie.
02:17:19
Speaker
Micheline, Montana, Katrina.
02:17:21
Speaker
Raina, Allie, Jake.
02:17:23
Speaker
Drithi, Daphne, and Katie.
02:17:25
Speaker
Vern, Meredith, H, and Vince.
02:17:28
Speaker
To April, Aaron, and Ellen.
02:17:30
Speaker
And to Brittany, Alyssa, and Meredith R. Yay, thank you so much.
02:17:36
Speaker
Thank you.