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16. Patriarchy is Still the Devil Here
6 Plays3 years ago
TRUE CRIME: Katherine Knight
We’re back with a horrifying story and, this time, we’re taking you to the small town of Aberdeen in New South Wales Australia. “If I don’t show up to work, it’s because she killed me,” John Price told his co-workers as he prepared to separate from his relationship with Katherine Knight. The next day his neighbors rang the alarm when he never arrived at work without a call — Katherine had murdered….and cannibalized him. This episode, we trace back Katherine’s relationship histories that preceded the killing and explore the question “what the fuck happened to you, Katherine?” Join us as we discuss “personality disorders”, break down the impact of childhood DV and how patriarchy is still the devil in this story.
cw: domestic violence, child sexual abuse, incest, graphic violence, animal abuse
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FYI: we've recently unpublished older episodes as we are in process of re-editing for a smoother flow & audio experience.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.
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- your grateful hosts
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
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Nuance.
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Bitches don't have nuance.
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Bitches don't have nuance.
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Hi, I'm Akshi.
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And I'm Shaina.
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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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Before we get started today, we wanted to offer our usual content warning.
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This episode contains mentions of domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse, incest, extreme violence, and animal abuse.
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Hello!
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Hello!
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What's up?
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It's been a long time.
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I had a break.
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Yeah, it's been a long time since...
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It's just been us together.
00:00:59
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Yes.
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Doing a full episode.
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That's true.
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The others have been collabs.
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Yeah.
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We did Olivia, and then we did Bex, which was the three of us.
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And then we had Minisodes.
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So I guess the last one was... Lake Lanier?
Lake Lanier's History and Donation
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Lake Lanier.
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Mm-hmm.
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Mm-hmm.
00:01:17
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Well, speaking of Lake Lanier, perfect segue.
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Yes.
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It was the...
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I guess, motivation to choose Project South as our most recent ghosty giver beneficiary.
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If you haven't listened to the episode...
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Just go check it out because it's fucked up.
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An important history, I think.
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But it is very traumatizing, so be in the space for it.
00:01:39
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So I'll open it with one of the quotes that I pulled from one of the articles I really pulled from for that episode.
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It was written by Bilal Morris, and she says, There's a city buried under Lake Lanier, Georgia's biggest lake, and submerged with it is a secret, an American horror story filled with terror, death, genocide, and ghosts.
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So in December, we took you to Lake Lanier, a haunting vacation destination with a racist and gruesome past.
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The waters of Lake Lanier submerge a small rural town called Oscarville, a place that was once home to 1,100 Black families.
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We talked about how the town saw years of white terror and genocide before it was flooded and turned into a man-made lake.
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Originally named after a Confederate soldier, Lake Lanier was designed to support water supply and hydroelectric power for neighboring white communities, which, if you ask us, is a hideous metaphor for white supremacy and the erasure of American violence.
00:02:33
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We recognize these ugly truths and uplift the legacy of community care and Black-led organizing power in Georgia and beyond.
00:02:40
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So thanks to support from our Ghosty Giver patrons, we were able to donate $145 to Project South, which is a Georgia-based racial justice organization rooted in the legacy of the Southern Freedom Movement.
00:02:51
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I'll read you their mission statement.
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Project South was founded as the Institute to Eliminate Poverty and Genocide in 1986.
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They say our work is rooted in the legacy of the Southern Freedom Movement and our mission of cultivating strong social movements in the South, powerful enough to contend with some of the most pressing and complicated social, economic, and political problems we face today.
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There are three strategic directions that guide Project South's work, our neighborhood organizing to grow community power,
00:03:21
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movement organizing to grow regional power and movement support to grow grassroots leadership.
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So thank you so much to the folks who donate in the ghosty giver tier.
00:03:32
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Um, you allow us to like really support the causes that are tied to the stories that we're talking about.
00:03:41
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Um, yeah.
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So that's that.
00:03:44
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Cool.
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Um, announcement, big announcement.
New Website Announcement
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We got a website.
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Yay.
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Finally.
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Yay.
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Created by yours truly, me and Shayna.
00:03:58
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Yeah, it's cute.
00:03:58
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Yeah.
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Check it out.
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Give us your thoughts.
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Be part of the analytics.
00:04:07
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We can see where you're pinging from.
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We know your IP address.
00:04:09
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That's really creepy.
00:04:10
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Did you see that?
00:04:11
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I did see that.
00:04:13
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And also, soon, there will be stuff that you can purchase on said website.
00:04:21
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Yes, merch.
00:04:22
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Yeah.
00:04:23
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Who knows?
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Maybe by the time this episode comes out, it's there.
00:04:25
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So check it out.
00:04:26
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Yes.
00:04:27
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You can also go and see a categorized list of our episodes.
00:04:31
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So if there are particular categories that you're more drawn to, they're separated out into those.
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And also, if you have any feedback, we'd love it.
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And there's a contact page on the website.
00:04:44
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So unpackingtheerie.com.
00:04:46
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Yes.
00:04:47
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That's where you go.
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Check it out.
00:04:51
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Okay.
Introduction to Catherine Knight
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We were gonna try to do something lighter because of Lake Lunier and like blah blah blah, everything that comes after that.
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And then we just utterly failed, I think.
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Yeah, it's...
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It's fucked up.
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You know, I think when we say we want to, like, take a break from the heavier stuff, it means that there's all these layers of emotional, intellectual energy that go into unraveling the way that racism intersects with, like...
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all the bullshit that culminates into the stories we cover.
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And so there's less of that in here, but it is nevertheless very fucked up and probably triggering for folks.
00:05:43
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So we'll try to make sure to warn you before it is a gruesome story and it is like a story that starts with a lot of trauma.
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So that being said, so...
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Today we're going to be talking about the very, like the first and I think only woman to be given a life sentence without parole in Australia.
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And there's some cannibalism in here.
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So be wary of that.
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I'm going to pass it to Akshi to get us started on where the fuck this happened.
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So, so this happened in a little, little town in New South Wales, Australia called Aberdeen.
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Today, it's a small town that's between these two other towns called Muswell Brook and Scone, which are relevant later.
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I'm saying that.
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And,
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Dairying, wheat, cattle, and sheep are integral parts of their local economy, which makes sense because the history of the town is a lot of stuff related to production, that kind of thing.
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So Aberdeen, the land, is originally home of the Wanarua Aboriginal people, and they're known for their strong ties of kinship, and they survived in small family groups and clans.
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Classic in 1828, colonizer Thomas Potter McQueen was, quote, granted 10,000 acres between Scone and Muswell Brook.
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And he named it Aberdeen after his friend, the fourth Earl of Aberdeen.
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So creative.
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So he was still living in England at this time, but then his financial situation declined and then he moved to Australia.
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And then this town just kind of became like an industrial town because
Catherine's Early Life and Career
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of that.
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In 1840, there was a steam-driven mill that was there.
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And then in 1891, the Australian Chilling and Freezing Company was established in Aberdeen.
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A year later was when the first cargo of sheep and lamb arrived at Aberdeen to be processed.
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So this factory was shut down for two years in the late 1890s because of typhoid.
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And then it reopened and then closed due to low supply.
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And then in 1940s, they started to process beef, rabbits, pigs, and even butter.
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In 1981, 20 abattoirs.
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So that's what these are called.
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They're like the equivalent.
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Are they like slaughterhouses?
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Slaughterhouses, yes.
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It's like the Australian word for slaughterhouse.
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Abattoir.
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Abattoir.
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So there's a lot of these, I guess.
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I know.
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But it's not slaughterhouse.
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There's a lot of them in New South Wales.
00:08:39
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And in 1981, like something happened and 20 of them closed and like 4000 jobs were lost across New South Wales.
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So just like a huge part of their economy.
Tumultuous Relationships and Violence
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And then this company in 1984 came in called Elders IXL.
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And then they established in 1984, the Aberdeen Beef Company, where they processed meat for export and also domestically.
00:09:03
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In 1999, the facility closed and 400 people lost their jobs.
00:09:08
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At the time, the town's population was 1,700 and one in four people worked at Aberdeen Beef Company.
00:09:16
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from this home and they cited stock shortages as the reason why it was closed um yeah so basically just like super small town a lot of uh people work at local slaughterhouse a lot of everyone knows each other because it's tiny tiny tiny um
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Yeah, a lot of history of just, like, working in factories doing industrial labor.
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So that's Aberdeen.
00:09:48
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Why are we talking about Aberdeen?
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Because Catherine is from there.
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Yeah, this is the town of Aberdeen, and this is where a woman named Catherine Knight lives.
00:09:58
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lived this is the woman who now is in a prison for the rest of her life without parole so you know like what the fuck's going on with katherine i also think context for the town is like important because everyone or when i was learning about it they were talking about how um there's like a lot of socioeconomic like challenges like people are not
00:10:23
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people are not doing well.
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And also like they don't have like a lot of access to education.
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Resources are low.
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And also like there's like higher rates of domestic violence.
00:10:36
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And so I wonder what all of this, how all of this plays into the way that she functioned and was enabled and created the conditions for her to like her story to exist.
00:10:49
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Yeah.
00:10:50
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Oh, Moka snoring.
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Yeah.
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Mocha's my cat and he's really old and very sweet, but he does snore.
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So you might hear some of that little squeaky boy.
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Oh my God.
00:11:04
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So here we have the, the, the context of Aberdeen where a ton of people work at the abattoir and Catherine actually was one of those people.
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She left school at the age of 15 without knowing how to read or write.
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And for a little while worked as a cutter in a clothing factory.
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But her dream, her aspiration was to work at the abattoir.
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She described it as her dream job because it was also like kind of a family, her family.
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dad used to work there.
00:11:33
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But first, her job involved cleaning congealed marrow and blood out of carcasses and cutting animals into smaller pieces.
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But then she was later promoted to boning.
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And she was at this point given her own set of knives.
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It's said that she hung these knives over her bed and
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is quoted saying they would be handy if I needed them.
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Always be handy.
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A habit of the hanging over her bed.
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That habit she's like continued until her incarceration.
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Everywhere she lived.
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She has her little knives above her bed.
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At this point, she's at the abattoir and she meets David Kellett.
00:12:11
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So this starts like this string of like really fucked up relationships.
00:12:17
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David Kellett worked at the butcher shop.
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They said the butcher shop.
00:12:21
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It's the abattoir, right?
00:12:22
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Yeah.
00:12:22
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Yeah.
00:12:23
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The internet described him as an alcoholic who is prone to fist fights.
00:12:29
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I guess one time towards the beginning of Catherine and David's relationship.
00:12:35
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I also never got information about how the relationships evolved, right?
00:12:39
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Like in the Lorena episode, we really get to see like how the relationship was...
00:12:45
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Yeah, there is no information really on that, which is maybe just because she's never shared that with anyone.
00:13:08
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Yeah, I guess so.
00:13:09
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And I'm just like, if she's out here, she's out here being like, I love slaughtering cows.
00:13:15
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Yeah, yeah.
00:13:16
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Like, I was listening to these, like, I was watching this documentary and this was literally something that she said, like, I love slaughtering cows.
00:13:25
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She took joy in it, which is a total red flag.
00:13:28
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Yeah.
00:13:29
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Join killing animals.
00:13:31
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This woman is full of red flags and no one ever, everyone just, like, enables her.
00:13:36
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Okay, anyways.
00:13:38
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So one time, I guess, Catherine joined in on one of his, like, drunken brawls.
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He was prone to, like, drunken brawls at pubs.
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And that was, like, an indicator to him that he was like, oh, this is a, she's very strong.
00:13:53
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Which makes sense because she's, like, throwing around cows all day.
00:13:56
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And this was like the beginning of noting or noticing that he was like slowly becoming like the submissive party in the dynamic in which he assumed he would have like, you know, where like you would assume that the dynamic would be shifted.
00:14:13
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And in 1974, she convinces David to marry her.
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Her mom even warns that she has a temper, says that she has a screw loose somewhere.
00:14:24
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The exact quote is, the old girl said to me, watch out.
00:14:28
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David said this, apparently.
00:14:29
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The old girl said to me, watch out.
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I hate that old girl.
00:14:33
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Yeah.
00:14:35
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Mom.
00:14:35
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Yeah.
00:14:36
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You better watch this one or she'll fucking kill you.
00:14:39
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Stir her up in the wrong way or do the wrong thing and you're fucked.
00:14:42
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Don't ever think of playing up on her.
00:14:45
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She'll fucking kill you.
00:14:47
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And that was her mother talking.
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She told me she's got something loose, a screw loose somewhere.
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So, like, all right.
00:14:54
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So her mom.
00:14:56
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That's her mom.
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Barbara.
00:14:58
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Barbara.
00:14:59
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Barbara.
00:15:00
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I have a feeling we're going to learn about Barbara.
00:15:03
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If it's not obvious, this is also like a very white conservative town.
00:15:08
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Yes.
00:15:09
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Yeah.
00:15:10
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Yes.
00:15:10
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And so a lot of the information that I'm pulling from like any of the coverage is like coverage from like people who are surrounding the town, the journalists who are covering the stories in the town.
00:15:19
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Yeah.
00:15:19
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So we're having to distill this information through that lens.
00:15:21
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Yeah.
00:15:22
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I think that's important to note.
00:15:23
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Yes, for sure.
00:15:24
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So either way, 1974, she convinces David to marry her.
00:15:30
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And then their wedding night, violence escalates.
00:15:34
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They had sex three times.
00:15:36
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And when he couldn't pull through a fourth time, she like strangles him in his sleep.
00:15:42
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What the heck?
00:15:45
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And he manages to fight her off.
00:15:49
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It's terrifying.
00:15:50
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So, you know, they move on from that.
00:15:53
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And they stayed together for 10 years.
00:15:55
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Yeah.
00:15:55
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Dissociate.
00:15:56
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I guess so.
00:15:57
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I'm just like, but I'm also like, how much, like, if you're coming into a conservative place with really traditional gender norms, like how much of this is like toxic masculinity and being like, I am not the subject of abuse.
00:16:13
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That will not be happening.
00:16:14
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That is not my situation.
00:16:17
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We're just going to keep it going.
00:16:18
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Yeah.
00:16:19
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You know?
00:16:20
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Yeah.
00:16:22
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And normally I would like take all these stories with a grain of salt, but this woman is like literally so wild.
00:16:28
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I'm just like, wow, she's the aggressor.
00:16:31
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Okay.
00:16:32
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So, throughout the ten years, people say that she was known to attack him with frying pans, burn his clothing, threaten him with knives, which she had mounted above her bed.
00:16:43
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Yep, yep, her knives.
00:16:43
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Her knives.
00:16:44
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Promised knives.
00:16:46
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Precious knives.
00:16:47
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Mm-hmm.
00:16:47
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One time, in fear for his life, Kellett fled before collapsing in a neighbor's house, and he was later treated for a badly fractured skull...
00:16:56
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Police wanted to charge her, but Knight was now on her best behavior, quote unquote, and talked Kellett into dropping the charges.
00:17:03
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Wow.
00:17:04
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Yes.
00:17:04
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So in May 1976, this is two years after, you know, they get married, shortly after the birth of their first child, Melissa Ann, David left her for another woman and moved to Queensland.
00:17:18
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You can imagine that did not go well.
Mental Health Issues and Postpartum Depression
00:17:20
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No.
00:17:21
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No.
00:17:21
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So the same week she was admitted to St.
00:17:24
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Elmo's Hospital after witnesses saw her violently pushing and swinging her second child in a stroller down a busy street.
00:17:30
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Oh my god.
00:17:32
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What the heck, lady?
00:17:34
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Yeah.
00:17:36
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She stayed there for several weeks and they were like, she has postpartum depression.
00:17:41
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Which I'm just like...
00:17:44
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The way that she's enabled throughout this whole story, I feel like really echoes this idea of the inherent innocence of white womanhood and the refusal to believe that she could be embodying such, you know, that she could be dangerous.
00:18:04
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Yeah, totally.
00:18:05
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It's kind of like the explanations that they give whenever there's a mass shooter.
00:18:11
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Yeah.
00:18:12
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Yeah.
00:18:12
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He was depressed.
00:18:14
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He was lonely.
00:18:15
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What?
00:18:15
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Postpartum depression.
00:18:17
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I want to say also, like, I think that that gets used a lot in cases where mothers have killed their children and they're like, ooh, postpartum depression.
00:18:28
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And, like, I want to spend some time talking about postpartum depression because, like, sure, that could be, like, a part of it.
00:18:33
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But also, like, postpartum depression is extremely common and, like, undertreated.
00:18:39
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And so, like...
00:18:40
Speaker
Birthing people are really left with very little to no support because people don't know how to address it and they don't know how to expect it or support people who are going through that.
00:18:53
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So according to the DSM-5, which has its issues...
00:18:56
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which is a manual used to diagnose mental disorders.
00:18:59
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Postpartum depression is a form of major depression that begins within four weeks after delivery.
00:19:05
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Postpartum depression is linked to chemical, social, and psychological changes that happen when having a baby.
00:19:11
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And so the chemical changes involve a rapid drop in hormones after delivery,
00:19:16
Speaker
Which makes a lot of sense when my hormones are rapidly anywhere.
00:19:20
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My body's like, what the actual fuck is going on?
00:19:24
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The actual link between this drop and depression is not clear.
00:19:28
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They just know that it happens.
00:19:29
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They know that levels of estrogen and progesterone, the reproductive hormones, increase tenfold during pregnancy.
00:19:37
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And then they drop sharply after delivery.
00:19:39
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So by day three after someone gives birth, the levels of these hormones drop back to what they were before pregnancy, which is really dysregulating.
00:19:48
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And so, like, for Catherine's case, she already had these tendencies to be abusive.
00:19:52
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And when she couldn't abuse the person that she was dating, she was abusing her children after he left.
00:19:58
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So, like, there's this pattern of, like, someone always has to pay for my hurt, even if the hurt is, like, kind of, like...
00:20:05
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you know?
00:20:05
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Yeah.
00:20:06
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Yeah.
00:20:06
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So, like, for Catherine's case...
00:20:09
Speaker
We can expect postpartum depression to happen, and it just only exacerbates her existing behavior.
00:20:14
Speaker
The website that I'm pulling this from continues to say, most new mothers experience the baby blues, quote-unquote, after delivery.
00:20:21
Speaker
About one in every ten of these birthing people will develop a more severe and longer-lasting depression after delivery, and about one in 1,000 develop a more serious condition called postpartum psychosis, which psychosis...
00:20:35
Speaker
Yeah, which is wild, but also... I wonder if it's, like, if you have, like, a genetic predisposition towards, like, schizophrenia, that that is likely to happen after you give birth to a child, like, to onset.
00:20:46
Speaker
Maybe.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:48
Speaker
Because it's, like, whatever is, like, really dysregulating to your nervous system sometimes triggers it, right?
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:54
Speaker
And that huge of a drop in hormones.
00:20:57
Speaker
Yeah, and... When aren't there postnatal vitamins?
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:01
Speaker
I think there are.
00:21:02
Speaker
Oh, there are?
00:21:03
Speaker
I think so.
00:21:04
Speaker
I just don't think that they address these severe ups and downs of hormones.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:10
Speaker
So, I don't know.
00:21:11
Speaker
I'm also thinking about, like, the term psychosis and how that's really stigmatized and how people always tie psychosis with something violent.
00:21:19
Speaker
And, like, that's not true either.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:23
Speaker
And it's also a way to pathologize people's spiritual beliefs sometimes.
00:21:31
Speaker
So...
00:21:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:33
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yep.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:36
Speaker
You know, in the witch... Which one?
00:21:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:39
Speaker
Everything comes down to capitalism, colonialism.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:42
Speaker
We were talking about that a bit.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:47
Speaker
So, I don't know.
00:21:48
Speaker
And, like, I'm just, like, just, again, with Catherine being Catherine, and if maybe psychosis was part of that picture also, I'm just, like, danger.
00:21:57
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:21:59
Speaker
How come nobody is, like, looking out for this?
00:22:02
Speaker
And also, I think – I remember watching this documentary where they, like, had interviewed, like, new mothers who did have postpartum depression and, like, experienced postpartum psychosis.
00:22:16
Speaker
And they did develop, like, these, like, I don't feel connected to my child.
00:22:21
Speaker
And some people were, like, I wanted to harm my child and I don't know why.
00:22:25
Speaker
But, like, the fear of being –
00:22:27
Speaker
like institutionalized or like preemptively criminalized for those thoughts and behaviors kept them from seeking support.
00:22:36
Speaker
And so I'm just wondering, I don't know.
00:22:39
Speaker
I'm just throwing out there that there's just like not enough information, not enough support.
00:22:42
Speaker
And people are just kind of left to deal with their really shitty.
00:22:46
Speaker
Massive hormonal changes.
00:22:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:48
Speaker
After a really like.
00:22:50
Speaker
Traumatic.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:52
Speaker
Birth is traumatic for everyone, you know.
00:22:56
Speaker
It's the trauma that your body goes through.
00:22:58
Speaker
That's true.
00:23:00
Speaker
And then this like thing that was like living inside of you and you got like, there's just a lot happening there.
00:23:06
Speaker
Like, why do we not have more reverence for that?
00:23:09
Speaker
We're just going to be like, there's a hospital bill you have to pay.
00:23:12
Speaker
Good day.
00:23:13
Speaker
Come back to work in four months.
00:23:14
Speaker
I really don't believe that that should even be happening in a hospital.
00:23:18
Speaker
Like, you know?
00:23:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:20
Speaker
I think that there should be a different setting for that.
00:23:23
Speaker
I agree.
00:23:25
Speaker
Same with death.
00:23:26
Speaker
Same with death.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:28
Speaker
And apparently, actually, research shows that 1 in 10, they said new fathers get depression during the year their child is born, which I imagine that that's the cohort that they're testing from.
00:23:42
Speaker
But no one ever talks about how the other parties... So...
00:23:48
Speaker
Some symptoms of postpartum depression can be hard to detect, but here are some that they offer.
00:23:53
Speaker
Trouble sleeping, appetite changes, severe fatigue, lower libido, frequent mood changes.
00:24:00
Speaker
And with postpartum depression, these come along with other symptoms of major depression, which...
00:24:06
Speaker
aren't typical after childbirth, but they may include being uninterested in your baby or feeling like you're not bonding with them, crying all the time, often for no reason, depressed mood, severe anger and crankiness, loss of pleasure, feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness and helplessness, thoughts of death or suicide, thoughts of hurting someone else, trouble concentrating or making a decision.
00:24:30
Speaker
No, I don't want to birth my own children, but this is making me not want to do that even more than I already don't.
00:24:38
Speaker
That's fair.
00:24:39
Speaker
Because I already have a tendency towards depression, so.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's scary.
00:24:48
Speaker
But anyways, I just wanted to point out that, like, the way that they use this kind of connotates her behavior with,
00:24:55
Speaker
like mental illness, which can show up in a lot of different ways and doesn't necessarily suggest that someone's going to be violent to their children or to other people.
00:25:08
Speaker
And, you know, like if that's something you're experiencing, you're really not alone.
00:25:11
Speaker
So, yeah, I support you in getting support, you know?
00:25:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:25:18
Speaker
So Catherine is released from...
00:25:24
Speaker
The psychiatric hospital.
00:25:26
Speaker
And immediately after, she's placed her two-month-old, Melissa, on a railway line shortly before the train was due.
00:25:34
Speaker
And then stole an axe and then went to town and threatened to kill several people.
00:25:37
Speaker
Wow.
00:25:41
Speaker
I mean, this is in the 70s.
00:25:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:44
Speaker
And the incident that we're covering really happened in 2000.
00:25:47
Speaker
So this bitch is really wandering around wild as fuck and nobody is like...
00:25:51
Speaker
I'm like, oh my gosh.
00:25:53
Speaker
I mean, her mom is just like willy nilly like, this bitch will kill you.
00:25:58
Speaker
And like, it's just, you know?
00:26:00
Speaker
Who's stepping in?
00:26:01
Speaker
Nobody.
00:26:02
Speaker
Nobody is stepping in.
00:26:03
Speaker
But also we talked about how this is a place with like minimal resource.
00:26:07
Speaker
So it's like.
00:26:08
Speaker
Minimal resource are also like not my problem kind of thing.
00:26:11
Speaker
Like I don't want to get involved.
00:26:13
Speaker
Like this person's clearly wild, but I'm going to live my life.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:21
Speaker
Some dude known in the district as Old Ted was foraging near the railway line and was the only reason the baby was rescued.
00:26:30
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
00:26:31
Speaker
Just minutes before the train passed.
00:26:33
Speaker
And so Catherine was arrested again and taken to St.
00:26:37
Speaker
Elmo's Hospital, but apparently she quote unquote recovered and signed herself out the following day.
00:26:45
Speaker
I don't even know what that means.
00:26:47
Speaker
Like, who's watching out for these children?
00:26:50
Speaker
These poor babies.
00:26:51
Speaker
She has a bunch of children.
00:26:52
Speaker
I'm like, where are they?
00:26:53
Speaker
Are they okay?
00:26:53
Speaker
I hope you're okay.
00:26:57
Speaker
Please don't listen to this episode.
00:26:58
Speaker
No, please turn it off.
00:27:01
Speaker
Unnecessary re-traumatization.
00:27:04
Speaker
Or, I don't know, do what you want.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, do what you want.
00:27:06
Speaker
But, you know, take care of yourself.
00:27:09
Speaker
I like how we're like, they're listening.
00:27:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:11
Speaker
It freaked me out and was like, what if the Setagaya murders?
00:27:14
Speaker
Oh, I mean, I have thought that before, too.
00:27:16
Speaker
I've thought that, too.
00:27:17
Speaker
And I just kept it in my brain and put it away and it brought it forward again.
00:27:21
Speaker
I'm scared.
00:27:21
Speaker
I don't like thinking about him.
00:27:24
Speaker
No.
00:27:25
Speaker
Sorry.
00:27:26
Speaker
Sorry about it.
00:27:27
Speaker
It's okay.
00:27:27
Speaker
I've already had that thought before, so it's not a new one.
00:27:31
Speaker
Anyways.
00:27:32
Speaker
Anyways.
00:27:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:34
Speaker
So a few days later.
00:27:39
Speaker
She wastes no time.
00:27:40
Speaker
A few days later, Catherine slashed the face of a woman with one of her knives.
00:27:46
Speaker
Oh, my gosh.
00:27:46
Speaker
Her damn knives.
00:27:47
Speaker
Someone take her damn knives.
00:27:48
Speaker
And demanded she drive her to Queensland to find David, who had left, you know, with another woman.
00:27:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:27:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:27:56
Speaker
The woman escaped after they stopped at a service station, but by the time the police arrived, Knight had taken a little boy hostage and was threatening him with a knife.
00:28:06
Speaker
What in the world?
00:28:09
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:10
Speaker
What in the world?
00:28:11
Speaker
She was disarmed when police attacked her with brooms.
00:28:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:23
Speaker
With brooms.
00:28:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:26
Speaker
I mean, I don't think they have guns.
00:28:27
Speaker
Guns, yeah.
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:28
Speaker
So, brooms.
00:28:29
Speaker
So, brooms, you know?
00:28:31
Speaker
They're working with what they got.
00:28:32
Speaker
Brooms.
00:28:34
Speaker
It's funny.
00:28:35
Speaker
It's... It's weirdly humorous.
00:28:38
Speaker
It's a distressing, like, circumstance, but that image is a little comical.
00:28:45
Speaker
It would be comical if it wasn't so fucked up.
00:28:46
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:48
Speaker
Like many things.
00:28:48
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:28:50
Speaker
So she was admitted to a different psychiatric hospital, Morissette Psychiatric Hospital.
00:28:55
Speaker
And there she told nurses that she planned to kill a mechanic who fixed David's car because it made it possible for him to leave her.
00:29:03
Speaker
Wow.
00:29:05
Speaker
So everyone.
00:29:06
Speaker
She's trying to blame everyone.
00:29:08
Speaker
Everyone's responsible for her pain.
00:29:11
Speaker
Yep.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
And surprise, surprise, she was released a few months later.
00:29:17
Speaker
She's actively saying, I'm going to kill these people.
00:29:19
Speaker
And they're just like, bye.
00:29:21
Speaker
Cool.
00:29:21
Speaker
See you later.
00:29:24
Speaker
So she was released on the 9th of August in 1976 into the care of her mother-in-law.
00:29:31
Speaker
Along with David, because David came back after he heard about his plan to, like, kill people.
00:29:37
Speaker
I think he wanted to, like, de-escalate her.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:29:41
Speaker
She was like, I don't – he was like, I don't want to be the reason people die.
00:29:43
Speaker
People are dying.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:29:45
Speaker
And then they moved to Woodridge, a suburb of Brisbane, or Brisbane.
00:29:49
Speaker
Brisbane.
00:29:51
Speaker
a suburb of Brisbane, where she obtained a job at the Dinmore Meatworks in nearby Ipswich.
00:30:00
Speaker
So she's still out here dealing with meat.
00:30:01
Speaker
She got to.
00:30:02
Speaker
She loves her knives.
00:30:03
Speaker
It's her thing.
00:30:05
Speaker
On March 6, 1980, they had another daughter named Natasha Marie.
00:30:10
Speaker
It's popping out babies.
00:30:14
Speaker
In 1984...
00:30:16
Speaker
Knight left David and moved in, first with her parents in Aberdeen, and then rented a house in nearby Muswellbrook.
00:30:25
Speaker
These names.
00:30:27
Speaker
Although she returned to work at the abattoir, she injured her back the following year and went on disability pension.
00:30:34
Speaker
And when she no longer had to... She went on disability pension and the government gave her a housing commission house in Aberdeen.
00:30:41
Speaker
So she's back in Aberdeen.
00:30:44
Speaker
Before we move forward...
00:30:46
Speaker
We always ask the question, like, why are you like this, Catherine?
Catherine's Traumatic Childhood
00:30:52
Speaker
What happened to you?
00:30:54
Speaker
So Akshi has a lot of info about that.
00:30:57
Speaker
It's going to be... I do.
00:30:59
Speaker
You're all going to feel very confused on your feelings.
00:31:03
Speaker
No, just like have confusing feelings.
00:31:05
Speaker
Oh, that's fair.
00:31:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:08
Speaker
Ambivalent feelings.
00:31:10
Speaker
Just a content warning.
00:31:13
Speaker
Domestic violence.
00:31:15
Speaker
child sexual abuse and incest.
00:31:17
Speaker
So... Fuck.
00:31:18
Speaker
Can't deal with that.
00:31:19
Speaker
Maybe just don't listen.
00:31:21
Speaker
I'm going to try to not go really specifically into things and just talk about them overarchingly.
00:31:27
Speaker
But first I'm going to talk about Barbara.
00:31:30
Speaker
Who's Barbara?
00:31:31
Speaker
I was just hearing you talk about her and I'm like, you're fucked up too.
00:31:35
Speaker
That's why she's like this.
00:31:38
Speaker
It's like that meme, that Devil Wears Prada meme, where she's like, oh, I see.
00:31:43
Speaker
You think this has nothing to do with you?
00:31:46
Speaker
Yep.
00:31:48
Speaker
So, Barbara was born in Muswellbrook.
00:31:52
Speaker
To a poor family.
00:31:54
Speaker
Her dad left when she was young and she was raised in a small, crowded house with extended family members.
00:32:00
Speaker
A quote from one of her other kids, not Catherine, about Barbara was, she never loved or cuddled or nursed.
00:32:09
Speaker
Mom was busy and there was no time or room for affection or love.
00:32:15
Speaker
There were rumors that Barbara may have been sexually abused by relatives when she was a child.
00:32:20
Speaker
And she was at one point like in a home for girls and people in the town described her as high strung and foul mouthed.
00:32:28
Speaker
Um, she often told her kids that there was madness running through the female side of her family.
00:32:35
Speaker
And then also classic white person sometimes told her family that she was descended from a Maori princess.
00:32:45
Speaker
So there's a quote from, uh, one of her kids when she was feeling good, we were Aboriginal.
00:32:50
Speaker
She knew all along.
00:32:51
Speaker
She just didn't say there was a lot of racism in those days.
00:32:54
Speaker
It was a secret.
00:32:56
Speaker
Um,
00:32:57
Speaker
So there's just, like, so much going on there.
00:32:59
Speaker
Why is that a thing?
00:33:00
Speaker
Like, I don't want to say, like, it's impossible.
00:33:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:03
Speaker
But white people really do have this thing where they're like, I'm part Cherokee.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:07
Speaker
Specifically Cherokee.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:08
Speaker
And then they, like, have this ongoing story in their families about how they were on the Trail of Tears.
00:33:12
Speaker
And that, like, ends up not being true.
00:33:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:14
Speaker
I'm just like, what is up with that weird... Yeah, and in Australia, it's always, like, Maori.
00:33:19
Speaker
It's just a weird lie.
00:33:20
Speaker
Like, what are you trying to hide from?
00:33:22
Speaker
And, like, what are you...
00:33:25
Speaker
What's the reason?
00:33:26
Speaker
What is the reason?
00:33:27
Speaker
You're just trying to distance yourself from the legacy of white violence, I think.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:32
Speaker
And actually, so this, a lot of what I'm pulling right now is from this book about Catherine called Bloodstained by Peter Lelore, which I have thoughts about, which I'll get into later.
00:33:44
Speaker
But in the book, he also says that, like, it's still kind of like that today in Aberdeen where people might be like, oh, so-and-so has Aboriginal blood.
00:33:57
Speaker
Okay.
00:33:58
Speaker
So anyway, Barbara moved to Aberdeen in the 1940s and married Jack Rowan.
00:34:05
Speaker
And he worked at the Abattoir and was an alcoholic.
00:34:09
Speaker
They had four boys in the first 10 years of marriage.
00:34:13
Speaker
And they lived like pretty close to the Abattoir in a little cottage.
00:34:19
Speaker
So tiny cottage, four boys, four.
00:34:24
Speaker
Right next to the abattoir.
00:34:25
Speaker
This is Barbara.
00:34:26
Speaker
Sounds terrible already.
00:34:28
Speaker
Yep.
00:34:29
Speaker
When her youngest children were a few months old, slash, like, a year old, she had an affair with a co-worker of her husband, Ken Knight.
00:34:39
Speaker
It was a huge scandal because it was, like, the 50s and it's a really small community.
00:34:43
Speaker
And so when, like, people found out about it, they were up in arms.
00:34:47
Speaker
Because of that, Barbara and Ken moved to Moray and...
00:34:53
Speaker
Two of her sons stayed with their dad and two of them went to stay with an aunt.
00:34:57
Speaker
So she like wasn't with her kids anymore.
00:35:01
Speaker
So after that, she's like having more kids.
00:35:03
Speaker
First, she had a boy that was named after Ken.
00:35:07
Speaker
Less than a year after another boy.
00:35:12
Speaker
Then she has twins.
00:35:15
Speaker
One of whom is Catherine Marie Knight.
00:35:19
Speaker
Born October 24th, Scorpio.
00:35:24
Speaker
1955.
00:35:24
Speaker
Scorpio.
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:27
Speaker
She doesn't forget.
00:35:29
Speaker
And then she had one more kid after that.
00:35:33
Speaker
Pretty sure.
00:35:33
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:34
Speaker
Are you trying to look up her chart?
00:35:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:40
Speaker
L-O-L.
00:35:40
Speaker
So in 1957, her first husband, Jack Rowan, died and her two older sons came to live with her and Ken.
00:35:48
Speaker
So now she had five kids living with her.
00:35:54
Speaker
And two more that were living at her relative's house.
00:35:57
Speaker
Two older boys came to live with her and Ken.
00:35:59
Speaker
And then because she had had four more kids in that in-between time, she had eight kids.
00:36:08
Speaker
And her kids who had been living in Sydney with their aunt also came to stay at certain points of time.
00:36:15
Speaker
So Ken and Barbara were known to be very strict and having nasty tempers.
00:36:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:36:21
Speaker
Ken was also an alcoholic and he was physically, emotionally, verbally and sexually abusive towards Barbara.
00:36:29
Speaker
And in the book, it says that she fought back.
00:36:32
Speaker
And the quote is she gave back almost as good as she got.
00:36:36
Speaker
I really hate how this person writes.
00:36:37
Speaker
Like there's more shit about like how this person writes that I really, really fucking hate.
00:36:42
Speaker
But I'm like, what the heck?
00:36:45
Speaker
But like a lot of this happened in front of the kids.
00:36:47
Speaker
Like they didn't care.
00:36:49
Speaker
So they were witnesses to this.
00:36:53
Speaker
Barbara was raped many times a day and often told her daughters intimate details of this and how she hated sex and men.
00:37:03
Speaker
No.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:05
Speaker
No.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yep.
00:37:10
Speaker
Man.
00:37:11
Speaker
So Catherine especially craved her mother's affection and complained often that she didn't get it.
00:37:18
Speaker
And complained that her sister was like the favorite.
00:37:22
Speaker
And Catherine says that she doesn't remember her parents ever saying that they loved her.
00:37:27
Speaker
So a lot of attachment shit going on here.
00:37:31
Speaker
She used to get beat by both her parents really often.
00:37:37
Speaker
She says that she can't remember them that well.
00:37:39
Speaker
I'm not going to go into specifics about that.
00:37:43
Speaker
But other family members would say about Catherine that she...
00:37:47
Speaker
would get depressed and get really anxious, but that she also had a vicious temper and often had to be, like, restrained or held back when she lost her cool.
00:37:59
Speaker
But then at other points of time, she and her sister, so other times they were, like, playful together, you know?
00:38:07
Speaker
They were very close.
00:38:10
Speaker
They stuck together.
00:38:13
Speaker
Okay, so Catherine says that until from like around the age of three till the age of 11, she was sexually assaulted by different members of her family, which has been confirmed by other members of the family as well.
00:38:30
Speaker
The tone which this is written in the book is so gaslighting and victim blaming.
00:38:36
Speaker
Like, yes, she's, like, a fucked up person, but that doesn't, like, give you, like, free reign to be, like, oh, like, she's making all of that stuff up.
00:38:50
Speaker
So one of the quotes from the book says, although everything she told the psychiatrist in this period has been seen as self-serving, others confirm elements of what she says.
00:39:00
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, so other people are saying that it happened.
00:39:04
Speaker
And it also explains her... Her behavior.
00:39:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:08
Speaker
I mean, it's really common that abusive people will lean on their traumatic past to justify their behavior.
00:39:13
Speaker
True.
00:39:15
Speaker
But I think it's important to acknowledge that people don't exist in a vacuum and that these behaviors have roots.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah, and there's multiple things happening there.
00:39:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:22
Speaker
Like, it's true.
00:39:23
Speaker
And also, she's, like, really fucked up and not... Very few survivors of abuse end up being...
00:39:32
Speaker
as violent as she was.
00:39:34
Speaker
Right, right.
00:39:35
Speaker
It's like many things can be true at the same time.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
Another thing that they say, which I'm just like, this is just wrong, is that, like, the psychiatrist that I guess, like, evaluated her later on claimed that she had little memory of her childhood and found it difficult to discuss, but, like, remembers that there was a lot of physical violence and sexual violence in it.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:06
Speaker
And she used to also wet the bed until she was 11, which is around the time that she said that the abuse, sexual abuse stopped, which is a common thing that happens when children are being sexually abused.
00:40:16
Speaker
So going back to this, what the psychiatrist said, he said that he doubts that this is true because she can't remember the details.
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:27
Speaker
And he believes that victims of sexual assault rarely suffer suppressed memory.
00:40:31
Speaker
And I was like, dude, what the fuck are you talking about?
00:40:35
Speaker
What is he talking about?
00:40:36
Speaker
He's a psychiatrist.
00:40:37
Speaker
Psychiatrists don't know shit sometimes.
00:40:40
Speaker
I'm like, that is such a common response to trauma.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:43
Speaker
Just like memory loss.
00:40:44
Speaker
That's such a common – I'm like, what are you even saying that's like not true?
00:40:47
Speaker
It's a protective thing.
00:40:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:48
Speaker
Your brain says, nope.
00:40:49
Speaker
Some people have some responses.
00:40:51
Speaker
Other people have other responses, you know?
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:40:54
Speaker
Um, anyway, so that I was just like, what the heck is going on in this book?
Impact of Childhood Abuse
00:40:59
Speaker
One thing that's, I guess, kind of like sweet is, um, when she was younger, she was afraid of the dark and kept a doll with her that protected her.
00:41:09
Speaker
And she said, one doll used to protect me.
00:41:11
Speaker
I was scared at night.
00:41:12
Speaker
They wouldn't let me have the light on.
00:41:14
Speaker
I thought there was something wrong with me.
00:41:16
Speaker
And that all boils down to my, my brother's.
00:41:20
Speaker
doing shit.
00:41:21
Speaker
I played with my dolls and things that I like a lot.
00:41:25
Speaker
I had one doll I carried everywhere with me.
00:41:27
Speaker
It used to protect me.
00:41:29
Speaker
It was like gold to me.
00:41:30
Speaker
It meant more to me than anything in the world, I suppose.
00:41:36
Speaker
So there was that.
00:41:40
Speaker
I found a chart.
00:41:41
Speaker
Oh.
00:41:42
Speaker
So apparently since she was born in Australia, she's actually a Libra.
00:41:46
Speaker
Oh.
00:41:46
Speaker
And she's a Venus in Scorpio.
00:41:48
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:41:48
Speaker
Why do I share things with this?
00:41:50
Speaker
I also have my Mercury and a Libra.
00:41:53
Speaker
My moon's in Aquarius.
00:41:55
Speaker
Interesting.
00:41:56
Speaker
Look at this Scorpio-Saturn.
00:41:59
Speaker
Saturn return must have been gnarly.
00:42:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:03
Speaker
Interesting.
00:42:04
Speaker
You know, my chart's very similar to Richard Ramirez, so.
00:42:07
Speaker
So, okay.
00:42:08
Speaker
Here we are.
00:42:08
Speaker
Here we are.
00:42:11
Speaker
So, anyways, that I think paints a little picture of
00:42:16
Speaker
Catherine's childhood, I'm going to say a little bit more about it.
00:42:19
Speaker
But when you were talking, I was like, oh, this is another recipe for disaster situation.
00:42:26
Speaker
You know, like, I just wonder what's in their family's genetics as well.
00:42:31
Speaker
And...
00:42:31
Speaker
Like, what are all the things that are contributing to, like, this being her path of trauma response?
00:42:38
Speaker
Right.
00:42:39
Speaker
Yeah, what is the thing?
00:42:40
Speaker
Because, like, I was talking about this earlier, and I feel like there's something about, like, white people.
00:42:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:48
Speaker
Like, when you look at, like, the cluster of serial killers and the cluster of people who are, like, you know, at the top of whatever...
00:42:57
Speaker
For example, she was, like, the first woman, you know?
00:42:59
Speaker
They're always white people, and I'm just, like, I'm thinking about these serial killers, and they have these, like, I mean, they're not great lives, but oftentimes they're not, like, a lot of people experience that and don't go that way.
00:43:13
Speaker
So, like, what is it about what's in your genes already that makes trauma unbearable and switches you into this person who feels like you need to dominate and destroy other people?
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah, what I was hearing a lot when you were talking and sharing the stories about her first husband... Yeah....was very much like, oh, she's, like, really just trying to regain control, like, in such an aggressive way.
00:43:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:43:41
Speaker
She's, like, fight response, that times thousand, infinity.
00:43:44
Speaker
Yes, and a lot of her abuse is sexual nature, which makes, like, the connection... I see the connection there.
00:43:51
Speaker
So in 1969, Catherine's uncle, who was Ken, her dad's brother...
00:43:56
Speaker
The only person she was close to other than her sister in the family died by suicide.
00:44:03
Speaker
She later said that she wished it had been her dad because she loved Oscar more.
00:44:09
Speaker
And so the family wasn't living in Aberdeen at this point.
00:44:12
Speaker
They moved back after that happened.
00:44:15
Speaker
So she was in school until she was 15 and she was known at school for her sudden and violent temper.
00:44:21
Speaker
Not just her, but also her sister.
00:44:23
Speaker
They were both known for that.
00:44:24
Speaker
Both known for doing anything to get attention, either good or bad.
00:44:28
Speaker
Because they were very neglected at home.
00:44:30
Speaker
So school was a place where they were trying to get attention and their needs met.
00:44:36
Speaker
So if there was a fight in the playground, it was usually them two.
00:44:42
Speaker
But it was more likely to be Catherine.
00:44:44
Speaker
And she would fight with anyone.
00:44:45
Speaker
She wouldn't go like looking for fights, but once it started, she would like not stop.
00:44:50
Speaker
You know, she wouldn't be able to end it.
00:44:52
Speaker
Other kids at school were scared of them because of how like aggressively they fought with each other.
00:44:57
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:59
Speaker
And people said that Catherine never seemed happy and always had like a scary frown on her face.
00:45:06
Speaker
So one of her classmates remembers that they, the sisters were
00:45:12
Speaker
arguing over who would push their bicycle, and then they just, like, started throwing punches at each other.
00:45:18
Speaker
They were always together because they didn't have a lot of friends, but they also, like, fought with each other a lot.
00:45:23
Speaker
They were also really close.
00:45:26
Speaker
So complicated.
00:45:28
Speaker
But if, like, anyone tried to fight Catherine or anyone tried to fight her sister, the other person would always join to help.
00:45:36
Speaker
They were, like, aligned, but then also aggressively fighting with each other.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:41
Speaker
She once assaulted a boy and then once injured a teacher and the teacher said that – sorry, she was injured by a teacher and the teacher said that she was acting in self-defense to Catherine.
00:45:53
Speaker
Weirdly, there was also a quote that said that when she was not in a rage, she was a model student and often earned rewards for her good behavior.
00:46:03
Speaker
Which I'm like, how is she earning rewards for her good behavior if she's like this the majority of the time?
00:46:10
Speaker
This is just like a recipe for so much bullshit.
00:46:14
Speaker
Yep.
00:46:15
Speaker
You know, like the duality of punishment and coddling, you know, like those things existing at the same time is just like, I feel like a recipe to socialize someone to be really horrible.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
00:46:32
Speaker
So clearly Catherine had an extremely traumatic relationship.
00:46:36
Speaker
Childhood.
00:46:37
Speaker
Her mom had a traumatic childhood.
00:46:39
Speaker
It's just passing on, passing on.
00:46:42
Speaker
And like we've said before, like, yes, trauma can explain people's fucked up behavior, but not everyone who goes through childhood trauma ends up causing harm like this.
00:46:57
Speaker
And I just wanted to kind of look into like the impact of like exposure to domestic violence on children and young people.
00:47:05
Speaker
And also the long-term,
00:47:07
Speaker
consequences of people who have been sexually abused as children.
00:47:10
Speaker
And so I looked in a few research studies and there was clear evidence that showed that domestic violence and child sexual abuse are often co-occurring.
00:47:23
Speaker
And often there's association between the abuse of a mother and a sexual abuse of a child.
00:47:29
Speaker
What I was mentioning before about like a lot of attachments that's going on,
00:47:32
Speaker
Right.
00:47:33
Speaker
So like when you're a child, pretty much until you're like age 21, like your brain's developing.
00:47:39
Speaker
And one of a very key developmental thing that we need as humans who are social bonding mammals is like a secure base in a caregiver.
00:47:49
Speaker
So because we're not able to take care of our own like survival needs, we need to trust that our primary caregiver is going to respond in our times of need.
00:47:59
Speaker
And obviously both our parents were not.
00:48:02
Speaker
We're not there.
00:48:03
Speaker
And so growing up in an abusive household can really, really, like, fuck up the developmental progress of children.
00:48:11
Speaker
And it always carries into adulthood and contributes to the cycle of violence continuing a lot of the time.
00:48:18
Speaker
So often, like, children who grow up in households like this end up having a disorganized attachment.
00:48:24
Speaker
And I'm not even going to go into that with Catherine because she has a lot of other shit going on.
00:48:28
Speaker
But this researcher says that
00:48:33
Speaker
Such attachments result in the infant being chronically overwhelmed.
00:48:36
Speaker
And if uninterrupted, this pattern could have devastating developmental consequences for the child underpinning much of the intergenerational cycle of domestic violence.
00:48:48
Speaker
So it also kind of matters like the age of exposure.
00:48:51
Speaker
And so like if children are really young, it's associated with just like PTSD, social problems, difficult, sometimes difficulty developing empathy as well, just present with her.
00:49:03
Speaker
But this research study also says it cautions that there is rarely a direct causal pathway leading to a particular outcome and that children are not passive participants, but are active in constructing their own social world.
00:49:18
Speaker
One other study that I found was they looked at 130 women.
00:49:24
Speaker
Most of them are white, middle class, and they had experiences of witnessing violence between their parents as children.
00:49:32
Speaker
And they measured it in terms of moderate and severe.
00:49:35
Speaker
I don't know how they separated that.
00:49:38
Speaker
But they found that the people who had experienced more severe violence...
00:49:45
Speaker
had more violence in their dating relationships, both towards their partner and from their partner, but it wasn't clear whether the towards their partner was, like, self-defense.
00:49:54
Speaker
Greater number of antisocial behaviors, which was, like, criminal behaviors, truancy.
00:49:59
Speaker
I'm like, what the heck?
00:50:00
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:50:01
Speaker
Not going to school.
00:50:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:04
Speaker
Arrests and, like, physical fights.
00:50:07
Speaker
But also more depression, higher trauma symptoms.
00:50:12
Speaker
Yeah, and the results of the study also found associations between childhood sexual abuse and antisocial behaviors in specifically women.
00:50:21
Speaker
Survivors of childhood sexual abuse are often more vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse as an adult and often have a poor quality of relationships, but finding sure that there's no difference in the ability to form close friendships or receive emotional support from friends or towards friends.
00:50:39
Speaker
Interesting.
00:50:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:41
Speaker
So there's a clear distinction between relationships that include a sexual component to it versus ones that don't and feel safe.
00:50:50
Speaker
A quote that I feel like is really relevant from this article, which is by Fleming Sibthorpe in Bammer, 1999, says, The combination of sexual abuse and a family background marked by alcohol abuse, unpredictability, emotional deprivation, and social isolation...
00:51:12
Speaker
shape women's expectations about trust, intimacy, and sexuality.
00:51:16
Speaker
It is difficult for a girl to develop appropriate expectations about her sexuality and her role in loving relationships when she is subjected to exploitation, violence, and the lack of any emotional or social support.
00:51:29
Speaker
Women's relationship with their fathers play an important role in determining the quality of their relationships later in life.
00:51:35
Speaker
Having an alcoholic father and a father who is uncaring
00:51:39
Speaker
but very controlling, increased the odds of having an alcoholic partner living in a relationship that had domestic violence.
00:51:47
Speaker
One thing I wanted to look into was like the very specificity of like sibling sexual abuse, which I think isn't looked into that deeply, but it occurs more frequently than any other form of sexual abuse.
00:52:00
Speaker
And it's often happens in like a family, like the one they grew up in, where they're like seeing this pattern happen between their parents and like learning from it.
00:52:09
Speaker
But very similar consequences as I've mentioned before.
00:52:14
Speaker
But it often disrupts a bunch of different developmental stages when it's happening because it lasts longer.
00:52:19
Speaker
And it builds a lot of difficulty with peer relationships, confusion about sexuality, aggression, and a very distorted sense of self.
00:52:26
Speaker
It says that the study found that child survivors of sibling sexual assault have impacts that are uniquely severe.
00:52:34
Speaker
They exhibit the most severe forms of mental distress and antisocial behavior.
00:52:38
Speaker
And they're unlikely to receive professional intervention because they often go unreported.
00:52:43
Speaker
And so they carry these issues with them into adulthood.
00:52:46
Speaker
And that results in consequences I've already said before, mental illness, re-victimization in interpersonal relationships, just experiencing violence in interpersonal relationships.
00:52:57
Speaker
Yeah, so that's fucked up.
00:52:59
Speaker
And it's actually very common in Australia.
00:53:03
Speaker
Much more common in most places than people think.
00:53:05
Speaker
But I found an organization whose mission it is to stop and end child sexual abuse in Australia.
00:53:12
Speaker
And they do it by educating young and older children.
00:53:16
Speaker
They have programs specifically for Aboriginal and Indigenous children.
00:53:19
Speaker
And they also do awareness campaigns and have advocacy support services.
00:53:24
Speaker
And in this survey that they did, they found that
00:53:27
Speaker
The prevalence is like 20% of women had experienced child sexual abuse, age of onset being under 12 for 71% of them.
00:53:35
Speaker
20%?
00:53:35
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:53:36
Speaker
That's a lot.
00:53:38
Speaker
And it was two to three times more likely to happen in girls than... Yeah.
00:53:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:43
Speaker
Usually it was fathers, stepfathers, and other male relatives.
00:53:47
Speaker
They made up more than half of the perpetrators for women.
00:53:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:51
Speaker
This we've talked about before, too, that there's a lot of survivors of abuse that are incarcerated.
00:53:56
Speaker
So they found that 70% of incarcerated people were abused as children and 85% of incarcerated women in Australia were victims of incest or other forms of abuse.
00:54:08
Speaker
That's consistent with the U.S. also.
00:54:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:10
Speaker
And they did a study across 27 correctional centers.
00:54:14
Speaker
So it's a lot of data.
00:54:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:17
Speaker
I'm just like, when are we going to make it our collective responsibility to make sure that survivors have access to healing and also to interrupt really abusive people who just get to wander around being abusive?
Cycle of Trauma and Resilience
00:54:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:29
Speaker
I hate it here.
00:54:32
Speaker
I hate it here too.
00:54:33
Speaker
I really do.
00:54:34
Speaker
So like, it makes sense that
00:54:38
Speaker
She is the way that she is based on her past experiences.
00:54:42
Speaker
It doesn't justify it by any means.
00:54:45
Speaker
But, like, you can see, just like in many other stories that we've covered, like, that there could have been many, many different points of intervention.
00:54:54
Speaker
And there were, because she was in a hospital at one point, too, you know?
00:54:58
Speaker
But it was just not taken seriously, it seems like.
00:55:03
Speaker
Or, like, people just didn't want to take responsibility seriously.
00:55:06
Speaker
for this person and her behavior.
00:55:08
Speaker
So just, like, let her roam free.
00:55:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:11
Speaker
And I also am just, like, especially in Western communities, there's just, like, this hyper-individualism, which maybe, especially, like, with the time that she grew up, they probably were just, like, oh, she's just a bad kid, you know?
00:55:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:22
Speaker
Or, like, that's just how she is.
00:55:23
Speaker
Or she's, like, from a hard family, so.
00:55:25
Speaker
Yeah, or have you.
00:55:28
Speaker
Like, treating it as, like, an isolated thing when really there's just, like, a...
00:55:32
Speaker
There's a lot that culminates into behaviors like this.
00:55:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:35
Speaker
And I mean, you can see, like, her really violent, aggressive behaviors and controlling behaviors are... I was thinking of undoing.
00:55:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:48
Speaker
Which is, like, her just trying to, like, recreate scenarios where she's in control.
00:55:53
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:55:54
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:55:54
Speaker
In a really fucked up way and harming a lot of people in the process.
00:55:57
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:55:58
Speaker
But yeah, confusing feelings because...
00:56:01
Speaker
This child went through a lot of shit.
00:56:06
Speaker
I always think about that when people are really violent and like people that later it's just like, what is the point of no return, you know?
00:56:16
Speaker
And then also.
00:56:18
Speaker
I think it, I think her point of no return was what she's like, okay.
00:56:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:22
Speaker
I just think about like, maybe not.
00:56:24
Speaker
I don't know.
00:56:25
Speaker
I don't know.
00:56:25
Speaker
I'm unsure.
00:56:27
Speaker
But I do always think about like, wow, this person did this really horrific thing on an unimaginable thing.
00:56:34
Speaker
And I think about how at one point they were like a baby.
00:56:37
Speaker
You know, a toddler, a child.
00:56:39
Speaker
And at like, at what point did these behaviors emerge?
00:56:43
Speaker
And at what point could they have been shaped differently?
00:56:47
Speaker
Like, we'll never know, really.
00:56:49
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, she does unimaginable things because unimaginable things happen to her and she thinks it's normal.
00:56:55
Speaker
Sure.
00:56:56
Speaker
You know?
00:56:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:56:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:56:59
Speaker
She thinks it's normal.
00:57:00
Speaker
Her baseline's really, really weird.
00:57:02
Speaker
Yeah, her baseline's fucked up.
00:57:03
Speaker
I mean, everyone in this town's baseline is fucked up, clearly, because, like, no one gave a shit.
00:57:07
Speaker
That she, when she started doing this.
00:57:09
Speaker
That's true.
00:57:10
Speaker
Like, even when she was at school, nobody gave a shit.
00:57:12
Speaker
That's true.
00:57:12
Speaker
She's, like, out here having physical altercations.
00:57:15
Speaker
Who else in Aberdeen is behaving like, what the fuck?
00:57:18
Speaker
Oh, my gosh.
00:57:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:20
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:57:20
Speaker
Because they act like, when you talk about Aberdeen, they're like, it's a small community of people, and, like, we're just a farming town.
00:57:27
Speaker
I'm like, no, what the fuck is happening over there?
00:57:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:30
Speaker
You're not okay.
00:57:31
Speaker
No.
00:57:31
Speaker
Folks are not okay.
00:57:33
Speaker
I'm also thinking a lot about the ACES study.
00:57:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:36
Speaker
And I don't know, that might be too long to get into here.
00:57:40
Speaker
But basically, it's like a series of studies that show there is a direct link between adverse childhood experiences and your, like, obviously emotional and psychological health, but also, like, body health.
00:57:58
Speaker
Like, over...
00:58:00
Speaker
over time, I think if you have like ACE four or more, five or more, you're like, so there's a list of adverse childhood experiences.
00:58:07
Speaker
And if you have like four or five or more of these in a cluster, it's supposed to increase.
00:58:14
Speaker
You have like significantly increased risk of like a lot of health conditions and addiction issues and what have you.
00:58:23
Speaker
And a lot of the time, like I think what wasn't addressed, at least in the ACE study stuff that I've seen is like, I think,
00:58:30
Speaker
Addiction.
00:58:32
Speaker
And they also, like, talked about overeating or undereating.
00:58:36
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:58:37
Speaker
And how, you know, like, those things are – they treated it as a problem in and of itself.
00:58:43
Speaker
But I think the realization was, like, actually those were the things that were protecting people.
00:58:49
Speaker
Like, they were –
00:58:51
Speaker
Survival strategy.
00:58:52
Speaker
Yes, this was like a solution to their issue and we're treating their solution as the issue itself, like not getting to the root cause.
00:59:00
Speaker
Like there are all of these stories, for example, like about people who have a tendency to like eat to the point of discomfort and eat, just eat, eat, eat, eat.
00:59:10
Speaker
And they learned that a lot of those people were survivors of abuse at home.
00:59:16
Speaker
And they found that either like when they started gaining weight, they stopped being like pushed around by their stepfather or they stopped being sexually abused.
00:59:22
Speaker
Roxane Gay talks about that in her memoir, Hunger.
00:59:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:29
Speaker
I need to read that.
00:59:30
Speaker
It looks devastating though.
00:59:31
Speaker
It is devastating.
00:59:33
Speaker
It is devastating.
00:59:34
Speaker
Anyways.
00:59:35
Speaker
Anyways, on the other side of that, though, when you're talking about social support, there's also a lot of evidence to show that there are a lot of protective factors to ACEs.
00:59:42
Speaker
And so they found that, like, quote-unquote resilient children, people who, like, defy, like, the trajectory of, like, normal correlations typically had, like, a set of, like –
00:59:53
Speaker
protective factors that would buffer the aces so like positive childhood experiences were on the other side of that and it included like supportive like adults yeah in their lives even if it's just one yeah yeah i think um having access to socioeconomic stability was a protective factor access to like other resources was a protective factor there are all of these like things that like help yeah which i think transitions well to a point where i just want to say like
01:00:23
Speaker
that when I was doing this research, I was just thinking about my trauma and recovery class and how my instructor was talking to us about how she led a very small group of older women who were survivors of child sexual abuse.
01:00:38
Speaker
And she just shared with us how to witness the healing that happened just for these people who have kept these stories inside of them for so long and didn't feel comfortable sharing was really beautiful to witness.
01:00:50
Speaker
And so I did a little...
01:00:53
Speaker
googly google because i like to find i like to find positivity somehow when we're talking about such dark shit and i found this um that they did in south africa it was called the survivor to thriver group and it was a group for survivors of child sexual abuse and the outcomes of the group found that the people who are in the group
01:01:17
Speaker
five of whom were black and three were white.
01:01:19
Speaker
They found that the group setting was a normalizing environment where they felt free to share their experiences.
01:01:24
Speaker
They felt, quote, witnessed by other survivors.
01:01:28
Speaker
One person said, my whole perspective in life changed.
01:01:31
Speaker
It was a secret.
01:01:32
Speaker
And then suddenly that lie is gone.
01:01:34
Speaker
I don't have to perform.
01:01:35
Speaker
It's not a race.
01:01:36
Speaker
So I'm just me.
01:01:37
Speaker
And it's so nice.
01:01:39
Speaker
And then another person said, I think I'm starting to realize that they are at fault in my life and how I'm blaming myself for certain things that I shouldn't.
01:01:48
Speaker
And then there was also a kind of like radical acceptance that was found and people like finding purpose and like spiritual connection that was being part of this group.
01:01:59
Speaker
So one person said, in the act of helping someone else to find hope, you find meaning.
01:02:04
Speaker
I don't know.
01:02:04
Speaker
It's a mystery.
01:02:05
Speaker
I don't know exactly how to explain exactly how you find that meaning, but you do.
01:02:10
Speaker
Which I understand.
01:02:11
Speaker
Last quote I'll share from the study is one person said,
01:02:16
Speaker
What I needed to change from victim to survivor, I felt, is personal acceptance, love, and assurance both from myself as well as others.
01:02:27
Speaker
So it's totally possible for people to experience beautiful healing in community as always.
01:02:34
Speaker
I was thinking about our conversation about resilience the other day and how you were like, well, I don't like this term.
01:02:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:41
Speaker
And I was thinking about it because in the one other...
01:02:46
Speaker
paper that I read, which is called I'm Not a Victim, I'm a Survivor, they talk about resilience, saying some researchers have considered resilience as a personal characteristic or trait, whereas others have viewed it as a state or outcome.
01:02:59
Speaker
These conceptualizations imply that resilience is static or something to achieve and then from which to benefit.
01:03:06
Speaker
However, in this study, participants emphasize resilience as a process.
01:03:11
Speaker
Recovery from trauma, reconceptualization of self,
01:03:14
Speaker
And the development of healthy sexuality included deliberate efforts occurring over time.
01:03:19
Speaker
It required ongoing efforts, including both successes and failures with their internal thoughts and emotions, as well as their interactions and relationships with others.
01:03:29
Speaker
Which I liked.
01:03:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:31
Speaker
Resilience as process.
01:03:33
Speaker
I like that.
01:03:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:34
Speaker
You know, I think it's often attributed to people who have a really strong understanding.
01:03:40
Speaker
avoidant protective mechanisms when it's like no they just haven't felt safe to ever be vulnerable or share and like that is rewarded because we live under capitalism absolutely always comes down to capitalism always I mean even here Abattoir so there's a little bit of light out of all that dark stuff that I just shared I think that's so I don't know
01:04:08
Speaker
Tangent.
01:04:09
Speaker
I think a lot about how there's a lot of space – not a lot of space, but when you talk about spaces for survivors, a lot of the times they're crafted for adult survivors of intimate partner violence or adult survivors of sexual assault.
01:04:23
Speaker
And I think people who experience childhood sexual abuse or childhood domestic violence feel left out of those conversations because when you bring it up, people recoil from them, even people who –
01:04:37
Speaker
are making space for adult survivors.
01:04:40
Speaker
So I think it's really powerful that that space existed.
01:04:44
Speaker
And I think there's like a call for more for it, more of it.
01:04:48
Speaker
And I also like, I'm thinking about pleasure activism.
01:04:52
Speaker
There's this essay in there by, um,
01:04:55
Speaker
God, what's her name?
01:04:56
Speaker
Amita Swadhi?
01:04:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:04:58
Speaker
Yes.
01:04:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:59
Speaker
I know how you're talking.
01:05:00
Speaker
It's incredible, but they're a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and bring a really beautiful lens to the idea of pleasure activism, which is a book by Adrienne Marie Brown about the politics of feeling good.
01:05:13
Speaker
She talks a lot about how liberation should be the most pleasurable thing we can experience, so how do we make that so?
01:05:19
Speaker
And then it's a collection of essays, and this essay...
01:05:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:24
Speaker
I mean, that was in there.
01:05:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:25
Speaker
Her name's Amita Swedeen.
01:05:28
Speaker
And I actually know this.
01:05:29
Speaker
She has this like website called mirror memoirs, which is about people sharing their stories essentially, which is very cool.
01:05:36
Speaker
I just really dig the work.
01:05:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:39
Speaker
So she's an educator, storyteller, activist, and consultant dedicated to fighting interpersonal and institutional violence against young people.
01:05:47
Speaker
And like through a transformative justice lens too, which I think.
01:05:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:52
Speaker
We just never get that.
01:05:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:53
Speaker
Especially childhood sexual abuse.
01:05:55
Speaker
People are like.
01:05:57
Speaker
I just don't know.
01:05:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:00
Speaker
So I was thinking, I was thinking about that.
01:06:02
Speaker
You all should check it out.
01:06:04
Speaker
It's an amazing book.
01:06:05
Speaker
It's an amazing collection of essays.
01:06:07
Speaker
And it also makes me think about like, you know, anti-violence spaces often are like,
01:06:12
Speaker
let's like striving for violence free lives and I'm just like it's really not enough to strive for violence free lives like we should be striving for really full pleasurable lives like it's not enough to have relationships free of violence we should be striving it's a baseline you should strive for
01:06:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:33
Speaker
And so, like, I'm really all about, like, having a survivor-centered focus on conversations about sexual liberation.
01:06:39
Speaker
Because, you know, like, when your baseline is so scary, it can feel like you're – it could feel free to be in a relationship that's simply safe.
01:06:52
Speaker
And, like, why do we need to settle for simple safety?
01:06:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:57
Speaker
So.
01:06:57
Speaker
When it's the baseline.
01:06:59
Speaker
That's what I have to say about that.
01:07:02
Speaker
So I guess coming back to Catherine, Shana shared about her relationship with her first husband.
01:07:10
Speaker
And I'll take it on a little bit further.
01:07:15
Speaker
And so right after this, 1986, very shortly after she broke up with David No.
01:07:20
Speaker
1, she meets David No. 2.
01:07:22
Speaker
David Saunders.
01:07:24
Speaker
He's a 38-year-old local minor.
01:07:27
Speaker
And after just a few months, there also isn't information about courting process, nothing.
01:07:32
Speaker
But he moved in with her and her two daughters after just a few months.
01:07:36
Speaker
So I imagine something happened to make that feel like a good decision.
01:07:42
Speaker
The sense of urgency in every abusive relationship starts with like, let's just move in together.
01:07:47
Speaker
What's that?
01:07:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:49
Speaker
So he ended up keeping his apartment, his old apartment, even though he moved in with Catherine.
01:07:54
Speaker
And she became very jealous and suspicious about what he did when she wasn't around.
01:08:00
Speaker
And she often would, like, kick him out of the house and then would, like, go and beg him to come back.
01:08:07
Speaker
Trigger warning for, like, animal abuse.
01:08:09
Speaker
In May of 1987, so about a year later...
01:08:15
Speaker
She slit the throat of his two-month-old puppy.
01:08:18
Speaker
No!
01:08:19
Speaker
Are you fucking serious?
01:08:21
Speaker
To show him what she was capable of if he had an affair.
01:08:25
Speaker
Oh, my God.
01:08:26
Speaker
And then she knocked him unconscious with a frying pan.
01:08:29
Speaker
What's with the frying pan?
01:08:31
Speaker
She claims that the reason why she cut the puppy's throat is because he punched her in the stomach while she was pregnant.
01:08:38
Speaker
But he states that she hurt the puppy to upset him.
01:08:41
Speaker
Either way, why are you cutting puppy's throat?
01:08:44
Speaker
That's really fucked up.
01:08:45
Speaker
Either way, what did the puppy do to you?
01:08:47
Speaker
Yeah, puppy didn't do anything.
01:08:49
Speaker
But they stayed together after that.
01:08:51
Speaker
That's horrifying.
01:08:52
Speaker
That's horrifying.
01:08:52
Speaker
And had a daughter together after a year.
01:08:54
Speaker
More children?
01:08:55
Speaker
Yep.
01:08:55
Speaker
She doesn't need to be having more children.
01:08:58
Speaker
She has a lot already.
01:08:59
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:08:59
Speaker
They then bought a house together and she decorated the home with animal skins, skulls,
01:09:07
Speaker
horns, and animal traps.
01:09:10
Speaker
So her vibe is abattoir vibe.
01:09:13
Speaker
Like it's her identity.
01:09:14
Speaker
It's very like Hannibal Lecter.
01:09:16
Speaker
I mean, people online call her the like female Hannibal.
01:09:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:22
Speaker
Shortly after the birth of their daughter, he left her because...
01:09:28
Speaker
She hit him in the face with an iron and then stabbed him with a pair of scissors.
01:09:33
Speaker
Holy shit.
01:09:35
Speaker
When he came back to get his stuff, he found that she had cut up all of his clothes and he became very scared, took a service leave from his job and went into hiding.
01:09:47
Speaker
Went into hiding?
01:09:48
Speaker
Yes.
01:09:50
Speaker
Wow.
01:09:50
Speaker
After a long time, after quite a long time, he returned to try to see his daughter and found...
01:09:56
Speaker
out that Catherine had told the police that she was afraid of him and had a protection order against him so he couldn't see the daughter anymore.
01:10:02
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:10:04
Speaker
You know, I just want to say...
01:10:06
Speaker
I was going to get into this later, but I just want to say that, like, I think that incel-type people will use stories like this to be like, look, feminism is a farce.
01:10:17
Speaker
It's a conspiracy just because they hate men.
01:10:21
Speaker
This is the story that people talk about when they're like, oh, well, women are just out here trying to ruin people's lives.
01:10:27
Speaker
Yeah, like, what about men?
01:10:29
Speaker
And I'm just like, I'm not saying that men can't be abused.
01:10:31
Speaker
They absolutely can.
01:10:33
Speaker
But I also am saying, like, feminism is like...
01:10:36
Speaker
At its core about patriarchy.
01:10:38
Speaker
And patriarchy is still the devil here.
01:10:41
Speaker
She was really able to, like, weaponize the scripts offered to us by patriarchy to obtain a protection order against someone who she was harming.
01:10:50
Speaker
And they just, like, took that, you know what I mean?
01:10:52
Speaker
So, like, we really... Even though everyone fucking knows who this person is.
01:10:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:57
Speaker
It's like she still lives in the same town that she grew up in, you know?
01:11:00
Speaker
Like, she's not some, like, new person.
01:11:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:03
Speaker
In a new place where people don't have this information.
01:11:08
Speaker
Yeah, so the thing that underscores abuse is the power differential.
01:11:14
Speaker
Like, is that one person has power over the other person.
01:11:18
Speaker
You can't have equal power and abuse.
01:11:22
Speaker
Mutual abuse is fake and oftentimes is used to criminalize survivors, right?
01:11:30
Speaker
Like, there is a legacy of survivors being arrested and criminalized for their own survival and their own self-defense.
01:11:37
Speaker
And the assumption is that, like, women of color are the aggressors.
01:11:41
Speaker
Survivedandpunished.com.
01:11:42
Speaker
Check it out.
01:11:43
Speaker
Yes, check it out.
01:11:44
Speaker
Also, it's the same, like, I think it's the same assumptions that cause dual arrest in queer relationships.
01:11:53
Speaker
Because people aren't able to... Because the police are not...
01:11:57
Speaker
There's also, like, mandated arrest policies when it's about domestic violence.
01:12:03
Speaker
So it was just like, yeah, that makes people less likely to call you because they don't want that to happen.
01:12:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:12:13
Speaker
There's so much there.
01:12:15
Speaker
There's so much there.
01:12:17
Speaker
Anyways.
01:12:18
Speaker
Any who.
01:12:21
Speaker
So after this dude, there wasn't much information about the other person that she dated, but it was her former co-worker from the abattoir and his name was John Chillingworth.
01:12:31
Speaker
They were together for three years.
01:12:33
Speaker
Also had a kid.
01:12:34
Speaker
It was her first son, but nothing more has been reported about that relationship.
01:12:40
Speaker
So like no violence was like reported on
01:12:43
Speaker
And he left her after he learned that she was having an affair with John Price.
01:12:46
Speaker
And I just think it's funny that she went David, David, and then she went John, John.
01:12:52
Speaker
Yeah, what's that?
01:12:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:54
Speaker
That's someone doing shit, maybe?
01:12:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:12:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:59
Speaker
So she was having an affair with John Price.
01:13:03
Speaker
John Shillingworth was like, okay, I'm gonna go.
01:13:06
Speaker
We'll pass it over to you.
01:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
01:13:09
Speaker
So John Price...
01:13:12
Speaker
This is the murder marriage.
01:13:13
Speaker
So buckle up because it's all fucked up.
01:13:16
Speaker
I mean, it's been fucked up, but it's going to be really fucked up.
01:13:20
Speaker
Okay.
01:13:21
Speaker
Like it's a gruesome story.
01:13:24
Speaker
I was able to find information about John Price, so I'm going to tell you a little bit about him.
01:13:29
Speaker
John Price was born on the 4th of April, 1955.
01:13:31
Speaker
He was the oldest of six children.
01:13:34
Speaker
He had limited education.
01:13:35
Speaker
He left school at age 14, so reading and writing is a challenge for him.
01:13:42
Speaker
However, he was noted to be a very hard worker, and he worked in heavy machinery, earth-moving equipment, trucking, and mining.
01:13:50
Speaker
He had a marriage before getting into this relationship with a woman named Colleen.
01:13:55
Speaker
They had three children together, a son and two daughters.
01:13:59
Speaker
So, big family.
01:14:00
Speaker
He split in 1988 after 15 years of marriage, but they remained on pretty good terms.
01:14:06
Speaker
And he was known as Pricey around town.
01:14:10
Speaker
So, he was well-known in community.
01:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, so...
01:14:15
Speaker
Fast forward 1993, John Price meets Catherine at a pub.
01:14:20
Speaker
Part of the course for abusive relationships, the beginning of the relationship seemed very okay.
01:14:25
Speaker
John had two older children who lived with him, and they seemed to really like Catherine, actually.
01:14:31
Speaker
And then...
01:14:32
Speaker
He made enough money as a minor, so they were living a pretty comfortable life.
01:14:36
Speaker
And I wonder if, like, part of the reason that it took longer for her to kind of reveal who she really was was because he had more supports available.
01:14:45
Speaker
So it took longer to break that down.
01:14:48
Speaker
Like, he had a good relationship with his kids.
01:14:50
Speaker
He made decent money.
01:14:51
Speaker
So he was the one providing, like, a shelter for her.
01:14:56
Speaker
And then, like, you know, he was well-loved and, like, he was well-loved.
01:14:58
Speaker
People liked him.
01:14:59
Speaker
Yeah, he had support.
01:15:00
Speaker
He had support.
01:15:01
Speaker
He got along with his neighbors.
01:15:04
Speaker
He got along with his coworkers.
01:15:06
Speaker
He got along with his ex-wife.
01:15:07
Speaker
So there's all these things going on here.
01:15:09
Speaker
And in 1995, which is two years into the relationship, they moved in together.
01:15:13
Speaker
So this, like, rapid... Mm-hmm.
01:15:16
Speaker
This pattern of, like, rapid relationship movement didn't really happen here.
01:15:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:24
Speaker
I mean, it's just, like, weird to me that this is that marriage, you know, based on the other people that she has dated.
01:15:31
Speaker
I know.
01:15:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:33
Speaker
Who are very different than this.
01:15:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:36
Speaker
I mean, don't know about John Shillingworth, but the others...
01:15:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, he might have been, like, targeted because he was kind of, like, noted to be kind of a soft man.
01:15:47
Speaker
And he's like, yeah.
01:15:48
Speaker
I mean, I imagine he was easier to control because he was patient.
01:15:53
Speaker
But also she had a lot more to lose by showing that the abuse side right off the bat.
01:16:00
Speaker
Right off the bat, yeah.
01:16:01
Speaker
Like, she was getting a lot from this dynamics.
01:16:04
Speaker
The older kids actually called her Nanny Kath.
01:16:07
Speaker
She was kind to them.
01:16:09
Speaker
And so she, okay.
01:16:10
Speaker
So Rachel Biddle, I think her name is, um, one of his daughters said, my kids called her Nanny Kath.
01:16:18
Speaker
She was kind to them and me and sewed beautiful clothing for the kids.
01:16:22
Speaker
So there's this, like, duality.
01:16:24
Speaker
We talk about this all the time, right?
01:16:25
Speaker
Like, abusive relationships aren't all abuse all the time, right?
01:16:28
Speaker
There's a reason why people get into them.
01:16:29
Speaker
There's a reason why people stay.
01:16:31
Speaker
There's, like, a lot of, like, you know, kind and loving, seemingly kind and loving behaviors and dynamics and attributes that people who end up being abusive balance their behavior with to keep people locked in.
01:16:44
Speaker
So, you know, people are always like, how did this get here?
01:16:49
Speaker
And it gets there very strategically.
01:16:52
Speaker
Oftentimes, like padded by these occasional indulgences, which honestly, if you haven't listened to the Lorena episode, you'll learn a lot about the dynamics of domestic violence and also the Jim Jones episode.
01:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's a trajectory that's like pretty textbook.
01:17:10
Speaker
So when she suggested that they get married, he declined.
01:17:14
Speaker
Interesting.
01:17:16
Speaker
Yes.
01:17:17
Speaker
And this is when the violence starts.
01:17:19
Speaker
Right?
01:17:19
Speaker
So she's chill because I think she can have him under the control.
01:17:24
Speaker
And then once he was like, I don't think we should get married, the violence really begins.
01:17:30
Speaker
So Catherine framed him for stealing a first aid kit, which I think is really weird, from his job.
01:17:37
Speaker
And she got him fired.
01:17:38
Speaker
Oh, my God.
01:17:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:41
Speaker
Which, I mean, first aid kit, first of all.
01:17:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:44
Speaker
So, like, sabotaging his, like, livelihood.
01:17:49
Speaker
And so he kicks her out.
01:17:50
Speaker
And, like, a few months later, they start seeing each other.
01:17:52
Speaker
So there's, like, this break in between, like, she did this.
01:17:56
Speaker
He kicks her out.
01:17:57
Speaker
She's like, okay.
01:17:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:59
Speaker
A few months later, he's probably like, I'm so sorry.
01:18:02
Speaker
I fucked up.
01:18:02
Speaker
Da-da-da-da-da-da.
01:18:03
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:18:04
Speaker
You know?
01:18:05
Speaker
And, like, he takes her back because this seems like newer behavior.
01:18:08
Speaker
And maybe he's like... Mm-hmm.
01:18:10
Speaker
He's like, maybe that was a one-time thing.
01:18:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:18:12
Speaker
She begins to escalate when she wants to move back in.
01:18:15
Speaker
And he says no.
01:18:18
Speaker
So... More control being lost.
01:18:22
Speaker
And she continues to insist that he is cheating on her, which is, like, a common... Mm-hmm.
01:18:28
Speaker
It's just a common thing in her behavior, but it's a common thing also.
01:18:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:32
Speaker
And I was talking about this earlier today about toxic monogamy and how, like, toxic heteronormativity tied in with, like, toxic monogamy culture and how it just, like, it implies an ownership over people's lives.
01:18:48
Speaker
Like, we assume, like, we identify with our partners in such a way that, like, we own each other and, like, you know, like, you're mine.
01:18:56
Speaker
Right.
01:18:58
Speaker
And any attraction outside of that is like a direct threat to what's yours.
01:19:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:03
Speaker
It's like a weird entitlement to body and life.
01:19:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:05
Speaker
Super weird.
01:19:07
Speaker
This morning when I was like in my class, we were talking about relationships and she framed it really well.
01:19:13
Speaker
She was like, I really like the word partner because it's like, you know, you're here living your life.
01:19:20
Speaker
This other person is here living their life and you come together in partnership to support each other.
01:19:26
Speaker
But, you know, that's it.
01:19:28
Speaker
You don't, like, own this other person.
01:19:30
Speaker
Right.
01:19:31
Speaker
And, like, you both still have autonomy.
Societal Norms and Their Impact
01:19:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:34
Speaker
Like, you enrich each other's lives.
01:19:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:36
Speaker
In a particular way.
01:19:37
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:19:38
Speaker
But, like, what is this very weird enmeshment that we romanticize?
01:19:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:43
Speaker
I mean, it's in, like, it's romanticized in media as well, you know?
01:19:47
Speaker
It's true.
01:19:48
Speaker
It exists to benefit capitalism.
01:19:49
Speaker
It's, like, very normal.
01:19:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:53
Speaker
All comes down to capitalism.
01:19:57
Speaker
does you should you should share about against the cup form on one of them yeah I haven't read that in a while I should go back and read it okay we'll stay tuned for that yeah wow what a throwback
01:20:09
Speaker
Okay, so, you know, this escalates very quickly.
01:20:14
Speaker
She's like, you're cheating on me.
01:20:15
Speaker
Why don't you want me to, like, move back in with you?
01:20:18
Speaker
And John starts losing friends because no one wants to be around her.
01:20:22
Speaker
And they've told him, yes, so the isolation piece is very present, which allows her to escalate further because he has no social support.
01:20:30
Speaker
And they're like, come on, how are you, like, letting this woman control your life?
01:20:35
Speaker
Right back to patriarchy and toxic masculinity.
01:20:38
Speaker
And like how that's embedded in the response, you know?
01:20:47
Speaker
And in February 2000, after all this escalation, the isolation, there's an argument that escalates probably in circles around the same topics.
01:20:56
Speaker
And she tries to stab him in the chest.
01:20:58
Speaker
John very quickly tries to pursue a restraining order, which is, like, called, I guess, the apprehended violence order in that area, against her.
01:21:08
Speaker
But she beats him to it.
01:21:10
Speaker
So, like, she knows.
01:21:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:11
Speaker
She's, like, done it before.
01:21:12
Speaker
Uh-huh.
01:21:13
Speaker
Uh-huh.
01:21:14
Speaker
And so, like, he becomes increasingly concerned about his safety.
01:21:17
Speaker
And so he tells his coworkers, like, she tried to stab me.
01:21:21
Speaker
And if I ever went missing, it was because she killed me.
01:21:24
Speaker
And his boss offers to let him crash at his place and he refuses.
01:21:29
Speaker
He said that he was, like, scared that...
01:21:33
Speaker
if he didn't go home, that something would happen to his children, which is really common that like threats against family members, keep people in abusive relationships, threats against friends too.
01:21:44
Speaker
It also heightens the isolation piece.
01:21:47
Speaker
And I also wonder if he didn't want to bring her to the like boss's house, you know, which is really common too.
01:21:54
Speaker
And like, and she probably saw all this shit happen in her own home.
01:21:57
Speaker
So she's like a, like seasoned, you know, like she's got all of these tactics on lock.
01:22:02
Speaker
February 29, 2000.
01:22:04
Speaker
After work, he stays out till around 11pm, drinking with his neighbors before coming home.
01:22:09
Speaker
He comes home to find that the kids were sent off to a friend's house for a sleepover.
01:22:13
Speaker
So he's home alone.
01:22:15
Speaker
And then he falls asleep.
01:22:17
Speaker
Catherine lets herself into the house, makes dinner, watches TV, showers, goes upstairs, and wakes John- This is after, like, the restraining order is out.
01:22:29
Speaker
So she's, like, violating herself.
01:22:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:31
Speaker
Let's herself in- Like, breaks into his home, essentially.
01:22:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:22:36
Speaker
And she wakes him up, like, and is dressed in lingerie, and, like, they have sex.
01:22:42
Speaker
And he goes back to bed.
01:22:44
Speaker
Shortly after, she takes a butcher knife from next to her, from next to the bed.
The Murder of John Price
01:22:53
Speaker
I don't know if she just like left his head there.
01:22:57
Speaker
And continuously starts stabbing him.
01:23:00
Speaker
Yes.
01:23:04
Speaker
Evidence suggests that he woke up during the attack but couldn't fight her off.
01:23:10
Speaker
Yes.
01:23:13
Speaker
So he dies from his wounds.
01:23:16
Speaker
Safe to say.
01:23:16
Speaker
And the rest of this is, like, so fucking gruesome.
01:23:19
Speaker
So, like, if that's something you cannot stomach, then maybe fast forward a bit.
01:23:27
Speaker
She...
01:23:28
Speaker
uses her abattoir skills to skin him and hung his skin from a meat hook in the living room.
01:23:39
Speaker
She decapitates him, and then she cuts him up and cooks him in a dish with potato, pumpkin, beets, zucchini, cabbage, squash, and gravy.
01:23:50
Speaker
I have no words.
01:23:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:52
Speaker
It looks like she makes a dish for herself, but there was half-discarded contents later found at the crime scene, so it suggests she couldn't finish her meal.
01:24:00
Speaker
Go figure.
01:24:01
Speaker
And then Catherine takes a large number of pills.
01:24:06
Speaker
It's suggested that maybe she was trying to kill herself.
01:24:10
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:11
Speaker
But instead, she just passed out in the bedroom right next to John's remaining body, which is skinned and mutilated at this point.
01:24:20
Speaker
She's just sleeping next to him.
01:24:23
Speaker
What the fuck?
01:24:24
Speaker
The next morning, March 1st, 2000, John's co-workers are suspicious.
01:24:32
Speaker
They heed his warning.
01:24:34
Speaker
The neighbor and co-worker show up to check on him after he didn't show up to work without a call, which is really unlike him.
01:24:39
Speaker
And they're extra alarmed because he was like, if I don't, if I disappear, it's because she killed me.
01:24:44
Speaker
So they were concerned his car was still in the driveway.
01:24:46
Speaker
So they went to knock on the door and they found blood on the door.
01:24:49
Speaker
So they called the police.
01:24:51
Speaker
They were like, I'm concerned.
01:24:53
Speaker
He didn't show up to work.
01:24:54
Speaker
The car's in the driveway.
01:24:56
Speaker
Looks like there's some blood on the door.
01:24:58
Speaker
And so the police arrive and they still are expecting like, maybe this is just a welfare check
01:25:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:03
Speaker
You know?
01:25:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:04
Speaker
Maybe he slept through his alarm and everything's fine.
01:25:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:07
Speaker
They are greeted with a very different, different reality.
01:25:12
Speaker
Yes.
01:25:14
Speaker
So they see the blood at the front door and they peek through the mail slot to get a look.
01:25:20
Speaker
And so they're like, yeah, this is really blood.
01:25:22
Speaker
We're going to break in.
01:25:23
Speaker
So they broke into the back door.
01:25:26
Speaker
And Sergeant Graham Furlonger says, as I went in, I saw straight ahead what I thought was bunched up curtains.
01:25:32
Speaker
His partner, Constable Scott Matthews, said there was something hanging that was blocking my entry into the house.
01:25:38
Speaker
I thought it looked like some sort of blanket or some sort of covering that had been placed up in the archway.
01:25:42
Speaker
So they have no idea what this is.
01:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:25:45
Speaker
Why would you think that it's that?
01:25:46
Speaker
I don't.
01:25:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:47
Speaker
Why would you think it was that?
01:25:49
Speaker
So it's blocking the entrance of the hallway, so he reaches to push it aside, and he felt something cold.
01:25:55
Speaker
He realizes that his arm is covered in blood.
01:26:00
Speaker
Initially, he thinks that this is his blood, because he's, like, breaking in.
01:26:03
Speaker
He, like, didn't understand, like, what the fuck is all this blood about?
01:26:06
Speaker
And then Furlonger says, I realized then that it was in fact a human pelt, the skin minus the head, a full skin just hanging from the top of the doorframe.
01:26:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:17
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:26:18
Speaker
And they look around, they realize there's just, like, blood trailing along the walls and the floors everywhere.
01:26:23
Speaker
Yow.
01:26:24
Speaker
So, they look over to the bedroom, and they see the remainder of his body.
01:26:28
Speaker
They said, no head, skinned, also no genitalia.
01:26:33
Speaker
And, I guess, like...
01:26:35
Speaker
Graham, for a longer, was like, don't look Scotty to his partner.
01:26:40
Speaker
Because, like, this is a small-ass town.
01:26:43
Speaker
You know, I'm sure that the calls they get are not... Not like this.
01:26:48
Speaker
Not at all.
01:26:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:49
Speaker
This is completely outside of their scope of, like... Anything.
01:26:54
Speaker
So, in the kitchen, police find John's head boiling in a pot of veggies on the stove.
01:27:02
Speaker
What the actual F?
01:27:05
Speaker
On the table, there are two full plates with meat and veggies.
01:27:10
Speaker
Each of the plates were labeled with a name, and then they realized that one note featured the name of John's son and the other of his youngest daughter, and they realized that Catherine was planning to service John's body to his children.
01:27:26
Speaker
Wow.
01:27:26
Speaker
The lengths.
01:27:28
Speaker
To service, to serve, my bad.
01:27:29
Speaker
They quickly realized that Catherine was planning to serve John's body to his children.
01:27:36
Speaker
They're looking around and they hear snoring.
01:27:39
Speaker
So like when they're talking in the interview, they were like, you know, when you're high crisis and you're scared, you have like sensory, like, like you're like your sensory stuff is like singular.
01:27:52
Speaker
So you might make miss sounds and stuff.
01:27:55
Speaker
So they kind of like kind of pushed himself out of that.
01:27:57
Speaker
And then when he did that, he was like, I hear snoring.
01:28:00
Speaker
And he went to go investigate and they find her passed out snoring in the other room next to the remains.
01:28:06
Speaker
And obviously they try to wake her up and they detain her.
01:28:10
Speaker
God damn.
01:28:13
Speaker
So also they find a little note.
01:28:15
Speaker
I don't know when.
01:28:16
Speaker
I think they probably go back to the crime scene for this note.
01:28:18
Speaker
But it says, time got you back, Jonathan, for raping my daughter.
01:28:24
Speaker
You to Beck, which is his daughter, for Ross.
01:28:29
Speaker
For little John.
01:28:31
Speaker
I don't know what she's saying.
01:28:32
Speaker
Now play with little John's dick, John Price.
01:28:35
Speaker
What?
01:28:36
Speaker
This is the little note she left.
01:28:38
Speaker
And like, they found later that these claims were unfounded around him.
01:28:44
Speaker
She's elsewhere.
01:28:46
Speaker
She is elsewhere.
01:28:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:48
Speaker
She's, yeah, when you were talking about how she had sex with him and then just started stabbing him, I was like, she is not.
01:28:57
Speaker
In her mind, like, this is not this person.
01:29:00
Speaker
This is, like, someone else.
01:29:02
Speaker
And it's, like, all of her rage directed to this poor man.
01:29:07
Speaker
And, like, obviously, if these claims are false, she, like, literally has, like, delusions that she has projected onto this person who just... Mm-hmm.
01:29:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:29:21
Speaker
Super bad luck.
01:29:51
Speaker
I had to be on the phone with people who I'm like, okay, this doesn't sound... Like, people would be like, my abuser is following me, which... Totally fair.
01:30:00
Speaker
Like, that could be happening.
01:30:02
Speaker
But then hiring people to follow me, and I got out of this relationship 15 years ago, and he's still out here following me.
01:30:07
Speaker
They're following me around in, like, cars with tinted windows, and they're gonna take me... You know, like, the... Yeah.
01:30:14
Speaker
It turns into, like, this really convoluted, extravagant story where you're just like, I think that this is not...
01:30:20
Speaker
really happening, but this is a real reality for you.
01:30:24
Speaker
And that's a really scary reality to be in.
01:30:28
Speaker
This is what this cat that letter kind of had me thinking of, like, it's not uncommon that stuff like that kind of happens.
01:30:34
Speaker
And it's really hard because it's like, there's a lot of complexity there, because I'm like, inherently, like, we believe survivors and also so many other things are happening, you know, like, and also those things happen.
01:30:48
Speaker
And like, where
01:30:50
Speaker
People just, bitches just don't have nuance.
01:30:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:54
Speaker
Can we have that on a t-shirt?
01:30:55
Speaker
Bitches don't have nuance.
01:30:56
Speaker
Bitches don't have nuance.
01:30:57
Speaker
But anyways, this is not, this tangent isn't necessarily related to directly Catherine, but this letter had me thinking about that commonality I see.
01:31:09
Speaker
And I just don't know that we have the resources or supports or training to properly handle it.
01:31:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:31:35
Speaker
It showed that he was stabbed 37 times before he was beheaded and skinned, that she removed his genitals in that process, and that she had driven into town with his wallet and withdrew $1,000 from his bank account, money that the police still can't account for to this day.
01:31:51
Speaker
They don't know what the fuck she did with that or why she did that.
01:31:56
Speaker
And this is when, like, she goes back and forth between admission and non-admission.
01:32:04
Speaker
Because this is where she discloses DV childhood and, like, claims that John was the perpetrator.
01:32:10
Speaker
Which is why I can see, like, in that novel, him being like, she's using this to her advantage.
01:32:16
Speaker
And I'm just like, yeah, she's absolutely leaning on her shitty childhood to justify her behavior.
01:32:23
Speaker
And also, she had a shitty childhood.
01:32:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:26
Speaker
Yeah, she's not lying about it.
01:32:27
Speaker
Yeah, like, ah.
01:32:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:30
Speaker
Okay.
Trial and Gender Norms
01:32:32
Speaker
Nuance.
01:32:32
Speaker
Bitches don't have nuance.
01:32:33
Speaker
Bitches don't have nuance.
01:32:41
Speaker
Okay.
01:32:42
Speaker
So, the trial finally begins in October of 2001.
01:32:47
Speaker
The trial does not last very long because she just goes back and forth.
01:32:56
Speaker
She initially pled guilty to manslaughter, which was immediately rejected.
01:33:05
Speaker
Wait, so she did this February of 2001?
01:33:07
Speaker
She did this March of 2000.
01:33:09
Speaker
March of 2000.
01:33:10
Speaker
Yeah, I was just thinking that it.
01:33:19
Speaker
Around the same time as Sattagaya murders.
01:33:21
Speaker
It is totally the similar timeline as Sattagaya murders.
01:33:25
Speaker
I was thinking about that.
01:33:27
Speaker
So, yeah, this happened in March of 2000.
01:33:32
Speaker
She was arraigned on March 2nd of 2001, and the trial officially began in October of 2001.
01:33:39
Speaker
So there was some, took some time.
01:33:42
Speaker
The trial,
01:33:44
Speaker
manslaughter thing rejected.
01:33:47
Speaker
The judge offered the 60 jury prospects, the option of being excused because of the nature of the photographic evidence, which five of them were like, with which five accepted.
01:33:58
Speaker
And then when the witness list was read out to the prospect, several more dropped out.
01:34:02
Speaker
And then the jury was put together.
01:34:06
Speaker
They say that like,
01:34:08
Speaker
She was like, no affect, no reaction to the details, except for when they recounted the skinning and decapitation piece.
01:34:15
Speaker
And then all of a sudden she like breaks down and like an intense explosive scene, which I'm not sure what to make of that.
01:34:24
Speaker
But then Catherine changes her plea to guilty and then judge adjourned the case without testimony.
01:34:30
Speaker
So something that I like.
01:34:34
Speaker
Something that the judge said kind of stuck out to me, said that she was small, unimpressive.
01:34:40
Speaker
No one would notice her in a room.
01:34:43
Speaker
And I'm just like, there's really something about that.
01:34:46
Speaker
There's really something about the assumption of her innocence because they're like, oh, just an everyday person, which is not like grace that will be given to anybody fucking else.
01:34:54
Speaker
And, um...
01:34:56
Speaker
I also wonder, like, how this ties into, like, the toxic masculinity that was surrounding John and, like, her exes and, like, the community's response to that being, like, this cannot be happening to you.
01:35:08
Speaker
You're weak for accepting it.
01:35:10
Speaker
I looked up, like...
01:35:13
Speaker
what people were saying about like domestic violence and hetero relationships where the man is abused.
01:35:18
Speaker
Actually, this is on Wikipedia.
01:35:20
Speaker
It was like a collection of like information.
01:35:24
Speaker
And, and they said that societal and gender marriage expectations were relevant in these discrepancies.
01:35:28
Speaker
Many judges and newspaper articles joke that men subjected to IPV were weak, pitiful, and effeminate.
01:35:35
Speaker
Men beaten by their wives were seen as so unmanly that they did not deserve society's care or protection.
01:35:40
Speaker
Men will go out of... So, like, for me, I'm, like, noticing, like, men will go out of their way to uphold, defend, and benefit from patriarchy without realizing that patriarchy is ready to discard of them the moment that they depart from the notions of what real men ought to be.
01:35:53
Speaker
This is reminding me of gender as trauma and how gender is traumatic.
01:36:00
Speaker
for everyone in different ways.
01:36:01
Speaker
So I went to this webinar called Gender as Trauma that was about how gender norms in the gender binary and how they're oppressively imposed on like
01:36:15
Speaker
everyone are traumatic so like here we're seeing the way in which like societal norms and connected to toxic masculinity can be harmful and even deadly towards men who fit a different like role than what is expected from them
01:36:40
Speaker
And, like, the webinar goes on to say how, like, a lot of different things and how the gender binary stems from colonialism.
01:36:47
Speaker
But, yeah, there's a book, actually, that you can check out.
01:36:51
Speaker
It's called Gender Trauma.
01:36:53
Speaker
And it's written by the person who led this webinar.
01:36:56
Speaker
Their name is Alex Ian Toffee.
01:36:58
Speaker
So, Gender Trauma, Healing Cultural, Social, and Historical Gender Trauma.
01:37:03
Speaker
Thank you for sharing.
01:37:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:04
Speaker
You're welcome.
01:37:06
Speaker
Yeah, this shit totally goes back to colonialism, like everything else.
01:37:09
Speaker
I'm just like imperialism in and of itself is inherently patriarchal.
01:37:13
Speaker
And so patriarchal violence is always used in colonial pursuits.
01:37:17
Speaker
And we see the way that that just like permeates over and over and over again in different like areas of modern life anyways.
01:37:27
Speaker
But, you know, bitches have no nuance.
01:37:30
Speaker
So, Barry O'Keefe, the judge, he also said that he has never before or since struck something of the horrific nature of Catherine Mary Knight's case.
01:37:40
Speaker
And he noted her lack of remorse and continued threat she posed to society.
01:37:45
Speaker
And he said, this was an appalling crime almost beyond contemplation in a civilized society, which...
01:37:51
Speaker
I noted, like, it's wild to me that white people have the audacity to always fall back on how their societies are quote-unquote civilized.
01:37:59
Speaker
Like, this bitch didn't happen in a vacuum, like I said.
Borderline Personality Disorder Discussion
01:38:03
Speaker
Like, we say.
01:38:04
Speaker
Like, what is the role of colonial violence, which always includes patriarchal violence, in creating the conditions that allow for this shit to happen?
01:38:12
Speaker
Yeah, and we at least know that this violence goes back to, like, her grandma.
01:38:16
Speaker
And probably further than that.
01:38:18
Speaker
So it's not, like...
01:38:21
Speaker
Oh, shocking.
01:38:22
Speaker
Yeah, like, why do you think this has nothing to do with you?
01:38:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:25
Speaker
And your ancestors and your community?
01:38:27
Speaker
Like, what?
01:38:28
Speaker
Bye.
01:38:29
Speaker
Anyways.
01:38:32
Speaker
Anyways.
01:38:33
Speaker
Anyways.
01:38:34
Speaker
So they gave her a psyche vow and they considered her quote unquote sane, which is interesting, but they diagnosed her with borderline personality disorder, which I'm going to get to because it's an opportunity to talk about borderline personality disorder.
01:38:47
Speaker
Some psychiatrists probably who said that people who experience sexual abuse as children can never forget it.
01:38:54
Speaker
Right.
01:38:55
Speaker
I'm just thinking about how often that's weaponized by, like, so I used to go do medical advocacy when people were getting their rape kits done.
01:39:04
Speaker
And oftentimes the state of shock and trauma causes people to not remember what has happened to them or the details of what has happened to them.
01:39:12
Speaker
And the police were so fucking horrible when they were like, what do you mean you don't remember?
01:39:16
Speaker
And would ask them really wild, detailed questions about what they were wearing or
01:39:21
Speaker
where they were what was the color of like i don't know the bed what was the color of the carpet who were you with i can't even remember that shit for a mutual experience i'm just like why and then they'll use it to dismiss the case yeah and i just like also want to reiterate that like less than two percent of all like sexual assault cases see a courtroom and there's like rape kit back it's just like fucking wild i cannot anyways i'm i'm tangenting
01:39:51
Speaker
Bringing it back.
01:40:07
Speaker
So let's talk about that because I think borderline is unjustly covered and stigmatized.
01:40:15
Speaker
Like, tons of people have borderline and are not out here being abusive, scary assholes.
01:40:24
Speaker
Like, you know?
01:40:25
Speaker
Like, borderline personality disorder can show up in a lot of different ways.
01:40:30
Speaker
And also, like, it just happens to be the lens through which she acts
01:40:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:40:52
Speaker
And I think, like, the tendency towards certain ones might be genetic, but the development of them is rooted in trauma.
01:40:58
Speaker
Yes, 100%.
01:40:59
Speaker
Like, complex trauma.
01:41:00
Speaker
And so she was talking about, like, yeah, it's more like a personality structure than a disorder.
01:41:05
Speaker
And it really is, like, an adaptation to cope with an ongoing traumatic situation.
01:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, oftentimes people who have complex PTSD are diagnosed with borderline personality disorder because complex trauma is something that's quote unquote new.
01:41:26
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't like how – I mean, this is true for all mental disorders that are in the DSM where the blame is always shifted to the individual of like there is something wrong with you.
01:41:38
Speaker
not this is a response to trauma on an interpersonal or societal level, which I think all mental health issues are responses to trauma.
01:41:52
Speaker
That's true.
01:41:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:41:54
Speaker
Like combined with other things like genetic predisposition.
01:41:59
Speaker
But, you know, people don't just like, you know, your brain's trying to do something.
01:42:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:42:05
Speaker
Your brain's trying to do something.
01:42:07
Speaker
So I have some stuff on borderlines personality disorder and framing it as like a really like a form of complex trauma response as opposed to a
01:42:21
Speaker
reducing it to a pathology.
01:42:25
Speaker
And I found this article that is from theconversation.com and it's based in Australia, I believe.
01:42:31
Speaker
So borderline personality disorder as a diagnosis is strikingly common in Australia, affecting between 1% and 4% of all Australians, which numerically is a high number of people and also is consistent with the data you pulled earlier about how high sexual abuse is.
01:42:50
Speaker
Like how high the rates of sexual abuse are.
01:42:52
Speaker
20%.
01:42:52
Speaker
20 fucking percent.
01:42:56
Speaker
I hate it.
01:42:57
Speaker
I hate it.
01:42:58
Speaker
Also, I want to say BPD is overdiagnosed or underdiagnosed in men.
01:43:04
Speaker
And overdiagnosed, like, we definitely, like, it's a gendered personality disorder and it's like a feminized personality disorder.
01:43:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:43:13
Speaker
This article talks about it loosely being characterized by emotional dysregulation, an unstable sense of self, difficulty forming relationships, and repeated self-harming behaviors.
01:43:24
Speaker
Most people who suffer from BPD have a history of major trauma often sustained in childhood.
01:43:29
Speaker
This includes sexual and physical abuse, extreme neglect, and separation from parents and loved ones.
01:43:33
Speaker
This link with trauma, particularly physical and sexual abuse, has been studied extensively and has been shown to be near ubiquitous in patients with BPD.
01:43:43
Speaker
People with BPD who have a history of serious abuse have poorer outcomes than the few who don't and are more likely to self-harm and attempt suicide.
01:43:52
Speaker
Around 75% of BPD patients attempt suicide at some point in their life, one in 10 to eventually take their own life.
01:43:59
Speaker
Wow, that's a wild statistic.
01:44:01
Speaker
That's really high.
01:44:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:44:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:44:06
Speaker
I mean, I think a lot of these behaviors are rooted in shame and like living in shame and wanting to not face that shame.
01:44:14
Speaker
And the DSM-5 does not mention trauma as a diagnostic factor in BPD, despite the inextricable link between BPD and trauma.
01:44:22
Speaker
The DSM-5 is, I mean, the DSM, not just DSM-5, is just bullshit.
01:44:29
Speaker
It is just bullshit.
01:44:30
Speaker
Like, I talked about this very briefly in the previous episode, but...
01:44:35
Speaker
What is this prolonged grief disorder?
01:44:37
Speaker
I'm like, you just keep adding things that make no sense at all for the purposes of money.
01:44:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:44:45
Speaker
Well, that's the thing, right?
01:44:47
Speaker
Like, insurance only, like, covers therapy for different kinds of, like – like, I know on Medicaid, it's, like, really hard to get ongoing therapy if you don't fall within, like, DSM criteria.
01:45:00
Speaker
And so in adding that to the DSM, more people are falling into criteria and more people are able to get care.
01:45:06
Speaker
But how about we just, like, fuck and flip over the whole system because we should not be profiting off of people suffering?
01:45:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:13
Speaker
And people shouldn't be only able to access therapy if they're going through a hard time.
01:45:18
Speaker
Why do we have to wait for crisis?
01:45:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:19
Speaker
Prevention's great.
01:45:20
Speaker
You know, when I switched therapists at one point when I moved to Seattle, I immediately was like, I should find a therapist now because I'm doing fine.
01:45:28
Speaker
And I'm going to be happy when I'm not doing fine because I know that's going to happen, that I have a therapist.
01:45:34
Speaker
And lo and behold, was very happy when random crisis situation came up like pandemic.
01:45:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:41
Speaker
Also, like, it's really hard to, like, organize your thoughts and find a therapist when you're in crisis mode.
01:45:46
Speaker
Yep.
01:45:46
Speaker
Yep.
01:45:46
Speaker
It's hard enough when you're not in crisis mode.
01:45:48
Speaker
It is really hard to find accessible, affordable therapy and affirming therapy by people who, like, have identities that represent you.
01:45:55
Speaker
Like, that is, like, so fucking hard.
01:45:58
Speaker
Anyways.
01:46:00
Speaker
So this article continues to say, And...
01:46:17
Speaker
The next they're talking about why the label is harmful.
01:46:21
Speaker
Labeling people with BPD as having a personality disorder can exacerbate their poor self-esteem.
01:46:27
Speaker
Personality disorder, in quotes, translates in many people's minds as a personality flaw, and this can lead to or exacerbate an ingrained sense of worthlessness and self-loathing.
01:46:37
Speaker
This means people with BPD may view themselves more negatively, but can also lead other people, including those closest to them, to do the same.
01:46:44
Speaker
So it says also that clinicians too often harbor negative attitudes towards people with BPD, viewing them as manipulative or unwilling to help themselves because they can be hard to deal with and maybe not engage with initial treatment.
01:46:56
Speaker
Doctors, nurses, and other staff members often react with frustration or contempt.
01:47:00
Speaker
These attitudes are much less frequently seen from clinicians working with people suffering from complex PTSD or other trauma spectrum disorders because they're looking at it as like this is a – you have a personality flaw.
01:47:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:13
Speaker
You have a mood flaw.
01:47:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:14
Speaker
As opposed to, like, this is who you became as a response to an ongoing situation that you should have never been put in to begin with.
01:47:21
Speaker
This is just to say, like, people really, like, slap this, like, diagnosis on and put it on people's charts and then people treat them accordingly.
01:47:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:30
Speaker
When really, like, the root of it is trauma and the root of it is, like, really having, like, incredibly low self-worth because people have routinely told them or proved to them that that self-belief is, like, true.
01:47:42
Speaker
Fuck.
01:47:44
Speaker
Yeah, fucked.
01:47:45
Speaker
So this article says other symptoms of the disorder include identity disturbances, feeling dead inside, quote unquote, rage responses or difficulty regulating emotional reactions to situations, mood swings, constant anxiety, panic, poor self-esteem, memory blanks, dissociation, out of body or feeling unreal experiences and problems with concentration, feeling invalid and fear of being abandoned.
01:48:06
Speaker
Like that's just like, I mean, how does that not impact your entire way of like being in the world?
01:48:14
Speaker
It also says rage or diffuse anger or diffuse anger is another symptom of BPD.
01:48:19
Speaker
That's poorly tolerated by family and health professionals.
01:48:22
Speaker
If the person with the condition repeats self-harming behavior, frustration among family, friends, and health professionals increases and may lead to decreased care.
01:48:31
Speaker
Since people with the disorder crave reassurance that they are worthy, valid, and deserving of care, this rejection sets up a dangerous spiral of increasingly harmful behavior that's intended to attract people.
01:48:42
Speaker
care.
01:48:43
Speaker
So it reminds me of like Brene Brown.
01:48:46
Speaker
You know, when she, I dig that bitch.
01:48:48
Speaker
I know that there are other people who do shame research that have been overshadowed by the fact that she's a white woman who gets a lot of attention for it.
01:48:54
Speaker
And also this is helpful info.
01:48:57
Speaker
She talks about how being in shame causes people to engage in more behaviors that exacerbate that shame.
01:49:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:05
Speaker
Because being in shame, like shame versus guilt, guilt is like, okay, I did this bad thing.
01:49:11
Speaker
shame is like I am bad and so if you have that belief then you can literally do whatever you want to like reinforce that whereas like feeling of guilt is more likely to lead towards doing things of taking accountability because you still believe that like you still have your self-worth intact even though you may have done something you know yeah and in that way shame is like really debilitating because you get stuck in it
01:49:37
Speaker
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
01:49:38
Speaker
And my personal experience with people in my life who have borderline, some I think I don't want to diagnose, but I think undiagnosed, and some who have been, like, diagnosed by proxy, like friends going to therapists and the therapist saying, I think this family member has... I think you're right.
01:49:57
Speaker
Sure.
01:49:57
Speaker
I think a lot of, like, my... Those interactions are, to me, seem to be rooted in a lot of shame because they can't receive...
01:50:06
Speaker
I think shame makes accountability really impossible.
01:50:09
Speaker
And so it's really hard for people to have space for these like behavior patterns, especially when there's like no addressing, like unhealed and untreated.
01:50:18
Speaker
Like I'm talking about like when people have no self-awareness of like these patterns happening for them.
01:50:22
Speaker
I really do think that when they receive negative feedback or even just like constructive feedback,
01:50:29
Speaker
They immediately internalize that as you're telling me that I'm bad and I already believe I'm bad and everyone has told me that I'm bad and I grew up in an environment where I was treated like I was bad.
01:50:39
Speaker
And like there's so there's nothing constructive that can be done with that information because it's always filtered through the lens of like, oh, you're telling me that I did this thing that was hurtful.
01:50:48
Speaker
I'm just hurtful.
01:50:49
Speaker
I'm just bad.
01:50:50
Speaker
That's just me.
01:50:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's just me, which is a total barrier to, like, taking accountability because if you can't, like, if you can't untangle the... Your identity.
01:50:59
Speaker
Your identity from the behavior, then there's really, like, it's really hard to do something with that.
01:51:05
Speaker
And, yeah, the...
01:51:06
Speaker
diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and everything that comes with it kind of just reinforces that just like the opposite of what you're trying to do yeah when you like figure something out about someone yeah supposed to be helpful not make it worse yeah and i not to say that everyone who has a diagnosis of it like experiences i understand that some people when they get certain diagnoses it like really validates their their life experience i
01:51:35
Speaker
There is a nuance there also.
01:51:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:51:37
Speaker
I mean, nothing is like, nothing is uniform.
01:51:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:51:43
Speaker
This is just a pattern, not a, not a one size fits all.
01:51:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:51:47
Speaker
And like, on the other hand, like I can see how someone on the receiving end of that, that could be really hard.
01:51:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:52:15
Speaker
They also say that the rage of people who have BPD, which often occurs in response to apparently small issues from the outside, may actually be a delayed expression of anger with the perpetrator who abused them.
01:52:27
Speaker
I'm sure we were just talking about.
01:52:29
Speaker
Right.
01:52:30
Speaker
And then their memory blanks out.
01:52:32
Speaker
Their memory blanks and then out-of-body responses to stress may be attempts to repress recollections of that abuse and escape from that trauma.
01:52:39
Speaker
And then they go on to say, like, not all trauma stem from physical or sexual abuse.
01:52:43
Speaker
Emotional neglect or deprivation can also be difficult for people who identify to identify and define.
01:52:50
Speaker
They can nonetheless leave a mark for years to come.
01:52:52
Speaker
About 10 to 20% of people who have borderline have not reported history of childhood trauma.
01:52:58
Speaker
So, I mean, that could be like a... For a multitude of reasons.
01:53:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:53:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:53:05
Speaker
There's a lot of reasons people don't report or don't seek care or like simply just don't fucking remember.
01:53:10
Speaker
Exactly.
01:53:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:53:13
Speaker
Okay.
01:53:14
Speaker
Well, that being said, you know, there's a lot more that goes into that, which we don't really have time to unravel.
01:53:20
Speaker
I just wanted to note that like, it's really reductive to just say someone who has BPD is prone to all these terrible behaviors and they're manipulative and dah, dah, dah, dah.
Catherine's Imprisonment and Family's Tribute
01:53:30
Speaker
And therefore, and like Catherine, she just has BPD.
01:53:33
Speaker
And I'm just like, there's so much that's missing from that narrative.
01:53:38
Speaker
And, you know, there are like,
01:53:40
Speaker
quote-unquote treatments for it dialectical behavioral therapy was created and with bpd in mind yeah marcia linehan has bpd yes created by someone who has bpd yeah she's from u-dub is she really yeah look psychology researcher at university of washington what
01:54:00
Speaker
Well, she describes dialectical behavioral therapy as a synthesis or integration of opposites.
01:54:05
Speaker
DBT was designed to help people increase their emotional and cognitive regulation by learning about the triggers that lead to reactive states and helping to assess which coping skills to apply in a sequence of events, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to help avoid undesired reactions.
01:54:21
Speaker
So the integration of opposites piece, I think, is important because people with BPD often experience a lot of black and white things.
01:54:28
Speaker
And I think we also live in a society that, like, perpetuates black and white thinking, binary thinking, which does connect back to, like, this binary way we, like, we're talking about, like, gender a second ago.
01:54:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:54:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:54:45
Speaker
So I think DBT directly responds to society's desire to have things be either or, when really many things can be true at the same time.
01:54:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:54:57
Speaker
And when you're able to have high dialectical self-views, meaning that you can honor that there are many parts of your identity that can coexist and don't negate one another, that has positive outcomes.
01:55:07
Speaker
You contain multitudes.
01:55:08
Speaker
Yes.
01:55:10
Speaker
DBT is helpful for a lot of people.
01:55:12
Speaker
DBT skills can be helpful for a lot of people.
01:55:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:55:17
Speaker
Anywho.
01:55:18
Speaker
Anywho's it.
01:55:19
Speaker
Back to Catherine.
01:55:21
Speaker
Sorry.
01:55:23
Speaker
She was diagnosed with borderline PD.
01:55:25
Speaker
She was escorted to prison that day.
01:55:28
Speaker
And like we said earlier, she became the first woman in Australian history to be given a life sentence without parole.
01:55:34
Speaker
I read a 2021 article that says that this case still haunts cops, the cops that came there to this day.
01:55:40
Speaker
I mean, no shit.
01:55:41
Speaker
Yeah, one of them said I couldn't eat meat for three months after, which I mean, just three months.
01:55:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:55:45
Speaker
Bro.
01:55:46
Speaker
To this day, Catherine falls back on insisting her innocence and refuses responsibility.
01:55:52
Speaker
She can't accept that she did that.
01:55:54
Speaker
And then in June of 2006, she even tried to appeal the life sentence, saying that the penalty of life in prison without possibility of parole is too severe for the crime.
01:56:04
Speaker
Oh, man.
01:56:05
Speaker
What kind of world do you live in, Catherine?
01:56:07
Speaker
Where are you?
01:56:08
Speaker
She's elsewhere.
01:56:09
Speaker
She's elsewhere.
01:56:10
Speaker
This bitch is elsewhere.
01:56:12
Speaker
She is still alive serving at Silverwater Women's Correctional Center.
01:56:16
Speaker
She's 66 now.
01:56:18
Speaker
Or at least this article said she was 66.
01:56:20
Speaker
I don't know if it gets... Maybe it was a year ago or something.
01:56:23
Speaker
Whatever.
01:56:23
Speaker
She's in her 60s now.
01:56:25
Speaker
She has white-haired and bee-speckled, and her nickname, The Nana, belies the horrific nature of her crimes, this article said.
01:56:31
Speaker
What the heck?
01:56:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:56:33
Speaker
So, according to James Phelps, who wrote, Green is the New Black, Catherine spends her time knitting, painting, and helping other incarcerated women sort out their disputes, and
01:56:42
Speaker
Conflict resolution, Catherine.
01:56:45
Speaker
She has... Explain.
01:56:48
Speaker
She has, like, structural dissociation.
01:56:50
Speaker
Wow, that's so specific and correct.
01:56:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:56:57
Speaker
Yes.
01:56:58
Speaker
Like, maybe the person, the reason why she switches back and forth is because there is a part of her that really truly believes that she didn't do that.
01:57:06
Speaker
Maybe.
01:57:06
Speaker
And then there's a part of her that's like, yeah, I did that.
01:57:09
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:57:10
Speaker
And, like, she was like this when she was in school, too.
01:57:12
Speaker
That's true.
01:57:14
Speaker
Do you think she's got split person?
01:57:16
Speaker
Yes.
01:57:17
Speaker
Do you think she's got DID?
01:57:19
Speaker
I feel like she totally could have DID.
01:57:21
Speaker
Because DID is a response to trauma.
01:57:24
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
01:57:25
Speaker
You can't integrate.
01:57:26
Speaker
So your body creates different, like, yeah.
01:57:29
Speaker
Different, yeah, parts, essentially.
01:57:32
Speaker
There's some wild research that shows people with DID have different chemical structures when they're in different states.
01:57:38
Speaker
So maybe one personality does have PPD.
01:57:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:57:40
Speaker
And maybe one personality does not.
01:57:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:57:43
Speaker
I'm not sure.
01:57:44
Speaker
This is all to say that I think DID is also wrongfully stigmatized.
01:57:48
Speaker
Yeah, like all these freaking movies.
01:57:53
Speaker
It's not correlated with violence.
01:57:56
Speaker
She just happens to be violent.
01:57:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:57:58
Speaker
And people are bored, I guess, with the everyday...
01:58:02
Speaker
The everyday people who have these diagnoses and don't act this way.
01:58:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:58:09
Speaker
So she helps just like sort out disputes.
01:58:13
Speaker
She not surprisingly, like she doesn't really get visited in prison, but reportedly she has found religion.
01:58:20
Speaker
Okay.
01:58:21
Speaker
Of course.
01:58:22
Speaker
Like, I don't know.
01:58:22
Speaker
That's such a common thing.
01:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
01:58:25
Speaker
But also like the way that she's just like knitting and shit kind of reminds me of George Bush painting cats to like hide from his past of being a war criminal.
01:58:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:58:32
Speaker
You know, like he was like, I really am responsible for the death of so many people.
01:58:36
Speaker
Now all he does is paint cat paintings.
01:58:39
Speaker
Wild.
01:58:40
Speaker
Look at me.
01:58:42
Speaker
I'm just a gentle little man.
01:58:46
Speaker
Man.
01:58:46
Speaker
With cat paintings.
01:58:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:58:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:58:49
Speaker
It feels like it gives the same energy.
01:58:52
Speaker
So I didn't want to end on like a somber, somber note.
01:58:55
Speaker
It's all fucked up.
01:58:56
Speaker
So I did look up to see like what's like John's family up to.
01:59:04
Speaker
And they actually have a Facebook page in his memory called John Charles Thomas Price, aka Pricey's memorial page.
01:59:12
Speaker
And they still post every year on his birthday.
01:59:14
Speaker
Aww.
01:59:15
Speaker
Someone wrote, not a day goes by.
01:59:17
Speaker
You're not in our thoughts.
01:59:19
Speaker
Your kids have grown into gorgeous young adults and making you proud.
01:59:23
Speaker
Love and miss you every day, Pricey.
01:59:25
Speaker
Kids always talk of their uncle and the funny times we had.
01:59:29
Speaker
Love always slim in the kids.
01:59:31
Speaker
And then they have a heart and like four beer emojis.
01:59:35
Speaker
There's a lot of beer in these emojis.
01:59:37
Speaker
I guess they go to the pub that they used to hang out at.
01:59:40
Speaker
We'll be sure to have a stubby for you tomorrow night and throw on the lawn.
01:59:45
Speaker
I don't know what that means.
01:59:46
Speaker
Throw up on the lawn?
01:59:48
Speaker
I have no idea.
01:59:48
Speaker
I have no idea.
01:59:49
Speaker
It's some Australian slang that's beyond me.
01:59:51
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
01:59:52
Speaker
Someone's from Australia.
01:59:53
Speaker
Please tell us what a stubby is and what throw on the lawn means.
01:59:55
Speaker
Stubby maybe is a beer.
01:59:57
Speaker
That's my guess.
01:59:58
Speaker
Based on the emojis.
02:00:00
Speaker
Based on the emojis.
02:00:01
Speaker
Yeah.
02:00:02
Speaker
Another person said, Shay and I had a drink for you as we do every year.
02:00:06
Speaker
RIP buddy taken way too soon.
02:00:08
Speaker
You live on in your three amazing, beautiful children.
02:00:11
Speaker
They also post photos of each other like at the pub being like in memory.
02:00:16
Speaker
So, you know, he's being honored by his like community.
02:00:20
Speaker
Yeah, which I mean, something horrible happens.
02:00:23
Speaker
Like we talked about traumatic grief in the Richard episode and people think that there's no possible way to heal from that.
02:00:30
Speaker
And like, I think it's true that that trauma stays forever.
02:00:33
Speaker
But like, it goes to show that like having community is a really healing thing over and over and over.
02:00:39
Speaker
People are remembering him for who he was and not for what happened to him.
02:00:43
Speaker
So shout out.
02:00:44
Speaker
That's beautiful.
02:00:45
Speaker
Yeah.
02:00:46
Speaker
Well, that's that, I guess.
02:00:47
Speaker
Yeah.
02:00:50
Speaker
A light episode.
02:00:51
Speaker
A light episode.
02:00:52
Speaker
Wow.
02:00:52
Speaker
Very light.
02:00:55
Speaker
Light and airy fairy.
02:00:58
Speaker
Oh my god.
02:00:58
Speaker
We really did that.
02:00:59
Speaker
Okay.
02:01:00
Speaker
We did.
02:01:01
Speaker
We did.
02:01:02
Speaker
Hope you take care of yourselves.
02:01:04
Speaker
Remember, as always, watch something funny.
02:01:07
Speaker
I don't know.
02:01:08
Speaker
Do something.
02:01:09
Speaker
Go outside.
02:01:10
Speaker
Scream it up below.
02:01:12
Speaker
Enjoy the sunshine if there's sunshine for you.
02:01:14
Speaker
Yep.
02:01:16
Speaker
Do something.
02:01:17
Speaker
Don't look into this further.
02:01:19
Speaker
I mean, you can.
02:01:20
Speaker
I'm not going to control your life, but...
02:01:23
Speaker
Take care of yourself.
02:01:24
Speaker
I mean, we told you everything you need to know.
02:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
02:01:27
Speaker
That's true.
02:01:28
Speaker
But, you know, if you've got that morbid curiosity and you want to hurt yourself, like I do, often.
02:01:32
Speaker
Which, yeah.
02:01:33
Speaker
Okay.
02:01:34
Speaker
Well, that's a wrap.
02:01:36
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
02:01:37
Speaker
Peace out.
02:01:38
Speaker
Yeah.
02:01:38
Speaker
See you in the next one.
02:01:39
Speaker
As per usual, Patreon starts at $2 a month.
02:01:44
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And it's like a little tip.
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If you would like to contribute.
02:01:48
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The $10 tier gets you a sticker.
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The $20 tier gets you a mug.
02:01:54
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And also your money.
02:01:55
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50% of that money goes to causes related to the stuff we talk about.
02:01:59
Speaker
You know?
02:02:00
Speaker
And then visit our website, unpackingtheerie.com.
02:02:03
Speaker
Check it out.
02:02:04
Speaker
Cool.
02:02:06
Speaker
Bye.
02:02:06
Speaker
Bye.
02:02:09
Speaker
Thanks for listening and for supporting us.
02:02:12
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.
02:02:24
Speaker
yes and special thanks to all of you who subscribe to our patreon as we've mentioned before we do all the research for this we edit and we don't have any sponsorships or ads um so patreon support is super helpful in just keeping this project sustainable keeping the buzzsprout subscription going paying for the website all the stuff
02:02:48
Speaker
So thank you so much.
02:02:50
Speaker
Sari, Liz, Clifton.
02:02:53
Speaker
Jill, Victoria, and Lindsay.
02:02:55
Speaker
Lauren, Vivian, Valerie.
02:02:57
Speaker
Micheline, Montana, Katrina.
02:03:00
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Raina, Allie, Jake.
02:03:02
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Drithi, Daphne, and Katie.
02:03:04
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Vern, Meredith, H, and Vince.
02:03:07
Speaker
To April, Aaron, and Ellen.
02:03:09
Speaker
And to Brittany, Alyssa, and Meredith R. Yay, thank you so much.
02:03:14
Speaker
Thank you.