Season 6: Bonus 1 - Listening Beyond the Panic

Recently, a well-known Christian podcast released a new series exploring topics like trauma, mental illness, and abuse—many of the same themes we're addressing this year on Safe to Hope. Understandably, some of our listeners are engaging with both, and a few have already shared how conflicted or invalidated they felt.

In response, we’ve released a special bonus episode. To gently offer a different perspective—one shaped by the lived experiences of survivors and informed by experts in trauma care and memory science. This episode also frames the heart of our season: why believing survivors matters, and how we hold sacred space for stories that are hard to tell.

SHOW NOTES:

Season 6 Introduction (Episode 1)

Season 1 Significance of Story

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Lewis Herman

Remember my Affliction:Advent Through Lamentations  by Kimrey Dillon

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices by Thomas Brooks

What is a Girl Worth?  by Rachel Denhollander

Living in His Presence by Sylvia Gunter (re: Luke 11:24-26)

Keith Evans quotes from https://youtu.be/nxPxss963SI?si=NbqKx7DFCqX0KyGs

Honoring the Truth: A Response to the Backlash by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

Misquoted 20,000; correct is 12,000 reports of satanic ritual abuse

Misquoted 1 Timothy instead of 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Dr Jim Wilder Resources:

• The Red Dragon Cast Down: A Redemptive Approach to the Occult and Satanism
• The Other Half of Church: Christian Community, Brain Science, and Overcoming Spiritual Stagnation

Safe To Hope is one of the resources offered through the ministry of Help[H]er, a 501C3 that provides training and resources for those ministering in one-another care, and advocacy for women in crisis in Christian organizations. Your donations make it possible for Help[H]er to serve as they navigate crises. All donations are tax-deductible.

Help[H]er website
Give
Shop

We value and respect conversations with all our guests. Opinions, viewpoints, and convictions may differ so we encourage our listeners to practice discernment. As well, guests do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HelpHer. It is our hope that this podcast is a platform for hearing and learning rather than causing division or strife.

Please note, abuse situations have common patterns of behavior, responses, and environments. Any familiarity construed by the listener is of their own opinion and interpretation. Our podcast does not accuse individuals or organizations.

The podcast is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis, or treatment.

Chapters

• 10:34 Segment 1: Obstacles to Victim Care
• 59:18 Segment 2: Obstacles in Understanding the Nature of Evidence and Legal Language
• 1:18:17 Segment 3: Obstacles in Comprehending the Depth of Human Depravity and Lived Experiences

Transcript

Ann Maree 
Over the past several weeks, we have been slowly releasing quote, unquote introduction episodes to this 2025 story season. As I mentioned in the first episode on February 11, our season this year is a little different. Instead of three storytellers over 3 seasons, we will be hosting only one storyteller throughout this year.  On April 8, the first story episode will drop. The episodes we released so far had a specific goal. We wanted to ease our audience into very difficult subject matter shared by our storyteller, and then provide information that might help as you the audience, listen along. 

First, we introduced the topic of evil, more fully with professor and author Ingrid Farrow. The second episode, Jesus is My Captain, we introduced you to Carya and shared pretty much what amounts to the end of her story thus far. We wanted you to know before we begin her story, that in the end, she is okay. We're not saying she's all fixed, but she's okay. The third episode on March 11 was also an end of the story type episode with our typical, what was this experience like for you, for both the storyteller and myself, the host. Again, we thought it was important for you to hear that she's doing okay. This week, our original intent was to air an episode on self care for the audience so you could listen to the stories. We really need to pace ourselves as we listen to this human depravity and be intentional to counter dark evil with deep good. That episode is still incredibly helpful, and we are anxious to share it, but we have moved it to April 7, one day prior to dropping the first story. We did this because we recently discovered there is likely one more way we need to frame this season in order to help our audience listen to it well. 

A short time ago, a reputable Christian organization dropped a new podcast series that addresses several of the topics we will be discussing on our 2025 season of the Safe to Hope podcast, many of our Safe to Hope audience members have listened to the previous podcasts released by this organization, and they've been quite impacted by what they heard. So we are assuming our audience may again tune in to their newest series. You may not have listened, but we decided it was important to host a Safe to Hope bonus episode in order to articulate our concerns with the way several matters on the other podcasts were presented, specifically mental illness, trauma, repressed memories and victim care, evidence and legal obstacles related to abuse and claims of ritualistic cultish or satanic abuse. Even if you never hear the other podcast, we still felt it necessary to share a different perspective, if for no other reason than to help inform any questions you may have about our season or conversations with friends who are listening to the other podcast and or to our season six on Safe to Hope. 

For the purpose of understanding better the topics that we will tackle today, I thought I'd provide a very, very brief summary of the podcast series that were challenging. The series storyline centers around the time in US history referred to as the Satanic Panic. The podcast host implies several key situations that may have led to this moment, including the horrific accounts of the Jonestown Massacre, the Manson murders, and a slew of reports of satanic activity in. In the late 1980s and early 1990s multiple reports of satanic ritual abuse blanketed our country, some 12,000 plus actually, which apparently led to instilling fear— a panic— in American parents, teens and children. The result this host of the podcast concludes is that the Satanic Panic captivated our imaginations, caused Christians to focus on conspiracies, or in other words, fake crises, influenced the creation of a moral majority, and ultimately diverted our attention from the real devils walking among us. The manner in which these theories are being presented are, as always, with this podcaster, captivating and persuasive. The host presents several high profile actual cases from that era and several relevant surrounding times as well, and then he connects dots from those cultural moments to his conclusions. Now, overall, we are not disputing the authenticity of the series. I must admit, however, it has been so far, difficult to track where the host will land, but when it came to the most recent episode and the stories which were communicated in that one, that's when we became most concerned. In part— full transparency— because the series seemingly discredits our own season on Safe to Hope. More significantly, however, our concerns extend much further in that, as presented, the premise in the most recent podcast episode significantly diminishes victims and their experiences. It calls reporting of specific abuses into question, and then it suggests that due to particular dynamics related to how abuses may be reported. These disclosures are likely false accusations. As one of our Safe to Hope listeners recently shared, after hearing that other podcast quote, “as a childhood trauma survivor, I found this episode very invalidating. I have a major concern that all of the people discounted were women.” So in order to articulate our concerns, I've asked staff and board members to speak to our apprehensions. Everyone participated, but for today, I'll be chatting with just two representatives of our staff and board. Kimrey Dillon has almost an MA in Biblical Studies, and she is currently a first year law student. She serves Help[H]er by helping as my assistant and acting as the ministry Research Coordinator. Julia Fillnow, as you may recall from previous episodes on Safe to Hope, is a licensed therapist, certified and specialized in trauma, abuse and addiction treatment. Julia serves on the Help[H]er board, and is becoming quite regular as a host and guest on this podcast.  This Safe to Hope bonus episode is divided into three broad concerns. We labeled our concerns obstacles because we believe the information we heard on the other podcast will deter victims from reporting abuse, which then will only serve to create safer spaces for abusers in Christian institutions.

Ann Maree   
These obstacles we've identified act as sort of an umbrella to more specific difficulties we discuss from the podcast. They are obstacles to victim care, obstacles in understanding the nature of evidence and legal language, and obstacles in comprehending the depth of human depravity and lived experiences. We reached out to the other podcast organizers last week, and we asked who they were consulting with and if there were any expert contributors for their series. If so, we asked if they would tell us who. We have not yet heard a response. So throughout our episode, I will be including sound bites derived from some of our season expert contributors, because these are individuals with multiple years of experience working with those impacted by the types of suffering we'll be discussing now. I also just want to emphasize that we, our staff and our board, do not consider ourselves experts. What we are good at, however, is networking— networking with and learning from those who have much more time and experience working with victims and survivors, those who are most impacted by similar experiences on both our 2025, season and the other podcast recent release that precipitated our concerns. Just a reminder too, that this particular season of the Safe to Hope podcast is extremely difficult to hear. The story includes childhood sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, satanic, cultish and ritualistic abuse, and it is for mature audiences only. We ask that you apply an abundance of caution and discretion, and we warn those who might be significantly triggered that includes for this episode as well. 

Segment 1: Obstacles to Victim Care (Timestamp 00:10:34)
“I was shocked to hear the not guilty verdict. I mean, just after experiencing what we went through and what our parents and everybody tried to do in the last six years, just—they're free now?—and it's it's just it was such a shock to hear that they were going to go free and terrified.” That's a young man, an accuser of his own childhood sexual abuse, satanic abuse, navigating the devastating reality of acquittals of those he and others claim were their abusers. It's actually the last line on the podcast episode that we're concerned with, and it left me with chills down my spine. The podcast host implied throughout this episode that there were several events which led to a resulting popular opinion that the children's accusations were manufactured. Most specifically, he traced the fault line to a woman who had previously claimed a similar event, that she was abused in satanic rituals. Michelle, as the story goes, remembered, quote, unquote, ‘her abuse through a series of counseling sessions resembling hypnosis.’ Critics charged that a very suggestive practice in therapy at the time was the reason she believed she had been assaulted, and that methodology motivated her false memories. Similarly, the host suggested that the children alleging abuse in the other situation, had been brainwashed into believing their own abuse and that by hearing it over and over and sharing it with each other for years, they simply convinced themselves of something that never happened. I must admit, I find it difficult to believe that a young teen man would use the word ‘terrified’ over something that never happened, even if the details of what happened were different than what the accusers originally chronicled—and we're going to talk about that later in the show— something seriously harmed this young man. Julia, can you share some of your thoughts about your concerns with some of what was said here in that podcast? 

Julia
We do need to be very wise and use caution with what we do with the information that we have as an organization. We recognize that some of our listeners at Safe to Hope may be trying to understand their own history or experience, and so the content that we put out is created and produced with them in mind. I think the same is true for other podcasts and resources out there. There may be some who are listening, who are drawn to the topic because of their own histories or just want to understand, maybe their current circumstances. And statistically, we know there are listeners who are survivors of abuse—abuse throughout their lifetime, in childhood or adulthood—so the language we use will either further understanding and healing for them or potentially induce shame and fear. So we're responsible for our words. We're responsible for their impact. And those of us with a platform or in positions of leadership, I think this applies all the more to us. 

Ann Maree   
Yes, good insight. Here we are responsible for and need to be very careful with this sensitive type of information. Okay, so false memories is one of the categories within our first obstacle with that other podcast episode. And I know you have a good bit of wisdom here. So please, what are you thinking?

Julia   
So another thing that stood out to me was that an obstacle that victims face is the questioning of their memory and their disclosure, and kind of two questions I was wrestling with and turning over my mind is just this idea that an entire movement—a cultural movement—can impact individuals and can impact how the worst thing that ever happened to you is held. It's kind of haunting to think that there are institutions and there are movements that are put in place to rise to prominence in order to cast doubt on people's experiences and sort of so the question becomes, when does healthy skepticism cross the line into a cruel denial of somebody's reality? So one of the things that came up in the podcast was this idea of false memory. And if it's okay, I just kind of like to go in to some of the historical context of what is false memory. How did it come to be? Is it still current? 

So false memory essentially started as a cultural movement in about the 1980s. There is this massive rise of grassroots self help groups, groups like AA and survivors groups, as more people began to tell their stories, so survivors themselves also began offering services and support groups to other survivors, which is really cool, something that hadn't been seen before. Many of the survivors then became licensed themselves because as this was born out of their own healing work. They used to be widely believed that abuse in the home was limited to families in poverty. But as more Americans had places to speak out, like these groups, these groups that they could go to and build community, it became clear that domestic abuse and childhood sexual abuse were represented in all families. So around that same time, Child Protective Services was formed, and many viewed this agency as a quote, unquote ‘threat to the nuclear family.’ So additionally, the movement began trying to protect parents from this threat of therapists and other helpers from kind of implanting ideas, were colloquially like getting a hold of their minds and taking their kids away from them through these government agencies. So it this movement interestingly, and it's called the false memory movement. It was interestingly focused entirely on child sexual abuse. They had nothing to say about other types of abuses like physical abuse or intimate partner violence, so their focus was limited. But despite that, their impact grew over time, and the trend became one of dismissing victims who were coming forward. Judith Herman kind of speaks to this in one of her books, where she says that there is this rapid increase and claims of ‘false allegations.’ I put that in air quotes these false allegations. And at the same time as these claims of false allegations were rising, there was an increase in victims recanting their claims, which I think is significant.

Ann Maree   
Mind control, right? And Dr Wilder will be talking a bit about that in an upcoming episode this spring, Julia, what exactly did the impact of this look like?

Julia   
So there are advocates on both sides of the equation. So there are advocates who are there for the victims. But then there are advocates on the side of false memory. So I'll call them false memory advocates. They essentially stake their claim on the presumption that memory cannot be repressed. And repressed is just a word that means it's buried in the unconscious, buried in the psyche and sort of forgotten. And so they concluded that those who are coming forward in adulthood having recovered certain memories from their childhood, that those testimonies were categorically untrue. They demanded tangible evidence, which we know in this work is nearly impossible when abuse happens in secret. So the false memory debate went on for about 20 years. Reached its height in the 1990s when the movement essentially became an institution, and there's a foundation created called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. This foundation has its own sordid history that we won't get to in detail, but those who are involved in the Foundation have been accused of abuse themselves. Many have defended pedophiles, and they've also defended institutions like the Catholic Church, who have been accused of abuse.

Ann Maree   
Right. And in fact, the Foundation was established because the founders were accused by their own daughter of abuse. Okay, thanks. That's been helpful. So now we've learned a whole bunch since the 80s and 90s, help us understand how what we know now informs this false memory theory. 

Julia   
So standing against the false memory advocates are trauma advocates and trauma advocates and victim advocates believe that false memory advocates grossly oversimplify how the brain works and how memory is stored. So two data points that refute false memory advocates—bear with me, guys, I'm a little bit of a nerd. I love science, so I'm going to geek out a little bit. If this is uninteresting to you, that's fine. Some of the implications we'll talk about a little bit later. So two data points that refute the false memory advocates: There are over 111 studies on forgotten or repressed memories from childhood of sexual abuse. So proving this is true to those cases that repressed memories are, in fact, the norm. Many of these studies are peer reviewed. This is also pretty cool that we can now pinpoint the exact neurocircuitry, and in fact, there's two different circuits in the brain that essentially go offline during a traumatic event and cause dissociative amnesia. And dissociative amnesia is now a diagnostic category in the DSM. So professional organizations, even like the American Psychiatric Association, the British Psychological Society, the American Medical Association, all reject the position that repressed memory does not exist.

Ann Maree   
Wow. Okay, so all one really needs to do to understand false memory theory, or repressed memory theory, is to look into a little of the latest brain science discovery. Right? We have biological rationale for disputing that repression doesn't exist? Is anyone really susceptible to being convinced or brainwashed like the podcast implied?

Julia   
False memory advocates also claim that some people may be prone to suggestibility. Suggestibility is just a fancy term that means that they can be swayed. They claim that some are susceptible to memory implantation, which is what the podcast that we were referring to spoke about quite a bit and that they're susceptible to like therapists, police officers, friends, family members, but current research shows that under 5% of people are memory suggestible. And actually, we can test for that. There's something called the Gudjonsson suggestibility index that is used by forensic psychologists in the court of law, and probably the best piece of evidence is that people who are traumatized are far more distrusting and hyper vigilant, right? And so therefore they're less likely to be susceptible to new information coming at them and more likely to test and retest information that just doesn't fit with your experience, and that's massive.

Ann Maree   
So what you're saying, and this makes sense to me— not that that means anything. We know that's hard to do, but anyway—but what you're saying is that traumatized people, they're not going to fall for this, what we what we've heard, called brainwashing. 

Julia
Yes. 

Ann Maree
They're not going to just mimic what they've heard if it doesn't match their experience. Can we encapsulate the age group where that happens? Or does it happen across the board for all ages, children through adults?

Julia  
The suggestibility scale does say that children tend to be more suggestible than adults, but I'm not trained in that index, so I can't speak specifically to groups or populations that might be more suggestible. 

Ann Maree   
Okay, yeah, no, thank you. I was just curious to that'll probably something that we would be questioned about. But what about kids?

Kimrey    
So yeah, can I ask a question as well? From what I understand, a lot of times these memories are coming forward for people who are often, I mean, decades removed from the abuse in their 40s and 50s. How does that kind of impact how we think about the susceptibility to memory implantation? I mean, a lot of times these are adults who are five decades into life? 

Julia   
Yeah, it's such a great question. From what I know, and my limited experience is when memories are repressed, in some way, they're preserved, so when they come forward, they're highly accurate. Having them being repressed does not detract from their reliability. Does that kind of hit what you're asking? 

Kimrey    
No, that's great info. I was thinking more along the lines of like it's not a child who's being lied to by their older sibling, right? Like it's someone lived enough life… 

Julia
Oh, yeah, that's right, 

Kimrey
…to kind of discern for themselves. 

Julia
Yes, yes, absolutely. 

Kimrey
Or, I mean, I can remember as a kid, trying to convince my sister, who was seven years younger, that she was adopted from Venus, right? Like she didn't buy it, so she wasn't susceptible to that lie. So I just think, like, how much more so someone who's in their 50s is going to be able to weigh for themselves. 

Julia
Right. Right. Absolutely. That's a great point. 

Ann Maree    
No, what you said a moment ago, too, both of them are great points. But Julia, what you said is, even if it's been repressed, it doesn't make it inaccurate. That is so… I mean, why would we jump to that conclusion that a repressed memory must be inaccurate?

Julia   
Yes, that's right. Yeah.

Kimrey   
I think all of this is just so tragic. I mean, just to be told that what you're remembering never happened. I mean, that's its own form of gaslighting, which is almost reliving the abuse or remembering the first time.

Julia   
Right. And I think that's why caution and care should be our utmost priority. Because, yeah, to your point, that's what the perpetrator does. And you know, we're starting to learn more about the impact, obviously, of trauma and abuse on people and how systems can add additional layers of harm, and when individuals, when families, when friend groups, when churches, when institutions control the narrative for the victim, or they reframe their narrative, or, like you said, they gaslight them, we call that secondary abuse or double abuse. And oftentimes the secondary abuse or double abuse ends up being the most painful, harmful, sometimes much, much more than the primary or initial abuse. 

Kimrey    
Is that why, culturally, we still struggle to believe victims now? Do you think that this continues to have an impact? 

Julia    
Oh yes. Yeah, I think that the beliefs— the foundation may not be as prominent, the false memory foundation may not be as prominent, or the false memory movement may have kind of dissipated in some ways, but the rhetoric is still there, and I see also that the rhetoric has seeped into the court system. I see it seeped into churches, especially. 

So just as some examples, I think you guys have probably heard a lot of these narratives come forward. You could probably provide some of your own examples too. We have a lot of data, so when a victim reaches out for help in their churches, how many times are they met with doubt and skepticism and just dismissal, especially when time has passed and the woman has been married to a man for a decade or two decades or three or four or five. The pastor, the shepherd, the helper, can often fall into this kind of rhetoric and be like, “Well, why now? What's your motivation now? There must be some kind of game for you to come forward now, why didn't you stop it?” Or, “Why didn't you you change or try to change him as soon as you first recognized it?” Right? There's always the assumption that survivors misremember or they only remember partially. So you know, just some of the things that I've heard, “Are you sure it happened that way? Maybe you heard him differently. You're assuming the worst about him. He needs your love and your affirmation.” There's also the assumption that people are exaggerating as they're remembering events, or their memory of the events itself is exaggerated, or they're being— and this is the one that I hate the most— is that they're being unduly influenced by these outside sources. So of course, she's coming forward now. She's reading those books, she's listening to those podcasts. That's making her create this narrative, this storyline of what's happening in her marriage. Also, I think there's the belief that they're being influenced by licensed counselors, or Christian counselors. So a lot of shepherds in the church think that licensed professionals are leading them down a dangerous path that they don't agree with this group of counseling approach, and this other group of counselors is a preferred approach. All these things. I mean, I know you guys have heard that too. I think they can also misuse the idea of spiritual warfare. So “the enemy is trying to deceive you. The enemy has gotten a hold of your mind” and using spiritual practices to bypass truth, like “love covers over a multitude of sins. Forgive one another. Submit to your husband.” This is probably less prominent, but I still hear it a lot, that there's churches and counseling movements that discount children's disclosures— which is so sad— assuming that kids lie or fabricate, and that their feelings really can't be trusted.

Ann Maree   
And we did hear some of this, even in the podcast that we're referencing, especially the piece about being influenced by licensed counselors or Christian— even Christian counselors. And some of the I guess what you use the word rhetoric, was the ‘hypnosis’ that was supposedly used. And I think we're going to get to that later. It's just reminding me there's nothing new under the sun, right? We just keep circling through some of these same…

Julia   
So the hosted this podcast that we're referring to, he had another podcast series where he asked the question— which is a great question that I think we all need to consider— is who benefits of this rhetoric in light of disbelieving victims coming forward? Who benefits? Media, I think media and the legal system can over generalize and amplify this fallibility found in memory and the suggestibility of certain individuals. This is a quote from experts in the field of forensic psychology here, but when they're speaking about this danger, when media and the legal system amplify false memory, they said “that there are unpleasant consequences.” And I would add that. Hmm, far more than unpleasant, but they say there are unpleasant consequences. “They're causing real child abuse victims to hide their memories for fear of being disbelieved. They're making the arrest and conviction of child molesters and other sexual predators more difficult, and they're making it harder for adult survivors who recover memories of childhood abuse to work through them in therapy. The point is no one wins if society conducts a media debate before the scientific evidence is accumulated.” And this was written in 1998 so I would add on my end that no one wins if society and media discount the scientific evidence already available to us. 

Ann Maree   
And it certainly seemed like that's what happened. We weren't even touching on what we know now about the brain, about brain science. In that podcast series, the host was interacting with what was known at the time. That's not wrong. That's what they knew, but it's not what we know, and we shouldn't be interpreting history through what they knew then— the only thing that they knew then—I mean, it misrepresents. And this is a big word that we keep using, there was a lot of misrepresenting of theory, of philosophy, of care, of science, of facts, and so, yeah, I'm glad you're bringing up what we know now so that we can interpret even what we hear in our story coming up on April 8. And I don’t want to say more education, because it's just, it's a touch. I mean, we just have a touch of information that we might not have had before.

Kimrey   
Julia, I loved that quote, especially in connection to your question of who benefits, right? I mean, it shows very clearly who benefits. It's it's not victims. I did want to ask, how do you distinguish that question from the question we asked a little bit earlier when women come forward, and the question is like, what's your motivation for coming forward now, like, you must have some gain. What's the difference between asking, what is your gain versus who benefits? 

Julia   
The question usually asked to victims like, about gain implies that there's something dark and manipulative about what she's after, when the reality is, when victims come forward, they're the ones who are wanting safety. They're asking for safety, they're asking for help. So if there's any gain, quote, unquote, gain, it's safety, and there's no ulterior motive. We know that the percentage of false allegations kind of hovers between three to 5% and the more we study abuse and control, the more and more it shifts to the lesser end. Some statistics now say about one to 3% and that's significant. The victim has nothing to gain coming forward. She knows what she's up against in some ways, at least she knows that she's living in fear about her husband's potential reaction and the power that he does wield over her, over possibly her children, the influence he has in the church and his business and the community. So actually, she's risking everything. She has nothing to gain. She has everything to lose. And that's, I think that's what we need to understand. From the victim's perspective, that they're not after anything but safety and health and protection. 

Ann Maree   
And you went towards the domestic abuse situation as an example. But even before you said that, I was hearing the sexual assault victim— oh, my goodness— the massacre in the media that happens. And when you said it's one to 3% perhaps of false accusations, those are the accusations that get the most air time. And so we believe that there's more happening. There's much more happening than is actually happening. 

Julia   
Yeah, in the case of sexual abuse, the conviction rate is 5% and unfortunately, you know, working in the clinical space, I have to tell my clients that that is the conviction rate, so that they know what they're up against. And it takes a lot for somebody to say yes and to hang in to the process and to speak truth into a very— dare I say— caustic and abrasive system, like the legal system. So I think holding those statistics in mind is also helpful for all of us. 

Ann Maree   
And what you're saying, just to clarify, we've heard of cases with ample evidence who don't get convictions.

Julia    
That's right, and even with specialists involved who are forensic interviewers and are trained in how to ask the questions, not in a directed way, in a broad way, to help the victim to tell their story— even when it's clear evidence from their mouths— that is often not enough in the court of law. 

Ann Maree    
And there's something else that's kind of haunting me in all of this, and that is the risk that those kids in the podcast story took when they came forward and reported their abuse. I don't imagine any of them walked away thinking they benefited from that experience. I mean, ‘terrified’ was that kid's word they had more strikes against them being believed than they even knew. 

Julia   
It also brings to mind for me, just this idea that we have— either in the clinical space or the advocacy space or the shepherding space within the church— that sometimes we think there's a ‘perfect victim,’ and that these perfect victims should act in a certain way. I think it also kind of maps on quite well with how our research and understanding of the brain has changed over time. Seems like some of us are stuck in that old way of thinking of there should be a perfect victim. Even in the trauma space, it used to be that in treatment clinics, inpatient and outpatient, it was a very shame-based approach, where we’d fundamentally ask the question, “Why are you doing this?” Like stop, we need to put you somewhere else and contain you and keep you safe and keep us safe. “Why are you doing this?” And as we learned more about the brain and the body, the question shifted from “Why are you doing this?” to “What happened to you?” I think you can even hear the difference in the questions. “Why are you doing that?” Why are you doing this, this shame-based closed question to What happened to you, which feels very inquisitive, open and respectful of the person. So having another understanding of just the science behind memory is helpful. And again, this is where I'm going to geek out a little bit. So bear with me, but I was asked to do this. [laughs] My people thought it was important. 

Ann Maree
It is important. 

Julia
So typical memories are usually encoded as narratives, whereas trauma memories or abuse related memories tend to be very fragmented, disorganized; they often lack a sense of time and sequence, and they're sensory oriented, so they contain a lot of raw sensations, emotions, some more perceptual details and rather a clear kind of chronological storyline. And this happens because during trauma, or during a traumatic experience, or experiences the brain's language and reasoning centers that are found in specific parts of the brain go offline because they're overwhelmed by the stress and overwhelmed by the stress hormones that are racing through the body. So it's sort of like short circuits the brain. Short circuits to prevent the system from essentially blowing a fuse. But when this happens, obviously we can expect that there's some kind of disruption. So when these major centers in the brain, the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, go offline, it will disrupt how normal memory is stored. So instead of being this neatly processed memory, the memory instead is very scattered. It scatters across different parts of the brain, but it's primarily encoded in the limbic system. And the limbic system is a specific area where we get our survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and also where we get our emotions and our bodily sensations.

Ann Maree   
Yeah, so I mentioned a few minutes ago that another expert contributor we sought out for the series, for the entire season series, is Dr Jim Wilder, and our audience may or may not be familiar with him, but I'm just gonna plug one of his books that was life changing for me, and that was The Other Half of Church. So he is writing a lot now about brain science, but in the past, he wrote a lot about ritualistic, cultish, organized abuse. I'll have Helen put the book [The Red Dragon Cast Down] in the show notes. I can't remember the title of it right now. This quote was from one of the episodes that we had Dr Wilder on, and let me just play that.

Dr Jim Wilder recording   
You might want to know in the brain, that when you do a brain scan of dissociative identities, they're all scattered in different parts of the brain. The little clumps of the brain are doing this, and when the traumas are removed, all those parts of the brain are still active; they just work with the rest of them, so they're synchronized and they're working together. And so the actual resolution isn't that you lose any part of your brain, it's just that each part can work together with the other parts the way it was intended to, and that's what you have to… you want to create dissociation, you have to get a brain that's young enough that it hasn't started working together yet and traumatize it so it never learns to do that. 

Ann Maree   
That is just chilling to me still. While we're debating whether or not disassociation and DID [dissociated identity disorder] and even trauma are factual, there are people who are using it to torture, is just crazy craziness. Julia, help us understand what this means for how a traumatic story is then told. 

Julia   
So, I mean, memories are certainly stored differently, and I think it's important to know and to take note that memories resurface differently, and they resurface differently, also just depending on the person and the type of trauma. But generally, there's never a clear story. Oftentimes, there's a lot of sudden and intense emotions, or not any emotion. So emotional numbness, which confuses people a lot. There's usually a lot of bodily sensations that come up with a memory, like tightness in the muscles, there's nausea, there is that dissociation, and memories or images can be vivid, and so they can come back as flashbacks, like nightmares, dreams, but also as emotional flashbacks. So the emotion that they were experiencing at the time of the trauma might come to the surface as well. So to think that, you know, somebody might be very anxious, we don't always see that as a flashback, but it can be a type of flashback. So thinking about disclosures— when somebody tells their stories— they're really not neat and tidy, they're often delayed, and details can come out in kind of bits and pieces that aren't linear. This does not make them any less credible, how they come forward and what their presentation is like, and I want to underscore that, that it does not make them less credible. It's just the way that it was encoded in their mind and in their body. So just to wrap that up, the story that comes out in fragments, a story that comes out in tears, and a story that comes out in tangled pieces, isn't a false story. It just hasn't had the space yet to come forward. 

Ann Maree   
Okay, so this is where I can take a brief moment and speak a little bit more personally, because this question, well, first of all, got me into all kinds of trouble, but I think it's a stumbling block in many situations, and that is the theory that we believe the victim, we just we believe their story. And there's all kinds— we could have a whole podcast on that one. But how do we hold that when, what you just said, Julia, when all these things are happening, when it's coming out in fragments, when it's perhaps coming out with anxiety, and maybe it doesn't have all the right pieces/parts to it yet, the narrative, maybe it doesn't make any sense? Which, of course, it probably doesn't make any sense if it's coming out in fragments. And then, you know, you sit down and you hear this story, and you're hearing the person even through sobs, and trying to make sense of it, and they walk away. And you're processing, you're like, how am I going to believe that? How do I believe that? I want to believe them. I want to show them that I have confidence that their story is real, that that's what their experiences were, but then maybe the next time they tell the story, the details might be a little different, or maybe it's years from now, after they've told the story multiple times, and that the details might not be the same. I did consult with several expert contributors offline, not those that necessarily will be recorded. And I really appreciated what this this one said, she said, “she believes her friend when her friend tells her this”— and she's not in a counseling relationship, so it's, you know, this could happen to you too if you're not in a counseling relationship— you might meet somebody who tells you this kind of story, but she believes her, but she also holds loosely to the details of that particular story, and she allows the Lord to clarify, and then she trusts Him amid the whole situation. Now, this was just pretty, I thought, informative, she said, But for most Americans, especially Western Christians, that's it's impossible for us to live with that kind of ambiguity. We assume that stories should be able to be proven and from the get go, right? That's what you're saying. From the perfect victim, should tell the perfect story, and it should be proven from the beginning, and then there's evidence to show that it happened. That's what we were hearing similar on the other podcast. And you can't believe something if you can't see it with your own eyes. And then she reminded me, given our faith, having never seen Christ, not seen Him crucified, nor seen Him risen from the dead, that's just a really, really strange position, and we're going to get to evidence in a minute. But yeah, I just thought I would throw that in as a kind of summary of believing the victim.

Julia   
Yes, no, that's great. I love that reflection as somebody who's walked so intimately with a friend. I mean you hear just in her response, that openness that's reflected in that question, like, what happened to you? And that changes the question, rather than them interacting with a woman and thinking, ‘can I believe her?’ And that's the wrong question. The right question is, ‘what happened to her?’, and the Holy Spirit does reveal in His own time, that stories, if they're given space, if they're given places to be told, become more and more clear over time. And because we hang out in the church space a lot, I think pastors, shepherds feel the pressure to immediately label and diagnose who's the victim, who's the villain. What do we do? How do we handle this? How do we communicate with the congregation? And while those are good and important questions, I think you need to give space to allow the woman to tell her story and to kind of grapple with her own experience and what she's facing, as far as— if I can speak to like the details, like details can change. Even though details change, it doesn't mean that the story changes. So peripheral details can adapt a little bit, and that's normal, but usually the core memory, the core experience, does not change. So if the peripheral details change, that's okay, let that go. The core will always be there. 

Ann Maree   
Yeah, right. The abuse happens, happened— I'm even thinking, well, this is kind of jumping off in a different direction, but what I was thinking was— even if all of the details from the story on the podcast for which we have concerns changed, something horrible happened to this woman. 

Julia
Yes, 1000 times. 

Ann Maree
Yes. Okay, so that was what I was, where I was going with it. It was, that doesn't erase the fact that this woman has been horribly harmed in some way. And so let's spend some time getting together and talking about what happened, like your question, What happened to you? and let the the other things kind of fall by the wayside, even if we have to do it multiple times, even if it doesn't come out in the first or second or third telling of the story. The point being, you're sitting in front of a person who's been hurt, and harmed in some way, and maybe harmed in such a horrible way that she can't even spill out what actually happened. And that's who, that's who you're sitting with, not, you know, not somebody that's been brainwashed… by a book.

Julia   
Right! And our therapeutic practices focus on creating that space for truth to come forward and to kind of work through what has been happening. And when the body is able to relax, when the spirit is able to relax, when the mind can relax, that's when things begin to make sense, and memories start kind of coming together. I kind of think of like a client coming into my into my office and being like, okay, let's just throw those puzzle pieces on the table. And it's going to take some time, but we're going to kind of organize things, and over time, things will begin to make more sense. But that can't happen for somebody who feels like they're a threat or that anything they say is going to be thrown back in their face or they're going to be doubted. 

Kimrey  
I think too it's important to remember that a lot of times abuse is happening over and over again in the same place, and so sometimes it's hard to separate out the individual instances. So some of those details may be different through time, and your brain in trauma mode just kind of scrambles things. And so it may be that the woman is recounting the same occurrence on multiple occasions, and her brain has just scrambled the details into one. So I think it's important to keep the broader picture in mind. Abuse is very rarely a one and done. 

Julia
That's right.

Kimrey
The situation is often repeated in the same place by the same perpetrator over an extended period of time. 

Ann Maree   
Yes. One other thing I wanted to bring up that you mentioned was the setting, the kind of the atmosphere for the room where the therapist is meeting with the client who's going to now tell their story. Because that was mocked a bit in the podcast episode that we were talking about because it was categorized as hypnosis. Not all breathing exercises are hypnotic. [laughs] It's okay to breathe, it's okay to relax, it's okay to relax your body. I mean, even in biblical counseling, we would say that anxiety can be mediated by Scripture, by remembering, by thinking about the things of God. But, you know, remembering His kindness, His patience, His goodness, those kinds of things, even remembering that He promises things and He keeps His promises. Those are, you know, ways of bringing the body to the body, the mind, the spirit, to a calm where they can then speak. And so these are not some psychologist’s co opted ideas. Doesn't make them sinful.

Julia   
No, in fact, we have a nerve in our body that when it's pressed upon, will calm the brain and calm the body. So the Lord designed a specific nerve connected to our part of our brain that's there for survival, to calm down or to calm. So when you're doing belly breathing, it pushes against that nerve and it sends a signal that you're safe.

Ann Maree   
Wonderfully made, right? 

Julia
Yes. 

Ann Maree
One more thing that I did want to mention is with grounding exercises like breathing and calming and relaxing and things like that, in one of our resources— one well, in the only physical resource right now that we have— from Kimrey that she wrote, Remember my Affliction, she brings up the fact that God was already using grounding exercises even in Lamentations by using the Hebrew alphabet to help the Israelites in their lament. And so just reminding us again, grounding exercises and these, these ideas of getting your body to a place where it's able to work together with your mind, work together with your emotions, work together with your story. It's not sinful. 

And Julia, I think we took a little detour from what you were saying, so I want to circle back. Please just continue with your thoughts about how people tell their stories and how we hear their stories.

Julia   
We're Western, we're highly educated, so we're very cognitive, but we don't understand our own cognitive bias, and one of the big cognitive biases is Attribution Error. We fall victim to it all the time. We're so logical, we're so heady, and yet that is leading us astray right, like we're elevating the mental over the physical at great cost. It needs to be both. So when you prioritize the logical, you're going to have some massive blind spots, and you're going to possibly go to the wrong conclusions, like the way that we think is inherently sinful as well. 

So one example of this, and it's a very common example, is maybe a woman who comes forward and begins to speak to her pastor about maybe strange or hurtful things that are happening in her marriage. But she's very vague, as we just learned previously, about trauma and how it comes up. She's very vague. Her speech is pressured, she's anxious, she's overwhelmed. The pastor concludes that she's a bit much, right. He wonders, and probably assumes that she must be a really hard person to live with, because he himself feels overwhelmed in the conversation, so he's picking up on her emotional cues, and he can feel it himself. Then he meets with the husband. The husband is very calm, relatively inoffensive, very logical, so he appears reasonable. The husband talks about having to work hard for his family and feeling very unappreciated in his marriage, and the male pastor can identify with that, because he's the primary breadwinner in his family. The attribution error is that he concludes that the wife's anxiety must be the cause of the marriage problems, rather than a symptom of something else, perhaps a symptom of trauma, the symptom of coercive control that's right underneath the surface. In the podcast that we've been talking about, the host, I think he was mocking a traumatized woman who was sharing part of her story. One of the comments that he made as she was reflecting on this experience, where as a young child, she was forced into a car, and she was in this car accident, and she walked away, and she said, “I survived.” And the podcast host said that she stated the obvious. I think that was difficult to hear, trying to put myself in her experience. To be clear, this wasn't sent directly to her by the podcast host, but I think it reflects what he was trying to say was that her comment of ‘I survived’ was illogical or somehow unnecessary or discredits her, right? So sometimes a survivor does need to verbalize what might seem obvious because they're trying to make sense of it themselves, or they might be feeling shock or belief about what just happened. Her comment, right or wrong, should not disqualify her experience, but the fact that he mocked her seems to me that he was disqualifying what she went through.

Ann Maree   
I agree. I felt the same way.

Julia   
So when we talked about false memory, and specifically the foundation, I just want to reinforce that it wasn't just a different philosophy or a bad science, that they weren't just misguided, they were pretty deliberate, literally hell bent on destroying survivors’ credibility, but then also making sure our perpetrators never face the consequences. So while the rhetoric does still seep into our thinking, into our culture, into our churches, at the end of the day, it's not just about knowledge and facts, it's also a heart issue, and I want to be nuanced about where this disbelief comes from also. So on the one hand, there's the silencing that comes from evil, like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and then there's also, on the other hand, it can be a bit of a mixed bag. I think we're all shaped by what we've been taught to believe and by our experiences. So a lot of us grew up in families or churches where disbelief was just kind of the norm, and maybe we called it something else. Maybe it was sort of disguised as critical thinking, maybe skepticism, maybe even cynicism, and now it just feels like second nature, and sometimes it's not about what we've learned, it's about what we assume, what we want to be true. And that's where this attribution error comes in. Instead of recognizing trauma when we see it, we assume distress is a reflection of the character, rather than what the person has endured. And if we're not careful, we don't just get it wrong. We can unintentionally cause harm, even with an open heart. Sometimes it's not as simple as just saying, knowing better with your head leads to doing better, right? So there are others who know better, and they still choose not to do better, or maybe for a season, they fake it so they still choose to disbelieve or protect power or cover rather than confront. And that's when you know it's no longer about ignorance. Ann Maree, you and I have talked about that a lot. It's about a heart that refuses to see and have the humility to learn and change. 

And so here's where I want to speak directly to anyone listening who has felt repeatedly, repeatedly dismissed or invalidated or exhausted from trying to kind of get somebody to understand them or understand their situation. If you keep trying and you're you feel like you're hitting a brick wall. You're no longer dealing with someone who's willing or open— and that's really sad— an unwinnable battle, I think, and maybe they refuse to see because they need to be right, or it's about control or position, and maybe it's just easier for them to pretend it isn't real. But whatever it is, you don't have to keep engaging. And that I would I would advise to protect yourself and choose your energy wisely, because some people aren't looking for the truth. They're just wanting to avoid it. 

Segment 2: Obstacles in Understanding the Nature of Evidence and Legal Language (Timestamp 00:59:18)

Ann Maree    
We're going to take a turn now and talk about the second concern we had with that other podcast, and the second obstacle, and that is obstacles in understanding the nature of evidence and legal language. So not everyone is attuned to the type of language used in a court of law, and when the terms are simply presented without explanation or qualification, they can be misinterpreted and sometimes seriously so. On the podcast for which we have these concerns, as mentioned, there were a couple specific events the host narrated. The first a story that revolved around a woman who, supposedly, via hypnosis with suggested false memories, said she experienced satanic ritual abuse. The other event involved a group of parents and children who accused the preschool staff of the same. In the second event, a lengthy, multiple year, high profile trial ensued with multiple witnesses, questionable or unconvincing evidence and a companion media frenzy. The way these things were communicated on the podcast implied particular directions. So we want to clarify some specific facts and some of the legal language that was used in that podcast and that you might encounter in any report of abuse situation. So Kimrey, have being a student in law, like we've said, none of us are experts, but we do have some information, and we know who to go to to get it, is going to interact with us on some of those concepts. So Julia, thank you. Thank you for all of that has she's been addressing a lot of the challenges that the abuse victims face in our communities and in our churches. So can we now? Can we, Kimrey we talk about the intersection of these challenges with the court system?

Kimrey   
Absolutely, I will share as much as my baby 1L self can.

Ann Maree    
1L is first year law, for those who don't know, but she's a genius, so she's catching on quickly. One situation I've seen several times is that charges against an abuser will be filed and then later dropped. Several times I've seen pastors email the congregation celebrating the fact that charges were dropped and then welcoming the abuser back into the congregation. And I can't tell you more than one time this has happened. So explain some of the misconceptions that are happening here?

Kimrey    
Yeah, I've seen this as well and and I think it's based on a lack of understanding of our legal system. I choose to see it as a good faith misunderstanding. 

First, just explaining the court system a little bit. In a criminal case, prosecutors are the ones who ultimately decide what charges to bring against a defendant. Our criminal justice system is organized around statutes, and these statutes dictate elements that prosecutors must prove to the jury. So this is a silly example from a mock case I recently did revolving around a burglary charge. So in this fake jurisdiction, the statute required three elements. One, it required an entry, it required an intent to commit a felony or a theft, and it required that the building being entered be a dwelling. All of these things have to be present for this particular action to be classified as a burglary. So in other words, if any one of these elements is missing, say the building isn't a dwelling, but it's a warehouse, then there's no burglary charge. So a prosecutor bears what's called the burden of proof to the jury, unless the jury is satisfied that the prosecutor has proven each one of these elements beyond a reasonable doubt, then they cannot convict the defendant, and this relies on evidence. So sometimes a prosecutor will charge a person and hope more evidence will continue to come to light before trial, but later in the process, the prosecutor may realize they just don't have enough evidence for a jury to convict, and when that happens, they drop the charges. Now this can mean one of two things: either to state the obvious, there's no evidence because the defendant didn't commit the crime, or the crime really did happen, but for whatever reason, there's just not evidence available. And this could happen for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the defendant's just really good at covering their tracks. Perhaps it's been a long time since the crime happened and a key witness is now dead. Or perhaps the victims are traumatized, children whose story is fragmented, like Julia has been talking about, which is confusing to a jury when it's not linear.

Julia    
What would there be other reasons, maybe procedural, why charges might get dropped?

Kimrey   
Unfortunately, yes, this can happen on a couple of fronts. There can be procedural errors in law enforcement or in the district attorney's office. So what would that look like? So on the law enforcement side, it may be that evidence wasn't properly collected, maybe there was mishandled forensic evidence, maybe there are chain of custody issues, or maybe there's constitutional issues. Maybe they didn't have a warrant when they obtained the evidence, and other procedural errors like this make the case legally unviable. On the district attorney side, there are also a lot of legal technicalities. Get this, even down to the font you use on reports submitted to the courts. If you miss a deadline because you submitted the wrong font, too bad, so sad, the court's not going to hear your case. Statute of limitations, improperly filed reports like we just mentioned, or procedural mistakes can all lead to case dismissal.

Ann Maree   
So quote, unquote, ‘charges have been dropped’ says nothing about guilt or innocence, and more about the volume and quality of the evidence, right? 

Kimrey   
Exactly. So let's say new evidence did come to light later, charges can be refiled.

Ann Maree   
How is that different from an acquittal? 

Kimrey   
So an acquittal is what happens if the case goes to trial and the state loses. In other words, the jury does not find enough evidence to convict and returns with a not guilty verdict. At this point, legally, it's game over for the state. Charges cannot be refiled because of the double jeopardy protection included in the Fifth Amendment.

Ann Maree   
Yeah, and I think this is where we get stuck with this episode. It's different. Not guilty isn't not guilty, right? 

Kimrey   
Here again, it comes down to evidence. It comes down to the jury did not feel like there was sufficient evidence for them to say beyond a reasonable doubt that the prosecution had proved every element.

Ann Maree   
But it's different from exoneration. 

Kimrey    
Yes, so exoneration is another big, fancy legal word, and it's also a separate situation. In this situation, the jury found the defendant guilty, but later new evidence came to light, proving that the state charged the wrong person. This comes up a lot with DNA technology that's available now that maybe wasn't available two or three decades ago, and when this happens, the person is exonerated of any wrongdoing. Sometimes it also occurs on technical issues with the trial process, but DNA is the one we see most frequently. 

Julia   
So you're saying the takeaway being when charges are dropped, it does not necessarily mean the defendant is innocent.

Kimrey   
Yes, which in abuse cases means discernment and precaution, especially in a church setting, is still needed to protect the vulnerable.

Ann Maree   
You mentioned briefly that evidence may be lacking even though the abuse really did occur. Can we talk a little bit more about why this might be the case? 

Kimrey   
Yes, so it does not necessarily mean that no evidence exists, though sometimes that's the case. It often just means there's not enough to proceed with charges. 

Ann Maree   
So then what does that look like? 

Kimrey
Okay, buckle up! It takes a variety of forms. 

First, let's look at weak evidence. This may be a he said, she said, situation, as we know, evil does not like operating in the open. So often there are no cooperating witnesses. Often there is no physical proof. One perpetrator I've had the unfortunate experience of dealing with knew exactly where the line was and made sure his abuse left no witnesses or marks. That's normal. 

Another category is circumstantial evidence. So circumstantial evidence can be used in court, but it's suggestive evidence, it doesn't directly prove wrongdoing, and here again, it goes back to is it enough to satisfy the burden of proof? 

A third category is diary or journal entry, so they may be useful in establishing patterns, but they're often not sufficient as standalone proof in court, because it's still one witness’s word, there's here again, still not cooperating evidence. A lot of times too, judges are concerned more with the impact of these patterns on children than they are the women, which is really unfortunate. So if you have children, make that a priority in your record keeping. But here again, that discriminates against the woman who maybe doesn't have children and is in an abusive relationship. 

So that's a challenge, and then the biggest and final challenge is delayed reporting. So the longer the delay, the harder it may be to collect forensic evidence or find corroborating witnesses. As Julia mentioned earlier, a lot of victims don't come forward for decades, and it's simply hard to build a case at that point, even if the statute of limitations is still open, and a lot of times that's the biggest barrier. Our legislators put a limit, called a statute of limitations, on how long a crime can be chargeable after the crime occurs. So it may be five years or 10 years, it must be tried within that period, and basically that's just to keep the system from getting more bogged down than it already is. So here again, like we've been saying, lack of evidence often means that the burden of proof is not met, not necessarily that the abuse did not occur.

Ann Maree   
Yeah, and this was similar between our podcast and the one we're talking about, photos were mentioned, and of course, no one had those photos. No one has those photos in our storytellers case, either. That's evidence, but it's not in our possession. It's not in her possession, right? It doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So, yeah, you have to be very careful with your language. I'm getting the sense of in the legal realm, and we need to understand that as helpers, what those things mean. And you can come back to this episode. Often take notes, look at the transcript. 

Okay, so another issue I've seen Kimrey is often, if a victim or witness withdraws their testimony, the automatic assumption is that they withdrew because they've been lying. Right? Is that the only reason someone might withdraw?

Kimrey   

No, it's a reason. It's definitely not the only reason. I think first, it's important to remember, the process of going to court is strenuous in its most favorable light. I don't know. Have you all read Rachel Denhollander’s book? What is a Girl Worth? She mentions this just how grueling it was, and she was a lawyer, and it took up space in her book, just talking about how long and hard that process was. And a victim may decide they just don't have the strength or the will to continue, or they may lose faith in the system. I mean, we talked about this earlier, with Julia having to tell her clients, right 5% is the conviction rate, even if you have amazing evidence. This is particularly an issue with sex trafficking— losing faith in the system, because your judges, your attorneys or your law enforcement officers may have been buyers. This is a slightly different but similar case in Kentucky that's still developing, where a judge was shot in chambers by a local sheriff, and there have been reports that this may have been tied to sexual exploitation of female defendants. I personally know a former district attorney who is fired for swapping sex for reduced charges with a female defendant. So if this is taking place in chambers, one can only imagine where else this is taking place, but the places you would normally hope to find justice or protection still may not be safe for a victim, so those are other reasons why someone may withdraw or may even come forward in the first place.

Julia   
Yeah, the part that I dislike probably the most about my work is, is when we get into the legal system, right? Because as soon as you draw a line in the sand, some line in the sand with a perpetrator or set boundaries, he escalates. And then will use the legal system because it's flawed, and because as a system, it it's built there's built in control, right… in the legal system, and so he will kind of hook and use that for his benefit to legally abuse his victim. So there's that kind of fear that the victim has like, well, What's next? What's right around the corner is he going to accuse me of XYZ with the kids. He's going to use the legal system to tie her in financially, so she has to spend all of this money. And we know that abuse victims when they're separated or divorced, that their income goes down, whereas the perpetrators income goes way high. He's not that affected by it. So there's, gosh, there's just so many reasons why victims decide to say, “hold up, stop or I can't do this.”

Kimrey   
Yep, and I will say I am encouraged in my law school class. There seems to be a lot more trauma awareness and a lot more abuse awareness. So I think generationally, yes, there are good changes coming, but the wheels of justice turn really slow, very slow, and it all depends on your judge, really. We have a judge in our jurisdiction who understands family violence, and it's incredible to watch her work, because she will put safeguards in place that victims haven't even asked for, because she knows. And so you can find these judges, they do exist, and hopefully more is as we learn more in the clinical space, we'll be able to apply more in the court system. 

Julia   
We need this, this overlap of specialty, so that we can help one another and grow in our education awareness, like those judges, that judge that you mentioned, who has that kind of awareness, like, where does she get that education?

Kimrey   
I have no idea. I would love to ask her sometime. I don't know if it's just years on the bench and seeing the patterns, if she has a background or extra training that she's invested in. That's a great question I should ask her next time.

Julia   
We need advocates in all spaces.

Ann Maree   
Amen. We need advocates. Yes, all over. Yep, yes. Okay, and so I have, I have so much experience with people, women mostly, not pursuing a case. I, to be honest, it's one of my recommendations, because I'm very protective, and I I know that they're going to get hurt, so it's very wrong. I think that we just automatically assume they must have been lying, therefore they didn't pursue legal action, and that just doesn't get at the complexity of everything that's going on, right?

Kimrey   
No, and none of it serves as proof that the abuse didn't happen here again, especially if we're talking about helpers or pastors. Issues like this demand a really high level of wisdom and expertise and training and protocol. We know that evil likes to play games in the shadows, and honestly, I mean, it's enough to make anyone crazy? I feel crazy sometimes sorting these things out for other people, and that should, I think, give us incredible empathy for victims.

Julia   
Yes, yeah, that's a wonderful point. We need you, Kimrey.

Ann Maree   
What a gift. 

Just a quick summary here. So hearing the words not guilty does not mean they didn't commit the crime, that there wasn't enough evidence, doesn't mean that the evidence that there was didn't also show that there was a crime. The burden of proof is greater.

Kimrey   
The burden of proof is greater. Or you just had a jury who wasn't willing to convict. I mean, your jury is 12 members of the community who aren't necessarily trained in this anymore than the average layperson. Yeah. So you, your prosecutor can have a slam dunk case, and the jury for whatever reason— maybe this goes back to attribution error— decides, “nope, we don't, we don't feel like we have enough to send this guy away to prison.”

Ann Maree   
And then I can, I can just imagine, if the case has been in and out of the court system for 10 plus years, just how much that jury might say, “Okay, we are done with this. Don't have it yet? Done.” Yeah, so there's just a lot going on in the background. The words don't always convey the actual conclusions. And so we've got to be very careful, I think. 

And I also want to just kind of this be the starting conversation for people out there who are thinking about reporting their abuse to take into consideration, and we're going to do another, hopefully another episode similarly, about reporting stories such as the one that we're going to be airing this season.

Segment 3: Obstacles in Comprehending the Depth of Human Depravity and Lived Experiences (Timestamp 01:18:17)

Ann Maree 
One final concern that we had, well, one that we're going to talk about in this episode was the dismissal of, a potential for, and the prevalence of evil. And our first episode of this season, this year, with Dr Farrow, kind of addressed that. So I refer the listener back to that episode for more information about evil and its prevalence. But for this episode, we're talking about the podcast most specifically what we'll be touching on in the 2025 season, similarly to what they were discussing in their podcast, evil the reports of ritualistic, cultish, and satanic abuse. And our dear friend Kimrey here reminded us of CS Lewis and his quote when he said, “Humanity falls into two equal and opposite errors concerning the devil. Either they take him altogether too seriously, or they don't take him seriously enough.” And so on that podcast that we're talking about and expressing our concerns with, we would definitely say that the satanic influence and impact was seriously under-recognized, and at multiple times it was entirely dismissed, if not mocked. 

The overarching situation from the concerning podcast was again the impact of the Satanic Panic in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The specific events discussed on that podcast were a woman who, quote, unquote, ‘remembered her supposed repressed memories’ of satanic ritual abuse, and a group of parents and children accusing the teachers and employees in their school of the same. Anyone I've spoken with who has listened to that podcast concluded the same thought that we all have here at Help[H]er: The host did not believe in satanic ritual abuse. The quote, unquote ‘evidence’ appeared to be missing, if not completely non-existent. Now we've already mentioned the anomaly that a group of people who placed their belief and faith on a non visible to us event, Christ's death and resurrection, demand evidence in one of the most difficult crimes to have evidence for, that being abuse. But given that the FBI found no links to over 12,000 claims of satanic ritualistic abuse between the 80s and 90s. What are we to conclude? That it didn't happen? Well, maybe. That the evidence was lacking that it happened? Oh sure. That it couldn't happen? Not so fast. What can we say we do know about Satan, and what do we know about what he does? And then where do we get that information? The extent of information regarding the demonic realm, and the study of demonology is ultimately the study of Satan, but the information is found in the Scriptures, and it's comprehensive and complete. It tells us it's complete for what we need to know. Dr Keith Evans, having studied demonology for his PhD dissertation, said that quote, “if we think, in the 21st century American Western Christianity that demonic realities are not part of our Christian experience, it's probably because we're not reading the same book.” Unquote. In fact, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. John tells us that in 1 John 3:8, and if his work is not abusive, what do we think Satan is actually doing? One of the problems with that is that these kinds of abuses are rare, and this is information from Julia too, by the way, although our storyteller and the experts from our season would all agree it is more frequent than we would like to know, but because it's rare, and because of both the high level of secrecy and the means of control used, it is difficult to study.We have much more evidence for ritualistic abuse than satanic ritualistic abuse. When you put the term Satanic in front of abuse, you lose people. But we do have documented evidence of ritualistic abuse with bizarre, sadistic practices as organized crime and sex traffic rings. One author has said quote, “when the term satanic ritual abuse is replaced with the term extreme sadistic abuse, these practices suddenly appear more credible.” I think it's dangerous to assume that reports of occult or ritual abuse are products of mass hysteria or political or cultural movements rather than real events. If you look at the historical precedent, these types of cases extend far beyond the 1990s and the United States. Mass hysteria can influence how these reports are responded to with overreaction, skepticism or sensationalism, but that does not determine the veracity. Reports shouldn't be dismissed as solely a social panic. 

So on this section of the episode here today, I'm going to just start playing some quotes from our expert contributors, and then Julia, myself and Kimrey can interact on them a little bit. Let's just see how far we get. This is again, Dr Gingrich, and she's talking about trauma a little bit in PTSD, and why we don't talk about some of these things, some of this evil.

Dr Gingrich recording 
You know, I think the good news is that PTSD, I think, is being more commonly recognized. And, you know, there's less denial about war vets, perhaps struggling with PTSD or victims of natural disasters. You know, there are so many that are happening these days, so that's that's the good news. It's kind of more like crisis kinds of situations. But I think it's still the relational trauma, the chronic relational trauma and and child abuse, that there's something about that that people just don't want to recognize. They don't want to believe that there is such evil in the world, and that's apart from even the extreme kind of organized, ritualized abuse that you know, our storyteller talked about just regular as you said— not that there's really such a thing— but, but incest, you know, child abuse, that's just there. I think people just don't want to acknowledge that we live in a world where other people, adults that are supposed to keep kids safe actually commit atrocities, harming these children and adults too, in so many horrible ways. We just even as Christians who know that sin has invaded our human condition, I think we still don't want to really recognize aspects of sin.

Ann Maree 
All right, I'd love to hear from both of your perspectives, even in your experience right now, about why you think we just don't want to talk about it. We don't want to recognize it, we don't want to see it, we don't want to deal with it. We don't want to respond to it, all the things, and it being evil, the evil that produces a trauma so bad, so hard, that people suffer many, many years.

Kimrey  
I think there's a variety of reasons we don't want to see it. One, it's overwhelming. And sometimes I think if we recognize evil for what it is, we have to deal with that. And it's easier to just not deal with it. It would disrupt my life too much. I think too when we recognize evil, we have to do something about it, which, here again, disrupts our lives. And finally, it's messy. Recognizing evil is messy and it shows the messiness and in the world and in others and in ourselves and as Westerners, it doesn't fit into our nice, neat categories and so… and it's a commitment to walk with someone for the long haul through that messiness. 

Julia  
Oh, absolutely. I think it challenges the way we think. As we've pointed out in this podcast. Our logical brains can't wrap our minds around how something like this could happen, and it starts to poke holes in our own worldviews, and even the worldview that like the church is safe, or that our communities are safe, or schools are safe, yeah, so I think there's part of that too. Worldviews are really hard to change, we're very bought in and committed and married to what we know to be true and what we feel to be true, even despite evidence otherwise.

Kimrey  
And to add to that, Julia, what our experience tells us is true.

Julia  
That's right, which is part of what forms our worldview. Yeah, yeah.

Ann Maree  
Yeah. Dr Wilder did mention too, it's like, how do you address evil? You've got a job, and you work 50 hours a week, you've got kids to you come home to to take care of, and, yeah, all the things. But I do believe probably the greater pressure is that we don't want it to disrupt our— I'm not gonna say lives, because I want to say more to that— we don't want it to disrupt what we believe about people, about how they should, how they act. I don't know. I maybe it's that whole Christian, Christian environment is so vulnerable because we believe the best about people, and we forgive and all that. And so this really disrupts even that thinking, What does love look like if evil exists? What does forgiveness look like if evil has been committed against somebody? and it's going to stretch us, and it's also going to stretch us in relationships to one another. Anyway, that's my two cents. 

I think it might be important before we go any further, though, just to clear up the air on some of the words that we've been using and some of the definitions, I guess, that we would agree to. 

Cult: So cult. There is a difference between cult and occult, but there are some similarities. And so I'm pulling this definition from a Christianity Today article called “Escaping High Control Religious Groups,” which was an interview in the magazine on the online magazine in December of ‘23 and so CT asked the question, “evangelicals often think of the term cult as a group that deviates from biblical Orthodox Christianity, like a group that denies the divinity of Jesus. What is your approach?” And the expert answered, “most of us working in this area prefer a more sociological definition that defines a cult as a group that controls, coerces or abuses a person's rights and freedoms. So for instance, this kind of control can also happen within orthodox belief. For example, a church can be doctrinally correct while still controlling members, legalistically, using guilt and fear.” Okay? So quick again, defines a cult as a group that controls, coerces or abuses a person's rights and freedoms. And like I said, that can be either a cult or the occult. 

Satanic: Okay, how about the word satanic? What are we talking about when we're talking about satanic? Well, the Bible speaks about demonic frequently. In fact, the Bible is full of stories of Satan and his minions, activity from cover to cover, providing us with what we need, as 2 Timothy tells us for our instruction. If we are to resist the devil and stand against him, we need to know what he does and what he's capable of doing. Again, listen to this from Dr Keith Evans quote, “the activity of the demonic is everyone's situated reality. And by situated reality, I mean it is our situation in this world until we are glorified.” end quote. Think about the reference to Genesis 3:15. What do we think it means when God tells the serpent, the devil? Quote, “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.” What does enmity look like? Or, how about when Paul tells us in Ephesians 6, that our battle is not against flesh and blood. How does that manifest itself? Of course, we know enough about total depravity and the impact on the flesh and on the world, but what does that depravity look like when we're talking about the devil? If his mission is to destroy and if women are in the crosshairs, and if Satan is still permitted to sift as he did with Simon and Job, whether directly or indirectly. What do we think this will look like? What can be assumed about demons just from Luke 11:24, through 26 is that they are unclean. They can go in and out of bodies. They can travel. They seek comfort. They can talk. They can make decisions. They can distinguish from different places. They seek company with each other. They are wicked, and they seek to control men and women.

Ritualistic: And then ritualistic— I want to say actually, that the best definition and examples that I heard was from our storyteller, and you're going to hear that in episode seven on May 13—But I'm just going to briefly summarize some of the things that she said. She said any ritual, “whether good or bad, is a deliberate, planned activity designed to symbolize, express and reinforce beliefs.” And so as you're hearing those words, you can even think there are Christian rituals like communion, there's familial rituals like a birthday celebration or a graduation or weddings, and all of them have similar, you know, every wedding has a certain thing in it. Every birthday has a certain part to it. You know, you sing Happy Birthday, maybe you give presents, which means that all rituals, whether they're good or bad, they follow a script. And there's variations in the script, but there's a lot of similarities. When the wedding happens, a marriage has taken place, so that's that's going to be a part of the script. Rituals are not random or ad hoc. They're planned ahead, and they typically involve more than one person. So maybe one person is graduating, but there's others around the person in the family, or there's classmates that have graduated with them, so there's more than one person. So that I just wanted to demystify some of those words. I'm not going to get into abuse. I think everybody in our audience, at least has some form of understanding of what abuse is and is not. 

I'm just going to play this cue from Dr Wilder, and then we can interact on what he said.

Dr Wilder recording  
And it's also, you know, you can't lure new prey by looking dangerous, you have to lure new prey by looking as desirable as possible. 

Ann Maree 
So, okay, so one of the implications on that podcast that we're concerned with was that they thought it was suggested that satanic activity might be well hidden. And that was, there was kind of a chuckle around that, or mocking, because the theory is that participants in satanic activity would be really good at hiding what they do from society or authorities or even from the people who live in close proximity to one another, like members in a church or whatever. It didn't say all that, but the implication was that's a stretch. ‘You can't believe that surely there'd be evidence again, right? But that they'd be careful not to leave any evidence’ didn't even seem like it might be a possibility. So Thomas Brooks, in Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, writes, “Satan knows that he would present sin in its own nature and dress. The soul would rather fly from it than yield to it. And therefore he presents it unto us, not in its own proper colors, but painted and gilded over with a name and show of virtue that we may be more easily overcome by it and take the more pleasure in committing it. “So, yeah, the potential that Satan's devices are being well hidden. I think we can say that's pretty possible.

Kimrey  
Well, and I think we know this just from our experience working with abusers, right? I mean, here again, going back to what Julia was saying about attribution error, the abusive husband doesn't reel the pastor in by looking scary, dangerous or describing what he does to his wife at home, he looks normal and put together and attractive, even from a social standpoint. And so it's here again, abusers all come out of the same playbook, and the master of that playbook is Satan. 

Julia 
The reasons why victims don't want to come forward is because they know their spouse is very well liked, and he can work a room, and he can woo people in certain ways. And whereas, you know, she might be grappling with her own sense of isolation, because he's worked it in such a way where she's cut off from relationships, and so she's wondering, like, who is really for me? So he there he is, maybe in this position, or position at work, or, you know, whatever it may be, where he's elevated and she is devalued and alone.

Ann Maree  
Yeah, I love that you guys keep bringing this back to other abused examples. We keep saying over and over that our storyteller has a concentrated version, but if you pay attention, you can hear the same patterns, and you can hear the same symptoms of the other types of abuse that we've been hearing more readily in the church. This also should demystify the types of abuse that we're talking about in our season this year, and also open our eyes to it. If we've noticed the patterns in domestic abuse sexual assault, we can now notice it in other types of abuse. I asked Dr Wilder about this, so let me play what he said.

Dr Wilder recording
Well, let's see. I guess the you know, the logic behind it is what I would probably recommend people understand. You know, the think it's Saint Paul that says, I don't want you to be ignorant of the enemy's devices. So, you know, how, how does he think? How does this, how does this rascal work? Because that's what, actually, how I ended up being in charge of it was, you know, at our clinic, dealing with the problem was that I'd grown up in South America, and I can remember being maybe seven, eight years old, and being told by my friends, here's how you make a contract with the devil, and here's what you have to do as well, well known and openly discussed in those cultures and the practices that are used by cults to intimidate people, basically the same ones that are used by drug cartels or by Putin in governments and stuff like that.

Ann Maree  
And then I would add to that in speaking with another expert on this topic, and her answer in that, why would we believe that what happens in South America, and she wasn't talking specifically to Dr Wilder, but or Africa, why wouldn't we not believe that it happens in the United States? Satan isn't bound by geographical borders, and there's no reason to believe people in a different country are more evil or prone to the power of demons than we are. Speak to that a little bit. I mean, we're reticent to recognize evil. Why do we think that in our country, we're much more civilized and we wouldn't, wouldn't even think about worshiping Satan? 

Kimrey  
One I think it's a blessing of maybe a heritage. But blessings can sometimes blind us to realities. I think you see this a lot in majority cultures as well. It's hard to see, hard to see reality clearly when only one narrative has shaped, here again, what Julia would say your worldview.

Julia  
And we know that Satan is cunning, so he will change form, and he will change his game plan. And you know, the the battle tactics aren't the same as they are in South America and Africa and the Middle East. They're going to look a little bit different. And he, he can do it in such a way where he hooks into our own built in idols and structures and systems.

Ann Maree  
Again, from Brooks quote, “his first device is to destroy the great and honorable of the earth by working them to make it their business, to seek themselves, to seek how to elevate themselves, to raise themselves, to enrich themselves, to secure themselves, as you may see in Pharaoh, Ahab, Rehoboam, Jeroboam, Absalom, Joab, Haman and others, self seeking, like the deluge overthrows the whole world. But were the Scripture silent? Our own experiences do abundantly evidence this way and method of Satan to destroy the great and the honorable, to bury their souls in hell by drawing them wholly to mind themselves and only to mind themselves. And in all things, to mind themselves and always to mind themselves.” It's just so interesting to me. I've read this before on the podcast, but it's interesting who Brooks names for his examples here. What were some of the sins of the men he named the ones who were seeking for themselves? Well, they worshiped false gods. They promoted false gods. They did so in the temple. They murdered. They murdered children, they murdered babies, they murdered pregnant women. They established cults. They sought out male cult prostitutes. For what we wonder, they raped their siblings, which is incest, and they sought to exterminate entire cultures. So again, I'm wondering, what if anything has changed?

The final question that I just thinking about the podcast that we've been talking about and. And kind of the dismissal of the concepts that we've been talking about, the theories that we've been talking about, and just kind of summing it up by saying, Okay, if all of the things that we heard on that podcast were made up, brainwashed, not true. Couldn't happen, no evidence, all the things. Then my question would be, what then does Christianity, the church, we think evil looks like? What do we think satanic worshipers do? Even just Dr Wilder bringing up Putin. How can we look at the level of evil we are seeing today in the news in Israel, in Gaza with Putin, with Ukraine? How can we look at that and not conclude that those who give themselves over to Satan are involved in even darker, sadistic evil. Dan Allender, when we had him on, said evil— let me, let me play that.

Dan Allender recording 
In that state, the sheriff and a handful of others are operating a cultic structure where phenomenal, inconceivable harm is being perpetrated. You know, when you solicit that reality, when you actually call it forth and say, evil exists, and it's, I mean, this is so redundant, I don't know what to say, and it's evil. And evil has no conscience. It delights in harm. It plans and sets up inconceivable cruelty for a human being to suffer, and it's happening all over the world. So we live in a world of war, but most of us do not want to go to Kmart or Costco or wherever, and no, it's a war zone. We want war zones to be in Sudan or in Gaza or other worlds, but not ours. So the reality that this is true, not just today. it's true 100 years ago or 100 years from now. You know, America could collapse into a structure comparable to Nazi Germany. Of course, you begin to own up to that. It's too terrifying. So because of our fear, and because, actually, we've spent much of our life escaping the reality of our own heartache, then we create a pretend world where evil does certain things, but it's usually far away.

Ann Maree  
Right. So while the frequency of satanic, cultish and ritualistic abuse might be rare, it is universal. No part of this world is exempt. But also, I think it's fair to summarize again by saying that it should be unbelievable. We should be in awe and shocked. It should shock us. It is warped, it is perverse, it is hidden. It is happening in the unseen world, and it's a war that world is protected by the father of lies, who is hell bent on protecting his territory. And so again, why would we be surprised in hearing anyone share their story with any of these elements in it?

Kimrey  
And I think too, it's important, even if everything mentioned in that other podcast is as they presented it— it didn't happen, it was a false report, it was mass hysteria— that situation does not invalidate the existence of these types of abuse. Just because, here again, we talked about this at the beginning, just because a person comes forward with a false claim does not invalidate the 97 to 99% of claims that are true. 

Ann Maree 
Thank you both for giving us a little bit of insight into your wisdom and your particular fields, and in having had your own experience in hearing stories like this, meeting people like our storyteller and others. I hope it was helpful for our audience to hear some of our concerns with the podcast that we heard, some of our concerns in being very clear in how we now present our story, which is the next episode on April 8. I do hope that what we've given you today will give you another, yet another framework for how to listen and ask good questions. We're not saying you can't ask any questions about what you're hearing, and we've asked the questions ourselves throughout this process, and that's okay, it's just we're hoping that we could give you something to land on. If that's the case, as far as it relates to these very important things to us, the care of the victim, the victim's eyes wide open, I should say, in entering into any kind of reporting, but also clarity for those hearing some of the results that might happen if they do, and then also just clearly having your own doctrine, if you will, of evil, of satanic worship, of satanic abuse of sadistic, abuse of ritual, of cult, any of those things. If you're in the church, that's the place to have one of those doctrines. Our secular counselors are not going to have them. Now I'm not saying that about our Christian counselors. And you know what? Sadly, our Christian counselors right now, our Dr Wilders, Gingrichs and Allenders have a more robust doctrine of this kind of evil than we do in the biblical counseling world, for sure.

Kimrey  
And I would like to say too, when I started encountering this topic, I was like, I don't want to go here. I don't want to know. And the Lord has just solidified for me His glory and goodness and beauty through it. And so don't shy away from it, because it's hard— embrace it as an opportunity to discover new layers of who God is, and in doing so, discover new layers of His heart for a world that has dwelt in deep darkness that He came to save as a light.

Ann Maree  
Oh, that's a good point. I think our storyteller does that well. She directs our attention. Otherwise, I don't, I don't know. It would have been too hard. I don't know for me to have heard, if not, for how she, she shone the light of who God was, who God is. And I think we all heard that in Jesus is My Captain. And you'll hear more of it as the season progresses.

Julia  
Yeah, you can't listen to her story without seeing the sovereignty of God and His Majesty better than you knew than you saw it before.

Ann Maree  
Amen, yes, absolutely, yeah. And I think that's a beautiful way to end this episode, is in putting the blinders on and not allowing ourselves to see the very, very dark of the darkness, we are going to miss the light, right? 

Thank you both. That's all for today. Don't forget to join us on April 8, when we release the first story in our season. But also April 7, when Julia and I will give you this sweet little bonus of how to listen and take care of yourself and also the storyteller while you're listening.

[closing]

Safe to Hope is a production of HelpHer. Our Executive Producer is Ann Maree Goudzwaard. Safe to Hope is written and mixed by Ann Maree and edited by Ann Maree and Helen Weigt. Music in this season is ‘Cinematic Slow Sad Piano | Soundtrack’ by OpenMusicList, licensed via Pixabay. We hope you enjoyed this episode in the Safe To Hope podcast series.