CLOSER LOOK, E2: When Memories Return And Puzzles Are Solved

afterlife presented by pair of thieves. I'm Scarlett Estves and I play CLO, a girl forced to

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forward slash Nightmares. Sometimes the past doesn't come back as a thought. It comes back as a neighborhood, a street sign, a familiar turn. And suddenly your body knows where you are before your mind can even catch up. There's roughly two years ago, almost exactly actually two years ago.

“My family, wherever ever talked about the situation, we just kind of, it's almost like one life”

ended and the other life began. There's never been an discussion about it, growing up, nothing.

So we never been back to that neighborhood and about two years ago, I wound up getting a referral through my company to go to the house in August. I took the referral, went out there, not realizing exactly where it was until I drove into the neighborhood. drove into the neighborhood, all of a sudden, everything just hit me. I saw my house. I saw everyone around. I could vividly recall things that happened to people that were there.

All the way back to the childhood all over again. I wouldn't say necessarily debilitating at that time, but it takes your breath away for a few minutes and then you say, "K, I'm a grown-up. I can do this. I'm going to go do my job." So I went and talked to the guy at this house, while I'm listing the house, so I wound up having to return to the property multiple times. And each time those emotions compounded and compounded and compounded until it just made me cry.

I probably cried that day, I cried every day, I went back, just things that again, you kind of shove to the back and you kind of go on with life. That's the sound of memories returning after decades of silence. And if you've listened to the previous episode, you already know where I stand on that phrase "kids are resilient." Sure, they might be in some areas, but resilience isn't proof that they weren't harmed by a predator's

actions. It's only proof that the survivor somehow adapted. I'm Mike King and this is Gardens of Evil, a closer look inside the garden. When memories return, and puzzles are solved. Now before we go any further, a quick content note. We're going to be talking about child sexual abuse, coercive control, and cult dynamics. We're going to explore how silence can become a survival strategy, and how memories can remain buried for years, not because the survivors are hiding the truth,

but because their minds learned that staying quiet was the safest way to endure what was happening to them. We're also going to look at what happens when those memories return, and how they can ripple through relationships and responsibilities. We're going to talk about another painful reality that

many survivors experience, because when they finally do reach out for help, the therapy itself

becomes another layer of injury, not because the therapy was harmful, but because the disbelief

and to the people who believed, who defended, and who protected them. Several years ago,

“I had the opportunity to meet with the survivors of the Zion society. Now they were seeing each other”

for the first time as well, and it was like hearing the sound of a bunch of locked drawers opening,

one memory at a time. Now in the last episode, you heard Don say that she didn't remember Amber being in that cold. It actually made perfect sense since Don was very young, and Amber was moved from the group not long after, but then Amber mentioned something ordinary. It was a memory that she had of curling Don's hair one morning, trying to make that wiggly little child's hair look perfect for the cult leader. She accidentally burned Don on the neck with the curling iron,

and boom, a small detail, but that tiny detail stirred a shift of emotion in the room.

Suddenly, Don's memory of that moment jumped into view. The connection was restored, and the

“emotions burst in a moment that I will never forget. Traumatic memories seem to return at the”

oddest times. Sometimes it's through sensations, a place or a sound, a smell, or a daily routine. For Anessa, it happened with a turn into a neighborhood. For others, might be the smell of mint, a voice, or a phrase. Curtains moving in the breeze, or or for Don, a burn from a curling iron, a small cue that unlocked an entire chain of associated memories. And as I watched this unfold, I thought of the controversy I witnessed in the 1990s when I was investigating ritual crimes

for the Attorney General's Office. It was the satanic panic era when suggestive questioning, repeated prompts, and a gender-driven therapy sometimes contaminated memories.

“Back then, I learned early that if you're going to handle delayed recalls ethically,”

you can't feed the witness with information. Instead, you listen intently, and then you try to validate what's being said with other reliable forms of evidence. That's a discipline that I've tried to maintain with these survivors when they came back to me decades later asking to please tell me what happened to me. They certainly deserved to know the truth, but I didn't start

by reading my police reports to them. Instead, I listened as they described what they remembered first.

You see, on many occasions, the memories being shared by these survivors mirrored the same statement they told me some 30 years earlier in that Children's Advocacy Center. In some cases, they actually repeated almost word for word, what they told me when they were six-year-old, eight-year-old, 12-year-old children. It was remarkable. And to better understand this phenomenon, I thought I'd reach out to a friend, Dr. Judy Hoel, to help me answer why this is occurring.

Dr. Hoel is a triple-board certified licensed, clinical forensic neural psychologist. She's also a tenured professor at Pepperdine University. Dr. Hoel, when a survivor has a moment where one small sensory detail becomes the pitcher snap that brings everything into focus. What's really going on in the brain and in the nervous system? Well, a lot of people don't realize that oftentimes people who have been through extreme trauma, their memory formation is interrupted

during that time. And there's a lot of research about this and there's a lot of hypotheses about why this is, but this is why sometimes trauma survivors will explain that they don't recall certain details that feel like they're part of the big picture, maybe people expect them to recall it, but they'll recall the texture on the perpetrator's shirt or something that seems really mundane, like something they noticed in the corner of the room. And again, because their

memory formation is so disrupted, it's hard to know what their recall is going to be like when you're asking them about what happened. And there is a theory that this is somewhat protective in nature, that your memory is interrupted and disrupted during a traumatic event, because your brain is essentially trying to protect you from remembering all of it. But of course, as we know, there is a consequence

mental and physical health. And that's why a lot of treatment approaches is all about integrating

“those memories back again, but processing them in a safe way. This podcast is brought to you by Dutch”

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real answers before small problems turn into big bills. And if your pet needs medication, Dutch vets can prescribe for many common issues, including you get free shipping. So go to Dutch.com and use code nightmares that's Dutch.com promo code nightmares. Dr. Hose comments help clarify something that survivors have been describing to me for years. They may not have remembered the assaults in sequence,

“but they did remember the texture of a room. The movement at a window or what happened to”

them. So I asked Dr. Hose to go a little bit deeper on what people casually call a trigger because

clinically it's a whole lot more than a dramatic emotional reaction. Sure, triggers are not always

sort of in the form of a narrative or even something that is visual. A lot of triggers are pertaining to the other senses. So some of the examples that you just gave are perfect examples of these that it could be a certain smell. It could be even something that's tactile, feeling a certain type of texture and being reminded of that texture at a previous traumatic event or traumatic crime scene. And this is because sense memory is different and process and stored

differently than narrative memory. So narrative memory is sort of the stories that you tell yourself

“when you try to recall something in a linear way and you have to express it through language.”

That's a very different kind of memory stored in process than sense memory, which is so immediate and so this role doesn't require words. The way that we process sense memory is not with our frontal lobes, right? It's not with this higher order thinking part. It's sort of the very base part of how we are formed as human beings. It's like a very primordial part of our brain that processes sense. And so just by how great your coping might be, whether you think that you

might be over something that could have been traumatic, oftentimes people will say, I just get transported back to that event or that particular traumatic incident when something triggers me and somebody they don't even know what that is until they go back and they think about it and they say, oh wow, there's actually something that is connected to that but it happens so quickly that they couldn't really perceive it or describe it in the moment. Dr. Ho's explanation makes it a

whole lot easier for me to understand why the reaction feels so immediate and physical but I wondered why the memories don't just come back in a neat timeline. Why do they return so often in so many different pieces? Well there's different theories about it as I mentioned because

memory formation was disrupted and it kind of was in pieces when the memory first became stored

in a person's brain. It also gets recalled in that way because it's not actually linear the way that the whole memory got stored but also there's a theory that sometimes the recall is in pieces because your brain is trying to protect you that if everything came back all at once essentially your psyche would have a really hard time dealing with that and so by recalling it in a piece male fashion it's almost sort of trying to help you to cope with it little by little instead of the

whole thing at once and again that's just a theory but to me it makes logical sense that again our

brain is always trying to help us survive emotionally and physically and your brain is trying to

ensure your survival and so these things are subconscious, unconscious things that your brain is doing. It's aims are in the right place it's trying to help you to survive but as I mentioned that kind of recall and peace meal actually makes it harder sometimes to heal because then your memories and pieces and it feels very out of control so a lot of therapy is about recalling the entire

coping strategies to calm yourself down when triggers come up so it's really about establishing

“a sense of safety and control for the person. So how do you keep an investigator or the spouse of”

someone who's now recalling memories how do you keep them from creating an environment where the survivor feels like they have to fill in pieces in parts so they might be I don't know tempted to make something up or give you an answer to calm the fear you have in your face because of

your espouse and you're hearing all this for the first time. Yeah and I would say that this phenomenon

is extremely common with younger people because again there's sort of that sense to comply especially when the adult and an adult of authority but also as you just mentioned even adults. Certain personality traits too adults who are really empathetic who really care about the feelings of others especially when that loves you so much and you see their fear you see their frustration and you want to appease them so I think if you're the spouse of that person the loved one or even an investigator it's

important to number one be super open minded about what they're going to share and express that at the top like you know it's okay if you don't get through all of it and sometimes I might ask you questions that you don't have an answer for and that's totally normal and it's okay just tell me you

“don't know or you don't remember and we'll kind of move on. I think it's also important that we”

ask very open ended questions again investigator some are getting more training about this which is

so important because that first interview you know there's a lot of contamination that can happen

even in the most I guess even in the most well-meaning of investigators right because they're just trying to help so they're they're starting to suggest things to try to help you with a narrative it can even be their own discomfort to they have to hear so much traumatic material all the times so they're like oh I just want to help you get over this I don't want to see you suffer and you see that there's a pain on the person's face but but really you have to let them answer the

questions so instead of giving them a multiple choice or saying well when he touched you what did he do you're already assuming right that he'd has touched you or you're already assuming that a certain act occurred and so really it kind of needs to just be okay then tell me what happened after that okay then what happened after that and okay is there anything else you remember it's really open ended takes a lot of patience but it is how we get the I guess the the most accurate version

of the picture from that person the way that they're able to tell it at that time so when you're talking to survivor spouses or significant others family members close friends what are the biggest risk factors leaving toward like contamination when people are trying to help somebody else

“remember something yeah I think when there's time pressure like everything has to happen today or”

in this interview that is a big risk factor another risk factor is the interviewer's own distress right so that happens a lot more with family members where their frantic their feeling stressed and they're putting that energy on you even if they're not meaning to and you start to feel like you have to do something to try to calm them down you're starting to take care of them in the moment that's another risk factor as I mentioned a risk factor is asking close ended questions

just asking them to confirm with a yes or no that's a huge risk factor another one that people don't talk enough about is the interviewer's own trauma history right so whether it's an investigator or family member or friend if they've been through something that feels thematically relevant there's going to be a lot more risk for that type of contamination to happen now I wanted you to hear from two husbands who have actually lived through this so I reached out to

Rocky and David husbands of the survivors of the Zion Society cult these guys aren't clinicians they're just two guys who love two women who survived a cult and they've had to learn in real time

what their support looks like and how it should be delivered now here Rocky talked about that first

disclosure he doesn't pretend that he had perfect thoughts and and he said the same thing that a lot of people feel but they're afraid to say out loud that the shock the worry the rush of questions was overwhelming but he made a decision early on to separate what happened to his wife from who his wife is well you know any time you receive news of something that tragic it kind of has set you back for a minute but you know a little bit of a shock you know a lot of

you're being given you know it's a it was a traumatic experience for her and this is like a

million things come into your mind that the you're running through it's like okay well she's

trusting me enough to tell me this this is important wow this is also very shocking so you're taking that part in and then you know part of you is like well especially in a new relationship it's like our is she damaged you know all these thoughts go through your mind and I know they some of them sound terrible like oh she damaged but this is somebody I'm planning on spending the rest of my life with

“these are important things to know and I think initially when she told me all those things rushed through”

you know and I think it takes a moment to digest before you really respond to all those and

and ultimately the outcome that I come up with after hearing that after she had talked to me about

her past because obviously she cared enough for me she wanted me to know what everything and I found that this was just something that happened to her not not who she is and I felt it was important that I didn't treat her like a victim but I showed her love and respect and like see her intrinsic value of who she can be and who she could become versus a victim. I think you can see why I wanted Rocky in this episode this guy doesn't sanitize his first reaction but he does show us what maturity

can look like. Our first reaction to something so difficult to hear could be emotional and messy but

the way that Rocky handled things speaks to his character and the relationship that he has with

“Shelley Rocky explained something else that's really important that much of the disclosure came out”

early in their relationship well before marriage. No for the most part it was we we spent a lot of time together talking and you know it's like Shelley does something she doesn't write so she brought the truckload she dumped it on me so here it is you know this is what happened and you know there's little things that come up later you know that she may have forgotten about or things about nature but for the most part she she was pretty open and what he said next really cut right into the

worst habits that spouses can fall into they try to turn into detectives. Rocky said that his instinct was to not dig for the grizzly details he figured that he knew enough that he didn't believe that demanding the dirt or more detail would help either of them so he didn't pry he didn't try to dig up more dirt instead he provided a safe place for Shelley to share what she had been ready to discuss for some time. Mine was just the opposite I knew something bad had happened and I didn't

want all the little details I didn't want to pry um because I didn't want to know those things and I didn't want to look at her that way I thought those were things that happened in the past and it wasn't worth judging up and it wasn't going to help me nor her to do so so I knew bad things happened that's all I and I got more information than I wanted obviously but I didn't think it was important to judge up small details and it's just nitty gritty things that it's just dirt why dig up more dirt

let's dirty and by doing so Rocky learned the difference between support and extraction he was candid about the learning curve that he experienced and he said that while he's a fixer by nature he had to acknowledge that this wasn't something that he could solve or repair especially in one sitting there's definitely uh learning curve right and how to deal with our relationships and and uh I'm I'm a fixer person so I want to fix everything and some things I can't fix I that's probably

the hardest lesson I had to learn is um she doesn't want me to fix it for her she just needs

“to be to listen to her I think in the beginning I was trying to fix and trying to and I get frustrated”

myself luckily jelly was patient enough with me to say look I just need you to listen to me not trying to fix everything I think she fixed me I don't know that I fixed her so in healthy relationships disclosure doesn't just expose the survivors old wounds it exposes

and knowing how to help can be incredibly crippling to a couple that's where extra support comes

in and is the flood gates open for rocky he found himself at a cross road I would say tread lightly watch questions don't be a detective in those moments that's not if what they want to divulge is up to them it's they're they're trusting you you need to know that they're trusting you they're they're spilling everything to you for a reason you need to be that person they're looking for to support them to love them if they need a hug they they get a hug if they need distance you

“give them distance say I think you need to be very sensitive to that nature and and very loving”

towards that person with all empathy and compassion rocky chose to tread lightly and he avoided the urge to interrogate his wife instead he respected her timeline even when it wasn't what he had hoped for he showed trust and that trust was felt by shelly now when I spoke with Carrie's husband David I marveled at the different experiences that he added to my learning Carrie's disclosure was revealed in pieces over time he talked honestly about how uncomfortable it

was at first to keep their relationship at the center of his interactions rather than focusing

on the abuse this was all really evident when he said that Carrie determined when the disclosure times were right you know it was it was really early on in my relationship with Carrie and the for context we met in the late 2019 early 2020 we began argue about that at times but it was really early on in our relationship and it was just part of that getting to know you period and it was like I grew up in San Diego I grew up in a polygamous sex cult like whoa what are you talking about that's

wild and it really took me a little while to understand the full depth and breadth of really what happened there because Carrie was so matter of fact about it it wasn't an emotionally charged thing for her it was really evident in talking to her that he really did some work he grew past it to where

“25 this years later um she was able to share it with me very openly and honestly and and”

in times drastically too which which was definitely difficult at times to to here David described the disclosure this way he said it was a drip then a flow then a drip then a flow it has really been an adventure in for me to put any of my discomfort aside to just hear the story that my wife is telling me you know and so it's probably it's probably been she's been like you know what he can't handle this story yet so we're going to give him some time to chew on what I told

him already and then someday we'll be able to speed on that as if I know her and if I'm being fareded me yeah it's probably impacted that so yeah when I loved one truly listens they learn that safety

“is built in the tone and the pacing and the restraint and that's what creates a trusting place for”

these kinds of discussions David didn't need a minute by minute account of the abuse instead he worked toward maintaining a safe place where Carrie could share what she was ready to share to hear the specifics of how a pedophile took advantage of my wife as a 10 year old girl I don't need to hear that Mike I do not need the minute by minute account the questions that I've had were more about logistics more about the inner workings of the

group as we call it about her feelings about it and and for the first time she told me about it

I I knew that this was really going to be one of those things that we talked about with a whole lot of love and openness and empathy and compassion or it was going to get in the way and so I again trying to put any any of my my stuff aside um just to sort of as much information as she was going to

to my sir do I have a right to know that information am I some sort of a deviant myself for having

“that question you know um yeah yeah there's been a lot of soul searching around how to show up”

and and and is it for her is it for me and what are my motivations around it David also made sure that the questions that he asked were primarily for Carrie not for himself she didn't need him to be angry at those people who heard her what she really needed was for him to be present and steady and supportive that helped me say out of fix it no protect mode right he doesn't need me to protect her from anything regardless especially something that happened 25 years ago 30 years ago

that she's done a lot of work to move forward from will David taught me that a spouse can

feel outraged for the perpetrator but remain focused on the survivors healing journey that way it became about them and there was strength in that David also made it clear that he chose to

“resist judgment and instead he opened his ears and tried to understand I believe that that we all”

have the right to agency we all have the right to some privacy in the world of shame and guilt and trauma and abuse um everybody's gonna get there in their own way on their own time any advice I would have would be if you feel your own triggers do the work do it because healing is possible for for people that have been victimized and the people that love them that get triggered by hearing about that put any judgment you have aside both Rocky and David demonstrated that good spouses don't have to be

perfect spouses they just need to be steady humble and willing to learn and to better understand this dynamic I thought I'd give a friend to call Dr. Patrice Barry a clinical psychologist the mom an author and a speaker now she helps us better understand why this dynamic inside of marriage is often so difficult for couples to navigate Dr. Barry explained how disclosure might come in fragments and that shame or distrust can slow down the process because survivors are oftentimes

gauging the reaction of the listener trying to make sure that they don't overwhelm them and the brain is really it's really complicated and sometimes there are past memories that have been

“blocked and for some people when they remember it comes in like a flood and they remember everything”

all at once for some people things the memories come back in those pieces and then for some other people they're sharing the pieces to gauge people's reaction to either not overwhelm their spouse they might be afraid that the person might not be able to handle it there can be a lot of shame that can come up for the survivor and a lot of thoughts of will I be believed how will they react and it can be a very scary thing for the survivor in a difficult situation for the spouse or partner too

because they're hearing this awful thing that happened to somebody that they love and sometimes they can feel like there's nothing they can do about it and yet what their spouse really needs is their validation just their listening ear and that can be so helpful. Over time more information might come out and that doesn't mean that the story is changing it simply means that it's unfolding as the nervous system allows a little more truth to return

to the survivors forefront and often during traumatic events the what people smell sometimes what people hear those are the things that really stick with them and their can be I've worked with people where so I don't wear perfume or I try to be very careful about what

since I have in my office and I always let someone know so if they come into my office and I have

some peppermint or something but I don't know that the person that harmed them was chewing on a mint at that time there really can be something that activates their amygdala and that amygdala is that fight flight freeze or people please and that's the part of our brain that tries to protect us and so sometimes the association gets wrongly connected to the mint

and it's not the same thing as certainty about every detail validation sounds more like this I hear you I see you I love you I'm here for you this wasn't your fault and that's where the brain is protective and how that child survived that horrific event might have been that dissociation being able to disconnect and not be in their body and to just focus on those curtains because sometimes they might not be able to describe in detail the person's

face sometimes those memories don't always get stored away the the same way that what I had

for lunch is filed away in my hippocampus. When asked about disclosure before or after the marriage

“and how that impacts successful resolutions her answer was really important because she ties the”

feelings of trust to the success of disclosure. I want to go back and talk about high demand or high control or cult groups because secrecy is often demanded expected you you aren't supposed to tell this doesn't go outside of the group and people are trained to not tell and often survivors will have that fear of what if I'm not believed because one of the worst things you can do is share

with your spouse and then them not not believe you and that can be a real fear and then some people

they don't want to be seen as a victim they don't want it to change how people look at them but maybe they hear about this large case or that multiple survivors are coming forward and then they step up and they said I was yes this thing happened to me too they might have survived up until

“this time with this huge secret that nobody knew and now because often people they they don't want”

to be one of the people that were that was a victim of this of this group and what became clear to me is that couples who discussed these issues early in the relationship seem to be in a better position to respond effectively when the triggers or the relationship issues arise in the marriage you know it just makes sense so if it's at the beginning of a relationship or before marriage the person knows oh within an intimate relationship this person has certain triggers or this person

because when people have been through certain things sometimes they'll say you can't sneak up behind me or because the survivor might freak out and in a way that's like it's like I was just joking and the spouse is confused if they don't know but if they know what's happened then they're able to acknowledge and be aware of any of any potential triggers if their spouse maybe needs to attend therapy or get additional support then they know and they're able to work with that therapist

if there's certain things as a spouse that they need to be aware of to support their partner

“but um and I think you're going to get to it of when a person finds out later”

sometimes there can be some confusion of because things might start to make sense for them a

doctor Barry helps us all the better understand how critical our reaction is to successful

disclosures we shouldn't overreact and we shouldn't move into some kind of a fixip mode something that I tell parents that if their child ever comes to them and says something's wrong first you fake it you hide your your real reaction because if you overreact the person is going to stop talking so as a therapist if I'm interviewing somebody and if they share something really painful and I'm like and I found like and I have this big reaction they're going to be like

oh wait a minute should I like so that can sometimes stop people from from talking and while you're not you're not a robot and it's not that you underreact but that you you manage that you make sure that you breathe that that you make sure that as this person is talking that you let them know how much you love them how much you care about them how much you support them and you're so thankful that they felt safe enough to share this with you and that you don't have to try to fix it because

someone in the midst of of their pain and what I mean by that is if I shared I had this horrible

“thing happen yesterday and you were like oh it'll be better I might be like but it's I don't”

like I might not be ready to hear that like sometimes just hearing that must have been hard oh my gosh I didn't expect like I'm thank you for for for sharing that sitting with people in the midst of something difficult and not trying to make them feel better which is harder please just breathe know that um before emotional like just just hold their hand just be there and just support them that's really all they they need right now she also cautions against asking questions that are

confrontive things like why didn't you tell me sooner now I like how she offered a more productive way to think about things and how to respond in these kinds of situations I would love for your

“listeners to try to not ask people why so the why question can put up defenses so if I say why did”

you do that why didn't you tell me why the question why can make somebody versus eventually I might want to know help me understand or like just what's been going like what what brought all this up for you like I might that might be a legitimate question but if I say why is this coming up now it's it's going to come across more aggressive to the other person and that's not how the person intends it and the reason why I say to not ask for details is because the survivor might think will you only believe

me if I break down the story for you and while that shift in language might sound small it's really significant because one style of questioning implies failure while the other side

communicates safety and with that she offered some really usable guidance for those first few days

when the disclosure starts happening so when a person discloses they might have an increase in trauma symptoms because they opened Pandora's box and because this has been closed this wasn't something that had been shared this wasn't something that they had brought up and a lot of my survivors don't understand that and I break it down that that's very common that when they disclose

“it because every time they look at their spouse they now know that their spouse knows and so I think”

in those in those first hours some people might not want to be physically comforted so if I go to hug them and they back off and to not take that personal so that in their mind they might be

they might need to feel safe first so felt safety is different from physical safety they you might

see they might have trouble sleeping that that night they just might need a little bit of extra support and they might just want to watch something funny and so that's where sometimes not if you're not sure sometimes just asking like hey do you just want to talk or do you just want to be together in silence let's let's just not talk perfect personally I thought that was one of the most useful lines in this whole episode and it was

do you want to talk or which rather sit in silence now that doesn't mean sit alone unless the disclose or wants to sit alone it's not an open-ended demand or a pressure-filled invitation it's just a supportive check-in you know when I asked the Zion Society survivors about their parenting skills 72% said they were over protective parents using terms like I'm a helicopter parent while the other 14% said they feel the constant need to protect their children

that means the most of them didn't simply move on but they adapted they watched they managed risk while they tried to make sure that what happened to them didn't ever happen to their own children according to Dr. Barry over protection might come from love but protection is healthiest when it builds safe adults around children rather than wrapping children in fear I love this piece of advice that she gave her own child and that she recommends we consider teaching our children

multiple safe adults that means they should be willing to tell their teacher their doctor their parent

“their next-door neighbor if they are people that they feel safe with and it's something that I see”

in my practice all all the time where letting their child be out of their site when their child is in kindergarten and going off to school or going to to daycare or they have to have a babysitter

for the first time and being over protective doesn't protect children so really what protects

children is them having safe adults so I have an eight-year-old and something that I do with my child is that if there's something so first of all we don't have secrets like we have surprises we don't have secrets adults shouldn't have secrets with the children and then for for for my son I tell if there's something ever not okay that he can tell we have a list of people he can tell

“he can tell mommy he can tell daddy he can tell gg he can tell his teacher the school counselor”

that if something isn't okay to not tell just one person please tell everyone if if you're not safe don't tell one person tell everybody because sometimes a child tells their parent and their parent says that's not true how could you say that about this person having it's not if something's not okay tell shadow from the rooftops please tell everyone until you're safe one of the Zion Society cult survivors camey put words to this in a way that I haven't been able to shake for

35 years her memory of her abuser was larger than life and she spent years living in fear of him that trauma followed her into adulthood and in the parenting I'd like you to listen carefully to what Kami had to say because in just a few lines she captures the psychological damage of child abuse and she does it better than most textbooks ever could sexual abuse literally cracks a child into

a million pieces I spent all of my life until 2009 when my abuser died living in horrible

fear that he would get out of prison and confined me and kill me for getting him busted I spoke out as a tiny child against monsters and I would many many years in absolute terror fearing my abuser would come after me I felt so alone with so many questions my children come first they need me to not be consumed by my demons painfully I look back on my past wishing there had been some type of program to help me get through the horrors I had endured during my childhood

this little child saw Arvan Shrieve the Predator is mighty in episode one Aaron Mason

compared the Zion society's polished facade to the great and powerful Oz how fitting because for

Kami Arvan didn't appear frightening at first he appeared larger than life a predator can look strong capable even protective to a child whose hungry for steadiness but Kami shows us what people often miss that the abuse doesn't end when the access ends it kept living inside of her as fear and isolation and the belief that the monster that she exposed might one day come back for her and when Kami says that her children come first you can hear what so many survivors carried

into parenthood they're not just raising their own kids they're also trying to build the safety

“net that they never had Kami put her finger on something really important that being rescued”

is not the same as recovering she got out of the Zion society but the healing has taken a lifetime you know I thought a lot about that as I've watched the Zion society survivors reconnecting comparing memories and starting to fit the puzzle pieces together what many of them needed the most was not somebody to explain away their pain but somebody who is willing to help make sense of what they experienced carefully truthfully and without judgment and throughout my

investigation into the Zion society cult and later while writing deceived I watched these triggering

happening in real time I saw it with the survivors and I saw it with the police officers who also

“worked that case one Zion society survivor told me about a police detective who came to her home”

on the morning of the raid she was only six or seven years old at the time but she never forgot

that detective she recalled that she was blonde and beautiful but that's not why she remembered her it was because the detective was kind and compassionate the search of the compound lasted for hours in the detective faithfully stayed with the children keeping things calm and quietly controlling the nervous parents this little six-year-old survivor didn't know the detective's name but based on the details in the description she gave I did she was describing detective Marcie Korgensky

who wrote a carefully detailed report of her activities that day detective Korgensky went on to

“have a remarkable career retiring as chief Korgensky but it wasn't her rank that struck me it was”

her memories of that morning she noted in her report about one of the little girls having sorrows on the inside of her legs she described that memory to me 30 years later during the writing of deceived I was in a conversation with the mother of of this child and there were some comments about some marks on the upper inner legs of these children and it seemed at that time that it was a fairly common occurrence in these children not just one or two children but a number of

these children had these little sorrows on their legs and so I said to her I said something about

those sorrows to her and and and I'll just I just never forgot it because I was just so

“surprised by her answer she said I said what what are these little are are you concerned about”

these little sorrows on something to that effect and and she said oh they're just herps and they said they're just herps or they're what and she said they're just herps and I didn't know initially what she meant by that and what she meant was she didn't she was naive to what was really on those children's legs those little marks on their legs were herpes and they didn't understand the gravity of these little all of these little children

having herpes sexually transmitted disease that would go with them throughout their entire

lives they had no idea how serious what those children had on what that was on their legs when I heard those comments I immediately remembered that survivor meeting that I'd had a few years earlier listening to one of the survivors now a grown woman in her mid 40s the conversation turned to concerns of sexually transmitted disease because of the abuse and as the girls talked one to another quietly and matter of factly this survivor said that she had lived with herpes

and dealt with the symptoms the confusion and the unanswered question of how she got it for decades detective corganski's observations from that day of the raid rush back into my mind as validation it wasn't a rumor and it wasn't speculation it was a documented observation from a crime seen 30 years earlier and it now provided the missing puzzle pieces so with both the detective and the survivors permission I connected the two of them together so that they could talk about it

now they're meeting didn't erase the trauma or fix the past but it certainly connected the dots a year later another survivor asked if I could tell them what my reports said happened to them in the cult again airing on the side of caution I asked them to share what they remembered but I promised that I would see if there was anything in my old reports that could validate the memories they were having and what happened still sends a little bit of a shiver down my spine as

this survivor described the abuse that they endured at age six I was less surprised than before as the survivor described the assaults almost word for word in the same way they had decades earlier that kind of consistency doesn't prove that every delayed memory in every case is accurate

sometimes the records line up and when it's validated it gives the survivor an anchor to build upon

“the puzzle pieces stick together so please think about what healing can look like after 35 years”

for some science society survivors this podcast has become a doorway into better understanding

it's been powerful to watch the survivors reconnect with their childhood friends kids who shared similar

homes lived under the same rules and felt the same fears but now reunited they continued to validate and even correct each other's memories and little by little the puzzle pieces are

“fitting back together and every time a survivor finds a puzzle piece their voice becomes a little”

bit stronger and the power shifts from the cult that tried to control them through secrecy shame

and isolation as they discover the transparency of truth and connection and community they grow stronger sometimes it happens because a spouse learned how to listen better or a psychologist helped the survivor discover their past wall embracing a stronger future and it even happens when

“a retired police investigator is united with a little girl that she comforted decades earlier”

but the survivors have found each other and they found clarity where they're used to be confusion

most importantly they found their voice but that's not the end of this story our final episode is called what the cult tried to take but couldn't and I'm not going to spoil it but I will tell you this it's about what survives and what couldn't be erased by arvin shrieve and is lieutenant's those evil designs the people who wanted the last word they demanded silence but they didn't get it if you're a survivor of abuse I hope this episode offers hope if you need help reach out

immediately if you are someone you know as experiencing sexual violence contact the rape abuse and incest national network rain that's r a i n n dot org or call the national sexual assault hotline at 1-800-656 hope services are free confidential and available 24/7 this episode of Gardens of Evil inside the Zion society cult was written narrated an audio produced by me Mike King based on the book deceived an investigative memoir of the Zion society cult I hope you'll check out my weekly podcast

profiling evil wherever you get your podcasts and I'd like to thank Aaron Mason who narrated the earlier episodes of Gardens of Evil I'd like each of you to know that I'm donating all of my proceeds from book sales and this podcast to fund child advocacy efforts and criminal justice scholarships executive producers are John go forth and Jeremy Sinan Gardens of Evil is a production of the gamut podcast network