Kyle's Story

- True story, media.

“- Hello, it's Andrea, and today I am pleased”

to be sharing our unbridged conversation with Kyle, who we hear from in the finale of Season 7. I knew right away that I wanted to share the full conversation with you because this is truly an extraordinary story

of resilience and of someone who is thriving in the face of unimaginable hot. So, listen to this one with care, it's a tough story, but it's also really uplifting, and I know that it will resonate

with so many of you the way that it did with me. We are off to the races, working on season eight behind the scenes, and we will be here each week with you on case files in the meantime.

As always, you can subscribe to the show

on Apple Podcast or Patreon for head free listening in two bonus episodes a month of our subscriber exclusive show, nobody should believe me after hours. If you are following the never-ending legal mess that is Kualski B. Jock's Hopkins,

you will definitely want to tune in as we have lots of updates on that story. If financial support is not an option, we totally get that sharing the story wherever you talk to friends and reading and reviewing the show on Apple

and Spotify are also great ways to support. And guess what? You support the show just by tuning in each week. So thanks for being here. We'll be right back with Kyle.

Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B.

Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B.

Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B.

Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B. Welcome to the Kualski B.

Kyle, thank you so much for being with us and for agreeing to come on and tell your story.

“Could you just start by saying why you initially reached out to me?”

Sure. So I had recently just moved and as part of that old process, I've moved so many times in the past several years. I tried to like slim down whatever I'm keeping with me.

But I always have this folder because I get,

especially moving around so much. I get pretty sentimental and I have low mood to certain times. And there are certain reminders that I like to keep with me. Just to sort of review whenever I feel I need them. And I had had what I found several years back,

reports from Dr. Smith, but they had always been important since I found them as just a sense of validation. There was recognition that what I had gone through was real and it was recognized by people outside of just myself. And although that obviously not the most pleasant memory,

the validation is important and I keep them in a folder along with things like letters of recommendation I had gotten from my law school professors or other judges I've worked for. And so I sort of keep them as bookends. It's sort of surreal reading because in both cases,

I'm reading about myself and the third person. It had been a very different context. And it's sort of a reminder whenever I'm feeling uncertain about what's going on or the direction I'm in, how far I've gone, how far I've come.

And I had originally emailed Dr. Smith

when I first found her reports.

Which had been over seven years ago about this point. And it sort of occurred to me, but it might be a good idea to reach out and give her a further update. But considering I had been in up past seven years, I figured she probably would have retired or she might have.

So I just did a cursory search to see if I could find like a LinkedIn with a current work email if there was one. And you can imagine if you search for Dr. Sally Smith what sort of results pop up. It took me a while to really process what exactly I was seeing.

Because at first I just saw a YouTube link that was about her getting testimony. And I didn't even know if this was the right Sally Smith. Once I saw that it was in Penelas County, I'm like, oh, it was.

But the context didn't make it all clear what type of suit it was or who she was getting testimony for. So I had to dig a little deeper and then I found everything about taking care of Maya movie, which I have now watched beyond the teaser

and different news reporting on it.

“And I think it was, I don't want to say,”

I think it was like a Reddit thread or something that said about the documentary that mentioned this podcast and I wasn't even sure what was going to say. But I mean, the stories I had read mentioned

So I knew I could not reach out to her directly

“with the email I had reached out before.”

And I figured I wanted to say something, and if there was any way to reach out to anyone that would still have a contact information, it would be this podcast. So I just sent that email,

sort of screenshotting my previous emails from several years ago as proof of who I was and just, again, sort of stream of consciousness. I wasn't sure what I thought the goal would be, but just to get it out there.

Yeah, and for me, you know, this experience of getting this email was really extraordinary because I knew about you just anecdotally because Sally had mentioned that because you had previously emailed with her

when you found her report and that had really stuck with her. So I had this almost strange sense of deja vu like, have I already talked to this person or like, why is this sort of, why is what he's saying so familiar to me

and then I kind of realized that. And it also, Sally was extremely fresh on my mind, which is what I told you when we connected because I was in the process of digging back into four of her other cases that were featured

in Take Care of Maya. And you know, have just been on this sort of whole, whole Odyssey with Sally Smith and that case and the film and the verdict just got overturned

the jury verdict of over $200 million was reversed.

And so it's all sort of sort of stuff happened in pretty quick succession, and then you and I connected and I asked you if you would be willing to come on and share your story. And yeah, it was just a really beautiful thing

to hear from you and you know, your email. You know, one of the truths I hold dear about reporting on child abuse

“is that it's really important to talk to survivors”

because they're the ones that we should be listening to the most. And so I'm just so grateful to you for being willing to tell your story to us. So where would you like to begin the story? So I was born in Cincinnati.

I lived for the first year of my life in Northern Kentucky, which is where all of my father's side of the family is. My mother's side of the family is in southern Ohio, so I'm just, you know,

right across state lines and not too far. From when I was about one and a half, I guess, and I do not know the full story behind this,

because I've never been particularly interested

in unhashing old drama. How I phrase it is my mother sort of obscended with me down to Florida and that my parents were still married at the time. And as I understand,

they didn't officially get divorced until a few years later and no one on my father's side of the family knew where I was for the next two or three years. So, you know, my earliest memories

who was always I was living with my mother. I never could make sense of why when whatever went down between my parents, my mother's instinct was to go to Florida, when all of her family, her parents,

and her sisters were 50 miles north and southern Ohio. It just seems to be just getting away from everyone that could detect her. I'm not sure what her reasoning was.

From what I can gather, becoming a mother just seems to completely occupy her identity from that point on. If she didn't have a purpose before then, which I'm not saying I know one way

the other that she did or didn't. If she didn't, from that point on, she got all of her purpose, all of her sense of identity from being a mother. And she desperately wanted to be

the only one responsible for me. Because I did not starting getting visitation from my father again until I was four, I think. That is when they had sort of track me down

and she would regularly drive down from Kentucky and I'd have we can visit with them very long drive. But I guess before my father started visiting my grandmother on my father's side

had driven down to Florida and her and my great-grandmother took me to Bush Gardens, which I had pictures of. I was about three and I have no recollection of what's so ever.

“But what I do remember is for years afterwards,”

including after I graduated college and was a full adult.

My mother always just threw out this idea

that my grandmother had brainwash me that one visit when I was three years old because she's like, I could tell that was a difference in you. They said something they did something to turn you against me.

And I could tell you just act like a different person from then. They're always plotting against me to take you away from me. And she has gone through many stages

of different levels of coherence and functioning throughout the time I knew her.

from what I remember when I was very young

“and she just sort of never brought out up again”

and then after I graduated college and made it finally clear to her that I would not be coming back home ever, basically.

I didn't officially say that I would never be seeing her again

but I would not be moving back and she had always sort of held onto that hope that I would be. She just completely had a meltdown and she just threw that back in my face

for the first time and like 15 years saying I could always tell you were three years old the way you looked at me was different. They brainwashed you against me. I don't know what she said or did

but she's been plotting against me here entire life. She wants to be your real mother, not me. She thinks she's your mother. And I would find random incoherent scribblings on these notes that she would always write

and just like I realized that Judy, my grandmother's name was really behind what can my father had done the whole time. But some of my earliest memories were my mother saying well why don't you just go

and live with your grandma? If you want her to be your mom so much, just go with live with her. And it sticks out because it's the only time I ever remember my life, my mother apologizing

for something she said to me. Because the next day she, I remember being on her knees sobbing. Basically saying I didn't mean it. I don't want you to go away.

I want you to live with me. I was like three or four in my book. Okay.

“From that point on, she never apologised for anything.”

It chained, it shifted to, as I got a little older, we'll just go and live with your father. And then when I was in my teens, it became, you know,

you're old enough now that if you ran away, no one wouldn't come looking for you. Which, as we'll get to,

was always the most cruel irony of the whole thing,

because she would never let me be independent. And besides that, my earliest memories of my mother from when I was three or four, because the apartment we were living in, we moved a lot.

Aside from, you know, the reality that I just have to understand, my mother was periodically going to have a mood where she screams and tells me that I should go live with someone else.

That was giving her grief, or just mocking me for crying. She was still having normal days, and I was still functioning as a normal child. All throughout those early years,

as a best I can remember, there would be moments, bad moments when her temper would flare, but in between those moments, I remember life being pretty standard.

Not that I have the same reference. Were you like in your younger years, were you in school, were you sort of doing normal kid activities, was there sort of a more normal period?

I went to school normally all throughout, up to the end of sixth grade. I did all the normal kid things up until that period. My father was routinely visiting me every other weekends. He eventually moved down to Florida as well,

so he could visit me more regularly.

“And what was your relationship with him like when you were younger?”

So I always really look forward to having,

you know, visit with my dad. Up until I was about 12, who was sort of that standard situation where my father would come and visit me on weekends, and I was looking forward to it.

We always had a lot of fun. My father always had really bad anger issues. As I later learned after he passed away several years back, he had gone through like constantly substance abuse and to his probably about 15.

From what I little I know about his background, who was hospitalized for several months, when he was 15, some issue with his leg, like Dean Payne thrombosis.

I'm not sure of the details, but he was just prescribed tons of prescription painkillers from that point on. And going through his things, as far back as the 90s,

it looked like he was seeing multiple psychiatrist and doctors prescribing him multiples of the same prescription, without knowing about the other, and he just had that going on for a long time.

So that probably explains a good deal of why he always had a very erratic temper. He was never physically violence, although there was one particular the last time I ever saw him

when I was visiting him in Kansas City. I was sitting, and he did have me sitting in the room I was on the phone with one of his work friends or his neighbors saying that

I would know I would go to jail for beating him, but it would be worth it. But he never actually did any physical violence or anything like that.

It was sort of like I understood that for the price of having two really fun days visiting him every other weekend. I would understand that would be a period of an hour so each visit where he would just

his mood would change, just going on a ramps, a pirate against any slight thing that I had done that had triggered his mood. There would always be some unpredictable thing that would just,

I'd understand that it would be for the next hour. I'd just sit there, and he would just yell at me about

but then his mood would change, who would apologize, and we'd enjoy the rest of our visit.

“I just always understood that I just sit there”

and stay quiet. It was, I was also used to it with my mother, so it didn't seem like a bad arrangement to me where I'd get to have two days of fun

and change for one hour of just sitting being silent. Then as I understood all throughout this time, he was abusing multiple prescription painkillers. They're right before or right after my 13th birthday as having an extra long visit

with my father and Kansas City had just transferred to an office there, and I was with him for like two weeks or something. I should back up just a little, because the year leading up to this,

he did have increasingly erratic health bursts. It became more frequent, and he started saying more intentionally cruel things, and he would increasingly start to say, "You know, someday I'm going to go out,

I'm going to meet another woman, and have a new son, and I'm not going to need you anymore." He said that a two or three times the year I was 11 or 12,

and then when I was staying with him and can't do city for the two weeks, that is when he officially said he had disowned me, and it was the last time I ever saw him. We had a good two weeks,

I don't remember what the trigger was as I rarely did, but something triggered him, and it seemed worse than normal. Again, not physically violent,

he had this weird, he would take a can of lifestyle and spray it in my face for like 30 seconds. I don't know what that was about. And he wrote out a series of,

like it took his notebook paper and wrote out a series of prompts, and it was like one of them was just explain why you understand that you're a bad son, or write,

“why you should understand why I'm upset with you,”

or why you deserve me to be upset with you, and then he'd left and said, "I want you to finish those by the time I get back." At that point, I just called my mother,

because I was scared what he was going to do and she called the police, until the police came, and then I was the next thing I remember as a police station,

talking to them, and they were talking to my dad, and then my dad came in, and he seemed all sunshine and rainbows. I'm like, okay,

he's back to normal again,

because his mood always did change

and all the visits. But as soon as you're back in the car driving home, I'm understood immediately that he had just been acting that way to get the police off trail or whatever,

and he said that drive home. I remember because all I could do was just stare at the window as he was yelling. It was,

remember this date, which is funny, because I don't remember the dates. I would remember this date, and he would say the dates.

As of this date, you are no longer my son. I disown you, and I never want to see you again. And then he bought me a ticket.

I don't think I was supposed to go back home, but he bought me a plane ticket home, and that was the last I saw him. Of course, that was not actually the end

of him trying to get back in my life. Years later, I learned that he was in constant custody battles or trying to get visitation of me back. And I was aware of it at the time,

at some extent,

but I was just never interested.

Were you seeing, because I know you had mentioned, like your grandmother on that side, and some other family members, or are you still seeing her during that time,

or were there other family members around, that were involved? So I have always, and I remain in contact with my grandmother, and my father side of the family.

She's probably been consistently the most important person in my life. Throughout my life, she's never stopped calling me every week or so, or sending me cards. So she was sort of like the one consistent my flying.

I can't fully explain what went down between her and my father, yet because it ties back into other events. But at that time, they were still regularly talking. So there wasn't any issue then at the point.

So I never saw my father in person get out to that point. He was trying to get back to my life afterwards, and as I laid it learn, my mother was doing everything to keep that secret, which at the time I was even consciously aware of it.

And it wasn't until years later, that I fully understood what a gift it was to my mother,

that she never had to share,

custody or visitation rights with me,

“because I think it was sort of her dream come true.”

All I can imagine is that she took me to Florida when I was a year and a half, thinking or hoping that the other side of my family would never have anything to do with me, and that it would just be her and me.

And she had been always so bitter that my father and my grandmother had always stayed in contact

that when it finally happened on its own,

she was just thrilled. But so that as far as it goes with my father, direct contact with them, although he does factor in later in the story. When I was in eighth grade,

it was when the school flagged me as having ADHD or possibly having ADHD, which despair or the expense, the suspense, yes, I do have ADHD, but I was not sure of that for a long time.

As far as I'm aware, I was officially diagnosed with it in third grade, but later reports may be indicated that maybe the school just flagged it as a possibility, and then my mother just went on saying,

that it was true without getting an diagnosis, but there's nothing the fairies about that, because I do definitely have ADHD, and my mother told me, well, you can't go back to the same school you did in third grade,

because they do not have a good program for kids with learning disabilities. So we're going to go to a different school in a different district. My mother then went online and started looking in, because she felt newly empowered

as a parent of a kid with learning disability, and so she would go online to different parent groups. And from only I think I can imagine, is that she looked into autism and more severe developmental or learning disabilities,

that would, the most appealing thing in the world for her, mean that she would have to be involved in my life, well, and to adulthood,

that I would always need her in my life,

that I could not function independently. And again, this is just what I'm gathering. I don't know what the actual line of reasoning was, but all I can imagine is that started with that real diagnosis, or the real flag from my school,

but I was struggling with ADHD potentially. So she would down this rabbit hole,

“and I remember she had never used the internet before this,”

but from fourth grade on, she was always online in these different groups. She started going to, like, conferences in Orlando, and I didn't think much of it all,

because in my mind, this ADHD, and autism thing all started at the same time, and they all were just sort of bundled into this one thing, and like, whatever. They started to be on Adderall,

which I didn't really think anything about it. But starting when I was in fifth grade, my mother told me one day, that I now had to be on a special diet, that certain foods I didn't work with my body right,

and they would go into my brain, and they were digestive and certain chemicals that would go into my brain, and they would impair my brain function, and that is why I was the way I was. The umbrella was just gluten-free casing free,

but it was also a whole host of other things, certain food dyes, certain artificial sugars, and sweeteners, just basically all I would know is that my mother would tell me what I could eat. I didn't think about it that much,

but since I was still visiting my father at this point, in my life, I remember there's this weird interval where it was like, don't tell him you're on a diet. Whenever you're eating with him, try and order the things that you know you're allowed to eat.

“If you have to eat something you're not allowed to”

to hide the diet, go ahead, but just for the two days you're with him, and as little as possible, and I can just remember like we'd be in a motel, and I'd be calling my mother and be like,

"Yeah, well, I had to eat these pizza flavored pringles because it gets suspicious if I didn't eat them,

but of course the real story was I was never following my diet

when I was with my father. And I was also going through a whole bunch of different medications, and new supplements that she'd read about online, and she had the pill box out for me, and I would just take the pills.

Sometimes I get new ones, sometimes they change dosage, I didn't really ask. And that probably contributed to my appetite dropping, and I guess the appetite loss combined with a very restricted diet,

means that I was barely growing between the ages of like 9 to 12 to 13 potentially. I didn't know this. I mean, I had never been 9 to 13 for it. I didn't know what my weight or height was supposed to be.

I was always conscious that I was a skinny kid, but I didn't think much of it. Something that stands out only in high-side as our member was in sixth grade, like a social studies class.

And I like a movie going, and it was talking about like starving kids in Africa, and my teacher was pointing to either a slide or a movie, it's like, "Well, you can see how skinny their own legs were."

“And then I just remember his eyes sort of like pausing”

when he looked at me.

but I'm not starving, I don't think."

“And that's not tight anything that happened later,”

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From what I understand about my mothers, who would just read online about these different medications, they kid with autism, or any number of development disabilities should be on,

based on what other parents said worked. So she wasn't a nurse until I wanted to say it was about eight or nine. She put herself through nursing school while I was from the ages of like five to eight,

I think.

And it's always the juxtaposition

of how focused and together, and my mother must have been in the early years of my life, is just so stark between what I knew her as, and my adolescence and early adulthood, because.

And it was always one of the factors that made speaking out against her, or having any sort of negative thought against her, so difficult, because looking at objectively, how hard she worked to put herself through

nursing school while raising me, and she set up a prepaid college fund, and she was, we were on food stamps and welfare, and she was working as like a custodian at a pita hut,

while going to nursing school nights, I spent so many days with like 12 different babysitters, she was, we were either working or going to school, and what I know her as from my adolescence,

is someone that could never have been that together,

or organized. Her mental state slowly degraded to be less and less functional, and she gave it more and more paranoid, she couldn't keep work relationship to her job, but I think just motherhood,

and the drive to be a good mother providing, it just her source of identity fueled her,

“which I think then just made the idea of being the mother”

to a disabled child who would always need her, just became all the more appealing. Do you think it was about being a good mother, do you think it was about being seen as a good mother? I think it was both.

I mean, being seen, I know as the year to when on being seen was the primary components and whatever was driving her, but if I'm looking back to like my very early childhood, and like we're here in Florida away from all her family,

I don't remember her really having regular friends, or to my knowledge,

he's never had a real relationship after divorcing my father.

There's no one to perform for, I think. I think just the idea of motherhood and being needed meant something to her, having being the only one that took care of me, she could've easily taken me to her family back in Ohio,

being the one solely responsible for raising a child, meant so much to her, and objectively the things that she did to support me, setting up a prepaid college fund. She took me to like swimming classes,

when I was like two or three, I was in all these activities. She was very big into throwing me very special birthday parties and finding all of the kids from our apartment complex we're living in,

and so she was objectively did a lot of good things as a mother in those early years, was just interspersed with when I was at home, something would trigger her anger, and she would just yell at me for giving her grief,

for mocking me for crying when I was upset, because she was yelling at me. It was sort of a conflict of contrast there, but the performative aspects picked up definitely once,

I was first flagged for having a learning disability with ADHD. Then I think that was what opened to up to these communities of mothers who, it's hard to paint with a general broad stroke, just because these parents of kids

with challenges and learning disabilities do need to be in community with each other, and so that itself it's not nefarious,

“but I think she dug down enough to find the ones”

or like don't give your kids vaccines, or all of these things are poisoned, or here are things to say to doctors to make them prescribe your child the medicines that we know that they need,

even if the doctors will understand.

I always remember she had printouts from other parents,

what they told the doctors, it's like tell your doctors this, and her having gone to nursing school, she was very at the things you needed to say, and I just know this from herself,

all of the different things that you would get prescribed for herself, you know, we had all the doctors shopping, we would go from one or another, and she would just not, she took me to random psychologists,

and I remember she just got upset with what they were saying, and so she would go to the ones who would be recommended in these conferences by these other mothers. So I know it sounds like you had at least

the school had sort of flagged and ADHD possible diagnosis, which later ended up being confirmed. The autism, did you get a diagnosis of autism or is that part kind of unknown?

And this sort of ties in to how Dr. Smith got involved in this whole story, but ever since this started happening was about nine, because all this conversation with my mother

and autism and all these treatment or special things I had to go to, all started around the same time, the school flagged ADHD,

“and I remember school officials saying ADHD”

wasn't an idea that sprouted from my mother. Since this all came together, I just assumed they were all sort of package deal, which in funny way, kind of is now that they actually diagnosed those conditions

have a lot of co-morbidity, not complete co-morbidity, but there is an association. But those early years, it didn't bother me the diet really bothered me.

I hated, I was not allowed to go to different events because my mother would be like, "Oh, well, they're not kind of the right diet for you." But then for seventh grade,

I was taking out public schools. And this is here where my memory gets just sort of fuzzy, because all throughout the rest of my schooling,

I was never in one setting more than I want to say,

a year tops. At some period, I was just being home schooled, and I used that term very loosely. I would be home schooled for Reef Window, and then not go to this very small private school,

where I guess you didn't need to go through the normal process of documentation to get disability accommodations. And for I think only for one year, I was put back into public school in high school.

I forget if it was 10th or 11th grade, whenever it is, you take the PSATs. All I can remember is that I took the PSATs, and then they pulled me aside, because I was like, you scored in the top 1% tile,

and the reading and writing component.

“So we want to see if you want to discuss”

any like scholarship or AP credit opportunities, and I'm like, please, no. I don't like school. They'll give me more work. But so whatever year it is,

you take the PSATs, I was in public school, but I was absolutely miserable, because I did not know this was going to happen until my first day there.

I got there on my first day, and there was this weird older gentleman sitting in the same table with me and my first period. Every one of my teachers in like every school administrator

always had to meet with my mother every week

that happened in every class.

And only years later did I find out how much my teachers were resisting this, because she saved the many emails. There was one time we had, she wasn't a teacher.

She worked in, I guess, the disability program. I don't know what her title would have been, but I was sent to the front office to meet with her, and then when she saw me,

she just looked very confused. She was like, are you Kyle? Like, yeah, they told me I had to come here and meet you. I forget everything she talked about me with, and she was like, well,

we just want to like get some groundwork for what help you need. So do you ever have trouble understanding like the kid, well, other kids in a class are saying

“or do you not understand the slang that they're using?”

I'm like, I'm 16. I know what the kid's are saying. And so like, well, let's talk about what if she's who have, yada yada, and then we are at this meeting,

we're like the council of Trent, every single person responsible for my IEP was there, and I was sitting there, and my mother was there, and she spoke up.

He was like, you know, I was talking to Kyle, and he was saying, well, he doesn't really, he knows what the kid's are saying.

He doesn't have trouble talking to other kids. So maybe we can like pull back a little and just focus on issues as they come up. They'll look in my mother's eyes. That I don't know what was set or done,

but that woman was never on my IEP plan ever again.

The summer eyes, that wasn't my school experience, and I'd never properly, understandably, my grades,

the one year I went to public's high school were atrocious. But then I went back to being homeschooled, and I got all A's,

“because I don't think I was doing anything.”

Then I was just, I was miserable all the time. My frame of mind this whole time was, I do not want to hear more about things that are wrong with me. This was still when I was like,

there was a diagnosis of autism, but there must have been a mistake. Like if some, I spent so many years, some doctor could see me now.

They would say that this wasn't real, and I wouldn't have to go to all these special schools. I don't have to have a special helper following me around. I would not have to be on this or that, almost forgot.

So as to the diets, as we'll look back to, but one day, when I was 14, my mother came home,

and I had been on the diet to does 9 or 10. And she's like, well, they're these special enzymes, they just invented.

So take these every day, and you can have whatever you want. And so I was very happy then. I no longer had the diet,

“but I was still unhappy being at the special schools,”

having to take all these medications. She would take me to like physical therapy sessions, and I remember they were like, when I was away from her. They're like,

well, you don't really seem to have any particular issues, with like balance or strength or coordination, but your mother's paying us. So you know,

we'll do these things with you twice a week. When I was 14, she took me to one speech therapist, and they gave me a standardized test, and they said,

well, you know, your son is testing at the adult level for speech competence, and you know, fluency,

there doesn't seem to be any diagnosable, speech impediment or condition. He doesn't really need any help. And she didn't say anything, and a couple weeks later,

I went to another speech therapist. My mother was apparently unaware. I was a standardized diagnostic test. It was not going to be a different results for a different speech therapist.

And so they also said, he's testing at the adult level. He doesn't need speech therapy. The drive home, she just is like,

I just know there's something wrong with you. They can't see it. And the most up right up there in humiliation with this special helper, when I was 16,

was the summer. I think it was the summer of 15. She took me to this special thing at the local community center for it was basketball for kids with developmental disabilities.

And this is one of those things

that I always have such trouble

processing. And I don't like the negative association I have with certain things like this, because objectively, community center hosting,

sporting events for kids with special needs, is objectively a good thing. And should be encouraged, it should be funded. But I can never look at it

in a calm, balanced way because it was just, I just had to like shut down and go through the motions. And one time I got there early

and there was this other kid around my age that it was just had just been playing. You know, when the court was open, normally, before they closed it off, just for the special program,

I just casually talking, I don't know,

as they were setting up the special hoops.

And then, whoever's running a program called me over, it's like, "Okay, Kyle, come, we're going to get going now." And then I had to walk over

with all of the kid with Down syndrome or other developmental disorders.

“And I just remember the kid I'm talking to,”

he just looked at me, he didn't say anything. He just has such a confused look on his face. And so for the six months I was at this school, I sort of had a semi-regular group of friends.

And this is at the period where I was still unsure like what autism really was. Because at this point, I had not been through all like this special basketball or the special helper or needing speech therapy

or not needing speech therapy,

but still being told I needed it.

I don't think all that really started happening or hadn't had an effect on me if it had. But there was, you know, these group of kids I was hanging out with one day, they were sort of,

if you didn't, it doesn't affect well on them. They were all 14. They were just making fun of this girl who, as far as I'm aware, had autism in a way that was more apparent.

And I forget what exactly they were saying about her. But I just was like, well, I don't think we should have been making fun of her

“because I think she had the same thing I do.”

Like, they say she has autism. That's what I have I think. And they sort of turned to me as like, maybe, but if you do, you're not like her. Like, don't worry about it.

You're not like her.

And I just, I didn't feel like cry or anything,

but I definitely teared up a little. And it was a strong reaction that I did not see coming. And then I had no way of explaining to them. I just, it like, stun silence for, would felt like several minutes.

It might have just been a few seconds, or I just like, the words that you're not like her. I didn't know I needed to hear them. But, and again, in retrospect, hanging out with kids that were spending

those spare time mocking a girl with a disability, and that like a developmental disability, doesn't reflect well on any of us, but just those simple words that I wasn't like her. It stuck with me.

Because even by that point, I had developed like a conflict that I'm still getting over today, where I just did not want to hear about more things that were wrong with me. It just shows in mindset I was in.

Yeah, and I mean, that'll make sense, and you know, I see that story that you're telling with compassion for everyone involved, but yeah, obviously not great to have teenagers making fun of someone with developmental disabilities.

But, you know, for you, it's like, kids, and especially when you're teenagers, just that idea of like, you're different, or there's something wrong with you, especially something wrong with you,

that would sort of like isolate you from your peers in some way.

“I think we've come a long way in terms of normalizing those things,”

so that kids that are genuinely have those disabilities, are not isolated and stigmatized, but I think there's even sort of another layer of wrongness when you know that that's not when you're being told that you're struggling with something that you know

you're not struggling with, and I think it's a wrongness that sort of anybody who's been through one of these situations as I have understands, right? We're just like, it's that, it's that gaslighting, right?

It's that thing that just like, you're feeling that dissonance with reality, and for you, it was like persistent kind of everyday of your life, and that just is so, I mean, it's sort of hard to describe to someone who hasn't been through it,

but it's a very deep, very wrong feeling. Yes, it is impossible to describe, and there's no frame of reference, or even now there is, you know, things to me to get attention,

especially, it's very specific cases, the concept of munchows and biproxy or whatever title you want to give this condition slash form of abuse. There's a box for people to put it in.

I was completely unaware of it, but even if I had, there's just no way to describe this particular feeling, because it's not what people consider abuse.

It doesn't. There's no physical manifestation of it. There's just, and even though it is a form of psychological abuse, it's not in the way that people are conditions to understand.

Frankly, there were lots of things, my mother and my father were doing that were more straightforward, objective psychological abuse that no one was around to see.

But it was sort of the just a cruelty part, and that people might recognize that it more easily. But there's just no category to put this in

because like why would anyone say that your child had these issues or needed these,

“the special help or couldn't function normally”

if there was at least a chance that actually, no, they didn't, they could function normally. There's, there's no understanding. I couldn't tell anyone that, because one, I didn't,

I had thought there'd really been a diagnosis at this point, but even if there hadn't, if I say, well, I don't really have this, but like, well, your mother says, you do. Like, if, if you didn't,

your mother would be the first person to,

wants to know that, you, you just don't like being, special or disabled. You, like, these are conversations I'd have in my head, because I couldn't really tell anyone,

it would just play out in my head, what if, how would I explain this to someone if I did, what response would I get? Like, who could you tell, who could you tell, and who, and would they believe you?

It was an internal dialogue, and I just, no matter how many different ways I played in my head, one, I'd had no evidence, but, and so, you'd sort of tie this all into where we're going with Dr. Smith,

because this has been a very, very long prelude. Your story has so much in common with so many other stories that I've heard, and as I told you, the autism,

the fake autism diagnosis is extremely common, and I expect that they were plenty of other perpetrators in that group that your mom was communicating with, and, I mean, I don't remember the last time I saw a case, frankly,

that didn't have a fake autism diagnosis. That's how common it is. And you really articulated very beautifully, like, sort of, the way that this abuse manifests outside of the medical system itself,

“which I think is really, really important for people to understand,”

because they can get very fixated on what procedure, or what medical escalation, what treatment, and it really is, and that's sort of why we've started using that term,

montage and by proxy abuse, rather than medical child abuse, is because it is so much more encompassing, and it is this like, gaslighting and educational abuse,

and social isolation, and all of those things that you're talking about, so it's really helpful. I was taking some classes on and off for the local community college,

because I had that prepaid college plan, without telling my mother, I applied to a small regional university, and the completely opposite side of the state. And when I was going to start going,

she was upset,

I never knew how she was going to react to certain news.

So I sort of, diving into the deep end, and also turned out I had various severe ADHD, that I never wanted to focus on,

“because I thought it was part of the bad thing,”

that I never wanted to consider. So I was doing very poorly, and I was just rack with anxiety the whole time, at least the first few semesters I was there, because it turns out that you cannot go

from being isolated from all of your peers, for that many years, and then just immediately, segue into a college freshman, and I was just, all, I was everything I learned

that I was expected to be able to do as an adult. I panicked, realizing that I couldn't do it, or I didn't know how to do this independently. And it was,

and a weird twisted way, it made me homesick. And then I was just like, okay, if I stayed at home,

and it was taking classes at the community college, I know where everything was. I knew how the rules were. But I'd be familiar with everything, maybe I should just do that.

And I didn't, but as I saw myself when I was planning,

I was never going to visit home again.

Everything was going to magically turn sunshine and roses, and I'd have everything I ever wanted, as soon as I got there. But then once I got so anxiety written,

and just struggling with academically, and just functioning independently, which I had never been taught how to do. Like okay, every potential break, I'm going to drive back home,

and I'm just going to spend that week and home, or that week home. And during this period, my mother got increasingly in stable, and to halfway through college,

just like okay, I'm just doing more going back home. I'll just stay out with friends. She was just getting more and more on stable and paranoid. The best example I can have is one visit.

I came back. This was one of the last times I visited her. I came back, and she was so upset, because she said well,

is there's this suddenly the strange noise? It just started a couple weeks ago. What is it? Well, that's just the hum of the air conditioner. Like that's the AC going.

And then she just,

“she had been looking at the wall point and do it.”

She's one or at a round looked at me,

and it's like how dare you. Well, you were here when the maintenance man was here. That maintenance man came to listen to it. He told me that it was just the air conditioner. And that I was being weird.

You were here. You heard him saying that. You were just pretending not to be home. And now you're repeating that to upset me. I was just like,

there's no way to respond to that. I don't know if it was a joke. Am I waiting for a laugh? Like, I couldn't like, like, okay. I'm going to go in the other room now.

Like, I don't know what this is. And she would just start pounding on the walls. It's like, what is that noise? So I drove back. And then I went here.

You know, she calls from her. She kept moving around in this period. She moved to this new apartment.

“She's like, well, I had to move from the old one because that noise.”

Just no one could explain to me what the noise was coming from. I moved here and they had that noise too. She quit her job. And so I would take calls from her just because I knew if I didn't. She would take the college fund out of my name.

And also I was doing very poorly academically. And I felt, to the world like a failure because it's like, I thought I would go here and I'd thrive. I'm like getting season D's.

Eventually, I did graduate. It took me like all combined between the community college and the actual university. It took me seven years to get my bachelor's degree. Asterics aside, I did it.

And to set up the main drive of how Dr. Sally comes into this. I finally graduated from college. And it was after this where my mother had hoped on held on the idea that even though I had been away for several years now that once I graduated, I would be coming back home.

And just had a meltdown once I made clear that I would not be moving back home. And that was when she, for the first time in years throughout that whole. I can know your grandmother like she perennialized you when you were three years old. The way you looked at me after she took you to Bush Gardens.

So it was never the same.

A year later, she, as I told you, she had been moving several different places. She called me up and she said, well, they just discovered there's this huge mold investigation in the place I'm moving now. And I was reading all these things online about how mold toxicosis wrecks your health physically and mentally. So I, I'm, I'm moving away. I need to find a new home.

And all of these things, all these boxes of stuff that I have of yours. They have mold spores on them now. So I can't keep them. So I, I'm going to drop them off somewhere.

“If you want to meet me, otherwise I'm tossing them.”

She gave me a bunch like three, four different boxes. I loaded in my car from that point on. I would just get random updates. She's like, yeah, I moved in with this aunt and Georgia. But it turned out they had mold.

Or yeah, I'm moving back to family in Ohio. But all these people have mold. And they won't believe me. And when I was looking through her belongings, I'm my belongings, I should say.

I guess she got things mixed up when she was packing things into boxes because there was this. It was a giant folder within folders within a clear classic mind or sort of thing. I had no idea what it was.

I was just flipping through it. And I saw that there was a series of folders just about me when I was in school. And I really, really, really didn't want to read that. Because this is when I was still in the mindset

that there had been a diagnosis. It was mistaken. And I didn't want to read all these documents. Saying, yeah, this kid is disabled. Yes, he has autism.

Yes, he can't do this or that. I thought, this was the big binder of documentation that you always had. In the next day, I'd just, like, OK, let's get it over with. I need to flip through these and see what these people

with school were actually saying about me.

And first things I noticed, like, OK,

it's the email from the teacher that I mentioned. And like, way, all of these teachers were saying that they didn't think I needed this extra help. And it was just my mother yelling at them and reporting them for violating IEP program or whatever.

Like, that's weird. And then I found the dependency petition. And a couple of pages in the middle were missing. But it was just, like, the front page, how they were bringing the petition in my name.

And I'm like, when did this happen? And it said it was when I was 13. Then I remembered someone had come to the door when I was on the loan. And I have no idea what I talked to her about.

from a gas station saying, just tell me what you told her I won't be mad.

“But the dependency petition about, I guess, my weight loss”

or how I had not been gaining any weight from between the ages of like nine to 13 or whatever. Or maybe I gained a pound or something. And then from there, it was just reports who all signed at the bottom by Dr. Sally Smith.

And I was just reading from top to bottom each one. And I can't really explain how I process this. For so many years, I had been thinking, all of this was a mistake. If a doctor could see me, I could prove.

Apparently, from this, a doctor had seen me who I have no recollection, specifically of seeing, because I went to so many doctors left and right, I must have just been told that this was another doctor deployment.

And I have no idea how it was in my mother's custody the entire times was happening especially as I later found out

“that my mother had been in content of court.”

We're using to show up for many times. But it was just the letters, the reports from Sally Smith

saying, first impressions, I was very concerned

because Cal did not seem to have any symptoms of any type of developmental disorder or autism. And she would list through the change in my weight percentile from the years I was on the special diet, but just going through the record she had.

Apparently, I went, I stayed basically the same weight for three years. So I went from what was the 75th percentile for my age when I was nine until like the bottom 15th or 10th percentile when I was 11, but then in a follow-up report,

it mentioned how I gained 20 pounds in between. And then the piece is sort of slipped into place because I remember when I was 13, from the year between 13 and 14, suddenly my mother

“would be taking me to checkers for lunch every day.”

And I couldn't just eat whatever I wanted. It was still oddly restricted. I could get a big burger, but without the bun, none of the catch-up and mustard because of the dyes, and I could have a sprites because it didn't have the dyes.

But you can have all of the fries, you want. Grease is good, have all the grease you need. Dr. Smith's report was clearly flagging this 20 pound gain happened after child protective services was called.

Common sense would say that if something changes once apparent is under investigation, it could be just because they're under investigation. The whole situation definitely, there's nothing to laugh about, but the part that is worth laughing at is whenever she mentioned

my mother in the reports was just a combination of, can we please get this woman evaluated as well? Because I know that's not my authority, but good for it. But after reading these reports, I was just, and this was just a few months before that series

that Act showed up on Hulu. I read the reports, you know, suspected munchows and by proxy, I had to look up what that was. And that there had been a word for the thing

that was going on that I had just never heard before,

that there had been someone when I was 13 that had seen me, that had flagged that, at the very least, I should be evaluated to see if I actually had these conditions, as opposed to just trusting it, all the individual points where she said,

none of these doctors evaluated Kyle. The only notes they ever have is that the mother said, he has these symptoms, and they reported in my record that I had autism based on my mother's reports.

She wrote four different, five different reports of the time in each one. It's like every new piece of evidence, the mother is giving us is just a doctor saying the mother reported that Kyle has autism.

No matter how deep they dug,

there was never a doctor that ever actually made a diagnosis

or even suggested it. It was one time when I was nine, she told my pediatrician, she read things online in the groups about the things you need to say

to have the doctor say this. But after I turned 18, she did through a whole lot of legal means

For several months after I had been getting disability payments

I was on the where, that it was happening, this is before I went off to college and in her room,

“the drawer a bunch of letters addressed to me,”

and it was forms from the hearing to get me disability benefits and the letters were addressed to me, but I never got them. She hid them,

like a transcript saying, the hearing Kyle could not appear and his mother says this is because he cannot be around other people without getting so nervous that he breaks down the hives.

She brought a note from the doctor explaining that yes,

this would be too stressful for him,

so she has to represent him at the hearing. Suddenly there was drawers of her practicing my signature, and so she had the whole bunch of forgery and surgery. Frankly, gotten me disability benefits

based on false statements about conditions I did not have. My mother at this point had the state's head a professional, a legal professional doctor saying

that this doesn't seem to be true,

“that these things are actually harming him”

and my mother's response to that, now that I know the timeline was, okay, you magically are able to, whatever you want to want you to take these enzymes,

but she still persisted after that to take me to get speech therapy, physical therapy, special classes for kids with developmental disabilities,

basketball classes, special helper at school, still forged my signature, falsified testimony, to get government benefits

into her accounts, all in the idea that I was disabled,

despite never actually having gotten a diagnosis,

and at that point it was like, okay, you could have made excuses up until I was 13, which just she genuinely believed this. She fell into this rabbit hole

about different severe developmental disabilities, kids could have and the health they need. She thought herself competent to diagnose this and thought, you know,

I love the idea of being a mother with a kid of special needs, but she was told by a pediatrician specializing in abuse that these are actually harmful, I at least,

the barely seems to, he should get a full psychological examination, which Dr. Smith said at the end of all of her reports, a full evaluation, which never happens.

And from that point on, she knew that at the very least it was highly questionable, whether I actually had this diagnosis, and there was a strong likelihood of potential that everything she was doing was harmful,

but she just dug in. She stopped the diet, because that is, she probably, like a consent agreement,

where it's like, we will drop this if you stop the diet. That's the only thing she changed. It makes so much sense, because at that point on,

anytime any teacher, anyone, casual comments that I might not be disabled, it would just trigger a rage. Yeah, so she was able to sort of maintain this ruse.

And obviously this report from Sally has been a lot to you, and the fact that she saw you has been a lot to you. And what's happening right now is that doctors like Sally and other child abuse petitions are really being vilified for diagnosing abuse

for doing what Sally did in your case, which is seeing what is happening to a child, seeing that it is wrong, seeing that it is harmful and pointing it out, and then advocating for that child.

And it seems clear to me from reading the report that you shared from Sally that, you know, which this is not at all surprising knowing what I know about how these cases go through the courts and elsewhere, that like, they got very focused on the sort of physical piece of the malnutrition,

you know, and then probably that is the part that they insisted be remedied and didn't sort of see the abuse in the more holistic way, which it seems that the Sally did, and that was what she was advocating for.

“What do you have to say to people who are trying to remove the ability of doctors like Sally Smith to help kids and advocate for kids in the way that she did for you?”

Obviously I am not able to speak to any broader issues beyond my own experiences,

I was never removed from my mother's care,

“despite what was objective evidence of lying and contemptive courts.”

But more importantly, I would have wanted nothing more than to be removed from my mother's custody. I would have wanted nothing more than to have gotten the full evaluation of the licensed psychiatrist specializing in child abuse. I would have wanted nothing more than to have that evaluation happen, to have whatever facts revealed be out there,

and for me to have been put in a better life situation. I have made so many strides, and looking back at it is kind of crazy how, even if slowly I went from moving away to go into college to just completely being overwhelmed with anxiety, and completely unable to balance coursework with basic adulting or functioning independently.

I went from that to barely graduating there still, like she'll will. I motivated myself to go to law school, where I did quite well, and now being law clerk to a federal judge,

especially coming from a state school, probably the hardest thing to achieve after graduation. I have made a lot of progress, and what's funny is when all through law school, I was just once I was getting treatment of the actual learning issues I had, I was the one most obsessed with taking as many courses as possible,

and wanting as much responsibility and activity to fill my calendars, the three years of law school were the best in my life. I made all those advancements,

but I will always, even now, and probably the rest of my life,

feel like there's a period of ten years that I will never fully get back. I, to this day, feel like I'm ten years behind where I should be, which in a way is an improvement, because when I was first in undergrad, my biggest fear was that I would never move forward.

That everyone else, at my pure age range, would continue moving forward. I would just still be stuck in suspended childhood adolescence, and I would just continue to get older while never moving forward. Now, I've been selling moving forward year after year,

“but it's always ten years behind where I think I would have been.”

But I will always miss those ten years. I still struggle whenever I see like high school age boys, or any like TV drama of college or high school age kids, just hanging out after school. It is a feeling of grief whenever I see anything focusing on boys or

guys at that age. It's a grief that I thought would hold me back from achieving anything, fortunately I was wrong on that,

but it will always be with me.

And as someone who went through that, I have an instinctive reaction to ever reading that this child should never have been removed from their parents, even temporarily, and all I wanted for those ten years was to be removed from my parents.

The thing I was going through was so under the radar and so impossible to explain or describe, and so like in cities in a way, it was such a form of psychological abuse that I couldn't put into words so much so that,

you know, from the ages of like 11 to 14, my mother would beat me, never severely, never any lasting bruises or any violent vat, she would like, "What meet with the belts?" She had a paddle that eventually she used often enough that it broke.

“I can just remember those years of wishing that she had beaten me more severely,”

that there was a physical sign that someone could pick up on. And the idea that being with the parent is always the best, and this is where I can't speak on a broader policy basis, because of course there are some cases where there is just an issue that should be resolved,

and the kids should be immediately placed back with their parents. But the assumption that being with the parent is always going to be the best solution and should always be the goal for every situation, no matter what time you're seeing, it will always feel wrong to me.

I will always breathe that I didn't get those years in a situation away from my parents. And as much as I did love my father for the years we were visiting,

this was a few months after I had found Dr. Sally's reports.

“I did find out that several months after that,”

my father had died of an overdose. Because once I saw all of his belongings and saw all of the different medications that he had been on probably since he was 15, it placed in a neat little box explanation why he had the issues he had, and the way he slipped through the cracks,

and prescription drug abuse, over prescription doctors not doing the job they should. I don't regret not seeing him again. Even in the temp he did to reach out to me,

he never apologized for the things he said about saying that he to sell me,

or that he did eventually have another son with another wife. And he did take my name out of any beneficiary from his annuity, and that is now an annuity that goes to his second son. So I can understand what happened with him now, but in a weird way he was in his own disturbed way,

the only one aside from Dr. Smith's sort of advocating for me.

“When I was visiting him that last time when he did to sell me,”

I found out that he had taken me to doctors specifically to prove that I did not have autism, or that this diet I was put on was unnecessarily hurting me. And that is one of the doctors that Dr. Smith reached out to the doctor from Kansas City saying that this diet was harming me,

and I should be taking it off in a media way. In a weird way, even though he was trying to help he made it worse, because he got all the notices from the disability petition, because both parents have to be involved. It is both the nose or being sued in the interest of the child.

He reached out, he came to every court hearing my mother never did.

And knowing what I know about my father, he was probably so angry and vitralic against child protective services that it seemed to them that he was the real threat and that if I was taken to my mother's custody, I would automatically or to him.

He probably made my mother seen way more sympathetic. And it was just, it was narrative I could never escape. She was, to my knowledge, there was never any actual domestic violence for the reappeared there or married. I cannot attest to that.

But knowing that issues that my father had, the narrative was, she escaped a situation with someone with a drug addiction. Put herself through school at night, while working as a custodian on food stamps,

you know, pay for college fund to this kid. You ask so many issues that need so much help and she's devoting everything she has done. And once you factor in my father's aggressiveness, there was just no combating that.

And the reason why I'm pretty certain this isn't the case is because I do know after my father died and I was looking through his court paperwork

after he divorced his second wife.

My half brother, there was a child protective services investigation against her. And all of the emails from my father to the child protective services officer in that case. He was cussing her out, threatening her,

saying how dare you let this happen to my kid. I'm going to come and get you. Like if you don't fix this, if you're being so, I think incompetence, I can't believe this state of Kentucky's top protective services, I'm going to come after you.

And if you're the state and you see that this is the other parent, I don't know what this situation was from my half brother who I've only seen once he was for. But if my father was doing the same thing with my case, who is the state going to assume is the best option.

A parent who can plausibly, although not if you actually look closely at it, if you see all of the things that Dr. Smith saw.

“But plausibly, if you want to see that narrative,”

done everything she possibly could for this child. And did all these things, to help him with his struggles, and maybe some of them turned out to be unnecessary, but she made an honest mistake.

And the coolest thing to this day is that, even though there's awareness of munchows and by proxy, I had this weird situation where I was having the, I had the external appearance of a parent that was devoted. And even if you look at the record now and see the harm,

But in private, everything was the more classic understanding of neglect. It was in private. It was her, it's like Kyle, you're 17.

“If you were to run away, no one would come looking for you.”

Or how you're lucky that you have a pretty face because otherwise no one would ever want to be with you. And a child that is being neglected in that way has the benefit of the parent isn't paying attention to them. They can go.

I was constantly being told everything that in neglect a child would be told that your worthless, no one will come looking for you. No one will want to be with you. No one will care for you.

You will never be able to function on your own,

but never being given the opportunity to be on my own. Never give the opportunity to just walk away. Like anyone would want to do if that is what their parent is telling them. And there's no one situation where I was having like both the, if there are two boxes of recognizing child abuse,

the neglect versus the exaggerated care, how I was having both and not getting sort of like the recognition from the outside world for either.

“Is that my entire life thinking that this is something”

that can never be recognized? This is like the perfect crime. This is nothing there's no word for this. There is no, I'm getting the worst of both worlds and that I am having the physical abuse

and the emotional abuse and the neglectful parents with the constant smothering of an overprotective parents. And I'm getting the benefit to neither. And no one will ever recognize this. I wish a doctor could see me to recognize this but no one ever would.

And just tie back to the fact that there was a doctor that someone was 13 that not only saw the harm that the unnecessary like diets and medical treatments could have in its own way, but that recognized the very likely psychological abuse that was happening behind closed doors.

I can only imagine Gio and me ever had one face-to-face interaction with my mother, but Dr. Smith, everything she said in her report was not just true but like remarkably true and a way that no one else that dealt with me seemed to grasp.

Like the teachers and the school administrators that saw the way or other was acting. There was an issue there. The two is difficult. Or she should be doing this or that.

Could never spot was really being said

and done by closed doors. I could never speak about what was happening. Dr. Smith's report was accurate in every way imaginable, not just the physical effects of the restrictive diet and the concentration medications that was stunting my growth

and causing me to be dangerously underway. I mean, she recognized how suspicious it is to have a kid constantly changing schools. You know, everything but just living with my mother at that time in the worst period just seemed to be manifesting

everything that I was going through and just things that might. Just things that Dr. Smith got on to that I never thought anyone could ever could from what must have only been one interaction. Kyle, thank you so much for telling us all of this

and it's such an extraordinary story and it really does speak to when you know what you're looking at. Again, all of the elements of your story sound check, check, check to me. And when I met the script of professionals with abstract,

I was telling them the story that had happened in my family and they were all going, "Oh, yep, yep." And I was like, "What is happening?" Because I didn't think anybody else could sort of like put all this together, right?

“And I think that's why it's important to talk about”

and I know that survivors who are hearing your story will feel very seen by what you've said. I just want to say to you, it is truly extraordinary what you have accomplished,

given what you were up against on all sides. You are obviously a very smart, unbelievably resilient person. And you talk about all of this with such sort of clarity and compassion.

And I just want to say that I'm just, I'm really blown away by talking to you because I have been before and also,

you should never have had to be as resilient as you are.

And I'm just so sorry that the adults that were tasked with caring for you made it such that you had to be so extraordinary to be able to make it here. Nobody should believe me is produced

Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Marie Gossett, administrative support from Nola Karmuch.