He Fell Victim to a Predator Trying to Escape His Mom

Unfiltered Stories

Today on our show, Seth Gehle courageously shares his story of overcoming significant challenges from his childhood. Raised by a neglectful and abusive mother, Seth longed for care and connection. Unfortunately, his trust was exploited by a groomer who initially seemed supportive but ultimately caused him further harm. Tune in to hear how Seth has turned his past struggles into a force for good, advocating for others who have faced similar situations.  #survivorstories #trauma #healingjourney    You can find Seth here:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/gobeyondtheshadows  Website: Sethgehle.com  YT: https://youtube.com/@Seth_Gehle  LN: http://linkedin.com/in/sethgehle    Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.   Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.  By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.   🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅  Facebook ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB  Tiktok ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT  Snapchat ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredSN

Transcript

00:00My name is Seth Gale. I grew up with a single mother of three. As long as I can remember,

00:04it was just us and my mom. All the way back to like kindergarten, I remember coming home,

00:10being alone. So she would be with us at night. But during the days, we were home alone at five,

00:15six, seven years old. And I never had my father in my life either. He went to prison for a

00:19long

00:19time. When I turned probably about nine or 10, that's when things started to click for me that

00:24I was not living a normal life. I remember looking into the living room and my mom was smoking and

00:31drinking with a bunch of guys in there. Both my sisters were in there. And at least my older

00:36sister was smoking with them. And she would have only been 10 or 11 at the time. What started to

00:40happen was my mom would beat us or whoop us. My mom walked in my room one time. My sister

00:46was in there

00:46and I was playing my video games. And my mom kicked open the door and turned and looked at my

00:51sister

00:52and closed hand punched one of us. And my sister's head snapped back, hit the wall. And as soon as

00:57that happened, I jumped on the other side of my bed to like crouch and hide. And my mom proceeded

01:02to

01:02hit my sister a few more times in the face. I was about 10 years old when this happened. And

01:05I look

01:06up at my mom and I'm crying. I'm like hysterical. And my mom looks at me and says, what are

01:11you crying

01:11for? Stop being a little bit. It is not the physical parts. It is the emotional damage that it does

01:17to

01:17you after. A few weeks later, I had walked home from school and I wasn't supposed to. So I came

01:22home really late. Understandably, my mom was upset and I should have learned a lesson. And so she took

01:26me upstairs to do that, which was typical. But this time was a little bit different. I was laid out

01:31across her bed and she had her paddle and she started to whoop me. And I know the first time

01:35she

01:36hit me the way it felt, I just knew something was wrong. I knew that this was not, this was

01:40different.

01:41And she hit me and she hit me, I think another time. And then I fell to my knees and

01:45she kept

01:46swinging. And so she kept swinging and was striking me across my back with this big wooden paddle,

01:52like a solid piece of wood and tore me up. She hit me about three or four times across the

01:56back

01:56and I fell down and I was crying, screaming because I was begging her to stop because she

02:00wasn't hitting me on the butt anymore. I remember laying there on her bedroom floor and I looked up

02:05at her like, and I was crying and I was just like, what the hell? And you know, she told

02:10me like,

02:10get the out of here. Like go to your room is what she said to me. So I like crawled

02:14to my bedroom

02:15and I laid there for like two hours crying and the physical pain is sucked. But truthfully looking

02:20back on it, I mean, I was so emotionally destroyed because of the lack of like love. There was no

02:26respect for me. There was no learning. There was no teaching there. It was just, that was abuse on top

02:31of the abuse and the in the house and the drinking all the time. There would be days where we

02:36didn't

02:37have power. There would be days where we didn't have like heat. So my, or, or like, I remember we

02:43always

02:43had to heat up our, we always had to like put our bath water on the oven or put it

02:48inside the oven

02:49or on the stove to warm up our bath water and take it upstairs and put it in the bathtub

02:52so that we

02:53could have a warm bath. If I spent the night at a friend's house, I would see that like mom

02:57and dad

02:57are here. They have food in the house. You know, there was this warm feeling at their home and we

03:03just

03:03didn't have that because of all of those things. When a child is going through that, they are going to

03:07look for love somewhere. And that's kind of where I would eventually get into the worst part of my

03:13childhood. I started finding myself outside of the house a lot more. And I was over at my friend's

03:17house and my friend was about five years older than me. So he was about 15. This kid was like

03:22my

03:22protector. He was my best friend. He was older. I always found myself around older kids, maybe two

03:27or three years older than me because they were bigger, stronger, and they could protect me. I was a

03:30really small kid. He tells me he's going to his friend's house this weekend and his friend comes in the

03:34door and his friend is this grown man. This man is about 6'5", 380 pounds. He's got these big

03:41wireframe glasses on. He's got long, dark hair. He's a Hispanic guy. He was a massive guy and he

03:47didn't look like sloppy. He looked very capable. He looked like he could throw a hard punch. That's

03:52how I always describe him. And I remember the first thing he said to me was, do you like playing

03:56video games? And I said, well, yeah, I love playing video games. Do you like football? Yeah, I love

04:00football. Do you like the Buckeyes? Love the Buckeyes. And so he says, well, do you want to

04:04come up and hang out with us this weekend? And so I said, sure. I, you know, I got to

04:08go home and ask

04:08my mom. So I go home real quick and I asked my mom, mom, can I go hang out with

04:12my friend and his

04:13friend? Well, who's his friend? Well, he's his guy. And my mom says, no, like, what do you mean?

04:20So then my, my younger friend who was like 15, he comes over and he defends the guy and he

04:25says,

04:25you know, Hey, he's okay. My mom says, fine. As long as you're with him, you can go to his

04:29house.

04:29And so that's when it all kind of started for me. We would go to the guy's house and he

04:35lived

04:35about 30 minutes away. I remember driving up there. He drove a little white, like Honda Civic.

04:41It was a really old car. And there was, I remember there was trash all over his car. Like his

04:45whole

04:45floorboard was covered in trash. The reason why I talk about his car so much and the trips going up,

04:49there was a 30 minute drive. And I just remember like being around this grown man who we could cuss,

04:55we could listen to whatever music we wanted to listen to. And there was like nothing,

04:57there was nothing off limits. And so it was just cool to be around a guy like that.

05:01And then we get up to his house. It was just a big open studio. There was no bedrooms in

05:05the back

05:06left corner. There was black curtains like sheets hanging from the ceiling and it blocked off the

05:11back left corner. And that's where his bed was. The crazy part about it, he was so good at making

05:16us comfortable. These people are very calculated. They're very strategic and they're very smart and

05:22intelligent. And he was smart period. But if you want to do this to children, you want to do this

05:26to

05:26kids? You have to be calculated about it because if not, you'll get caught. He was very good at the

05:31grooming process because I came in like with open arms. I was like, this is awesome. And I never had

05:36any suspicions of anything going wrong. But I remember going up there and I always slept behind

05:41the couch. I slept on this like little rollout thing. My other friend slept with him in his bed and

05:46I never really thought anything about it. I thought like if the same thing, if me and my buddies were

05:51all

05:51spending the night together, we might all sleep in the bed together. And eventually it would lead to me

05:55sitting in this guy's lap. I would come up on the weekends and we'd hang out. And then at some

05:59point I would end up in his lap somehow. Probably after about two or three months of going up there,

06:04I had started to get more comfortable sitting in his lap and like being just kind of getting closer

06:10and closer to the inevitable. After about probably a month or so, after about a month and a half,

06:15two months, I would go by myself. On this one particular weekend, the first time he really kind of made

06:20a

06:20move on me, I guess. I was actually there with my friend and my friend had left to go get

06:25tacos

06:25down at Taco Bell. It was like right down the street. There's 50 cent tacos on Sundays back in

06:30the day. And we would just get like 40 or 50 of them and tear them up. And then we

06:33go home.

06:34And so my friend goes down the street to go get some tacos. And I'm sitting in the guy's lap

06:38and

06:38he had his left arm around me on my left hip. And I was still 10 years old at this

06:43time. I remember

06:43sitting there, we're watching like football or something. And his hand slips off my hip and he brushes my

06:49butt. And he says, Oh, I'm sorry. I said, Oh, no, no big deal. Like I attributed it to like

06:55me and

06:55him passing each other in a hallway. You know, we bump into each other. It's not a big deal. And

06:58so

06:59he picks his hand up and he puts it on my butt and he says, Oh, so this is, this

07:03is okay. And I said,

07:05you know, at this point I said, sure, you know, not a big deal. And then he kept his hand

07:09there.

07:09And he said, you know, you don't mind if I keep my hand right here. And when he said that,

07:12I knew I was

07:13like, okay, this is what we're doing. Like I was very aware of what was happening when he kept his

07:17hand on my

07:17butt. I knew that I was about to be subjected to something that I was not, I did not want

07:23to do.

07:23Unfortunately, I froze and I kind of just accepted it. And so my friend gets back and he obviously he

07:28moves his hand out the way and we go home over the next probably three months, things would escalate

07:33and continue to escalate where every time I would come to his house, it would be immediately sitting

07:38on his lap. We play video games for a couple hours and then he would start to grab me more

07:42and more.

07:43He would start to take his hands and stick them inside my shorts. And I remember I could right now

07:48I can feel his hands. Like I can feel he had these, like I said, these massive hands and they

07:54were so

07:54dry. He had these like massive calloused hands. His knuckles were calloused and they were so calloused.

08:00As a matter of fact, he would take them and rub them. He could rub his fingers together or he

08:04would

08:04just rub his knuckles against his hand and it sounded like sandpaper, but he would always do that.

08:08And so that's like a sound that I can always remember. And these, these like sensory things

08:13are what get to me now. But I remember his, the rough texture of his hands, touching me, touching

08:18my, my, my butt, touching my bare skin. And he had these long nails. So I remember his long nails

08:24and eventually it would lead to him putting his hands in my shorts, which would eventually lead

08:28to him touching like my penis. And then he would eventually start to reach around and grab my butt.

08:34I can remember what his hands feel like to like spread my butt and for him to try and stick

08:39his

08:39finger inside of me. And I, I always, it always hurt obviously, but I told him like your nails,

08:45like they hurt. So he actually would trim his nails for me being this like gentleman that he was.

08:51So this all happened, you know, within about six months of knowing him, it started to escalate pretty

08:55quick. It started to be reciprocated where he would make me touch him. And I say make,

09:00and it sounds crazy, but they will get in your head so bad that you'll do things that you just

09:06don't want to do, but you're just going to do them. And it's, I don't even know how to explain.

09:10It's like mind control. His relationship was never threatening. That's one thing I'll say about it is

09:14I never felt threatened. I never felt scared. I never, I was never like forced into doing anything.

09:20His relationship with me was very caring, I guess, for lack of a better term. He told me he cared

09:26about me and that I was special and that I was the only thing that mattered to him. And even

09:30on

09:30these car rides, he would sing songs to me or he wouldn't sing songs, but he would dedicate songs

09:34like by meatloaf and hairspray back in the day. Like I would do anything for love, like those

09:39kinds of songs, like those eighties, like rock songs, he would dedicate those love songs to me

09:43and he'd play them. And he would say, I think about you when I listened to these. And so at

09:4710

09:48years old, I'm like going up to his house. I'm like, this is really weird. But unfortunately my home

09:53life was not much better. And so on the weekends, like this was my escape. If all I had to

09:56do was

09:57like sit in this guy's lap, I could play video games all weekend and need a bunch of free pizza.

10:00Like it wasn't that bad to me. Once he started putting his hands on me and really in my, in

10:04my

10:05shorts. And so he wasn't violent. It was just, he just had rough hands. And so eventually though,

10:10he would, he would get me to reciprocate the same feelings. And so I can remember sticking my hands

10:15like into his shorts and then, or just, and I know I did not want to do it. One thing

10:19you'll hear a lot

10:19of people talk about when they go through these things is that they'd like detach and they're in a

10:24different place and they don't remember, or they're able to like disassociate. I could never

10:27do that. I was very present and aware the entire time. And I know that because it felt like years

10:34of sitting there in his lap, or when he'd take me back to his, eventually he would start taking me

10:38back to his bed and I'd sleep with him every night. And it felt like years. I mean, I'd be

10:43back there

10:44for three, four or five hours. And it was just like a constant, like nails on a chalkboard,

10:49just a constant, just force of him either putting his hands on me or like he would grab my hand

10:55and

10:55pull it over and put my hand in his shorts. And I remember when he would make me touch him

10:59on his

11:00penis. Like I didn't want to touch him. I didn't want to grab anything. So I just kind of would

11:03lay

11:03my hand there. This is really disturbing, but it was like really wet. And so I was thinking to myself,

11:08like, is this guy like pissing himself? And it was actually, he was like almost like ejaculating

11:13before I would even touch him. And cause he was just so worked up and excited, which is like next

11:19level

11:19disgusting. By the time I was 11, probably it was like fully performing oral sex on me in his bed.

11:26I remember when that first started happening and I'm laying there in his bed and this massive guy

11:30is, is performing oral sex on me and I'm looking down on him. And I think when I was 12,

11:34I had my

11:35first orgasm and it was from him performing oral sex on me. And when I did, I remember him looking

11:40up

11:40at me. Did you enjoy that? Did you like that? And what am I going to say? You know, I

11:44just had an

11:44orgasm. Like I, like, what do you want me to say? I agree to it. And I say, yeah, you

11:48know,

11:48and, and it was good and all these like nasty things. He would eventually coerce me once again

11:54to reciprocate everything he was doing to me. I would reciprocate to him. I eventually would

11:59perform oral sex on this grown man. One of the times he ejaculated and it hit me in the face

12:03and actually hit me in the eye. And, uh, he looked at me, he laughed at me and he said,

12:07you know, that was crucial. And so one of the things he would always do whenever we were out

12:10with hanging out with other friends, cause we did have other friends we hung out with.

12:13If something happened, he would say, Oh, that was crucial. And it was like,

12:16always like a jab at me. It was funny to him. And I'd always laugh too. And I was always

12:19like,

12:20ha ha ha. Yeah, it was. So that was like one of the more disturbing memories that I have.

12:24Another one that's really bad is, was he had bought me a, like a leopard thong. And when I

12:29was like a leopard pair of panties and like women's panties, and I would, uh, I'd wear them

12:34around his apartment, like his studio. He would, I remember he bought them for me and I'd put them on

12:38and like, he'd like had me like parade around his studio. Like he's 36 years old and he's got this

12:42little 12 year old boy in a, in a leopard thong, like dancing around his studio. And it was to

12:47me,

12:48for some reason, that's just like more humiliating, but yeah, he, it would continue to get worse and

12:52worse and worse. And so what, what makes this even more crazy is that during the week I was going

12:58home

12:58to my mom. And at this point, when I was about 11 or 12, she was into pain. She was

13:04very abusive

13:05with us to the, she was grabbing me by my face and punching me and slamming my head against the

13:10walls.

13:10And I went home to a bedroom that I had up in my bedroom at home. I had a, like

13:15a hole in my

13:16ceiling that was like two feet wide, about four feet deep. You could see straight into the attic

13:19above. So it would rain and it would snow and it would come into my room. And I slept on

13:23a little

13:23like three, four inch mattress with a thin little blanket. And I wet the bed every night. And so my

13:28home life was just, you know, at 11 years old, 12 years old, I was seeing people completely, uh,

13:33out of their minds on my couch, looked like zombies. I've seen pregnant family members sitting there on my

13:39couch. So they couldn't even function. They're just sitting there shaking. That's what I dealt

13:42with Monday through Friday. So what am I going to do on the weekends? I've got to go somewhere else.

13:46When I was 12, my mom, she stabbed her boyfriend in the stomach over some in the bathroom. And I

13:53was,

13:53we were, me and my sisters were at my neighbor's house and we walked outside and there was a fire

13:56in the front yard. And then my mom's boyfriend comes out and he's got blood all over him. And then

14:01my

14:01mom comes out the house and she's young and screaming and going crazy. And me and my sisters at this

14:06point, we're all hysterical. We're crying. We can't control ourselves because we know this is

14:10it. Like mom is gone. Like this is it. We don't know what just happened, but there's a fire.

14:14Mom is yelling. The police just show up. They throw my mom in the back of the car.

14:18I remember standing out in that street at 12 years old, looking at my mom in the back of this

14:23police

14:23car. It felt like I was in a reality TV show. Like I, it was having an out body experience.

14:27She was kind of telling me through the window, like, it'll be okay. I'll be back. I'll come and get

14:32you.

14:32The police officer drove away and I was standing there in the street. My mom was just taken away

14:36from me. We go back into the house and then one thing leads to another. My sisters go one way.

14:41I go another way. And for the next four months or so, I would bounce around to a bunch of

14:45different

14:46houses. And throughout all of this, I was still talking to my abuser every single night. And I

14:50was still going to his house every weekend, not having a mother, not having a father, and then getting

14:54sexually abused in the worst ways every weekend of my life for about four or five months until my

14:59grandparents, they found me at a, at a friend's house. They wanted to adopt me. And so they took

15:04me in and actually had my sisters already. And my grandma asked us like, do you want us to adopt

15:08you guys? And I said, yes, without like, yeah, absolutely. Once again, I told my grandma, well,

15:13I got this friend I want to go hang out with. I was molested when I was about five or

15:16so, four or

15:17five years old by a babysitter. And I, and we told my grandparents about that when I was really,

15:21really young, but I know we did because they remember it. And they remember trying to get us out of

15:26the

15:26situation. I tell my grandma, well, Hey, I got this friend that I want to hang out with. She says,

15:30well, who is it? I tell them they're like, hell no, you're not hanging out with this guy. And so

15:34I defend him. Like I had done for the last few years. This was like a very unique relationship

15:39with me and this guy. I was very defensive of him, very protective of him. I knew his whole family.

15:44He had sisters that I would go to like their Thanksgivings and their Christmases. And so this guy

15:49is bringing this 12 year old boy over for all of his Christmas holidays. Like he didn't have a

15:53girlfriend and he doesn't have a wife. He doesn't have friends. He's got this little boy. He always

15:57brings with him. So I told my grandparents that I'm like, yeah, I know him. I know his whole family.

16:00He's cool. He's fine. My grandparents said, well, we need to meet him. So the guy comes over and it's

16:05very much like a first date. Like, like you're taking me out on prom night. Like he pulls up,

16:09gets out of the car and he's got his best 5XL red t-shirt on with his best clean gray

16:15sweatpants.

16:16And you know, he's got his hair washed for once and he shows up. It's just like real romantic,

16:21like gentlemen gestures, right? So he knocks and he comes in the house and he makes my grandparents

16:28laugh and boom, they're comfortable. And so I'm right back in my hell. After introducing him,

16:33he would come to my house every weekend, right? And he would come and pick me up. And it actually,

16:36he was very like cordial about it. I think when my grandparents were involved, he may have realized

16:42that he was at risk of losing me because I had two parents. I had a father figure in my

16:47life with my

16:47grandpa. He actually became very close with my grandparents. Like he would come in and talk.

16:52And, and, and that was, now that I'm thinking about it, I mean, it was brilliant on his part to

16:56like close up that relationship. I was right back in my hell, right? I'm going back to his house every

17:01weekend now. And at this point I was almost 13. Things were really, really picking up and getting

17:06really heavy where every weekend or every week he would call me, he was always depressed. He always

17:11wanted to kill himself. So he would always use that against me of like, if I don't come and see

17:14him,

17:14like, I'm the only thing that matters to him. It went from going up to his house and playing video

17:19games for most of the time. And then hanging out with him in his bed for a couple hours to

17:23playing video games for an hour or two. And it'd be like six o'clock and he'd say, I'm going

17:27to bed.

17:27And he would lay, he'd go back there and lay down. And there was this, you know, a wall and

17:31he would

17:32sit there and he would just punch the wall behind him until I went back there and got in bed

17:35with him.

17:35And it was his way of like, I'm depressed. I'm sad. You need to come back in here and love

17:40me.

17:40That's what would happen. And you know, all I wanted to do was go play video games. When he wasn't

17:44sexually abusing me, it was, it was truthfully, it was a lot of fun. And he was a lot of

17:48fun to be

17:48around. Like I said, it eventually got to the point where it was just, he was obsessed with it.

17:52There was a jar of Vaseline next to his bed. And I remember seeing this Vaseline for years and it

17:57just disgusted me because I could see the grooves in it from where he had stuck his fingers in to

18:03use

18:03his fingers on me in the past. And it just disgusted me. I never wanted it to get to that

18:07point.

18:08Obviously, like I said, I couldn't disassociate. I couldn't detach. I was there. I was there

18:12for every single second of it. I was never in another place. He eventually let's convinces me

18:17to let him rape me. And I remember being there at 12 years old, almost 13. And I'm like naked

18:24on his

18:24bed and on my hands and knees on the edge of his bed. And you know, he, I remember feeling

18:29his finger

18:29with a bunch of lube kind of like wipe me down on my butt. And he proceeds to rape me.

18:36And it wasn't

18:37this like brutal, like rape session. It was as gentle as it could be. And, um, I remember it

18:43happening. I remember what I remember all of those things. I remember how it feels and I could hear

18:48him. I could feel his hands on my hips, like holding me still. Cause he, like I said, he had

18:52these massive hands and, and I just, I remember like hearing him. I remember when he was finished,

18:58you know, I could, I can hear like the exhaustion and his like demeanor and his breath.

19:04He wipes me up with this towel at 12 years old. I go back and I go sit on his

19:08toilet and I go and

19:10sit there for 10 minutes to get everything else out of my body. And at that point I was pretty

19:14convinced my life was over. I was pretty convinced that I had some sort of sexual disease, HIV, AIDS,

19:22something. I was convinced that everybody would know or think that I was gay. I was weird for

19:26sleeping with this man. I didn't have my mom and my dad. I was, I'd already been through all of

19:30that.

19:30So my life was over. I was at the absolute deepest part of my life that I've ever been.

19:36And I was ready to die. I had been ready to kill myself for several years at this point.

19:39A few months later, I turned 13 and he's at my 13th birthday party. They threw me a surprise

19:43birthday party and he's there with like all my family. I think my dad was actually there

19:48and everybody's kind of like, who the hell is this guy? You know? And, and you know,

19:52this is just my sexual abuser. No big deal. He just raped me a couple months ago. But when I

19:56was

19:56almost 16, I was about a month away from being 16. I was up at his house one weekend and

19:59I had a friend that was with me who was a couple of years younger than me. I noticed that

20:03the guy

20:03was starting to make the same kind of gestures towards him that he had done to me. There had

20:07been like a few people that hung out with us occasionally, but this kid was very frequent

20:11and he was a good friend of mine too. I don't know what the guy's like overall plan was or,

20:15or whatever, but he also ran a haunted house in that town of Bluffton, Ohio every year.

20:21And every year, uh, 4,000, these little kids would come through this haunted house and he'd be at the

20:27end of it handing them all candy. So there's no telling how many victims he had and there's no

20:30telling how long it would have went on. But, but this night he took my friend back in that,

20:35back in his bed with him. And that was the first time that I can remember my friend going back

20:38there. And I thought to myself, like, this is it. Like, I'm not, I'm not going to let this happen

20:42to anybody else. I messaged my friend who introduced me to the guy five years prior on the video game.

20:47And I just asked him to come over to the next day so I could talk to him. My friend

20:51who I messaged

20:51shows up. And so I'm in my bedroom with him and I'm talking to him and I'm trying to get

20:55these words to come out. And just like that day that my mom was taken away from me, I could

20:59feel

20:59all those emotions coming back of like my blood and my energy and everything was leaving. And I

21:03was like melting. And there's this, there's these cameras that are watching me because nobody's

21:08going to believe me. I'm everybody's going to deny me. Everybody's going to think I'm stupid.

21:12They're going to think I'm gay. They're going to think I have diseases. And my friend looks at me

21:16and he just says, he touched you, didn't he? And I turn and look at him and I just fall

21:20apart.

21:20I fall to the floor. I'm crying. I'm sweating profusely. I have never cried so hard in my life.

21:28And after maybe 10 or 15 seconds, he looks at me and he says, he did it to me too.

21:32And I was

21:35completely thrown off. Like I still had no idea. This guy who was my friend was like my hero. He

21:42was

21:42like my big brother. And then when he said that, I was just like, what the hell? Like, and I

21:46fell

21:46apart again. And, um, so he says, you know, what do you want to do about it? He says, do

21:50you want

21:50to report him or do you want to keep it a secret? He's like, it's up to you. I'll follow

21:53your lead.

21:54And I say, well, this guy, we got to get him. Like, I'm not, I'm not dealing with this. And

21:58so

21:59we go out and we tell my grandparents and my grandma was especially destroyed because of what

22:03had happened to me at five years old. And then she tried to save me then. And then I brought

22:08this guy

22:08into the house and everybody trusted him and he was part of our Christmases. And now she finds out

22:14this. And so she stays at the house, me and my grandpa, my friend, we go to the hospital to

22:18do

22:18everything else. And we get there. And one thing I do remember about this day was when I got there,

22:23the nurses and everybody was thinking in the police officer, they're like, well, how are we

22:26going to get this guy today? Like we, we have to have hard evidence to get him today. And I

22:30said,

22:31well, I have his DNA on my body because that weekend I was abused. I knew at 15 years old,

22:36I'm very proud of myself for this mostly because of the way they reacted. But at 15 years old,

22:40I knew to not take a shower and to not take my clothes off. And so I went home that

22:44Sunday,

22:44I never showered, never took my clothes off. And we go to the hospital and I tell them that,

22:49and they're just like, holy, take your clothes off right now. Take my clothes off. They swab me,

22:53they come back, boom, we got his DNA and a couple of places. And so the cop drives up there

23:00and arrest

23:01him. And that's, that's like a whole nother crazy story. As a matter of fact, it was his first

23:06sexual assault case he had ever handled. They got him to confess out of custody basically.

23:10And so he would end up getting sentenced to I think 10 years for 11 counts, which is absurd.

23:17He had at least 10 years of pleasure between two victims at a minimum. There's no telling how long

23:23it went on before us or would have went on after. And that was back in 2011. So he would

23:30be free today

23:30to walk this world and do whatever the hell he wanted to do to people. But fortunately enough,

23:35he died in prison in 2019. He requested parole, was denied and then died a year, died a few months

23:41later, about a year before he was supposed to get out of prison. I know I have the closure of

23:47reporting and my case being handled and solved and all of those things. I do not take that lightly. I

23:53cannot imagine what it would be like to not have that case solved and not be able to have that

23:59justice. I don't know what that would be like. So to those who can't, I do empathize for you.

24:03My answer to that or response to that would be not to focus on the vengeance or the conviction.

24:09I would not focus on those things. I would focus on yourself because you have to control what you

24:14can and you have to take care of yourself. So I tell everybody now, if you do report,

24:19you absolutely should report. But more importantly, do it for yourself so that you can get the therapy,

24:24you can heal and you can get that weight off your back. Despite all of the bad things that I

24:29went

24:29through as a young man with the abuse and the sexual violence and all of those different things,

24:34I've moved on to become and I'm living an incredible life. I'm doing things that I never

24:39imagined that I would do. And there's nothing you could have told that 12 year old boy the things

24:44that I've done now. I've won national construction awards. I served my country for eight years. I've been

24:49all over the world to include a combat deployment to Afghanistan. I'm married. I have two beautiful

24:54children. I have a nice home, two nice cars. And I'm telling my story now so that other people can

25:02understand that there's a, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. As long as you keep moving

25:07forward and remain strong and resilient, you can do amazing things. This summer, I'll be speaking at a

25:13gala for children who go through sexual violence. And to think that two or 300, 400 people are going to

25:21want to hear me talk and hear my story as a sign of hope and resilience and strength and gratitude.

25:27It's incredible. I would have never imagined that happening to me in a million years. And so I'm,

25:32that's the reason why I tell my story now is so that other people can know like there is,

25:35there is hope for me and I can do amazing things. So I'm writing a book right now that details

25:39all

25:40of this stuff, a little bit further detail, but it also details how I have survived afterwards.

25:45And a lot of that is really through perspective, gratitude, and strength through my lens of life.

25:52I try to give other people perspective of how life can be, how it should be and how beautiful it

25:58can be

25:58with that perspective. You can develop gratitude. And when you have gratitude and you express gratitude

26:04daily, you can use those two things to be very strong in your life and to do amazing things.

26:10You can use those two things to be very strong in your life and to do amazing things.

26:15You can use those two things to be very strong in your life and to do amazing things.

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