She Used Me... For Her Own Pleasure

Unfiltered Stories

After surviving homelessness, abuse, and years of trauma, Forrest Iang escapes a dangerous foster home and finds a lifeline in the Navy. This is a powerful true story of resilience, survival, and rebuilding life after unthinkable pain.   #overcomingtrauma #survivalstory   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

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00:00She was able to begin exploiting me as well at 12 years old.

00:04So she was 38.

00:06She treated me as if I was, one, a son,

00:11and two, somebody that she was in a relationship with.

00:19I grew up in Southern California.

00:21My mother moved there when I was very young.

00:24My mother was an alcoholic, and so was her boyfriend,

00:27and her boyfriend had tried to take her life.

00:29So she left from New York, and we moved to Los Angeles,

00:34and we were homeless when I was very young.

00:36I remember I was subjected to child porn as a young boy

00:42and left with a lot of many strange people.

00:46And because me and my older brother were both involved in that,

00:52he kept doing that stuff to me as I grew up.

00:54We lived in a bunch of different places.

00:56Then my mother met another man who became my stepfather.

01:02My mother and stepfather got along until I was maybe 10 or 11,

01:09and then they started fighting, and he started leaving.

01:11My mother started leaving, too, so I was home alone for days at a time.

01:16I met some kids at the local pool.

01:20There was a pool, like a swimming pool three blocks from my house.

01:24We could go pay $0.50 and go swim.

01:26Met some kids there.

01:28Their auntie was, she was a mother of two.

01:32She was married.

01:33He allowed all the kids to come over to her house all the time,

01:37smoke, cigarettes, drink, do drink, and these kids had invited me over there.

01:44And when I started going over to this house, she'd ask me where my mother was.

01:48I was 12 years old.

01:49I don't know.

01:50And she said, well, you can come over here anytime you want.

01:53You can stay here.

01:54Eventually, her and my mother had some sort of a conversation,

01:59and a deal worked out where I just went and stayed with this woman and her family.

02:09I didn't really talk a lot.

02:11I was a quiet, afraid child.

02:15This woman really embraced me and started paying attention to me,

02:21buying me clothes and food and telling me she wouldn't let people hurt me anymore,

02:26that I was safe with her, because I was afraid all the time.

02:30So this woman, she told me that her husband, that she needed me to sleep in bed with her

02:35because I didn't feel safe.

02:38And, you know, she started with touching, backstretching,

02:44a lot of positive words of affirmation,

02:47a lot of empathy and sympathy,

02:50and then because I was a vulnerable child,

02:54I didn't have anybody who loved and cared for me to watch out for me.

02:59She was able to begin exploiting me as well at 12 years old.

03:04So she was 38.

03:06I didn't, for a long time, think that that mattered or counted because of media.

03:13It's a big reason that I share that part of my story,

03:16because under any public media about a female child,

03:23there will be comments about how the child is lucky,

03:28wanting to know what she looked like,

03:31where were these women when I was a child.

03:33She treated me as if I was one, a son,

03:39and two, somebody that she was in a relationship with.

03:43It was very confusing and difficult for me when I got punished,

03:48such as, oh, you can't go to the drive-in with your friends

03:51because you didn't have sex with me.

03:53You know, it just, it was a really, like, twisted, awful dynamic.

03:58I was scared to tell anybody.

03:59I didn't, I was embarrassed and ashamed that this was happening to me,

04:04and it was difficult in school because other boys my age

04:08were starting to have girlfriends,

04:10and I wasn't allowed to have a girlfriend.

04:12To explain to my friends, I would just tell them that,

04:15hey, I don't think that girl's very pretty.

04:17So my friends used to just think I was, like,

04:20this picky, stuck-up person when it came to two girls,

04:24and I really, like, I thought those girls were beautiful.

04:27When I was 14, my foster mother told me

04:31that she had gotten pregnant and had had an abortion

04:34and that it was mine.

04:40I didn't know how to feel about that as a 14-year-old.

04:43I just felt really sad and hollow,

04:44and I started to feel sad and hollow all the time,

04:47and I stopped eating.

04:50My foster mom didn't encourage me to eat,

04:53didn't offer food, would deny me food again,

04:56and by that time, I felt like being hungry

05:00was a way of being in control, and I lost a lot of weight.

05:04When I was 16, she had taught me to eat myself.

05:09I was walking home from somewhere.

05:13She pulled up and told me to get in a car,

05:15that we were taking a drive.

05:16She started driving very fast,

05:19and I was kind of used to this,

05:21because whenever she was angry,

05:22she would drive the car fast.

05:24In later research, I realized that

05:26that's actually a form of physical abuse.

05:29She was going, like, 90, 100 miles per hour,

05:31running red lights,

05:32and I don't remember her exact words,

05:35but she said,

05:36since you want to kill yourself,

05:38I'm going to go ahead and help you out,

05:41and I'm going to kill both of us,

05:43and I'm going to drive us off of the cliff.

05:45So I leaned my foot over,

05:47I put my foot on the brakes,

05:48and the car started to spin.

05:50It spun out on the side of Into a Strawberry Field.

05:53I reached over,

05:56and the gear shift was on the steering wheel.

05:58I put it into park,

06:00and she was screaming and hitting and clawing me,

06:04and I took the keys,

06:06and I jumped out of the car,

06:08and I threw the keys as hard as I could

06:10out into the field,

06:11and then I ran.

06:13I walked back to the neighborhood.

06:17I waited until I didn't see anybody in the house.

06:22I went in,

06:23I got a duffel bag,

06:25and put a couple pairs of clothes

06:29in my duffel bag and a jacket.

06:31I walked out of that foster home

06:34for the very last time.

06:36I thought,

06:37how am I ever going to make it?

06:41I'm 16 years old,

06:42I've got nothing.

06:44How am I ever going to,

06:46do I go to college?

06:47How am I going to graduate high school?

06:49How am I ever going to pay for a place to live,

06:54and food, and a car?

06:56And there's no hope.

06:58I have no hope.

06:59When I was 17,

07:02almost 18,

07:04my biological mother found me.

07:06I was walking near the store that I worked at,

07:12and she drove up in her car,

07:14and jumped out of the car,

07:17and hugged me,

07:19and said she'd been looking for me,

07:20and asked me if I wanted to go live with her.

07:24And she had moved away to Palmdale,

07:27which was outside of Los Angeles.

07:31And I didn't really have any other option.

07:35So I moved.

07:38Back in with my biological mother,

07:40started going back to high school,

07:42and I just tried to forget everything that happened.

07:45I just pretended that everything was normal,

07:48that I had never been gone on,

07:50that my mother had never done those things to me.

07:53She had done some work on herself,

07:54and became a school teacher.

07:55When she told me I had to leave after I was 18,

07:59I joined the Navy.

08:00The Navy really saved my life.

08:02I got sober for a couple years.

08:04I started attending 12-step meetings,

08:07and I just didn't really want to deal with the past again.

08:11I didn't like to talk about it.

08:13I didn't like to tell anyone.

08:14It would come out once in a while.

08:16I knew something bad happened,

08:18and I just didn't want to think about the bad things that happened.

08:22I just wanted to be good and healthy,

08:24and do the right thing.

08:25And it just kept creeping in where I would have rages.

08:30I had a girlfriend, and we got in an argument,

08:33and I had this overwhelming rage and horror,

08:37and I just punched myself in the face.

08:39And I was embarrassed about that.

08:41What kind of a person punches themselves in the face

08:45while they're arguing with their girlfriend?

08:47I didn't like people to touch me.

08:49I had weird reactions to things that I didn't understand why.

08:55I just thought I was weird and abnormal,

08:58and I wanted to hide that from everybody.

09:01And eventually, I had a relapse on my own.

09:08Things got pretty bad pretty fast.

09:12I had done X or M.D.

09:15during my last relapse,

09:17and that was the first time I had ever really, really felt good.

09:20My friend who saved my life

09:22were playing with a firearm

09:24when I had about four months sober,

09:27and he killed me in an accident.

09:32I got arrested here in San Diego.

09:35I got charged with first-degree murder,

09:38and here in California,

09:40if you commit a violent felony with a firearm,

09:44there's an extra 10 years added on to your sentence automatically.

09:50And so I was 23 years old,

09:54looking at spending 35 years to life in prison.

09:58I had just gotten out of the Navy before this happened.

10:01I went on trial.

10:04I told the truth.

10:05The proceedings before there was a jury trial,

10:09the district attorney said that I could plead guilty

10:14to voluntary manslaughter

10:16and just go to prison for 10 years instead of 35 to life.

10:20But I would have had to say that I did it on purpose,

10:25and I couldn't do that

10:27because I loved my friend very much,

10:29and I didn't necessarily care

10:34about whether or not I went to prison.

10:36I felt that I deserved to go

10:38because I was in so much pain and regret and horror

10:42over seeing my friend die in front of me.

10:45A year and a month later,

10:46there was a jury trial,

10:48and I got acquitted of all charges.

10:52And I walked out free,

10:54living in my car and hating myself,

10:57and I had promised my friend

10:59that I wouldn't commit suicide.

11:01So I went back into the military,

11:04and I volunteered to be a hospital foreman

11:10who goes with the Marines to go fight.

11:13And I went to Iraq in 2004

11:16with the full intention of not coming home.

11:27I gained a sense of honor back in my life,

11:33developed strong bonds and relationships with other men,

11:37trauma bonded with them,

11:39and I had the opportunity

11:42to try to save someone else,

11:46but I didn't.

11:48I lived.

11:49And when I was like 38,

11:51my relationship had gone through a really rough patch

11:55with the woman that I love,

11:58who I've been with since 2006.

11:59She threw me out of the house.

12:01My business was failing.

12:02I found myself a really rough patch in my head,

12:06feeling a tremendous amount of pain,

12:09and another veteran reached out to me,

12:12and I went through a veteran's treatment program

12:17that specifically addressed childhood trauma.

12:20Really surprised how many other people

12:21had had similar experiences,

12:23and that uncovered,

12:24and I started to remember.

12:26I started to remember more and more

12:27that those things did happen,

12:29and I started to learn about the human subconscious.

12:32After my friend died in that accident,

12:36every time I closed my eyes,

12:37I saw a bullet hole in his head,

12:39and I screamed,

12:40and so it took me a long time.

12:41I disassociated away and kept myself busy,

12:45and when it was time to learn how to meditate,

12:4815 years later,

12:49that was not easy to sit still and meditate,

12:52and it took another man to tell me,

12:54hey, dude, maybe stop being a weenie

12:58and just sit down and meditate.

13:00Do it.

13:00I have a practice where

13:04when a new memory is uncovered,

13:07like when I remembered that

13:09there were bad, evil people

13:12filming, doing sex to me.

13:15It was just a little precious baby boy.

13:17It was just a little innocent child,

13:19just helpless.

13:20I did the meditation,

13:23and the meditation is I'll close my eyes,

13:26I'll imagine myself walking,

13:28and I use a lot,

13:29I'll shorten it because I use so many markers

13:31to make it more visceral,

13:33but essentially I get up,

13:35I get in a helicopter,

13:36the helicopter flies back in time,

13:38the soldiers get out of the helicopter with me

13:40and the bad people

13:41and rescue the little me

13:42and take them away in the helicopter

13:44and put them in a treehouse,

13:45a treehouse with everything you needed,

13:47right?

13:47So I can do that

13:49and we can go back

13:50and do inner child rescue.

13:52If I can speak to anyone else

13:54who is a child,

13:55who's going through that,

13:56I'm going to say that I believe you

13:58and that you're worthy

13:59and that you have to fight.

14:01You have to fight,

14:03but you can make it.

14:04You can make it.

14:05Make it through anything.

14:06Make it through anything.

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