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00:09I asked Morgan and Rod, what does marriage mean to each of them?
00:12Morgan started with this, we will be together forever, for God has sent Rod to me and he
00:18is my guardian angel.
00:20And Rod concluded with this, my only hope for my life is that I can be the man and husband
00:25and father that Morgan and my future children deserve.
00:28She really thought he was the love of her life, this Prince Charming.
00:33It's going to be a fun honeymoon.
00:36We were just really excited to start our life, but unfortunately, at the start of our fairy
00:42tales when our nightmare began.
00:46Morgan looked at him to be her protector, but what you don't know, you don't know.
00:54A shocking event happens that changes everything.
00:59I thought I was dead.
01:01But then also part of me is like, no, I've got to fight for my kids.
01:07He was no longer my husband.
01:09He was somebody completely different, somebody ugly, somebody that I didn't know who it was.
01:15He was a stranger to me.
01:38I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most
01:42and the deceptions that change everything.
01:46Today we meet Morgan, who thought she had it all, a loving relationship with her high school
01:51sweetheart and the promise of a bright future.
01:54But after a series of tragic events, that promise turned into peril.
02:00Morgan, what are you hoping people learn from your story?
02:05My hope is that women learn to speak up to see if the things that are going on in your
02:10relationship is healthy or not.
02:12Yeah.
02:12Like, I generally started to believe it was me, that I was the problem.
02:16So I didn't say anything.
02:18I stopped trying to be heard.
02:23My name is Morgan Metzer.
02:28I grew up in Canton, Georgia.
02:31We have an older brother.
02:32I'm the middle.
02:33And then Morgan's the baby sister.
02:35We have so many wonderful memories together.
02:39All girls pretty much dream of finding their prince charming.
02:41So we always, like, thought about, you know, who our boyfriend would be someday or her husband.
02:47And then when, of course, she met Rod, she felt like she found her prince.
02:57Rod and I met when I was 14, he was 17, and we were high school sweethearts.
03:07My first impression of Rod that he gave off is definitely the big man on campus.
03:12Everywhere he went, everyone knew who he was.
03:15He was extremely patient, funny, kind-hearted.
03:19He had ambition.
03:21He was pretty much the whole package, I guess you could say.
03:25He made me feel like a princess.
03:28Morgan wanted to be protected, and she looked at him to be her protector.
03:32And so he kind of just took on that role.
03:36Rodney's family came from a lot of money.
03:38They were very well-to-do.
03:40Rod's parents would take a lot of their kids' friends on trips.
03:45And on these trips, we were spoiled, given a very lavish lifestyle.
03:51I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
03:56After high school, the couple, they're stronger than ever.
03:59Morgan follows Rodney to Wyoming, where he's training to be a mechanic.
04:03And she goes to cosmetology school.
04:06And then they decide to move back to Georgia and start their careers.
04:12We grew together naturally as a couple.
04:16Everything was still innocent and pure.
04:21I don't ever recall them ever arguing.
04:24They always got along.
04:26From the very beginning, they've always been very happy.
04:30Rod proposed to me after about six or seven years being together.
04:35He asked me in front of my family with my grandmother's wedding ring.
04:40I was 100% sure I wanted to marry Rod.
04:47Rod and Morgan, the importance of marriage supersedes our daily activities.
04:53We got married April 18, 2009.
04:56I asked Morgan and Rod individually what does marriage mean to each of them.
05:00And Rod had this to say.
05:02Marriage good, Rod like marriage.
05:07The wedding was my dream.
05:09Everything I could have ever imagined.
05:11It was a true fairy tale.
05:15It's one of the most beautiful weddings I've ever seen.
05:17You may kiss to your heart's content.
05:22The family was so excited.
05:27His brother Kevin's speech was wonderful.
05:29One day I hope I can share the same love they have with a woman as great as Morgan.
05:37And for the first official time, Morgan, welcome to the family.
05:44I cried.
05:45Hi guys, thank you so much.
05:47Hi Morgan.
05:47It felt like royalty becoming Miss Metzer.
05:57Before we got married, we did own a house together.
06:02We resided there after the wedding.
06:04It was so much fun getting to call him my husband.
06:08And they were happy.
06:09They were always doing things.
06:11And I felt like I had a brother there.
06:13So it was nice.
06:15Rod had no expectations from me.
06:17He really didn't.
06:20He just wanted me to do what I wanted to do.
06:24And I wanted to go hang out with friends that night.
06:27He says, go out.
06:28Go have fun.
06:28I'll see you later.
06:29We were just overall really excited to start our life.
06:34But unfortunately, at the start of our fairy tales, when our nightmare began.
06:50Morgan and Rodney's marriage is almost picture perfect.
06:54And then, a tragic event changes everything.
06:59Rod's brother passed away of leukemia.
07:11Kevin's passing was very difficult for all of us.
07:14I can only imagine how it made Rod feel.
07:18It was just him and his brother, you know.
07:20And to see the pain of losing a sibling, it was difficult.
07:28It affected both of them.
07:30But Rod was just very quiet.
07:32He was not sociable.
07:33He was not fun.
07:37This death was a test of how the couple would weather dark times together.
07:49I was supportive.
07:50I tried to help guide him in different ways.
07:53Therapy, just talking, listening, asking what it is that he needs.
08:00But Rodney started changing into somebody completely different.
08:07It was like watching a slow, painful death.
08:22After we lost Kevin, a really good bounce back.
08:26Something exciting that happened in the family was we got pregnant.
08:31I feel like I got a glimpse of that old Rod.
08:35He was elated.
08:37More excited that we were going to name him Kevin after his brother.
08:42It was just exciting after so much of the heartache of losing Kevin that something so wonderful was about to
08:48happen.
08:52At 22 weeks, the couple received devastating news.
08:59The baby has a congenital heart defect.
09:03They did say he would need multiple heart surgeries, eventually possibly a heart transplant.
09:08There was a lot of unknowns.
09:11Nobody wants to hear that their baby is going to be sick or potentially need all these treatments and surgeries
09:18and be in pain after they're born.
09:22Right after I'd had Kevin, they let me hold him for a second.
09:25They took him from me pretty much immediately.
09:28He was a week old when he had his first heart surgery.
09:37I remember dropping to my knees and I said, God, either take him home with you or let me bring
09:45him home.
09:49And the next day is when God decided to answer my prayer, but decided to take him home with him.
10:01It wrecked her.
10:02It wrecked her soul.
10:06Any mother to lose a child is just unimaginable.
10:12From what Morgan had shared with me and how Rod processed the loss of baby Kevin, it was more of
10:19he just stayed busy.
10:21He kept himself away and she grieved by herself.
10:31I feel like my sister handled it well, but she was devastated and she wasn't herself, nor was Rod.
10:37So, yeah, it was awful.
10:41Ugh.
10:47As Morgan continues to grieve the loss of her child, she gets some amazing news.
10:54I got pregnant after the loss of Kevin about three months later.
10:59It was just a gift that was sent from baby Kevin to them to be like, don't be sad.
11:05You know, it's going to be okay.
11:06We've got a baby on the way, you know?
11:09The first ultrasound, Kevin's doctor was in there and she looked at me and she goes, of course.
11:15You would give me a high-risk pregnancy after Kevin.
11:20You're having twins.
11:23And I handed Rod the ultrasound thing and he's like, two?
11:27I said, yeah, and he was so excited.
11:30Almost a year to the day of losing baby Kevin, Morgan gives birth to twins, Mason and Amelia.
11:41So after the twins were born, Morgan was a stay-at-home mom.
11:45And that's when I could just tell that Rod wasn't happy or he was going through something, but it was
11:51something that she kind of kept private.
11:55He struggled with sharing my time.
11:58Anything that took me away from taking care of him, he would get irritated, but it wasn't where people would
12:06notice it.
12:08He was just like, honestly, just miserable and hating life.
12:12He was a mechanic.
12:14Rod was making countless mistakes.
12:17Certain things went wrong.
12:21Soon, Rodney was unemployed, but Morgan thought that they would be okay financially.
12:26We had an amazing home that was paid for outright.
12:29He did have inheritance from a great aunt, but he eventually told me the money was gone.
12:37I realized that Rod was waiting for his grandmother to die.
12:43But when his grandmother passed away, he did not receive anything.
12:49Then they get the notice that they're going to potentially be losing the house.
12:56It put a strain on our relationship because that's when he ran out of any options to be able to
13:01provide for the house at all.
13:05She was going to have to be the one to step up because he obviously couldn't.
13:12So I started my own interior design business, Shiplap and Sugar.
13:16It took off.
13:18After the first year, I was voted the number one interior designer in Canton, and I was still able to
13:23rock at being a mom.
13:26We got to work together and run this business.
13:29It was so much fun.
13:31They didn't lose their house.
13:33We had more business than we knew what to do with.
13:37Eventually, Rodney, he started working for my company as a handyman.
13:41He would do built-in bunk beds.
13:42He'd make me floating shelves.
13:44He'd hang everything.
13:47But he didn't like being the worker.
13:51In my opinion, I felt like, to me, Rodney would find ways to sabotage the projects.
13:56I would see something like the stupid curtain rods not having the right measurements, even though that was your one
14:03job.
14:09I would tell him to do something, and he would do it incorrectly.
14:14He would convince me that I told him to do it that way, and it would be my fault.
14:20She had a hard time deciphering if what he was saying was true or not.
14:25But looking back on it now, he definitely was gaslighting me.
14:30Once Rod saw that I was able to become successful for our family and I had the drive, he still
14:37wanted the control.
14:39The way he spoke to me did change.
14:41He wanted to degrade me.
14:42He wanted to make sure I knew who was in charge.
14:50He would antagonize me, and then as soon as I would lose my cool, is when he would go quiet.
14:58And he'd start recording me and say, look at how crazy you're being.
15:05Gaslighting was Rodney's AMO.
15:07I can beat you down.
15:08I felt like a horrible mom.
15:09I felt like a horrible provider overall.
15:12I didn't look forward to getting up every morning.
15:16A lot was on her plate, but she wanted to protect her kids, make sure that they didn't know that
15:22something was going on with mom.
15:26One day, Rod and I were having a disagreement.
15:30We were going up the stairs.
15:32The kids were listening, and all of a sudden, he's falling down the stairs.
15:41And then as soon as when he hit the bottom stairs, the kids were down there, and he's like, mom,
15:45push me down the stairs.
15:49I felt as though Rod faked falling down the stairs to show the kids mommy did hurt daddy, to paint
15:58me ugly in their eyes.
16:02Morgan could endure anything that Rodney was throwing at her.
16:05But then he started manipulating the kids against her, and she realized she had to face the reality of her
16:11relationship.
16:13I just was like, all right, that's it, I'm done.
16:26Eleven years into their marriage, Morgan files for divorce.
16:29When he found out I filed for divorce, Rod wasn't accepting of it.
16:34He would sit outside my parents' house, calling me like crazy.
16:38I mean, he really thought he was going to get me back.
16:41But I wasn't going, I wasn't budging.
16:45This is the only man that she's been with, and no matter how the relationship was going, it was still
16:51hard.
16:52But I think she knew that she deserved to be treated better, you know what I mean?
16:55So I was proud of her for sticking up for her and her kids.
16:59In December of 2020, the divorce was finalized.
17:03He moved out, got an apartment, and they shared custody of the two kids.
17:08I knew in my heart I had done the right thing, but I loved my husband.
17:21He was my best friend.
17:33That year, the day after Christmas, I took the kids to see my sister in Orlando for them to stay
17:40for a few weeks.
17:42The kids wanted to come see me and stay at my home outside of Disney World.
17:48When I got back, I was over at Nicole's house, and Rod had sent me an email, something along the
17:56lines of,
17:57I think you should know this, and he attached the document from the doctor's diagnosis.
18:05I think I dropped my phone, and I was like, oh my gosh.
18:09The father of my children has pancreatic cancer.
18:15I mean, he was telling me it was stage four, and he was going to die.
18:20She was distraught.
18:22It was, oh my God, my children's father.
18:25My emotions were all over the place.
18:28I remember just dropping everything, and left Nicole's house, and went to his apartment.
18:34He said he was extremely scared.
18:36He didn't want to tell his parents.
18:37He wasn't comfortable being alone.
18:39And I said, okay, you can come and stay at the house.
18:44Even though they were divorced, Morgan still loved Rodney, and she wanted to be supportive.
18:49So she let him stay with her for a few days.
18:54On the day of New Year's Eve, my parents came over and approached Rod and said that we do need
19:01to call your parents
19:02and tell them about your diagnosis.
19:06He left very angry.
19:10New Year's Eve, I mean, we talked for a little bit.
19:12I was telling her about what the kids and I were going to be doing.
19:15I just knew that she was joined in Nicole's house, so it was nothing unusual.
19:22I did get text messages from Rod.
19:26He wanted to hang out, but I told him I'm going to be staying at my parents' house tonight.
19:33But that was never my intention.
19:35I didn't want to see him.
19:37It was my hopes that he would leave me alone, knowing that I was with my parents.
19:43When Morgan came over to my house, she was a lot more quiet than usual.
19:48But then I realized that at the time it was my husband and I, and that it was our other
19:52friends.
19:53So I understood it.
19:55And then she went home.
20:06That night, all I wanted to do was just curl up next to my dog and go to sleep
20:11and wake up the next morning ready to start my fresh new year as a newly-singled divorcee.
20:20The next time Morgan opens her eyes, she sees an image no one wants to see.
20:27I saw a male figure standing in a lit-up doorway, dressed in black.
20:34When I went to go, like, really, like, adjust my eyes is when he attacked.
20:43I screamed as loud as I have ever screamed.
20:50I thought it was over for me.
21:00When the attacker attacked me, I was hit in the face countless times with the butt of a gun.
21:10I was strangled.
21:12I was sexually assaulted.
21:13I had the gun pointed at my forehead.
21:17I was fighting for my life.
21:20He had a voice disguiser.
21:22It sounded like Batman.
21:24I still hear his voice in my head.
21:26He said, you've messed with the wrong people.
21:30I couldn't help but think, okay, this is it.
21:33I'm done.
21:35Still to this day, I get disappointed in myself when I say that I finally just let go.
21:44And I stopped the fight.
21:48All of a sudden, I had a sense of peace that just went all over.
21:53And at that moment, he stopped strangling me.
22:01That's when he proceeded to zip tie my hands behind my back.
22:04He put a pillowcase over my head.
22:08When I was bleeding, I could feel the blood going down my face.
22:13He started asking, where's my phone?
22:16And I said, I don't know.
22:17It's somewhere in the bed.
22:18And he found it.
22:19And he's like, what's the passcode?
22:21And I told him the passcode.
22:24And then all of a sudden, Morgan's attacker takes her to the back porch and says,
22:29don't move until you hear a car honk its horn two or three times.
22:33That never happens.
22:36Morgan is struggling to stay awake.
22:38And finally, she hears footsteps.
22:41She doesn't know who it is.
22:46And then she hears Rodney's voice.
22:50Morgan?
22:55And I was like, hello?
22:57And he goes, what happened?
22:58What happened?
22:59What happened?
22:59And I told him what happened.
23:01He took me inside.
23:03He called the cops.
23:04I'm right here.
23:06OK?
23:08Right here.
23:13Jerry, you got me in 911.
23:14Somebody broke in over here.
23:19OK, the person broke in.
23:20Are they still there?
23:21Did you just come home?
23:22We don't know.
23:24I showed up and I don't know.
23:26He said, did someone broke into your house?
23:28Yes, not my house.
23:29My ex-wife's house.
23:30She was on the back porch.
23:32And the back door was wide open.
23:34She was tied up with a hood over her head.
23:36You're saying she was tied up with a hood over her head?
23:39Yes.
23:39Yes!
23:42When he got off the phone with them, he's like, you know, it's fine.
23:46I, you know, walked the house.
23:48Nobody's here or anything like that.
23:50But I was still scared.
23:54I'm Dakota Livers.
23:56At the time of this case, I was a detective in the criminal investigations division, specifically
24:00assigned in the special victims unit.
24:05When I initially arrived, Rodney Metzer was sitting in the driveway.
24:09As I walked past him, he said, are you the guy that we've been waiting on?
24:12I said, yes, sir, I am.
24:13And he looked me dead in the eyes and he said, do your job.
24:18I was like, okay.
24:24All right, so here's my plan for this.
24:28The first investigative step that I wanted to do was get a scene size up.
24:32We were able to find out that their children were actually in Florida, which was a relief.
24:38Morgan was in a shocked state.
24:40She was obviously beaten.
24:43She had bruising around her eye.
24:45She looked disheveled, as would somebody that had just went through an incident like this.
24:51There were no signs of forced entry into the house.
24:57When Morgan detailed how the attacker had used her phone, we began looking at the alarm system.
25:02We were able to look through the records.
25:05It showed Rodney arriving, which is about the time the 911 call was made when Morgan was found.
25:11But videos prior to that had been deleted or weren't there.
25:17The last video was Morgan going inside.
25:23Morgan detailed how the attacker made claims of your ex-husband is going to miss you or, you know, he's
25:30next.
25:31The attacker had to know Morgan had an ex-husband.
25:37It's leading us to believe this is somebody close to Morgan that did this.
25:43I set up two chairs on the front porch for Rodney and I to have a discussion.
25:50They asked him how he came to be at Morgan's house.
25:54And his explanation was incredible.
26:03While brushing his teeth, some mysterious person tapped on his window three times.
26:08And all that he could make out that they said was Morgan.
26:20He believed that Morgan was in danger.
26:23He took it upon himself to drive from his apartment to her house.
26:27His story began to unfold as he was telling it because it did not line up with things that Morgan
26:34had already told us.
26:34Such as, there was no reason for him to come to that house looking for Morgan.
26:40Because Morgan told him she was going to stay the night at her parents' house.
26:44Which is not that house.
26:47You knew she was here, which is why you came straight here and left there at her parents' house.
26:53The entire time, we were all open-minded that there might be another potential suspect.
27:11He said maybe a new love interest had done this to Morgan.
27:15However, all the evidence at this point was pointing towards Rodney Metzer.
27:21Rodney actually ended up giving us consent to look through his phone.
27:25During that time, we found pictures of text messages on another phone.
27:30And the other phone happened to be Morgan's phone.
27:33He also had pictures of her sleeping.
27:37Detective Livers pulled me aside and he asked me if I had given Rodney permission to take a picture of
27:43my phone.
27:44And I told him no.
27:53He had unlawfully gotten into Morgan's phone.
27:58That's a crime here in Georgia.
28:00And they were able to arrest him that night for that crime.
28:12But we still had our work ahead of us to confirm or dispel if Rodney was our lead suspect.
28:18Or if there was some rando that did this.
28:30Arresting Rodney gave us time to do further investigating into him, into his story.
28:38Starting the next day, I was tasked with obtaining search warrants for Rodney's vehicle.
28:43He had a Volkswagen for his cell phone and for Rodney's apartment.
28:50And the Volkswagen was a handwritten letter without a signature.
28:53But it was outlining the person having cancer and begging the recipient of that letter to come back to him.
29:03After we finished our search of Rodney's vehicle, myself and a number of other detectives went to that apartment.
29:10Did a very thorough search and recovered quite a few things of interest.
29:16We seized his laptop computer.
29:19We seized his wireless router.
29:21And probably the strongest piece of evidence that we seized was a collection of new and one-cut, large, industrial
29:31-size zip tie.
29:36There was a stem from a zip tie that was missing the head.
29:43So we examined the zip ties that were used to bind Morgan's hands together.
29:49And there happened to be an extra head on one of the stems.
29:55One of our evidence technicians did what's called a fracture match examination.
30:01You look under magnification and you're able to see all the jagged cuts.
30:07And you can actually move those together and you can confirm or conclude whether they were once one piece or
30:14they're not even related.
30:17It was a perfect match.
30:23We scanned the barcode of those zip ties and we were able to see that this was a brand sold
30:29exclusively by Lowe's Home Improvement.
30:34Sergeant Harris found surveillance footage of Rodney buying just those zip ties and walking out of Lowe's.
30:48And this is in the height of COVID.
30:50He was the only one in there not wearing a mask.
30:54So you could clearly identify that it was Rodney.
31:00As the evidence against Rodney is piling up, detectives uncover something chilling inside Rodney's search history.
31:10In the search of his laptop, I found numerous search phrases and topics that he had been looking up in
31:20the days and weeks before this home invasion.
31:25Among those search phrases were things like how to disguise your voice, various entries on cancer, pancreatic cancer, treatment for
31:36cancer.
31:38But also, he was researching letters that would be mailed out that have to do with cancer care.
31:51He had made searches for how long to strangle someone before they go unconscious.
31:59There was a book of seven ways to be her hero found at his apartment that gave us the motive
32:06of why this attack was done and why Rodney did this.
32:10It was all to win her back, to show her, you need me at that house.
32:17We, without a doubt, believed Rodney was the one that conducted this attack.
32:31After we gathered all this evidence, we brought Rodney back to the Criminal Investigations Division headquarters to conduct a follow
32:37-up interview.
32:38Staple Miranda writes, are you familiar with these?
32:40Okay.
32:41Have these rights in mind, do you want to talk to us now?
32:43Yes.
32:44Sergeant Harris actually second-chaired with me in that interview.
32:47I let Rodney know, hey, listen, we're still investigating this incident involving Morgan.
32:52We had yet to tell him anything about what we have done, what we have found.
32:56We asked Rodney about any particular diagnoses he might have, specifically cancer.
33:01What other kind of health issues do you have?
33:05Nothing.
33:06This is as far as I know of yet.
33:07How did you tell her that this cancer thing?
33:12I don't know if I should talk to you guys anymore.
33:16I'm sorry, you're a really bad feeling.
33:19What angle you guys are going to do?
33:20We're seeking the truth, man.
33:22I see what angle you're trying to pull on me.
33:24What's that angle?
33:26Are you convinced that I did this?
33:27No, absolutely not.
33:29I thought you had cancer.
33:30I can see you're different.
33:32I've already learned something about you, that facial expression.
33:35You keep scratching yourself and you get agitated by what I said.
33:39I'm 100% lying to what you're talking about.
33:40I was concerned that you had cancer, but that was forgiveness, I guess.
33:48His pancreatic cancer diagnosis, he ultimately told us, was fake.
33:55That helped him achieve some sympathy from Morgan.
33:59And in the days following, he was able to manipulate his way into her house, where he eventually would spend
34:07the night and sleep on the sofa.
34:10I asked Rodney about some of his internet search history, specifically about disguising his voice.
34:16Because Morgan described the attacker as how Christian Bale sounded in the movie The Dark Knight.
34:21I have one more.
34:23Has there been a time recently where you were interested in how you can change the sound of your voice?
34:29Maybe talk about that.
34:32I feel like I wasn't...
34:34The voice was a male in the movie.
34:36It was funny to hear him say that he feels like he doesn't have a masculine enough voice.
34:40I thought that was amazing.
34:44Well, probably the most significant thing that we found in your apartment was a collection of said ties.
35:16By the time we revealed that we had his zip ties,
35:21his whole demeanor changed, partially because he was surprised that he had forgotten to get rid of the zip ties,
35:27but also because the zip ties were such a critical piece of evidence and he knew that he was in
35:33trouble.
35:39By January the 3rd, we had conducted enough investigation that I was able to take additional charges on Rodney
35:47for what happened to Morgan.
35:50And among those charges were home invasion in the first degree,
35:54aggravated assault by strangulation,
35:56kidnapping, armed robbery,
35:57and burglary.
36:05My name is Rachel Ash.
36:07I'm the deputy chief assistant district attorney for the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit.
36:11During our initial interactions with Morgan,
36:14she was struggling with the idea that this could be
36:17this person who she had loved since they were teenagers.
36:22He was no longer my husband.
36:23He was somebody completely different,
36:25somebody ugly,
36:27somebody that I
36:28didn't know who it was,
36:30a stranger to me.
36:33What she had gone through was so violent.
36:35She was afraid he was going to come back
36:37and he was going to kill her.
36:44When I found out that Rod was the one that did this,
36:47I was in a state of shock.
36:48All I know is I'm looking at her kids and I'm like,
36:50oh my gosh, like,
36:52thank God they were with me.
36:56Once I got the kids home,
36:58I sat them down
36:59and I said,
37:00guys,
37:00daddy did something very bad
37:02and he's going to be in trouble
37:05for a large portion of your life.
37:12Rodney Metzer was indicted on 14 separate charges.
37:17The sheriff's office investigation was so strong
37:20that this was a case that was leading to a plea.
37:23He would not have had any chance at trial.
37:30Ultimately,
37:31Rodney Metzer pled guilty
37:32to all of the counts in the indictment.
37:34He was sentenced for a total period of 70 years
37:37with the first 25 years of those being in custody.
37:40As part of his sentence,
37:42he's ordered to have no contact of any kind
37:44with Morgan or his children.
37:47I don't know if what he got was fair or not.
37:52Sometimes, I think 25 years,
37:55okay, that's more than enough time.
37:56But the day is going to come
37:57where he's going to get out.
37:59I feel like that's why
38:00I sometimes wish the sentencing was longer
38:02because I don't want to come to that day.
38:04But I know what's going to happen.
38:07At the sentencing hearing,
38:08you were able to give a victim impact statement.
38:11Can you tell me a little bit about that experience
38:13and why you decided to do that?
38:15I wanted to have the last word.
38:17I didn't want him to think he broke me
38:19because I hadn't been heard for so many years.
38:22And finally, he had to sit there and listen to me.
38:24So I felt like I finally found my voice again
38:27by walking up there and speaking.
38:30Rod, I hope you make your mental life a priority
38:33during this time of isolation.
38:35Thank you for the gift of my children
38:38and my heart aches for the fact
38:40you'll be missing out on first dates,
38:43homecomings, proms,
38:45the hormonal changes into adults,
38:47graduations, Christmas mornings,
38:50driver's licenses,
38:52college acceptance letters,
38:53first apartments, first jobs,
38:55proposals, weddings,
38:57and the potential birth of our grandkids
38:59and so many others.
39:01But what disheartens me more
39:03is not only you were missing these milestones,
39:06but I'll have to look into Amelia and Mason's eyes
39:08as each of these milestones take place
39:11and see the want and the desire
39:12for their father to have been there.
39:16Our kids know what happened that night you attacked me.
39:19We didn't ask for this, Rod.
39:22Why didn't you let me help you
39:23when I begged and pleaded to be better for our family?
39:26It's time to let you go and lay you down to rest.
39:29Goodbye, Rod.
39:33Once I stepped off the podium,
39:34I felt empowered
39:36as some weight was lifted off my shoulders.
39:39I get it.
39:40I really do.
39:45All the way up into a few years after the incident,
39:47I still believe some of the things
39:49that Rod had told me the kind of person I was.
39:52I had to, like, reprogram my brain.
39:55She grew up with him,
39:57and I think it's hard
39:58because what she had known of
40:00was normal for 20 years of her life
40:03was really manipulation
40:05and gaslighting at its finest.
40:07It's a lot of trauma.
40:09I feel with trauma,
40:12there are stages you have to go through.
40:14It took me a few years
40:15to get to the point that I realized
40:19I needed a little bit of extra help
40:21to cope with the situation.
40:28Morgan went to counseling.
40:30She went to therapy.
40:31She went to a PTSD rehab facility
40:34for six weeks or so,
40:36and she did everything
40:38and continues to do everything she can
40:41to be the most healthiest version of herself.
40:46Morgan has grown and involved
40:48by being more self-aware
40:51and not having to find a protector
40:53and realizing that she can be her own protector
40:55and that she doesn't need anybody.
41:02There's so many different aspects
41:04in what I hope people can learn from my story.
41:08Mental health awareness,
41:11narcissistic abuse and signs.
41:14And my biggest one is,
41:16as women,
41:17we need to learn to speak to each other
41:18and not sugarcoat everything
41:20because had maybe I spoke up a little bit more,
41:23I may have gotten the help earlier.
41:25I may have gotten the help here.
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