S2: E7 - Knowing

[0] I'm John Walsack, host of the new podcast, Missing in Arizona.

[1] And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world.

[2] We cloned his voice using AI.

[3] In 2001, police say I killed my family and rigged my house to explode.

[4] Before escaping into the wilderness.

[5] Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere.

[6] Join me. I'm going down in the cave.

[7] As I track down clues.

[8] I'm going to call the police and have you removed.

[9] Hunting.

[10] One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.

[11] Robert Fisher.

[12] Do you recognize my voice?

[13] Listen to missing in Arizona every Wednesday.

[14] on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

[15] The podium is back with fresh angles and deep dives into Olympic and Paralympic stories you know, and those you'll be hard -pressed to forget.

[16] I did something in 88 that hasn't been beaten.

[17] Oh, gosh, the U .S. Olympic trials is the hardest and most competitive meat in the world.

[18] We are athletes who are going out there, smashing into each other, full force.

[19] Listen to The Podium on the IHeart app or your favorite podcast, weekly and every day during the Games to hear the Olympics like you've never quite heard them before.

[20] In 2020, in a small California mountain town, five women disappeared.

[21] I found out what happened to all of them, except one, a woman known as Dia, whose estate is worth millions of dollars.

[22] I'm Lucy Sheriff.

[23] Over the past four years, I've spoken with Dia's family and friends, and I've discovered that everyone has a different version of events.

[24] Hear the story on Where's Deer?

[25] Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[26] Topics featured in this episode may be disturbing to some listeners.

[27] Please take care while listening.

[28] When I think about him getting out, you know, I'm anxious.

[29] There's a tightness I get in my throat and in my chest.

[30] The closer gets to him getting out, I'm kind of at a point where I'm scared.

[31] I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal Episode 7, Knowing.

[32] We've listened to three different stories of women confronted with the terrible reality that their partner was mixed up in this awful dark underworld of child sexual abuse material.

[33] Getting through the arrest, the court system, and sentencing, the whole experience has been emotional to navigate.

[34] The other factor that weighs on all three families is what happens once these offenders are released.

[35] As we heard in episode 5, Mandy Hale was at work when the FBI called to tell her that her house was being searched and her husband was being arrested as part of an international sting.

[36] He was involved with one of the worst child sexual assault material websites in the world.

[37] Now, her ex wants to see their daughter, but he has not been forthcoming about the rules of probation.

[38] In episode 6, we met Aaron, a woman who felt so unsafe in her home, she fled with her two kids to another state, once discovering her military husband was hoarding a stash of illegal photos of children.

[39] At the time I record this episode, Ashley Lytton is starting to face the reality of what it means for her soon -to -be ex -husband Jason to be a returning citizen.

[40] Earlier in this series, you heard Jason being sentenced for two counts of voyeurism and one count of sexual exploitation of a minor.

[41] With his time served applied, he will be back in the community soon.

[42] Ashley expressed her anxiety to therapist Jessica Baum.

[43] You're about to hear a part of one of their sessions.

[44] Jessica and Ashley allowed us to record their conversations for the project.

[45] Jessica is a psychotherapist and the author of Anxiously Attached, becoming more secure in life than love.

[46] We're dropping into the middle of their session here, when Ashley is talking about Jason calling his daughter from jail.

[47] I allow him to call her.

[48] I have him call my phone so it's on speaker and I can hear it and monitor their conversations.

[49] But about a month ago, he told her something and it really, really scared me. He'd said to her, I now know that God sent me here so I can spread the gospel.

[50] And I was like, what the fuck?

[51] No, he's there.

[52] because he chose to be a creeper.

[53] That's it.

[54] What's the fear?

[55] She just doesn't get it.

[56] I feel like he's manipulating her to think that, like, his time there is for him.

[57] He'll tell her, God's working through me, to spread the gospel and stuff.

[58] And I'm like, no, you're there because you're a pervert.

[59] Yeah, so not taking any, like, ownership or accountability ever.

[60] No. In denial of his own sickness.

[61] Yeah, and I just think that that denial is, Dangerous.

[62] Yeah.

[63] So dangerous.

[64] Yeah.

[65] I mean, it's so valid.

[66] I mean, your fear and concern makes sense.

[67] And whatever you can do legally, but also just education -wise and awareness -wise to stay aware and alert is needed to protect your kids.

[68] Ashley's fears are justified.

[69] When I hear them, I start to go down a major rabbit hole.

[70] Will these men go back to re -offending?

[71] I'm assuming the system will have used.

[72] eventually grant visitation of some kind, even if it's supervised.

[73] Will the children be safe?

[74] I have done hours of research, reading and interviewing professionals, trying to understand the motivation of these offenders, and what these women are up against once these men are released.

[75] I often think of what Ashley's close friend Emmy said to me. Her husband and Jason were best friends.

[76] She was really there for Ashley.

[77] Before sentencing, Emmy submitted a letter to the judge, where she expressed fear for the future.

[78] He is a threat, a danger to everyone around him.

[79] Each day, he is in the presence of what could be his next victim, a child walking to her from school, a child at a grocery store, or even a gas station.

[80] That thought haunts me to my very core, every moment of my life now.

[81] I have seen the devastation his actions have caused.

[82] I pray that justice will protect this young family and allow them some semblance of peace to pick up the pieces of the lives Jason has shattered.

[83] Today, it's Ashley and Mandy and Aaron's family, but we're all living in communities with people looking at CSAM.

[84] Do a quick internet search for child pornography and arrest.

[85] It's a sobering experience.

[86] I'm not an expert.

[87] I'm just someone who wants to root out a growing problem.

[88] It starts with understanding, what drives these offenders, how people access CSAM, and why our government is struggling to get a handle on it.

[89] I started by speaking with some people to help shed light on the psychology of offenders like Jason.

[90] Dr. Jonathan Bone has spent years studying and assessing sex offenders for nearly two decades.

[91] He has worked for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, as well as in county jail.

[92] I met him in his office in Salt Lake City.

[93] I'm a clinical psychologist with expertise in forensic psychology.

[94] Dr. Bone has worked with many child sexual exploitation offenders.

[95] I asked about the correlation between consuming CSAM and pedophilia.

[96] You could say that somebody who is consuming child pornography and masturbating to that and acting on their sexual urges and trading that or downloading it, that they could be classified as somebody who has a pedophilic disorder.

[97] When I met with Dr. Bone, he showed me the definition of a pedophilic disorder straight out of the diagnostic and statistical manual.

[98] of mental disorders, the DSM.

[99] But the DSM does not speak to consumption of CSAM specifically.

[100] Much of the general public assumes that those who watch CSAM are people with pedophilia.

[101] But the dialogue around the topic is nuanced, and it falls under both psychiatric and behavioral.

[102] And there appears to be a leading school of thought about the behavior, the why people consume this material, pornography, and its pervasiveness.

[103] Tom Squire is the clinical director for the Lucy Faithful Foundation in the United Kingdom.

[104] They are a charity whose sole mission is dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse.

[105] Through the foundation, Lucy Faithful runs Stop It Now, a deterrence campaign regarding the viewing of indecent images of children on the internet.

[106] Tom is a cognitive behavioral treatment specialist, who has also worked with sex offenders for 20 years.

[107] Thousands of the people who contacted us at Stop It Now have reported that their starting point was accessing adult pornography and then from there their online behaviour and their sexual behaviour escalated and they crossed those thresholds and boundaries into abusive behaviour involving children.

[108] There's also some research about the nature of adult pornography which focused upon the way in which it was described.

[109] So rather than its content, the language that was used to describe it on adult science, You know, very common terminology might be for teenagers or might be about kind of incest -themed pornography or voyeurism and so forth.

[110] What was once considered taboo, incest pornography, step fantasy, school pornography, is now readily available and it's free.

[111] The availability of pornography feels like it's kind of turned the dial a little bit within society about kind of where the boundary lies between positive and healthy eroticism and what I think most of us, would view as harmful and concerning legal adult pornography.

[112] But also there's something about that boundary becoming much more porous.

[113] And it's that that then means that some people's decision making, and they're responsible for it, but it feels to them like an easier step to take because of the nature of the adult pornography that they might have been looking at already.

[114] And when someone watches a lot of this kind of pornography, Tom says wires can get crossed.

[115] School pornography says plus 18.

[116] But most of the girls are styled to look like schoolgirls.

[117] And with repeated choices like this, interests can start to shift.

[118] From, you know, my experience facilitating groups with men who've offended in this way, I would expect perhaps two or three of them to say that they'd always struggled with the sexual interest in children.

[119] And then I would expect most of the rest of the group to say, actually, no, for me, my sexual interests always felt pretty normal.

[120] I've had kind of relationships with appropriate partners.

[121] However, in the context of the internet, I started to kind of cross these thresholds and to seek out.

[122] Content that held my attention or that gave me a stronger emotional reaction or conversations with children where I could feel a sense of kind of influence and control in a way that I couldn't have adults.

[123] So our experience at the foundation, and through our work, suggests that perhaps the more common story is this kind of route via adult pornography.

[124] But it's not the only story, by any stretch.

[125] I'm John Walsack, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona.

[126] And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world.

[127] We cloned his voice using AI.

[128] In 2001, police say I killed my family.

[129] First mom, then the kids.

[130] And rigged my house to explode.

[131] In a quiet suburb.

[132] This is the Beverly Hills of the Valley.

[133] Before escaping into the wilderness.

[134] There was sleet and hail and snow coming down.

[135] They found my wife's SUV.

[136] Right on the reservation boundary.

[137] And my dog blew.

[138] All I could think of is.

[139] And the sniper me out of some tree?

[140] But not me. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere for two years.

[141] They won't tell you anything.

[142] I've traveled the nation.

[143] I'm going down in the cave.

[144] Tracking down clues.

[145] They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere.

[146] If you keep asking me this, I'm going to call the police and have you removed.

[147] Searching for Robert Fisher.

[148] One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.

[149] Do you recognize my voice?

[150] Join an exploding house.

[151] The hunt.

[152] Family annihilation.

[153] Today.

[154] And a disappearing act.

[155] Listen to missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

[156] The podium is back with fresh angles and deep dives into Olympic and Paralympic stories you know, and those you'll be hard -pressed to forget.

[157] I did something in 88 that hasn't been beaten.

[158] Oh, gosh, the U .S. Olympic trials is the hardest and most competitive meat in the world.

[159] We are athletes who are going out there, smashing into each other, full force.

[160] Listen to The Podium on the IHeart app or your favorite podcast platform, weekly and every day during the games to hear the Olympics like you've never quite heard them before.

[161] In the summer of 2020, in the small mountain town of Idlewild, California, five women disappeared in the span of just a few months.

[162] Eventually, I found out what happened to the women, all except one, a woman named Lydia Abrams, known as Dia.

[163] Her friends and family ran through endless theory.

[164] Was she hurt hiking?

[165] Did she run away?

[166] Had she been kidnapped?

[167] I'm Lucy Sherrith.

[168] I've been reporting this story for four years and I've uncovered a tangled web of manipulation, estranged families and greed.

[169] Everyone, it seems, has a different version of events.

[170] Hear the story on Where's Dea, my new podcast from Pushkin Industries and IHeart Podcasts.

[171] Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[172] But Dr. Bone sees it differently.

[173] If a 15 -year -old kid starts to look at pornography, I don't think that there's going to be this devolution of deviance or this evolution of deviance.

[174] I think that there's something else that's already in there that then we have access to all the stuff that's out there that gets tripped.

[175] I think that for the most part, that's more of a urban, tail.

[176] My theory of pedophilia is that there is something biologically cross -wired that's going on either through development or genetics or poor evolution, like something has occurred that would trick that person into wanting to consume that kind of pornography.

[177] You then get these other guys that just consume everything that there is.

[178] A child is not a sexual creature in our minds.

[179] But some of these men and women develop such a distorted way of seeing the world and seeing other human beings that they either believe or they convince themselves that that five -year -old was coming on to them.

[180] In Tom's experience, he has found that adult pornography has been the gateway for illegal content.

[181] But Tom isn't focused on the why as much as the how, as in how did you get to this place and how do we stop it before it starts.

[182] and you might be surprised who stop it now ask for help.

[183] Mind Geek are the owners of a number of mainstream adult pornography sites.

[184] Mind Geek owns Porn Hub and U -Porn, among many other adult porn entities.

[185] The team at Lucy Faithful persuaded the biggest purveyor of pornography in the world to post a warning message when someone searches for video content with children.

[186] That might be asking for young teenage pictures.

[187] A message would then appear on their screen.

[188] to let them know that their search terms were both concerning, but also, crucially, to let them know that confidential help is available through us at Stop It Now, and that people could be directed to our resources.

[189] So for us, that was a really attractive option, because we're interested in preventing people offending at the earliest possible opportunity, and ideally, before they have committed an offence.

[190] We want to get the message out to this very hard to reach group of people, that there is help available and that there is a different decision that they can make, which would minimize the risk of children being harmed.

[191] In a 2014 paper on the treatment and management of child pornography use, the author's Michael Cito and Adakunle Ahmed classified different types of offenders who consume child sexual assault material, also known as C -SAM.

[192] They found that in some cases, CSAM use might be motivated by hypersexual or compulsive sexual behavior.

[193] In other cases, its use may be a result of reckless or impulsive behavior or accidental access or curiosity.

[194] This suggests there are different types of CCM offenders.

[195] A parapheric group comprised of individuals who would meet the diagnosis of pedophilia.

[196] A sexually compulsive or hypersexual group who would need assessment and treatment regarding their sexual self -regulation.

[197] a group of impulsive risk -taking individuals who require more general intervention regarding their self -regulation and a relatively low -need group of accidental or curious users.

[198] Depending on the classification, different recommendations, assessments, and diagnoses apply.

[199] I thought about Jason, Michael, and Joel, husbands, and fathers.

[200] Which type of offender do they fall into?

[201] I think it's interesting to note they all said it wasn't sexual.

[202] What else would they say?

[203] Maybe by saying that they thought it would get them off the hook.

[204] Maybe make them less evil?

[205] So I asked Tom, what does someone get out of viewing CSAM?

[206] There are lots of needs at play, and I think your audience would assume, rightly, that a key need that's being met through the behavior is a sexual need, one of sexual pleasure and arousal.

[207] But that's not the only need, and in my view, there's almost always some emotional needs that are met through the behaviour.

[208] Examples of that might be that it might provide someone with a form of escapism from the challenges of their day -to -day life, from the difficulties that they're experiencing.

[209] Perhaps those difficulties generate strong feelings for them of feeling inadequate in some way or might be affecting their sense of self -worth.

[210] So engaging with this sexual content, be it at adult pornography, or sexual images of children or abusive conversations with children online, provides this kind of solace to people's sense of themselves, their sense of kind of worth in many ways, and provides them with this escape.

[211] And the escape then helps them manage their feelings.

[212] Other examples might be for some people, this might be the one part of their life where they can experience themselves as being influential and potent, where they can feel like their decisions and behavior who are kind of shaping their experience and also shaping the experience of someone else.

[213] In addition to being convicted on one count of sexual exploitation of a minor, Jason was also convicted of two counts of voyeurism for filming a vea.

[214] I asked Dr. Bone, why someone would engage in that behavior?

[215] I think that there's an element oftentimes of the sneakiness and getting away with and I'm checking you out and that's kind of turning me on because you don't know that I'm looking at you.

[216] and there's like some little power there and there's just like sneakiness.

[217] The Utah prison system has a rehabilitation program that starts with one of the toughest things for an offender to accept.

[218] Accountability.

[219] It is a process of confronting all prior bad acts, even the ones nobody knows about.

[220] So they get immunity, but they have to disclose everything that they've ever done and they get it out.

[221] And it takes 18 to 24 months, typically the treatment that Utah does.

[222] So it's basically this immersive.

[223] experience where they literally have to like confront everything they've done.

[224] They have to write out their disclosure and then read it to their group.

[225] It's kind of a pure accountability component to it.

[226] I wasn't sure what the point of that was or if people would be honest.

[227] But Dr. Bone sees a lot of value in the disclosure.

[228] Part of any use disorder, so alcohol or porn use disorder, there's a tremendous amount of guilt and shame.

[229] But I think that divesting oneself all this stuff in a four, where you know you're not going to get into trouble, it's probably very relieving for them.

[230] The statistics are staggering.

[231] According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are more than 29 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation annually.

[232] That is over a half a million reports weekly.

[233] When we started this series, we were appalled at what we perceived as short prison sentences.

[234] In Joel and Michael's case, they did not serve their full time.

[235] And Jason's was comparatively low.

[236] I spoke with former Utah U .S. attorney John Huber about what he was up against when he was in office.

[237] The problem with child pornography is it is improper in our social mores, if not the law and regulations, to talk about it for what it is.

[238] I mean, to say rape of a child, sodomy of a child, that's really gruesome.

[239] And yet it doesn't capture the impact of that offense on that child.

[240] And it's an impact that that child and their family will live with for the rest of their lives.

[241] You can't erase that experience from a child.

[242] And we know from social studies that that child will have a very, very difficult time in life.

[243] Why?

[244] Because someone stole their childhood from them.

[245] I asked John what he would like to see happen legislatively in Utah.

[246] Where could they do better?

[247] In Utah, it's not like the legislature is taking a pass on holding child offenders accountable.

[248] In fact, let me give you an example.

[249] If a person videos themselves or has someone else film them in the act of sexually abusing a child, those people directly involved in that crime face 25 years to life in prison, minimum mandatory penalty in the Utah state prison under Utah law.

[250] That surpasses the possible sentence that you could get in federal court for that same offense.

[251] So they take this very seriously as anyone would and should.

[252] My concern is with the run -of -the -mill cases.

[253] This goes on constantly, dozens upon hundreds of cases where you have these images and collections and trading images and bartering them like their baseball cards.

[254] It's those offenders that I am so concerned about because they're not getting the attention in court or according to state law that I believe they should.

[255] When he says run -of -the -mill, he's referring to cases like Jason, Joel, and even the one his office prosecuted, Michael.

[256] Individuals who aren't necessarily hands -on or creating their own content.

[257] But these offenders are perpetuating the trade and production of CSAM by consuming the content.

[258] By doing so, they are sustaining and promoting an ever -growing market, which means more secondary.

[259] sexual exploitation.

[260] More child abuse.

[261] You think about the world of child pornography and the waves of offenders that are sweeping through our courts across all the states.

[262] Do we say, well, there's so many we can't do anything?

[263] Do we need to think of a different way to handle these offenders because there are so many or because some view it as an addiction problem?

[264] To me, there's a huge difference between someone who gets caught in a cycle of addiction and abuse of drugs and their life spirals out of control and they make very poor decisions.

[265] The risk associated with that person, even if they succumb to overdose and they pass away, that price seems different than shifting the risk onto the community to say, we'll do it.

[266] We'll do it.

[267] our best on this vector of child pornography and we'll try to give them chances to rehabilitate and such.

[268] The risk there is to their next child victim.

[269] How can we say we can absorb that risk as a community or a family?

[270] The price is too high because the price is a child's life and their family and their friends and that burden that they're going to have to carry because an adult took their innocence away from them.

[271] I'm John Walsack, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona.

[272] And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world.

[273] We cloned his voice using AI.

[274] In 2001, police say I killed my family.

[275] First mom, then the kids.

[276] And rigged my house to explode in a quiet suburb.

[277] This is the Beverly Hills of the valley.

[278] Before escaping into the wilderness.

[279] There was sleet and hail and snow coming down.

[280] They found my wife's SUV.

[281] Right on the reservation boundary.

[282] And my dog blew.

[283] All I could think of is in the Sniper me out of some tree.

[284] But not me. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere for two years.

[285] They won't tell you anything.

[286] I've traveled the nation.

[287] I'm going down in the cave.

[288] Tracking down clues.

[289] They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere.

[290] Keep asking me this.

[291] I'm going to call the police and have you removed.

[292] Searching for Robert Fisher.

[293] One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.

[294] Do you recognize my voice?

[295] Join an exploding house.

[296] The hunt.

[297] Family annihilation.

[298] Today.

[299] And a disappearing act.

[300] Listen to missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the Eyehart.

[301] Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

[302] The podium is back with fresh angles and deep dives into Olympic and Paralympic stories you know, and those you'll be hard pressed to forget.

[303] I did something in 88 that hasn't been beaten.

[304] Gosh, the U .S. Olympic trials is the hardest and most competitive meat in the world.

[305] We are athletes who are going out there, smashing into each other, full force.

[306] Listen to The Podium on the IHeart app or your favorite podcast platform, weekly and every day during the Games to hear the Olympics like you've never quite heard them before.

[307] In the summer of 2020, in the small mountain town of Idlewild, California, five women disappeared in the span of just a few months.

[308] Eventually, I found out what happened to the women, all except one, a woman named Lydia Abrams, known as Dia.

[309] Her friends and family ran through endless theories.

[310] Was she hurt hiking?

[311] Did she run away?

[312] Had she been kidnapped?

[313] I'm Lucy Sherrith.

[314] I've been reporting this story for four years and I've uncovered a tangled web of manipulation, estranged families and greed.

[315] Everyone, it seems, has a different version of events.

[316] Hear the story on Where's Dea, my new podcast from Pushkin Industries and IHeart Podcasts.

[317] Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[318] The price is high, and there is trauma all around.

[319] While no damage can possibly compare to the victims of sexual exploitation, the women we've met really are victims themselves.

[320] There's a growing body of research that perhaps the majority of partners in this situation would meet the diagnostic threshold for post -traumatic stress disorder, that the impact of police investigations has huge detrimental effect, potentially on all aspects of their life, their employment, their family relationships where they're living and so forth, and that family members too share this fear of public exposure and stigma and shame by association, because in the majority of cases, there is no reason why other family members ought to have known or ought to have suspected this.

[321] Absolutely.

[322] I'm sure Erin, Mandy, and Ashley, would all love to hear someone say it out loud.

[323] On this side of the pond, I don't think any of them felt that they were treated as victims with PTSD.

[324] This kind of metaphorical bomb going off in people's lives and this moment of discovery that the person who was their partner, their husband, their adult son, their father, has been behaving in a way which typically they'd never imagined in their wildest dreams might be the truth of the matter, with devastating consequences for them.

[325] So there's a recognition in recent years, and we're keen to kind of promote that awareness about the impact and needs of these people in their own right.

[326] I hope in the spirit of recognizing those impacted, family, friends, and children continue to be a focus of support.

[327] Like Tom said, a bomb went off in Ashley's life, and she has been left picking up the pieces.

[328] She's been doing a lot of work in therapy in an effort to not let this whole experience break her.

[329] She can't change what happened.

[330] But in this session with Jessica, they talk about what she has learned.

[331] I think, I decide that's what life is.

[332] It's just a series of fires that we just constantly put out.

[333] Really, really hard lessons.

[334] I'm like, okay, I have the school of life.

[335] I've taken enough lessons for a little while.

[336] I need a little break.

[337] Yeah, I'm like, universe, give me a week.

[338] Like one week.

[339] right just let everything go smooth i realized that i really don't let myself cry because i think in any moment in my life when things have been really hard i'm able to like disassociate a little bit yeah well and some of that dissociating is like healthy in order to get through life and then in the right environments with the right people it's okay to let that down because it's not about feeling sorry for yourself.

[340] It's about forming compassion and empathy and understanding.

[341] But there is one area where Jessica noticed Ashley would get emotional when it came to Jason.

[342] One of the things that came up for me was when he was in the bedroom and kind of distancing himself from you for months and you were just trying harder and harder and harder to get back into connection.

[343] That's where a lot of the sadness came up.

[344] Yeah.

[345] That makes a lot of sense because Because I was like, what's wrong with me?

[346] Like, what am I lacking that he doesn't want anything to do with?

[347] You know, and so I did a lot of, like, self -hate and really not good self -talk and things like that.

[348] But I was just like, you need to be kinder to me. Yeah, and so when we're being rejected, instead of seeing a problem with what's going on in their world, we internalize it.

[349] and it can be called developmental shame but then this inherent sense that something is wrong with me has actually been there our whole lives and it shows up in our romantic bonds when we don't get the love and exchange that we want we make it about us and we turn it in once and there was a lot going on in Jason's world that Ashley was internalizing we heard about the drawings, missing work, and sitting out of family parties how many years of discons connection was there?

[350] I feel like it was kind of off and on.

[351] It started when I was eight months pregnant, and he had an affair.

[352] That's when I really took those rose -colored glasses off and just started noticing things.

[353] But that's when I really started to see things changing.

[354] And then the last three years of our marriage, he was a completely different person.

[355] He's always played on flag football leagues, and he was a gamer, so he had game.

[356] and, like, all that stop.

[357] Every season for the University of Utah football games, we had season tickets with all of our friends.

[358] All of a sudden, he sold our tickets off, and he's had him for, like, 20 years.

[359] And then there was no adulting.

[360] Like, I couldn't have a conversation with him about anything serious.

[361] I don't know, like teenager responses and behavior and everything.

[362] If I found out on a Tuesday that that following Saturday, we were going to be going to dinner with our family or something, I wouldn't tell him until maybe the morning of because he just could not handle the anxiety of it and he would make my life hell.

[363] Also, he started taking a lot of baths and would, like, be in the bath for hours.

[364] And then we weren't intimate at all at this point.

[365] And then I started serving him, like, his dinner in bed.

[366] Like, he'd just be in the room, so I'd bring it to him in the room, and that was it.

[367] So he was completely isolating himself like that.

[368] I feel embarrassed almost because I was giving it at all in those moments.

[369] I feel foolish.

[370] Like I was on a whole different planet than he was.

[371] Nothing would have been enough.

[372] I'm so happy that you can see that now, and the experience of giving, giving, giving, and self -abandoning is an adaptation that we learn to try to get into connection when we're terrified of losing connection to someone that we've been relying on.

[373] Yeah.

[374] I think you're helping women by doing your own work, looking at your fears, looking at your trauma, understanding your adaptive strategies, the denial system that you had in place, what you were really scared of, facing.

[375] All of us, myself included, we stay in situations sometimes longer or longer than our intuition is letting us because there's an underlying fear around losing our life or losing that attachment that's very valid.

[376] So a lot of these women, while the behavior out there is obvious, the fear of facing ourselves and starting over and facing our fears, it takes a courageous person.

[377] And sometimes it takes a really horrific event to say, okay, enough is enough, this is my bottom.

[378] I need to move forward and to detach.

[379] And it can be very hard.

[380] Yeah.

[381] I'm so proud of myself.

[382] Yes, you should be.

[383] On the next episode of Betrayal, a teacher in one of the country's best school districts is caught posing as a teenager online to solicit sexually explicit videos from an underage girl.

[384] If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team, email us at Betrayalpod at gmail .com.

[385] That's Betrayal P -O -D at Gmail.

[386] dot com.

[387] To report a case of child sexual exploitation, call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Cyber Tip Line.

[388] At 1 -800, The Lost.

[389] If you or someone you know is worried about their sexual thoughts and feelings towards children, reach out to stopitnow .org .org.

[390] In the United Kingdom, go to stopitnow .org .org .com.

[391] These organizations can help.

[392] We're grateful for your support.

[393] And one way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts.

[394] And don't to rate and review betrayal.

[395] Five -star reviews go a long way.

[396] A big thank you to all of our listeners.

[397] Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with IHeart Podcasts.

[398] The show was executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fasen, hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Carrie Hartman, also produced by Ben Fetterman and associate producer, Kristen Mulcury.

[399] Our IHeart team is Sally Perry and Jessica Kreinschek.

[400] Special thanks to our talent, Ashley Litton, and production assistant Tessa Shields.

[401] Thank you to Jessica Baum, Dr. Bone, Tom Squire, and the Lucy Faithful Foundation.

[402] Audio editing and mixing by Matt Daovecchio, Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines, music library provided by My Music, and for more podcasts from IHeart, visit the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[403] I'm John Walsack, host of the new podcast, Missing in Arizona.

[404] And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world.

[405] We cloned his voice using AI.

[406] In 2001, police say I killed my family and rigged my house to explode.

[407] Before escaping into the wilderness.

[408] Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere.

[409] Join me. I'm going down in the cave.

[410] As I track down clues.

[411] I'm going to call the police and have you removed.

[412] Hunting.

[413] One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.

[414] Robert Fisher.

[415] Do you recognize my voice?

[416] Listen to missing in Arizona.

[417] every Wednesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

[418] The podium is back with fresh angles and deep dives into Olympic and Paralympic stories you know, and those you'll be hard pressed to forget.

[419] I did something in 88 that hasn't been beaten.

[420] Gosh, the U .S. only bet trials is the hardest and most competitive meat in the world.

[421] We are athletes who are going out there, smashing into each other, full force.

[422] Listen to The Podium on the IHeart app or your favorite.

[423] podcast platform weekly and every day during the Games to hear the Olympics like you've never quite heard them before.

[424] In 2020, in a small California mountain town, five women disappeared.

[425] I found out what happened to all of them, except one, a woman known as Dia, whose estate is worth millions of dollars.

[426] I'm Lucy Sheriff.

[427] Over the past four years, I've spoken with Dia's family and friends, and I've discovered that everyone has a different version.

[428] of events.

[429] Hear the story on Where's Deer.

[430] Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.