Crime Junkie - EXPERT ON: Domestic Violence

Episode Date: October 2, 2018

In our last episode, we talked about Susan Powell who was a victim of domestic violence. Many of her friends talked about Josh's strange behavior and the recalled things that should have been warning signs.Today we talk to an expert on the topic, Ashley Bendiksen. She will tell us her story of survival, what signs to watch out for and how to safely leave a toxic relationship.Ashley Bendiksen is an acclaimed survivor speaker and award-winning activist, speaking and training nationally on the topics of domestic violence, teen dating violence, sexual assault, and bystander intervention. She also delivers motivational keynotes on resilience and leadership. Passionate about helping others reshape and redesign their lives as she once did, Ashley also offers coaching and consulting services for victims and survivors, and life empowerment coaching for women.Ashley’s professional background includes 11+ years as a speaker, a career spanning victim services, advocacy, and PR. She holds a B.S. in Administration of Justice, graduating as Valedictorian of her class - years after dropping out because of domestic violence. She also remains active on numerous boards and initiatives and serves as an Ambassador for several national organizations. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram! You can also join our FanClub or even more episodes and exclusive content!   For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.   

Hey, crime junkies. Are you guys a little surprised to see me in your feed on a Tuesday? Well, I'm here because I have some special information for you. This isn't a normal episode. This is a follow-up to the episode we released on Monday. There was a portion of the episode where we were talking about Susan Powell after she had gone missing and all of her friends kind of looking back and recognizing all of this odd behavior. And there was a moment in the episode where I said, you know, I just don't understand where was everyone while it was going on? Why is everyone talking about it after it's too late? And I said, you know, I don't have any experience with domestic violence. I can't speak to how you help somebody or how you get somebody out of that situation.

And that didn't feel like a good place to leave it for you guys. And we were lucky enough that in the last couple of weeks, someone actually reached out to us who is an expert in this area. And what I'm going to play for you guys is pretty much an almost unedited version of my conversation with her, giving her story and her advice. She speaks for a living on this all about what to do, what signs you should be looking for. And when you see those signs, how you can help a friend or a loved one out of this kind of situation. Before we even jump in, can you start off with telling all the listeners who you are and what you do and your background with what we're going to be talking about today? Sure. My name is Ashley

Bendixon. I am an expert in domestic violence and sexual assault prevention work. I have a degree in administration of justice, and I dedicated my career to victim services and advocacy. And really it stems from my own personal experience as a survivor of both of those issues. And so I also speak nationally around as a domestic violence sexual assault survivor. That is amazing. So I have to say, you know, when you reached out, like I said, it could not have been better timing because we, Britt and I had just recorded an episode on Susan Powell, which by the time this gets released, will have just been released the previous Monday. And there's a portion of the episode where I don't know how familiar you are with the case, but Britt's telling the story and

she's talking about how after Susan goes missing, all of her friends are kind of looking at her husband, Josh, and recounting how he was, quote, legendarily controlling and he would make her knit her own socks and he would like control what her and the kids were allowed to eat. And I kind of said in the episode, like I don't get it. Like it's cool that you guys are all saying this now that she's missing, but where was everybody before? Was this like something everyone saw and no one said anything about? And if you did see it, why didn't you say anything? Or how do you even say anything? And I kind of ended this whole little rant of like, I know nothing about this and I have no experience with this. And I wouldn't even know,

I guess, what to look for. And if I saw it in somebody else, what even to say? And so the fact that you reached out, I think is so perfect because we've actually had people reach out in the past saying, you know, I would love to hear from somebody who actually knows what they're talking about. Like I'm a good storyteller, but I don't know what I'm talking about. So I think a really good place to start is like knowing the story that we just told. What are things that people should be looking for? Because Susan Powell was never physically abused. She didn't show up to church or outings with black eyes. But I think there were major signs of abuse. And I don't know how are all of us supposed to recognize something like that

when it maybe isn't so obvious. Yeah, you know, it's really hard to identify for a lot of reasons. One, a lot of abusive relationships aren't physical. You know, physical abuse is something that comes as the abuse progresses. But a lot of times it begins as the, you know, controlling nature, being possessive, really the verbal, emotional, psychological abuse. And that's stuff that you can easily hide. And it's also something that victims over time start to learn how to manage and hide in a way where either their friends or coworkers or colleagues don't see it, or they develop this skill of really explaining it all, whether it's making excuses or, you know, they've just had a bad day at work or they're really stressed right now. It's not usually like this.

But, you know, you're so right. Like the physical abuse is what we think that we would see. You expect to just see a black eye and know that a friend is in need. But the signs are so much more subtle. So it's almost just a matter of trusting your gut instinct and, you know, like really trusting into that hunch that you have that something's wrong, even if you really can't explain what that is. So if you got this hunch, because again, when we're talking specifically about this one case that we just talked about, obviously, there were things that people saw that weren't normal and it didn't feel right, but nobody seemed to have done anything before. Like, and I don't even know what the right thing to do is. Do you say something to them? Are there

bigger actions you should be taking? Like, what are the next steps? If you get this gut feeling that something is wrong, then what? Yeah, it's really common for people to have that gut instinct and not speak up. And I think the simplest way to put it is that people know they want to offer help. They know they should reach out, but they're paralyzed simply by not knowing what to say, what to do. And it goes back to just, you know, the age old tradition of this being something that people deal with and the privacy of their own lives and their own homes. And so it feels inherently awkward to, you know, approach someone about their relationship or insert your opinions. In many cases, you're almost wondering, am I crazy? Am I just imagining this? Maybe it's

not that bad. They seem to say everything's okay. So I think, you know, we just need to, as bystanders, get past our fear and discomfort of just simply going up to someone and saying, is everything okay? Or saying, I'm worried about you. And as a little tip, a lot of times when friends do work up the courage to address someone that I think is being abused, they'll talk about, you know, I don't like that he does this, that he does that, and they talk about all these abusive behaviors that they're seeing. And as a victim, your instinct is to defend them, to explain it, and you just go on the defense. And sometimes the best thing you can do is simply say, you know, I've noticed that you have changed. I've noticed that you're showing up to work late all the time.

I've noticed that you don't hang out with us anymore, that you're not, you know, doing your passions anymore, and really putting the focus on them because it allows them to really self-identify how much their life has changed and really how much it's probably being controlled by their partner. Is it something, I mean, how often does that happen the first time? Like how many, is there even like some kind of formula to how many times you need to let somebody know that you're noticing this or keep reaching out to them? Because I think even in like, I don't know that I've had like full instances of this, but I've seen the way someone has changed a person and tried to approach them. And after so many times, it's really easy to give up.

Right. It gets super frustrating when you keep trying to tell a friend to leave someone and you know that they should and they're not listening to you. And in many cases, most people will be like, all right, I'm all set. They're not listening to me. I'm trying to help. And sometimes you stop staying in touch with that person, which is actually an awful thing because then they really become even more isolated from anyone they might have access to support. For most victims, it takes them a long time before they ever actually leave. I think the statistic is seven attempts before a victim actually goes through with leaving their abuser. So the best thing you can do is say it three or four times, you know, bring it up every once in a while. But if they start to get bothered and

they try to insist that everything's okay, stay present, you know, stay their friends, stay in their life, just so that when they are ready, they're going to know that you're the person they can go talk to. Because otherwise, the more you bring it up and the more you're trying to convince them and urge them to leave, the more they're just going to want to cut you out. And then really the only person they have in their circle is their abuser. Is there a good way to do that when even the abuser is, I think, doing a lot for that person to convince them that their abuser is the only person they have, if they're pushing their family away and trying to drive a wedge between whoever they're abusing and their friends, because I've personally even seen that

where somebody is in a weird relationship and that person has driven them away from their family, away from their friends. And it's really hard to stay close to that person, because you constantly have this person in between who's kind of in their ear saying that maybe you don't have their best intentions at heart. Right. And especially if they pick up on the fact that you as a friend are trying to encourage them to leave them, they're going to bad mouth you, they're going to call you names, they're going to say, Oh, don't don't hang out with Mary. She's a bad influence. And there's going to brainwash them until they start to think, All right, I won't hang out with them anymore. And if your abusive partner is upset that your friends are so and so, and it results in these

huge arguments and, you know, violent outbursts, then you're going to slowly just side with your abuser. Because when you're in one of those situations, it's really like self preservation. It's trying to manage it every day. And sometimes that means taking the easiest way out, which is just doing whatever you have to to satisfy the person that you're afraid of. So is there anything as someone from the outside, a friend, a loved one that you can do other than being there and trying to bring attention to the disparities in your friend or loved ones actions? Is there anything like at what point do you have to do more or should do more, if at all? You know, it's a really, really tough issue because sometimes there's very little that you can do. I think if there's physical,

if you're in fear of physical danger, it's really being vigilant about noticing any little warning signs, you know, whether it's you're hanging out in a group and you see him grab her by the arm. You know, those are the kinds of things where you could potentially, you know, contact the police. But there's really little, you know, there's really little options other than just, you know, being a friend and trying to say like, do you need help? Do you want help going to a resource center? You should call an anonymous hotline. But there's nothing that you can do to force a victim to leave their abuser if they're not ready. And unless you're really witness to anything where you can call an outside agency or law enforcement, sometimes your hands are just tied. And it's

it's the saddest and most frustrating thing in the world for friends that are concerned. And it's just really unfortunate when, you know, everybody else can see that a victim is in need and needs help, but they're just not ready to do it for themselves. Is it ever a good position? Or does it make it worse if you were to band together with maybe that person's family or a couple of friends who are all seeing this and confronting that person together? Or would they feel ganged up on? Is that something that everyone should just do and point out individually so that person's hearing it from a lot of people at once, but maybe not feeling like everyone's attacking them? Yeah, I think, I think every person is different. But from my, my guess, just from my line of work

and the amount of survivors and victims that I've worked with, I think if it was a group effort, they would just really hate everyone even more, because they're going to feel attacked. And I do think it's smart though to contact family members, siblings, parents, and kind of just share those concerns, because I think multiple voices, you know, individually can make a big difference. And just kind of from a personal standpoint, you know, for me, my family, my friends, my coworkers, nobody ever spoke up. And I think if, if, well, actually one person spoke up once to me, and like, I'll never forget that he was just like, you don't deserve this. And I was like, it's fine, I can manage it. But had more people said that, like, one more person, then another

person, then another person, maybe I really would have started to self identify and thought, you know what, they're right. Because otherwise, without all those voices saying you should leave, you don't deserve this, you need to be safe, the voice in my head is what my abusers tell me all the time. So I think, I think more voices in the same shared message can be incredibly helpful. So I think it's a great idea to reach out to family and friends. And kind of on that note, do you feel comfortable sharing more of your personal story? I do. Yeah. Yeah, I think everyone would love to hear that because, you know, obviously we've got this,

this story of the woman we told, who's very real, but it's, it's almost been so publicized that it feels sometimes very far away. So I think to hear something that's like a very real world example of it, and things that maybe you saw that you should have seen and how long it took you to kind of walk through that journey. You know, we have hundreds of thousands of people that listen, and I'm sure that at least one to maybe more people are kind of in the same situation. And even if it to help them know that they're not alone, I think would be a wonderful thing. Absolutely. So, so I, when I grew up, I grew up in a small town and I really didn't know what domestic violence was. And I had these stereotypical images of who a victim is and who a batterer is.

So it's definitely not something I ever thought that I would get into. But I did end up becoming a victim when I was in college. My relationship, like all abusive relationships started out amazing. And what I know now that I didn't know then is that the first phase of any abusive relationship is that they're incredibly charming and they're everything that you want them to be. And it feels too good to be true. And, you know, personally, I had a rough childhood. So meeting him, he seemed to fill all the voids that I had. He was everything I've been looking for. And so I really felt head over heels for him very fast. And same on his end, he kind of had a rough past. So he felt the same about me. So we spent a lot of time together in the beginning, which

sometimes you would say, oh, that's a red flag. They spend all of their time together. But we both were into it. Like we had a really awesome relationship. Our friends approved, our coworkers thought we were a great couple. People seemed to really like him. He was just really charming. But then over time, us hanging out together, you know, he would start to say, oh, you're going to hang out with your friends tonight. I thought we were going to hang out. I was just, I miss you all day. And I thought maybe we could make dinner together. And so he would be really subtle and basically just say, I'm going to miss you. I don't want you to leave. Why don't we do a double date instead so we can all hang out. And I didn't realize that those were like early warning

signs of control. And what started off as seemingly subtle and sweet, and he cares about me, then became like, well, I don't want you hanging out with her and she's a bad influence. And you told me that you were going to hang out with me tonight. And he just got really controlling really fast. And he definitely isolated me from my friends, my family, my coworkers, any of the extra curriculars and like hobbies and passions that I enjoyed doing. He would find ways to pull me away from them somehow so that I would just spend time with him. And eventually it got to the point where I was so afraid to ever even say, I'm going to go to the movies today with my best friend or I'm just going to go to the mall today and do some shopping. I was so afraid to ever ask to do

anything without him because I knew it would bother him and he'd get upset. And when he did get upset, he would get erratic. He would do things like, you know, drive kind of crazy all over the road. He would start screaming out of nowhere. And I just tried my best to just calm him down, remind him that I cared about him, that I loved him, you know, tell him that he can trust me. I'm not trying to upset him. And so that was kind of the beginning of it. But then over time, because of the control and because of the isolation and the manipulation, my career started to tank. I wasn't performing well at work. He even forced me to drop out of college because it was so stressful and overwhelming that my grades were dropping. I couldn't focus on anything. And before I knew it, I basically lost

everything in my life, you know, my network of support and my hobbies and really any career or goals or aspirations that I'd been working towards. And meanwhile, while I kept saying, well, it's not that bad, you know, at least he never hit me, even though he gets really angry, I was not identifying all these little physical warning signs. So like he would restrain me if I tried to walk out of a room, or he would grab me really hard by my wrist while he yelled at me, or he would hold me up against a wall and scream in my face, or even just driving erratically to induce fear. So those were all little warning signs. And about a year and a half into our relationship was the first time that he really ever acted out physically towards me. I was trying to come home one night to our apartment,

and he got so angry that he punched the glass at the front door and it shattered into my face. And then he was doing things like getting angry every other day and throwing objects and, you know, kicking in furniture and I just felt so unsafe. So that was about two years where I thought that I could manage our relationship and I thought that things were always going to get better because he would apologize and say he was so sorry and he would tell me why he was acting a certain way because of work or stress or whatever it was. And I really just hoped that things would go back to the way they once were, because I always held on to hope that maybe he really is the guy that I met. Maybe he's really the sweet guy and I didn't want to just give up yet. But I knew once

he got really violent and I felt very in danger that I had to finally leave him. And this was after thinking about leaving him so many times. But I finally knew that I had to to keep myself safe. So I broke up with him and about two weeks later he was intoxicated and he showed up at my apartment and he broke in and I was severely attacked. He came at me. He was screaming that he hated me. I ruined his life and he grabbed me by the throat and he strangled me and he pinned me to the ground and it was horrifying. And, you know, that alone I think was something that I was so fearful might happen that that's probably one of the reasons I waited so long to actually break up with him because the fear of retaliation and just trying to keep myself safe on a day-to-day basis. So long story

short, that night when he attacked me at one point he just got off of me and like kicked at me and walked away and I was already starting to pass out a little bit but I was gassing for air and I came to and that's when I ran out of the apartment, ran up the street to a payphone and called the police and that was how I was able to finally leave him but the crazy thing was is even in those final moments with him like coming into my apartment I still looked at him and like it was such a whirlwind of wondering how things had gotten that bad because I still remembered how amazing he was when I first met him and I always thought he was like my dream man come true and just how things just escalated like it had a mind of its own and I just never saw it along the way. I never saw that I was a victim.

I never thought that he was a batterer that I was a victim of domestic violence because to me it was just our relationship and he had issues and I was trying to help him through those issues so you know it was just it was eye-opening and now that I am a speaker year around I go into a lot of high schools and colleges and I speak to women's groups. My story is not unique it's something that so many people are going through right now something that so many people can relate to you know in some way maybe it didn't get as bad as my story but all those little like control and manipulation and insecurity and you know not wanting you to I mean nowadays it's like oh why are you friends of this guy on Facebook unfriend them you know it's just it's stuff that we we play

off but these are all the little warning signs that add up to some of the most extreme cases that we see of domestic violence and unfortunately domestic violence homicide. And it's amazing because I obviously started this saying you know I don't know anyone I don't have experience with this but in the last 20 minutes listening to you talk and even listening to your story I have seen the stuff that you've talked about in multiple relationships between family members or friends like people that I consider myself very close to and again I recognize it is not being right and I don't want you to be with that person but gosh I mean I'm wondering how many times people are even not recognizing it for really what it is. Right well

and that's the thing people just aren't educated on what domestic violence is and we know about physical violence but you know if more people heard the basic definition and learned about verbal abuse and emotional abuse and things like isolation and manipulation they would be self-identifying less than right you know it's just an education thing it really is and for me honestly when I finally self-identified I heard a speaker and my life was like in PowerPoint slides in front of me I'm like oh my god like I'm a victim of domestic violence it was crazy. It is weird to see it in front of you and I was kind of that was my follow-up question is for people who might already have suspected or are listening to this and kind of like me like light bulbs are going off and being like

I recognize this if they're the actual person in the relationship what advice do you have for somebody who feels like they might be the person being abused by somebody? Yeah first and foremost things don't get better and that's not just my opinion that is fact people that are abusive unless they want to seek help and get help for themselves it doesn't get any better it's just going to get worse. I think being aware and starting to self-identify is the first step and then it's just a matter of planning out how you're going to safely leave not just breaking up and not telling anyone like I did where then I was you know attacked and I wasn't prepared for that but really taking the time to think about where will I go? Who will I tell? You know if

they have a shared key to the apartment making sure that you change the locks there are local agencies in every community that offers free advising and free counseling and free resources. A lot of people don't realize that most quote-unquote women shelters actually have like free services for you and they'll help you come up with a safety plan so I think it really is just being self-aware knowing that you have to make the it's not the easiest decision but the right decision the smart decision to take care of yourself and your safety and then just letting a few people in whether it's friends or counselors and making sure that you have a safe exit so that nothing goes wrong and you know it's really hard when you love someone because you want to be there

and you want to wait it out but I think just knowing that they have issues and they have to work on them and you can't do anything to fix that or change that you know it's really just the beginning of understanding that you have to take care of yourself first. And to be clear do you think that anyone who is in any like stage or level of abusive relationship needs to have a safety plan because I think if I were listening to this in my mind I would be like well he's never maybe hurt me yet or touched me yet it's just all this emotional stuff I don't think he would ever actually touch me but is that plan necessary for everyone? You know I I do think it can depend on the situation however you know we've seen cases where somebody was never physically abusive and then the second

that you know they the relationship ended they literally lost it because it's really domestic violence is centered on this need for power and control so if your partner leaves you that can trigger all of these feelings and emotions and violent outbursts that maybe never showed up before. I think if it's really in the early stages of the relationship where it's really just kind of minimal emotional abuse verbal abuse and you're kind of like seeing those warning signs you want to leave you definitely don't have to go that step but I think if the relationship has gone on for a little while six months to a year they're pretty invested in you and you're leaving them could definitely trigger some stuff so I think it's just like I said calling up these free local hotlines

talking to someone that's confidential and anonymous and just picking their brain is always a great first place to start. Is making the plan the same if it's just it's just me and a boyfriend or if I have a child with this person is there anything different that I should be considering anything more I should be considering now that you're not just worried about your own safety but this child that maybe you even share with your abuser. Yeah okay so when there's children in the picture it definitely requires much more effort because now you might even have to do something like warn the secretary at this child's school that a certain person shouldn't be coming by to pick them up if there's something like a restraining order in place you might have to tell the kid's

dance teacher or their coach and you really just have to be super vigilant about making sure that the right people in your kid's life are aware and alert for this person and then there's other things that you can do through the help of obviously the court system if you want to keep your children away from them you can reach out to local child and family agencies and they have a lot of support programs if the kids were witness to abuse there's amazing free counseling for kids through the local shelters so again I think it's just having that phone call with somebody who's an expert in your community and they will point you to all the right resources to make sure that you and your children are both safe. And I have a question more on the abuser's side is this a

cycle that they tend to repeat over and over like I have to imagine that when they get out of one relationship and they go into another they almost start over where it's magical and it's beautiful they don't just go into the next one being abusive like what about the abuser psychology if you know makes them start off so well is it manipulation from the start or I mean I guess I don't know what plays into their thinking. Yeah you know domestic violence they say is learned so it's definitely a pattern of behaviors that they have learned are normal in a relationship. Nobody is going to be abusive on date one otherwise you'd never stay with them you know so you're exactly right when one relationship ends and they move into another one it is the same

cycle of behaviors all over again that phase one where they charm you phase two where they slowly start to isolate you and manipulate you phase three where they have full control over you and it's just it's the same repeatable pattern over and over and over again and it's very common for you to maybe be in a relationship with someone who's abusive and learn that they possibly had abusive relationships in the past a lot of times they'll say oh don't listen to what you hear they were crazy they were the one that was abusive you know it's just it's a cycle that really never ends and unless they get specific programmatic help to undo those behaviors that they've learned are normal and appropriate they just keep repeating themselves and just from a personal standpoint

my abuser a few months later I learned that he was in another relationship and that he had attacked her and you know she had tried reaching out to me on I think it was my space at the time but you know it was like literally a few months later he was already doing it to someone else and even since then I've heard through the grapevine that he's been in court for other victims and I also found out that he had other restraining orders long before me so you know it's uh it's just a toxic cycle and it does it keeps repeating itself is there anything that you know we all talk about how to help the victim which I think is the number one priority but I think you know these abusers often have friends and family as well like if somebody were on the opposite end and recognizing

like wow I see this in my friend or my brother is there anything someone could do to try and get that person help yeah that's a really challenging task because there are batterer intervention programs but the problem is unless they know that they have a problem and want to change you can't force them to go unless the court forces them to go obviously but you know I mean you can you can definitely go up to someone that you think is abusive and you can take the same approach as you would for the victim like I've noticed that you do this and it's not healthy for you and you know if you get so upset every time they do this but you don't need to feel that way but unless you can really convince them that they should go change it's very challenging and most batterer

intervention programs they cost a lot of money they're 40 weeks long they're effective but who wants to just you know front all this money especially if they don't think they have a problem to do a 40 week you know batter program so it's really really hard to help a batterer um see that what they're doing is wrong because they've essentially spent a lifetime growing up and learning that these behaviors are completely normal so it's really really hard to do it's hard to reach somebody who's abusive so where do you see most abusers ending up in prison or living their life with a chain of abused women yeah in a perfect world they would be in prison or they begin they'd be reformed they'd be going through programs but unfortunately most batterers um you know they

don't ever get to that extreme level where you know they're severely physically hurting someone enough to get put into jail for life most of them if they even ever get caught on any behaviors with the law it's like a misdemeanor so you know for the most part they just keep cycling through these relationships or they find one where unfortunately that person remains a victim and they spend their lives together um you know there's plenty of victims that never leave their abusers ever and they spend a lifetime with this person so yeah unfortunately uh they don't end up in prison and most cases never get reported to the police because you know most victims don't call the police when an incident happens and if the police happen to show up because the neighbors call

the victim can say it was nothing i'm fine they overheard the tv and the police really can't do much more than that unless they see some kind of you know indication of violence or destruction so most cases never even make it to the police so most most domestic violence is just in our neighborhoods in our communities and it's hidden behind closed doors and nothing ever happens is there i mean obviously what we talked about the beginning this episode is you know loving those people and being there for those people is there anything else we as a society that we should be doing or in a perfect world would help prevent something like this yeah i think i think it's twofold i think the first part which we've really been emphasizing is being a bystander

understanding that we all do play a role when someone's going through a situation like this because most people remain silent and that's why these behaviors just perpetuate and continue to happen so i think seeing our individual roles as bystanders feeling like we can go up to someone and say i'm concerned how can i help you you know what can i do that's a huge piece of it because it acknowledges that you notice something is wrong and it kind of maybe validates the fears that they have the feelings that they've been going through that something is wrong i think the other piece is that we who have gone through these situations and these types of relationships should tell our stories more because i know for me hearing it from someone else validated my

experience and allowed me to self identify and get myself out of my situation and now as a speaker the reason that i choose to speak here around is because i've seen the power of telling my story and helping others to change their lives and and get out of their abusive relationships because so many of us so many victims feel unique they feel like no one will understand what they're going through they feel very alone like they can't open up so i think simply by talking about this more and telling more of these stories we can start to help more victims leave sooner you know we'll never stop these relationships from starting or happening but i think if we can get people to leave sooner that's the best possible you know path that we can hope

for i think that second point is so important because again as we've been talking and i've been thinking about instances where i've i've seen red flags like this i think part of the reason it's such a disconnect is often i've seen it in people that i consider to be really strong women and i think the way it's been portrayed for so long in society is that it it happens to like a very specific woman who doesn't speak up and she might be a weak woman but i don't think that's true i think it happens to very strong successful women i don't think there is a stereotype of a person that can be abused do you see that often that that it can happen to anyone absolutely and the same goes for people who are abusive they can be you know very well off well educated i mean

there definitely is no mold for who's who a victim is and who a batter is and to your point i definitely always felt like i was a really strong woman and part of me thought i'm not a victim i'm strong and i'm here to help him through his demons and understand and be empathetic towards his past and and be compassionate and patient so i thought i was a really strong woman i definitely didn't see myself this week and that's part of why i didn't think i was a victim you know because weak people were victims and that wasn't me is there anything else that that we haven't covered that you normally do when you go and speak to larger audiences or speak to victims anything that you think the audience should know somebody who's maybe listening and going through this or

listening and seeing somebody go through this i think we've i think we've covered a lot of it i i just think um it's very easy to make excuses for life training in a certain way but you start to realize that you're making excuses all the time and we just need to focus on ourselves and taking care of ourselves first and foremost and you know it's amazing how relationships can just you know tear up your whole life and turn everything upside down but we just need to get back to who we aren't and really taking care of ourselves so i think if you're in a situation you know just trust your own instincts and just try to get out and just as a whole societies communities you know organizations companies we just need to improve the culture so that we're

not being silent about this anymore absolutely and do you have i know you said everyone can go there's like local resources but do you have any kind of website or anything that you offer people if they wanted to go look up a little more information about you or your your talks that you give yeah um you can look me up anywhere i'm on all the channels all the places ashley bendixen but my website is ashley bendixen.com i do like i said i speak at schools but i even do things like workplace training you know a lot of my co-workers didn't know how to help and so i talk about how co-workers can be bystanders so there's so many different ways that this conversation can happen and i'd love to help anyone out there that that has an

interest and i'm also really open to just being a support and a mentor to anyone who is in an abusive relationship right now or transitioning you know i really love helping people that are in the first few phases of leaving them abusive relationship and the reasons in their life since anyone has resonated with anything just send their message and i'd love to connect and do whatever i can to serve and help and can they reach you through your website or do you have like a specific email address um yeah my website or you can just email ashley at ashley bendixen.com um i also have a website project that i launched um recently and it's a it's a story telling platform for survivors um and you can submit your story entirely anonymously but really it's just going

to be a site where we can share stories to help validate the experiences of others so if anybody out there has a story they want to share they can visit bluheartsproject.com and it's just a quick and simple form and they can do it entirely anonymous and i know it will help so many other victims out there that's amazing and well thank you so much like i said i i so appreciate you coming on you know we tell these stories and i hate for true crime to just be entertainment i think in everything that we've done there's a there's something that can be learned so hopefully this doesn't happen to another victim and i again so appreciate you coming on because i think there was a lot to learn from the last episode but i wasn't the person to do it so having you was

so helpful so thank you so much oh my pleasure and like thank you for covering this issue i think it's awesome to use a podcast as a way to educate people and help people and i just i think it's really neat and you're so right there's so many crime podcasts out there that are just like entertaining and we forget like the human aspect of like these are people and this is what people are going through right now and so i think it's awesome what you're doing like my pleasure to serve and help you out i hope all of this information was helpful or at least enlightening for some of you if you want more information on ashley you can visit her website ashley bendixon.com that's a s h l e y b e n d i k s e n i'm also going to put a link on our website with she actually is kind enough to have provided us all

of her contact information if somebody out there listening is in a situation and you'd like to get her advice you can also visit blue hearts project dot com that's where she's collecting the stories of survivors to hopefully help other people in this situation all of this information will be on our website crime junkie podcast dot com and you can expect us back for our regularly scheduled episodes next monday this week's episode of crime junkie was hosted by me all of our editing and sound production was done by david flowers and all of our music including our theme comes from justin daniel crime junkie is an audio chuck production so what do you think chuck do you approve