Something Was Wrong - S18 E1: [Alexis] You're Not Alone

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

*Content Warning: sexual assault, rape, emotional abuse, bigotry, racism, fraud, gaslighting, domestic violence. Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resour...ces SWW Merch: merch.cameo.com/store/somethingwaswrong Follow Something Was Wrong on IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastFollow Tiffany Reese on IG: instagram.com/lookiebooArtwork by the amazing Sara Stewart:@GreaterThanOkay - Instagram.com/greaterthanokaySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm Candace DeLong, and on my podcast Killer Psychie Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds you hear about in the news. Hey, Prime members, listen to the Amazon exclusive podcast Killer Psychie Daily in the Amazon music app. Download the app today! Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences. It discusses topics that can be upsetting and triggering, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, suicide, child abuse, and murder. Content warnings for each episode are at the top of episode notes. And confidential and free resources for survivors
Starting point is 00:00:42 can be found linked in our episode notes as well as on our website somethingwaswrong.com slash resources. Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes. Testimony shared by guests on the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, something was wrong, broken cycle media or wondering. The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is any of the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. Thank you so much for listening.
Starting point is 00:01:19 You thinkin' on me, you don't know me well, at all, at all It comes from me I'm Alexis and I started listening to this podcast way back in the first season. Part of the reason why I continued listening to it for one, the stories were so beautifully told, but I found myself relating to many, many of the experiences that the survivors were sharing throughout many different episodes. And ever since the beginning,
Starting point is 00:02:26 I've kind of got to myself that I have, unfortunately, so many stories and experiences that I could have shared. But I have never really been quite ready to share my story up until now, the only people who I've shared my story with, concerning this particular individual, has been with my best friend, my husband, and with my therapist. It is a little daunting to be finally releasing it, but I do feel like I am ready to finally share what I went through at this time. I am originally from the East Coast, and in 2016, I graduated college
Starting point is 00:03:12 throughout my college experience. I was in a pretty verbally and emotionally abusive relationship for four years. It was really odd and often, I would say it really marred my college experience a lot and it clouded the majority of it. I really thought the only way that I could free myself from this relationship was to physically put distance
Starting point is 00:03:34 between myself and the person who I was in a relationship with. That being coupled with not knowing what I wanted to do after school, we happened to have a ton of recruiters for a teaching cohort at our campus. So I decided to talk to them. I applied for a position and I ended up getting accepted into the program.
Starting point is 00:04:00 They operate throughout the nation. So we were able to choose 10 different places where we thought we wanted to be placed. I ended up being placed at my 10th choice, so when I went down there, I didn't know anybody. My whole life was on the East Coast. I didn't have any family down there. I didn't have any friends down there yet. I moved completely down there by myself,
Starting point is 00:04:25 and within two weeks my mom would be gone back home and I would really be alone. The first few months were very difficult, and I was very lonely. So, like many people do, I sought out companionship on dating apps. After going through a few people on dating apps and nothing really coming from any of those interactions,
Starting point is 00:04:49 I finally came across David. What drew me to David physically was he had a lot of tattoos and I am attracted to tattoos. I liked his style and I was also intrigued that it's said in his bio that he was a hip-hop DJ and I thought that was really interesting because I'd never been around anybody like that before. I was in my early 20s at the time and I believe it said that he was 29 years old on a stating profile. He did look like he was 29. I liked what I saw basically and I
Starting point is 00:05:25 ended up swiping right on him and he ended up matching with me. We talked quite a bit and very quickly our conversation moved from the app to texting to calling each other on the phone. He was very persistent about meeting up and taking me on a date, but I was very busy with my job at the time. He was in and out of town for different DJing gigs. We lived in the same state, but our cities were pretty far away from each other. It could take up to an hour and a half to get to each other in traffic. So our schedule is just really one aligning. Also our conversations were going so well. I wasn't concerned about hurrying up and meeting him if that makes sense.
Starting point is 00:06:11 I really liked his sense of humor and I initially felt very comfortable with him. I am naturally a really sarcastic person. So finding someone to keep up or one up me when it comes to sarcasm is kind of rare. Our banter back and forth was really good and our conversations also never went stale. He seemed like he was genuinely interested
Starting point is 00:06:33 in getting to know me as a person. What was going on in my life, what my interests were, what I was doing for work, how work was going about my family, which was kind of different than what I've experienced in the past. He seemed very down to earth. He seemed very caring.
Starting point is 00:06:50 He was definitely charming. The interesting thing about him, more than once, he mentioned to me that he had absolutely no game. And I feel like mentioning that you have no game is like when guys say that I'm a nice guy, you know, like when somebody has to say I'm a nice guy or I'm a good person that probably means the opposite. So he told me multiple times that he was super corny, that time I looked at it as somebody who was self-deprecating, I guess, in a way, and it kind of aligned a little bit with the sense of humor that he had. I think I should have been a little wary about somebody trying to portray that image as hard as he was, but I really didn't think too much about it at the time. One thing that's important to note about David was that he made it a point to let me know how much more comfortable he was in black spaces
Starting point is 00:07:54 than he was in white spaces. He is a white male but he told me that growing up him and his family moved to a neighborhood that was predominantly black and throughout his life that's who his friends were. a neighborhood that was predominantly black and throughout his life That's who his friends were you said that he was raised by a black community who embraced him and he felt more comfortable dating black women and being in those spaces I was going through a lot of racial identity issues at the time so it did kind of make sense But it should have been more concerning that he made it a point to make sure that I knew when I understood this information. And
Starting point is 00:08:32 he was also making money and profiting in black spaces as well. The gigs he would go to were attended by predominantly black attendees. He was very frequently the only white person there, so he would get a lot of attention. He would be very vocal on social media about social injustice. He would act like he cared a lot about civil rights. He would just post a lot to bring awareness to any kind of racial injustices that were happening
Starting point is 00:09:02 to somebody who doesn't know him. It did look like he was an ally, but he was pretending to be this way to one have access to black women that he victimized repeatedly and to also profit off of this community because that's all that he did. He frequently used us in more ways than one. He had a photo shoot for his record company. I think it's very telling that in the promotional pictures that he decided that he was gonna shoot in a Black Lives Matter shirt.
Starting point is 00:09:37 It portrays this image and it gets him exactly where he wants to be. So just looking at how he used those spaces and how he hurt so many people, it's just really gross and it's just fucked up how he pretended to be this type of person. And not so many people defended his actions as well. One of these attempts to meet for the first time, I told him that I was sick and he told me that he was willing to come over and bring me soup and just sit with me so I'm not by myself and he would be able to get me
Starting point is 00:10:14 whatever I needed since I was too sick to really do anything for myself. As nice as I thought that this was, I did not want to meet him for the first time being sick because I looked terrible but also I didn't think it was necessary for him to come all the way out there to just bring me soup and sit with me while I wasn't feeling good. So I kind of brushed it off to the side and we eventually ended up scheduling first date. David did tell me that he had a gig that night, but he really wanted to go
Starting point is 00:10:47 on this date. I just needed to know that he needed to leave at a certain time in order to make it back to his gig on time. I thought that was totally fine, and I even offered to go to him, but he told me he wanted our first date to be in my city. He didn't think me being the woman. I should be the one to have to drive all the way out there. So he was totally fine coming out to see me. He did offer to pick me up and take me to the restaurant, but I declined. I didn't think it was smart of me to get in the car with somebody who I'd just been talking to over the internet because honestly I don't know who this person was or where they could take me. And I told him that I'd be happy to meet him at the restaurant. When I finally got to the restaurant, he was basically exactly as I expected.
Starting point is 00:11:33 He looked exactly like his pictures. He dressed in the same kind of way. His voice was the same as what I heard on the phone. So I felt pretty comfort in meeting him for the first time. And from what I remember about the first date, it was pretty great. I could find myself kind of liking him and I felt like I was attracted to him and I did feel like he liked me as well. He did offer to take me back to my apartment and when he dropped me off, we did end up kissing for the first time that night. He asked if I wanted to come to the gig with him back in his city because he wanted to hang out with me a little bit more and extend the night, but I told him, I don't think it's a great
Starting point is 00:12:13 idea. I didn't know how I would get back home. I didn't want to have to be forced to stay overnight with him if I didn't feel comfortable. I thought that we could definitely do that another time, but I just told him for tonight, it's okay, you go do the gig, you don't need me to be there, and I'll talk to you after the gig. I did ask him if he wanted to come up just to hang out a little bit more for five or ten minutes before he went off. He told me that as much as he wanted to come up, it was really important for him to let me know that he wasn't with me for any physical reasons. He thought our connection was so much deeper than that. He really saw a future with us.
Starting point is 00:12:58 He didn't want me to think that he was with me only for the sex or only for physical reasons. I was a very used to that response. I thought that was admirable and I thought it was kind of nice. Like this guy is making an appointment to say that he really wants to get to know me and who wants to take things slow because he sees a future out of this relationship. After that first date, things moved pretty fast. We were talking constantly. He did come out to visit me quite a bit,
Starting point is 00:13:29 which is a big deal, I think, because we didn't live close to each other at all, and also because of my busy schedule. I really didn't have time to come out to him. He was making it a point that he really did want to see me, and he really did want to spend time with me. After about a month, we were out one night and David got a little bit drunk and we ended up going to his apartment that night. He ended up confessing his love to me. It was a little bit of an intoxicated brand. He told me he loved me
Starting point is 00:14:01 and that he really did see us spending our lives together and blah, blah, blah, blah. Not that this isn't nice to hear, but I've only known you for a month. And I should have known from my past relationship that usually somebody saying I love you that early on when they barely know you is a huge red flag. I didn't say it back to him at that moment, but I was like, I think you're drunk right now. If we need to revisit this, we will revisit it later. We ended up going to sleep, and then the next morning,
Starting point is 00:14:32 he said he did remember what he said to me. He was like just so you know, everything I said was true. And it is how I really feel, regardless of whether I was drunk or not. And I didn't tell him, I loved him back at that moment because I didn't. But I did end up saying I love you back. I think about a week later from my skewed perspective of what love was. I thought at the time that I was in love with him and that he did love me. Very quickly, he did ask me to be his girlfriend after the second or third time that we were hanging out and after we were officially together, I started going up to his city to
Starting point is 00:15:17 go to gigs with him. And when I first started going to his gigs, he was super attentive to me. I was always in the booth with him. He always went around to introduce me to everyone as his girlfriend and he made sure that I was really comfortable throughout the whole night. He did pay on our first date and he did pay for a couple of dates after, but after maybe the the time we were hanging out, I did find myself having to pay for a lot of things. And first it started with being an excuse and then it became a little bit expected that
Starting point is 00:15:54 I would pay for things. He was either dealing with financial issues or he had to save that amount of money with me having the resources at the time and also me believing in an equal partnership within a relationship. I did not initially have problems splitting the payments for some things but as I was paying for more and more it did become a little bit more concerning to me. One thing that was a little bit strange during that time too is I look back. When he introduced me to his close friends, his friends really could not care less about me. They were very cold, they were very dismissive. I thought
Starting point is 00:16:39 they were going to ask, where are you from? What do you do? You know, normal questions about me as you're trying to get to know a person, but his friends really couldn't give two fucks about me. And I just figured that they didn't like me for some reason. I just kind of moved on from it. I figured as long as the person who I'm dating liked me, then everything was fine. I would deal with his friends as they come.
Starting point is 00:17:04 But he was very attentive to me at gigs and they were very fun to go to with him in the beginning. Right around Thanksgiving time, we were out to eat. And over conversation, he just casually mentioned that he was going to go pick up his son this weekend. I was very taken aback because I had never heard anything about children up to this point. We hadn't been dating for that long,
Starting point is 00:17:33 but I had known him for over a month and a half at this point and nowhere on his social media, dating profile, conversation phone calls, texts, or anything, or in his apartment, where there are any signs of children. This was really the first time that I got that warning pit in my stomach that, oh, there's something wrong about this because there's no way I should be dating you
Starting point is 00:17:57 and not know that you have kids. I did question him about that. And he told me that he didn't like to mention that he had kids when he was dating somebody in the early phases because he didn't want to be prematurely judged for not being with the child's mother. And he also didn't want to give out information about his children with somebody who he didn't really know that well yet. When he responded with that, I was a little disarmed by the response because I wasn't expecting it. But to me at the time, even though it was very, very weird and
Starting point is 00:18:33 very concerning that he didn't mention to me at all that he had children, the explanation did kind of make sense to me. So I kind of brushed that off a couple of days later. I found out that he also had a set of twins and his first child and his twins were from two different mothers. He did tell me that regardless of our relationship and how serious we got, there would be nothing that would come between
Starting point is 00:19:06 him and his relationship with his kids. He told me that he does have contact with the moms and he does regularly call them and text them to figure out what's going on with his children and when he's picking them up and when it's his weekend and everything and our relationship was not going to impact that at all. And even though at the time, he said it kind of harshly, I did honestly think it was kind of admirable that somebody was stating to me that obviously their children came first and that a romantic relationship wouldn't trump the relationship that they had with their kids. One day, I was supposed to go with him to meet his mom for the first time, and I was very nervous because,
Starting point is 00:19:50 as far as I knew, David didn't have a super close relationship with his family. He didn't talk about them a lot, but every now and then, his mom would call and he would always say that he would send his mom money, but she ended up calling and she was on speakerphone. She asked, so what's this girl's name again? He told her Alexis.
Starting point is 00:20:13 Her response to that was Alexis. Shining her name be like a quanta or something. I thought you said she was black. I was totally taken aback that the first interaction that I I would have with somebody even though it was over the phone. You're gonna say something This outwardly racist and he he just snicker that it I was kind of in shock I've gotten stuff before you know about the way I talk. I've gotten stuff about my name before but really Nothing quite as outlandish as that. I asked them about it and his response was, oh, don't take that to heart. That's just kind of how my mom talks. She just jokes
Starting point is 00:20:50 about stuff. It's a joke. She doesn't really mean it. Clearly, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And it is very difficult to not also emulate those behaviors. If you have a parent who's acting like that, unless you do a lot of work on your own, which he was trying to portray, that he did that work, but he was clearly a lot more like his mom than he wanted to admit. We ended up not going to see his mom. I don't think it was because of that. I think something came up, but I'm actually very happy that I did not have to meet her in person and deal with other things that she would have said to my face. I did decide to Google David, so I had met him. He was actually a DJ. He did attend the events that he told me he attended, but I did come across a blog post that was basically accusing him of more or less being an awful person. I wish I still had the blog post so I could
Starting point is 00:21:55 read it verbatim, but basically it exposed David as an abuser. It said something like beware of the nastiest DJ in the state. He says he's a lot younger than he actually is. He's really in his 40s. He likes to hang around college campuses and tell girls that he has all of this money and that he's a big DJ. But girls who actually end up dating him end up paying for everything. And it started talking about how he is a predator and he abuses women, ended saying, stay away from this man. I was taken aback by what I read. But as I scrolled down, I did see a lot of the comments were actually defending him. And they were saying, no, he does so much for the community. David is
Starting point is 00:22:45 actually a really nice guy. He's great. I'm sure you don't know him and you're just saying stuff about him but made me feel better reading it, seeing the comments having his back. So it made me think that the post was kind of slanderous and not true. Once I read it I did call him and I did question him it, but he was already ready with an answer and he told me, Yeah, my friend sent me this post a couple of months ago and we've been trying to take it down The story about this is I had this ex who I broke up with and she's wanted to get back together with me And I won't talk to her so she's basically doing whatever she can to ruin my life I also believed him a little bit more because of the comments defending him.
Starting point is 00:23:29 Fast forward to right before Christmas. I don't typically tell my parents about people who I'm dating, but things were going well for us at this time. And I felt really comfortable with this person, so I thought that this would actually go somewhere, so I decided to share with my parents that I was in a relationship. The reason why I told them about him
Starting point is 00:23:52 was because during the breaks, I usually went home. And I usually spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's back home with my family and my friends from the East Coast. But this year, I had plans to spend New Year's with David because he was doing a really big gig on New Year's Eve. I told them what he did. I told them his DJ name, so my parents, unbeknownst to me, ended up searching him as well. So I got a text from my mom one day saying, you need to call me right now. This cannot wait. This is urgent.
Starting point is 00:24:25 I'm kind of panic not knowing what it's about. I call her. And both of my parents are on the phone and they ask me if I've seen this article. I am immediately calmed down because in my mind, I've already talked to David about this and I already know the answer. My parents tell me the concerns about the article and I'm telling them mom and dad. It's totally fine. David has already told me about this. I've seen it before. They're trying to actively take it down because of slanderous and this is basically written by an ex who's out to get him. Obviously my parents being a lot wiser than me. They didn't believe it and they didn't buy it and they're like, okay, well, if you want to believe this, then that's disappointing.
Starting point is 00:25:07 But there's a lot of concerning things we're seeing about this person and we don't think that you should be in a relationship with them. And me thinking that I know the person who I'm in a relationship with way better than my parents who have never met him before, I'm thinking they're overreacting to the situation. I really hate and regret that I reacted this way because me staying in a relationship with David actually negatively impacted the relationship I had with my parents because I wouldn't stop seeing this person and my parents were very concerned about the choices that I was making during this time. I ended up not talking to my parents for a couple
Starting point is 00:25:47 months. I do really regret that this person did have an impact on a relationship that I cared so much about. Have you guys talked about it since? Have you been able to revisit it and heal? Now we're totally fine. I think it just took a couple of months. We never spoke about anything after the break up, but they were just so right during that time. I think I was really hurt and offended because I interpreted as like, you guys don't trust me. Right before I went back home for Christmas break,
Starting point is 00:26:23 I did go to a party with David and some of his friends, and we ended up having a lot of fun together. My flight to go back home was the day after. I got a little bit too drunk, and I was way too sick to be able to make it home for a flight. And I ended up rescheduling my flight. In the morning, I woke up to about five texts and like, three missed calls from my mom,
Starting point is 00:26:48 saying, if she doesn't hear from me, she's gonna call the police. I'm so confused because I have no idea where this is coming from. I told her the night before that I would have to change my flight and come home actually on Christmas day because I was sick and not in the condition to fly. So I had no idea why she was texting me with this urgency.
Starting point is 00:27:10 I finally call her back and she's like, what were you doing? I was about to call the police. I don't know where you are. I was just like, where is this reaction coming from? I was asleep. I know that it was because they didn't trust him and they knew nothing about this person. It was a little bit of an overreaction, but my mom was very concerned about me.
Starting point is 00:27:33 I told her everything was okay. She ended up calming down and I did go home for Christmas break. I remember when I was at home, all I could think about was getting that home to David and I wanted to make sure that at this really big New Year's Eve event that I had the perfect outfit so I actually went with my mom to find a dress and a pair of shoes that I was excited about wearing and all I wanted to do was get back and have him pick me up from the airport. He did end up picking me up and things were normal. We really missed each other, we were really happy to see each other. That night on New Year's, it was really great. We were still in a pretty good place. He still introduced me to everybody. He was really excited because this was a big deal for him. I guess there were a lot of important people who were at the party.
Starting point is 00:28:26 I felt proud of him in a way that he was able to have this opportunity. And he seemed really proud to have me there supporting him. I say the whole night in the DJ booth, it was just after the New Year, funny enough, when things kind of started to change in our relationship, and I think the mass started slipping a whole lot more.
Starting point is 00:28:55 After years, I would say that February was when there was a major shift in our relationship and things really started to change. That year, the Super Bowl was in our relationship and things really started to change. That year the Super Bowl was in our state, so David was scheduled to do a lot of events that weekend. He was really excited about it because it was a really big networking opportunity and a lot could come from this weekend if he made a really good impression. So me being his girlfriend, I kind of automatically assumed that I would go down with him. I was already thinking of taking my days off of work. I had never been to the Super Bowl or anything of this magnitude before, a couple weeks before. I was waiting
Starting point is 00:29:37 for him to ask me to go and he never did. I brought it up to him. I was like, hey, so this weekend, do you want me to come with you or like what's the deal with that because if you do want me to come with you, I need to know so I could take days off of work. He told me that as much as he would love for me to come with him, he would be really busy that weekend and he honestly didn't see us being able to spend a lot of time together. He said that this weekend was a really big opportunity for him and this could be very huge for his career. This could take us new places and it could really set us up for a good future. He needed to minimize his distractions as much as he put that weekend. I wasn't happy about this because I was really excited to potentially go and I thought it would be really fun and I thought it would be cool to experience something like that
Starting point is 00:30:33 with your partner, but I accepted it. That's really when things started going downhill, but that whole weekend, it was very difficult for me to get in contact with him. I would call him, he wouldn't him. I would call him, he wouldn't answer, I would text him, he wouldn't answer. When he did call, he was always so rushed and so agitated that I was seemingly bothering him and distracting him from all of these big opportunities and throwing him off that he just didn't have time to talk and wasn't interested in talking to me.
Starting point is 00:31:05 I didn't really know what to do. I would ask him how he was doing throughout the weekend. When did he think he was coming home? He just wasn't responding to my texts. He posted multiple Snapchat stories of him in a hotel room with another woman who was sitting on his lap drinking a bottle of something. And when I saw this, my heart just completely dropped. Not only are you not talking to me, but you have another woman sitting on your lap and you're dumb enough to post this on your story that everybody can see and then I can see as well. Why would you do something like that? Obviously I called him. I could see that he posted the Snapchat
Starting point is 00:31:48 a couple of minutes before I called. So I figured he would have his phone. He didn't answer and I basically didn't talk to him the whole weekend. I just had a pit of my stomach. I didn't know what the future was of our relationship. I didn't know what the future was of our relationship. I didn't know what was going to happen with us. I had no way of reaching or communicating with my boyfriend,
Starting point is 00:32:11 which was the most frustrating thing at the time, because all I wanted to do was talk about what was going on and talk about what I saw and have him explain to me what situation that was. Last we spoke, he did tell me he was coming home Monday night at some time. Since I couldn't get in contact with him, I decided to drive to his apartment. When I was getting there coincidentally enough, he was just arriving back home. And he was very shocked to see me there. His reaction was basically like, what are you doing here? We didn't have any plans to hang out, why are you here?
Starting point is 00:32:48 I told him that I saw the video, what was that about? You haven't talked to me all weekend, like, what is going on? And the reason why I'm there is this is the only way I could communicate with you right now. And as your partner, you owe it to me to let me know what's going on. Like, everything else, he has an answer for everything. And I shouldn't have accepted it, but I did, but he told me that the girl in the video was an old friend of his, and everybody knew that they were good friends.
Starting point is 00:33:20 They were just homies. There was nothing that everyone on between them. He did say if he was doing something that he shouldn't have been doing, why would he post it on Snapchat where he knows that I can see it. And that was like another mind-fuck situation with that because you're doing something you're not supposed to be doing with a random girl sitting on your lap while you have a girlfriend. but if he was really up to something sneaky and this wasn't just a friend sitting on his lap, it's really because he
Starting point is 00:33:51 had no respect for me, but like most things, he's always prepared with an answer, and it really made me question where I was coming from and why I was getting upset at these situations. He did express his disdain with me coming over to his apartment not invited because he said that was a violation of his personal space. I think after I confronted him with that, he did say he understood why I was upset and he may have apologized for not being communicative that weekend but that was really the end of it. He did say that he was going to do better with responding to me and that was just a
Starting point is 00:34:36 rarity because he was so busy that weekend. But for me, coming from a place where we literally talked all the time and he's always on his phone for business, suddenly you're icing me out and I can't get in touch with you. That was kind of drawing to me. The communication never really got better after that. That's when things just continued to go downhill. We ended up not talking for sometimes weeks at a time. I would send him text messages He wouldn't respond. I would see him on Snapchat hanging out with people I started to question him and I started to not trust him
Starting point is 00:35:14 That's when I started to think there was maybe something else going on After the Super Bowl in the midst of things not being so great about us We like to go to this sushi restaurant and it was kind of a gathering spot for him and his friends. One night we were celebrating one of his friends birthdays. Like I mentioned before, his friends didn't give two fucks about me and they were not friendly towards me at all. So did I really want to go? No. But he wanted me to go with him and I like sushi so I agreed to go. He did warn me before that this ex supposedly she was the one who made that angry
Starting point is 00:35:53 post about him on the blog. He didn't warn me that she would be there but he told me that she just likes to go wherever he is. She knew that he was gonna be there and he has no plans and talking to her or whatever, but she probably is gonna be behaving in a certain way to get under my skin. I was like, okay, great. Another reason why I don't really care to go to this thing, but I'm gonna go anyways. We end up going to dinner and everything is fine, but as the night progresses, everyone sections off a little bit and I kind of see her gravitating towards him. I go to the bathroom and when I come out of the bathroom, they're standing in front of a table, but from my vantage point under the table,
Starting point is 00:36:40 I could see they're holding hands. The person me you're telling me don't worry about, she's crazy, she's this, she's that. You're holding hands with her when you think that I'm away, so I saw that, and again not knowing what to do, I just went outside. It was February, and it was cold, it may have just snowed, so I was just sitting on the curb by myself. It's like 10 or 11 o'clock at night, not knowing what I saw, and I think I was crying. I was just sitting on the curb by myself. It's like 10 or 11 o'clock at night, not knowing what I saw and I think I was crying. I was honestly waiting for him to text me because I told him I was going to the bathroom like 15 minutes ago and I never came back. I'm sitting here and then spend like 30 minutes now
Starting point is 00:37:19 and somebody comes outside and I finally think it's him, but it's one of his friends. And this friend, I had only met for the first time that night. His friends sits down and he was like, I was wondering if you were okay. He was just being a good human, which was very rare in this group of people. And he realized that a girl was alone at nighttime, somewhere outside of a restaurant. He said, I noticed you were gone for a while. I told him I was just really upset right now and I needed a minute
Starting point is 00:37:50 and I wasn't really happy with what was going on inside. He told me he's known David for a long time. And he said that I seem like a very nice girl, and I seem a little bit different from the girls who he usually ends up dating. He's not so sure if I could really handle all of this, but he asked me, do I honestly think that that man in there loves me? I was like, I don't know, he said he loved me. I really wasn't in this space to have that kind of conversation at the moment, but he was like, I don't know. He said he loved me. I really wasn't in this
Starting point is 00:38:25 space to have that kind of conversation at the moment, but he was like, if you decide that you want to stay with him, I just want you to honestly think about and ask yourself, do you think he really loves me and do I deserve to be treated the way he's treating me? Because he's seen him do this with a lot of women. He basically said he doesn't think that I need to go through that. So that's been something that's really stuck in my head. I never saw this guy before that night and I never saw or heard of him again after. I couldn't tell you what his name was. I couldn't tell you what his face looked like. To me, it was kind of like an angel shedding light on this horrible situation that I was in. I just really appreciated that individual in a moment when I needed somebody showing
Starting point is 00:39:12 that active kindness not only checking in on me but really telling me what I needed to hear since nobody else in a circle did that and everybody else seemed to enable him. I ended up going inside. David got so intoxicated that night that me and another friend ended up having to basically drag him home because he couldn't walk. When I confronted him about that situation the next day, he conveniently said that he didn't remember and that his ex must have taken advantage of him when he wasn't in a position to stop what was going on. Because he would have never engaged in those behaviors if he was clear-minded.
Starting point is 00:39:50 I tried to gear myself up to break up with him when I was talking to my best friend. I told her a bunch of times that I don't want to do this anymore. I hate being treated like this. I told him that I was tired of being in a relationship with somebody who basically doesn't exist. But for some reason, I just wasn't able to pull the trigger. I'd never broken up with anybody before. And it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I also had some hope that the David that I once knew and who I grew really fond of would
Starting point is 00:40:28 come back. I thought that maybe this was a busy time. There was a lot going on. There were a lot of changes, but I thought the person who I first started dating the charismatic, funny guy who had come back around. Our communication was still very fractured, but there were times when we would reconnect and we would start hanging out again. When we were together things were the most part would be normal, but we would constantly run into the problem of when we were apart, me not being able to get in contact with him. One of these weekends that I was up with him, he told me that he
Starting point is 00:41:04 had to talk to me about something and what that he had to talk to me about something and what he was going to talk to me about. I probably wouldn't like very much, but this would be a very big opportunity for him and him getting in good at this place could really set us up for a good future. Whenever he talked about these kinds of things, he brought me into it, making me think that we had some kind of a future together.
Starting point is 00:41:31 He told me that his manager was opening a strip club in our city, and his manager asked him to be a DJ. The way he presented it to me, it was more like a dance club with nude dancers there. And I've always been an open-minded person, but at the time, I was concerned because of how he previously behaved and how bad our communication was. The last thing I needed at this time was for my boyfriend who was barely talking to me and who I just saw with another girl sitting in his lap, being a DJ five nights a week at a club with naked women.
Starting point is 00:42:17 I expressed to him my concerns and he said that my concerns were valid, but a lot of big-name people were going to come to the strip club. They already had a bunch of NFL players, rappers, reality TV stars lined up to 10. So like the Super Bowl, he told me he didn't know that who he would potentially meet there. And that him being a DJ at that club could be a really big opportunity for him.
Starting point is 00:42:43 He said that he's never been the type of guy to objectify women and he doesn't view women in that kind of lens. This was strictly be a professional role. I do honestly believe that people can work in an environment like that and be professional, but I shouldn't have believed him. In order for me to feel comfortable with it, he did say that he wanted to take me to some of the auditions and walk through the club first together and opening night. So I could really get an idea of what kind of
Starting point is 00:43:15 environment he would be working in. I told him that I wasn't very interested in going to any of the auditions. I didn't feel like I really needed to be there to walk through and figure out the day-to-day logistics because I didn't really care that much to do that. But I did kind of want to go to the opening night. There was a lot of talk about it and it was supposed to be a big deal. We ended up going and it was actually really fun. Again, he was very attentive to me and he did introduce me as his girlfriend and that was a big deal
Starting point is 00:43:45 because at this time I hadn't been going to gigs as frequently because I noticed over the past month. He started to ignore me at the gigs more and more and when I confronted him about that he would say that having a girlfriend really wasn't good for his image. It was better for him to appear single and it wasn't about me, but this is what he needed to do to elevate in his career. I should have known that it was bullshit,
Starting point is 00:44:12 but I just didn't want to fight about it. So the fact that we were at the club, and you know, there were all these beautiful naked women walking up to the booth, tipping him and giving him the songs. He wasn't acting inappropriately at all. I was with him the whole time. He strictly did his job that night, and he did show a lot of attention to me,
Starting point is 00:44:35 even though we weren't in the best place. At that time, I did feel okay, maybe there is some truth in what he's saying, and he can do this job in a professional manner. David had been working at the club for a couple of weeks and our communication still wasn't great but I still wasn't very concerned with what was going on.
Starting point is 00:44:56 My spring break was coming around and we had previously talked about going to Mexico over spring break because I had never been there before and that was a place where David really liked to go and he always expressed to me that he really wanted to show me around there. So I brought my passport to his house and as I was putting it in the drawer, I noticed a piece of mail with a name that I was not familiar with at all. When I first met David, he told me a particular last name and he told me that he liked to use this last name because his legal last name was his father's and he really didn't have a good relationship with his father.
Starting point is 00:45:43 He wanted nothing to do with him, and he didn't want to be tied to that man in any kind of way. He also said professionally, the name that he told me sounded better than his birth name. This name that I saw in the piece of mail was completely different than the other two names that I knew about. I went to him, and I got the piece of mail, and and I told him I saw this. He told me your birth name was this and now I'm seeing something completely different. And his explanation for that was
Starting point is 00:46:17 that this name was his mother's last name. And sometimes he preferred to use his mother's last name. There were three different names that I found out he goes by. I do believe that I know his true legal name, but like everything else, these were things that I had to figure out on my own. And he did lie to me about who he actually was. I had to ask him about it, but he was always prepared with an answer. And his answers always could make sense. And to me, being a DJ and having a stage name and this being your professional name, okay, a bunch of people don't use their birth names as their professional name, you know. And a lot of people don't have great relationships with one parent or both of their parents, and they want to use a different name. So all of his explanations kind of made sense at the time, but that was another time
Starting point is 00:47:08 that I did have a pit in my stomach and I was just like, this is something else that's very odd and off about this person. We planned on me going up to see David and me spending the weekend with him. Him taking me out for my birthday still at that point our communication was not great. We get into the week of my birthday and I hadn't heard anything from him. I was supposed to go up to see him on Wednesday of that week and it was now Tuesday and I heard nothing. I was getting upset because at that point of time I had nobody else to spend my birthday with and here was my boyfriend
Starting point is 00:47:54 who claimed that he loved me and we had all these plans together and he was basically nowhere to be found. So not knowing what I was doing for my birthday anymore at that point and me thinking I was spending the birthday by myself. I did call my mom and as great a woman as she is, she did drop everything and she came into town and she did end up spending my birthday with me. Wednesday came and I heard absolutely nothing from David. I was getting happy birthday texts from my friends and everything, but the person who I wanted to speak to the most was nowhere to be found.
Starting point is 00:48:32 I ended up going to dinner with my mom and we had a really nice dinner from my birthday, but I was very hurt that my boyfriend couldn't even wish me a happy birthday. He couldn't even give me a phone call. And I've been trying to get in touch with him the whole week. We had all these plans, and I heard absolutely nothing from him. I ended up going to bed, and then the next morning, I see text messages from him. In all lowercase, he texts me happy birthday.
Starting point is 00:49:02 I immediately call him, and I'm just like, hey, what was going on into my surprise? He actually answered the phone. When I asked him why hadn't I heard from him, he told me that there was something wrong with my phone and he was like, so you didn't get all the text that I was sending you? I was like, what are you talking about?
Starting point is 00:49:22 I didn't get any text from you. All I got was the all lower case happy birthday from you the day after my birthday. He was like, no, I texted you a bunch of times. I guess there's just something wrong with your phone and I just figured you were mad at me and just didn't want to hang out with me anymore. I was like, well, I didn't receive any of your texts.
Starting point is 00:49:40 I didn't get anything and so what's the deal? Are we still hanging out? Do you still want me to come up there? And he told me that since he didn't hear from me He made other plans and he was going to be busy the next couple of days But I could go up on Sunday and that's when he would be free That should have been the end of it But I did agree that on Sunday He said he would make it up to me and everything.
Starting point is 00:50:06 We would go to a nice dinner and he was excited to actually celebrate my birthday with me. So, again, I forgave him. Maybe there was something going on with his phone and he did try to send text. What was very interesting, leading up to my birthday dinner. He made a very big deal about how he saved up $100 to spend on my birthday dinner. And to this point, I had been paying for everything. He kept saying that this money could have gone to his kids, his car could have been fixed with this,
Starting point is 00:50:44 he was having car issues, he could have used this money for so gontas, kids, his car, could have been fixed with this, who's having car issues, he could have used this money for so many other things, but I should feel very special because he's choosing to spend this $100 on me. He's making me feel guilty about something that I didn't even ask for and I shouldn't feel guilty about. He ended up taking me to dinner and then we went back to his apartment and we tried to hang out I guess for a little bit but it was very uncomfortable. It was very evident that things had changed. I felt like he really didn't like me that
Starting point is 00:51:16 much and to be completely honest. I think I was trying to convince myself that I liked him a lot more than I did, but I really don't think at that point I liked him that much either. I think I was too scared to make any kind of permanent decision to in the relationship still having hope for what could be or what was, but I really don't think that I enjoyed spending time with him anymore. I'm sure he got a real take at him coming up with bullshit responses to anything and everything and me continuously coming back Why he didn't just break up with me. I wondered that quite frequently. I also wondered who would eventually cut the cord on things
Starting point is 00:52:06 I think it did amuse him to kind of see how far he could take this while doing whatever he wants. Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here and I'm here to tell you about my brand new podcast. It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. Why medical mysteries? Well, we've all been there. Turning to the internet to self-diagnose are inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes. Though our minds tend to spiral to worst-case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery. Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been
Starting point is 00:52:50 cremated. Or the time when an entire town became ill with nausea and chills, and the local doctor chalked it up to being food poisoning until people started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings. Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night. Follow Mr. Ballon's medical mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon Music. With my job, I frequently had a lot of conferences in the city.
Starting point is 00:53:23 So whenever I had to drive all the way up there for a conference, it was always very convenient for me to just stay at this apartment. I was close to where I had to be. So the weekend after my birthday, I had a conference in his city and I asked if I could go up and stay with him. He agreed that weekend was one of his friends birthdays and he was going to celebrate his birthday at the club where he was DJing. He told me it was gonna be really fun, he was super excited, it was a big deal, but I did not want to feel ignored. I didn't want to feel bad being at the event with him.
Starting point is 00:54:11 I just wanted to try to get things back to where they were. So again, I thought it would be better for me to stay back while they all went to the event. Before they left, it was David and three other guys, one of whom was his friend who was having the birthday. They were all pre-gaming together and when it was time to leave, he gave me a kiss, he told me he texted me when he would be on his way home and basically I went to bed. I think it was like 10 or 11 o'clock and I went to sleep. I hear them come back at around three in the morning
Starting point is 00:54:53 and listening to the voices out in the living room, I hear a female voice. They were out there for a couple of hours. I ended up waking up and I looked at the clock and it was around five o'clock. I walked out and the living room was dark and his friends were on the couch. I think they were playing a video game.
Starting point is 00:55:17 David and the girl that was over there, they were nowhere to be found. I asked his friends, where's David? They tried to lie to me and say, he went off to get food, but I know that his car hadn't been working in the past few weeks, so there was no way that he could have gone anywhere to get food. He was basically stuck in the apartment. So I told the guys, stop lying to me, I know he didn't go to get food, where is he? They didn't really say anything,
Starting point is 00:55:45 and then finally, after moments of awkward silence, one of the guys that I think you know where he is. David lives with a roommate, and his bedroom is on one side and has a private bathroom, and his roommate's bedroom is on the other side. So you could walk in the bathroom and go into the bathroom to get to the bedroom if that makes sense. That weekend his roommate was actually out of town and since David was not with me, there was only one place that he could be. So I walked to the bedroom door and I was to the bedroom door and I was banging on the bedroom door, saying, David, I know you're in there.
Starting point is 00:56:27 I'm not an idiot. I know somebody's in there with you. Come out of the bedroom. This was very loud. I think I was banging on the door for about 30 to 45 minutes. And there was nothing. I heard some rustling in the room from time to time. I tried to open the door, the bedroom door was locked.
Starting point is 00:56:45 I tried to open the bathroom door that would get me to the bedroom, the outside bathroom door was locked, so I had no way of getting in. And after him not responding, I went into his jump drawer and I got a screwdriver. The first thing I thought of was to try to take the door handle off the door. The first thing I thought of was to try to take the door handle off the door. Now unbeknownst to me, I didn't know that taking the door handle off the door didn't unlock the door at the time. So basically I ended up removing the door handle, but the door was still locked. And now it was even more difficult for me to get in. That didn't work. And I needed to get into the bedroom.
Starting point is 00:57:25 that didn't work and I needed to get into the bedroom. So the next thing I thought of was to try to unlock the door using a credit card. So I took my credit card and I kinda slid it up and down the door and actually ended up popping the lock and I was able to get into the bathroom. I go into the bathroom. They're not in the bathroom and then I open the bedroom door. When I opened the bedroom door, David was on the ground and the girl who was over there, she was sleeping in the bed, passed out. I
Starting point is 00:57:58 just stood there and I was stunned. And I asked him, what are you doing? His response to me totally caught me off guard and was nothing that I was expecting at all. He completely flips it around on me and he pretends to wake up and he says to me, what the fuck do you think you're doing barging into the room like this? This girl, she was fucked up and she got really drunk And my friend wanted to hook up with her and I was actually protecting her I locked the bedroom door and I slept on the floor to make sure none of my friends out there did anything to her and to make sure that She was safe and I wanted to make sure she was okay for the rest of the night. And the fact that you fucking come into my room, you destroy my property and you interrupt the situation
Starting point is 00:58:51 and you disrespect me to this degree, shows what kind of a person you are. This relationship is over. I'm done with you. I basically want nothing to do with you. Get the fuck out of my room. You could sleep here for the rest of the night, but in the morning, as soon as the sun comes up,
Starting point is 00:59:08 I want all of your stuff gone, and I want you out of my apartment. After he said that, I was so stunned by that reaction. I was speechless. I didn't know what to say. I was just like, okay, this has gone way too far. I went back to sleep and I got my stuff and I ended up going to the conference the next morning. At the conference, I was totally unable to focus. I was just totally confused because he was
Starting point is 00:59:41 mad at me for something that I should be upset at him about. I did have a couple of things from the night before that I needed to get from his apartment. So after the conference, I didn't have going back over there. His male friends were still there, but the woman who was there, she had already left. David was in bed, and it looked like he hadn't moved the whole morning. He was just completely cold to me. I wanted to talk about what happened,
Starting point is 01:00:12 not necessarily wanting to rekindle things, but I kind of wanted to process what was going on, but he was basically like, I don't want to fucking talk to you. This relationship was over. You totally disrespected me last night. He told me that he expected me to pay for the damage that was done to his property, and it was even more disrespectful that I would do something like this to his roommates room when he wasn't even home. He just didn't have any words for me. I could get my stuff
Starting point is 01:00:41 and I could leave. And I was just like, so you're not going to talk about the fact that I caught you in the room with another woman. And he was like, no, I told you what happened. And you don't trust me enough to believe me. This is my problem. And we can't be in a relationship anymore. I didn't want to fight it. I got my stuff. And I ended up leaving. Honestly, as I was driving home, I did feel a huge sense of relief that I was finally done. I didn't have to deal with him anymore. I didn't have to worry about being gausslet, being ghosted. It was a whole flood of relief that I had after being in this situation for a couple of months. I did have a after being in this situation for a couple of months. I did have a couple more things that I ended up leaving at his apartment
Starting point is 01:01:33 and they were kind of expensive things that I wanted. So the only contact I had with him after we broke up, I texted him that I needed to get my stuff and he agreed to me coming back up. I think a week or two later, I collected everything that was over there and I think we talked for a minute. He told me that he wished me the best of luck going forward. He sure that I'm a nice girl, but my behavior that he saw that night was how people start when they escalate and become murderers. And I was like, you're actually comparing me to a murderer because I needed to get into a room
Starting point is 01:02:16 where my boyfriend was engaged in inappropriate sexual acts with somebody else, how dare I not give him credit for the amazing guy that he is, that he sacrificed all of his sleep all night to protect this woman. The fact that I would come in and destroy his property is just somebody who he wants nothing to do with. I had never been exposed to anybody who thought like that before. About a week or so after we broke up, been exposed to anybody who thought like that before. About a week or so after we broke up, I had unfriended him on all social media and we stopped following each other, but he was not blocked at the time.
Starting point is 01:03:00 So, I was kind of curious and I did go to his Instagram. I think it was dated a couple of days after my birthday or after I went up for my birthday. He posted a picture of another girl. The picture made it look like they were very much so in a relationship. I ended up going to her profile and she had multiple pictures of the two of them together, like my Bay and all this stuff and I'm so happy I met you and you came into my life. Clearly there was distinct overlap between when he was seeing me and when he began seeing her. A couple months later that kind of stuck with me and I'm very much a girls girl. I rarely feel like we're wrong in a lot of these situations. If it were me and I was dating somebody who was also dating somebody else at the time
Starting point is 01:03:48 when I was seeing them, I would totally want to know and I would want to hear about it. I went back and forth but a couple of months after I initially saw the pictures and did confirm in my head that yes, there was overlap. I did decide to DM the girl. I told her who I was and that I noticed she was in a relationship with David during the time when I was also in a relationship with him. I warned her that I
Starting point is 01:04:18 went through a lot of manipulation while I was with him. He put me through a lot and I would just hate for another woman to be in the same situation that I was in. I told her if their relationship is working out, then that is great. I'm happy she's not having to deal with what I was dealing with, but I wanted to warn her just in case. I did get a response from her and she told me that not long after they started dating, she did realize that something was up about him and she decided to move on and she said that she was sorry that I went through what I went through. So it didn't seem that they were dating anymore at the time when I messaged her, but that did confirm my suspicions
Starting point is 01:05:03 that he was actively in a relationship with somebody else while he was in a relationship with me. Was it immediately after that you found the social media post? I think it was about a year after I had absolutely no contact with him or desired to ever interact with this human again. But I did have a nagging feeling that there was something very, very off and something didn't sit right with me about him. I decided to Google him again.
Starting point is 01:05:34 I saw the blog post that I initially saw pop up again. Absolutely everything that was said in the blog post, it was absolutely true. This man, he's a predator, he prays on young black women. He puts himself in places where he will be surrounded by the women who he wants to pray upon. And he's been a little bit of an elevated situation, right? He's the DJ for this club. Some people may look up to that.
Starting point is 01:06:07 And he basically has his pick of who he wants to victimize. Him using women for money or using women sexually, everything about that post was absolutely true. But when I was looking up things, I came across a series of Facebook posts from multiple different people and these posts outlined David as an abuser. What I found on Google was eerily similar to what I experienced that night where everything basically went to hell and I saw him in the room with another woman. As I was reading, I got sick to my stomach because what the survivor was detailing
Starting point is 01:06:56 was basically the exact same thing that I witnessed the night that I went into the bedroom. that I witnessed the night that I went into the bedroom. I checked the date because I was just like, maybe this is the girl and honestly, it never crossed my mind that a sexual assault occurred in that bedroom. I just thought he was cheating on me. It really didn't cross my mind at all that he was assaulting somebody who was probably unconscious.
Starting point is 01:07:32 God, it even makes me sick to my stomach as I'm talking about it now. But as I was reading it, I realized the survivor said that this happened prior to the date when I experienced this with David. She said that she ended up passing out. She begged her boyfriend at the time who I was familiar with. She did mention his name and this was one of David's friends. She told her boyfriend at the time that she did not want to go to David's apartment
Starting point is 01:08:05 and she did not want to hang out with them because she didn't feel safe being with David and she asked her boyfriend to not leave her alone with him. I guess throughout the course of the night, she ended up drinking a lot and that's one common theme. There is always a lot of alcohol involved, whenever he goes out and whenever his friends are around Almost the exact same thing happened as what I think happened that night that I went into the bedroom She passed out and she woke up to David sexually assaulting her These men are all abusers and they behave like that because they're all cut from the same cloth
Starting point is 01:08:44 When she told her boyfriend about it he responded saying he didn't want to hear about that bullshit. She's lying, she's making it up. He didn't believe her. She has tried to do what she can to expose this group of men for what they really are but they have so many people in this community fooled that she hasn't been listened to. And I came across another post saying that a similar situation happened with somebody else. She was loosely dating one of the guys in the group and this woman ended up passing
Starting point is 01:09:21 out. She wasn't prosecuted and she woke up to David trying to force himself inside her mouth and he was basically saying, come on, just do it. She kept trying to push him off and he ended up cussing her out. This was something that she frequently posted about and
Starting point is 01:09:41 even on her Instagram, she frequently posted about wanting to out him as an abuser, but nobody was listening to her. That whole crew that she mentioned, they were all in this together, and nobody was ever listening to her. Realizing that this is what happened, and this person is actually such a worse human being and so much more of a monster than I thought could be possible. It just really made me upset for the women who were victimized by him. I did mention that he did often talk about racial injustice and say that he was a big supporter of the black community, but he also did put on a lot of fundraisers and do a lot of shows
Starting point is 01:10:33 for female survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. The fact that you are pretending that this is a cause that you care about, yet you are the person who is abusing these very women. And you're also setting yourself up to have access to any woman that you want. It's just beyond twisted. I wanted nothing more than for him to face repercussions for what he's done. Upon doing more digging, I ended up finding out that more than 20 black women have come forward, saying that he has sexually assaulted them. The police did try to get in contact with him, but again, he is a white male who is victimizing black women and apparently he didn't answer the phone and they just decided the case wasn't important enough and the case was dropped. It's just so
Starting point is 01:11:34 disgusting and sickening and really sad that he's out here able to live his life. Granted, he's scrubbed what he's could from the internet. He's changed his handles. I guess he's trying to rebrand himself or whatever, but he's able to live his life the way he wants to and go on without any repercussions when he has harmed so many women and ruined the lives of so many people. It's very unfortunate that when certain people in our country and with our justice system, voice injustices, then we aren't paid attention to because we aren't deemed important enough in society. And here he is able to live his life the way he wants to, but yet he has harmed so many women. What he's done to them is permanent.
Starting point is 01:12:26 They'll be dealing with the trauma of his actions, her possibly the rest of their lives, and he's just able to go on like nothing's ever happened. The most he has to do is change his Instagram handle around the same time that I did see those social media posts. I went on a rabbit hole and I think I paid for a background search because I needed to figure out who this guy really was. I've kept tabs on what's been going on a little bit because I'm just hoping that he gets arrested and his survivors get justice for what
Starting point is 01:13:03 he did to them. I was looking at a background search site and this is where I first actually found out that he was a lot older than he said he was. When we were dating, he did tell me he was in his late 20s that could have been believable. For the birthday we celebrated, I think it was his 30th birthday. But actually I found out he was, I believe in his early 40s. Here I am, I'm 22 years old. Unbeknownst to me, not only did he have so many different names,
Starting point is 01:13:36 but I'm dating a guy who is 10 years older than he actually said he was. I also saw that in June or July of the year that we broke up, he got arrested for domestic assault on a family member was what the charge said. It looked like he got out on bail and it didn't look like he really had to serve any time for it, which unfortunately I feel like happens so often with people like this. When you think you have them, they get off somehow and they just get set free like nothing ever happened But that was the only recent arrest I saw I Believe he scrubbed a lot of what was on the internet about him
Starting point is 01:14:17 But I don't think he's been arrested for anything else unfortunately a Big part of the reason why I wanted to share my story is because honestly looking back at this, I felt very stupid and I don't think it's uncommon for a lot of people who deal with this situation to feel dumb at the time and feel like this is only happening to them. A big reason why I started listening to this podcast and continued to listen to it, it
Starting point is 01:14:50 allowed me to realize that I wasn't alone in my experiences. For people who are experiencing the same thing or have experienced the same thing, it's important to know that this is not your fault. A lot of times we find ourselves in vulnerable positions. Like I said, I was on the heels of a very abusive, verbally and emotionally abusive for your relationship. That was the only lens I had as to what love was. And when I tell people this, I say that I was just kind of right for the pick-in at that time because I was just so emotionally fragile.
Starting point is 01:15:28 I was very insecure. I was going through a lot of identity issues. And the fact that I had a glimpse of somebody who is treating me okay, that's what I clung to. We learn from these experiences. We say we should have done all of these things differently. In retrospect, it sounds weird to hear, but I don't necessarily regret the experience that I had with him because for one, it taught me a lot, it challenged me, it really prevented me from putting up with a lot of bullshit in the future.
Starting point is 01:16:06 If I didn't deal with a situation like that, I wouldn't be the person who I am now. I think I've tremendously grown from this experience. And I am so lucky to have a wonderful relationship with a loving husband who I wouldn't trade for the world. I think honestly if I didn't experience that, then I wouldn't be in the position that I am now, but I think it's important for people who are experiencing a similar circumstance to know that you're not alone, and this is not your fault. These abusers find people who are vulnerable at the time in whatever way it could be age,
Starting point is 01:16:40 it could be health, it could be experience what you're dealing with. They prey on people and they get off on things like this, so it is be health, it could be experience what you're dealing with. They pray on people and they get off on things like this. So it is totally them and it has nothing to do with you. You're not alone. Just know that you're not by yourself when dealing with this and you are very strong for contending with what you contend with. I'm so incredibly sorry for what you endured and experience with this person. It's really disheartening to hear that so many young black women have been targeted by this person and the police are doing absolutely nothing about it. Thank you so much for all of your time and energy and sharing your story. I think it's incredibly important. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:17:31 Next time on something was wrong. I've never met anyone like her before. She gives such wild vibes, funny, but like you could tell it came from somewhere. It came from a lot of hurt, which I relate with, so I understood. I always said to people that she was like our little child who would insert herself into our relationship
Starting point is 01:17:55 anywhere she could fit. She would go on dates with us. She would even plan, quote, dates for like the three of us. She just wanted to be involved all the time There was just a lot of red flags with her, but I was going through my own Share at the time and so when she would say stuff like that I was like to Emma. You're an asshole. Why would you assume she's lying about all this trauma she has? That's not really your place to have an opinion
Starting point is 01:18:24 all this trauma she has, that's not really your place to have an opinion. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe friends. Something was wrong is a broken cycle media production created and hosted by me, Tiffany Rees. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow something was wrong on Instagram. At something was wrong podcast. Our theme song was composed by Glad Rags. Check out their album, Wonder Under.
Starting point is 01:18:56 Thank you so much. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today, or you can listen early and ad- free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

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