Something Was Wrong - S19 E13: (2/2) [Jennifer Khalifa, CPEDV] Prevention is Synonymous with Healing

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

*Content Warning: religious abuse, domestic/interpersonal violence, sexual abuse, child sex abuse, molestation, grooming, rape, violence, stalking, purity culture, animal bite, murder, gun violence, violence, coercive control, gender based violence, digital violence, suicidal ideation. *Sources: California Partnership to End Domestic Violence: https://www.cpedv.org/ VOCA (Victims of Crime Act) Funding Advocacy: https://www.cpedv.org/voca-funding-advocacy Help Save VOCA Funding! - Tell Congress to authorize VOCA at $1.9 billion and encourage Governor Newsom and the California Legislature to invest $200 million in ongoing funding to backfill federal VOCA funds: https://oneclickpolitics.global.ssl.fastly.net/messages/edit?promo_id=21423 Follow the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence: https://www.instagram.com/ca_partnership/ https://twitter.com/cpedvcoalition https://www.facebook.com/CAPartnershiptoEndDVCalifornia H.E.A.R.T Program: https://californiayouthpartnership.org/heart SURVIVED & PUNISHED - End the Criminalization of Survival: https://survivedandpunished.org/ Policy Advocacy Day: https://www.cpedv.org/policy-event/policy-advocacy-day California Healthy Youth Act: Comprehensive Sexual Health Education: https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fo/r8/chyattltr.asp SWW S19 Artwork by the amazing Sara Stewart: Instagram.com/greaterthanokayCalifornia Partnership to End Domestic Violence: https://www.cpedv.org/ VOCA (Victims of Crime Act) Funding Advocacy: https://www.cpedv.org/voca-funding-advocacy Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): https://www.ic3.gov/ Stalking Prevention, Awareness, Statistics & Resource Center (SPARC): https://www.stalkingawareness.org/ Something Was Wrong: somethingwaswrong.com Something Was Wrong on IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastSWW on TikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Tiffany Reese: tiffanyreese.me Tiffany Reese on IG: instagram.com/lookieboo See 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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and confidential resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes. Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes. Pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself,

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At all, at all. It comes. You don't know me. You don't know me. You don't know anybody until you talk to someone. Nobody knew what was really going on. No one knew about the sexual assault. The only thing people knew is it's hard to hang out with Jen. Jen seems different, even my own mom.

Why is she emotional all the time? Why does she seem so down? But no one knew because there was no way I was gonna tell a soul what was going on, especially having that religious piece to it. I was the bad guy here in my mind. Going back to the mom, once she figured out it was more than just this friendship, she had said, well, you need to move out.

Every month I would essentially get kicked out, but then she would ask for a rent check. So that went on for like a number of months. At this point in time, I had given a lot of my money in rent. They would ask for certain things. I would just hand over money. I felt like I had nothing. Finally, one day I had gone to a religious leader. I had not been active in church, but I went to them and I reported what was happening because I thought that was the safest place I could go. I'd set up an appointment and I went into his office.

He sat me down. His response, I'm not gonna even say that it was good because it was terrible, but there is something that he did say that stuck with me to this day. As I was recounting what was going on, he looked at me and he said, I'm gonna ask you something.

If you had a daughter, Jen, would you want her to be in a relationship like this? It was this light bulb moment of, holy shit, there's no way that I would ever want any of my kids or loved ones to experience something like this. And he goes, why do you think that you deserve this? That was also coupled with him telling me that I would have to go internally, they have their own courts, for lack of a better term, that I would be facing excommunication, basically reprimanded for my part in this. That's when I started questioning spirituality

and that specific religion because I was met with that, whereas for him, everything was just swept under the rug because he was given a calling and within that church, a calling is like an assignment. And he was assigned to work with the young men ages 14 to 16. I remember them specifically saying, he needs a calling and he doesn't need to be reprimanded because that would make him feel further from the church. And you know what's interesting, in the years since then, there's folks who have spoken out against the atrocities within the church and the way that they have protected folks who have either caused harm through IPV or domestic violence and sexual violence and the way that it's just completely been

mishandled. It's a very patriarchal religion. It's made me proud to see some of the folks. I've had the opportunity to work with coalitions who support the survivors in that area now. That experience completely changed my world. I still didn't leave after that. It took a couple of months, but I'll never forget. I just hit rock bottom. My friends had distanced themselves from me because they said it was too hard for them to watch. They only knew what I had shown them. They didn't even know the half of it. I think I was also to blame for creating that distance because I didn't like the fact that

they disapproved so much of him. I had started opening up to some friends, mainly my best friend that I call my sister now. I told her what was going on and I called her one morning. They had left to church, him and the mom, and I said, I have to go. She came over, no question about it. We loaded up my car, we loaded up her car with every possession that I had from that house. She moved me into her home and I dumped everything in her spare bedroom and that's where I lived for two months. I finally told my mom one night, I told her, here's what's been going on. I finally opened up to a friend and this was nine months after the sexual

assault where the dog had bit me and that person had said, you need to report it to law enforcement. Another friend came with me, we went down to the station and we made a report and that was one of the other traumatic experiences of this was sitting in a room with a strange man and I believe there were two of them having to recount these horrors and question whether or not they're believing me. And the questions I was getting were things like, well, why did you invite him over? Painting this story and they're also questioning the validity of it and your role in it. Talk about victim blaming. And I remember feeling like, am I to blame? Because they make you feel like

it's your fault or you had some role in this. That's at least how I felt in that scenario and in that situation. So I make the report. I didn't know what a restraining order was. A friend of mine was working at a state hospital actually. She had told me of a position. I applied for it. I left the state with, I think I had like a hundred bucks to my name. I was in my sister's house decompressing for those two months. I moved back to Utah. I got a therapist. And I'll never forget when she looked at me and she goes, Jennifer, you were the victim of domestic violence. And

when she said those words, I can only imagine the look on my face because I felt confused. And I'm like, how? I'm not married to this man. I'm in college. We don't have children. It didn't even dawn on me then. It does now when I work with students. I always tell them when you hear the words domestic violence, what does that look like? And a lot of them will say, oh, well, it's a woman and her husband comes home for work and he's tired and hungry and he physically assaults her and there's kids that are crying. And we always unpack that and say, look at that, you just painted me a picture. You assigned the victim and survivor an age.

You just put them in a heterosexual relationship. You just determined that this was a married couple. And that is why in the field, we use the words intimate partner violence or gender-based violence, which helps us just recognize everyone because this is not something that only happens in heterosexual relationships.

It's not only something that happens to adults. You do not have to be married to this person. It gives us the ability to have conversations about teen dating violence, about what happens in the LGBTQIA community, the way this shows up for marginalized groups. What does this look like for our young adults? What does safety planning look like? Because that's going to be different depending on what demographic you come from. But again, I would have never had the language to even pair that. And I remember that being so eye opening for me. Eventually, I was called back

to Orange County and investigator had me come back to do a covert call. The way he explained it to me is we were going to call him, he was going to listen in and I needed to try to get a confession because it was nine months after the assault. I completely broke down even before the call. And he's like, I have kids do this. I completely broke down even before the call and he's like, I have kids do this. I remember looking at him and I'm like, how do children do this? They do this with molestation cases and sexual assault cases. I couldn't even fathom how a young person would do this, let alone myself. And here I am in my mid twenties. So we make the call, he answers immediately. He goes, I don't know what you're talking about. I

don't know what you're talking about. Please don't ever call me again. You're crazy. Ends the call. The investigator, when we hung up, looked at me. He goes, that man knew exactly what to say to cover his ass. I can't arrest him, but I guarantee I'm going to take a trip out to his house, which is exactly what they did. I had to drive back up to Utah, but I did get a call from my former boyfriend, and he was just irate at the fact that I had even come

forward and spoken to law enforcement. He's like, they came to my house and he's just going off. And essentially where it landed was if anything were to ever happen in the future, this will be on record and on file for him forever and always. I'm not going to lie, every time I've watched the news, even though this was 15 plus years ago now, I've always just questioned or wondered if I would see his face. Because that church community is a very small community. I would run into people who had known him or crossed paths with him, whether that was when he was doing his missionary service.

There are so many folks who were like, oh, yep, that sounds like him. Someone had said when he was on his mission, there had been word of him going into rooms with 16 and 17 year old girls and paying his mission companion to stay outside because he needed to have private conversation. So this man has a long history of abuses and nothing being done about it. I remember feeling like it was such an injustice, but only 6% of cases ever make it to a courtroom for sexual assault cases and only 2% of those are ever tried and actually charged. And it's also very hard for folks to report it.

It is a traumatic experience in and of itself of reporting a crime like that. That being said, I knew when I went back to school eventually, I was like, I want to do something about this. I'm going to work in the field of domestic violence. I don't know what I'm going to school eventually, I was like, I want to do something about this. I'm going to work in the field of domestic violence. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I am. I eventually re-enrolled in school. That's where I started this healing journey. I got a degree in public health.

And I remember because I went back to school in the city of Utah, I had had worked with a presenter from the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault. I was at a conference and I heard her speak. That's the first time I heard someone who was validating my experience and who was telling my story. I was like, well, that was my first time ever seeing a preventionist in action. For folks who don't know, a preventionist in the field is someone who is a prevention practitioner, and we'll get into prevention and what that is. But that was my first time and I was like, whatever she's doing, this is what the world needs. I had

had her come into my program and my professors would say, this isn't a public health issue. This is a criminal justice issue. I was like, it's not though. And they would say things like, well, we need to focus on heart disease. We need to focus on cancer. How many sidewalks exist in our communities? So I finished school, I had my first job in public health working for the health department. I was working for the ag department part time and also WIC as a lactation consultant part time.

Shout out to WIC. Oh, love WIC, I love WIC. It's such an important program. It's so important and what's interesting, I was lactation consultant, but also this was showing up there, men who were belittling their partners right in front of me. I didn't have the skills. I just knew I'm like, why am I watching what happened to me happen here in this space? It's just something that is so pervasive and it's everywhere. I had done a lot of work. We would do STI

classes, but that was an environment that was abstinence only. So it was almost to like little or no avail. It was pretty atrocious. I had done a lot of prevention education work on nutrition and again, like breastfeeding and things like that. And had still done some collaborative work with prevention educators who were talking about things like gender-based violence. But back then, it wasn't such a norm to talk about it as a prevention strategy or looking at things like risk factors and protective factors. It just wasn't at that point in time.

So fast forward, I end up eventually meeting the father of my two kids. I had been in school. I met him right before I graduated and this is two years post exiting that relationship. In my mind, I really thought I had healed. I had actually gone out with my roommate at the time who had broken up with her boyfriend. I wasn't planning on going and I met him, it was like a salsa club, but for 18 and older.

So I don't have alcohol, nothing like that. I told her, I was like, I'll go with you. So I went and I sat in a chair the whole night and normally I would love to dance or like have fun, but I didn't and I went to the bathroom at one chair the whole night and normally I would love to dance or like have fun, but I didn't. And I went to the bathroom at one point to splash water on my face because I just wanted to go home, but I was there to support my friend. And he was standing in front of the chair I had been sitting in and he's like, well,

do you want to dance? And in my head I said no, but I was like, sure. That night I was walking in my car and he was like, well, let me give you a ride. And by ride it was like across the parking lot. And I was like, okay. He had asked me on a date that following Sunday and it was so innocent. It was to IHOP or something.

And I made my roommate come with me. That was another practice I had. After my first boyfriend, I would always bring a roommate or a friend when I'd go out on dates. I dated off and on in between, but nothing really substantial. I was finishing up college,

but worked at a bank that was across the street from a gym. Their dad loved the gym. He was a competing bodybuilder. That was not my type at all. But we had mutual friends from that gym because they would all come to my bank and sometimes I would go to that gym. I was like, oh, this guy seems safe.

He was a little bit older than me. He had a job, he had a really nice car and that person came in being very nice and very loving. One thing I didn't recognize is that I feel like my emotions were very turned off because I had dated in between and all the experiences were awful. Nothing as bad as what I had gone through with my first boyfriend. But when I met my kid's dad, it just felt matter of fact. I didn't have to have an emotion. I didn't have to invest. And I know that that sounds so horrible now. But at the time, that felt safe. And I thought, well, maybe that's what it's supposed to be.

Sometimes it's when we play the worst case scenario game. For some people, they're like, why are you even thinking about this? And for some people, it's like, this actually helps me. Exactly. I didn't know it at the time, but I was like shut down. There was no vulnerability for me. That was out the window. It was safe. I was at this point 29-ish.

And so in that world too, I was like, well, I know I want kids. And this man's like, I want kids. I wanted the white picket fence. I wanted all the things. For sure. That was the draw. That's what drove that decision making. I wasn't seeing massive red flags right out the gate. And so I thought, okay, well, maybe this is the route, even

though I don't feel like I actually love this person necessarily. And the other thing is my friends loved him. They're like, oh, he seems so fun. And so we would hang out and go do things together. I didn't do anything with my first boyfriend. I was pretty much locked in a room and sleeping with this man at his beck and call or making food or doing all those things. So this to me felt more real. We would go to concerts, we'd go to events, we'd go to Vegas, but there was this thing where I would notice his aggression that would pop up every now and again. One time we were planning a trip to Vegas, he completely lost it, but he did have, what is it, Graves' disease. And so he'd like, well, that masks different mental health

issues and that's why I'm so explosive. That was his reasoning for it. And so I just bought it. It wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. And it was nothing like what I had experienced before. So I didn't really have anything to compare it to. I didn't have this healthy home life or parents that I could look to. I mean, I have TV sitcoms, but that didn't seem realistic. I didn't have anything to gauge, and I felt like, well, I've done enough therapy. I'm really self-sufficient now. Maybe this is just the next step. So I did give it a go.

And I had met his family. He has an incredible family. I still have a really good relationship with his parents and with a niece that's his brother's daughter. They seem like a very wholesome family. And so I thought, this like a very wholesome family. And so I thought this is a very wholesome environment. It just seemed it wasn't as bad as what I went through before. But at that time, I didn't know what like an overt and a covert narcissist were. I had no idea that I was walking right back into more of the same and that it would actually

be worse because now I would find myself in a field that is very focused on domestic violence. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious. And if that's true, then you're in luck. Because once again, Mr. Ballen Podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories is available everywhere you get your podcasts. Each week on the Mr. Bolland podcast, you'll hear new stories about inexplicable encounters, shocking disappearances, true crime cases, and everything in between. Like

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We had dated nine months before we got engaged. At the time I thought, oh, this is so long. But now I'm like, what the hell were you thinking? You did not know this man. And I know now I did not know this man. But even when we got engaged, she's like, do you want to get married? I'm like, okay. It just felt like checking boxes in some weird way with this man.

I met my child's father while I was still living in Utah. He had lived in the Bay Area. So when I told him, I don't want to stay here, I want to move back to California, he was totally on board. We ended up getting engaged and we had planned to be married a year later and we ended up relocating to California

right before we got married. In the course of that, he had been laid off from his job and he had worked in the construction field. And at that time I had taken a leave and I was looking for something, preferably in domestic violence. But again, I had no idea what that would be because I wasn't a therapist.

And at that time, that's all I thought existed in the domestic violence field or someone who works at a shelter, but I had no idea. We'd both been applying and this is 2012, but it still was pretty tricky to try to find a job and I had been going on interviews. I had applied at a local domestic violence program. They had a position for a part-time hotline advocate. I applied for the job thinking there's no way I'm going to get this. A good friend of mine who I knew in high school, we had reconnected when I moved back and she had told me like, do you want to meet my dad's new girlfriend? And

the dad's new girlfriend was a neighbor of my mom's. I meet the dad's girlfriend, she and I become good friends. But I realized the agency that I had applied for, she had worked there. I kept checking my email, I never got an email back. And I was talking to my mom and I'm like, do you think I should call that woman's name was Karen. I was like, do you think I should call her? I don't really know her that well. You know, I know her husband and I know his daughter and they're like, yeah, give her a call.

So I call her and she goes, Jen, let me go check. Let me run by HR's office. And she comes back and tells me, check your junk folder because they did write you back to come in for an interview, but you missed it. So I opened my junk folder and sure enough, there is an email from that organization inviting me in for an interview. It's so weird how everything that lined up, it was pretty serendipitous to now. I don't know, the universe had my back in that moment. I get the job and I start as an advocate and I'm answering these hotline calls. In my brain, I think I am completely

healed from this experience that I had. I didn't even realize what that healing journey was going to look like or the path. I started off as this baby advocate in the field and in the state of California, they do require you to be certified as a domestic violence counselor. So shortly after getting my job there, I had taken our 40-hour training. And that's when I saw the person at that time was the only prevention education specialist at the organization. They were the one facilitating and teaching. They were saying the things that I had experienced.

There were survivors who were telling their stories. They're naming the different types of violence. I still thought violence meant this person hit me. How many times do we hear, but they never hit me. Now I'm learning about emotional abuse and verbal abuse and financial abuse and psychological abuse. Even where I'm at today, I'm still learning about these things. Someone told me recently, think about financial abuse this way. There might be folks who like consent to not working or being a stay at home mom, but it might teeter into that realm of financial abuse if you can't leave. So ask yourself, can I leave

and still be sustained? Even if it's my choice not to be employed, would I still have the capacity or the permission, I guess, to exit this relationship and still be sustained in that way? These are things I'm still learning, but in that training, light bulbs going off where I'm learning these things and connecting all the dots for me, I never felt so validated as I did when I was in that training. And I just knew whatever that woman's doing, I want to do it. That prevention person who I was so enamored by the work that they were doing because they were in the community, they were in high schools. They were teaching young people about teen dating violence. And I was just like, how were you having these conversations with young people? How could my life have been different? Had someone in high school told me what a healthy and an unhealthy relationship

was? It was not anything that was ever talked about. The organization I had worked for had actually been around since the early 90s, but I had no idea that these things existed. I had been in that role about nine-ish months and I had actually just found out that I was pregnant with our first child. Things with my partner, I noticed the aggression here and there, but they weren't as bad yet. One night there's a volunteer event. My boss says, hey, they need more staff to be there. Can you go?

I was so tired. I was pregnant. I did not want to go, but I decided to go. And it was my first time interacting with some of our staff since I was at one location and there were multiple offices and resale stores at that time. This event was at one of their resale stores and that preventionist who had led that training, I run into her and she's like, hey, it's so good to see you. They're gonna be hiring a part-time preventionist to come help me, cause I'm the only one in this position for our organization, traveling to universities,

doing a take back the night event, providing prevention education in a classroom. And I looked at her and I said, I'm a health educator. At that time, I had just gotten my CHES certification, which is a certified health education specialist, which basically means you know how to develop prevention programs. You know how to look at what the sociological model is, which is primary prevention or essentially like teaching in schools. So I had just done that and I was like, that's where I want to be. I told her, I was like, I want that job.

She goes, well, I need someone bilingual. I am bilingual English-Spanish. And so I interviewed for that role. I was six or seven months pregnant. I didn't know if I'd get it. And I remember after my first interview, I pulled them aside. I said, I know I'm pregnant. I am going to have this baby and I'm going to come right back. I will stay here. I'm not leaving. And they gave me the job. And that was how I got into the field of prevention work. I started off as a prevention education specialist. I had no idea what that is. The word we like to use now is prevention work. I started off as a prevention education specialist. I had no idea what that is.

The word we like to use now is preventionist. I was tasked with going to high schools and teaching young people the things I so desperately wish had been taught to me. Our program was called the HEART program, which stands for Healthy Emotions and Attitudes in Relationships Today. We're with young people, we're talking about red flags,

we're talking about the different types of violence, the cycle of violence, we're giving them resources and that program is still doing phenomenal today. We set up school clubs all over the county doing such incredible work and I was eating it up. I didn't even feel like I had a job, I was just living. I had my son, I went back to work, my hours have increased, I started doing more work, I started meeting with legislators here and there, we would call those influencer meetings, I went back to work. My hours have increased. I started doing more work. I started meeting with legislators here and there. We would call those influencer meetings. I got involved with our state coalition and they hold what's called Policy Advocacy Day. So I'd go up to that and you're talking to legislators about trying to get teen dating violence education

mandated in schools in California. I was eating it up. But at home, after I had my first son, things started to escalate with my husband. Those small bursts of anger started to become far more frequent. It was just nonstop. So at home, I was then on the receiving end of a lot of emotional and verbal abuse. It was a lot of that to begin with. Things like, after I had my son, you're ugly, you're fat, you're disgusting, you make me

want to throw up. We were not intimate with each other. I discovered later that he was watching pornography pretty heavily. What he would do is he'd go into these explosive phases, usually verbally assault me at that time, then go to the bank and take out hundreds of dollars and take off for the night.

I would confront him about the money that was gone and he would shove me, push me, hit me. Later on I found out he was blowing it at strip clubs and who knows what else he was doing. It started ramping up and that was just the norm and I again was like this is supposed to be a normal relationship and here I am in the midst of my fields. For advocates and for a lot of organizations there is a requirement that folks need to be out of their abusive relationship like one to two years and every organization has different parameters. Something that is really important to me is how do we create space for our survivorship and our advocacy because those two things do and can coexist. And just

because I'm in the field and I am an advocate does not mean that I stop becoming a human. Being a human is a very complex and messy experience. A lot of our experiences exist on a spectrum to some degree. At that point in time, I was at law enforcement briefings training police on how to respond to domestic violence calls. I went to their morning briefing, I would come back at night. I went on ride alongs with them. We would train judges. I was training junior DAs. I was working with the public defender's office. I was everywhere in this county training so many folks with an incredible team of preventionists

and who are dear friends and colleagues and they didn't even know what was happening. So here I am working in this job that I love and doing this work I never thought that I would do and meeting people I never thought that I would meet. And I am being abused at home. So now who am I going to tell? Because I felt like the biggest fraud. My position continued to grow. I eventually became the prevention education manager. We went from a team of one and a half to I I had four full-time staff, and then we brought in interns. That's how much work we were doing. It was incredible, Tiffany.

We ran a project with the American Public Health Association and we got our heart program documentary into their Film Fest. We were able to work with so many incredible legislators. We were able to develop programming for incarcerated individuals. We took prevention from this one-off education piece, and then we started looking at things like real prevention, which is social justice and equity and what does that mean? And we were developing programming to help us work with folks who are traditionally marginalized

because violence doesn't just happen. If you look at the lifespan, and there's some great work that's been done on domestic violence across the lifespan, for a lot of us, it is something that does happen at home. And there's a lot of risk factors or things that may put someone more at risk to experience these things. But there's also ways to enhance protective factors and we can do that at the community level.

We can do that by have systems that properly respond, right? We know law enforcement is not always the safest response, but how do we find alternative solutions? And what do we do when there is a proper response by law enforcement? What do we do when they are enforcing a restraining order in the correct way? There's a great organization also called Survived and Punished, which works with victim survivors who have been convicted of a crime, but it's something that came as a result of the abuses that they experienced. For example, there's a case of a woman who was trying to leave and as she was planning, she left her home for the day to get a few more documents. Her partner was home watching

their child, found the bag that was packed and found her go bag and bus tickets and murdered their son. Not only was he charged, but she was also charged and that's what you would call like a failure to protect charge. So we were doing so much incredible work, building collaborations. And it was such an incredible time. And we were facilitating that state certification training three times a year. I was doing a lot of media. I was a guest expert on the TV show, The Doctors. I had done a show for Vivica Fox as this expert in domestic violence and domestic violence prevention. All the while, I was being abused at home. The violence with my husband escalated. He did become physically abusive. And I remember he would either verbally assault me, physically assault me before

I'd have to like go on stage and talk about this stuff. I did go back to school while I was in my marriage, while I was managing that prevention department when I was pregnant with my second son. I was in graduate school at Boston University. I was getting an MSW and that entire program is rooted in social justice work. I was working full time, pregnant with my son, experiencing domestic violence at home,

and then doing 16 hours of clinical practice outside of that to meet the demands of my program that I was in. I remember one time, it was the first day of the 40 hour training and he had hit me and pushed me so hard that I could not turn my neck. I called that colleague, Karen, the one who actually is the one who got me into the field.

And I told her what had happened and she's the only person that I told. She never told a soul. She just listened to me. I had asked her, is there any way you can please go start this training for me? She couldn't, she had something else going on, so I went down there and I just remember trying so hard to keep it together. So I was living this dual existence.

We had a second son. Shortly after, there was a night that I was holding my son. He was a brand new baby infant. I had had with my birth an episiotomy and he would say things like, I don't care if you're hurt. I don't care if you're injured. You have to do this. And he took off. I learned to cope and try as best I could to go to sleep. And that night, that's what I did with my son. Their dad came back, woke me up, woke the baby up. It's like two or three in the morning. I had to get up to work the next day and I said, listen, I don't care what you're doing. Can you please watch him and I need to sleep. And he decided to punch me in the jaw while I was holding my child. I looked at my sons and I remember thinking, I am not going to

be responsible for them doing this to their partners in the future because I stayed and I told them that this was okay. That was that light bulb moment in that instance. I did notify law enforcement, it was full police but these were the exact same police that I had trained and I am now looking them in the eye in my living room. It was like my two worlds had collided. And my first thought was I'm going to lose my job but at that point I didn't care because it wasn't about me anymore. I knew the second I made that call, it's game over. I'm going to need to do something.

I got a call from a detective who I was just in their office setting up again programming, working with their own advocacy internally. And that detective gave me a call and was like, hey, Jen, it's me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't even know what to do. Like what was real anymore. Their dad ended up taking off. He fled from the police. He drained the bank account completely down to nothing.

He left the state and went back to where his parents were living in Utah. I went into work. I sat down with my boss and I told her everything. Within minutes, they had me meeting with our executive director. I was just like, listen, you can fire me. It's okay. And she looked at me and she goes, Jennifer, there are so many of us who are survivors. We have board members who are survivors. There are many folks who are survivors. We got you.

I had been afraid for so long that I could not tell anyone what was going on. So yeah, I did not lose my job. I am so thankful for the folks who stepped in. I thought these people are going to judge me. I'm going to be a fraud. I was not met with that. I had so much support. I mean, these people are my close people and like my tribe to this day, including Karen. I had to go through the entire restraining order process. Our legal director had to ask our legal advocates to leave the courtroom so that they could call my case. I would be in the courtroom.

I'd be seeing the legal advocates that I worked with day in and day out. These are legal advocates I had trained in the field and certified in the field. So it was a wild ride during that time. Even then navigating these systems was not easy as someone who has internal knowledge and insight. I was still navigating the court system, dealing with all of his stuff.

He had to have supervised visits, so I'm having to go down and register. And it was just such a mess and it was so overwhelming. I can't even imagine for our victim survivors who have no idea, who are making that call to that hotline, right, for the very first time? Because while I was in the field, I felt like I had come so far from my experience with my first boyfriend. What if your partner developed 21 new identities? Or you discovered that your friend who helped you through the darkest times

was actually a conniving con artist? Or what if you began seeing demons everywhere, inhabiting people around you, including your son? What would you do? I'm Whit Misseldine, the creator of This Is Actually Happening, a podcast that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. In our newest season, you'll hear even more intimate first-person accounts of how regular people have overcome remarkable circumstances, like the man who went to jail for 17 years for accidentally shooting the person who tried to save his life, to a close friend of the infamous scam artist, Amanda Riley.

These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you, this is actually happening. Follow This Is Actually Happening on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can listen to This Is Actually Happening ad-free on Wondry Plus. I stayed in the field and I stayed in the work. I really love the work that I got to do. My two big loves are prevention and policy. And I loved all the opportunities I had to do policy advocacy with our statewide domestic violence coalition. And I had been going up there since I first came back from maternity leave with my oldest

son. There was an opportunity to join their board of directors in 2020, which I did. I really wanted to bring in that lens and that perspective of prevention. This was during the summer of 2020 when we started talking more deeply about social justice and how does this connect to gender-based violence and intimate partner violence?

Why does racial equity matter? And why do systemic responses matter? And why does restorative justice practice matter? We were having so many critical conversations at this time, but I did find myself in my role almost burned out. Like I was just exhausted as much as I loved it. So I did take a break and I went to do some other work, but I stayed on the board. Shortly after that, they had an opportunity for a director role.

So I am the senior director of prevention for our statewide domestic violence coalition. In my role, what we do is we provide technical assistance and training across the state to all preventionists in California. Also, we do that for technical assistance and training for our shelter-based programs, oversight of 40-hour training. And honestly, every day, I feel like it is such an honor and a privilege to be here. Can you explain what exactly the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence is? Absolutely. I love that question because I'm always happy to talk about the work that we're doing at the coalition. We are the state domestic violence coalition, meaning we are recognized as the coalition for California. We are essentially a technical assistance and training provider

for all of our domestic violence programs and intersecting agencies across the state. What that means is we have member organizations, which are typically comprised of domestic violence. Some are shelters, some are non-shelter based or dual sexual assault and domestic violence organizations. We provide technical assistance and training. So if an org is wanting to know what our best practices with shelters, we hold webinars that talk about how do you set up a DEI plan. We create a lot of culturally specific spaces. Then another piece of our work is our prevention work where we are creating a lot of training. So we have what's called our building change together training. It's our prevention core competencies, three-day training, domestic violence, sexual assault, preventionists can come together and learn about root causes. So that is where we're looking at

things like race, equity, social justice, systemic responses. They can get trained and bring this information back to the organization or within their own communities. We have peer learning circles where we talk about topics together and collectively as peers. We have webinars, we have workshops. We take survivor calls even at the coalition. So our capacity building teams take survivor calls and we connect them with resources across the state.

Also at the partnership, policy is a strong priority. So some of the work that we do is policy advocacy. So when we talk about legislation, it's harder sometimes to do that at the local level alone. So a lot of the work that we do is centered around setting strong policies. So in support of bills, policy advocacy, we have a policy advocacy day. Anyone can join the partnership, by the way. You don't have to be an organization. You can join it as a survivor or as an individual member. You can join us on our Policy Advocacy Day when we are talking to legislators about the bills and the priority areas for that

year. I know we'll probably talk about VOCA, which is a strong priority issue for this year. It's the Victims of Crime Act money. We look collaboratively at the national level with our national partners on different issue areas, but there's a lot of cross sharing of information and how we can best support the folks who live in our state. And for California, you know, there's this perception that it's this vastly, holistically that we're all super progressive and that's not the case. So a lot of it is how do we meet the needs of our organizations based on where they may be and based on what those geographic regions look like because it's going to be very different when we're looking at a rural community versus urban and so forth. I am surrounded by the most

amazing and incredible human beings on the planet because they work day in and day out to ensure that our victims and our survivors are at the center of everything that we do. They work day in and day out to support the advocates that we have across the state and our survivors and folks who are in alignment with the movement. This is not only when we talk about intimate partner violence. A lot of the conversations that come up for us are things like economic justice, housing insecurity, food insecurity, and how all of these things can be risk factors for domestic violence. We're talking a lot about health equity work and what is health equity that encompasses that economic justice piece, but also things like reproductive justice, paid family leave rights. It's so vast and it's so broad. I am also a part-time lecturer.

I work for Cal State University and I teach their intimate partner violence class. When my students come in, one of the first things I tell them is, you think you're here to learn just this one thing, but you're gonna walk out of this class at the end of the semester and be like, wow, I had no idea. I thought this issue was just this one thing that happens between intimate partners

or within a family dynamic. And it's really not. What that tells us though is the way to prevent it is so much more vast and wide. If you are being stalked, you are still the victim of domestic violence. Say they've never made contact with you ever, it does not matter. That is still emotional abuse. That is still psychological abuse. It's just like breaking objects. We still consider that physical abuse. It's a threat of harm, but you're also breaking physical property. And another thing too is infidelity, we would also consider to be a form of domestic violence.

It is manipulation, it is emotional abuse. It's not something that is consensual to the other party. I think one of the biggest takeaways, even for me, is that sometimes when we think about victimization, when we hold the bias about what domestic violence is, we hold the bias around who could actually be a victim of this. And the answer is anyone. I think one of the other things that we're still unpacking and we're still figuring out how to address are our societal and social norms that also keep this going. That perception that men can't be victims of this.

Our statistics say one in four women are victims of domestic violence. And what is it like one in seven men domestic violence, but if you're including other forms of violence, that number jumps at 10, one in four. I mean, if you just think about your own social circle and the people that you know and love, how many of us know someone who has been victimized? It's really hard for anyone to say,

I know absolutely no one. What exists within our society is the shame and the stigma and the guilt. For men, the one emotion that is acceptable is anger. And if we can do more to dismantle toxic masculinity and talk about our emotions, one of the things that stuck with me in grad school is the opposite of addiction not being sobriety,

but the opposite of addiction is connection and I wholeheartedly believe that because as I said earlier trauma serves to disconnect us. It does. The opposite of trauma is choice. The way I conceptualize that is I think about breathing in my day-to-day when I'm driving or sitting like I'm not thinking about oxygen. I just know it's readily available and as a human I expect that I can breathe. I don't think about it. But what would happen if I were drowning? It would turn into survival. So that choice for me to be able to breathe is gone. And I feel like systemically, we can really start to address this if we can just name it and we can give permission to feel and we can create spaces where people can reconnect and where they can heal,

especially for our male identified individuals. And especially when we're looking at the LGBTQIA community, the rates of victimization for trans women is substantially higher. And also the homicides of trans women, getting involved, using your voice, sharing your story, and let's do what we can collectively to reduce and remove that shame and that stigma. Because no matter what gender you may identify with, it doesn't mean that you're less deserving of love or acceptance.

I feel like that's also another huge contributing factor. At that community level is shifting some of these social norms. And what that takes is us disrupting it. So in conversations, interject, allow someone to cry, give them a hug. The work that we do now, everything is about centering survivors. I do see it as such a responsibility to have this platform and to be able to continue to provide education. And if it just helps one person know that they can call a hotline or they can safety plan or there is a way out and that on the other side of it they can thrive. This work, it was built by survivors and survivor voices. Also, we know community-based work

is where it is at making sure that we are centering the voices of those who are most marginalized, going to them to talk about what do solutions look like. The communities and the individual who has been impacted is the holder of the answer of how it is going to be prevented. Sometimes it takes someone sharing a story for you to be like, shit, that's me too. These unbalanced and unhealthy relationships where there is coercive control, a lot of these things have impacted us for generations within our family dynamics. But when we're looking at domestic violence across the lifespan, it's looking at a four-year-old

who is showing up with disruptive behaviors, let's say, or maybe they're having a hard time hanging out in school. So instead of coming to them and saying, what is going on with you? How can we support you? Historically, we've punished folks. Or looking at a teen who might be choosing a violent peer group.

How long did it take us to ask the reason why? We know that addressing domestic violence, sexual violence, gender-based violence at all levels, whether that's the individual, societal, or policy level stuff, it's going to take us working at all levels and really looking at people and looking at impact and building in systems and responses that meet the needs of us as individuals and meet the needs of our own trauma. It's that paradigm shift of instead of when we look at people who are acting out and we're like, what happened to you as opposed to like, what is it that you're doing?

It's just about us really being trauma-informed. We're doing that with our prevention work. I have the most incredible team that I get the chance to work with who are having these critical conversations with our communities where we're looking at how do we center survivors? How do we go to them for those answers? Like Women's Liberation, we look at those movements, which were great, but they were also very white centered. And that means that they heavily relied on systems that were also very white centered. So that being said, in my capacity now, there are

a lot of failures at all of the different levels, but we get to name it. We get to address it. We have incredible trainings where we try to build up the efficacy and the aptitude of our preventionists in the field because we want them to be able to say these things. But also on the other side of that, we're looking at legislation and policy because legislation and policy is how we open the door to make sure that we are having these conversations. I think about the California Healthy Youth Act. We've been trying to get teen dating

violence education mandated in schools. Well, it wasn't until the California Healthy Youth Act, that came on the scene in around 2016, which was comprehensive sex ed for our youth saying that you need to be inclusive of the gender spectrum and LGBTQIA communities. You just need to make sure in your sex education, you are being inclusive and that teens are not having to go online to find information. They're not having to go to Pornhub. A big piece of it was HIV and STI prevention. That piece of legislation came about in like I said, 2016 and 2018, we were able to add on the healthy relationships piece. So now the law, as it is in EdCode, you have to teach healthy relationships to youth once in middle school and once in high school, along with comprehensive sex ed and human

trafficking. And my kids benefited from that work directly, which we discovered in our pre-interview. I remember my kids coming home and telling me about some of the stuff they were learning about at school and how it related to my work. I was very impressed. I think it's so important. The work you do is endlessly impactful. Tiffany, that makes my heart so happy to hear because this is collective voices of advocates. I am just one person. I really feel like prevention is synonymous with healing because it's fostering

connection and a lot of what trauma does is it disconnects us from whether that's ourself or the community itself. As I was describing in my story, I just felt like I didn't even know who I was anymore, and that's what trauma does. I think the biggest thing for me, Tiffany, is I never in a million years thought that I would be here. And what I would want victims and survivors to know is that there is a place for you here.

If you have loved ones, friends, family in your life who have shared anything like this with you, the big piece of advice is I just tell folks when they ask me like, what can I do to support a friend is to believe them, just believe them. And as far as the work just show up, we're all human. None of us know 100% what we're doing, but it's just about doing it because that's how change happens and that's how change gets made. What can our community, the Something Was Wrong community, do to support this work? How can we show up? What are the different avenues in which we can do that and become more a part of the

solution? There are so many ways to take action. I always appreciate that question, Tiffany. It's just that it's showing up. If you want to support the coalition, you're always welcome to visit our website, which is cpedv.org. And you'll see a lot of calls to action. One of them right now, we are really focused on VOCA, which is the Victims of Crime Act. California is facing an almost $200 million shortfall. And what

that means is critical services and resources for our victim survivors are going to be severely underfunded. Some are going to be completely cut altogether. And that is a huge fight that we are fighting right now. So as much mobilization and activation and support that we can get, the better. There is a piece of legislation, which is AB 1956. And that is something that we are in support of here in the state of California, which would mean the state of California can step in and provide a backfill to those funds. But that's not a California only issue. This is something that is happening nationwide. So you're going to hear about it if you're

following any of the VOCA, which is what we call it for short. It's something that a lot of states are going to be talking about and the biggest piece of support that we need this year. On that, there is going to be a rally in Los Angeles. That's on April 5th from 12 to 2 at City Hall, and they're going to do another one in the Bay Area. You can always follow us on social media. We're constantly posting what's going on. We have so many other opportunities. Our statewide domestic violence conference is going to be this year in June, and that's going to be a virtual conference. And we hope to go back to being in person the following year.

But our conference this year where you get to come hear some amazing keynotes and be in community with so many advocates, that's going to be June 26th and 27th of this year. And that registration is open online. We have different trainings. We have our Policy Advocacy Day, which is going to be at the very end of April, I think 30th and May 1st. We just had our rally for teen dating violence. February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month. And we have a rally at the Capitol where we work with an amazing group of teens who come forward and urge our legislators to continue to fund prevention because it is so essential,

as well as our intervention services. That is done every February. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. So if you're not involved at the state level, please connect with your local programs because I guarantee there's going to be a lot of opportunity to get involved, to volunteer. And just to get started in the work, there's something that every single one of us can do to contribute to the prevention of domestic violence and gender-based violence so that

our communities and our children especially have access to healing. Show up, familiarize yourself with the resources, get involved at that local level. Please feel free to ever connect with us. We're happy to connect you with local programs. You can always find more information on how you can get involved in like the activism pieces. It's just about doing it. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see the ways that our community get involved and how we can support you as well. Amy, who was on season 19, she mentioned the work that she's doing with Colorado on behalf of VACA funding and its importance as a stalking victim.

Since we are speaking about stalking specifically this season, I'm curious to know how stalking survivors specifically could be impacted by these cuts potentially? What kind of services does VOCA fund that directly impacts stalking victims? That's a great question, Tiffany. And I think it's so important. And that's actually how I got in touch with you because I was listening to that as I was driving to teach my class. And I'm like, oh my gosh, VOCA, I need to reach out to Tiffany.

And I was really astounded when you replied to me because for our stalking victims, if someone is being stalked by their aggressor, the chances of them experiencing something far more horrific drastically jump just as if there's the presence of a gun that's present in the home where there is domestic violence, the chances of homicide substantially leap. And a lot of times when we think about domestic violence and homicide, for example, we think about domestic violence being way over here on one end of the spectrum and death or homicide being on the far other end. And it's not true. They are side by side. So when someone is experiencing stalking or unwanted pursuit,

it tells us that that relationship is extremely dangerous. The remedies typically for stalking would be a restraining order, whether that's when you first get in touch with law enforcement, you can get what's called an emergency protective order or a temporary restraining order, which is given by the court. You'd have to go to court but potentially get a permanent restraining order against someone if you are the victim of stalking. Our legal advocates in the field are the ones who support with those services day in and day out for our victims and survivors of domestic violence and stalking. Legal advocates are usually the ones getting restraining orders for our stalking victims. That money has already been reduced and cut. So the number of grant awards that have been given out has been drastically reduced, but also the award amount. So we have programs now that are

not funded for legal advocacy that previously were. Our VOCA money, it doesn't just fund domestic violence. VOCA funds sexual assault, rape crisis centers, domestic violence. This is on all levels. So we're talking about shelters. It also funds elder abuse, it funds child abuse, and it funds human trafficking. And these are all the services that are provided and I'd want to name that are culturally specific organizations. So those are the organizations that represent the communities that they serve are the ones who are going to be taking one of the biggest hits on these funds. Throughout this advocacy for VOCA, I think one of the things I've said is you're diminishing funds, you're diminishing staff, you're diminishing advocates, but the rates of victimization are going nowhere. All that's going to do

is overload the system, especially post COVID. It's really hard when we think about our advocates and our self-care that we even need to be able to sustain us in the work. They're already overworked, they're already feeling underpaid, and now you're going to overload them even more and you're going to have folks that are now going to have to be turned away. I mean, this is one of the most detrimental things. Maybe you're saving money now, but what happens down the line? Because we know that experiencing violence in the home is a huge risk factor for experiencing poor coping or struggling with substance use issues or becoming unhoused, all the other

things that are going to need resources and funding. As we know, and as we see in the work daily, the trajectory after being victimized is much different in the lifespan of that person. If you're looking at the high level financial cost, it doesn't even make sense from a cost perspective when you look at the care and the systems and the requirements post-crime. I think we cannot speak enough about this and I'm so, so incredibly thankful that you are willing to come and educate us all. We will certainly link to your website.

We will link to the VACA specific information as well as the petition where folks can go contact our legislators and help spread awareness. I cannot thank you enough for being willing and for reaching out. I'm so glad that we connected. Every time I listen to you, I'm just like, yes, please keep talking because I'm learning so much. It's endlessly valuable to me, the work that you're doing, you being willing to come to the podcast, share your own experience, be so vulnerable and educate us all as well.

It's incredible what you've overcome. I am again, endlessly thankful to you for your time and your energy and your bravery. The work that you do on a daily basis, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are an inspiration. You're making real and direct change in people's lives. That's incredible. I think that's more than anybody could really hope for to leave a legacy like that on this earth.

Oh, thank you, Tiffany. I really want to thank you again for this opportunity. And the call to action, there's just so much work to be done. It is such an honor to be able to name and help support and get those voices out there. Next time on Something Was Wrong. My stalker, he was not getting treatment and he was stalking multiple people including Ivanka Trump. He had tried to kill himself in her store and he had been arrested multiple times for stalking her and he jumped bail. He became fixated on me and he came to my gallery.

My stalker was also stalking at that point Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow. When he came to kidnap me, that's who grabbed him and we held them and turned him into LAPD. So I caught my own stalker. I had to do that. I didn't have a choice. It's crazy. 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 Reese. 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 Gladrags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much. Listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the app today.

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