Something Was Wrong - S5 E2: Exposed Our Sin | Julia

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

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Hey, prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. I'm Candace DeLong and on my new podcast, Killer Psychy Daily, I share a quick 10 minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the cold-butter killers you read about in the news. Listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast Killer Psychy Daily in the Amazon Music exclusive podcast killer psyche daily in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today! Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences. Many episodes discuss topics that

can be triggering, such as emotional and physical abuse, suicide and murder. Please take caution when listening. I am not a therapist or a doctor. Opinions expressed by guests of the show do not necessarily represent the views of this podcast. If you or someone you know is being abused, please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. If you or someone you love is experiencing a suicidal crisis or thoughts of suicide,

please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Thank you. It felt so good last week to be sort of quote back in the saddle, and their response from all of you on the season and the series so far has been amazing. Thank you so much. I know myself and Julia both really appreciate it and I'm very excited to cover such an assortment of survivor stories this season and I'm happy to hear that a lot of people are loving the format. The last thing I want to say before we jump into the episode is thank you so much to Julia

again for taking part in the series and sharing her story with all of us. She is incredibly brave and it is no small thing for her to come forward and share this knowing that there is going to be backlash within her circle and her life for being honest and brave about her experience. It's women like her who inspire me to share more of myself. So thank you, Julia. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is something was wrong. You think you know me, you don't know me, you know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me well You think of me, you don't know me well Better run, better run, better run

Better run, better run, better run I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Further into my dating relationship prior to getting married, I was approached by Lance during a show at the venue one night and Lance pulled me aside and it was just us and he goes, hey, he's like, God told me that you and me are my now husband or having sex outside of marriage and he confirmed it to me, my husband and I looked at him and I said, no, we're not. And no, he didn't. And he got extremely offended. And I was like, well, I know what I know. And I walked, turned around and walked away on his heel. And I was just horrified. But that I don't understand still why that

wasn't a huge red flag to me. And why I wasn't like, I'm never talking to this bucker again. Because red flag to me and why I wasn't like, I'm never talking to this bucker again. Because what adult man approaches a... probably, I think I was probably 19-year-old at that time and says something like that. Because first off, it's not any of his business whether he's a pastor or not. And second, if you think it's a problem, go talk to my husband, not my husband, but my boyfriend about it. Don't come talk to me about it. Leading from that, in 2008, I got pregnant with my oldest child outside of marriage. And I was attending ministry school still at the time. So we kept it a secret for six months because we were afraid of what was going to happen.

And at that point, I was full time working in the nursery and I was working in children's church underneath the youth pastor. I was actually like training to become the youth pastor or not the youth pastor, the children's pastor. And once we told them, we were pulled into the Lances Dad's Once we told them we were pulled into the Lances Dad's office, Ben, the senior pastor of the church, pulled us into his office and basically gave us a huge shame talk and said, how could you do that to those kids and set that horrible

example and you should be ashamed of yourselves and everybody in the youth group knows. And now they have to look at that and see what sinful, horrible people you are and what mistakes you've made and all this stuff and give us like this rain down of guilt and tried to pressure us and get to getting married. We decided on our own to get married because we were planning on doing so anyway, this is just kind of speeding up the process, but we had made that decision

and then on a Sunday morning, Lance and Ben pulled us up in front of the entire church congregation and quote unquote, it exposed our sin by telling the entire church about the fact that I was pregnant outside of marriage and that they were going to love us through it and they were going to pray for us and support us in any way that they could regardless of our mistakes. Did you know about this ahead of time?

No, we were not told ahead of time that this was going to happen. What was that experience? What did you were you crying? What did you feel? Were you horrible? I honestly, I remember looking down at my feet the entire time and not looking up until I left and I walked out into the parking lot to get some air afterwards and had one of the fellow youth leaders parents who was a part of the church come up to me and talk to me about, you know, how God was going to bless me and my mistake, quote unquote, calling my child a mistake. Were his parents there? My in-laws did not attend this church anymore because they didn't agree with Lance ironically, but they weren't there during that.

And I honestly, I don't recall if we told them about it after it happened. I don't think my parents knew about it until I told them about it recently. Was that a typical thing at the church for this to happen? Apparently during this time it was, many years later, when I was on staff and Lance was the head pastor, he made a joke about, oh, remember when we used to pull people up and it's supposed to send during church services during a staff meeting and then looked at looked at me and he immediately realized what he said, and that was the only time that I've ever gotten an apology from him for anything. Wow. Yeah.

How did you feel? Horrified. I, not only am a very anxious person anyway, but I'm also a people pleaser. And it was horrifying to have to go through that in front of all these people. Like, I already know what I did. And I already know that it's a sin, quote unquote. And I know like that makes me technically a bad leader and all that stuff. But to do that to somebody, it just doesn't, it doesn't make sense to me. I would never pull my child up in front of a group of people and be like, hey, look at my kid just did. It's a horrible, horrible embarrassment, like super cool, but we're

gonna love him anyway. The shame, the shame. I mean, that's, I'm so sorry, that's horrifying. That's all right. Did you guys continue to stay at the church after that and did you get married at the church like were you allowed to get married at the church still? What was that process like? Prior to us getting married, I was, I was made to step down from all of my roles in the church. My husband was not.

He did, I believe he did have to step back from youth leadership for a little bit. We were allowed to get married at the venue, but we were only allowed to have 100 people, and it had to be this one specific day that they had available. And so that's what we ended up doing. Did Lance attend and did Pastor Ben attend? Yeah, yeah, both of them did, and both of them had a part in our ceremony. So regrets. Well, when you know better, you do better, right? Exactly. Yeah. So after you got married and you're

beautiful, baby, came into the world. Did you continue attending the church and working for the church then? Yeah, we did. My husband worked there full time. He was, I believe at that point, he was still doing like custodial work. So he was in charge of cleaning up after shows at the venue and locking up that building. He was in charge of setting up and tearing down for church services. So he was doing that. I was still not working up until my daughter was five months old, I believe. And then I finally went back to work and started working the nursery. And I believe that's also when I started working in the church office. And we kept going to that church. I don't know what we were thinking, but we kept going.

When did some of the financial challenges of the church begin? So in 2010, this is about two years after my daughter was born. I was working in the office full time at this point and the church had started to experience some financial issues. They, I'm not exactly sure how it started, but I know that it developed rather quickly and we started running out the building to

another church on Sundays so now myself and a lot of other people were working twice as long because we had to supervise like the nursery and all that kind of stuff for legal reasons and at the same point like the building was kind of falling apart we had black mold in the office and all kinds of things but we were sort of just just keep making do with all of that while they were trying to get things figured out. So we kept running the venue, we kept doing church services and all this stuff and then we found out that the property was being foreclosed on. And so because of that, they Lance and Ben had this great idea and

they said, okay, well, we're going to change all of our church's names, the church's name on everything into a new name. We're going to get a new phone number. We're going to completely be a new establishment and we're going to move properties since we're losing this one and we're going to build a new building in a city fairly close to here. So basically replicate the exact existence of the church just under another name. Exactly. And while doing that because the property was being foreclosed on, we should have lost all of the property that existed there, whether it was the chairs and the tables,

everything, everything, everything, sound equipment, all of that stuff, but they made it seem like the new church had purchased that stuff from the old church, but we actually just moved all of it to the new building. I was just talking to my husband yesterday and I said, first of all, anybody who says they need to move their money is a sociopath, you know, any guy who's like, yeah, let me just move some money is a sociopath. You know, any guy who's like, yeah, let me just move some money around. My father love to say move the money around or change business names.

That kind of stuff is so shady and it's illegal. And it's illegal. And especially when you're claiming you're a nonprofit and that's what's also fascinating to me about the venue when I think about how many hundreds of thousands of dollars I imagine that they made over the span of that venue being open. They weren't paying any taxes because it was all underneath the nonprofit and they weren't paying any employees. So where was all that? Where did all that money go? Well, and during this whole entire process of the property moving and them for closing on the old building and opening the new building, we weren't even getting paid regularly. We were supposed to be getting paid, I think every two

weeks, and we would go three, four weeks without getting a paycheck. Meanwhile, Lance and Ben are getting their paychecks and their cars are still good and they've got, I mean, brand new vehicles, really nice homes and the rest of us can't even buy groceries. This church changed names, and now it's church 2.0. Right. Under this new name in a new city nearby, and you're still continuing to work. I believe at this time in the office. Correct.

And your husband was still working for the church when you guys moved over to the new facility. Right. In the new facility, he was still there for, I believe it was about six months because he, at this point, had started taking on all of the IT roles, like he would hook up their internet, do all the website, crap, all of that stuff.

But once we started not getting paid and when we were not able to pay our rent to people who went to the church, whose houses we were renting, he was just over it. So he finally quit and went looking for a new job. When I think about how many ties you had to the church at this time in your life, it's kind of overwhelming because you're living in a house that's owned by somebody in the church. You're attending the church and basically living there. Your family is super invested and they control both of your incomes. Did that feel like a heavy burden? That tie or did it feel like comforting? Like this is my place and this is why I'm tied to all of these people is

because like this is my these are my people. At the time it was comforting and now it makes me sick to my stomach thinking about it especially because when I did get pregnant with our first child my husband's family asked him to leave, and so he was living at the church and working at the church, and like so our lives were completely sucked up into that. When he finally left, even then, it didn't really start to shake loose for me until probably a year or two later. So when my husband left his job, left his job at the church, he became fairly unavailable

because of all the other jobs that he was working on the side prior to getting a full-time job. And I remember both Ben and Lance asking him for things still as if he was part of the staff. And at one point, it became so bad that Ben had emailed me or Facebook message me actually and said, I see how it is. We've done so much for your family

and taking care of you guys. And now your husband won't even respond to my messages. How can you treat somebody like that, that it it it it it it. And I just responded with, my husband doesn't work for you and don't talk to me like that again. And that was the end of that conversation. Wow. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of

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the lives of countless children and force a heated debate about punishment, an America's criminal justice system. Follow American scandal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or Wonder App. So, is that when you sort of started beginning to plan your own exit, would you say? Yes, it was kind of like a pebble in the beginning of an avalanche type of situation. I started to realize from there and like very,

very slowly afterwards how little we were actually respected or even, they weren't even grateful for the jobs that we were doing. When I left my job, it had to hire three people to take my job. That's how much I was working and we were expected to be at every single event. And that was from the beginning on, is we were, if there was a show, if there was a church conference, if there were just extra church services, we were supposed to be there. It didn't matter if you got there at 6 a.m. and didn't leave until 1 a.m. the next day, you were expected to be there. And were you paid salary or hourly?

Hourly. And they would pay you for those hours? Or were some of those hours like your volunteer time or how did that work? Like how to do different NG8? We, I don't believe we were paid for any of the venue hours still. If there were conferences typically, we were compensated for the additional hours

that we had to work. Can you kind of describe how things developed from that point to the point where that avalanche happened that you're describing? So Lance became the senior pastor and in charge of everything his parents both kind of stepped back to focus on their ministry network or whatever they were working on at the time. And the more that Lance started to be in charge, the more you could see the cracks in everything,

you could really see how little he cared for people and the way that he was manipulating people and bringing them into his circle because he could see something of value in them, like they could do a job for him or they could offer him a service and then he would use them and dump them immediately. The more I started to see that, I was kind of like, okay, okay, like I don't like that, obviously. And I didn't appreciate the way that I was being treated because I had to kind of figure out my own, I guess, crutch to be able to get through my job

without lance yelling at me on a regular basis. Because I was in charge of publications for the entire church, for services and for venue staff and whatever. So I finally figured out kind of a rhythm to be able to avoid those confrontations. But he still did it to everybody else and probably a minimum once a week

you would hear him yelling at somebody, though. It seemed like he really could control everyone. Truly, he truly could. And one of the additional pebbles, when things started to really become clear, was seeing pastors that I respected and are still really good friends to me, their family, to me, to this day started leaving because of the way that he was treating them, and that started

to open my eyes a lot in those situations. The final tipping point was we had decided to have our third child and so I was like, you know what, three kids is a lot. I'm not trying to pay for take care for three kids. So that was kind of my casual way of getting out, but at this point, three pastors that I trusted and respected had left. And the final thing was I became friends with somebody else who was a Christian, but she is also gay. Like, my entire life, I've known that like you can love who you want to love. That's how life works. That's how love works. But when I started going to the church, I allowed that to be changed because that's what the Bible says, so supposedly.

And once I met this friend, it was like a veil was lifted. And I was like, oh shit, I've been letting them tell me who got it. And I've been letting them tell me what love looks like when that's not the case at all. And so that coincided with me leaving my job, just at the right time. And I think that's when I really started to realize all of the abuse that we had been through

and all of the manipulation that Lance had put us through. Thank you for sharing that. How many of those people towards the end when you were leaving were left? How many of those kids that were working those 24, 7 shifts at that venue? Like how many of them are actually still there today? The core of us are all gone. All of us have left. I can think of maybe one or two people who might remain that have been there probably a majority of the time,

but maybe not as long, but the main people I was connected to are all gone. We all left right around the same time. You wrote a really amazing blog post about your experience, which I will link to in the episode notes. And one of the things that I really appreciated about it is that you took the time to research cult behavior, those symptoms and red flags to look for. Can you speak about discovering those things and what examples you can give that speak to that cult experience?

Yeah, so first and foremost, I need to give props to getting curious by JVN. My love, my entire existence, my beauty, my queen, my everything. Truly, we're not worthy. We are not worthy of you. I love you so much. You are an Aries goddess. If you're out there somewhere, God, I love you. We both love you. Please adopt us. Okay. Yes, please. Anyways, he did an episode where he had a specialist who talked about cults and that's that was kind of my like oh crap moment where I realized you were in a cult. Like that was a thing. So the first of the characteristics was oppositional or opposing critical thinking and that was Lance's like number one thing because he was always down for a fight. And one of the things he used to say all the time was if you're offending people, then you're doing your job.

Like any time you try to bring up something about the Bible, well, what about this and this and this? It just set him into a frenzy. And actually, he taught a class at school of ministry where you were supposed to write about one of the Bible verses, like you could pick the one where it talks, supposedly talks about tattoos and talk about why that's not accurate. And then he would like argue with you about it. Was he the teacher for that class? Yes, he was. Who were, who were the other teachers? Other pastors and then like visiting pastors from other churches and stuff would come in. Talk to us, which that part was really cool, but his part was not. Did you get grades?

No. He was also very into world domination. Can you talk about that? That was his goal. He would always talk about how when he was in junior high or high school or something, he printed out a big old map of the world and would like come up with these like plans with God about how they would take over the world for Jesus and all this stuff.

Sometimes he would even put out challenges for the youth group or the church where it was like, okay, we wanna see 100 people saved and 100 days and we're gonna dominate the world. We're gonna take over the world and that was something he would always frickin preach from the pulpit. He would always like yell it and it's very obnoxious to think about now

No, no more of that. How often was he and his father or the church pastors in general speaking about bringing people back to life? Was that a frequent conversation or did I just happen to be there on a really good night? I mean, I think it was like once monthly because that was part of the spiritual gifts is that people could be risen from the dead because of the power of God. But that goes hand in hand with like healing, physical healing. So I think they did talk about Smith Wigglesworth

and like major services. Yeah, I remember when he was talking about it, he got so animated and he was so emotional and he was like talking about, I hope somebody gets in a car accident and is brought back to life. Yeah. And there was the fog was going and it was like, I was like, what is happening? And yeah. And then when I attended the Sunday services, I just remember there was a lot of interesting things, like people waving flags and painting and all sorts of stuff that honestly

I thought was pretty dope like it seemed really cool to me. I didn't know exactly or understand what was happening But it was it was there was one thing I can say for sure and it was that all of the services were extremely emotional Yeah Everything was loud everything had to be like in your face and like really abrasive and kind of intense like that and I don't understand what the point of that was. It's true and I had a friend point that out to me probably five years before we left and because she decided to leave the church and she was like, you know, he doesn't even preach out of the Bible. He's literally preaching on quote-unquote

I decided to leave the church and she was like, you know, he doesn't even preach out of the Bible. He's literally preaching on quote unquote experiences that he's had. He's not even talking about like actual scripture. And then I didn't think about it, but as I like got later and later on, I was kind of like, oh yeah, that's definitely the truth. So I don't know why nobody called him on that sooner

or maybe they did and maybe that's why people just disappeared. Is there any other red flags of cults that jump out to you now? One of the things that I noticed was isolating members and penalizing them for leaving. I could not point out one specific instance where this happened, but there were many times not even just with people, but with like churches that we were associated with, where if somebody disagreed with him or somebody wronged him or like a person left, he would kind of trash their reputation. And so that would make the rest of us obviously not necessarily care for that person person, because this is somebody that we trust and we know. So why

would he lie about that? Seeking an appropriate loyalty to the leadership was definitely a thing because again, same situation. He didn't want us going to different churches, church services because that's being, quote, unquote, flaky or disloyal. And he wanted us to be absorbed in that church that we were at. And crossing biblical boundaries,

like accountability was a huge thing within the church, but especially within the youth leadership group. And specifically things like where he pulled me aside and had an inappropriate conversation with me about how God supposedly told him that I was having sex with my then boyfriend. Stuff like that where it's like Yeah, that's definitely not something you should ever be doing I don't see that would he encourage you guys to do that amongst each other as well to call each other out for stuff like that absolutely and

even though Like we weren't allowed to like if I as a female saw one of my guy friends doing something like that I wasn't supposed to call them out I was supposed to tell a guy leader about it and have them handle it. Why? Because of gender whatever they wanted the guys to handle the guy stuff and the girls to handle the girl stuff and similarly at one point during our youth years like shortly after I was already married, but not many of our friends had gotten married yet. Some of them, some of the girls from our friend group

went on a girls trip and then were told that they were not supposed to do that again, because you shouldn't do things that your, like male counterparts don't wanna do, or can't attend with you unless it's like a church event. Oh, like specifically Lance's wife told one of my friends that she was at one point she really enjoyed doing something like some certain activity but Lance didn't enjoy it, so she stopped doing that activity because she wants to do things with him. Oh.

Yeah. I also remember that she recorded music, right? This, the band, at the church recorded their music, and we're touring at some point, we're doing some trip. Am I right? Yes. Remembering that? This, your youth pastor's wife wasn't she also pretty heavily involved with this brand of Christianity?

Yes, she was. I only had one or two negative experiences with her as far as all this kind of stuff goes. She was not nearly as manipulative as Lance was, but I think she was also being submissive in that way, like allowing him to handle that. Yeah, she always struck me as like behind the scenes, more quiet and reserved. Yeah, so after you left the church, which I by the way didn't, you know, we've been friends, our kids go to school, we've seen each other here and there, social media and stuff. And I, you know, last I knew you were working at the church. I had, I remember I had the new church location because I had

dropped something off there. I can't remember. It was, this was years ago. And I do remember feeling surprised that you were still there. And the reason why I felt surprised you were still there is because you're such a real person. You're such a kind person, you're an amazing person. And, well, thank you. There were a lot of other incredible amazing kind people that I met that attended that church as well. So that didn't surprise me, but it did seem like a lot of the people that I knew had kind of started slowly leaving. And it also just kind of surprised me because of the way that your youth pastor, this ex-pastor Lance was, it's so far from your personality and your husband's personality.

And many members of the youth group, I would say, have similar personalities. Would you say that he may be connected or targeted a certain type of youth or a certain type of person? Hmm. Man, now that I'm thinking about it, it seems like it makes sense because you're right, a lot of us are fairly similar-minded

and like we've discussed earlier, it's our parents were either in the church and just not really involved or like it does seem like there was like a type kind of that he was going after. After you left the church, was that when he started your this pastor, Lance, started his wine bar business? With the wine bar that kind of started taking place

as we were leaving and then like when we had left. And I remember hearing about it and just mostly being kind of confused. Not really sure where that had come from slash why he a pastor with me to own a wine bar but I didn't give it a ton of thought right in that point. Now I'm just like that this isn't seem, at least for this specific pastor and that whole situation seems really just sketchy. And now there's two bars, but that's initially I think it started out with a lot of church people because I did go to like one women's night thing. There, even though I had kind of left the church, I ended up going to that.

Just to sort of see people and it seemed cool and then now I know tons of people who talk about that wine bar and it's a sister bar that's out in another city. Is the church still active and alive and is he still a pastor? It's still active and alive, he is still a pastor. I don't know, like, as far as, like, the way that their leadership works and stuff, I don't know how all of that works other than him still being the head pastor. Do you still know people who attend the church

and do you stay in contact with those people? I know a handful of people from the church still. There are some that I've recently had to like, unfriend on Facebook and all that kind of stuff, just because I can't keep putting myself through that. You know I hate Facebook, so I know, I know. And Facebook is a death trap, but like, it was like up until a certain point,

I like still had those really strong connections with them and like friendships and stuff. You're a nice person. You're a very nice person. I'm a nice person. I'm a huffle puff. Like I just really want everybody to be my friend and it's like cool, everything's fine. But at some point you have to cut the bullshit and say no you're not healthy for me for me. And you got to go. And I can't

keep seeing your shit about Trump at my timeline. So you have to leave. And it's people from that church. And I was just like, nope, nope, nope, nope. We're not doing this anymore. So as the saying goes, unfollow anything that makes you feel like shit. Yep. Exactly. That's been my motto the last like year and a half. So it's how many years now since you left, your position in the church. It has been, it'll be seven years next month. That's crazy, we've known each other a long time. It time flies, I guess.

I know. You've always been such an amazing person, but I really feel like you embrace who you are now in a new way and how has this shaped you as a person, do you think? I kind of realize, even through just having this conversation, that when I started going to this church at 17, that person that I was then is a lot closer to the person that I am now.

But because I was being told that I had to behave a certain way and being kind of shamed for certain things that I would do, or ways that I would act, I really let that taper down who I am and who I expect myself to be, even though at the same time that they're shaming you and like putting these religious shackles on you, they're supposed to be like building you up spiritually, which is a weird situation.

So I was getting some confidence then, but it was kind of a different format. And now, having come out of all that, it's almost like somebody took blinders off of me, and now I can see everything, including everything about myself. And it's like, yeah, I am this way, and that's great. And I, like, there's not great things about me, too. But, like, I don't have to feel shame about that. And I honestly think it's kind of made me more of it, not only just like an open person receptive

to other people, but it's also made me literally not give a fuck about what people think about me anymore. And I think a lot of that has had to do with even just the end experience of leaving this church because that was one of my biggest fears. Well, what about all my friends and my family that I've made at this church? Like, what are they going to think of me? What's going to happen?

But also having this revelation of love. And it's like, well, if they truly do love me, then they will continue to love me and be my friend. And I think that's kind of driven me throughout the rest of this last seven years. It's just like, well, people are either going to love me or they're not going to love me. And that's kind of driven me throughout the rest of this last seven years is just like well people Are they're gonna love me or they're not gonna love me and that's cool Whatever they want to do because I don't really need them when I've got my family That's amazing and I think it's so true from from my perspective You know, you were the same person, but I could definitely see that you were just much more reserved and quiet and

unhappy You know yeah, and you're just so full of life and and quiet and unhappy, you know? Yeah. And you're just so full of life and love. And I really respect that about you. You are always looking at things from a perspective of how can we love other people? To me, that's top as good as you can get. So thank you. You are such an inspiration.

And I'm so appreciative of you sharing more about your experience and honestly seeing you come out with your blog this past year and seeing you start to share it and and really blossom and really like not give a fuck has been just so cool as your friend to see that. And I'm just really like proud of you, dude. I think it's so awesome. It's so hard to do. It's so scary to do to take a take a leap and take a pivot and say, I'm not going to put up with this anymore, but you've really leaned into it. And I think it's I think it's rad. Thank you. I super appreciate that. That's awesome. And you honestly, you were like a huge inspiration in a lot of that because you've always been a really good example of like not giving a fuck about other people's opinions and stuff, which is

amazing to me. So I try. It's always, it's always seems like that at least. So I've always looked up to you for that reason, for sure. You're so sweet. If you could talk to that young woman that you were standing up in front of the church, being chastised and shamed, what would you say to her now? What would you want her to know?

First off, I'd want her to know, fuck them. These are not your people. Don't allow that shame to take over the rest of your life because it can do major damage even when you don't know that that's what it's doing. What about your faith? Now like when people ask me, oh are you still a Christian, I feel weird saying yes because I'm not really. I don't have good knowledge or like a substantial knowledge of the Bible by any means. And I even if I did, I don't know like the parts that I do know well, I don't know if

all of them I agree with 100%. There are certain things like about that kind of stuff that I believe in. And I definitely like believe in God or higher power of some kind because I've been all of the things that I have experienced in all of the just like the roller coaster that life is. Like for me, that's kind of an undeniable thing, but I don't think for me personally, I don't have to go to church to know that. I don't have to go to church to be in a relationship with whatever higher power exists And I know that whatever higher power does exist that the core of whatever that is is love We have talked about going to church again many times

We even tried going to church after we had left our old church But I couldn't find one that felt right, especially not now where I'm at spiritually. And I don't know that I, whether it's trauma or whatever from my previous experience, just thinking about going back to a Christian church is literally making me wrinkle up. Like, I can't think about that. I would rather go sit in Catholic mass and do my Hail Mary's and have that kind of a religious experience versus going into another charismatic church where I have to talk to people because I don't know that I can at least not now allow myself to do that at this point.

Like you say, I think that speaks to the trauma that is real. The thing that's so interesting about these experiences is we sometimes gain more knowledge the more time that goes by. Yeah. is we sometimes gain more knowledge the more time that goes by. Yeah, we're both moms and I know your children are such a huge part of your life. What parts of this, if any, do you share with them? I actually just recently kind of talked to them about it because they've asked us many times like why we haven't gone back and why we can't go back necessarily. And before we would just say it's

complicated, it's kind of complicated. We'll have to explain it to you when you're older, but this past week, because I mean, we have nothing else going on. So I can't even remember what we were doing. We were driving around or something and it came up again. And I said, you know, here's the thing. I would love for you guys to be able to go to church, whether that's with your dad or whatever that looks like in the future, it was like in some churches are good. I was like, but there are also things about some churches that are not good where they try to take advantage of you

for certain things. Like they want you to help them with a project or they want you to like give them money. That kind of thing. I was like, not all churches are like that. We kind of had an experience like that, but it's more complicated. And so I'll have to explain that more as you guys get older because they don't understand that concept really.

That's honestly the most that we've talked about it. At some point, they'll know. I'm sure I will 100% tell them everything because I can't keep my mouth shut. So they're going to know at some point in their adulthood what happened. What advice would you give to somebody who is in a church that they they want to leave, but they're afraid? Know that whatever friends you do have will respect you for your decision and they're not going to turn their back on you. I think a lot of us have, as they call it in the church,

discernment, where you can feel when something's not right. You know that sense, that sixth sense, that you can tell when something's up. And if you know, then, I mean, just go. Like, don't waste time because I regret not leaving sooner. That's probably one of the few regrets that I do have is wasting so much time because there are really good churches out there. I'm sure that are loving and supportive and all the things that a church should be. So don't waste your time on an unhealthy

one that's not going to lift you up. You need to be surrounded by an actual support group. Absolutely. I just appreciate you so much sharing your story and being super brave and vulnerable. You're just amazing. It's really hard to talk about this stuff and especially when we're going through our own crisis right now at the same time. So you're amazing.

And I just appreciate you. Thank you. I appreciate having a platform to talk about it on because I it needs to be shared. I think so thank you. After season five episode one came out, I received a message from a 24 year old woman from Sacramento named Kelly, who was previously married to Lance's adopted son. She's known Lance since she was five years old and grew up in the church. I spoke with her at length about the church, the abuse she personally suffered, and witnessed.

And I will share that interview with all of you next time. Something was wrong, is written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Tiffany Rees. Music by Gladrags. Thank you so much to each and every survivor for sharing their story. If you'd like to support the growth of the podcast, you can leave us a five star review on iTunes, support the podcast on patreon.com, share the podcast with your family and friends, or support our sponsors. Websites and resources mentioned on this episode can be found linked in the episode notes. Follow me on Instagram at lookibo. L-O-O-K-I-E-B-O-O.

Thank you so much. Te no me he perdón, no me he vuelto Eto, Eto, Eto, Eto, Eto, E don't know me, you don't know me well You think I know me, you don't know me well I'm straight up, I'm not ready to go I'm not ready to go, I'm not ready to go No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Hey, Prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.