Deb Aldrich
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Kristi: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the CAPE podcast. CAPE standing for the Child Abuse Prevention and Education podcast. My name is Christy McVie and I am an ex West Australian police officer who spent 10 years with the police where I was trained as a specialist child interviewer and a child abuse detective. This podcast is all about sharing what I learned, saw and knew whilst investigating child sexual abuse in the police force.
It is also about sharing the knowledge that I gained in that time that helped me with my own parenting of my then two year old daughter. My mission is to help share my knowledge and to help you in your role as parents to keep your kids safe along with guest experts in the field of child abuse prevention and education, both in person and online.
Thank you so much for joining in on the fight to prevent child sexual abuse. Your kids will thank you for it.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Cape Podcast. I've had a really busy week this week. An actual [00:01:00] fact guys I just found out that I, well, I knew about it. It's been a couple of months in the running, but I'm actually in the Take 5 magazine today. So I, yeah, if, yeah, it's from the July 11th, if you let me know if you actually see me in there I was interviewed a few weeks ago and I forgot all about it and then someone rang me and said, you're in the magazine and I thought, Who buys magazines anymore, so I had to go out and buy it.
Yeah, so I've had a busy week, but today I'm with Deb Aldrich. Deb and I connected via LinkedIn. Now I talk about online safety for kids and stuff. And I have I always say that there's so many amazing things about being online, and one of those is that you get to connect with like-minded people like Deb, and Deb and I connected over our.
our prevention work and our advocacy for child sexual abuse. And Deb and I are going to talk about intrafamilial child sexual abuse today, which Deb has amazing resources and a book about. So Deb, thank you so [00:02:00] much for being with me today and for having a chat with me. I really appreciate it.
Deb: Thanks, Christy.
Thank you for having me on. Well,
Kristi: it's, it's just it's just so interesting when I, when I put that call out. So I put a call out on LinkedIn and I got such an amazing response from so many people because you know, I know lots of people in this industry, but I still don't know everyone and everyone has little, their own little experiences and wisdoms and things that come from all different, different And so it's always interesting when I meet someone who's, you know, coming from a different perspective than mine or, you know, coming from a same perspective, but different experience.
So thank you. All right, Deb. So you're here to talk about intrafamilial child sexual abuse. Can you just very briefly, or as, as best you can explain what intrafamilial abuse is?
Deb: Okay. So intrafamilial abuse is, is, it's really the thing that we don't talk [00:03:00] about a lot. It's, it's taboo. People don't want to hear about it.
It's, it's the abuse that happens within the family. It could be sibling on sibling. It could be an uncle who abuses his nephew. It could be a grandparent abusing a grandchild, father, stepfather, anybody who's considered to be a
Kristi: Yep.
Deb: And as I said, it's, it's kept hidden. We don't talk about it. Nobody wants to hear about it.
You know, back in the day incest was, you know, just a terrible, horrible word. Nobody wanted to say it. Intra family abuse is similar. I think incest is more of A different generation. I think it's, well it is, I think it's more penetration where intrafamilial abuse can be touching, can be having the person do things to the child or have them do stuff to the child.
I don't think it's, yeah, so intrafamilial is what I'm talking about. It's what I've written about in my book. As you mentioned, I'm a, well, I'm a survivor, I'm an adult survivor of, of intrafamilial abuse. And I got to a point in my life where [00:04:00] I'd seen it, not just for my own, what happened to me, but in extended family friends.
People I met and I just kind of had a gutful and I just, you know, with my own circumstances to being silenced my whole life, not being able to talk about it or get help from my family. And internalizing my pain and trauma which is what I did. A lot of people externalize with, you know, being promiscuous.
It's becoming an exotic dancer, alcohol, drugs, addictions, whatever. I internalized all my stuff. So I was the people pleaser. I would just always. Be the person who did everything people told me to do, kept quiet you know, I, I struggled with anxiety my whole life, depression, not so much more anxiety, just being that energizer bunny that would just go and go and go because to stop would be have, [00:05:00] have, you'd have to stop and think about what happened to you.
So because I was silenced and told not to speak about it you know, and, and the control and manipulation from those people who are from your you know, your family, your, the first people that you grew up with not only my abuser had control over me, but who I used to think of as my safe person growing up that they were the person that, you know, I thought would never hurt me or let me get hurt.
But these days I call them my supposed protector and I talk about that all through my book. I don't name these people. Yeah. I talk about them. In those terms but just the control that both these people had over me from a very young age and, and I was very vulnerable. I was an easygoing little girl.
I was happy. I was confident. Until I wasn't until all this, you know, trauma, trauma set in and my abuse from my memory. And I have got a very good memory and a lot of my memory comes from the humiliation of [00:06:00] what this person did to me and said to me, I'm sure there's a lot of stuff I've blocked out.
I'm sure there's a lot of stuff I saw as day to day normal stuff. So I didn't, it didn't, you know, stay in my memory, but The humiliation was, was the worst part. And it has affected my whole life.
Kristi: Yeah. And humiliation has the, you know, as we know when you're a child and especially as you're developing humiliation makes you like literally shrink into yourself and become less because you're too scared to stick your head out and be seen because you get humiliated when you do.
Deb: Yeah. And I do speak about that in some of my blogs, how I didn't want to be, I didn't want to draw attention to myself. And, and the fact that. You know, when, when your child has been abused and not gotten help you know, when you go to school, it's like, you've got a red flashing light over the top of your head.
Bullies can, you know, see you as this vulnerable person. So for me. My home [00:07:00] life wasn't safe. My school life wasn't, I didn't really feel safe anywhere. And my my stress system, you know, it, it, it was over sense or it's, it, you know, early life abuse sensitizes our stress systems and it rewires our hormonal systems become either hyper active or oversensitive which just continues into our later lives.
So somebody who might go for a job interview, say, and. And you know, it's not that big a deal, whereas somebody like myself, who's been through that sort of trauma, everything's just overreactive.
Kristi: Well everything's bigger than what I like. You just don't, your system doesn't know how to be calm. So it just becomes like this massive experience, which you can't enjoy and you, and it's overwhelming.
So yeah, I can totally relate. I can act everything you're speaking. I can totally relate. So with regards to your story and we'll obviously want to [00:08:00] respect that you don't name them at all without going into too much detail as well, but so your abuse was happening by someone in the family who was from what age and, and when did you first speak up or try to, should I say?
Deb: Yeah. So from my memory, it was between four and 14. Okay. It was definitely before I went to school. And I remember something because something I remember at school, I know things were going on before then. So I, and I did start school about five and a half. I lived on the Northern beaches down in Sydney, had to be born before the 30th of July to start the school year.
So. My, I had to wait till I was about five and a half to start school. So it could have been somewhere between four and five. But I do remember it did happen before then. I told my supposed projector when I was about 10 years old and I thought I had couldn't quite remember the conversation but it wasn't until I was in my forties and [00:09:00] decided to cut my abuser out of my life.
I spoke to my dad about what had happened. He he'd never been told. So my supposed to protect, I never told my dad. And that's a huge mistake because. I think that could have changed my whole life. If my, if my dad had to know what this person was doing to me, things would have been different.
Kristi: I'd imagine if that, if, you know, it, as you were mentioning earlier, like with intrafamilial, it's could be anyone in the family.
And we know that a large percentage of child sexual abuse is by family members. And And people know, like over 90 percent is people known to the abuse. And in fact, when I was investigating these abuse, these cases you know, it was a very large portion was family. Yeah. A way bigger portion than a way bigger portion than any other.
And so when people say to me, Oh, you know, I can trust [00:10:00] people. And even when I became a police officer and started learning about this stuff, I was like, Looking at my own family going, who can I trust? You know, with my daughter and it's none of their fault and no, you know, so far nothing has happened, but at the same time, it made me reassess.
and made me more, more wary. So that's through my experiences. And I obviously am a protective parent, but it's very normal. And what you're telling me is very, very not normal. Cause it's, I don't think not being protective is normal, but it's very reminisce of the times that you grew up that people just went, don't want to deal with it.
Not going to, not going to address it. Not going to do anything.
Deb: Yeah, I've got a chapter in my book called the snow globe effect, and I relate it to being trapped in a snow globe as a kid. Where are you going to go? Who are you going to talk to? If, if, and if you do find your voice, which a lot of us didn't, if you do find your voice and that person doesn't help you, they minimize the situation, they don't make it [00:11:00] significant, then you're not going to speak up again.
And you know, they may be, as you mentioned, it's a times mine happened in the seventies and eighties. And who was this person going to tell like that? They took me to a psychologist once. They had my abuser sitting in the waiting room. I didn't even really know what was going on with me at that point in my life, to tell you the truth, to be able to speak to someone about it.
Yeah. But my supposed protector saw somebody they knew who worked at this psychologist office and they never took me back because of, you know, obviously they didn't want people to know. So this is what happens to victims. We In the family, we are the ones who have to suck it up. We don't get the help and healing that anybody who would be abused by a non family member would have got at that time in their life.
And I was left to dangle in the wind my whole life, fix myself. And every, almost every decade, like into my twenties, thirties, forties, I've tried to speak to this person. Not my abuser, my supposed protector about what [00:12:00] happened to me. And they didn't want to hear about it. They didn't want to know.
Whether it was through guilt, shame, whatever. So they silenced me every time I spoke about it. And then I went back into this shell of, well, was it that important? You know, was it that significant? Well, it must be because I've had so many detrimental things happen to me during my life, my health, my relationships, my over protectedness of my own children.
You know, my, you know not feeling worthy as a friend, people pleasing, as I mentioned before not feeling good enough until I got external validation from people, these are all, you know, things, responses that we go through. And yeah, so I got, I've been to lots of psychologists. I got a little bit of help here and there.
You don't gel with everyone. I'm not saying that they're not the right thing to do. They're absolutely the right thing to do. But it got to the stage where I was in my early forties and. My abuser's birthday was coming up and, you know, you've got to understand that I was still [00:13:00] participating in family gatherings, birthdays, weddings, everything, just like nothing had happened, just to keep the peace in the family sucking it up to, so everyone else didn't have to deal with it.
And it was close to their birthday and I was saying to my psychologist, I just don't want to contact them. I don't want to ring them. And she said to me, one of the most important things in my healing journey. And you know, I did hear on one of your podcasts about healing and do we ever really heal?
And I agree, we don't fully heal, but we can get to a certain point in our life where we're in a better place. Yeah. But she said to me, Dave, you don't have to see your abuser, you know that, don't you? And I looked at her and went, what, what do you mean? Like, how am I going to navigate that? And then it, I, I let it sink in and I went, you know what, it's going to blow up my whole family, but it's my time and I can't keep pushing this stuff down any longer.
It's making me [00:14:00] sick. It's so detrimental to my mental and physical health, my relationships with my family, you know, that they shouldn't have to put up with, you know, all the stuff that I've had to, to deal with. So I did, I, I sat my mom and dad down. And I said, What had happened and my dad went white as a ghost because just all the blood just drained out of his face He he didn't know he wasn't told And he was so angry.
So yeah, so that's, that's how I came about, you know, getting away from my views. So when I was 44 years old, I stayed and put up with it for that long. And one of the biggest messages I have in my book is that I don't, I want people to read my book and, and, and I write from survivor to survivor. I write it in a really conversational tone.
I've got poems throughout it that, you know, people can relate to because there's my [00:15:00] turmoil that I'm, you know, addressing through these poems. But what I want to get through to people is that, You don't have to stay in the situations. You wouldn't put up with this type of abuse or, you know, from people that weren't your family members.
So why should you put it up, put up with it from the most people who are supposed to love you the most in your life and treat you with the most respect? Why should you have to put up with this from those people? You should. If they can. Yeah. And if they can't, you know, if, if they can't respect your boundaries.
then, you know, maybe you just have to move away from them. And if that's the only thing to give you a bit of peace in your life, which is the only way I found to do that. And I also don't see my supposed to protect her anymore. And I had to make that really, really difficult decision. Which I'm, I'm trauma bonded in a way to this person, [00:16:00] because as I mentioned, they were supposed to be my safe person.
And I don't know if you've ever heard of Sinead O'Connor's trauma bonding with her mom.
Kristi: No, tell
Deb: us about it.
Kristi: I'm sure people listening haven't heard it either, but yeah, please explain it because I hear that term used and I do kind of understand the concept of it. I think I have a bit of a trauma bond with at least some someone in my family, but Yeah, it does once you realize that that's what it is.
It's easier to let it go.
Deb: Yeah. So Sinead O'Connor was physically and sexually abused by her mom, which is, is quite unusual being a woman. You know, we all hear about the men being abused, but it does happen. Yeah. It's, it's, it does happen. And she actually of course she became really well known for nothing compares to you that fantastic song, I think back in the eighties or nineties but she actually brought to the forefront, the Catholic church abuse.
She's Irish [00:17:00] and she was she started to get big with her music career. And she actually ripped up a picture of the Pope at the time live on Saturday Night Live. And that was a big hoo ha and oh my God, everyone turned against her. But what she was trying to do is what we're all trying to do at the moment is bring this but she was just outcasted for doing that at the time, and she suffered in her career, but what she says, and I write a little bit about this in my book also, is that her music was her safe and healing place.
That was the way she could like, get out of her, all the abuse that she had happened with her. And if you ever watch, which I suggest people do, if they are listening, watch the Dr. Phil interview with Sinead O'Connor. I don't know. It's about, I don't know how many years ago, but there will only be one as far as I know.
And it just shows her flipping and flopping between how much she loved her mom and how much she's so glad she's dead. And, you know, and then she'll go back into crying about how much [00:18:00] she can't wait to see a mom in heaven to that she ran a torture chamber and that, you know, Sinead ran away at a certain point in the time their father left them.
I think there's about four of them Sinead and her brothers and sisters and yeah. And she just talks about how a mom ran a torture chamber and that everyone else would be. Really excited for school holidays, but she would just dread it because she'd be at home, you know, with her mother the whole time and trauma bonding comes about when the person you see is your safe person growing up, you know, you look for them for comfort, but they're also your abuser.
So. Is this confusion in your mind between, well, this person is abusing me, but they're also comforting me. And it's, it's just, it's just a horrible reality really to be in. And, and when you're little, you don't understand what that means either. And if you, if you've grown up with abuse as being normal, you think that that is normal.
You think [00:19:00] that that's, you know, this, You think in a way it's love, but it's not. It's, it's that person either not protecting you or abusing you. So you can be trauma bonded to either your abuser or your protector, supposed protector.
Kristi: Yeah. And I can see that in a lot of cases that I, and I didn't know that word back when I was, investigating.
It's really, I've only just started hearing that word in the last few years, but or that phrase, but I can see that in a lot of cases where, especially because not all abuse is is violent or painful either. Sometimes there's grooming involved and there's you know, and sometimes, you know, there's pleasure involved.
It's such a complicated mental game abuse. Yeah. And so it's not all cut, it's not all cut and dry, it doesn't all make sense in the brain and the brain. And so the trauma bonding is, you know, you can be trauma bonded, like you said, to your abuser or to people who are meant to be protecting you, who you you think that [00:20:00] will, will do and keep you safe, but they, they don't.
But yeah. And the familial stuff. I mean, I have I have some experience in like want to have a better word ghosting family members because I couldn't couldn't deal with, you know, that side of it where you, you were guilt and shamed and blamed for anything that went wrong.
Deb: Yeah.
Kristi: Even though it wasn't your fault, you're a child.
Deb: Yeah. I've got a chapter called The sorry, the invisible perpetrator and the million dollar question. And, and part of that came about by. The million dollar question, I'll start with that. That came about by my adult son saying to me, why did you still see this person for so long if they did that to you?
And that's a really important question because I know other people have been abused and the external family member ostracizes them and says to them, Oh, you couldn't have been abused because you've stayed around this person. You've interacted with them. How could you, how could this possibly have taken place?
Yeah, [00:21:00] but we do. Because we don't want to lose contact with other family members. We may be trauma bonded. We have such low self esteem and lack of confidence that, you know, we stay in these situations.
Kristi: Yeah,
Deb: So true. And the Invisible Perpetrators, my book called Circling the Wagons, and it took a long time to me to find exactly the right name for this book and and to even stop doubting myself of why would anyone want to read your story, it's not that interesting.
So it wasn't until I came about with the name circling the wagons. And that comes from back in the 1800s when people would, you know, the settlers would travel from the East coast to the West coast of America and at night, or if they're under attack, they'd circle their wagons and that they'd all be in the middle of them to protect themselves from attack.
And my metaphor with the family abuse is the family circles, the wagons around the secret. [00:22:00] Because they're so ashamed of the secret. They don't want, you know, people to know about what's happened, but in turn, when they're circling wagons around the secret, they're also protecting the perpetrator. So this is why they become invisible and nothing happens.
And as the victims, we're on the outside of these wagons. So that's how I came about with the name circling the wagons for my book because I came to realize over the years, talking to other people, seeing my own circumstances. It happens. This is what happens to everybody. Wow. Yeah. And that's, and that's what I talk about in this chapter about the invisible perpetrator and the fact that they also use our trauma responses, our negative behaviors, our toxic behaviors against us to discredit anything we say, how can you believe her?
She's a stripper. How can you believe him? He's in jail. You know, they're always in toxic [00:23:00] relationships. Why would you believe a word they said?
Kristi: Yeah.
Deb: And, and, and it works. It does. It really does. Yeah. Because the, the, you know, most people, and this is also why I'm on this big bandwagon to educate people about this topic.
And it, not a lot of people are talking about intrafamilial. I just did a blog about the last sleeping giant and we've talked about me too. We've talked about stranger danger institutional abuse, church abuse, but nobody wants to speak about the intrafamilial abuse. And I've just got to the stage, Christy, where I went, well, if I have to be the messenger, then I'm the messenger, you know, cause I'm so tired of, I'm so tired of keeping quiet.
So. Well,
Kristi: I I'm with you in that mission because that was the number one thing that I saw and people don't want to hear it. They they're scared of the idea that. You can't trust your family and that because we've got this perception that family should blood's thicker than water and blood, you know, blood has hurt [00:24:00] most people and including myself more than water ever did.
So, you know, there's, there's this perception that we, you know, we need to trust our family. You, you know, you can't let your family down, you'd all of this stuff. I'm going to 100 percent agree with you and just say, listen, family can do more harm than anyone else can in your whole life. We can, we can, you know, if someone outside a stranger hurts us.
Well, it's just a stranger, but when your family hurts you, it hurts you in so many more ways than anyone else can do it. And and, and we've got this, yeah, I'm, I'm all for doing whatever you need to do to keep your sanity and your peace and whether that's letting go, like releasing relationships.
Telling people that you don't want to see them anymore, allowing yourself, because at the end of the day, we only have our health and our mental health and whatever's going to protect that is going [00:25:00] to, you know, we need to do it because I, and you've probably seen some of these studies, but you might not have, you know, the university of oh, which university was it?
I can see there. One of the universities last year came up with a and I'll put it Swanborn University. I knew it was started with an S. Swanborn University released a study that showed that victims of child sexual abuse are eight times more likely to die in middle age
Deb: than
Kristi: people without child sexual abuse.
And they have more I think it was five, times more likely to die of cancer or or heart disease any kind of, like, you know, cardiovascular diseases. And then there were 12. 9 times more likely to die of from mental health illness, which self harm and suicide. So, you know, not only does child sexual abuse affect you as a child, it affects your whole life for the rest of your life.
And it, it's a big deal. It doesn't, you know, yes, you may, you're, you listened to the podcast where I said, do you ever really heal? [00:26:00] You might find some peace in that moment, but it's gonna, it's a, it's a large toll and cost to the body. And what we're seeing now is we know that one more than one in four Australian adults have been sexually abused as children.
They go on to have their own families. And when we don't have, when we have repressed traumas you know, and we don't deal with things and we don't talk about it, we don't get it out of our bodies, then it's going to bleed onto the people around us. So we're passing on generational trauma by not dealing with it.
When we could talk about it. And so if our families are the ones doing this to us, and our families are the ones who are continuing the abuse by not protecting us, then we need to. We need to let them go because if they're meant and I like to talk about, and in my own stuff, I like to talk about safe versus unsafe, safe adults, protect kids.
They don't harm them. They listen and you know, they create boundaries. They listen to children's [00:27:00] boundaries. They listen to them. Say when they say no, they stop. They. Don't make people feel uncomfortable. They don't say inappropriate things. They don't do all of these things. That's what safe people do.
Yes.
Deb: Yeah.
Kristi: And that's, that's the thing. Like if we could you know, with all of our knowledge and all of our information that we've got, you know, all we want is for you to have safe relationships and safe families so that your kids can be protected and safe in the long
Deb: run. Absolutely. And just what you were talking about before Dr.
like Dr. Phil, he's helped me, like he's explained things in his. He's, he's TV shows that made me realize that I didn't participate willingly and, and all that sort of stuff. But one of the things he said to a woman and her daughter who'd both been abused by the stepfather. So the stepfather and then the step grandfather, but for the.
The the grandchild, he said, you'll never truly get over what you went through, but the biggest thing you have to do is make sure that you don't let them control you from afar and you [00:28:00] know, taking your power back, speaking about what you went through, not hiding it. You know, it's like, I used to think this is my secret, but I realized it's not, it's my story.
And stories are for telling and stories can save lives. And that's what I wrote on my Brave Hearts survivor story. That's the first time I wrote and spoke about, you know, this type of thing. And people always say blood is sicker than water, but you know, as I say in my book, but blood can turn toxic too.
And, or septic, sorry, blood can turn septic. And we just, you know, Have to realize that our health, mental and physical, and I've, I've had all these things that, you know, you mentioned I've had heart problems. I've got autoimmune problems. There's my body kind of has always got something going on health wise and I'm struggling with some stuff at the moment, but I've had a tumor and, you know, Luckily, I also had a huge cyst on my ovary at the same time, which is what I went to the emergency department for this pain.[00:29:00]
And while they were doing the the ultrasound and CT, they found this my appendix was three times the size that it should have been. And I had what was called a mucosal tumor in my appendix. And luckily it was benign, but I was straight into hospital two days later having all these things removed.
And I know that my nervous system is just so like, even now I'm starting to shake in my voice and that's one of my trauma responses. So I hope you can't hear it, but you know, there's just so many things that ways that, you know, if we, if we're not drinking ourselves to death or, you know, taking drugs or whatever.
And, and I do speak also about you know, I have to exercise, I have to get that nervous, anxious anxiety out of my body each day. I have to do meditation, which is so beneficial to people in my situation. You have to slow your breathing because we're all on this heightened. You know, response all the time.
And that, and that's what we were, you know, we were with as, as children, we were wondering or waiting for that next time [00:30:00] this person did this to us or came in our room at night or took advantage of us or, you know, or the next time we were bullied at school or whatever it was that we were just heightened and oversensitized to.
Kristi: Yeah, so true. And, and we tend to, I find I tend to like, because I grew up in quite a stressful related family situation I tend to feel like when it's not, when there's not a lot happening and when everything is calm and peaceful, like I start questioning my life choices and that it's boring and what's going on with it.
Like I'm, I'm used to having this higher level of stress in my life. And if it's not stressful, everything is just. Everything's wrong. It's boring. I start picking fights with my husband, with my daughter. Like it, and I don't even, it's only in the recent years that I've started realizing that's what I do when my life is calm.
I start creating problems. And so if, yeah, it's, it's crazy how our [00:31:00] nervous system, and it's something that we haven't done enough research and talk about. And we're now starting to understand, but you're right. You need to meditate. You need to do exercise. You need to get out in fresh air. You need to ground yourself down and make it lay in, lay on some grass or if it's not too cold or put your feet in the dirt or go camping or walk your dog or whatever, because it's really important for our nervous systems to have some.
To slow down a little bit.
Tina: Quickly interrupting this episode to let you know that Christie has a whole library full of resources to support you. If this podcast hits home for you and you want to learn more about cyber safety, abuse awareness and prevention, and how you can protect your children, head to the link in the show notes where you can access free downloads, informative guides, and courses relating to these topics.
You can also order Christie's book, Operation KidSafe, a detective's guide to child abuse prevention. If you want to join the fight against child sexual abuse, you can support [00:32:00] Chrissy to reach a wider audience by leaving a review on this podcast or sharing it with your community.
Deb: So
Kristi: Deb, tell me you've, you've written this amazing book called circling the wagons. You're talking openly and honestly about intrafamilial abuse. So what kind of cause I get a lot of people through mostly through Tik Tok, funny enough cause I speak over on Tik Tok about this stuff.
I get a lot of people tell me that their families have not, you know so they, they've tried to tell someone as a child and they, they, no one listened. Their parents have told them same situation as you told them, or someone's told them not to say anything. They're lying. They've, you know, and taken, and, and I love how, I love how you explain protecting the secret.
Because I get a lot of questions from people saying, you know, why do people do that? Why do people take that, tell you you're lying, justify it minimize it. And then you've got to keep a [00:33:00] secret and it's, and it, you know, it does all that damage. And I think you've hit the nail on the head. They're protecting the secret because of the shame.
And then in protecting the secret, they're protecting the perpetrator. Yeah.
Deb: Yeah, and what I found also through my lived experience and knowledge and, and just working through all this stuff and just examining everything basically is that the women are usually the ones, so it's usually the perpetrators generally are the men, the women are the ones who are the bystanders or supposed protectors.
They're the ones who silence us. And generally, and they generally, but yeah, enable it they can't deal with the position they're in and potentially they've had the same thing happen to them as a girl. And potentially because of the decades before us with the brush it under the rug, we don't talk about this.
Men can't control themselves. Just you know, this happens, doctors and nurses, whatever excuse, you know, these [00:34:00] past generations have given their daughters. They've been silenced too. So they've just passed that silencing on to the next generation. And I can't say for sure whether that's happened to my supposed protector, but they have a lot of, you know, reactions and things that make me think, and I have spoken to them and they've denied it.
And that's, and that's all I can do. And I did try to relate to them in some way, if I had had something hard to understand, try to understand and say, well, why, you know, why are you coming at it from this point of view? Why, why do you never want to listen to it? Why won't you? Why did you never hold them accountable?
Why didn't you punish them? You know, because not doing that, and it's not just me. I found two other people who they abused as well. You know, so, and that's why I mentioned before that if my dad had a known, Things would have stopped. Would have been different. Yeah. Yeah. And if this person had a watched what was going on in their own home and.
Checked in with me and even just recently they victim shamed [00:35:00] me by Saying to me, why didn't you tell me the abuse was continuing when you know, why would I why would I? You did nothing you showed me it wasn't significant. It was hard enough to speak up the first time Yeah, and and this is me growing up doing it As a child, not knowing what was right and wrong.
Kristi: It's not my
Deb: fault.
Kristi: It's never a child's fault. And and that's the thing, like, in order for them to feel, be able to sleep comfortably at night, they have to put the blame onto someone else and they put them back onto you. And why, like, and we actually connected initially over my post about about the, you know, if a child doesn't feel safe, they won't feel safe.
If they won't disclose and in that post, I was saying that, you know, I listed a whole reason, a lot of reasons and you said, yeah, and, and you only will, you know, if you manage to find your voice, if you only have one shot, because if you managed to find your voice and the person doesn't have that, the right response, [00:36:00] then you don't open your voice.
You don't say it again. You're not going to tell anyone because no one did anything the first time. So why would you?
Deb: Exactly. What's the point? And there's, there's certain people that I want to help with my book and my advocacy and one of them is teenagers. And mostly because I was very isolated as a teenager.
You know, obviously through primary school and stuff, stuff, stuff was happening to me into my teenage years as well. But because The one person who I was willing to speak to and able to speak to didn't protect me or help me. There was nobody else. And one of my friends that I connected with who I went to school with and we just connected 30 years after and, and a lot of questions that people ask me become my next blog.
And she said to me, why didn't you tell me when we were kids or when we were teenagers? And I said, Oh my God, no way. No way. I didn't want anyone to know. I wouldn't willingly have spoken about it to anybody. The humiliation, the shame, the guilt that obviously isn't ours, but we feel [00:37:00] we take that on and we all need to pass that back to the person who, you know, who deserves to have it, which is our abusers.
They're the ones who should be shameful and guilty. We, as children, we didn't have the emotional or intellectual capacity to give consent. And I know you speak a lot about consent and I think it's fantastic how you brought your daughter up with the consent. And I wish I had a known to bring my daughter up with, I don't give consent as well.
But we didn't have that ability to give consent either way. And a lot of us feel like, because we didn't stop them, say no, thought it was a game, participated. We were willing participants. Never, never. I've heard, I've heard particularly a lot of adults who are the abusers will tell that person. But you enjoyed it, but you liked it.
And I've got a whole chapter called Kaleidoscope and it talks about how, you know how things change in a kaleidoscope every time you move it around. Patterns change the patterns between. when we were children and what we thought was [00:38:00] happening to when we grow up and realize what really happened. And then we beat ourselves up because we were sexualized during our abuse.
And I try all throughout my book, I try and give examples so people, you know, particularly people who haven't had it happen to them can understand a lot better. And, and I say to them, look, being sexualized as a child is like being tickled or having somebody draw on your back or your hairbrush. It, it, opens up these senses in you and you don't know as a kid that these senses shouldn't be opened, you know, or, you know, made to happen at that time in your life.
So what I, you know, I hear about people committing suicide because of this and, you know, particularly men, particularly boys, because, you know, a lot of boys were highly sexualized because of their abuse. Then, you know, going back in their mind and thinking, well, I didn't stop this person or I might've enjoyed it.
And then as a, as an adult, beating [00:39:00] themselves up yet and then never getting to a point in their life where they finally realized that it's not your fault. And I talk about that. It is not your fault. And one of the biggest things in my book is. Let's get this clear right from the start. You were not at fault.
And as soon as you start taking that on, which a lot of us takes a lot of time to, to do and education is key to want to working out why you weren't at fault. And this is how I've got to the place where I have, because I've continued to look into it and I've continued to work out as I said, whether it's Dr.
Phil, psychologists, watching shows, just reading, going over my own situation and working out that that, well, that was a lie. You know and that did not happen that way because I have a really good memory and that humiliation, those words that were said to me made me know that this person knew what they were doing when I didn't, you know, and I've also just recently Since I was on [00:40:00] Braveheart's website, one of my friends from, that I went to high school with down in Sydney, she read my post and even though I don't name my abuser, she guessed who it was because she saw abuse happen when I was 14 and this person did it in front of her in, you know, I won't say what it was but they did it in front of her and she's like, what the hell is that?
Because that stuff wasn't happening in her house. And apparently like, I don't, I don't remember this particular bit but I got really angry, embarrassed and yelled at him. And then that makes me go, well, where was my supposed to protect her? Where were these people who were living in the same house as me?
If this person was still abusing me up until the age of 14 in a different way and people were seeing it.
Kristi: Yeah, well, your abuser was obviously very brazen in their abuse because they'd got away with it for so long, you know, and yeah That's the thing they get brazen because they know that no one's gonna speak up against them And in fact,
Deb: it's like
Kristi: yeah,
Deb: go [00:41:00] on.
Sorry. I was gonna say it's like letting a serial killer off Yeah. They're just going to keep doing it. They, they know they can get away with it. They're enjoying what they're doing and, you know, they think that, well, I'm not getting punished. So, and, and one of the things that, you know, and I'm doing some participating in some research studies and stuff at the moment, which is trying to pass, you know, pass it forward all the knowledge and stuff that happened to me from a lived experience, which a lot more.
People is taking on board listening. Finally, they're finally listening. Yeah. Yeah.
Kristi: So you're so, so you were talking about how your abuser was getting really brazen and that you're doing lived experience research and stuff and you're passing forward your story.
But yeah. It, it's, it's really important, I think, when the more we tell our stories, the less power they have over us. Yeah. You know, the more we, the more we share, even when we're, when we feel [00:42:00] shame and when we feel embarrassment and when we feel humiliation, the minute we share that and we don't, it loses power every time.
Deb: Yeah. It really does. The more I've spoken up, the more I know how prevalent, you know, this, this is everywhere. Whether it's been, you know, me doing a brave hearts day in my local community where I raised money and put myself out there in my local paper saying, I'm a survivor. I'm going to be there on this day if anyone wants to come and see me, or if you just want to learn about child abuse prevention, come on down.
I've just spoken at Morton Bay says no to violence and I opened up the dialogue of intrafamilial abuse being a form of domestic violence. It is. Well, it is. It's the home and it's, you know, abuse. So it's violence. And, but it's something that we don't talk about. And you know, I spoke in front of 500 people, including police and politicians and, and it was really hard, but my confidence kicks in when I talk about this because I'm so passionate [00:43:00] about it and you'd never get me up there.
Yeah. I'm so passionate, but I'm also still that traumatized person who doubts herself or, you know, when, when people, you know, don't like if I reach out to an organization and say, Hey, I'm here, use me, I'm, I'm willing. And then they don't get back to me. That's really frustrating. I know I'm only a little fish in a big pond, but I've got so much to contribute.
And yeah, you know, this is just the start of my journey. And well, you can
Kristi: give back to this. You can give back where you didn't have that. You might change someone's life. You might try and change someone's experience. You might just give that mom or that dad or that family member who, you know, Has a child in their care that they, they might not have given the right response to, you might give them the confidence to say, no, actually, this isn't okay.
I'm going to go on, do something about it, you know, because I'm sure [00:44:00] I know. So, you know, we, if we, your experience, my, sadly, your experience isn't you're in a club, you're in a club. You never asked to be in really, but your experience isn't isn't. You know, you're not the only one out there that has had this kind of experience.
I'm sure what you'll find in your advocacy work is you'll find survivors with similar stories to yours. And they'll come out from everywhere once they hear you speak. And, and they'll be like, that happened to me. And this is what happened. And, and, you know, and it's just, it's not fair. None of it is fair, but.
What we do with that, what we do with it is what we take the power back when we, when we talk about it, we take it back and we take it away from where it was.
Deb: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I just wrote a blog called I, am I the exception or the rule? And I'm certainly not the exception. And with the fact of, you know, you've got statistics.
But how accurate could those statistics [00:45:00] be? Because nobody got my statistics when I was a little girl because it was covered up. And there's so many people who, as I said, talking about this stuff, writing about it. My husband talks to people at job sites now because he's proud of what I'm doing. And they go, Oh yeah.
I wanna get that book because, or I, I wanna get that book from my family member or my friend, you know? So it does, it does make me just go, I already knew. I already knew because of my close people near me that it had, had, it happened to them. But it's just amazing how many people are out there and, and it looks, a lot of people are still not ready to deal with it.
And I nos i's realize that that's, yeah, exactly. That's their journey. The more normal we make speaking about this, the more we share posts about this. Although, you know, and even the trigger warning trigger warnings, I struggle with that because I do know suicide child abuse do need a trigger warning, but I feel like the people who need to educate themselves and hear about this stuff, [00:46:00] not potentially suicide, but more child abuse.
They're not looking at it because there's a trigger warning. So they're not learning and they're not getting that knowledge to. To realize, well, you know, as I said, all these things that we. Feel about ourselves and put on ourselves during our life, which we shouldn't because there's a trigger warning.
They're not going to look at it.
Kristi: Well, yeah, some, some people in, in society or in communities that they don't want to hear about the bad stuff. So they'll just avoid all bad stuff, you know, and I'm sad. Yeah. Those are the head in the sands, emus or whatever.
Deb: Yeah.
Kristi: Ostriches, but you know, I think a lot more people are willing to To listen and read and to hear this stuff now.
I mean, when I started in my job and I was interviewing kids and I was talking about this stuff back then, a lot more parents and people were like, and I'm talking 14, 13 years ago, a lot more people were like, no, like, no, you're no, that can't be right. No. And that would be [00:47:00] like, no, they were, you know, really dismissive of what I was trying to share.
But once you know this stuff, you can't unknow it and I know it changes your world. So I know a lot of people want to keep those blinkers on, but if they're listening to this podcast, they're not those people.
Deb: I've also had people like even the local chemists say, you know, I'm selling my book at a few local places, bookstores, the news agent.
And they've looked at my name and gone on, Deb Aldrick, are you the one who write that book? It's at the news agent. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And then like. Can anyone read it? Or do you have to have had something happen to you? I said, no, I want everyone to educate themselves, to know what red flags to look out for, to see behaviors in adult survivors.
And then, you know, I even wrote a blog just recently because somebody said to me when I told them what my book was about, which is also like, I go you know, when I say what my book's about, I'm like childhood trauma. And then if they're interested, I'll tell them a bit more. But somebody said to me, but you look so normal.
Kristi: And,
Deb: and [00:48:00] look, she's very,
Kristi: very,
Deb: very innocent and naive and just a lovely, lovely person. I know we need
Kristi: to change those stigmas
Deb: and those. But it did get me thinking, well, what should we look like? And, you know, and, and if, if say you're in a road rage situation, which a lot of child abuse survivors will have these overreactions to things, you know, whether it's, it's hurt that somebody said to them or whether it's, Oh, this guy just cut in front of me.
Oh my God, I'm going to lose my shit, you know. If you got out of the car and this person say had an A for abused on their forehead, how would you deal with them? Would you look at him and go, mate, I'm so sorry. Can we just work this out calmly? I'm so sorry. What happened to you? Would we have a different reaction?
That guy down the pub getting smashed every weekend. Yeah. If you saw that A, if you went and you went, oh, I understand now. Yeah. How can I help you? I know, we dunno. We dunno what we're interacting. No, but [00:49:00] her saying that to me, it is just as I said, all these questions or things put people put to me, make me go, oh, I'm gonna write about that.
'cause that is an important point and people need to understand these things. Yeah. Most of my book was about things that I'd seen or, you know. Whatever, just day to day things that I've gone, okay, and I've got 35 chapters in my book. They're quite small and it's an, it's not a light read, but it's an easy read because, you know, I just, I write it in very conversational tone that anybody can understand.
Well,
Kristi: that's a good segue to finding, telling us about how people can get your book. So, I know that you said, so circling the wagon wagons so where can they get it from?
Deb: So it is available. I, I, I've self published. So there's, there's a, there's a platform called Ingram sparks and they, what they do is you put your book in to them, you, you get it all made up, which I did.
I did the cover. I picked everything on my book. I wanted it to look a certain way. And [00:50:00] anyway, so Ingram sparks and sells it to online retailers all over the world. People are like Amazon, how they just Oh, so they can get it on Amazon or, yeah, so Amazon. Amazon Booktopia yep. Angus and Robinson, Barnes and Noble.
But one of the downfalls is these online retailers can sell it for whatever they want to make their extra profit. So what I've actually found recently, and I'm really quite annoyed about it, is it's on for over $45 and most people. Don't want to buy that. So what I've done is I've got my dragonflightadvocacy.
com. au, which is my website and I've now got an online store to sell it to anybody for 35 delivered in Australia. So if anybody's in whatever state in Australia, it's 35, there's no extra for delivery. And. I don't make a lot of money on this book, but that's not what I did it for. Yeah. I cover my costs and a little tiny bit more.
But I want this message to get out to people, you know, [00:51:00] people can buy it cheap as an ebook on Amazon, it's under 20, whatever they Kindle, whatever that they can read it on that. But one of the reasons I like people to have my paperback is because at the back I've put about five or six lined blank pages.
And why I did that is because when I was writing my book, I knew how hard I'd struggled to verbalize all of the, you know, issues and trauma and everything that I dealt with to my supposed to protect all my life because we'd get into this conversation and they'd say something really ignorant or dismissive and then I'd lose my shit and we'd get nowhere with it.
So I put these lined pages at the end of my book so that if a survivor reads my book and wants to tell their story at the end of it, if they give it to their caregiver, their friend, family member, whoever it is, They can read my book and understand everything that they need to know about what somebody goes through.
[00:52:00] And then they can read the survivor's story at the end. So hopefully that's amazing. Yeah. So hopefully they're at a point in their life by the time they've read it to go, okay, And, and, and, you know, that's, that's why I like the paperback if somebody wants to do that.
Kristi: Yeah. That's so amazing, Deb. I, I'm, you know, I'm really proud of you for, for everything that you've done for sharing that in that I'm really proud of you.
I know that it's, thank you. It's not an easy thing to do. It's not an easy thing to First of all, admit what's happened or to share what's happened, but also to do something as powerful as write a book. I know it's not an easy journey cause I wrote one too and self published myself. And so I know how hard that is.
And and also that in every part of this process, you're considering how to help others.
Deb: So one of the things I wanted to ask you to from your standpoint and I've, I've listened to about eight episodes. Oh, wow. I've been, I've been listening. When you're in the police and [00:53:00] dealing with all, you know, the child abuse stuff, did you have at times?
Did you know that something was going on in the family, but people didn't press charges?
Kristi: Yes.
Deb: Or was it at a stage where they had to? Short answer, yes. Short
Kristi: answer is yes. There was many, many times when I interviewed children where I I was sure that there was something going on, but it's not about pressing charges as much as pressing charges.
And a lot, I think maybe I have to do a podcast on how, how child abuse investigations happen and what the process is, because a lot of people don't realize unless there's physical evidence or unless there's evidence that, that like a video or something of the abuse, the child has to say something, otherwise nothing.
We can't, the police cannot go off of hunches or, or feelings, right? So they need, they need evidence. And the evidence, the first, in the first case, the evidence is a child saying this person did this to me. And if a child doesn't speak [00:54:00] up, which is very likely, even if police had intervened at your age, you know, at some stage in your childhood, because of the fact that no one was protecting you or no one gave you that support, you might not have even said anything.
Because you would have been trying to keep it the piece. So, but, in saying that you know, Once a child says something, then obviously the investigation starts. Until the child says something, nothing happens. So when I was putting that post on LinkedIn, it was like, you do realize that children literally only have one chance with police.
And then you know, mind you, I've had kids come back. And I interviewed children more multiple times. Usually I would say because I would do protective behaviors and body safety with them afterwards, their situations changed. So their safety changed. And then they would say to their carer or their caregiver, I want to talk to, I want to tell them about it now.
And so then they would come back and then we'd do the interview again. And I have done that more than once, but in most cases, [00:55:00] if the child doesn't speak up, I would get hunches and feelings, especially, and then I would be, it would break my heart.
Deb: I just wondered whether some of the mothers or the women didn't want it to go any further too.
So at times, they usually threw up,
Kristi: yeah, they usually threw up walls and made it hard to interview. And they usually would you could tell when a child had been especially because they're not allowed in the interview room with the child. So it's right. So I don't know if you know this, I don't know, I don't in Western Australia, this is how it happens.
I'm not sure how it happens everywhere else, but the child is interviewed one on one with the interviewer. It's recorded. Video recorded. There's the parent or the caregiver sits out in the waiting room and the child is allowed to have breaks whenever they want to. And then they'll come out and talk to the mom or the dad or whoever's there with the child at the time.
But yeah, you could tell when, when parents were trying to control their [00:56:00] children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Deb: Somebody getting a bit antsy out in the waiting room or whatever. How long is it going to be? How long is it going to be? What did
Kristi: they say? Did they
Deb: say
Kristi: anything? Or they would be like, Oh, you know, I've got lots to do today.
Like they would be really dismissive of the process and they will, it's just,
Deb: yeah, it's just terrible. Isn't it? Like, it's really terrible. Most important person. And yeah. You know, I, I was over the top, if anything, with my kids, you know, sleepovers, friends who their parents were, who their step parents were, who this, you know, friends, older brothers or siblings were you know, and it does, and you're
Kristi: allowed
Deb: to, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I speak about too, that, you know, that might've changed my kids in a way, you know, because this, this stuff just flows on down, whether it, In whichever way it flows down, it's going to flow down. And you know, sometimes, and I've heard this more recently, which just distresses me, but some parents feel that, well, I didn't get protected.
Why should I protect my child? And that is the most unheard [00:57:00] of thing that I, yeah, I know. And my psychologist told me that. That's a very,
Kristi: that's a traumatic answer if I ever heard it.
Deb: Yeah. Yeah. They're like
Kristi: literally blaming their children for
Deb: them. And then. That continues on and I speak about all the impacts health wise, you know, the health system, the mental health system the government payments for all these people, you know, whether they're homeless, whether they're, you know, they're addictions.
And no one asked for it.
Kristi: When, when it comes down to it, no one asks for this.
Deb: No. And, and, you know, one person's choice to abuse a child has such huge ramifications, lifelong ramifications, and generational ramifications. Mm-Hmm. You know, it just flows on. And, you know, I think though,
Kristi: from, from my perspective, like, and I talk about this with my own parents, parent, one of my parents.
Yeah. You know, like. And it's my mom. So I'm happy to tell her I've talked about this with my mom because I didn't grow up [00:58:00] with my mom. I grew up with my dad, but I grew up with my dad because my mom had so much generational trauma and trauma from her own childhood that she wasn't able to parent.
Right. But my dad, he, he, although he had trauma, he had, he was older and he'd you know, suppressed at all. So he was able to function and stuff like that. But my mom, I've talked to her and, you know, we talk, we talk about, you know, stopping generational trauma and it stops with me. It stops with us. Yeah.
Like she, she didn't stop it. I think from her perspective, she sees it as we talk about it and I say it stops with me. My daughter is not going to be affected by this trauma. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. We can't always do that because we do, we do, we do put traumas on our kids. It's not, I think
Deb: it's kind of safety.
It's not safety. We try to put on our kids, you know, it's, it's, it's all those, Hey, and I heard, you know, you speaking about how your daughter now tells other people or people come to your daughter for resources when they need it. And that's [00:59:00] fantastic. And, you know, and, and that's, It's, you know, what I hope for other people who speak up that, and for myself, you know, I have had people come to me and tell me about a terrible situation that they're now stuck in that they had no idea and they don't know how to deal with this whole family dynamic anymore.
And how do I still see this person when they're protecting this other person who did something to my child, although I've lived my whole life with them and that's the, you know, I'd like to say. I think a lot of people, yeah, it's, it's fucked them. The mindfuck. Yeah. Thank you. It's, it's, it's how we all are.
Yeah. It's a
Kristi: mindfuck. But you know, at the end of the day, I think a lot of people struggle because when you cut out family or you leave a loved one because they've protected someone or that they're the one abusing or, you know, whatever reason it's going to create change and change is hard. Yeah. For everyone.
Yeah.
Deb: So it's gotta be hard. When you've got no, no self esteem and, and I've actually tried to help someone [01:00:00] really close to me about a year ago. I tried to get them away from their abuser and their bystander and they ended up turning against me because they couldn't deal with the situation they were in.
And I've got a chapter about it called stand by me and I tell people what you should be doing for these people. But the fact that she was so heavily trauma bonded to her bystander, so mentally ill because of her abuse. And this is a person who's not young and the thought of leaving was so much more distressing to them than staying in the hell that they live in every day.
It's just, there's trauma. Well, the hell they live in every
Kristi: day is what they know. The unknown is doing is leaving and going somewhere else and doing something else. And the unknown is scary from a lot of people. It's why they don't change their circumstances. Yeah. There's so, there's so much psychology.
No one could like, it's so much to unpack, but I really have loved our chat and I really love your book and everything that you've shared about it. So just share that website again. It's [01:01:00] dragonflightadvocacy. com. au.
Deb: Yeah. You have to put the AU on it. Cause there's another one. That's what I use. So yeah.
Dragonflyadvocacy. com. au. It's a free resource for people to look at my blogs as I said, teenagers, people who probably don't have the resources, they can buy an ebook and nobody will know about it. But I keep putting these blogs on whether they're poems that I've written or whatever. But, but particularly things that teach you a lesson about something about, you know, they sound amazing.
When I was a little girl, I didn't want to be seen. I didn't want to have any attention drawn to me stuff like that. But the books, yeah, the books for sale on there and and I'll, I'll send it straight out to anybody who wants. Yeah. I've just ordered some extra copies in as well. So yeah. And I'll put all of those links in the
Kristi: show notes.
I'll put all of the links in the show notes. So thank you. I'll find you and it will be directly.
Deb: And they, they can contact me and on, well, they can look at the, the, the side anonymously, but they can also contact me and there's a whole lot of links. To different like [01:02:00] Bravehearts Yeah. Support support 100, respect, support, all the support services are on there that, that they might need to click on.
Yeah. So, and, and I just, after I wrote the book, I just thought, well, how am I gonna get people if they wanna get in touch? So that's how, yeah, yeah,
Kristi: yeah. No, perfect. Perfect. And I, it sounds like the book would be the perfect book for anyone trying to understand. Not only themselves, if they've been through a similar experience or an experience like that, or for someone who's supporting someone who has been through that experience.
So it sounds like the perfect book and there's so much you can learn from Deb. Wow. We've nearly been talking. We've been talking over an hour, so we better, we better wrap it up. No, I guess you can have conversations like this and it can just keep going and we could be here all day. And I love that we have we have these conversations because we're both very passionate and it's such an important conversation.
So and now Deb, they can find you on LinkedIn if they need to find you. Have you got any other social media, if, if they need to? [01:03:00]
Deb: Yeah. I've got Dragonfly Advocacy on Facebook. There's a page and a group there. I think it's Dragonfly Advocacy three, the number three on Instagram. I'll
Kristi: put them on the, I'll put them on the show notes, but yeah, on Facebook and Instagram
Deb: and Instagram.
Yeah. Yeah. And you can, I think you can click on all those links from my website. I'm pretty sure they're all down the bottom of that. So if anybody wants to connect, absolutely. And I just need to say, so much for this platform. Thank you for letting me come on today. Because it's, you know, it's, it's so nice to have somebody, you know, you're saying you're proud of me.
It just, you know, it really, it's, it's really nice because I haven't had a lot of that. So, you know, just I am proud of you connecting with people and I'm proud of you for you doing what you're doing because, you know, we're both, you know, Along the same path to help other people and educate them and stop this crap from continuing, basically.
Yeah.
Kristi: Yeah. Let's, let's be the generation that stops all of this. Let's be the generation that, that stops our kids from having to deal [01:04:00] with this. And, and yeah, let's be the generation that stands up and protects kids. I agree. Absolutely. Thanks, Deb. Have a good rest of your day. Okay. Thank you. See you
later.
Kristi: Thank you for listening to this podcast episode. Education empowers children and empowers parents and education prevents abuse. That is why I'm here and that is why you are here. So thank you. If you want any further information or support, follow me on social media, either under Christy McVie or KAU social media accounts.
I'll put the links in the show notes. You can also purchase a signed copy of my book Operation Kids Safe via the [email protected]. Also, on my website is a free ebook titled 10 Tips to Keep Your Kids Safe from Abuse. and self paced courses for parents to help you in your journey of child abuse prevention.
Don't forget to join our free Facebook group called Operation [01:05:00] KidSafe Parenting Group. Please see the show notes for any extra information, links and help should you be looking for extra support. Thank you once again for giving a shit about preventing child sexual abuse. See you next time.
