S2: E7 - Knowing

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from CoolZone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people. You wouldn't be wrong to call monsters, but if Scooby-doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil, they're just some weird guy.

Hey guys, it's Andrea Gunning. Betrayal is now releasing episodes every single week about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything. Now, you can get access to Betrayal weekly, 100 ad-free and one week early with an IHeartTrue Crime Plus subscription available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Plus, you'll get access to other chart-topping true crime shows. You love, like There and Gone, South Street, Creating a con, the story of Bitcon, Paper Ghosts, Unrestorable, The Girlfriends and more.

Care while listening?

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is betrayal. Episode 7 Knowing.

That's it.

What's the fear?

She just doesn't get it. I feel like he's manipulating her to think that, like his time there is for him. He'll tell her God's working through me to spread the gospel and stuff, and I'm like, No, you're there because you're a pervert.

Yeah, so not taking any like ownership or accountability ever.

No.

In denial of his own sickness.

Yeah, and I just think that that denial is.

Dangerous?

So dangerous.

Yeah.

I mean, it's so valid. I mean, your fear and concern makes sense, and whatever you can do legally. But also just education-wise and awareness-wise, to stay aware and alert is needed to protect your kids.

Ashley's fears are justified. When I hear them, I start to go down a major rabbit hole. Will these men go back to re-offending? I'm assuming the system will eventually grant visitation of some kind, even if it's supervised. Will the children be safe?

He is a threat, a danger to everyone around him. Each day he is in the presence of what could be his next victim. A child walking to or from school, a child at the grocery store, or even a gas station. That thought haunts me to my very core, every moment of my life now.

Today, it's Ashley and Mandy and Aaron's family, but we're all living in communities with people. Looking at CSAM, do a quick internet search for child pornography and arrest. It's a sobering experience. I'm not an expert, I'm just someone who wants to root out a growing problem.

I'm a clinical psychologist with expertise in forensic psychology.

Dr. Bone has worked with many child sexual exploitation offenders. I asked about the correlation between consuming CSAM and pedophilia.

You could say that somebody who is consuming child pornography and masturbating to that, and acting on their sexual urges and trading that, or downloading it, that they could be classified as somebody who has pedophilic disorder.

When I met with Dr. Bone, he showed me the definition of a pedophilic disorder straight out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM. But the DSM does not speak to consumption of CSAM specifically, much of the general public assumes that those who watch CSAM are people with pedophilia. But the dialogue around the topic is nuanced, and it falls under both psychiatric and behavioral.

Thousands of the people who contacted us at Stop It Now have reported that. Their starting point was accessing adult pornography. And then, from there, their online behavior and their sexual behavior escalated, and they crossed those thresholds and boundaries into abusive behavior involving children. There's also some research about the nature of adult pornography, which focused upon the way in which it was described. So, rather than its content, the language that was used to describe it. On adult sites, you know, very common terminology might be for teenagers, or might be about kind of incest-themed pornography or voyeurism, and so forth.

What was once considered taboo incest pornography step fantasy school pornography is now readily available and it's free.

The availability of pornography feels like it's kind of turned the dial a little bit within society. About kind of where the boundary lies between positive and healthy eroticism. And what I think most of us would view as harmful and concerning legal adult pornography. But also there's something about that boundary becoming much more porous, and it's that that then means that some people's decision-making and they're responsible for it. But it feels to them like an easier step to take because of the nature of the adult pornography that they might have been looking at already.

And when someone watches a lot of this kind of pornography, Tom says, wires can get crossed. School pornography says Plus 18. But most of the girls are styled to look like schoolgirls. And with repeated choices like this, interests can start to shift.

From my experience, facilitating groups with men who've offended in this way.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from CoolZone Media on iHeart Radio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people. You wouldn't be wrong to call monsters, but if Scooby-doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little hitlers of the suburbs. From the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up. In Turkey, the monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil.

For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene.

It uses terror to extort people.

However, one murder of a crime boss sparked a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the mob.

It sent the message that we can prosecute these people.

Discover how law enforcement and prosecutors took on the mafia and together brought them down.

These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government.

From Wolf Entertainment and iHeartRadio. This is law order, criminal justice system. The first two episodes drop on August 22nd, plus, did you know that you can listen to the episodes as they come out completely ad-free? Don't miss out subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel today.

Our iHeartRadio Music Festival presented by Capital One, coming back to Las Vegas.

Two nights September 20th and 21st.

On one stage stream live only on Hulu, a weekend full of superstar performances.

Never seen before collaborations.

And once in a lifetime, artist moments you'll have to see to believe.

On sale now at AXs.

Don't miss A$ap, Rocky, Big Sean, Camila Cabello.

Dogecat.

Dua Lipa Gwen Stefani posey hose here.

Keith Urban New kids on the block.

Paramore shaboosie.

The Black Crows The Weeknd.

Thomas Rhett.

Victoria Monet.

And more.

Get your tickets to be there now at AXS.

If a 15-year-old kid starts to look at pornography, I don't think that there's going to be this devolution of deviance or this evolution of deviance. I think that there's something else that's already in there, that then we have access to all the stuff that's out there that gets tripped. I think that, for the most part, that's more of an urban tale. My theory of pedophilia is that there is something biologically cross-wired that's going on either through development or genetics or evolution. Like something has occurred that would trick that person into wanting to consume that kind of pornography.

In Tom's experience, he has found that adult pornography has been the gateway for illegal content. But Tom isn't focused on the why, as much as the how. As in, how did you get to this place? And how do we stop it before it starts? And you might be surprised who stop it now? Asked for help.

Mindgeek are the owners of a number of kind of mainstream adult pornography sites.

MindGeek owns PornHub and YouPorn, among many other adult porn entities. The team at Lucy Faithful persuaded the biggest purveyor of pornography in the world to post a warning message when someone searches for video content with children.

That might be asking for young teenage pictures. A message would then appear on their screen to let them know that their search terms were both concerning. But also, crucially, to let them know that confidential help is available through us at Stop It Now and that people could be directed to our resources. So for us, that was a really attractive option because we're interested in preventing people offending at the earliest possible opportunity and ideally before they have committed an offence. We want to get the message out to this very hard to reach group of people that there is help available. And that there is a different decision that they can make to minimize the risk of children being harmed.

In a 2014 paper on the Treatment and Management of Child Pornography Use, the authors Michael Cito and Adekunle Ahmed classified different types of offenders who consume child sexual assault material, also known as CSAM. They found that, in some cases, CSAM use might be motivated by hypersexual or compulsive sexual behavior. In other cases, its use may be a result of reckless or impulsive behavior, or accidental access or curiosity. This suggests there are different types of CSAM offenders, a paraphilic group comprised of individuals who would meet the diagnosis of pedophilia.

There are lots of needs at play. And I think your audience would assume, rightly, that. A key need that's being met through the behaviour is a sexual need, one of sexual pleasure and arousal, but that's not the only need, in my view, there's almost always some emotional needs that are met through the behaviour. Examples of that might be that it might provide someone with a form of escapism. From the challenges of their day-to-day life, from the difficulties that they're experiencing. Perhaps those difficulties generate strong feelings for them of feeling inadequate in some way, or might be affecting their sense of self-worth.

In addition to being convicted on one count of sexual exploitation of a minor, Jason was also convicted of two counts of voyeurism for filming Avea. I asked Dr. Bone why someone would engage in that behaviour.

I think that there's an element, oftentimes of this sneakiness and getting away with and I'm checking you out. And that's kind of turning me on because you don't know that. I'm looking at you. And there's like some power there, and there's just like sneakiness.

The Utah prison system has a rehabilitation program that starts with one of the toughest things for an offender to accept accountability. It is a process of confronting all prior bad acts, even the ones nobody knows about.

So they get immunity, but they have to disclose everything that they've ever done and they get it out. And it takes 18 to 24 months, typically the treatment that Utah does.

So it's basically this immersive experience where they literally have to, like, confront everything they've done.

They have to write out their disclosure and then read it to their group. It's kind of a pure accountability component to it.

I don't know if that was or if people would be honest, but Dr. Bone sees a lot of value in the disclosure.

Part of any use disorder, so alcohol or porn use disorder. There's a tremendous amount of guilt and shame. But I think that divesting oneself of all this stuff in a forum where you know you're not going to get into trouble is probably very relieving for them.

The statistics are staggering. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are more than 29 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation annually. That is over a half a million reports weekly. When we started this series, we were appalled at what we perceived as short prison sentences. In Joel and Michael's case, they did not serve their full time.

The problem with child pornography is it is improper in our social mores, if not the law and regulations, to talk about it for what it is. I mean to say rape of a child, sodomy of a child, that's pretty gruesome. And yet it doesn't capture the impact of that offense on that child. And it's an impact that that child and their family will live with for the rest of their lives. You can't erase that experience from a child.

I asked John what he would like to see happen legislatively in Utah.

In Utah, it's not like the legislature is taking a pass on holding child offenders accountable. In fact, let me give you an example if a person videos themselves or has someone else film them in the act of sexually abusing a child. Those people directly involved in that crime face 25 years to life in prison. Minimum mandatory penalty in the Utah State prison under Utah law. That surpasses the possible sentence that you could get in federal court for that same offense.

When he says run-of-the-mill, he's referring to cases like Jason Joel and even the one his office prosecuted, Michael. Individuals who aren't necessarily hands-on or creating their own content, but these offenders are perpetuating the trade and production of CSAM by consuming the content. By doing so, they are sustaining and promoting an ever-growing market, which means more sexual exploitation, more child abuse.

You think about the world of child pornography and the waves of offenders that are sweeping through our courts across all the states. Do we say, well, there's so many, we can't do anything? Do? We need to think of a different way to handle these offenders because there are so many, or because some view it as an addiction problem? There's a huge difference between someone who gets caught in a cycle of addiction and abuse of drugs. And their life spirals out of control. And they make very poor decisions.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism and the lives of people. You wouldn't be wrong to call monsters, but if Scooby-doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little hitlers of the suburbs. From the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey, the monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil, they're just some weird guy.

For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene.

It uses terror to extort people.

However, one murder of a crime boss sparked a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the mob.

It sent the message that we can prosecute these people.

Discover how law enforcement and prosecutors took on the mafia and together brought them down.

These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government.

From Wolf Entertainment and iHeartRadio. This is law order, criminal justice system. The first two episodes drop on August 22nd, plus, did you know that you can listen to the episodes as they come out completely ad-free? Don't miss out subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel today.

I've been thinking about you, I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you.

Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything, like you always do one session 24 hours, bpm 110 120..

There's a growing body of research that perhaps the majority of partners in this situation would meet the diagnostic threshold for post-traumatic stress disorder. That the impact of police investigations has a huge detrimental effect, potentially on all aspects of their life, their employment, their family relationships, where they're living, and so forth. And that family members, too, share this fear of public exposure and stigma and shame by association. Because, in the majority of cases, there is no reason why other family members ought to have known or ought to have suspected this.

Absolutely, I'm sure Erin, Mandy and Ashley would all love to hear someone say it out loud on this side of the pond. I don't think any of them felt that they were treated as victims with PTSD.

This kind of metaphorical bomb going off in people's lives, and this moment of discovery. That the person who was their partner, their husband, their adult son, their father has been behaving in a way which, typically, they never imagined. In their wildest dreams, might be the truth of the matter, with devastating consequences for them. So there's a recognition in recent years, and we're keen to kind of promote that awareness about the impact and needs of these people in their own right.

I hope, in the spirit of recognizing those impacted, family, friends and children continue to be a focus of support.

I think I decided, that's what life is. It's just a series of fires that we just constantly put out.

Really, really hard lessons. I'm like, Okay, I have the school of life, I've taken enough lessons for a little while, I need a little break.

Yeah, I'm like, Universe, give me a week, like one week.

Right?

Just let everything go smooth.

Yeah.

I realized that I really don't let myself cry. Because I think in any moment in my life, when things have been really hard, I'm able to disassociate a little bit.

Yeah, and some of that dissociating is healthy in order to get through life and then in the right environments, with the right people. It's okay to let that down, because it's not about feeling sorry for yourself, it's about forming compassion and empathy and understanding.

But there is one area where Jessica noticed Ashley would get emotional when it came to Jason.

One of the things that came up for me was when he was in the bedroom. And kind of distancing himself from you for months. And you were just trying harder and harder and harder to get back into connection. That's where a lot of the sadness came up.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because I was like, what's wrong with me? Like, what am I lacking? That he doesn't want anything to do with? And so I did a lot of self-hate and really not good self-talk and things like that.

Yeah, and so when we're being rejected, instead of seeing a problem with what's going on in their world, we internalize it. And it can be called developmental shame. But then this inherent sense that something is wrong with me has actually been there our whole lives. And it shows up in our romantic bonds. When we don't get the love and exchange that we want, we make it about us.

And there was a lot going on in Jason's world that Ashley was internalizing. We heard about the drawings, missing work and sitting out of family parties.

How many years of disconnection was there?

It was kind of off and on. It started when I was eight months pregnant and he had an affair. That's when I really took those rose-colored glasses off and just started noticing things, but that's when I really started to see things changing. And then the last three years of our marriage, he was a completely different person.

So he was completely isolating himself like that.

I feel embarrassed, almost because I was giving it my all in those moments. I feel foolish, like I was on a whole different planet than he was. Nothing would have been enough.

I'm so happy that you can see that now. And the experience of giving, giving, giving, and self-abandoning is an adaptation that we learn to try to get into connection when we're terrified of losing connection to someone that we've been relying on.

Yeah.

And I think you're helping women by doing your own work. Looking at your fears, looking at your trauma, understanding your adaptive strategies, the denial system that you had in place, what you were really scared of facing. All of us, myself included. We stay in situations, sometimes longer or longer than our intuition is letting us. Because there's an underlying fear around losing our life or losing that attachment. That's very valid. So a lot of these women, while the behavior out there is obvious, the fear of facing ourselves and starting over and facing our fears. It takes a courageous person, and sometimes it takes a really horrific event to say, okay, enough is enough.

Yeah, I'm so proud of myself.

Yes, you should be.

On the next episode of Betrayal. A teacher in one of the country's best school districts is caught posing as a teenager online to solicit sexually explicit videos from an underage girl.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeart Radio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people. You wouldn't be wrong to call monsters, but if Scooby-doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask.

Hello and welcome to Haunting Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm Your Host Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying, but all of them will be totally true.