S3: E7 – One in Six

Back in 96, Atlanta was booming with excitement around hosting the Centennial Olympic Games. And then, a deranged zealot willing to kill for a cause lit a fuse that would change my life and so many others, forever, rippling out for generations.

In 2020, in a small California mountain town, five women disappeared. I found out what happened to all of them, except one. A woman known as Dia, whose estate is worth millions of dollars. I'm Lucy Sheriff. Over the past four years, I've spoken with Dia's family and friends, and I've discovered that everyone has a different version of events.

Well, Bowen, the Olympics are underway. It's useless to talk about it as a thing. that's happening in the future, when it's happening in the present. And what's happening now is our podcast, Two Guys, Five Rings, is a phenomenon. Two Guys, Five Rings, Matt Bowen and the Olympics.

This could be the craziest podcast pairing ever. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and Super Bowl champ, Marshawn Beast Mode Lynch are politicking.

What does politicking even mean? There's bridge and gaps with no politics.

Joined by their friend and agent, Doug Hendrickson, it's going to be a wild ride.

We can change the world podcast by podcast.

Listen to Politicking with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Politicking and start listening.

Welcome to, In Case You Missed It, with Christina Williams, the podcast that's your go-to source for women's hoops. From buzzer beaters to breaking news, I bring you the highlights, analysis, and expert insights you need to stay ahead of the game. The people have spoken and it's time to give the stories that matter most the spotlight. Listen to In Case You Missed It, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, in case you missed it, don't worry, I've got you covered.

On this episode of Betrayal, you're going to meet a survivor of male sexual assault. It's a Hollywood actor. many of us have an affinity for, Anthony Edwards. If you watched ER in the 1990s or early 2000s, then you might have known him as Dr. Mark Green.

Pure, unadulterated rage. Anger that I'd never felt before. I wanted to take out a full page ad in Variety and say, you know, Dr. Green and Goose was assaulted by this man and have a wanted picture of him.

I'm Andrea Gunning. This is Betrayal, Season 3, Episode 7.. One in six.

There's no one that relates to you. You hit YouTube or Google and, you know, you're searching self-help videos or stuff related to your trauma and you're scrolling. There's. there's not a lot of resources out there.

We found a resource that we thought Tyler should know about. It's called One in Six, an organization which helps male survivors through providing information and support resources. And the name denotes what research has shown, that one in six men have experienced sexual abuse or assault, whether in childhood or as adults. So we arranged a meeting with the heads of One in Six and Tyler. Stacey, Tyler's mom, was there too.

This is huge. You're going to find him in our Studio B.

We wanted to spend a day peeling back the layers of why it is so difficult for men of any age to seek help as victims of male sexual abuse and assault. Anthony Edwards is the chairman and national spokesperson for OneinSix.org.

I'm a professional pretender by trade. I've been an actor professionally since I was 16..

Anthony has spent his career in the spotlight, but it wasn't until he was 52 that he came out of the shadow of abuse to tell his story.

I was assaulted by my mentor, a man who had taught me a lot about theater and about art and was intimately involved with my love for acting. And, as a result of the betrayal, I lived most of my life in fear, because my experience of having been assaulted as a kid set me up for being afraid and not trusting in people, places or things.

Anthony is now a leading advocate for male sexual abuse survivors. One of the One in Six's co-founders also joined the discussion.

My name is David Lisak. I'm a clinical psychologist. I've spent my career working in the area of trauma and also violence. I've studied perpetrators and I've also studied primarily men who experienced child abuse. I have spent the last 30 some years working in applied areas, training, law enforcement and prosecutors.

We wanted to give Tyler the opportunity to connect with someone who truly knows what he is dealing with. So we asked Anthony to share more of his story with Tyler.

Men by nature minimize, deny, hide and isolate. And that's the tragic result of what happens to people who are assaulted or traumatized. as kids. And I learned to survive by hyper-focusing. I think probably the reason why I worked so young and so hard is because that was the way to survive.

When you were 52, what inspired you to start talking about this? What happened to you?

Pure, unadulterated rage, anger that I'd never felt before. The man who had been my perpetrator, been the perpetrator, we try not to say my, because he's not mine, he is a perpetrator, was back in the news 22 years before. I had had the experience, when I was 30 years old, of being a new father, and I had run into him on a plane. And I said, hey, what you did was wrong. What you did to us as kids was wrong.

So you almost turned that anger into purpose?

I luckily did. And I think a lot of survivors don't. We've learned a lot from the Me Too movement. And there's a lot of women that were hurt and abused, and they need to get together and get angry and shout out. My experience, or experience at One in Six, is that a lot of men are already really angry and they're already acting out.

I asked Anthony how the trauma of his sexual abuse impacted important relationships.

The same year that I disclosed, the same year that my marriage ended. The problems within that relationship were directly affected by my inability to be truthful and honest with myself and what my experiences were. So you'll see that when you talk to men in their 50s. They're at this crisis of looking at this because a lot of their life has exploded. The result of unprocessed trauma will definitely manifest itself in unhealthy relationships.

Tyler, what parts of Anthony's story resonate with you?

A lot of it. Having to overachieve and just be super successful in life. Having that desire to want to do something bigger than myself and help others. because of what I've been through and use my story for good. At the end of the day, we've gone through the same thing.

I know you guys spoke a little bit in the green room. Can you give us a little bit, to the extent that you're comfortable? What happened to you?

Yeah, so I was abused by my stepfather growing up. Started around age 9 to 10, all the way up until right before I turned 16.. He had assaulted one of my friends. Growing up as a kid, going through it, I didn't know that. It was terrible, thinking I was all alone.

You learn so much, unfortunately, when you start uncovering these rocks. But The Predator, in my case, very much worked with a group. We had a group of boys that were all into theater. We were his special group. So the grooming aspect, which you realize that so much of this is about control and power and not, I mean, sex, yes.

And then for me, I was always trying to bring friends over as much as I could, because it gave me a sense of safety. I thought this was only happening to me, that he had something for me. I don't know why, necessarily. I didn't think it was him. It was just he had something for me.

Psychologist David Lesak heard something that didn't sit right with him.

I sniff a little guilt.

Well, yeah, because you got like some friends who he had done stuff to.

But who did it to them, to your friends?

It was my stepdad at the time. Don't call him that no more.

Yeah. I really don't want you to walk around with that guilt, because it ain't yours. It's not your fault.

I'd say that's probably like the worst thing of it all to this day now, because I like worked on what my problems were, but not, I guess, that problem, because I thought it more so had to do with just feeling bad for those people, but more so it's feeling bad for how I went about it.

Yeah, that kept me silent for a long time, because my best friend, Scott, was the one who was repeatedly raped.

Tyler's willingness to share his story at his young age really is remarkable. Anthony understands the significance, and so does David. He isn't only an expert on child abuse and perpetrators, he's also a survivor.

I disclosed for the first time when I was in my 30s. I think the way in which the abuse that I suffered affected my relationships primarily was sort of a deep lack of trust. I was abused by somebody who was living in our house. He was a boarder in order to help cover the rent. We were pretty poor.

Get out of that hallway?

Yeah, to get out of that hallway. Exactly. Yeah.

That moment affected everyone in the room. It was heartbreaking. Not only the awful abuse David suffered, but the years it took for him to process and work through the trauma. Anthony pointed out that Tyler was changing the pattern.

You're setting an example, not of success, that it's all gone and done and we got rid of it. But the shame is less. You're not going to carry that. You're not going to carry what's not yours. You know, this was done to you, not because of you.

Coming up, Dr. David Leasack explains how Tyler's experience was like living in a war zone.

It started with a backpack at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. A backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks. Two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar.

I saw, as soon as I turned the corner, basically someone bleeding out.

The victims of these brutal attacks were left to pick up the pieces, forced to explore the gray areas between right and wrong, life and death. Their once ordinary lives, and mine, changed forever.

It kind of gave me a feeling of a pending doom.

And all the while, our country found itself facing down a long and ugly reckoning with a growing threat. Far-right, homegrown, religious terrorism. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the summer of 2020, in the small mountain town of Idlewild, California, five women disappeared in the span of just a few months. Eventually, I found out what happened to the women. All except one. A woman named Lydia Abrams, known as Dia. Her friends and family ran through endless theories.

This could be the craziest podcast pairing ever. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and Super Bowl champ, Marshawn Beastmode Lynch, are politicking.

What does politicking even mean? There's bridge and gaps with no politics.

Joined by their friend and agent, Doug Hendrickson, it's going to be a wild ride.

We can change the world podcast by podcast. Are you talking about Apple?

Listen to Politicking with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search politicking and start listening.

We are sitting with Stacey and Tyler as they speak with actor Anthony Edwards and clinical psychologist, Dr. David Lysak. Here's Anthony.

To this day, I believe the perpetrator, in my experience, believed that he was doing it, because that's what I needed, what I wanted, because there was a lack of that role model in my life. I didn't have a father figure. He was going to be the father figure.

Yeah, no, it's hard to find joy in things, really. Like, I would say I've worked past my depression and I've worked on myself. I've come very far. But it's hard to really find something I enjoy. Like, I love watching a movie with my mom or my girlfriend.

It's interesting that you both felt this need to overachieve in your own ways. Where do you think that comes from?

In my head, I, like, picture where I want my life to be. And, like, I just sometimes tell myself, I know I'll be happy when I have that dream job and I have that wife that loves me and that family that I wanted and that house that's paid off and that maybe not sports car, but decent car. I'm not looking for anything crazy, but still, that's what I want.

But the irony, of course, is that you're using all of these conditions to do it. I use techniques that I learned, which were conditional. Oh, if I do this, if I get this role, then that will take care of it. If I get this, I'll leave it. If I find the right person, then I will have the perfect family.

Yeah, I live a lot in, like, what he was saying. You constantly tell yourself, oh, I'll be happy when I get this. Or, as I'm approaching this, I'll be happy. And yeah, I'll frequently say that, but I've been trying to be better about it.

Anthony, as a child, to learn that love is conditional, that's a really scary thing. Was it until you became a parent, did you unlock this unconditional love?

It was directly related to being a parent. That's the miracle. Like, I found the strength to confront this, man. When you're a parent and you experience that unconditional love, it changes you.

With the stigma and the fact that men typically don't disclose until much later in life, could the number be actually.

We know it is different. That's just what's... I mean, David could speak to that.

It's a notoriously difficult area to study, because there's actually a couple studies that have shown that even when you have documentary evidence that a man was sexually abused as a child and you then ask them later in life if they were ever sexually abused, the vast majority of those men will deny it. Some have lost the memory. Most probably are just not willing to respond. So as a researcher, I conducted many studies and found about one in six men were acknowledging that they had had some kind of experience that meets the definition of sexual abuse. And I'm absolutely certain that it is only some fraction of the actual number.

The conversation about denial sparked a thought from Tyler's mom, Stacy. You even said, had it not been for the discovery of the cameras in our home, he intended to take it to his grave. I mean, that was just his thought.

I mean, the plan was to get the hell out. I kept telling myself, next year it'll stop because I'll be older. I'll look more like a man.

You know, it's important to understand that the intensity of Tyler's need for purpose, it's the same as soldiers coming back from war. The experience in a war zone is so intense. You're frightened all the time. You see death and it actually affects your brain. Your brain gets kind of reset to live on edge and every second, every moment is charged with, you know, what, if, what, if, what, if, and what do I have to do to survive this?

Mm-hmm.

And it really recalibrates your brain. And it takes really a long time to sort of recalibrate again. So that, yes, you could be in a situation where you are once again in that kind of a, you know, danger, but most of life isn't that way. It just takes a while to get to a point where your nervous system and your brain are kind of just a little bit more quiet. It's okay to just have a quiet day.

Stacey was sharing something with me this morning about one of her concerns for you. Do you want to share a little bit? A huge concern for me is when I start to feel that something's not okay with you. You're kind of quieter or things like that. And you tell me that you're okay.

You're bringing up just a really important part of all this too. Everybody's affected by this event. These traumatic events. Everybody who loves and cares about these individuals is affected. And in the same way that you have to give Tyler space for his change, he also has to, and you have to take the space for yourself, as a parent, to process what it is.

It's worthwhile to remember from time to time that there's another part of the equation here. And that is that both of you were groomed. I've spent a lot of my career studying predators. And grooming is an integral part of these predations. And it's not just the direct victim who's groomed.

Yeah.

Everybody can be groomed. Everybody. What grooming is, is taking human trust and perverting it. It's almost impossible to detect it.

You typically hear from men that are much older than Tyler. Can you talk about the impact of a conversation that's starting with a 19-year-old on this public of a platform? What does that do to the overall conversation?

Well, Tyler, let me turn a question to you.

All right.

Let's imagine that there's a 15-year-old boy who's in a situation like you were in. What would you say to him?

Probably tell him to listen to the podcast.

Good start.

I don't know. I'd probably tell him it might seem like the end of the world, but it's not. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you it's going to be easy. But just like anything, you find ways to overcome it, and it'll happen. It's possible.

And 1in6.

You can find not only therapists, you can find support groups, you can find peer support groups, you can find other survivors. What we are really focused on here is to confront and challenge the stigma that silences men, so that young men like Tyler here, who has the guts to come forward, we appreciate what you're doing, and we don't want you to be alone.

Like what he was saying, men definitely minimize. Because I was talking to one of my buddies a while back, and he was talking about how he had lost his virginity at like 12.. And I was like, yeah, no, that's sexual assault, dude.

Well, that's what you're doing, man. You're naming it, and you're changing it. You're changing the world. But those simple conversations, that's what I also like to say, too, is you don't have to be on a podcast to effect. These are the normalizing conversation, and that's where the change happens.

Coming up, we ask Anthony and Dr. Lysak how we can approach children who are holding back. what has happened to them.

It started with a backpack at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, a backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks, two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar.

I saw, as soon as I turned the corner, basically someone bleeding out.

The victims of these brutal attacks were left to pick up the pieces, forced to explore the gray areas between right and wrong, life and death. Their once ordinary lives, and mine, changed forever.

It kind of gave me a feeling of pending doom.

And all the while, our country found itself facing down a long and ugly reckoning with a growing threat, far-right, homegrown religious terrorism. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the summer of 2020, in the small mountain town of Idlewild, California, five women disappeared in the span of just a few months. Eventually, I found out what happened to the women, all except one, a woman named Lydia Abrams, known as Dia. Her friends and family ran through endless theories. Was she hurt, hiking? Did she run away?

This could be the craziest podcast pairing ever. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and Super Bowl champ, Marshawn Beastmode Lynch, are politicking.

What does politicking even mean? There's bridge and gaps. With no politics.

Joined by their friend and agent, Doug Hendrickson, it's going to be a wild ride.

We can change the world podcast by podcast.

Listen to Politicking with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Politicking and start listening.

As we continue our conversation with Stacey Tyler, Anthony Edwards, and clinical psychologist, Dr. David Lesak, we wanted to hear their advice on how to approach children who are afraid to share their abuse. How do we help them feel safe enough to disclose?

It's a question that comes up all the time. How do we stop this from happening to kids? We normalize the conversation. We take the power of the stigma out of this by doing exactly what we're doing here today, so that that can role model for people to do it privately and quietly. It's not about me going out and being public.

I don't see how we can absolutely come up with a plan. Here's a plan or here are the rules, right? Follow these rules and it'll never happen in your family or never happen to your kids. But it's being willing to talk about this.

There are a couple of big things that we could jump at right away right now, and that's institutional protection. You shouldn't have a place where, you know, unvetered adults can go and spend three days in the woods with children. That's just not okay. And we accept these things because we're accepting institutional norms that need to be looked at, and institutions need to be held accountable. Especially when they serve children.

Saying it out loud to a safe and trusted person is the beginning of a new chapter.

Literally that moment when they had that first conversation, when they said, you know, something happened to me when I was a kid and someone listened, and they were heard and they weren't.

hurt.

That's all we're looking for, those moments, because that's the beginning of recovery. And now we want to do is start people on their journey, because everybody recovers differently. Isolation is the killer. No one gets out of this alone.

And finally, what advice do Anthony and Dr. Lisak have for Tyler?

It's the beginning of a journey that's a good one. It gets better. It's worth it. It takes some time, you know, and that's what you're going to be able to share as a 19-year-old that we couldn't share as old guys.

And there's one other thing. I want to make sure you understand this part. In all this time that it's going to take, that we're telling you to really heal, you know, it's an ongoing process, but you know, it deepens you, really does deepen you. You go through this process that you have already started. You're building yourself, you know, not your physical self, but who you are.

Well, we just want to say that we appreciate you doing this for us. Thank you. This was huge.

Back in 96, Atlanta was booming with excitement around hosting the Centennial Olympic Games. And then a deranged zealot willing to kill for a cause lit a fuse that would change my life and so many others forever. Rippling out for generations.

In 2020, in a small California mountain town, five women disappeared. I found out what happened to all of them, except one. A woman known as Dia, whose estate is worth millions of dollars. I'm Lucy Sheriff. Over the past four years, I've spoken with Dia's family and friends, and I've discovered that everyone has a different version of events.

This could be the craziest podcast pairing ever. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and Super Bowl champ, Marshawn Beast Mode Lynch, are politickin'.

What does politickin' even mean? There's bridge and gaps. With no politics.

Joined by their friend and agent, Doug Hendrickson, it's going to be a wild ride.

We can change the world, podcast by podcast.

Listen to Politickin' with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Politickin' and start listening.

Welcome to, In Case You Missed It, with Christina Williams, the podcast that's your go-to source for women's hoops. From buzzer beaters to breaking news, I bring you the highlights, analysis, and expert insights you need to stay ahead of the game.