TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: It's not too sunny. Yeah, we're good, but I did get enough of it.

CLIENT: I don't even know where to start. So (pause) so Friday morning, Cricket (ph) e-mails a bunch of her friends and says, "Emmett (ph) raped me Wednesday night." And he stayed with a friend Thursday night, came over Friday morning to allegedly work things out and apologize, and instead just wanted to grab his stuff. And when Cricket asked him why – because at that point, she was still trying to make that relationship work.

THERAPIST: Did you say – is that the –

CLIENT: Emmett.

THERAPIST: Emmett?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Raped her on Wednesday night?

CLIENT: Yep. And she –

THERAPIST: Isn't she mad at you for (inaudible at 00:01:16) her background?

CLIENT: Yep.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: So Wednesday morning, she had told me about some stuff Emmett had done the previous three weeks that she had described as cheating on her. Like, he violated a bunch of relationship agreements, negations, and very high-risk sexual behavior. Yeah. Some of his friends started sending her harassing e-mails and text messages, and so Wednesday morning, I told her, "You know you really should consider whether you want to be in this relationship anymore. He's not behaving well," and then Wednesday night raped her. And –

THERAPIST: Did they live together?

CLIENT: Yeah. So when he came over Friday morning to get his stuff and she asked him if they could talk – because she was still deep in denial and was hoping that, you know, maybe it was all a misunderstanding, and he had physically assaulted and battered her. [00:02:21]

THERAPIST: On Friday?

CLIENT: Yeah. So she called the police and got a restraining order against him, and then called a bunch of her friends. And so I left work early to go spend time with her because she just needed people she could trust around, and then I spent more time with her on Sunday. But it was really, really, really upsetting to me for a bunch of reasons. Like, obviously, like my friend was raped and battered, and that's terrible. I mean, by – and Emmett was someone I had considered a friend up until then. Like, I liked him a great deal and trusted him, and so that's all terrible, and there's, you know, all of the, you know, obviously secondary trauma associated with that. [00:03:12]

But then, like, just – and this feels so selfish of me, but the comparison of how her friends treated her and, kind of, rallied and supported her and closed ranks against Emmett versus, you know, back, like, 8 years ago when Phil raped me, like, no one believed me. People closed ranks against me. I had pretty much no one, and I think it's just it's really not fair, and I feel really jealous, and that's upsetting to me because, like, I shouldn't begrudge her support, right. Like (pause) – [00:04:13]

And then when Tom assaulted me a couple weeks ago, I didn't go public. Like, Cricket made this public, like, after she called her closest friends and we came over, she posted publicly about it on Facebook, and Twitter, and blogs, and, like, everyone knows and that's not something I can bring myself to do. I guess I just I don't have faith that my friends would actually believe me and/or – I don't know. I deeply fear people deciding that I'm the villain in this story, and a repeat of what happened when all of Phil's friends kicked me out of all my social groups. So, like, obviously people can't support me if I don't tell them, so, like, being jealous and unhappy doesn't even make any sense because I'm the one who chose to keep it all quiet. [00:05:25]

(pause)

THERAPIST: Well, the way you describe it in that sense, it's like you actually have no good options because it's going to blow up in your face if you do go public, but you can't feel, you know, upset and resentful if you don't. So (pause) yeah, I'm not hearing the good option there. [00:06:19]

CLIENT: I could, you know, accept the fact that I, you know, made a decision based on risk-factor population and live with the decision I made without being resentful. That would be an option.

THERAPIST: Except that it would be totally ignoring how terribly painful it was that you weren't supported. And the weight of that, sort of, reaching out to a [friend like that] (ph). [00:07:09]

CLIENT: Yeah. And I mean, it's not even true to say that I wasn't supported because the people that I reached out to did support me. I mean Jodie (ph) arranged a meeting for me about me confront him, and which was really terrible for her because she and Tom have been, you know, not just, you know, sex partners, but they've been dating and having, like, a real relationship for four and a half years. Like, it was really challenging for her and the whole situation.

THERAPIST: And that's when she really was there for you.

CLIENT: And she really was there for me, and she has been having hard conversations with Tom about his behavior in some of his other relationships, and, like, pushing him to, like, get into therapy to work on why he's so terrible about respecting people's boundaries, which can't be easy for her. [00:08:06]

But it's just the – it's so hard for me to ask for help, and, you know, I did mention what had happened in not a great deal of detail to, I don't know, maybe a dozen of my friends, and they all said, you know, "Oh, my gosh, that's terrible. Is there anything I can do?" But I couldn't think of anything they could do, and so they, you know, backed off. And, like, that's all – rationally I can understand, but it's, you know, I still feel jealous when I look at, you know, hundreds literally of people, you know, offering to come over and cook for Cricket, or help her change locks, or, you know, free legal services. I don't have that, and it's just – and also it's a different situation, right, because, like, not living with Tom, I don't need to deal with changing locks. I'm not going to press charges. There's no none of that to contend with, so, like, I just feel really unreasonable for feeling so resentful. (pause) [00:09:58]

And of course the other part of it is that Cricket's has been a volunteer at the Rape Crisis Center for, like, seven years. Everyone there knows her, and so when she called the hotline to, you know, get a case worker to help her sort out the legal and the housing stuff, they were all, like, deeply affected because she's their friend and coworker, and so they have been going above and beyond. And they also, like, ended up scheduling a group therapy session for all of them to process their feelings about it versus when I called in December when the situation with Brian was happening. You know, I wanted information on resources for abusers to learn how not to abuse, and I'm sure such things have to exist somewhere, but their response was basically that I'm a horrible person for trying to find resources for a perpetrator in that case, that I'm perpetuating rape culture, and why don't I care about his victim, or – [00:11:04]

THERAPIST: Aren't you (inaudible at 00:11:06).

CLIENT: Which was really –

THERAPIST: Or that, like, you weren't getting that response from them.

CLIENT: Yeah. And then I called after the incident with Tom, they said, you know, "All of their hotline staffers were busy," for me to leave my name and number and they would call me back, and they just never called back.

THERAPIST: Oh.

CLIENT: And so it was just so hard for me to sit there for hours on Friday, and then hours again on Sunday, and hear Cricket gushed about how wonderful the RCC has been to her because it just – I don't know. They weren't wonderful to me. In that situation, I couldn't really challenge her. Like, it would've been totally inappropriate for me to bring up my stuff with RCC. [00:12:00]

THERAPIST: I follow.

CLIENT: Hm?

THERAPIST: I follow.

CLIENT: So it was just really, really painful, and I should've, you know, should've tied some other close friend of hers to go and spend time with her instead of doing it myself. I should've, you know, kept myself safe, but (pause) –

THERAPIST: Okay. So I think (pause) one aspect of what's going on is maybe that you reject somewhat your own sense that you're not worthy of the support or sympathy, or not deserving of it to the people around you. [00:16:09]

Now I'm not saying you also haven't been hurt by people who really haven't been there for you in ways they should've been. Really, that's been the case as well. But I think this, sort of, adds to and complicates that. One example would be RCC not calling you back. That sucks. Definitely, they should – they fucked up, no question about it.

CLIENT: Nope.

THERAPIST: But I think that also feels quite personal.

CLIENT: Yeah, it did.

THERAPIST: In a way that in that case, it's kind of clear. I think, I assume it was not. You know, they didn't say, "Oh, this is who (ph)? Oh, yes, in that case we're all busy, and we'll call you back." Why don't you, you know I'm duking around with it now, but you know you know what I mean. [00:17:01]

And I think that is, you know, kind of, a production in which you feel very strongly I think, that you don't deserve, you know, being listened to and supported. And again, I'm not trying to let off the hook, you know, in that case, RCC for not calling you back. That's a fuck up on their part, you know. Like, it's one thing if, like, Ashley didn't call you back, but I think a fucking rape crisis center doesn't call you back, you know. [00:17:48]

(pause)

CLIENT: I'm glad to hear you say that. Dave's response was, you know, "Well, it's a volunteer organization, and volunteer organizations are, you know, notoriously incompetent at some things, and, you know, maybe you should just call them again," which, you know, is true and practical but also completely unhelpful. Dave's whole response to everything that's happened in the last month has been remarkably unhelpful, and even anti-helpful in cases. It's really upsetting.

THERAPIST: I imagine so. I'd imagine there are probably, again, they are both aspects of what we're talking about. [00:19:03]

CLIENT: His response when I told him what Tom had done was, "Well, I told you he was bad news, but did you listen? No, no, you didn't. I bet you're just going to go right back to him after this, too, won't you?" Yeah. That's his (crosstalk).

THERAPIST: That's horrible.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: That's really bad.

CLIENT: It was, like, all of the wrong things rolled into one sentence. (pause). And I know I told him that Cricket was, understandably in my sight, really upset, and anxious, and worried about the fact that – so when you have a restraining order against someone who used to live with you, they have to hire an off-duty police detail at time and a half to escort them to come pack up their shit and get it out of your house. [00:20:42]

THERAPIST: I see. So that would be Emmett having to do all that?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: So his appointment to do that is Thursday afternoon, and he wants to bring a bunch of his friends to help him pack, but the particular friends he wanted to bring are the friends who have been harassing Cricket, and me, and some other friends of ours on Facebook and social media for the last two weeks. And so Cricket freaked out because she saw this as an intimidation tactic. Like, you're going to make me bring police? Okay, fine. I'm going to bring my, you know, 6 foot 3, built like a linebacker friend who's been harassing me for two weeks.

And when I told Dave about this, Dave's response was, "She shouldn't feel intimidated because she has cops there, and the cops have guns. What can a 6 foot 3 Australian dude do against the cops with guns?" And then he said that it was really controlling and unethical of her to say that Emmett couldn't have friends help him pack, which was just like, I don't even know what planet Dave is coming from, but we yelled for, like, an hour about it before I was like, okay, we just we don't talk about Cricket anymore. I don't want to hear one word out of your mouth about this because it's really upsetting to me. But, like, I don't know why he's being such a jerk. [00:22:04]

(pause)

THERAPIST: I think – I just remember, like, our last (inaudible at 00:24:51) question I guess, I just find it incredible to handle on review, and on one hand, I imagine that what happened with Cricket has, kind of, exacerbated it that you're also bringing it up because in what I said, there was this suggestion that, like, actually you deserve more support and sympathy which you tend to doubt, I think. (pause) And it felt to you when, I guess, you know, the fact that it's confusing to you why he's been this way. What comes to mind? [00:26:08]

CLIENT: I'm actually thinking of Aaron Swartz. I think he committed suicide in January. I don't know if you know him.

THERAPIST: That's the – what's it called guy? Who founded something? Downloaded the data and got –

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah, or had, kind of, yeah. I think you had mentioned, like, how many people viewed him or something, but I can't –

CLIENT: I've never met him, but I was obviously aware of his legal case. I don't think anyone in my social circles could not be. And a number of my friends were close, personal friends with him, so when he killed himself, like, it was really, really awful for a lot of people. And, you know, of course with my history of suicidal ideations, and even a couple of attempts, like, just the fact that everyone was talking about suicide was really upsetting to me, and I was having a hard time with it. And just, like, kept insisting that, you know, Swartz was in the wrong, that his politics were ill-formed and sophomoric, that what he did was wrong, that the DA was correct to go after him, and that if he killed himself it was because, you know, he was, you know, pathetic and spineless, and not because of a pattern of bullying on the part of the prosecutors.

And, of course, you know, given my instinct to never trust police or prosecutors and assume that they always, you know, abuse their power and overreach unless given, you know, ample evidence of the contrary. This was, you know – [00:27:56]

But Dave just would not let it go until I agreed with him, and it became very personal and very charged that, like, I agree with him that Swartz was a bad person and that his death was no great loss. (pause) And most of the time when big issues like this develop, like, Dave and I are of the same opinion, and so it hasn't been a big deal, but, like, this is kind of the way in which he was arguing. Like his posture and his tone of voice, trying to convince me that, you know, Cricket was being unreasonable for not letting these people who have been harassing her and me, I might add, into her house was very much matched the way he acted around Aaron's death, and just – I don't know. [00:29:17]

I think his need to be right is short circuiting his ability to empathize with anyone. I just, I don't understand how anyone could see, you know, I'm going to bring a bunch of my friends who have been harassing you into your house as anything but an intimidation tactic. (pause) [00:31:46]

THERAPIST: What was his (inaudible at 00:31:52)?

CLIENT: I don't trust my own ability to judge people's characters anymore because this is three in the last six months, like, three people who I thought were, like, good people who I trusted and, you know, in some cases, cared about very deeply who have, you know, assaulted and abused their partners.

THERAPIST: This is Emmett and Brian?

CLIENT: Yep. I just – I don't know how to keep myself safe. It's frightening. [00:33:07]

THERAPIST: And this is very different. I'm not going to say anything about that this happened but that's pretty disconcerting what's going on with Dave as well. I mean, it's of a different order. Like, I wouldn't – but that you're surprised and disturbed by how he's been. (pause) I guess my point is I imagine that, sort of, shaken your confidence a little bit, too, or something like that. [00:34:09]

CLIENT: Yep.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: That makes me agree. (pause) It also makes me paranoid that, you know, maybe there's some glaring red flag with Ashley that I'm not seeing. And just to be clear, like, I have no reason to believe that other than, you know, mistrusting my ability to read red flags correctly. [00:35:53]

(pause)

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:36:42) hear, like, you've got something else going on there as well (pause) to do with things that you couldn't have known. I don't know how well you knew Emmett, and I know you didn't know Brian well, but Tom, you have a very clear sign. I mean, you did not actually throw the red flag there. I mean, I don't think you anticipated what happened, but if you had to pick somebody who would've done that. [00:37:35]

CLIENT: And in fact, like, after the last time we had consensual sex, I felt so icky that I had decided that I was going to break things off with Tom. So, like, I guess I just didn't move fast enough, but –

THERAPIST: Right. I guess where I'm headed with this is to wonder whether as scary as it is to feel like you're missing red flags, this may be better than, sort of, acknowledging how helpless you or anybody – doesn't necessarily prevent things like this from happening. I mean, again, like with Emmett, you haven't spoken, like, (inaudible at 00:38:47). I don't know. I don't know how well you can predict. Like, there are some things with, like, Tom where you kind of know and you've also been with Tom. But I mean in other cases, where the fact that you haven't been with that many, you know, you wouldn't be able to tell.

CLIENT: Yeah, and with Emmett, I've never hung out with him one-on-one, Cricket has always been there. And, you know, as more information comes out, it's become more and more clear that Cricket was really protecting him a lot. There were a lot of – there was a pattern of escalating bad behavior that she did not tell anyone about because she was protecting Emmett because she knew that if she told people, her friends would tell her to dump the motherfucker already. And, you know, I can't – [00:39:42]

THERAPIST: Does that mean she's out of the group, or –

CLIENT: Yeah, Dan's out of the group.

THERAPIST: Dan's out (inaudible at 00:39:46).

CLIENT: I mean, just being clear, I'm not blaming or judging her for not, but, you know, there really was no way the rest of us could have seen Emmett's behavior because he was really charming to people he wasn't intimate with.

THERAPIST: Right. Well, and maybe he was. Yeah.

CLIENT: I know. But with Brian, like, there's so much. I've known him for 12 years, but he did have questionable behavior with previous partners of his going back, like, six, seven years. Like at one point, I was concerned enough about one of his exes who I've also known since our freshman year of college. You know, I was concerned enough about her that, like, I sat down and had a, like, serious, you know, heart-to-heart with her about, you know, is this relationship okay? Is Brian hurting you? Here are resources for, you know, domestic violence. Checklists and, you know, there's a hotline you can call. [00:41:04]

So everything that happened in December, then the disclosures and everything was not shocking or surprising, but it was still unexpected because I had been – like, looking back in hindsight, I see lots and lots of individual moments where I felt concerned about Brian or one of his partners, but I didn't put it together into a pattern, and I think I was accepting people's reassurances that things were okay too easily because that's what I wanted to hear because Brian and I have been friends for so long.

But, like, again, like since then, like, more and more information has come out from, like, more and more of his previous partners and, yeah, things were really bad with a lot of them, and he had a lot of friends, and he was really popular and charismatic, and a lot of people were afraid that if they came forward, they would be shunned and thrown out of their social group, much like I was when I broke up with Phil. [00:42:13]

THERAPIST: Yeah, I was struck by that as well, that you don't seem like they're running your ear about that, although you feel, I think, very much so.

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean, and that's why I'm not talking publicly about what happened with Tom because he's very charismatic and very popular, and has lots of friends, and I know it would be the right thing to make that information public, to warn other people and to, you know, kind of flag to other partners of his that, you know, if something keeps happening, like, you're not alone. There's at least one person who will believe you, but on the other hand, I don't want to run the risks of being the first, which is a little bit selfish of me that I feel awfully guilty for. [00:43:07]

THERAPIST: That seems very tricky to me, the question of, like, you know, is it really your responsibility as it seems as if you feel like, that you feel it to be putting your name out there. I mean, protecting and taking care of yourself is not very important to you. I mean, I hope you get a great and supportive response. I'm not saying I kind of think you would, only that knowing you, it's easy to imagine that you'd be putting a sense of, like, social responsibility ahead of taking care of yourself. [00:44:01]

CLIENT: Shocking, huh. (pause) And, you know, separate from all of that, which is, you know, quite a lot to think about and process, but Ashley's been back in town from this vacation for three days and hasn't contacted me yet, and I'm unsurprisingly twisting myself up in knots and getting anxious about, you know, what does that mean.

THERAPIST: We have to – I think we're out of time.

CLIENT: Oh. Hopefully there's a whole e-mail the next day, and then we can talk about something else tomorrow. Blah. Thank you.

THERAPIST: Thank you.

CLIENT: Yep. [00:45:13]

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