Beyond Fear

Throughout the first season of Beyond Fear: The Crimes Podcast, we have received dozens of questions and comments from listeners. The conversations we have had one-on-one with each other and those we have had with some of you who have reached out have affirmed our belief that the work we do and the way we accomplish it are both incredibly important.

We’ve learned over the years that bringing our full selves to the table is critical. It is with that lesson in mind that we bring you the bonus episode of season one. As we noted, we have received dozens of interesting and important questions from our dedicated listeners. We could not possibly answer all of these questions in a single episode and will use many of them as topics for our second season.

Instead, we decided to tackle two questions that survivors ask us all the time. We decided to answer them intimately and authentically – perhaps with an honesty and openness with which we have not always answered. The greatest gift we can give others is to be one hundred percent ourselves. We want anyone who has been harmed and those who have caused harm to fully understand the indelible impact that sexual harm can have. We also want listeners to understand that healing is not linear, that is is complicated and messy. It is layered. Healing is sometimes, as in the case for both of us, entangled in navigating both sexual trauma and mental illness.

The two questions we tackle in this deeply personal episode include:

1. How do I know I am “over it”?
2. How to I navigate medical doctors/procedures/appointments as a survivor?

In the episode we talk about two books that have been integral to our understanding of trauma. The first is called The Body Keeps the Score, by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. This book helped us both to understand how trauma impacts us and changes us as a cellular level. The second book is called Trauma and Recovery, by Dr. Judith Herman. It was this live changing book, which was first published in 1992, that helped us both to fully recognize that we were not alone.

Later in the episode we talk about the importance of trauma informed medicine. We believe that trauma informed care is critical for survivors of all forms of trauma to receive the medical care they need.

Our friend Christine “Cissy” White, whose work can be found at http://www.healwritenow.com, talks about how it is not trauma informed if it isn’t informed by trauma survivors. Her work has significantly impacted how we think about medical care.

Finally, we discuss a potentially important and impactful intervention called pelvic floor physical therapy. This is not a very well known intervention, but many survivors who experience chronic pelvic pain, it can be life changing. You can learn more about pelvic floor physical therapy from thee following links:

Why Going to Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy Transformed My Life

Pelvic Physical Therapy: Another Potential Treatment Option

For a transcript of this episode click here.

For a direct download of this episode

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Episode 5 is the last part of our series of episodes dedicated to human trafficking. In this episode, you will hear Jess’s story of surviving trafficking. Our conversation exposes some of the many myths about the crime of human trafficking (which often includes trafficking), including who perpetrates it, who experiences it, and the context within which it occurs.

Traffickers do not usually target victims they do not know. In fact, like other types of sexual harm, survivors are usually trafficked by someone they know, such as a family member. People often assume that trafficking involves traveling or transporting a person. While this is sometimes the case, as Dr. Branchini-Risko noted in Episode 4, trafficking does not require movement across boarders. And as we hear in the case of Jess, a child may be trafficked or exploited from their own home. Furthermore, people who are trafficked are often not held against their will but may be controlled through other means, like a lack of financial independence.

Jess’s story of healing is emblematic of what many survivors of trafficking experience. The psychological harm may take many years to heal and often include post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Additional readings and resources:

Centering Survivors – Polaris Project

Survivors of Human Trafficking Recount Experiences, Provide Advice – U.S. Department of Defense

Faces of Human Trafficking – Office for Victims of Crime (OVC)

Helping Human Trafficking Victims – Center for Prevention of Abuse

Guest Bio

Jess grew-up in the duality of New York City and Seattle. They settled in the Pacific Northwest and earned their bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice, from the University of Washington. While attending undergrad courses, Jess found a passion for Restorative Justice and a desire to influence policies responding to real life circumstances. Advocating for change, Jess challenges systemic racism and the false narratives of popular culture.

After several years in the Social Justice arena, Jess made the decision to pursue their master’s degree in Social Work to expand their professional process. Embracing adversity and a colorfully diverse background, Jess is focused on the advancement of Transformative Justice and continues their commitment to harm-reduction and enhancing repair, one person at a time.

Follow us on Facebook at Beyond Fear: The Crimes Podcast, on Instagram @beyondfearpodcast, and on Twitter @fearcrimes. If you have questions about this or any of our previous episodes, or if there is anything you’d like to know about our work, we hope you will email us at [email protected] or you can contact us on our site here.

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In “How Hasn’t It Affected Me?” Alexa and Alissa have a candid, unscripted, and vulnerable conversation with Monishia “Moe” Miller and Guy Hamilton-Smith. We each talk about the ways that sexual violence has impacted our lives.

As with all episodes of this podcast, we want to warn our listeners that this can be difficult to listen to. It is okay to listen with a friend, listen in short chunks, or walk away. To offer fair warning for this episode, in particular, we talk about both in the short and long-term impacts of sexual violence in our personal stories, including substance abuse, self-harm, eating disorders, workaholism and suicide attempts.

This was a special episode for us to record. We spoke with two individuals we both admire and respect. The four of us created a safe space to talk very intimately and vulnerably about the ways that sexual violence still impacts us.

Material like this can be hard to listen to. It may bring up triggers for you. There are resources available should you need. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (www.rainn.org) has an abundance of resources, including the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

Some of the material we referenced in this episode includes:

Van der Kolk, Bessel (2015). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

Classen, C. C., Palesh, O. G., & Aggarwal, R. (2005). Sexual revictimization: A review of the empirical literature. Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 6(2), 102-129.

Maker, A. H., Kemmelmeier, M., & Peterson, C. (2001). Child sexual abuse, peer sexual abuse, and sexual assault in adulthood: A multi-risk model of revictimization. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 14(2), 351-368.

Nelson, E. C., Heath, A. C., Madden, P. A., Cooper, M. L., Dinwiddie, S. H., Bucholz, K. K. et al. (2002). Association between self-reported childhood sexual abuse and adverse psychosocial outcomes: Results from a twin study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 59(2), 139-45.

Arata, C. M. (2002). Child sexual abuse and sexual revictimization. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 9(2), 135-164.

Fleming, J., Mullen, P. E., Sibthorpe, B., & Bammer, G. (1999). The long-term impact of childhood sexual abuse in Australian women. Child Abuse & Neglect, 23, 145-159.

Vandiver, D., Braithwaite, J., & Stafford, M. (2017). crimes and offenders: Research and realities. NY: Routledge

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/blog/trauma-sexual-assault-and-eating-disorders

Moe is an adjunct lecturer of criminal justice at California State University, Fullerton, where she teaches courses in Juvenile Justice and Corrections. She received her Master of Science degree from California State University, Los Angeles in Criminal Justice Administration. Her research includes trauma and delinquency, youth services, and juvenile justice reform. She has worked as a youth advocate in the juvenile justice field for over twenty years.

Guy is a fellow at the Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, a 2019 JustLeadershipUSA fellow, and a writer with bylines in The Appeal, Slate, and other outlets. His work focuses primarily on the ways in which legal responses to sexual violence are ineffective and harmful, particularly focusing on post-sentence registration laws and indefinite civil imprisonment. You can read his writing on his website, https://guyhamiltonsmith.com and follow him via Twitter, @G_Padraic.

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In our last episode, Who is the Ideal Victim? we spoke with Dr. Danielle Slakoff about media depictions of survivors of interpersonal and sexual harm. Specifically, we unpacked the way that race influences media narratives about who qualifies as a “real victim” worthy of help and sympathy. Black and Latina victims are frequently portrayed as somehow to blame for their victimization.

The sexual harm experienced by Black women and girls is often undisclosed, unaddressed, and unseen. In this episode, Dr. Carolyn M. West and Dr. LaDonna Long share their work that exposes the ways in which Black women and girls are treated not only by the media but also by the criminal legal system and its actors.

Much of our conversation centers on the need to understand and acknowledge our country’s racist past in order to make sense of the way that Black women and girls are treated by the criminal legal system. For most of this country's history the rape of Black women and girls was not illegal because they were considered property and were not seen as human beings. This permeated our legal system, and the consequences are still felt today.

Ultimately, it will take all of us to make the changes necessary to reverse these injustices and we hope that our conversation will take us one step closer to understanding the way forward.

Additional readings and resources:

Love with Accountability: Digging up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse – edited by Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Pornography Consumers of Color and Problematic Pornography Use: Clinical Implications (2022) – Carolyn M. West, PhD

Mammy, Sapphire, and Jezebel: Historical Images of Black Women and their Implications for Psychotherapy (1995) – Carolyn M. West, PhD

Let me Tell Y’all bout Black Chicks: Images of Black Women in Pornography by Carolyn M. West, PhD

Sara Bartman – Black Past

Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood by Rebecca Epstein, Jamilia J. Blake, and Thalia Gonzalez

Race and Prostitution in the United States by Donna M. Hughes

New Docuseries ‘Hunt for the Chicago Strangler’ focuses on Murders of Dozens of Black Women over 20 Years – Fox 32 Chicago

Surviving the Silence: Black Women’s Stories of Rape by Charlotte Pierce-Baker

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation by Beth E. Richie

Black and Missing Foundation

Black Women’s Blueprint

We as Ourselves

Guest Bios:

Carolyn M. West, PhD is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Associate Dean of Special Initiatives at the University of Washington. She is an award-winning author, internationally recognized speaker, documentary filmmaker, and expert witness. For more than three decades, she has been investigating gender-based violence, with a special focus on domestic violence and sexual assault in the lives of African American women. Her mission is to deliver keynote addresses, conduct workshops, and customize innovative training material to educate and equip professionals with the skills to provide culturally responsive services. Her vision is to educate, empower, and inspire a multicultural alliance of survivors and professionals to prevent all forms of violence.

LaDonna Long, PhD is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Roosevelt University. Her research focuses on women’s experiences with victimization, particularly how race, class, and gender influences post-assault coping mechanisms. Her prior work focused on age and educational differences in African American women who have experienced sexual victimization as well as factors that predict disclosure of sexual victimiz...