Dr. Phil

In the end of November, I was approached by an interested producer of Dr. Phil’s with the possibility to be on his show. I was led to believe that the show was on my side, ready to help me defend myself and my sisters from an abusive home life with our dad. During the process of being asked questions about the situation, I wondered if it was a good idea to trust Dr. Phil or not. I decided that I felt (and still feel) that shining as bright a light as possible on my sister’s situation is the best chance of them being protected and everything being resolved. Between our dad’s extreme emotional abuse and alienation, the court officials shredding our trust and failing us, and thousands of people jumping on my situation and making angry judgments… those girls have been through quite enough. I decided to go for it.

I assumed that Dr. Phil would be a good way to get even more people aware of our problems. After I realized that they weren’t going to help us unless I faced my dad on camera in person, I almost refused because I knew the imminent trauma of being in the physical presence of my abuser who I was (and am) still recovering from living with. But I weighed the possible good that Dr. Phil could do for my sisters, and I decided it would be worth the risk of facing my dad for the first time in over a year. I decided it would be worth the trauma. I told myself that I could handle it, prepare for it, and get through it.

But no amount of hopeful thinking could prepare me for the trauma I experienced being in his presence again and feeling his anger emanating toward me from
his seat ten feet away. Years of emotional abuse and anger directed at me for telling the truth about him was emitted off him right at me. I could recognize it clearly, though onlookers may not have been able to. It's hard for outsiders to see through the charm, the nice-looking façade. Not the way people who've lived with him can. He lost his cool a couple times, his words laced with anger at me in a voice hard with a menace that I recognized all too well. His rage caused me to tremble. I felt like the little girl I was during the thousands of times I endured his exhausting tirades and threats of violence.

It became clear as we proceeded with the producers' interviews that the focus of the episode was not Dad's abusiveness, but rather parental alienation. So in addition to the trauma I felt by being in the presence of my abuser, I was also confused and trying to make sense of the direction the show was being taken. There were many times when it was painfully clear that documents were misread and not investigated enough by his team to understand it. For an example, at one point, Dr. Phil read aloud some lines of the list Sydney wrote of lies about our Mom that our dad would say to us on a weekly basis, which Dr. Phil misread as things Mom actually said. For another example, despite the fact that his producers had received the document that showed my dad is an admitted pedophile, who has a history of sexual contact with a child, they opted to focus on the idea my dad carefully spins: that my mom alienated us from him. 

MY DAD'S ABUSE alienates us from him. That is the absolute truth.

At one point, when Dr. Phil asked me for an example of how my dad abused me, I froze. How do I put years and years of multiple methods and incidents of domestic violence, emotional, physical, verbal abuse, and inappropriate sexual advances into one sentence? How do I explain that a lifetime of being made to pay for speaking the truth about him froze my tongue while he sat there looking at me with his banked, violent rage? I could fill up a week's worth of Dr. Phil shows and still not be done talking about the countless ways my dad abused my sisters, me, my mom and Angie. Victims of abuse who read this will understand exactly what caused me to freeze in the presence of my lifelong abuser. Also, victims recognize it when someone has chosen to not believe them. In addition to the panic that had me tongue tied in that moment, when Dr. Phil suggested the court systems are always right (although he had all the documentation that proved otherwise), I decided to stay silent. Being on national TV with the popular host who seemed to have his mind set on that concept, I didn't see how arguing that idea would get my sisters help (which was the only reason I went on the show). I kept praying to myself that somehow, some help could come from the show.

So now, with this blog post, I wish to relay what I would have been able to say on Dr. Phil, had I had enough time and therapy to prepare myself to come face-to-face with the man who abused me my entire life.

Question by Dr. Phil: What has your father done to abuse you?

My answer: My father has:

• Been found by DCFS to be responsible for "domestic violence related child abuse" of me
• Physically abused me, my sisters, and Angie by yanking our limbs, thumping our heads, pinching us hard, twisting our skin, and spanking.
• For years after the supported DCFS findings were made, Dad engaged in emotional abuse of me by repeatedly antagonizing and terrorizing me about my involvement in the 2005 DCFS finding of his domestic violence by telling me that:  when I was nine, I had lied to DCFS; the supposed abuse had never happened; I am a really good liar; my insistence that domestic abuse had happened should bring me shame; I was deluded and deceived into claiming the abuse happened; I do not seek the truth; I would suffer religious consequences for not seeking the truth.
• Physically abused Abby by gripping her thighs in such a way that she has bruises on them.
• Been violent toward Abby behind the locked bedroom door, which I think could have caused her pronounced limp she's had since she could walk. 
• Emotionally abused me, calling me a liar more times that I can even count.
• Lectured me and my sisters for hours upon hours, telling us lies about our mom and how bad he thinks she is.
• Described child pornography to me in detail, using himself and my toddler sister as subjects in his narrative by saying "Can you even imagine someone my age doing that with Abby?"
• Forced my celiac sister to eat gluten and then endure lectures about our mom when her body was distressed afterward.
• Abused my toddler sister Abby by terrorizing her in front of me and not letting me console her about her beloved Bear that he threw away in front of her.
• Taken my baby sister Abby and made her scream behind the locked bedroom door over 200 times that I've seen.
• Refused to allow anyone in the house to comfort the person he abused.
• Monitored and photocopied our personal journals we thought we had hidden sufficiently until he left full copies in his nightstand.
• Abused, demeaned, and degraded my stepmom Angie countless times in front of us all. He does this almost daily.
• Exerted extreme control over every move I made.
• Isolated me from my sisters and my sisters from each other within the house, using multiple methods to do so.
• Isolated us from our mother, family (including isolating me against his extended family), friends, therapists, and schools. He did this in Utah before they moved, and then he moved them all to Kansas to be in almost complete isolation.
• Refused to allow them to talk to their mother except during his once-per-week 15-minute call that he insisted on monitoring.
• Been violent toward my mother in front of me.
• He was violent toward me as a child.
• Disgusted my sisters by suggesting to them that steamed car windows were a result of me passionately kissing my sisters.
• Done inappropriate things like when he took one of my bras from the laundry hamper, and compared mine to my stepmom's bra, making her bring hers to compare, and made me touch her bra and told me start wearing thin ones like hers.
• Touched Angie's crotch in lewdly inappropriate ways in front of me.
• Terrorized me with graphic, detailed stories of extreme violence against women, saying that it could happen to me at any time.
• Inappropriately repeated a detailed and graphic story of a naked Brazilian woman accosting him in his apartment while on his mission.
• Threatened us with mom going to jail if we ever told on him.
• Targeted, threatened, and punished us all for things we had told our therapists.
• Refused to allow me to pursue my musical and artistic talents despite it being vital to my soul.
• Sought to make everyone believe that I'm a liar and brainwashed when I give honest, detailed accounts of his abuse.
• Emotionally abused me by telling me that I'm choosing to follow Satan. 

Obviously, I could not possibly have said all that in the short time I had with Dr. Phil. I wanted to. My sisters's story is NOT a case of, "we can't live with the parent we want to live with anymore, so we're going to throw a tantrum and run away." No. All these ways and more were how our dad abused us. After all these things happening hundreds and thousands of times over the course of our entire lives (I am 19, Sydney is 15, Dani is 14), they were at the point of an emotional breakdown. I am here to tell their story until they decide to return, and even after they do, I will never stop helping them until their voices are properly heard and they are given the help they need and deserve. They need actual assurance of safety ordered by the court.