Brian's Abuse In Summary

First off, today the page views hit 90,000. How incredible! In only four months, this blog has been able to spread my sister's true story across the country (and even internationally). I wouldn't be where I am today without each one of you who has come to read this collection of my family's experiences. Thank you.

As I discussed in my last post, here is a summary of all the abuse that I've put on this blog thus far. It's taken me a while to get it together and put it in order of occurrence, which isn't organized entirely accurately since the majority of my father's abuse was continual throughout the years. (For example, the abuse listed under "After Custody Change" were things he had been doing before the custody change, too). I felt that it was important to refresh these posts, since there are so many facts and stories that have been forgotten with time. 

The list is long, but very informative. I recommend heading to each link for a complete description of abuse if there are any questions, since these are just summarized bullet points. Also, don't forget--there's a Documents tab, a Timeline, an About section, a Q&A tab (you can always comment with valid questions), a link to the Roby Report, the Custody Report, and a tab for the Random Memories.

Pre-Custody Change

-A very detailed list of the different ways our dad has abused us (from when we were toddlers til present day).

-The facts that show my dad is the alienator, and that my mom never tried to isolate us from him as he did to her. This one is a deep read, but I feel that it's definitely a post to bring back from the past since my dad continues to try and convince people that my mom is who he actually is.

-Our dad would repeatedly tell us about a naked woman attacking him to have sex with him on his mission in Brazil. He started telling us this story when we were 10, 5, and 6 years old. Sydney, Dani and I always got the feeling when he told it that he was getting some kind of sick thrill in telling us inappropriate things and forcing us to picture related images in our minds.

-My dad would often tell my sisters and me detailed and very graphic stories of crimes against women. These stories would terrify us and although we would ask him to stop, he took pleasure in making us uncomfortable and frightened.

Custody Change (May 2010)

Sydney's Celiac Disease

For a while, I've felt the need to write a post dedicated to what my sister Sydney (now age 15) had to physically endure at the hands of my father, because what she has gone through is actual abuse.

Documented History

My dad physically abused my sister, Sydney, by forcing her to eat gluten despite her official celiac disease diagnosis. During her life, my sister Sydney experienced serious and painful problems whenever she ate gluten. My mom took her to around 80 doctor appointments over many years to try to find why she had so much pain. Finally, on February 28, 2006, Sydney was admitted to Primary Children’s Hospital and had a biopsy taken from the small intestine to conclusively confirm that she has celiac disease. Dad was informed of this on March 10, 2006.

Mom immediately completely changed Syd's diet and consistently ensured that she wasn't served any food that contained gluten. Because Dad refused to cooperate and, at times, insisted that Sydney eat gluten-containing food such as popular breads and doughnuts, Mom was forced to secure various notes (May 3, May 10, June 13, June 16, August 14 2006, and March 21 2007) and emails to Dad to inform and compel him to stop feeding Sydney gluten. My mom had to send him emails again from Dr. Harnsberger on November 15, 2006, confirming the celiac diagnosis and the importance of a gluten-free diet. Mom hoped it would lead him to stop undermining Sydney’s required diet.

Dr. Phil 2

I was contacted by a producer of Dr. Phil around the end of November. Among the things they assured me in order to get me to agree to be on the show were the promises that I wouldn't have to confront my dad, that he wouldn't know what I was saying to them, and that Dr. Phil was an advocate for children and would let me speak. 

Although they said all those things, I was initially very skeptical. I didn't believe they would follow through with their promises and didn't see how the show would be a positive resource or outlet (and definitely not a final solution) for helping me help my sisters be safe from our dad's abuse. After years of the court system failing me and my sisters, my sisters running in July 2014, and all the ways my dad has attempted to keep me silenced in court since then, and all the ways my dad and his supporters have tried to scare me into backing down, I was almost to the point where I didn't think there was anything that could do to help my family's situation. I was losing hope.

Around this time, a lot of people told me they thought it would be a good thing to go on the show. I had family and friends who had seen highlights of shows where Dr. Phil stood up for the child, and the producers continued to tell me the same thing: that he was going to let me speak. I was very hopeful for that, because I felt that if my dad and I were able to civilly talk without him interrupting me like he had always done, maybe we could be a step closer to finding a compromise; a resolution.

I made a deal with the producers that I would go on the show only if I didn't

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

Dad's Attempts At Alienation

My dad (Brian Wolferts) sought my total isolation from my mother and anyone in her life, hoping that I would discover for myself his idea that my mom (Michelle) was “mentally ill” and “damned.” It was obvious to me that he needed me to have as little time as possible with my mother in order to make his implanted ideas stick easier, because the reality of time with my mom was completely opposite to what he kept repeating about her.

He told me the only way that I would discover for myself that she's "mentally ill" is if I cut off every tie not only with mom, but with her family, her friends, anyone in any of my wards I’ve lived in, anyone from her work field or people she knows from the ward, etc. For me to even begin to know "what she’s done, and the kind of person she really is". Because “they’ll all defend her because she’s got them thinking she’s the victim.” He would also tell us that she wasn't a good mother, and didn't really love us because of the way she tried to destroy our relationship with him. I have endured countless hours of my dad railing and lecturing us about our mom about all these things and many, many more. Yet she never tried to alienate us from him like he claims. I find it absolutely mind-boggling how much he accuses her now of doing the exact things he has done my entire life. I'm thankful that his attempts to alienate me from my mom didn't work.

When I say his attempts to alienate me from her 'didn't work,' I mean that they didn't keep me from wanting a relationship with her. I'm very thankful for that. But I didn't survive his alienation attempts without being affected. Dad tried as hard as he could to make us hate our mom. He found every excuse possible to sneak my mother into every subject, whether it was suggesting how awful a driver she was to accusing her of being mentally unstable and unfit to raise us. He always spoke negatively about our mom to us, and it was apparent that our dad wanted us to hate her. He incessantly channeled rage and abhorrence at us in hopes that we would channel it to her--it was apparent to me that the end goal of his raging to us was to get to Mom. It seems he wanted us to blame her for our pain he was causing us. It hurt us to have him talking about her so horribly (and I think it hurts any child to hear any parent talking bad about the other).

We knew Dad was not telling the truth. My sisters and I lived with our mom for six years, then visited her for the remaining four, and we never heard a negative remark against my father from my mom, even when we cried to her about the scary things he was saying and doing. She was gentle and kind our whole lives. I knew that his attempts to make us believe something untrue about Mom were wrong. The bad things my dad kept trying to convince us Mom was doing were almost verbatim what he was doing and had been doing for years. 

It was easy to not internalize the falsehoods about my mom, because there was such a stark contrast between her true self and what Dad kept trying to make us believe about her. With that being said, though: there were times that it seemed that it would be so much easier to earn our dad's love and stop his attacks if we started hating her, but we knew it wasn't right to hate our mom, and we didn't want to! All of this constant negativity toward my mom that my dad openly fostered ever since they first separated brought us all immense internal pain. 

In my personal experience (and I know Sydney and Dani feel the same way) I didn't want to be a vessel that channeled my dad's hatred to our mom--or anyone else for that matter--and so I turned the hatred inward. It seemed like the solution at first, but it didn't take much time to wear on me. My self-esteem, my faith in my talents, my belief that I was a good person--all of that began to decay. I've thought a lot about it, and I think that my dad fosters the idea in all of the people he lives with that they somehow deserve the horrible treatment he inflicts upon them. Because people with little or no self-esteem don't fight back. 

What motivates him to do this?

Sydney's Writings

I'm going to dedicate a couple posts on all of the alienation speculation going on, because not only does it affect me, but it affects my sisters.

There are statements such as "Brittany is the only one coming up with this stuff, so she's alienated", "Sydney and Dani haven't spoken about abuse", and even "If there was really abuse, Sydney and Dani would have come forward about it" circulating the internet. (And those are just to name a few.) No, I am not the only one claiming abuse. Sydney and Dani have spoken about it, in the ways that they could without facing Dad's wrath for doing so. This post is to highlight one of Sydney's writings, and also to encourage everyone to look at the Documents tab where there are multiple journal entries from both Sydney and Dani.

Until I turned 18, the only way I felt I could express myself was through my private journal entries and by confiding to my close friends. My sisters have tried to speak about the abuse they suffered in many ways as well. They told me of it when we lived together at dad's house, and continued to tell me of it after I moved away. What they disclosed to me compelled me to get them an appointment with Dr. Hyde, who believed them. He stood up for them and agreed they would be severely emotionally harmed (see #10) if sent back to Dad's. Sydney and Dani also wanted to tell a judge. They ran away rather than go back to Dad's abusive house. They made a video, stating that they are not safe there and that they would rather live in a box than go back there (and they had told me that very same thing on both visits home to Utah between December and June). They stated they will run away again if forced to live there. They also wrote journals outlining their experience, as I had.

Here is what Sydney wrote, outlining what she heard our dad (Brian Wolferts) telling her on a weekly basis. I highly encourage you to read the entire first three pages.

Sydney writings and journal entries.pdf

If you're interested, the next page (titled "My Only Freedom") was something she wrote for school, which she won an award for. She hid it from Dad because that poem was her expressing how she felt living in his custody, but she explained the imagery of her poetic words to me. When she writes, "it's like talking to a rock. There is no significance to my voice." she is referring to our dad as the rock. When she writes, "...like I used to when I was three. Before the mix-up." She is talking about before the divorce. When she writes, "Everyone expects me to cope with it," She's talking mostly about Dad when he would repeatedly tell us to "get over" the custody change that altered our world. She also felt there were other adults he associated with that expected the same thing of her. The page after that is a poem Syd wrote for me after I moved out, "ancrer mon âme" ("Anchor My Soul"). I hold it close to my heart.

If Sydney saw what has been said about her and Dani being alienated by Mom, I know she would be offended and hurt. Here they have put everything on the line to speak out about what my dad said and did to hurt them, in the best ways they could, only to be shot down. Sydney is a passionate writer, and obviously chose her words very carefully. In her moments of deepest pain, she would write to express herself. Shame on anyone who claims her writings are false.

Stay tuned for the next post, and thank you for everyone's supportive comments!

Focus

Some of you may have been following the strange and confusing antics happening on Facebook this week. Yesterday "Mel Bittner" re-opened the Facebook Cause page called 'Missing Wolferts girls - finding the answers.'. A brief description of this woman's role, for those who feel they are in the dark in this:

As soon as my family's situation became public back in August, "Mel" pretended to be one of my biggest supporters.  She gained my trust to help with my Facebook page, and informed me to stay away from the page to 'legally protect' myself. I believed and trusted her. In early November, she suddenly hijacked it from me and my uncle, removed all other admins, and shut it down just before openly supporting my father. Her lies, threats, misrepresentations, and disrespectful behavior are repellent to reasonable people, which is her aim. I am deeply saddened by the confusion being created by those like "Mel" who want to distract me and others who want to support the girls.

Please remember that all strange and confusing behaviors on social media are designed for three purposes:

• To create doubt about my integrity
• To deflect focus away from admitted pedophile Brian Wolferts (my father) by allowing him to hide behind other's excuses for him
• To cause me to lose focus on my desire to protect my younger sisters

I am not losing focus. I am still determined to get my sisters the help they need to be officially protected. I can still close my eyes and remember the look on their faces as they begged me to leave when I reached legal adulthood, so I could help them escape my father's abuse. I was the first one out of the three of us to have a voice legally for the first time in our lives. I am going to continue to speak the truth.

John 8:32 "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

My Sisters

For a while, I've wanted to dedicate a post to Sydney and Dani, my little sisters who aren't so little anymore. I think that there couldn't be a better time than the Holidays to do this. I'm going to write about who these girls are: their hobbies, their dreams, their goals, their fears. I'm going to write about them in a way that will portray them as the remarkable young women they are, instead of mere faces plastered to a flyer.

Syd is the second oldest to myself. She has a remarkable ability to round up people around her. She has a sense of genius sarcasm, and uses it in such a way that never offends her peers, but brings them together in many hours of fun and laughter. Syd also has a gentle, caring side to her which she uses to bring the spirit of peace into the lives of those she associates with. She has a marvelous poetic gift, and expresses herself through writing when she can. She has a high sense of fashion. She is absolutely gorgeous naturally, and I believe it is because you can see straight through to her stunning inner beauty as well as outer. Sydney has an exceptionally strong testimony. She may outwardly seem shy to some, but she is fierce in defending what is right. She has an innate sense of wisdom for her age--she has always seen a deeper side to life. She has always been great at making close friends that last, and she chooses those select people carefully.

Dani is the younger sister of the two. I can't believe how fast she is growing up. Dani's developed into a fine young lady, with amazing homemaking skills. She's better than me in the kitchen... and I've just learned to accept that! Even at her young age, I can see wonderful hints of what an outstanding mother she will be. She is also the family 'techy.' If Syd or I don't know how to work a new item, we'll call for Dani. Dani possesses this amazing ability to love all mankind. She's not naive: she exercises her love with caution. But she could fill all of the Pacific Ocean with her tender care. She loves people, as I do, and I could see her becoming a great many things in adulthood. Dani possesses a kind soul unlike any other, and she is constantly looking for ways to serve others, even within the walls of her own home. She has a gift for making many friends wherever she goes.

All of my sisters have a great sense of humor (that I just didn't seem to inherit) and outstanding artistic abilities. I'm so pleased that we all share the love of art together: it's a similar interest that binds us. They/we also love music and have all been blessed to have had a mother who was able to teach us piano when we were young. I can't wait to see what each of my sisters become in their lives. I love them so much. Syd and Dani are so different, yet so alike. They are smart girls. They are able to assess and understand situations way beyond what most kids their age could. They have experienced so much pain at such young ages, and yet they have risen above it and become stronger through it. I know they have yearned to be heard for so long.

You won't hear any of this from my dad's followers, because they don't know these amazing girls. They don't know that Sydney has a phobia of cold feet, and they don't know that Dani used to hate any food that was green. They don't know that Sydney wants to be an engineer, and Dani secretly wants to be an actress.

Dad's supporters don't know the hours I've spent trying to calm Sydney as she sobbed from the pain my dad caused her from feeding her gluten and emotionally shredding her through endless abusive lectures, all the while trying to hold back my own tears as I tell her that, "One day this will be over," even though I didn't see a way it would end. They don't know the years I watched Dani fight to hold in all the pain to appear strong, yet collapsing on the inside until she began falling into depression (which she had to keep from our dad who demanded we appear happy at all times).

Dad's supporters don't know how many tears my sisters have shed alone, because

Custody Evaluator's Report Part II

A continuation of the first custody evaluator post.

According to the report, the custody evaluator, Dr. Blakelock, spoke on the phone with Dr. Dettenmeier, who had evaluated my mom almost three years before in April 2007. She told him that Mom had "coached the children in her efforts to alienate them from their father." She further stated that "Michelle lacked positivity and was 'vehement' towards Brian." Blakelock wrote, "Michelle's parental interference escalated beyond her immediate family as she negatively influenced extended family, friends, counselors, neighbors, spiritual leaders, etc. by sharing with these individuals Brian's therapy progress notes, Dr. Roby's complete psychosexual assessment report . . . ."

Despite Dr. Dettenmeier's conclusion that my mom had coached us, my Mom still was granted primary custody of us at that time. She was our primary custodial parent from 2004 until 2011. It was this report by Blakelock that resulted in my dad getting custody. 

Basically, Dr. Blakelock found my dad to be less abusive than my mom, despite her "coaching" stemming from her legitimate NEED to warn us to be careful around our dad who admits to multiple instances of sexual behavior toward children. Yet I had NO knowledge of any of these details until I found this report this week. All my mom ever wanted was for my dad to get the help he desperately needs for his severe problems, and to keep us protected from his impulses that have put children at risk.

So, my dad entered into sex offender treatment voluntarily, and did it for 18 months. Yet these three men "questioned the appropriateness of his treatment":

1. Dr. Ririe (psychosexual therapist who was hand-picked by special master Sandra Dredge to be Dad's therapist after she lied and said that Dr. Roby no longer wished to be my dad's therapist, which he refuted in an affidavit, btw);
2. Dr. Jay Jensen (who owns and runs ACAFS, the company who gets assigned by the special master to be the go-between between parties in acrimonious divorces, and who also conducted conjoint therapy for the Wolferts family);
3. Dr. Blakelock (custody evaluator).

Blakelock found my dad's 2005 abuse finding by DCFS to be inconsequential. My dad's multiple admissions of sexual behavior toward young children didn't seem to matter at all to Dr. Blakelock. 

My sisters and I have been betrayed by the officials who were supposed to protect us. 

A personal note to all those mothers out there who are fiercely defending my dad and seeking that my mom be prosecuted to "the full extent of the law" for protecting my sisters in hiding: if your children had been spending every other weekend with a father who had engaged in multiple instances of sexual behavior toward children in the past, and admitted to it well into his adulthood with children of his own at home, of course you would seek to get supervised visitation for him in order to protect your young daughters! Of course you would seek to warn them to be careful about not being alone with him, especially if the courts let your request for supervised visits drag on for over two years. Of course you would seek to protect them after the courts failed to listen to their accounts of abuse at his hands over the last FOUR YEARS of living with him primarily. 

I do not believe that any mother who loved her children would not be protective of them under the said circumstances. My mom was being preventative and warned us to be careful of anyone tried to invade our safety zone and touch us. Despite all these things she knew my dad had done--again, things that I never knew until very recently--and despite the way my dad treated us, she always encouraged us to see the good in him. That is a fact. I am a witness to it, and I know Syd and Dani will testify of the same fact when they are back, because we all lived through it.

Another Response To A Tweet

People who don't know my mom call her crazy. People who DO know my mom call her just the opposite. Everyone who knows my mom calls her loving, kind, rational, smart, and supportive. Multiple therapists have examined her and found her to not be crazy, and to be mentally sound. My sisters were examined in June before they were forced to run away, and the psychologist Dr. Hyde currently attests that it would be harmful to my sisters to be removed from our mother's custody. All three of us know that our mother is not abusive.

People who don't know my father call him loving and kind. People who live with him behind closed doors, under his authority, know that he is not. All three of his daughters who are old enough to articulate detailed accounts of his abuse agree that our father is abusive. He is consistently abusive. He is chronically abusive. He seems to be unwilling to change how abusive he is, despite his admitted years of investigations into his abuse. 

Why I'm Worried About Abby

Sweet little Abby in summer 2013

One day sometime in 2012, Angie came home from the doctor and in an unguarded moment told me that Abby's doctor had examined Abby and told her that Abby limped because she had a problem with her hips caused by physical trauma of some kind - an injury she had not been born with. (Abby had been limping since she first started walking). Angie seemed confused about what kind of trauma Abby could have endured, guessing that perhaps Abby fell very hard at some point, but my sisters and I looked at each other and we knew immediately. Angie revealed that the doctor said Abby needed physical therapy to try to fix the problem, and if that didn't work, surgery would be necessary. There was even a long-term leg brace in question. 

When my dad came home from work and heard about the doctor's examination results, he pulled Angie into the bedroom and shut the door, where he berated her for discussing the details with us and must have told her to never talk about it any more to anyone. (I'm assuming he ordered her to never speak of it again, because of the fact that after he talked with her it was suddenly taboo for her or anyone else to make a single comment about Abby's limp/injury).

They started having a physical therapist come to the house to work with Abby, but they came only during school hours, or whenever Syd, Dani, and I weren't home. My dad wouldn't let anyone discuss even the physical therapy. One time I remember one of my sisters asking at dinner about how Abby's PT was going, and my dad silenced her and changed the subject before she got an answer. So we knew the subject was off limits.

The public scrutiny of our situation with our father has brought out much discussion that he clearly does not want to have. I'm worried about Abby because knowing what I know about the doctor's recommendations and Abby's physical therapy, the following contradictions coming from my dad and his supporters have me pretty convinced that something is wrong where Abby is concerned. I'm so worried about her.

CLICK "READ MORE" TO SEE THE REST OF WHY I'M WORRIED ABOUT ABBY:

Obsessive Control: Isolation

Before I begin, I want to take a second to remind you all that I am Sydney and Dani's older sister. That sounds incredibly redundant, but you'd be surprised how many comments I see that try to disarm this blog. This blog is full of direct statements from those girls. I may have created it, but its use is to give these girls a voice. It is obvious who actually has their best interests in heart and really wants to know how they feel, based off of those people who support this site.

Below, I have listed a mere few examples of how my dad has mastered interfering with relationships, and specifically how he has managed to interfere with our relationship with our mother, as well as even between the three of us sisters.

It was obvious to the girls and I that dad sought to isolate us completely by seeking a job in and moving to Kansas. He moved my sisters in the middle of the school year, despite my dad's brother and his wife offering to let my sisters live with them at least until the end of the school year. They offered that to lessen the effects of the girls' traumatic situation, because even my dad's family was aware that those girls had already been through more traumatic, life-changing things than most other 13 and 15 year-olds. It's obvious to me that he didn't want my sisters having freedom to tell on him, or to see our mom more often before he moved them (for the full story leading up to their Kansas move, click here.)

He only allowed Syd and Dani to call Mom (and me) for 15 minutes one time per week, and only if he was there monitoring the call. He insisted they could only use his phone or his Skype account. If they were found to have texted our mom or communicated with her in any way without informing him, even if it was simply telling her how their day had been, he became infuriated with them (of course, our emails and phones were strictly monitored). We had to plug our phones in a separate room every night, where only Dad had access, and we couldn't even text Mom good night. 

Once he moved them to Kansas, Dad fought to make Sydney's and Dani's visits back to Mom difficult, expensive, and short. They only got about 4 total days over two visits to Utah between December and their summer visitation to Utah in June (that's four days over the course of six months).

His isolation tactics extended to even the smallest moments at his house both before and after he moved to Kansas. Dad forbade Sydney and Dani from hugging me after family prayers at bedtime, because he believed that they had been giving me longer hugs than they had been giving Angie. All three of us felt this type of controlling behavior was unfair and unreasonable. I can't hug my sisters?

Documents Page

FYI,

I have added a new documents page to the list of Pages found at the top of my blog, to help you become informed with actual supporting documents relating to the history of the court struggles with my dad. Please go through it. Reading the documents will help you to see why I am continuing to fight to protect all of my sisters. I will add more applicable documents as they get found.

Here are the links you will find today on my Documents Page:


Roby Report Complete April 2003

Dr Harnsberger Diagnosis Sydney Celiac 12 Sep 2007

Letter from Dr Hyde re Michelle 21 May 2007