Found and Silenced

At 3:05 A.M. on January 3, 2016, I received a phone call that my mother and sisters had been found in Pleasant Grove, Utah.  I was relieved to know they were alive and together, but worried about their overall state of being and desperately wanted to see them. (To read more how I was treated when I went to the Orem Police Department, read this post on Facebook.)

No more than a few minutes after I made my first Facebook post, the OPD posted this update stating they were holding my sisters for our father, Brian (screenshot on the right). In the press conference with Lt. Craig Martinez--which was partially aired on news channels tonight--he stated that it would be one or two weeks at most until the girls were reunited with Brian, and they would "probably" be going through some kind of process with DCFS.

This means that I have a week (two, at most) to fight for my sisters legally, without having any knowledge of where they are. They are said to be in the "state's custody", but they are not currently with Slate Canyon or any other youth facilities in the area. I'm concerned for their physical, emotional and mental welfare if they are simply delivered into the hands of our abusive father with no contact to anyone else, let alone legal protection or someone to help them have a voice. Please, please donate to my GoFundMe so that I can keep taking legal action the best I can.

My mother was recently bailed, and I have been reunited with her. She was interviewed by many of the news channels today, and KUTV is the only news channel to have posted the entire interview without cuts. Watch below:

Links to the various news articles published today:

KUTV (Channel 2)

Fox 13 SLC

KSL 5

ABC 4

Daily Herald

Link to another blog post made regarding my sisters today:
Click here

Many of you have asked what you can do to help. I would ask to please include Sydney and Danielle in your prayers at this time. Please donate, if you can, so that I can fight for them to be heard and not placed back with our father silently. Please share their story by sharing this blog, until they are able to have the proper legal representation that they so deserve.

Random Memory #12: Discussing Angie's Breasts

My dad (Brian Wolferts) discussed my stepmom's large breasts with all of us daughters. If this were to have happened just once, perhaps it could have been a very uncomfortable discussion that I could have tried to forget. But this happened multiple times, sometimes in front of Angie. These talks caused all three of us a huge amount of discomfort, agitation, and repulsion. 

One time he went on and on about her breasts in detail that I would definitely deem as "lurid" for over twenty minutes at the dinner table. I remember him talking about how much he loved to grab them and how it made their sex much more enjoyable. He seemed excited by our obvious discomfort and our disgust at the intimately detailed discussion. I was 16, Sydney was 12, and Dani was only 11. After that specific discussion, I remember how all three of us discussed that we felt disgusted by the way dad kept pressing images of them being sexual, no matter how many times we asked him to stop. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy watching our discomfort, and we recognized the look in his eyes well during those times.

I know I've repeated this over and over, but I still feel this way: writing out these Random Memories is not something I look forward to. It's a disturbing process to re-live all these experiences, but it's necessary for those coming across this case to see the full story. If you haven't done so, please read the 11 previous Random Memories.

Thoughts

As of right now as I publish this post, my blog has reached 80,237 views.

In spite of all the negativity and anger that has been thrown at me and anyone who chooses to support the girls and I, I can see the good evolving from this. Eventually, none of the nasty remarks and speculations on our life will matter. 

The following outcome is a given: My spiritually and mentally mature sisters will continue to grow up and make their own choices regarding their own safety and what is best for them. They will make decisions regarding where Dad fits in their futures, and they will set their boundaries. As they should. No matter what gets speculated about our mom, the actual truth is she did not alienate us from our dad. He did. His abuse, inappropriate sexual behavior, controlling, unrighteous dominion, and behavior are what drove us away from him.

I Won't Give Up on My Sisters Being Safe

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?

Comment Left in Moderation 1/14/15

This comment was left on my blog in moderation, and I felt it deserved its own post to address it, in order to give any readers a chance to address it too.

First of all, my dad called me into his room when I was a teenager and blindsided me with this discussion of child pornography. It wasn't because I was "lumping him in with people who were doing such abhorrent things" (whatever that's supposed to mean?). It was only after he put his own self and my baby sister in an example of filming child pornography that I considered him to be on that level. He painted a picture of himself engaging in child pornography with my baby sister. He looked excited when he talked about it for 20 to 30 minutes with me, as his unwilling and extremely uncomfortable audience. As I said before, he acted like he was gloating as he told me about child pornography.

Pretend that your kid randomly gets called into the principal's office in school for no apparent reason. Once alone with your child, the principal says, "A ring of people who made child pornography was busted, right here in our state! And what's crazy is that these people have made thousands of videos of doing things to children, even in schools like ours! Do you know what child pornography is? You need to understand how it works. What happens is that adults take children as young as your 2 year old sister and perform sexual acts with them. Those adults can be my age. Can you even imagine someone like me doing something like that with your 2 year old sister? Sometimes, they hire other people to come in and do it. But sometimes, it's actually principals and their own students!"

If your child came home disturbed by this, would your response to them be, "Did you ever consider that he was trying to explain how severe child porn is, because you were lumping him in with people who were doing such abhorrent things, and he was perhaps concerned you considered him to be on that level?" Would you suggest that the principal "was simply trying to illustrate just how terrible pedophiles can be, and that he was not in that category?" 

No; you would consider him a twisted threat to your child and all children. You would immediately seek for him to be removed as principal.

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!

Inappropriate Sexual Conduct

My dad abused us in ways that are difficult for me to talk about. He has committed multiple acts of abuse in the form of lewd and inappropriate sexual conduct in the presence of his children at home. Those who view the following post do so to their own discretion, and I recommend them to be over the age of 18.

My dad would touch Angie’s crotch in the presence of us kids, and he did so multiple times when my sisters and I were in the same room to witness it. When we first started living with my dad, and had every-other-weekend visits with our mom, there were instances where he would touch Angie inappropriately in front of us. When it first started happening (even before he had custody) I would turn a blind eye out of disgust and give him the benefit of the doubt. I kept telling myself, He doesn’t know we’re watching, and I'd keep hoping it were true. 

But whenever I saw him touching Angie there, I felt extremely uncomfortable, and I knew that after a couple years of it happening that my dad was completely aware of our consciousness to those actions. He wasn’t oblivious. Most of the time it was when we were all in the living room, sitting down to a movie or TV. I’d try to pretend like I didn’t see anything when I'd see him doing it... But knowing it wasn’t right, I ended up telling one of the DCFS workers involved in my mom’s visits. I’m not sure if the worker contacted my father, or what happened, but he stopped after that.

My dad also seemed to enjoy telling us sexual details of his sex life for his own enjoyment. One day, at the dining table, Dad was determined to tell my sisters and me what sex was like. In particular, how their (his and Angie’s) sex was. Angie was present in the beginning of the conversation, but left partway through, and that’s when my dad went into further detail. (To this day, I'm not sure if she left out of discomfort or if she felt it wasn't appropriate. I have always wondered.)

Due to the sickened feelings this discussion caused, my mind has blocked out much of what was said. As hard as I’ve tried, I remember hardly any of the exact commentary, because I was so disturbed by the entire thing. I remember that he was talking about how good it felt to have sex with Angie, and that having sex was an enjoyable experience filled with lots of pleasure. 

Sydney and Dani were so uncomfortable that I could see them physically squirm as he talked. Even as I write this, I can feel my stomach rising up my throat, making me want to vomit. He went on and on, and as usual when we asked him to stop, he only pushed further.

He didn’t go into explicit detail about his privates, but he talked about the pleasure sex brought in a way that made me feel like he was trying to make us picture him having sex. I remember him describing the tingly feeling that sex gives, and making strange comparisons to try to describe exactly what pleasures sex brings. He would specifically compare to experiences we could relate to, such as slipping into a hot bath. He told us that it's like stepping into a hot bath, "and your entire body starts tingling, and you don't want to get out because it feels so good." The connections he made, and the effort he put into forcing images and feelings into our minds made us feel dirty and sick to our stomachs. 

When we asked him to stop again, he said 'What? Don't tell me you girls don't need to know about this. Because you do.' And treated us as if we'd asked for this conversation, while we silently prayed for him to stop.

He wanted us to hear what he was saying and visualize their sex for reasons that I don't even want to imagine. To be honest, recently discovering that my dad admits to being aroused by 6 year olds and admits to having "a history of sexual contact with a child" only validates the disturbed feelings I already got from him.

Sydney and Dani confided in me that they felt utterly violated about the discussion. Multiple times, when he did these kinds of things, they expressed emotions of fear and physical nausea. They told me they felt uneasy about living with a man who seemed to have a continued desire to make us feel sexual discomfort. None of us could understand it.

I can't describe how difficult it is for me to recount these kinds of experiences I went through. For me to go back to those places of fear and disgust and disturbance.

I try to describe these memories with as much detail as possible because of the many people involved who deserve to know the truth. It's difficult to try to recount experiences that have caused trauma in my life only to have people tell me I am making something out of nothing, or that I'm making everything up. I am not doing either. These are memories of events that took place in my life, and I have the right to speak out about the life I endured with my father for three years at the side of my sisters, who lived with him for another year after I left. There is too much at stake for my sisters if they are put back in that harmful environment.

Random Memory #9: Crimes Against Women 1

My dad often told my sisters and me detailed stories of crimes against women.

One time I remember him sitting us all down, saying “I need to tell you what happened on the news today.” He went on to describe a story about a pregnant woman who was befriended by another seemingly nice woman in a grocery store. Dad told us that when the stranger offered to help the pregnant lady out with her groceries, she got in the car with her afterward and “sliced the pregnant lady’s belly open." 

I started asking Dad if it was necessary for us to hear all the details. I asked him politely to stop. He didn't care. "Then," he continued, "Her bladder and guts spilled out of her and the lady ripped the baby out of her tummy, and cut the cord. Then she cut the lady and left her to bleed out in her car.” My dad discussed with us all possible reasons and thoughts the crazy lady might have had that made her decide to kill the pregnant woman.

I attempted to stop his story multiple times, saying “Dad, I don’t think we need to know about this to this extent. I don’t think Sydney and Dani should be hearing this. I’m uncomfortable – all of us are uncomfortable.”

But instead of stopping, Dad told me that we needed to hear this. When I asked why,he said “if you don’t know about all of this, then how are you going to know to defend yourself against all those crazy people?”

Anytime I questioned my father about telling such grisly and violent stories against women, he would give the reason that when me or my sisters encounter this stuff, we need to "be prepared."

These stories terrified us, and I would think that if he truly wanted to "prepare" us, he would teach us self-protection or put us in a class. Instead, he chose to tell us gory details that made us wonder why he was thinking about the story so much. And why on earth he felt he needed to share it with us in extreme violent detail. Telling us that we needed to know what happened to other women to be prepared for when it would happen to us petrified us!

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

Random Memory #8: Naked Woman On Dad's Mission

My dad told this story to us countless times. It seemed to be a favorite story of his. 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.

Dad says this happened to him on his LDS mission, and he would tell it to us regularly since we were 10, 6 and 5 years old. My dad claimed that one day he was separated and alone from his missionary companion. (Everyone knows mission companions are supposed to be together always, and not ever be alone). 

Dad told us that he went into his apartment, where there was a beautiful Brazilian woman waiting to get him alone. He would tell us how this woman undressed in front of him until she was completely naked, tempting him. He told us that the beautiful naked woman "jumped on top of him and attacked him" when he tried to escape. He liked to say it took him a "long time to fight her off" and that "it was really hard to do because she was so attractive," but that he eventually resisted and "got away."

My dad told us that he came home from his mission early 'honorably.' From a young girl's perspective, I was always confused as to why he kept telling us this story and why he was sent home early, if he didn't have sexual relations with the Brazilian lady he spoke of. I don't recall him ever telling us the story around Angie or my mom. 

The obscene details of this story are hardly something a parent should describe to a child once, let alone repeat multiple times over the years to one’s very young daughters. I wish I could forget it.

Photo credit: www.ethanrwilkinson.com

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. 

A Great Blog Post

The following is a great blog post at the Equality Time blog that addresses a comment made this week by my dad's ardent supporter, Aaron Allred. Aaron is the founder and trustee of my dad's trust fund set up to help him fight me and my sisters in court where we seek protection from his abuse. His comment was incorporated into the blog Aaron created this week to support my father even further, by filling that blog with multiple allegations that I am a kidnapper and a liar, and that my supporters are as well. 

Having never spoken to Aaron Allred, or heard any comments or questions from him directly about my situation, I am not sure how he feels he can come forward with such statements that are misinformed and completely false.

Why I Think My Sisters Are Safe

Over the years, when my sisters and I would get a moment of privacy (which was actually very rare, and difficult to do because my dad and Angie religiously kept us from having any time alone even at home), we often fantasized about escaping dad's house because of the abuse, control, and terror we were forced to endure daily. We all felt a strong need to be free of that environment. I had asked them if they would rather have me move out and seek help for them, or stay with our dad's consistent monitoring in a situation where I wouldn't be able to fight for their voices. They knew I could help them find safety if I left when I turned 18. They deserve to live a life free of Dad's abuse. This fact will always be true.

My sisters made no secret to me of wanting to tell the court what we have been forced to endure, and they also made no secret of talking about how they would feel the need to run away if the court didn't listen and sent them back to our dad after they told on him. They never divulged details or strategies with me, but I believe they would have looked into it and would have planned it intelligently. They are smart girls, and they are familiar with shelters because we had to live in shelters before with our mom when Dad's abuse was unbearable.

Imagine being in my sisters' shoes. They, like many of the people who are interested in this story, just couldn't imagine that a Juvenile Court judge would see our petition and our supporting document from Dr. Hyde and not protect them. Yet that is exactly what happened, and it really does feel surreal and unbelievable. I am working hard to get the court to reconsider the plight of my sisters and the danger the court has put them in.

Do I think my mom is hiding with them? I don't know. I certainly hope so. I hope that if she is with them and protecting them like I believe she is doing, that the courts are lenient and understanding of her necessary act of protecting her daughters from the abuse the court enabled. I also hope that upon reading or hearing the truth about my father, that the courts will find themselves less able to continue to side with our abuser and less able to inflict further injustice and abuse against his victims (including my mom). 

My mom has always been a constant source of loving kindness and support in our lives. She is a good mother and has been our one source of healthy parenting and our most immediate example of Christlike love and compassion. She does not abuse us, nor does she seek to besmirch our dad to us. She understands what pain life with dad involves, because she lived it, too. She listens to us when we vent our frustration and pain about our abuse, but she does not tell us what to feel or what to do. She did not turn us against our dad--his abuse did. She tried to help us navigate our dismay and our fear as well as she could, getting us therapy and teaching us to pray for help and to practice patience and protect ourselves as best we could. She has always sought to help us be happy despite the horrible custody decision the court made years ago. My mom isn't perfect, but these decisions she has repeatedly made to spare us as much pain as possible from my dad's abusive techniques made all the difference. 

Obsessive Control: Monitoring Movements

I want to talk some more about what it feels like to live under the extreme and obsessive control of someone who uses isolation, triangulation, anger, fear and punishment to control everyone in his house. There is a really soul-crushing way that my dad exerts his obsessive control and dominion: he monitors everything. It's like living life on eggshells where any normal thing could set off my dad and cause his violent temper to erupt.

My dad (Brian Wolferts) always obsessively monitored all communication with our mom. We had to ask his permission to call our mom, even if it was just to tell her how our day went, and most times he would tell us there was no reason we needed to contact her so we weren't allowed to. When we did call her, we had to be in the same room with him at all times so he was within earshot of every word. 

After my dad moved the girls to Kansas (I had moved out six months previous), he continued to obsessively monitor all calls and Skype (video) calls between them and me/our mom. He limited their calls to 15-20 minutes once a week, and demanded such calls only happen using his cell phone when he was in the room to monitor what we said. Often he would manufacture reasons to cut their calls short, as he had always done even before the move. Sydney and Dani told me they could never express how they truly felt because he would punish them for almost anything they said.

CLICK "READ MORE" TO SEE MORE OF MY POST:

Random Memory #5: Temple Square

I'm still ill over this next memory of abhorrence. 

During a Christmas holiday family outing to Temple Square during December of 2013 just before my Dad moved my sisters to Kansas, we traveled in a caravan of multiple cars to a couple of destinations. At two different points during the night, either Syd or Dani were with me in the back seat of our grandparents’ car just ahead of Dad's car. Whichever one of them wasn't in the car with me was riding in the car with Dad and Angie. 

Months later, during their first visit to Utah from Kansas, one of them told me about this incident because it disturbed her so much. (The reason why it took months for them to disclose the incident to me was because all communication was monitored in Kansas to my mom and I. To read more about that, click here.) Immediately the other one said that it had also happened to her during the time that she had been alone in the car with Dad and Angie that night. I can't recall which sister reported it first, but I do remember they both had been disgusted by Dad suggesting what he did.

What happened was this: that holiday night, Dad pointed out to Syd while she was alone in his car with him and Angie that the grandparents' back car window up ahead was foggy. He said to her, "Why do you think the window is foggy? What do you think Brittany and Dani are doing to make it foggy like that?" Sydney was instantly scared by his suggestive tone. "Their heads seem close together... Are Brittany and Dani kissing each other??" Sydney was absolutely shocked at the mere thought that Dad conjured that image up. She was even more mortified at the fact that he was trying to put that image in her mind! Syd told me that Dad then laughed about what he'd said, as Sydney sat speechless in absolute and utter horror. 

Apparently, when Dani was alone with him and Angie in their car as we traveled to another destination, he said the same thing to her. When he suggested the grandparents' steamy window was probably due to "Brittany and Syd kissing each other", Dani was just as stunned and freaked out as Sydney. To say they were 'uncomfortable' would be a terrible understatement. When the girls told me about this situation, they said they were both sick to their stomachs just recounting it. 

The fact that he made reference to me passionately kissing each of my sisters out loud to them both suggests to me that he either enjoyed the lewd thought of an incestuous kiss between me and my sisters, or he enjoyed the disgust he was inciting with his lewd suggestions to them, or both. Either way, it is highly disturbing on so many levels that I can't even describe. Hearing my sisters describing what happened left me literally in shock, and it was obvious they had still not even been able to recover from the incident months later when they told me about it.

Photo credit: imgarcade.com

Facts About the GoFundMe Account

There has been some speculation about the GoFundMe account that was set up to help me and my sisters pay for attorneys.

When I filed the original petition to determine abuse and neglect against my dad in late June 2014, I was represented pro bono by an attorney. He had health problems and had to resign his bar membership effective July 1, 2014. I was left without legal representation when I needed it most desperately. Another attorney stepped in and represented me pro bono at the July 11 hearing where Judge Bartholomew vacated the temporary restraining order, which led my to my sisters deciding to run away on July 17 rather than go back to our dad whom they had publicly accused of abusing them. After the hearing, I was again left without an attorney to help me get the petition heard and my sisters protected.

In September, multiple family members rallied together and graciously loaned me money to pay the $5,000 retainer to hire a good attorney in Utah County with experience both in the Fourth District Court where my parents' divorce case was filed and in the Juvenile Court where my petition was filed. My attorneys are Trent Cahill and Scott Weight at Esplin Weight. I have also received some pro bono legal advice from an out-of-state attorney who has had experience trying a divorce case in the Fourth District Court in the past.

My attorneys have had to work hard defending against my dad's aggressive legal maneuvers. My dad has deployed every artifice and stratagem in his lawyer's legal arsenal to keep me and my sisters from having our day in court. Most recently, my dad was able to get the Juvenile Court to dismiss the amended petition we had submitted. 

We are now asking the Court to reconsider that dismissal and have plans to continue fighting. But it takes money. Through today, I have incurred $9,235 in legal fees with Esplin & Weight. My attorneys estimate that if we are ultimately able to get the case reinstated and get through an evidentiary hearing, it will cost an additional $10,000, which you can see he has included in my most recent billing statement dated 26 November, 2014.
I am extremely grateful to all who have contributed to the GoFundMe account. I assure you that it is all going to pay my legal fees, either directly to my attorneys or to re-pay the family loan that was made to fund the legal retainer when I hired Esplin & Weight. So far, I have raised $2,920 through the GoFundMe. Of that amount, GoFundMe takes a 5% commission off the top, and another company takes an additional 3% to transfer the money to a bank account. So, I have yielded a net of $2690.78 from the GoFundMe. Many of the contributions to the GoFundMe have come from family members. From the general public and anonymous posters (some of whom may have been family, but I don't know), I have raised $2,690.78 through the GoFundMe as of December 3, 2014. Since receiving this bill, my uncle sent to Esplin Weight another $2,000 payment using his credit card on Monday, December 1st, which payment comes directly from your GoFundMe contributions. I will include proof of this $2,000 payment to this post when I get the receipt from Esplin Weight. This payment will also be reflected in my next statement by Esplin Weight that I will share here with you when I get it. So that means that since three days ago, my current amount due Esplin Weight is $12,235 ($2,235 for past work already done, and $10,000 for work they will do going forward). I still desperately need your help.

So to recap:
$9,235     Legal fees incurred to date by Esplin Weight
($5,000)  Retainer paid to and used by Esplin Weight
$10,000   Estimated additional fees needed
($2,000)  Payment made to Esplin Weight on Dec 1, 2014

$12,235   Amount currently due Esplin Weight today.

This is far below what I need to raise to continue to pay my attorneys' fees. But, again, I want to express my gratitude to all who have contributed. I want you to know that the money you have donated was and is needed, and appreciated, and it has not been wasted or used for any other purpose than to help me and my sisters in our legal battle to keep them safe and protected. 

Not Teenage Whim

I have felt the need for some time to address multiple comments I've seen (the majority on my dad's Facebook pages) that suggest that my sisters are simply teenagers who "just want to live with our mom" and who should basically suck it up and just come to terms with living in Kansas. This is so offensive to me, and dangerously ignorant to suggest such a thing. I'm sure it's even more offensive to Sydney and Dani, who have literally put their lives in danger by speaking out.

Who are these people? Why would they want anyone to go to a place they know is harmful? I've seen some comments describing this as "willful denial" and that's a perfect description of these comments. I would like to give a message to those who are posting against my sisters who have a knowledge of the abuse: You are supporting the abuse of these innocent girls. You are fighting to return them to my father, who is the cause of their abuse, and who will certainly abuse them further. 

I can tell that many of my father's supporters do not know what it feels like to live under the extreme and obsessive control of someone who uses isolation, triangulation, physical violence, anger, fear tactics, and punishment to control everyone in his house. I have spent 19 years in constant fear and anxiety about what he might do to me, my sisters, my mom, and my stepmom. Just because I'm out of the house doesn't mean I can forget about my family members that are still having to deal with that on a daily basis. 

I have presented multiple forms of evidence that my dad is abusive, and yet many refuse to believe it and seem anxious to silence me and my sisters. Many vocally discount my words and the words of my sisters, on behalf of my abuser. It really shocks me when I see it. 

My sisters and I have been abused over the entire course of our lives. 

Our abuser is our father. 

I cannot be more clear about this truth. Our mother is not our abuser. Many of you who have posted against my sisters have convinced yourselves and others that you are actually fighting to protect my sisters from my mother. The truth is here: she has not brainwashed us to hate our dad. My dad's abuse hasn't even caused us to hate him. But it has caused us to run from his abuse. We are not lying about this. This is not a game of hide-and-seek being played. This is not an issue of teenage whim. This is a scary, possibly life-threatening situation where our abuser is relentlessly trying to find my sisters and get them returned to him before they can speak up in court. 

I know that it is absolutely 100% NOT SAFE for Sydney and Dani to go back there now that they have exposed him after years of living in the shadow of fear he cast on us. Certainly Sydney and Dani themselves know it's not safe, or else they'd be here now. No child deserves anything less than a safe home. It is clear, based on his actions since my sisters ran away, that my dad is desperate to silence my sisters and me.
  
Please help us.

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