How To Heal & Move Forward After Trauma & Abuse w/Deborah Tuerkheimer EP 1186

This is episode number 1186 with Deborah Turkheimer.

Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

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Welcome back, my friend.

Today's guest is Deborah Turkheimer. She is a professor at Northwestern University, Pritzker School of Law, and she earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard College and her law degree from Yale Law School. And Turkheimer served for five years as an assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney's Office, where she specialized in domestic violence and child abuse prosecution. And she's written a new book called Credible, why we doubt accusers and protect abusers. And in this episode, we discuss how to create a safe space for people to openly talk about their trauma and abuse, what Deborah calls the credibility complex and how to work around it, what to do if you're a victim who hasn't shared your story yet, why abusers have traditionally been protected and what we need to change in our society, the immediate steps you should take after being abused, and so much more. And it's my intention to help spread awareness to help those who have dealt with this type of abuse, but there is a chance that this episode could be a trigger for some of you. And I want to mention that before we get into today's episode. If you're inspired and feeling moved to share this, then please message some friends, post this on social media, and let people know about this episode so we can get this message out there more. And a big thank you to our fan of the week who left a review over on Apple podcast recently from Christie who said, Louis, your podcast is my favorite to tune into weekly. You manage to share so much value all the time and I am so fascinated by the mind and body connection. So thank you for continuing to educate me and others. I am super grateful to you. Christy, we appreciate you and everyone listening right now because we are just as much learning on team greatness and my end as you are. So thanks for learning with us. And again, please subscribe to the School of Greatness over on Apple Podcasts right now. Leave us a review at the end of this episode of the part that you were inspired by the most and spread the message of greatness forward. Okay, in just a moment, I'm the one and only Deborah Turkheimer.

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Welcome back everyone in the School of Gratitude. I'm very excited to bring our guest. Deborah Turkheimer in the house. Good to see you.

Nice to be here.

Welcome to the School of Greatness. Thank you. You put out this amazing book called Credible: why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers. A lot about sexual abuse, sexual misconduct. I don't know if you know a lot about my story, but my audience has heard me talk about this many times. I was sexually abused as a kid by a man that I didn't know. And for 25 years held on to kind of the pain, the suffering, the silence of it because I was so ashamed of myself for being in that situation. Didn't have the tools or strategies to heal or cope or communicate what I was going through. And it took me 25 years until I finally realized I can no longer live with this. I can no longer live with this pain, suffering, resentment, anger, frustration, shame. and started to find tools on how to communicate it effectively. This is a little bit different, but I feel in a way that there's a lot of people in the world who've dealt with sexual misconduct in their life and they don't have tools. They're afraid to come out and speak about it. When they speak about it, people try to discredit them. So my first question is, what would you say are the biggest signs that someone who has been abused sexually or gone through some type of sexual misconduct in their life if they're not speaking about it. What can we look for as a friend, a family member, a peer, a co-worker, to be like, Huh, something's happening. I wonder if it's sexual misconduct?

Yeah, I have heard you speak about your story. It's so powerful. And I think it really brings home how it can help on that path toward healing when someone is able to talk about what happened.

Absolutely.

And yet it's so difficult. And we can talk more about why that is. In terms of signs, I got an email just this morning from a man whose daughter was sexually assaulted, and she stayed quiet about it, he said, for over a decade. And he said, looking back, he saw what he called behavioral changes. Really? This is on my mind because it just came into my box this morning, but I don't think it's unusual. Part of the problem is it's easier to see in hindsight. And we all change and go through transitions throughout our lives for lots of different reasons, not only because we've been victimized. But I do think that often when someone experiences something traumatic, a sexual assault, let's say, or maybe ongoing sexual harassment, They are giving signs to the people near them that might indicate that there's something going on. And if you're a friend, a family member, maybe it's worth asking.

Right.

What if someone never is willing to open up about it? How do you create a safe space consistently if they're like, no, nothing ever happened, but really they're just so afraid to talk about it, you know?

Yeah.

Well, I think that honoring that is really important. I mean, people will I think when they're ready to speak. And what we can do if we're close to someone is let them know that we're here. And we will support them when they are ready to talk about what happened. And maybe it's in a therapeutic setting. Maybe that's the first place where someone discloses. Maybe it's to a roommate or to a friend or family member. But I think what we can do is just be there and be ready. and not try to force a disclosure before someone is ready because the consequences can be so enormous.

Right, absolutely. How long have you been studying this in the world? Because you've been doing this with law and you've been studying this as a professor, but how long has this been for you now?

Well, my first job was as a prosecutor and I handled child abuse and domestic violence and sex crimes cases that was in Manhattan. And that was now, you know, many years ago. I graduated from law school in like the mid 90s. And so ever since, I've been thinking about these kinds of cases and thinking about the people who are victimized.

Okay. What did it, what drew you to this work? Was it seeing a case that you're like, this is just not fair or this is unjust, or people are going through, you know, not getting their fair justice? What was the thing that really said, I want to fight for this or be a stand for this?

Well, the domestic violence cases that I handled from the very beginning were the most compelling to me. And I did feel like when people are hurt by those they trust.

That.

Injury is just devastating in a way that no other really is. And it seemed to me that the system didn't respond very well. to those kinds of crimes and people didn't really know what to make of it. And so I think that was the beginning of thinking about this on a sustained basis.

What were like the common crimes that you would see? What were the themes that just kept happening where you're like, this is unfair or that the system doesn't work in the advantage of someone who actually had something harmful happen to them. What were those common themes?

Yeah, a lot was just the expectation that we put on the victim to behave in certain ways. And then when victims didn't, they would be penalized and they wouldn't get justice.

So credibility, they lost their credibility for being emotional or lashing out or whatever.

Or not leaving, right, staying in the relationship, not breaking it off.

You could have left at any moment, why'd you stay? Right, so maybe it wasn't as bad as you thought, right, saying these things.

Yeah, you didn't leave, you didn't report right away, you didn't, Yeah, you didn't sever all contact. And so these kinds of things were held against victims, and they weren't able to get the justice they deserved.

Let's say someone did leave. They blocked the person. They severed all contact, and then they brought this to the courts. Would they get their justice, or was it still, they weren't credible, did you see?

There were still such barriers to belief.

Really? Yeah.

I think that cases involving children, And cases involving women who are alleging sexual or domestic violence are some of the hardest to prove because we don't want to believe it. It's so deeply threatening, I think, to the way that we think about our intimate relationships and the ways that we interact and the ways that we want to imagine gender relations. That it's just destabilizing.

So domestic violence, it's hard to believe that is what we're saying. Like, he beat me or she beat me. It's hard for someone to believe that. In the courts?

I think it's hard to believe it and hard not to blame the victim.

And hard-- For their part in it.

For their part in it, too.

It's not just like, okay, he or she didn't just hit you for no reason. He wouldn't just walk up and hit you. There had to be something that caused the argument, the stress. Which obviously is nothing that can justify hitting someone, but that's what they would say, right? Like, well, you instigated it. what would they say typically?

Yeah, what did you do to bring this upon yourself? What did you do? And there's also this need to care about what happened and to think that it's important enough to, if you're a juror, to convict, right? To act in some way. So you've gotta believe it, you've gotta not blame the victim, and then in the end, you've got to care enough to do something about it. Otherwise, it just goes on and nothing is done.

Well, there probably also has to have evidence, right? There's got to be some type of evidence of what happened. And it goes between what he said.

And she said, or.

Yeah. Right?

Well, that's true, right? In every criminal case, these are hard to prove. They're beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard of proof in criminal court, and that's rightly a high standard. But when it comes to these kinds of cases as a practical matter, it's even more difficult to prove.

Really?

Yeah.

And if we look at-- There's no video footage, you know, especially if there's.

No video footage, it's like, Who do we believe? Yeah, I mean, credibility is at the heart of these cases. And going back to your earlier question, I think that's when I really started to kind of focus on this as the central thread that runs through it all. Credibility is everything.

It is. And each side, I'm assuming, of the case is trying to de-credit the other person. Is that typically how it goes? Yeah, and that's-- now let's get the facts straight. Let's just de-credit the person so their facts don't seem legit.

Yeah, and that's our adversary system, right? That's how it works. That's, you know, there are rules of evidence that constrain what lawyers can do, but that's the game. That's how it's going to go. And so I think what we ought to be concerned about or to sort of look out for is what works, what strategies work.

To win the case.

Yeah, if a defense attorney gets up there and asks, what were you wearing? And the jury doesn't care, then those questions are going to stop coming.

Right?

It's only if it works that those questions are going to keep coming.

Interesting. Has there ever been cases that you've seen over the years where someone who committed a crime is like, you know what? Everything this person is saying is true. I did 100% of these things. It's my fault. I take full responsibility. You're right. I'm sorry. Give me my punishment. Do you ever see that?

Well, when I was a prosecutor, defendants could plead guilty before trial, and that did often happen. And sometimes they pled guilty because they didn't want to face a trial. Sometimes I think they pled guilty because they accepted responsibility. So it can happen.

Okay, that's good then, right?

It's good.

Okay. And how many of these cases, how many of these cases do you see that are men against women and women against men. Like where the victim is the man or the victim is the woman. Is it highly skewed with women, I'm assuming, being-- Yes.

So the vast majority of-- 90%, 99%. Upwards of 90%.

90%.

Yeah.

But there are some cases in the other way.

There were a few, and those tended to be a little bit different in the way that the pattern of violence looked.

Gotcha.

But it is absolutely the case that women can be violent and that men can be victims of female violence and male violence.

I've heard of some men who've been assaulted but don't have the courage to come out and speak about it or do anything because it's even more, you know, in their mind it's shameful to not be able to handle that or to be beaten by a woman or hit by a woman. It's like, Is that something you've studied as well? Like just maybe men not even talking about the violence or the sexual misconduct in that way because it's looked as just shameful or weak or whatever it might be that men might feel?

Yeah, I think that that's very true. I mean, in thinking about why people don't come forward, and we know that most victims of particularly sexual violence will never report. And the silencing is a huge problem. And one of the reasons is the anticipated reaction. of people. What are people going to say? And if you're a man and you've been assaulted, this is often, I think, going to be on your mind, is am I going to be disbelieved or discredited because the notion is that men.

Don'T get hurt or made fun of or whatever, judged and embarrassed.

Yeah, and we should also say that in same-sex relationships, you know, there are different dynamics that come up with these barriers to belief.

And you talk about a thing called a credibility complex. What does that mean?

The idea is that we're shaped by forces, we don't even realize it, but we're shaped by these forces that impact how we think about credibility. We all want to believe that we're being fair and that we're judging credibility in an unbiased way, but we live in this culture that shapes the way we think about credibility and our law. shapes the way we think about credibility and most of us don't even notice it. So, I mean, it's fascinating and I think really important to start to see these forces and start to kind of unpack how we're thinking about credibility so we can do better.

So how do we, so we have to essentially reshape the way our psychology thinks about credibility, which has been around for, I guess, thousands of years. I'm assuming are longer. So how do we, how do we reshape our minds about credibility then? What's the step? for us to do that. Is it first with the law, how it's shaped, or is it with human behavior and psychology?

I think it's got to be culture moving and reforming law along the way. I mean, there are lots of places in our law that I think need to be changed, but the bigger task is to transform the way our culture imagines credibility and metes out credibility judgments. But it sounds overwhelming, and as we're talking about it, it can seem like way too big to make any progress. But I believe that each one of us actually does have the power to do better, and that's how we're gonna transform culture. We do it person by person. We do it one credibility judgment at a time.

Okay. So if you could shape culture in this moment, Debra, if you could say what I'm about to say is going to change the way we think about each other as human beings and the credibility of one another moving forward, the law will shape around this, the way we perceive ourselves will shape around this. What would you say if you could snap your fingers and people started to view things differently? What would need to happen?

We would need to start to care more about people across differences. We would need to find shared humanity and realize that when someone has been hurt, it matters. be willing to disrupt the status quo in order to send that really powerful message that this survivor counts, that what happened is wrong, and that it has to change. There has to be some accountability in our lives, in our formal systems, but even just in the way that we react with one another. We tolerate way too much abuse in our midst. And if we really care about this issue, we need to start making clear that it's not acceptable. All of us have a role in that.

Okay. So what could someone who's been sexually abused or dealt with sexual misconduct, how should they approach communicating it? To be believed by their friends, to be believed by their boss or co-workers, to be believed by the family or society.

Yeah.

What we just say is like, okay, an event happened that you were sexually abused or abused in some way and it was not okay. Like you did what you needed to do to stop it. You said, no, whatever you tried to do, it was clear that this was not okay, but it happened. And the person did the abuse. What should be the next step for someone? And how can someone, if they're listening to this or watching this, what actions should they take next? or a friend that happened to someone, what could they say to their friend that they should do next?

Well, part of the problem is that most of us don't really understand trauma.

And.

We see someone as being deceitful when in fact they're impacted by trauma. So I'll give you some examples. When someone comes forward and doesn't have a full and complete memory of everything. Often that's perceived as, well, why can't you tell me the story from A to Z with every letter in between?

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Because you try to protect yourself, your brain protects yourself from trauma.

Absolutely.

Try to block it out.

Yes, and neuroscientists are really clear about all the ways in which we really shouldn't expect a narrative to be linear and complete. but most of us aren't neuroscientists. And so unless we've experienced trauma ourselves or we've become educated about it, we might believe that someone is lying when they're not. And so that's a really hard truth to hear if you're someone who has been traumatized, right? Because what are you going to do about it? You sort of have to prepare yourself for people not responding the way you'd want them to respond. I do think that we're becoming as a society a little bit more educated about trauma and a little bit better versed in the idea that people don't always report right away and when they do they may remember certain, for instance, sensory perceptions more than they do, let's say, everything that happened right before or everything that happened right after. But if you're someone who's gonna come forward, I think you have to be you know, sort of prepared for someone to say, I wanna-- why don't you remember A, B, or C?

Right.

If you're the person listening, you don't have to do that, right? You can be a person who learns about trauma and recognizes that when your friend discloses to you, it may not be the story that you're expecting to hear.

Right.

And that person may be more emotional than you expect. or maybe less emotional than you expect. And none of that means that the person is lying.

Right.

This is interesting because educate me on the legal system. Do they go more based on the story or actual the facts of what has happened in a scenario, in just the law in general? Is it more like the story that's shaped around the facts or the facts itself? Or is it everything kind of combined?

Yeah.

I mean, we only can We get at the facts through what people describe.

Got it.

And if you're a law enforcement officer, what you'd want to see is that there would be more evidence gathered, that there would be corroboration of someone's account.

Interesting.

But oftentimes that doesn't happen.

Gosh, it's so hard to communicate it then, right?

It's so hard to communicate it then. And when a person is skeptical and you're describing abuse, I think it becomes even more difficult to sort of persevere. And so we put these really, really heavy burdens on survivors, and we have these systems that are just not responsive the way we would, I think, as, you know, people of goodwill and good faith, we'd want them to respond.

Right.

Man. Because I'm just trying to think if someone was telling me a story, and I mean, how do we come from a, an unbiased point of view to listen and not think like, are they elaborating this? Are they diminishing what happened? Because when I know in the past when I felt extreme hurt in my soul, in my heart, I can elaborate sometimes. You know, personally, I can be like, ah, you know, this is, but what actually happened is there's facts, and how I felt is like the story around the facts. So how can someone communicate it effectively to get justice? Is it like, it just seems like a messy, challenging thing. It seems hard.

It's really messy. There's a difference, I think, between talking to like a police officer and a prosecutor.

And a friend.

And a friend. And, you know, I think, again, I hesitate to put more burden on the shoulders of survivors because they're dealing with so much in the aftermath. But I will say that context matters. and who you're talking to and what you want to get out of that conversation might impact what it is that you're going to talk about and how much detail you're going to go into and how much you're going to lean into the feeling side of it as opposed to the fact side of it.

Got it. Okay. Wow. It just seems messy for survivors.

It's true.

To try to communicate this and be credible.

Right?

It just seems messy. So why do we protect the abusers or the accused abusers, either one? Why do we protect those individuals over their survivors more?

Well, I think one answer is that when we're asked to believe an account of an abuse and we're asked to do something about it, It's difficult, right? It's easier to do nothing and to just preserve the status quo. And sometimes we do that by saying, It's a he said, she said. There's nothing I can do. I don't know what happened.

Wow.

But that's protecting the abuser.

Interesting.

It's not changing anything. And when nothing changes, he's protected.

So what should happen next if it's a friend listening? Do you approach the abuser? as a friend or you just say we need to go to the police right now or what should happen next if it's a friend listening trying to help?

Yeah, one thing is to realize if you're a friend listening or a family member listening, your standard is not beyond a reasonable doubt. You're not a criminal court jury. You're not sentencing someone to prison, right? So the notion that you have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt by something, I think is off base. And for people to realize that can be important because it then frees you up to say, this is my friend asking me to support him or her. I can do that.

I can be here and be a listener and support you.

And I think from the survivors I've spoken to over the years, that's really what they need in that moment is to have that person say, I'm here for you. I'm here to support you. Do you want Do you want me to go to the police precinct with you to help you file a report? Do you want me to help you find a therapist? Do you want to talk to someone who's a professional? Do you just want to be able to talk to me? What is it that you need? I'm here for you.

Yes. Should all accounts of all levels or all accounts of sexual misconduct or Physical abuse. Do you believe all levels ranges should be taken to the police? Or should there be only a certain once it crosses a certain level? Or, you know, is it once it happens so many times, like what should happen?

I think there's a continuum. There's a spectrum of gender-based violence and sexual violence, and it's really only at those more severe ends of the spectrum that we define something as criminal.

Gotcha. Can you give me what does that range look like? What's criminal and what's not criminal?

So, like, for instance, the criminal law would prohibit, let's say, sexual intercourse or sexual contact without consent and sometimes also with force.

Okay, without consent. Okay.

But wouldn't prohibit what we might consider to be street harassment.

Right?

Someone like talking nasty or flirting or whatever and not stopping. Constantly may be walking after someone and talking to them, going around the block and saying things, saying, Give me your number or whatever they want to say, right?

Something would have to be severe or protracted. Now, if someone, you know, was a stalker and it continued, then you could imagine it being a criminal matter. But the criminal law really deals with just the most egregious conduct. And short of that, we have workplace sexual harassment law, and that's something that covers employees, some employees. And then we have a lot of misconduct that isn't covered by law, and that we have to deal with in different ways.

Just with family, friends, and facing it and saying, hey, this is not acceptable for me, this behavior. Gotcha. Okay, so the law is saying without consent or with force. If that happens, you should be taking this to the police.

Well, you can take it to the police. I don't know if I'm in a position to tell every survivor that that's the right course.

Okay.

Because our criminal justice system so often respond so poorly.

And what usually happens if you take something to the police where there was without consent happened or with force, what most of the time happens?

Well, you know, the arrest rates in, depending upon the police department, the jurisdiction, are fairly low. So, you know, maybe 20% on average across the country. And the rest will happen. And the rest of those cases go nowhere. And along the way, it can be difficult to be told either, I don't believe you, or it was your fault, you were drinking, you were doing whatever, or it just doesn't seem that serious and we're not going to move forward. Those are really difficult things to hear, and survivors often say that the aftermath is worse than-- More trauma. The abuse, yeah.

Yeah.

Constantly reliving it for months and months is more painful than moving on.

Especially when you don't have that validation, right? When you don't have that officer or prosecutor or Title IX officer or HR officer saying, yeah, this happened and it was wrong and I'm gonna do something about it and I'm gonna hold him accountable. If you don't have that, then you feel, I think, you can feel even more alone.

Yeah.

Do you know how many cases of sexual misconduct happen a year that are, I guess, counted? Do we know this from the courts and police departments?

No.

I mean, you'd have to each state keeps its own statistics. The federal, the FBI keeps its own statistics. Everything is really disaggregated. And then we also have to remember again that most of it never gets reported. So we're seeing like a tiny fraction. When we look at these systems, we're only seeing a little bit of it.

And it all comes down to credibility.

It comes down to credibility.

Credibility. Who's credible?

Yes.

And we can have all of the laws in the world, and yet if we don't get credibility right, it doesn't, they don't matter. They don't mean anything.

Really?

So what can I guess a victim do to build credibility?

Well.

I know from people who are journalists, for instance, that one thing that they will often ask if they're reporting out a story is, did you tell anyone around the time?

Right?

Even if you didn't report to the police, did you disclose? Is there anyone in your orbit who we can talk to who will remember?

What you said, yeah, yeah.

You telling me. Or going back to our earlier conversation, were there changes in your life that people may have witnessed, right, that in retrospect can corroborate the idea that something bad happened? And so there are ways to go back in time if somebody comes forward publicly or to the police only years after the fact, there are ways to kind of go back, but it's really difficult. This is a theme, how messy and complicated all this is.

So if something happens to you, you should speak to a friend or two right away. That's what I'm hearing you say.

I'm hoping that for people who have been victimized that they can find someone in their life.

Right.

Who they trust to tell.

What about writing a letter, journaling? Does that help too? Like, I recall them some things and-- yeah.

That'S another powerful form of evidence if it ever comes to it, right? This is my diary and this is what I wrote down, or I wrote a letter, I kept an account about it. So that can be really effective. But it's also really difficult to, as you say, to relive all of that. And to have to do that kind of processing so close to the incident itself, I think, is often too much to bear.

And why do you think it's so hard for people to leave, I guess, relationships of violence or with a theme of these kind of explosions or misconduct. Why do you think it's so hard for someone to leave those relationships after six months, a year, years of being in kind of the same environment?

Yeah, I mean, so many reasons. There's maybe financial dependence. Maybe there are kids in the mix. and this individual is a decent, seems like a decent parent, often it's frightening to leave because leaving can be the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship. Or there's still an emotional connection and often this is not bad all the time and there's still love in the relationship. There are so many vulnerabilities that are at play here. And these lives are often really intertwined. I mean, that's true in relationships that aren't abusive, and that's true in relationships that are abusive.

Right.

So what can someone do so it doesn't get to that place? So that, okay, we've been in this environment, I feel like, man, it's just, I don't feel safe when this happens. Maybe it's only once every three to six months that my partner lashes out or does these things. How can they support themselves if they're not gonna leave, maybe a semi-toxic relationship, to shift the relationship so that those things don't happen again?

Yeah, it's a lot to ask of someone who's in a relationship that is controlling, which is sort of what maybe what you're describing. And the violence isn't ongoing, but it's sporadic. You know, it's really hard to get someone to change. And so I tend to think that looking out for these warning signs is really important and being able to sort of protect oneself as best as one can. Because again, it's just going to be really difficult to put the burden on yourself if you're in this relationship to change him.

Yeah.

And why do you think abusers are protected in general? Why are they, over the years, why have they been protected?

Well, they tend to have more power in our society, more status, more privilege, more authority, and... More money or whatever, yeah. Absolutely.

We.

Revere, often we revere some of these men. And we've seen in the MeToo era, some of them have been brought to some justice. and the conviction of Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelly recently illustrate that we maybe can do better. But think of all of the years, the decades, and the many, many victims before we were able to sort of do anything to hold these men to account.

Michael Jackson as well, even nothing happened until after many years after his death when a documentary came out. and he got away from trial, right? He went to trial and then got out.

I think that's right. And these are revered men. I mean, they are sort of the--.

You- don't wanna believe, is that what it is? You don't wanna believe.

I don't wanna believe that they would be capable of this. And you'd rather believe that either, you know, these victims-- Or seeking attention.

Or they were trying to-- which is that ever the case though? Or is there certain cases where what an accuser is saying didn't happen. Oh, I mean, what in the Victor? Victor did I'm saying, like, that didn't really happen.

You know, yes, and, you know, it is. It has to be said that false allegations occur.

Right.

And it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise. But it happens much less frequently than people tend to think. And so, like, the best estimates are around five percent of allegations. of sexual violence are false. And if you ask law enforcement officers or even just people on the street, what do you think that number is? It tends to be like, oh, 50-50 or a majority.

Wow, really? A majority? Wow. You think it's more like 5%.

More like 5% is what the research suggests.

Wow, okay, powerful, interesting. So why is someone like when you mentioned R. Kelly, why is. Because didn't he have, like, a trial, like, I don't know, back in the 2000 or five or eight or something? And then. But then I don't even know what happened.

He was acquitted.

He was found not guilty.

Found not guilty back in 2000 something in Chicago.

Yeah. And this was probably after a years or maybe decades of him.

Yeah.

Kind of building this relationship with these young women. I haven't watched the documentary, the series or whatever it is, so I'm actually out of the loop. But what happened recently and why did it take someone so long for this to happen? When people knew it was happening for.

Years.

You know, people have been speaking about it for years. It wasn't just like a couple of girls, it was like dozens and dozens, I guess. So why does it take so many people for finally, okay, now we'll make something happen.

So many people and the work of so many people. Surviving R. Kelly, the docu-series. yeah, the Mute R. Kelly campaign. That's crazy. And it was young women of color who tend to be most easily cast aside. And so this wasn't a case, I think, where people didn't believe it was happening. They just didn't care enough to do anything.

Really?

So people kept buying his music. And he had, according to a journalist by the name of Jim DeRogatis, who's written about this for years, and he's done so much work to uncover this. he puts the number in the thousands, the people who knew and just didn't care. Just let it go on.

What?

He had, you know, he had people around him. He had bodyguards and drivers and, you know, managers and people just looked the other way. We should be in Fiji. This was happening for decades, right? Yes.

And he was just convicted, just convicted in Brooklyn.

What? I'm just figuring out Brooklyn. What happened?

What was the sentence? I don't even know what happened. I'm not even know where.

He has not yet been sentenced. He hasn't been sentenced.

Gotcha.

He will be sentenced to likely the rest of his life.

Really? So.

For decades, seemingly good men and women were aware of this, but didn't take action. So what I'm hearing you say is this is a cultural thing first. We should just become better human beings with the people around us and not be a stand for this if this is happening in someone's life.

Yeah, this goes back to the idea that we need to care more. We need to find shared humanity and act when we see suffering in our midst, whether it's sexual violence or any other kind of violence. It's not okay just to turn the other way.

How do we work on not shifting blame onto victims then? How do we not blame and discredit? How do we truly listen to what they're saying, the facts, their feelings, believe 100% of their word, and then be in support. How do we not blame?

Certain kinds of scenarios are most likely to trigger blame, and so we can start by recognizing, like, oh.

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Intoxication, right? That's something that as a culture, we are very likely to sort of point the finger and blame shift when there's drinking.

It's almost like, oh, if you had one sip, then I can't trust you.

Yeah.

Or it's your fault. Or you were, you could have left at any moment or whatever the.

Yeah, I mean, we sort of put this burden on victims to fend off the abuse. And if they don't or can't, they didn't fight hard enough or they were intoxicated or maybe they went back to his apartment and they were interested in doing something short of what happened, right? But all of that is seen as sort of asking for it. And it seems just to say it out loud, it maybe sounds kind of retrograde. There are maybe people listening who think like, oh, I wouldn't do that. But it's so ingrained in us that I think even people who think of themselves as being progressive and not falling into that trap, we just, I think almost instinctively, start to ask, what did this person do? There's a psychological reason for it. It's protective to think that if we all behave the way we should, we're not gonna get hurt. It's called the just world theory.

Just thinking that this person will be a decent person, and I wouldn't do this, so I'm assuming this person would do this.

Yeah, and that we're all gonna be safe if we just do the right thing. We can keep ourselves safe. Bad things only happen when people bring it upon themselves. And the world would be a better place, and it would be a safer place if that were true. It's not true.

Yeah.

Okay. So yeah, that's an interesting scenario. I'm not sure if this happens a lot where if like, okay, well.

The.

Victim went to the person's apartment, you went there, you could have not gone there, but maybe they wanted to have some interaction, but they didn't want it to go as far as it did. And so that becomes discredited. Well, you were there. You could have left at any moment type of conversation, right?

Yeah, and part of what's so tragic is that this also gets internalized. by victims. And so it's not just that other people are blaming and saying, why did you go back? You didn't know him that well, or you've been drinking. But the person who was hurt is very likely to ask those same questions.

Blaming themselves. Yes. Why was I such an idiot? I could have left at this moment, or this moment, they could have said this to themselves.

Yeah, those same cultural forces are taken on board by survivors.

Yeah, this is just messy.

It's difficult, yes.

What do you want people to know about this? And do you think it's important for people to be sharing their abuse stories publicly, you know, on social media, and talking about their abuse stories? Should they only be addressing it privately with the person that it interacted with and their friends and family, or to the law? Like how Should people handle this moving forward?

I think it's such a personal decision. I think it's not for anyone else to judge who someone shares their story with on what terms, when. But I do believe that kind of in this me too era that we're living in now, it is becoming easier. I'm not gonna say easy, it's not easy.

It's still hard. It's becoming more accepted.

Do it.

Yes, that there are more stories that are being told and it can be really empowering and it can be validating. It's just not always that way and so I wouldn't want to be heard to say, Hey everybody out there, go tell your stories. It's going to be great. It's not always great.

Yeah, and it might be messy for many months. You might have to relive the trauma and deal with a lot of that stuff too.

Absolutely, and because we don't have systems that deal fairly with these kinds of allegations and because we in our daily lives don't always do as well as we should. Survivors bear the brunt of it.

Oh man, so if you could give some advice to someone who's dealt with this, whether it be recently or in their past and they haven't addressed it with a friend or family member or publicly or the police, what would you say should be their steps moving forward? Is it call a therapist? Is it tell a friend, what would you say moving forward they should do?

I would say think about whether there's someone in either in your life or someone who you could call upon, like a therapist, like a counselor, maybe a teacher, who you trust to begin processing this with. And maybe that's a first step and maybe it leads to a formal complaint down the road, and maybe it doesn't, but to be able to release this burden that you're carrying, if you can find a way to do that, then that probably will help on the path toward healing.

Right, at least for your own healing. Maybe you won't get justice in whatever happened, but you'll feel like you can let go of this, the weight, the pain, the trauma.

And at the same time, I think it's not It's not wrong to keep silent if that's what you can do, right? If that's all that you can do, it's not for anyone else to judge that silence. And I think that we, in the Me Too moment, we want to be able to say everyone should tell their stories. And I just want to be careful to say that what's right for one survivor may not be right for another.

Got it, yeah. So just because someone's saying you need to share this probably doesn't mean you have to if you don't want to.

Yeah, I mean, one of the women I spoke to for the book described being criticized for how she shared her story. Her friend, people in her friend group didn't think that it was appropriate to do it the way she did it and it involved social media. So you sort of have to expect that the reaction may not be what you want it to be. And at a time when you're feeling vulnerable and when you need the support of your community to get the opposite is brutal.

Yeah, so just be mindful who you're sharing with first. Make sure it's someone you feel like it's not going to judge you or shame you or put you down. A safe confidant to speak with or a therapist, a confidential therapist, and then figure out your next step from there. That's what I'm here to say.

I think that's right.

What are we gonna get when we go through this book? Credible, why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers.

Oh, well, if you are someone who's experienced abuse and you've come forward and had a horrible aftermath or an aftermath that was less than what you wanted, you didn't get the response from the people you turned to, I think you'll understand better why that happened when you read the book. If you haven't come forward, I think you'll understand more why you've been silenced and how the credibility complex can silence you. And if you're someone who either has heard an allegation of abuse from your coworker, your roommate, your family member, or you're gonna hear that allegation because we're now in this time when stories are being told, right? the book will help you deal and respond more fairly. And I think the way that you'd want to respond in a way that's not biased and that doesn't rely on misunderstandings about trauma and the way victims behave, but is more accurate and is more informed.

So who should be getting it then? Someone who's listening that if they haven't dealt with any sexual misconduct themselves? Should they get it for themselves to be educated? Or is it more for someone who's been who dealt with who's a victim who's gone through this?

Everyone should get the book because, you know, frankly, most people, especially women, but men as well, have experienced some kind of sexual violation in the past. And it may not be on the severe side, it may not be criminal, but it's something that makes all of us, I think, relate to the experience, or many of us, most of us. And then the rest of the people out there who are listening, who maybe can't relate to what it's like to be a victim and come forward, are gonna hear from someone they love and are gonna wanna do right by that person.

Eventually, in the future. Well, I think the statistic, if I'm remembering, one in four women have been sexually abused, one in six men, I've been sexually abused. There's a resource for men, 1in6.org that helps men unpack and figure out how to deal with the shame and come forward. And there's a resource line there. You can call people at 1in6.org, I'm not sure the best place is for women. If you have a resource.

I have a resource page on my website. The 1in6 organization is on the resource page as well.

Yeah, it's a great organization. And your website, which you're not that prominent on social media, but your website, Deborah, it's just your name, Deborah Turkheimer, right?

That's it.

Okay, so if you go there, we'll link it up there and make sure everyone has access to that. We're going to get you on social media here soon. It's my goal. So I'm putting some of this stuff.

From the book out on social media.

We'll see, we'll see about that. Get one of your students to make an account for you and put it out there. The book's called Credible: why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers. I think it's extremely timely right now with everything that's happened and all the different series and documentaries that are coming out. You can learn more why certain people have gotten away with these things for years, why our society has allowed certain people to get away with these things for years and not held a higher standard, and how we can start to shift that around for the better. so I want to acknowledge you, Deborah, for doing the work you've been doing for so long and being passionate about trying to find justice for people that don't find justice, that are going through a really challenging time, whether there was a criminal act against them or just something that was just they didn't want, you know, that they didn't want that wasn't criminal, figuring out how to be heard, seen, acknowledged, how to heal that process moving forward because I know it can for some be extremely scarring for the rest of their life until they learn how to release the trauma, until they learn how to communicate effectively, which is extremely hard to do because as I know you study with therapists and psychologists and neurologists that the brain kind of blocks these traumas to protect us. So learning how to unblock and let it go in a healthy way is a very powerful thing to do. And as my therapist tells me, healing is not an event, it's a journey. It takes time. Just because you say something one time doesn't mean you're healed and everything's good. This may take years, decades for people to fully release and let go. So I acknowledge you for doing the work, doing the research, being a valuable voice, even if you're not on social media yet, but being a valuable voice and putting this resource out there.

Thank you.

And I'm going to encourage you to be on social media and start sharing more. I've seen some of your videos and I'm excited for you to start doing more interviews on this. So we can go to your website, we can get the book there, we can get it on Amazon. How else can we be of support to you with this message?

You know, I appreciate everything you've said and I, you know, I put everything into the book. As you say, I'm passionate about this. I believe we can do better. The book is written not in a kind of pointing fingers way, not in a way to suggest that, you know, people are bad apples or that they want to hurt victims or protect abusers, not at all. It proceeds on the assumption that we all want to do right and we want a world in which sexual abuse isn't happening. And so, you know, my hope is that people will read the book and make changes in their daily lives. That's how we change culture. We don't weave a magic wand and remake our culture overnight. We don't remake our law overnight. But each one of us in the way that we interact with the person who we're closest to can make the world better.

Yeah.

One interaction at a time, and with the family, with friends, it doesn't have to be like, to the world, but one friendship at a time. This is a question I ask everyone at the end of our interviews called the Three Truths. So imagine it's your last day on earth, a hypothetical scenario, and you've accomplished all of your wildest dreams and goals. Everything's come true for you personally and professionally. But for whatever reason, all the work you've created, this book and all the messages you put out into the world, they have to go somewhere else. We don't have access to them anymore. They're gone. from this world, they're in some other world. So we don't have access to your content anymore, but you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. Three things you know to be true from your experiences in life that you'd want to leave with us. This is all we have to remember of your message. What would you say are those three truths?

Okay, I'm gonna start with people are complicated and imperfect. And so what we can do is find shared humanity and show grace, be generous when we interact with our fellow human beings.

Yes.

That's one. My second truth is integrity is essential.

Yes.

And we'll always make mistakes. and we'll fall short because going back to that first truth, we're imperfect. But we can act with integrity. We can be true to ourselves and our values and our core commitments. And that seems to me to be at the core of sort of what it is to be a good human being. And then I get one more, one more truth. Okay, I'll say anger, can be channeled toward change. And that when you see injustice in the world or unfairness or inequality or someone who's hurting, someone who's suffering, and it makes you mad or indignant or frustrated, or maybe you feel that way because you yourself have been wronged. You can harness it and you can make change in the world.

Yeah.

Use it for good.

Absolutely.

Channel your anger for something more meaningful than just holding onto the anger. I love that. Anything else we can do to support you before the final question?

I feel very supportive. This has been a great conversation. Good, good.

I want to get the muscles out there.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Okay, Deborah, the final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

Okay. I'm gonna say doing or being in ways that transcend self-interest and elevate the good of another person or other people. That's greatness.

Deborah, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links.

And also make sure to share this.

With a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

And now it's time to go out.

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