Survivors Are Not to Blame: Breaking the Shame Cycle After Sexual Abuse

For many survivors, the deepest wound isn't the abuse, it's the silence that follows. Martina Zanger lived that silence behind the facade of a perfect Swiss family. She was abused by her grandfather and her uncle, drawn into a cult, and later found herself in sex work searching for healing. Today, as a trauma expert and author of Not My Shame, Martina shows that true recovery begins when we return the shame to where it belongs, with the perpetrators, not the survivors. Welcome, Martina.

Hello, Rita. It's lovely to meet you, and thank you for, um, letting me be on this program, Beyond Diagnosis.

Oh, you're welcome. And while you have such a powerful story to share, I mean, that's a lot to go through, and I believe It started in Switzerland when you were only 4 years old, and Switzerland now for you is like a place of, like, dysfunction where it's hid behind the, the sense of perfection, you know, like the perfect family. No one talks about it. That's one of the problems with these type of things, trauma. No one wants to talk about it, or there's too much shame to talk about it. What is it that you remember from that time as a child around the secrecy that you lived and how it felt inside of you?

That's a really good question. So there were quite a lot of secrets that I had to keep. So not just my grandfather who sexually abused me and my uncle, his son, who sexually abused me. It was also that My mother, who was my grandfather's daughter and my uncle's sister, had a severe mental illness and was frequently suicidal. So we had to keep that a secret too in our home. So she was very unhappy, and, and, um, I suspect she was also abused by the same perpetrators that I was abused by, by her father and brother. And so she suffered severe depression and suicidal ideation. And we had to— we pretended that we were a normal, happy family. And that took a lot of energy. I had to hide so much from my friends, from neighbors, and so on. And I would get dropped off at my grandfather's place. Probably like every 2 or 3 weeks where I would get sexually abused by my grandfather and uncle because my mum wasn't coping being a mother of 3. And I was the youngest and the only daughter. And so I was dropped off every 2 or 3 weeks to be sexually abused by those 2 men. And of course, I had to keep that a secret too because my grandfather was a High Court judge. In the town that I grew up in. And my uncle was a very well-loved politician. They were really respected in our town. And there was no way for decades that I could say anything because I seemed to be unstable and crazy while they seemed to be, you know, very, very high-functioning men.

Mm-hmm.

doing good in society while I became a dropout because I couldn't cope with the truth of what had happened to me.

That must have been incredibly traumatic at 4 years old. Can you remember how you would have rationalized any of that? Well, how long did it last for? So from— is that it?

It actually started before 4, so I think it started at around 2. Which is when I started to be dropped off there, and it went on till I was 6. And at that point, my grandfather passed away and my uncle got married and left that house. So the abuse stopped then, but it went on for 4 years. And it happened like, you know, more than dozens of times. I once did the calculation, probably more than 200 times.

Wow.

And I did feel extreme fear whenever I went there, um, panic and fear whenever I stayed at that house. But, um, my grandfather was bedridden after a stroke, so I did— I saw him. I had to kiss him every night and every morning, and that is when he would abuse me. And I was very scared of him. He was an angry man. Whereas my uncle, that was much more confusing. He was a very charming man, very funny and charming. And he was a real— he groomed me. So on one hand, I loved him because he gave me affection. And on the other hand, I was terrified of him. And in my mind, he was 2 people. He was not one person. So he was the really lovely godfather and uncle who played with me and made me laugh. And then at night, he was the abuser who was absolutely terrifying. And the way I coped with both men abusing me was to, as the abuse was happening, I would float into the corner of a ceiling and look down at the abuse. And I was actually not in my body. I was not embodied. And that is how I coped, that I removed myself. Um, I removed myself from what was happening to my body down below, like down at the scene below me.

To have to even do that at that young age, or even be capable—

Yes.

To do that at that young age is extraordinary.

Yeah, it is extraordinary. And it's a, it's a very common way that victim survivors deal with abuse that just can't be— I mean, you can't wrap your head around it. You can't understand it.

Mm.

Um, and it took me a long, long time when I finally told the truth about what happened to me. It took years for me to just to understand how this could have happened, how no one saw it. how everyone looked the other way, and how those men were glorified in our Swiss society, whereas I was a failure, a dropout, a sex worker, a member of a cult. No one would believe me if I had disclosed it. So that was very difficult because they were so highly regarded, and I was really— I felt like I'm scum, I'm stupid. And that's why I fell in love with the Indian guru Rajneesh, because strangely I was 19, so I was very misguided then. Um, when I met him, he promised each of us that became his followers a new name. And a new birthday. And that would mean, in my interpretation, I thought it will mean that I have a new start and my past is no longer, um, I no longer have a past. And I believe that this is what would heal me, having a guru and meditating and searching for enlightenment. I would be able to heal from the unspeakable abuse that I still had not disclosed at 19.

I want to go into a little bit, understand a little bit what life was like in that cult. When you joined the cult, did you divulge that that was why you were there, to find that type of healing from your experience?

No, I never divulged that I was sexually abused until I was about 28. So at that stage, all of— all the years that I was in the cult, I never disclosed. And really, that was in the— that was in the early 1980s. And in the 1980s, throughout the 1980s, no one was yet talking about sexual abuse of children.

Mm-hmm.

And so I didn't even have words for it.

Yes.

It was only over time that I, you know, the memories came so thick and fast that I could no longer run from it. But I, I really believed that this guru would heal me from everything that ailed me. And all the other Rajneeshis too believed the same thing. We were all there to be healed. We all had wounds. And I guess all human beings have wounds. And we find various ways of trying to find healing, and that was my way.

So what was life like there in a cult, and was it what you thought it would be? And the out— did you get any semblance of outcome you thought you'd have?

Yeah, sadly. I mean, my experience is not positive. Um, so I became a Rajneeshi at 19. I had no skills. I was at that time, I was doing menial work like cleaning jobs, cleaning factories, working at Pyrmont fish markets, like working in sandwich shops as a sandwich hand.

Mm-hmm.

I had dropped— I had gone to uni but dropped out in week 6 of my first semester because I just simply felt I can't cope. I can't cope in the cold adult world. I dropped out at that point, and I then found the guru and wanted desperately to go and live with him, which is what we all wanted to do. There were, at that time, there were probably 200,000 followers across the globe. He had a huge following. He was very charismatic. I had to get as much money as I could Very quickly so I could go and live with him at his ashram in, um, America, in Oregon. He had a 64,000-acre ashram, massive, um, in the Oregonian desert, and that was our Holy Grail. So a friend who I met through Rajneesh was working at a brothel. Oh my God. And said, look, you can make money really quickly by doing this work. It's so easy, and you will make money like within 9 months. You'll be over there for— and we needed $8,000 to be there for a year. So I had to save up $8,000 plus airfare and some spending money. And so when she told me about working in the brothel, I thought, I can do that. Because I had actually, in fact, been groomed by my first abusers, um, to do sex work. You know, I felt I am— at that time, I am not worth much, but I am attractive and men like me, and that's what I'm good at. So I went for an interview at this upmarket Sydney brothel I got the job even though the, um, the man who interviewed me, he was the manager, lovely man, a gay man. He got me to undress just to have a look what I looked like, um, because I was a hippie and wearing really baggy clothes, um, and I had like, I remember I had these saggy old cotton undies and he took one look at the undies and was like, um, I think you're gonna have to buy some lingerie. before you start. And so he sent me to the House of Maryvale. Do you remember the House of Maryvale?

I don't, actually.

It was a very fancy, upmarket shop for women. Maybe it was for men as well. But anyway, they had lingerie, they had designer clothes. I had never been in a shop like that. And I spent my— I didn't have much money. My entire savings was spent on these G-string red undies and, um, little lacy bra.

We'll be right back.

So I, I kind of had to, like, I had to learn how to be a sexy sex worker. And I started the next night, and thankfully I was treated really well there by all the other staff and by management. The women I worked with were lovely to me. They could see I was like from another planet.

Mm.

Um, and they took me under their wing and really took care of me. So that was really beautiful. I formed some good friendships there. But, you know, I don't want to glamorize my time there because I had to have sex with many, many men and All of it was, you know, what would I say? Well, it was consensual because I got money, but I would never have had sex with those men if it wasn't for the money.

Yes. And did that re-traumatize you?

I think it did. Yes, it did, because that's when my pill use really got out of hand. So I'd been using pills, um, my mum was using pills, and I started stealing her pills when I was about 12. And she— the pills were kind of Valium sleepers, Valium, Rohypnol, those sorts of calming medications. And when I worked at the brothel, yes, my pill use really, um, got out of hand because I needed to find a way of calming my anxiety.

Absolutely.

I would pop Valiums Mostly, I think it was mostly Valiums, um, you know, sometimes 3 at a time, just to give me the courage to do what I had to do.

Most people do sex work because they need the money. Yeah, you know, they may be very unskilled in other areas of work, or they haven't had the opportunity to be able to study or afford to study. So, you know, It is a survival—

Yeah.

Survival work as well. I mean, some people do it because they can make great money and they want to do it, but it is sometimes a survival route. That must have just been harrowing for you. And I read that you also— you described that throughout that time you had your mother's voice of shame in your head. Throughout the whole thing, what you were going through physically, and then to have that on top— because it's bad enough that we speak badly about us ourselves, our own inner critic.

Yeah.

But then to have a constant voice of your mother's shame, and on top of it you're dealing with the fact that your mother wasn't there for you to protect you. Tell us, tell us about that.

Yeah, I mean, that was so, you know, it took a very long time for me to not hear my mother's voice in my head throughout each day. It was just, it was normal. It was like a radio that was tuned to the maternal radio station. And she would say things like, in real life, of course, but also in my head, she would say, She had a very strong German accent, harsh German accent. She would say, "I am so ashamed of you. You are so fat. You are getting fatter." Those are just some little snippets. But yes, she was very ashamed of me because we came from a well-to-do middle-class family. We were expected to go to university to meet our husbands. And have children and lead respectable lives, and I was an absolute dropout. So yes, she was ashamed of me, and I was ashamed of me too because I had learnt it from her. And I didn't see at that time— I was actually, when I look back on it now, I was a really sweet young woman. There wasn't much wrong with me except the abuse. You know, I was really sweet. I wasn't harming anyone. I was trying to find a way to heal. And I admire her, this young woman's, I don't know, quest for healing and her resilience.

Mm.

Even though she was quite misguided. I was misguided. But I can understand why completely. And I have utter compassion for that young woman I was.

Oh, absolutely misguided. I mean, you didn't have good guidance as a young child where we usually start receiving our guidance on how to be in life, what to do. You— yours was thrown into chaos.

Yes.

And then you're left sort of like thrown out into the paddock of the world, so to speak, of life.

Yes.

You have to just work it out for yourself, and you're trying to work it out with so much emotional trauma. Did your mother, when she said, I'm ashamed of you, did she know that you were a sex worker here in Sydney?

No, she didn't know. No. So she was ashamed because I was a uni dropout and because I wore the wrong clothes. And I, you know, especially when I joined the cult and I wore— we wore red and orange, and I wore a big mala necklace, a sandalwood necklace with the guru's picture on it. She just thought that was disgraceful. I had a different name, and she could not understand why her daughter had suddenly fallen off the rails, because I was actually like— I got in the top 10 percentile Um, in my HSC, I was a really smart, good student. And then just, um, once school finished, I fell apart. Yeah, the structure was gone and I fell apart completely.

Well, you said like you came from a good Swiss family where everything was hidden behind a facade. Well, once you finished, like, the structure of school It was too hard to keep up the facade. There was nothing— there was no order to keep you sort of in line. When I say in line, you know what I mean? In line. Yeah, you know, with boundaries and this has to happen and that has to happen. Well, once you had kind of like free will, did you then realize, wow, I've got free will but I've got no life skills?

I had no life skills. That's right. Because all I knew was harshness, and I knew I wanted to get away from that. I did not want the Swiss harshness. It's a very straight world. You have to be straight. You have to be conservative. You have to be good. And I didn't want to be like that. I was, I was a rebel, I think.

Hmm.

Um, but sadly, I found myself in the cult where, again, I was not Then I was not— I was oppressed once again and wasn't able or allowed to rebel, um, in that cult family either. So I went from one straitjacket to another straitjacket.

We see it on, you know, Netflix, we see it on all of these things, people join cults. But like, from someone who's actually— from the mouth of someone who's actually been in one, What is it like?

Yeah, so I was in the cult for 8 years. Um, I lived at the American ashram, um, where probably 2,000 of us were living at the time. So it was a big, big, you know, it was like a, a town. Um, and we each had jobs, so we paid for the privilege of working 7 days a week, 12-hour days. The more rich you were, the more money you gave the guru, the better your job was. So you might get a cushy job in the office or in one of the shops. But the job I got, and that was like one of the lowliest jobs, was called the pipe crew, and it was laying pipes irrigation pipes in the desert. So we had to dig ditches in the desert to lay irrigation pipe to grow all the vegetables and the tree seedlings that, um, you know, the vegetables that fed our community. Um, and I was not, you know, I was not an outdoor person at all. It was a rude shock.

Absolutely.

And we also, like, I thought, oh, it's going to be amazing being there, but it was not Amazing. We had to share— all of us workers had to first of all pay, I think it was $500 a month to, to work there. And we had to share a tiny, tiny space with 2 other people. So each room had 3 people in it, and we had just really cheap foam mattresses on the floor with hardly any room to move between them. And that was a rude awakening because I had kind of glamorized, it's going to be amazing and he's going to love me, he's going to see me and, and fall in love with me and help me. Well, I saw him every day and he never once looked at me in 18 months. So that was heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking, because I tried so hard to attract his attention. Um, and in a way, he was a little bit like my famous grandfather and uncle, um, a father figure that was indifferent.

It just sounds devastating. Like you said, you mentioned before that you had to pay $8,000 a year to get over there.

Yeah.

So you could go there.

Yes.

And then you have to pay $500 a month to be there.

Well, that's part of the $8,000.

Oh, that's part of the— yeah, I was going to say to you Where did you— once you were there, how were you able to pay for that monthly? Yeah, but that's part of it.

Yeah, so you paid a monthly fee of $500.

So in actual fact, he, he didn't have any interest in your emotional well-being at all. You were actually going over as a work slave.

Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah.

So it was nothing what you thought it would be.

Nothing like I thought it would be. I was so naive. Um, of course, the people that were in his inner circle got access to him, but they were only either the very beautiful young women, or they were rich and had given them— given him their inheritance, or they had sold their home and given him that money.

Unbelievable.

Um, whereas I had— I only had the $8,000, so I was of no interest to him. And he had, as, as you said, he had 84 Rolls-Royces, um, and he had Cartier diamond bracelets and diamond-studded Rolex watches. And he was in silence then, so he wasn't even talking to us anymore. He used to give these beautiful discourses, but he no longer did that. He was in silence. And so he would drive past every day at lunchtime in his Rolls-Royce, in one of them, and he would drive slowly past, and we would all line up on the side of the road, 2,000 of us, and he would wave. He would make eye contact with some But never with me. I was like desperate for his attention, never got it. And so over time, this was actually a good thing. I decided if he's not going to pay attention to me, I'm going to just not go to Drive-By anymore. And I used to go back to my little house that I shared with 2 other people. And just have a little nap and read my book because I thought there's no point being there. He's not going to look at me anyway. And that was like the first, the first seed of doubt had been planted then, and the first seed of rebellion had been planted. And then slowly it grew until I was able to leave.

And was it hard for you to leave?

Yes, very hard. Very, very hard. It was, I I, I was talking to a friend this morning who had a history of heroin addiction, and she was talking about how stopping her addiction was extremely painful. The way she described it is very similar to me walking away from the guru. I had to feel everything that I, that I didn't face. I had to face everything that I hadn't faced in those 8 years of Being with the guru.

8 years is a long time, isn't it?

A long time. It's like 19 until 27. Yeah.

And did you— formative years, very formative. I mean, that's when people, you know, young ones are experiencing, starting to experience life and start developing how they want to be in the world.

Yeah, yeah.

And did you find that people around you in this ashram, obviously they had emotional issues. Maybe they were dealing with trauma or whatever their situation was, that they started to feel like you did. Did they sort of think, well, I'm not getting— what am I doing here? I'm not getting any attention and I'm working like, like a dog.

Yeah, I mean, look, we had— I think most people were very devoted, dedicated, and obedient. And our disobedience was— my disobedience was very secretive. So I never openly said, stuff this, I'm not going to drive by, I'm going to have a nap, because that was completely unacceptable because we had to be devoted to him. So over time, I got to know maybe 2 or 3 close friends who also started having doubts. And that was very helpful. We would kind of whisper about our doubts with each other, and that was really, um, supportive.

Yes, well, that's the whole thing about cults. They tend to prey on the vulnerable. They seem to have a laser to be able to pinpoint, this one's troubled, or this one is trauma, or this one is whatever, abuse, you know, substance abuse. Whatever their issue is in life, cults draw them in looking for, for attention, love, connection, what they haven't had in the outside world.

Yeah, yeah. And it did give me a sense of family and belonging for, for many years. So even towards the end, I knew that he was corrupt. I knew he was not a good person. I knew he was greedy and uncaring, but I still hung in there, a little bit like a bad marriage. All my friends were part of this movement. My whole world was this movement. So it took enormous courage to say, okay, that's enough, I'm leaving now. I lost a lot.

When you say, okay, I'm leaving now, did you have any idea to what or to who?

No, not really. I mean, when I left It was the third time. So he moved back to India at some point, and I visited him there 3 times over a couple of years. But I was already like, the disenchantment was definitely there. So I no longer longed to live with him the way I had previously. But I visited, and the last time I visited, his girlfriend, her name was Vivek, she died by suicide while I was there.

Wow.

And the way this was dealt with was just so uncaring that he said, and everyone else around him said, she's done the most gutless thing any human can do. It's a terrible selfish act and so on. And I was, I think, you know, I felt like I was the only one who thought, I am so, so sorry, Vivek, that we have all let you down, that you have had this terrible depression and we weren't able to help you as a spiritual family. And that was the moment I knew I'm going to leave that cult. behind. And I did. I went into town, I booked my ticket home, and I left the next morning. And I never looked back.

And they never questioned or came after you, or—

They didn't come after me, but I was like blacklisted. If you leave, you're just a loser. You're, you're, um, you're no longer worth anything. So a lot of— I lost most of my friends, and I kind of came back With, you know, with just a broken, broken heart. Um, and that's when I finally got to face my sexual abuse memories.

The fact that you could keep going with everybody stomping on your self-esteem and you just keep bringing yourself up and moving forward is incredible. You say that your healing felt like that you were wading thigh, thigh deep through the muck of buried trauma. That's an incredible statement. So what was that process and what did it actually look like?

Yeah, yeah, it was awful. I just thought I was losing my mind. I thought I was losing my sanity. I was having— it started really bad nightmares about my grandfather and uncle. And then it became flashbacks in the daytime as well. So I was just flooded at night with nightmares and in the day with flashbacks. And I thought, I am— I must be going crazy. And I remember I saw a psychiatrist who diagnosed me. I just filled out a questionnaire. He was a very uncaring man. I won't say his name, and he prescribed me Prozac and said, "You have depression. That's all." And but then I finally had the courage to tell a friend, and she was a psychologist, and she referred me to another psychologist lady who I started to see. And she, I disclosed to her, and she believed me and supported me for. The next 4 or 5 years.

And so that's how you did it, through a psychologist?

Which is in the book a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, isn't that what you've kind of been searching for all that time?

Yes, exactly.

To be believed, to be supported, to be heard. And did she just— was it just talk therapy, or—

We did a lot of EMDR therapy, which is therapy that I now use with my clients. It's a great tool for working with trauma, um, that kind of cuts through all the mental chatter and goes quite deep. Um, and she took me very deep, but in an extremely safe and supportive way. So she was like— she became like my good mother. A good mother that I'd never had. And I still— I recently caught up with her for coffee, and that's like 40 years later.

Wow.

Um, and she's still so— such a beautiful person. Um, and she's— she really helped me turn my life around. She was the one that encouraged me to try university one more time because I thought, I'm so stupid. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I'm hopeless. And she said, give it a try. You might be ready now. And I was. And then through— really, that opened up a whole new world for me, tertiary education. I got my master's. I got a PhD. I started doing work that was— that is still very meaningful Um, and profound for me. And hopefully that hopefully helps others through that therapy.

And that's why it's so important to find whatever it is, whatever resonates with you. The work has to be done. The inner work has to be done to be able to rise up like you have. And wow, you've really found your voice, haven't you?

Yeah.

I mean, through this book, You've got a PhD, you're helping other survivors of violence and sexual abuse. Where do you think the legal system and the social system still needs to upgrade for our survivors?

Oh, it's massive. It's, it's so massive. Victim survivors get re-victimized and re-traumatized by the legal system. System, and that's by the criminal legal system as well as the family law courts. They're just— they fail women and children every single day. They traumatize women and children. They make catastrophic decisions, um, that impact women. So many women I've talked with have said the legal system was actually more traumatising than the abuse they experienced. And that's what I did my PhD on, was on sexual assault and the legal system. And I— in that, I interviewed women who had been to court about a sexual assault matter, and predominantly they all said that it was the hardest thing they've ever been through. And many said they wished they'd never taken that route of taking legal action. The PhD also, I wrote an intervention, a group intervention, which it goes for 8 weeks and it prepares women for the reality of going to court and what that will be like. And it allows them to build their emotional muscle. tools so that they are somewhat prepared for the onslaught of, you know, really when women are questioned, they are being treated like the criminals.

Mm.

They are told, we suggest to you that you are lying. I put it to you that you are lying. That's what defence barristers say every day of the week. And that is so frightening for victim survivors who have taken years of courage to actually make a police statement and make a complaint, a legal complaint.

It's disgraceful.

Yeah.

It is absolutely disgraceful. And I can understand why you believe in all your heart that the shame must go and be placed with the perpetrator. Not the victim like it is now.

Yes, yes.

It's almost like if you were a— it feels like it's like the 1700s, 1800s.

It does, doesn't it? It's like Handmaid's Tale.

Yes, it does. Yes.

Yeah, it's crazy-making, and it still makes me crazy at times. And that's why I write it at the end of my book. I write about Holding hope in one hand and rage in the other. I have both. And I think my rage keeps me going. It gives me the passion to keep helping other victim survivors. And my hope also helps me giving support to victim survivors. But rage is a great— you know, we're sort of like, oh no, you should Let go of your anger, don't be angry, you should forgive. No, I don't think you have to. I think, I think well-placed rage can really help us be energized and go on marches and support other victim survivors, support, um, people who are oppressed.

Without— and I'm talking about not toxic rage.

Yeah, yeah.

That's not what you're saying either.

Yeah.

Healthy rage helps us put boundaries in place.

Yeah, it does.

Because without that, we allow people— if we don't get— if we don't feel we have the right to be angry or enraged at what someone has done to us or a loved one, well then how do we move forward and say this is unacceptable? We actually can't find the line in the sand. Would you agree?

Yeah, I do agree. Yeah, I think our rage, you know, it's not very popular, but it will keep us going. It will keep us from death by suicide.

Yes.

Yeah, because if we have anger, and again, not toxic anger, but responsible anger, it keeps us going and it keeps us helping others as well.

It has been— your story is just incredible, and I do admire you from being where you are as a tiny little girl who's, you know, just starting her life and should have had, you know, a lovely childhood and a mother to protect her. So you didn't, and you had terrible relatives.

Yeah.

To come out now, you've, you've tried to find your way. You've tried to find healing. Um, so many are drawn into these cults thinking that they are family.

They're not.

They're predatory, you know, as what many people find out. So for those who are still carrying shame or silence, what's the first small step towards reclaiming their own voice like you did and their self-worth like you have?

I think it's finding the courage to tell someone about what's happened to you. And we have to choose quite carefully whether that's a therapist or whether it's a good friend. Like for me, it was a good friend I told. Or whether it's— well, anyone. Whether you ring up a helpline, 1800RESPECT, and tell The person on the other end of the line what's happened to you. We need to tell someone, first of all. Secondly, we need that person to believe us, to say, I believe you, and what can I do to support you? I'm here for you. Those are the 2 most important things, and that's where the journey begins. And then the journey will lead to healing. But it may take— like, for me, it took a good 5 years to really build a life that was sustained, sustainable, supportive, safe, and, um, and where I felt I stood on the ground with my feet on the ground and I was empowered. Took a long time.

It would take a long time to Because like you said, when you're a child, you went out of your body. To be able to safely come back into your body and trust, that would take a long time.

Yeah, yeah.

And a lot of courage.

So there are some services that are free. So for example, Victim Services— we could put it in the show notes.

Yes.

They provide 22 free hours of counseling to victims of crime. Sexual assault services also provide free counseling. So you don't— I mean, of course, sometimes it's quite expensive to see a psychologist, but there are free options.

Yes.

That's what you need. And I think every victim survivor deserves free, free help, free support.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Because they usually have run away from a marriage or a, you know, some form of relationship, or their home. They have kids, so they don't have the means, the funds, or, or the ability to go and get the help that other working people can do.

Yeah.

Martina, this has been so joyous. Well, joyous— it's been joyous to meet you.

It's been joyous to meet you too.

And an incredible story, which I think will help many listening to this. That doesn't matter where you've started, you can come out the other end like yourself.

Yeah, you can. Yeah, don't give up.

No, never. And I encourage everyone to buy your book. It'll be in the show notes. Do go, and your website will be in the show notes. So I do encourage everyone to go there. It's a fantastic read. Even connect on socials with Martina. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you, Rita. It was a pleasure to talk to you.