Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - "My Whole Career I've Fought For Girls Who Have Been Sexually Abused." – Interview with Francey Hakes

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

It’s one thing to hear a story about child exploitation from a survivor’s perspective. But what about the other side of the story? The story told by those who dedicate their lives to fighting against evil – to fighting against people who commit heinous crimes against children.Alex Clark sits down with former State and Federal Prosecutor, Francey Hakes, to talk crimes against children, the failures of the FBI, Gabby Petito, and More!Looking for like-minded friends? Join the Cuteservative Faceb...

It's the spillover with Alex Clark. Hopefully by now you have listened to last week's episode with Midsy Sanchez, a heroic survivor who is abducted by a child serial killer and rapist at eight years old. And you know, it's one thing to hear a story of child exploitation from a victim's point of view. But what about the other side of the story told by those who dedicate their lives to fighting against evil people who harm children. The people who put child predators in prison for life or even pursue the death penalty when applicable.

It's a life passion of mine to invest in stories that shed light on child exploitation. So it was very important to me to hear this specific perspective and get insight into these heinous crimes from someone who knows our justice system inside and out. The bonus, she's a conservative. The woman I am pleased to have with me today has overseen child exploitation efforts at the Department of Justice, which of course includes the FBI,

the U.S. Marshals, the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, the nation's 93 U.S. Attorney's offices, and the Office of Justice programs, which houses the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces and other law enforcement grant and victim-centric programs. She served as the liaison from the Department of Justice to industry, nonprofit, federal, state, and local agency as well as to law enforcement agencies and governments worldwide. She's also testified before the U.S. Congress and the United States Sentencing Commission and briefed senior officials at the White House on child exploitation issues. Holy crap, I could keep going.

Her background is that extensive and impressive. So I don't want to keep you waiting any longer. I am so elated to welcome to the spillover, former state and federal prosecutor and co-host of the True Crime podcast, best case, worst case, Francie Hakes. Francie, I just filled in the cute servatives of all of your extensive career history. And I got to say, I don't even know if I got it all right. I feel like I just talked for five minutes only going through every single, you know, aspect of your career, every title that you've ever held.

Well, I'm old, I think is what you're saying. No, it means I'm impressed and I cannot believe all your experience. So, before I get into the nitty gritty of the things that you've dealt with in your career, I do want you to kind of go through just what drew you to doing this career and what your aha moment was where you thought, okay, this is what I want to do for a living. Yeah, I can answer that. I used to watch Perry Mason reruns with my dad when I was five. Okay, now who's Perry Mason?

Oh, seriously? For millennials and Gen Z? My God, now I'm really feeling, oh, well, there's been a remake on HBO. Oh, okay. So people should know sort of who Perry Mason was, but Perry Mason was a famous defense attorney who never lost a case. The series was in black and white. It was a long time ago, even before my time. So it was in reruns by the time I was a little girl. And I used to watch the reruns with my dad. And the prosecutor on the show's name was Hamilton Burger. And he never won a case because Perry Mason always beat him because Perry Mason always represented the innocent person. And he would get the real killer to confess on the witness stand. end in the show. That was the schick. And so Hamilton Berger would then stand up and say, you know, your honor, we have to dismiss the case. Deputies arrest the suspect. And he always

did the right thing and was honorable and honest. And I wanted to be that guy. I didn't want to be Perry Mason representing the criminals, innocent or guilty. I wanted to be the prosecutor. I wanted to put the bad guys in jail. And I knew that's what I wanted to do from the time that I was five. When I was in college at the University of Georgia, I read a story in the paper back when they had papers. And it talked about a very serious rape case of a little girl who was about five in Georgia. And they were dismissing the case against the offender because they didn't get, this was pre-DNA. And the little girl was so afraid, not just of him, but men in general, that she couldn't take the witness stand. couldn't face him. And the Constitution

requires even a child to face their accuser in court. And so the case was dismissed because of what he did to her, he was never held accountable for it. And that's when I said to myself, I'm going to be a crimes against children prosecutor. Oh my gosh. I have chills already. I haven't even heard any of the other stuff. It's already so good.

Okay, so let's start with, first of all, for people that don't know, I mentioned it, but just to explain what it is, you co-host the podcast best case, worst case with Jim Clementi. I do. And explain for people who aren't familiar what your true crime podcast, kind of the style of it and what you guys do. Yeah, it's a really casual podcast. I would call it mostly an interview podcast, although Jim and I do discuss issues, sort of issues in crime today, what's going on today, what big cases are in the news. We just talked about the Gabby Petito Brian Laundry case, for example. Perfect. I'm going to ask you about that

today. Generally speaking, we interview our friends and colleagues, former friends and colleagues, current friends and colleagues, prosecutors, cops, detectives, agents, all about their best cases and their worst cases in their career and why those cases still haunt them. Because most of us who've been in law enforcement are still haunted by an awful lot of our cases. What qualifies a case to be either the best or the worst usually for people that work in law enforcement? We let them decide that. But generally speaking, the best case is something where they really learned something. It was a pivot moment in their career for them or they got justice, scrabbling against the odds. The worst case generally is the opposite. It's a case they lost, a case they never solved, or a case that was so horrific, even if they maybe won, they still will never forget it because it was so bad. Would you consider one of the first cases that you had when you started your career as a prosecutor in 1996 to be one of your worst cases? Yeah, I mean, I think from my very first job there in Columbus, Georgia, which is a small town in southwestern Georgia, I think I got my best and my worst case out of that, out of that office.

So tell me about the case that happened just after the Summer Olympics in 1996. There was a little boy and a little girl who went to visit their mother in Georgia. Their father lived in Florida and had been fighting. He had custody of the children because the mom lost custody of the children. That's how bad a mother she was. She lost custody of the kids. But the judge ordered visitation. And the father in Florida had been fighting visitation.

And finally a judge just overruled him and said, you've got to send the kids to her and her new husband. Their names were Andrea and Thomas Porter. And so the father very reluctantly sent his little girl and his little boy. The little boy was four or five at the time. His name was Tony. Sent the children to visit the mother. And the stepfather, Thomas Porter, was a medic in the Army.

They were both stationed at Fort Benning there in Georgia. Andrea Porter worked for the Judge Advocate General's office. She wasn't a lawyer, but she worked in the office. And during the first week that the children were there, almost immediately the abuse started. And Thomas Porter began abusing Tony in ways that are indescribable. He was punching him. He burned him with a curling iron in horrific, sexualized ways and sexual places. He bit the child in the genitals.

He strangled him until the child was unconscious and then stopped breathing and then reviving. and then revived him because he was a medic so we knew how. Just like a sick game, just to let me kill him and bring him back to life to keep hurting him more? Yeah, the child was very angry at being away from his dad. He didn't like Thomas Porter for obvious reasons. I was going to say, no kidding. The kid was really, really smart and he didn't like him. And he was somewhat rebellious.

And so instead of punishing him the way a normal human being punishes a child, Thomas Porter struck him, punched him in his stomach severe abdominal injuries, and then burned him with the curling iron first on his thigh and then in his general area. It was horrific injuries, things that the child would never really recover from. And then there was a point after he was torturing him that he couldn't revive him. So instead of calling 911 or taking the child to the hospital as a medic, he called his wife as a doctor. He called his wife as a her office and said you've got to get home something's wrong with Tony. So she rushes home, losing valuable minutes where the child is not breathing and is basically

dead. She gets home and they decide, again, they don't call 911. They do not call for an ambulance. They take the child to the hospital themselves where doctors perform heroic life-saving measures on Tony. And at the trial when the neurosurgeon testified, He said that he had thought to himself for many years after it happened. Why did I save that child?

I don't think I did the right thing. Wow. Because the injuries were so bad. The child is blind. We'll always be blind because of the brain damage from the lack of oxygen. It was just an absolutely hideous case of abuse. And both the parents were charged. And I prosecuted the case with my boss, the district attorney at the time.

I cross-examined Andrea Porter for hours. hours and hours. It was a horrific, horrific case. And while the jury convicted both of them, I've never forgotten it. Tony testified. He was carried in blind and testified. We didn't ask him very many things. Basically, he was kind of the evidence himself, just that he existed. And it's really one of the worst cases that I've ever had because I had to look at the photographs of the injuries and those are things like a child homicide case I tried at a different office that I worked those are things you don't forget the images you know later as a federal prosecutor I had to look at a lot of child pornography in my cases you don't forget those things ever they're burned in your

memory you can't they they don't get overwritten like on a hard drive you know they're always there you just try not to think about them and it I still get emotional when I talk about some of these cases because Tony is a real boy, you know, and these kids that are being abused to this day, kids are being abused, you know, right now, every minute of every day somewhere in this country and around the world, kids are being abused. And it hurts me. It still hurts me. And it's actually funny, not funny, really, not ha ha funny, but funny because I still carry a lot of guilt about leaving the Department of Justice and going into the private world because I still feel like I should be there doing that, doing the same work. But look at the work that you've done and, you know, this case with Tony in particular.

How often do you find out what happens to these kids in cases that you've worked? Where is Tony now? Do you know? I don't. I've hoped in the years that Jim and I've been doing best case, worst case, that Tony's father might reach out and let me know how Tony is doing. Because we don't, you know, people that go through the system like that, it's a horrendous experience for them and their family after, you know, on top of the experience they've already had of the abuse. And so I've always been very respectful about not reaching out to anyone and let them reach out to me if they want to. What has been a time where you have had someone, a child that was on a case that you'd work reach out to you? Tell us about that. My first case ever, my first trial ever as a prosecutor in that same office in Columbus, Georgia.

was of a man, I would just call him Richard, because I don't want to identify the child, who's now a grown-up, but was of a man named Richard, and he'd been abusing his daughter since she was a baby, since she was in diapers. And when she was nine years old, she told the authorities what had been happening to her.

What kind of abuse? Sexual abuse. He'd been sexually abusing her, severely sexually abusing her. And she told her mother, and they went to the police. And the police arrested him, but the case then just sat until I came to the district attorney's office.

I'd been there about three weeks, and I walked into my chief assistant DA's office, and I said to him, Mel, his name's Mel. I said, Mel, I need to try a case. And he said, you've been out of law school for what, five minutes? And you want to try a case? And I said, I do.

I need to be in the courtroom. And he goes, all right, Francie, here you go. Very Southern. So he handed me the case file, and it was this case, and I had a week to get ready. And we went to trial, and I met the victim. I'll just call her K, KW, and I met with KW, and I met with her older sister, who had also been abused. And by this point, was a young woman at 21. They both testified in the trial.

It was just absolutely heart-wrenching, and the father was convicted. Was the father in the courtroom when the children were telling me? testifying? Yes, he was. When they testified, did they look at him and talk to him or did they try not to make eye contact and just look at you or how does that work? Yeah, I always tell them just to look at me. They don't have to look anywhere else except for once because once they have to point them out. Those are part of the, you know, you see it all the time on TV. Do you see this the person who did this? You're sitting in the courtroom and the victim will point. They have to. That's an element of the crime that they identify the offender. And so that one time they both had to look at the at the man who had committed. such a terrible sexual acts against them. And they did, but the rest of the time they just look at me. And he was convicted, and the judge sentenced him to 50 years. I was super proud of that. He's dead now. I'm also happy to report, so he can't abuse anyone else. He's never getting out of prison. I call that a pine box sentence. So he came out of prison in a pine box where he belonged. But when I think about the case, one of my biggest memories is what happened

almost 20 years to the day after the conviction. And I was sitting in my house in Atlanta, and I got a call on my cell phone. And it was KW. I have no idea how she even got my phone number. And she wanted to tell me, thank you. She wanted to tell me that she was going to go into law enforcement because of me and that for the previous 20 years she'd had a really tough time but whenever times were tough she'd thought about me and all the things that I had told her that frankly by then I didn't even remember myself but she remembered I guess I had made an impression on her and she was getting ready to graduate from college and she wanted to be in law enforcement my proudest moment how did that feel getting that call as you're listening to her say this that

She's literally emulating her life after yours because of how much you affected her. I think it was maybe the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. It really meant a lot. It was not something I ever expected. You know, you don't think about those things because, of course, once the case is over, you turn to the next case. There's always another case. They say prosecuting cases is like shoveling smoke. There's always more.

You know, you can't really get rid of it. You can't get rid of cases. There's always more. But this was the single biggest reward, if you can call it that, that I could have ever gotten as a prosecutor. One thing that I think sticks out to a lot of people that are just not really familiar with this world. Maybe they do not consume a bunch of true crime stuff like I do. So it's very shocking for them to hear that you're saying a parent was involved in the exploitation of their own child. So how often do you find out that the parents themselves,

are actually involved in the exploitation of their own children in these cases. Is that something that rarely happens or happens a lot? Yeah, it'll shock people who aren't aware of it. The statistics are something like somewhere around 80 to 85 percent of children who are abused are abused by someone in their circle of trust. Often a parent, a step parent and uncle, some kind of relative. Mom's boyfriend is a very common perpetrator. Mom's boyfriend is a very common perpetrator. Mom's boyfriend is also a very common perpetrator of physical abuse of children. And it's, you know, a teacher, a priest, a babysitter, stranger molestation of children is very unusual, actually. It's almost always someone the child knows and knows well.

What are the reasons when, you know, the parent actually does admit to the crime that they've committed? What are the reasons that they're giving for being able to get to. to such a place of depravity that they're willing to inflict harm like that on their own child. Wow, that's a really complicated question, Alex. I mean, I've heard it all, right? I've heard defenses, including outlandish defenses. This is so outlandish. It's almost funny, except that it's a real case, so it's not funny. But, you know, I tripped and fell while I was getting out of the shower and my penis fell in her vagina. You're kidding me. Oh, no, no, that's been a trial defense. I've I had it myself.

So people will say crazy things like that. It was an accident. They misunderstood. I was bathing them. Very common excuse. And then the excuse I had in one particular trial when I was at the district attorney's office in Cobb County, which is just outside of Atlanta. Well, she wore a towel on the way back from getting out of the shower. And so she seduced me.

That's the eight-year-old. Sick. Yeah. excuses run the gamut. It's not like there can be a good one, let's be honest. Okay, so you also have experience working in crimes against children units in regards to internet safety with children. That's right. Knowing what you know about child predators, should parents allow their kids to have smartphones in social media?

If a child does need a smartphone, what precautions can a parent take to preserve their child safety? Let's just talk about cyber safety in general for a minute with predators. Yeah, that's a great question. I think, Alex, that there's a real tension. There's a real tension between the safety factor of having a phone. So you can always reach your child. There was a school shooting today in Texas as we're filming this. So parents need to be able to reach your children.

I totally get it. But there's also the fact that you're inviting strangers into your child's bedroom, into the palm of their hand. and very few parents monitor their kids' cyber behavior enough or even at all. You'd be shocked how many parents will just hand their kid a cell phone and they just do whatever they want with it.

And maybe they'll ask them for permission to get apps or something, but they have no idea who they're talking to. Is it laziness or is it ignorance? I think it's both. I think parents don't feel like they have the time. I think there's also they feel like a boundary or a privacy issue, which to me is garbage. Would you let your child go stand on the street naked and just wait for someone to grab them?

Of course not. But that's what you're doing if they're in their bedroom talking to strangers on a webcam. It's crazy to give the children the, and believe me, children are anywhere under the age of 18 because it's that teenage that gets preyed upon by strangers that they then go out of their house and meet in person and horrible things happen. So you can't give them that privacy. But Instagram and Facebook say you have to be 13 to use it. And how do they verify that?

They don't. They can't. There's no such thing. Children can get on anywhere and they do. Oftentimes they know more than their parents about technology. And so they're smarter about it. So parents feel somewhat helpless. They feel stupid.

They don't want to admit they don't know how to monitor their kids' behavior. All parents should be going to net smarts, which it's net smarts with a Z at the end. NetSmart's is a program by the National Center for Missing Exploited Children to help parents with cyber safety, cybersecurity, internet security. So I would definitely go there and be looking because they have age appropriate lessons for parents, for schools, for camps, for everywhere, churches so that they can provide internet safety lessons for parents and for kids. I feel like parents a lot of times they have this idea. Well, my 12-year-old daughter is smart enough. If some guy that she doesn't know DMs her on Instagram and says, hey, send me a naked picture of yourself. You know, my daughter would never do that.

But the reality is they're not just saying stuff that that's overt. Explain the grooming process that predators use online with children. Yeah, grooming, Alex. You know the word. You're exactly right. It's grooming. Sometimes these cases are called sextortion. And so what happens is it is a process.

These internet predators are like old-fashioned old-time pimps. They understand how to prey on people. They understand how to attract them in to their circle to get them to do what they want. It's different. Sometimes they will tease your daughter with, oh, hey, how about taking this kind of sexy, naughty quiz? And so the 13-year-old will take a sexy, naughty quiz. How many boys have they ever kissed? Have you ever gone to second base or whatever they say?

And the child will answer the questions. And then the person will threaten the children. if you don't take off your shirt and send me a picture of you in your bra, I'm going to tell your parents what you said in the quiz. You know, that's a very common one using some sort of emotional blackmail or sextortion. It's basically extortion of children. So this grooming process allows these children either through blackmail or through friendship. Think of yourself, because you're not that far from it, Alex. Think of yourself when you were 13 or 14 or 15.

I don't know any girls when I was that age who were. particularly secure about themselves. Some of them pretended it, but nobody really was on the inside. Everybody thought they were terrible. And so having a boy, especially a boy, three years, four years, five years older than you, compliment you, tell you you're beautiful, ask you about your day, find out all that you're doing, befriend you, sympathize with you when your parents are mean to you or you get grounded. These are the things that these predators do to groom the children. And by the time the child goes to meet them at the mall or on the corner, they think they're meeting a boy who's close to their age when really it's a 45-year-old man

who has lured them out. This happened to a girl named Alicia Kossakovich. Alicia Kossackovic was a victim, and I use her name because she uses her name freely online. She's a very public persona. When she was about 15 years old, that happened to her. She was lured from her home. I believe it was in Pennsylvania. She was lured out of her home one New Year's Day or evening.

by someone who'd been grooming her for months, who she thought was a boy around her age, and turned out to be a grown man predator who took her, literally chained her in his basement, sexually assaulted her horrifically for days, live on webcam. And she was only rescued from that right before he was planning to kill her because someone ran across that webcam traffic

and called it in to the authorities, and they found her and rescued her. Now, is this on regular internet or the dark web? Regular internet. Because that's something, too, is, you know, how much of this child abuse stuff in child pornography and everything is more prevalent on dark web? Is it just happening on regular internet?

Regular internet. I mean, every single case that I prosecuted at the U.S. Attorney's Office of child pornography was being trafficked across the regular internet. Now, there are certainly child pornography sites, on the dark web. But it's easily available. You can get it on the regular internet. People are emailing it to each other. They're posting it to sites. There are websites that are being hosted mostly in foreign countries where you can download child pornography for a fee. You can use Bitcoin or some of these other cybercurrents, cryptocurrencies. It is not hidden the way people

think it is. What do the victims, typical victims of sex stortion online typically look like? Are they coming from bad homes? Are they in poverty-ridden neighborhoods? You know, race, gender, what age? What is it like? Well, Alicia Kaczykovich had a great family and was strictly, you know, upper middle class. You have to think about your teenage daughter and sometimes your teenage son, but you have to think about your teenage daughter and how insecure she is no matter how she appears. Alicia had a great family, a great home life, and normal friends. She seemed normal, but this still happened to her because she fell prey to someone smarter,

older, more sophisticated, who knew the buttons to push. Child exploitation, child pornography, child sexual abuse crosses all known socioeconomic classes. It's anybody. It could be in any household. the people who are sex trafficked physically and forced into prostitution, for example, those do tend to be in a lower socioeconomic class. They tend to be sort of called from juvenile justice facilities and programs because they are vulnerable. They're already runaways. They're already sort of throw away by their families. So that is a certain cohort. But when it comes to child sexual abuse, that crosses all lines. And so if your child is currently being groomed like this through the internet from an online predator, what are the signs that your child is being groomed? How do you even know?

You need to look for sudden secretive behavior. The child acting in a way they don't normally. Mood swings, gifts or things they can't explain. Times or places, they don't want to tell you where they're going or what they're doing. No child, no child, and I know this is going to be very controversial for parents. no child should be alone with their device, their digital devices. They shouldn't have their phone in their room. They definitely shouldn't have an iPad or a tablet or a laptop in their room. Those things should only be used in common areas where the children know that they are at risk of having a parent over their shoulder, POS, at any time. If that is the case, they are less likely to be victimized.

And I tell parents this all the time. You should at least weekly be taking your child. device and looking at it. No matter what the child says, you need to understand how to look at their search histories and look at their chat and make sure that they're not doing anything inappropriate or not being groomed. How has the last 18 months of lockdowns contributed to child abuse cases in the United States? Yeah, according to everything we know, hotlines, police reporting, it's skyrocketed because as I said, most children who are being sexually and physically abused are being abused by someone within their circle of trust. They're at their most vulnerable one when they're at home.

And they had no school to go to. School and friends are the most common outlets for children to disclose that they're being abused at home. Or for people to see bruises and things. That's right. And children had neither. They weren't allowed to see their friends and they weren't allowed to go to school. And so children, abuse has skyrocketed in the last 18 months. I'm very concerned about it. On best case, worst case, you also talk about current cases that are in the news, which I love about your show. Because sometimes it is an interview episode like you talked about where police officers is giving their best or worst case.

And then also sometimes you and Jem, your co-host, will talk about current stuff. So right now we have the Gabby Petito case. What are your thoughts? Because I personally am convinced his family knows more than they're letting on, whether That's the sister or the parents or all of them. Yeah. Well, you know they know more. There's one simple reason.

If they thought he'd gone away to kill himself, which is what some people are speculating, he's dead. If he'd really gone away to kill himself, they would be raising the roof to help find him. They would be begging the FBI. They'd be pointing the FBI in their direction. They'd be telling police exactly where they saw him last. When was the last communication? Here are all his email addresses. they'd be cooperating with police.

In fact, they'd be knocking down their door to get police to help find him to try to save him before he committed suicide if that's what he was going to do. So I don't believe that's what happened at all. What I think is they know he's okay because they know where he is. There's probably some check in with us in 30 days,

put a classified up somewhere, put an email. Classic trade craft in the spy game is he's got an email account that they also can log in. he writes an email but puts it in the draft folder. Whoa. And all they have to do is log in an email account and see it.

It never gets sent anywhere. No internet service provider can see it because it's not been sent. So like Gmail, you can't see it because it's in your draft folder. But the parents can look at it in the draft folder and you can communicate that way. It's classic spy trade craft. If you were a betting lady and you had to say right now, he's hiding out in a national park somewhere or he's booked it to Mexico, Where do you think Brian Laundrie is?

If I was a betting woman, that's a tough one because I think those are the two biggest possibilities. Because, you know, Florida, obviously water, boats, very easy to get out. I just think it's awfully unlikely that he's in a swamp somewhere or a national park. There's been these sightings along the Appalachian Trail, which, by the way, some of it is in Georgia, my home state. So that's possible, but that only lasts so long. You know, he's got to have supplies. He's not out there with a bow and arrow, you know, killing deer. And he has survival skills.

He does, but he's not doing that. I think he's more likely in Mexico. I think he's made his way to Mexico overland. As we know, it's a very poorest border. So speaking of that, you are also conservative. I am. And a lot of our audiences faced backlash for their conservative beliefs. And so I'm curious, is backlash for being conservative something that you face it all in your industry?

You know, what advice can you give on overcoming not only a difficult day at work, but one that feels very personally difficult? You know, I've always been conservative in my whole life. And as a prosecutor, I feel as a state prosecutor, I felt like most people were conservative. But when I was at the U.S. Attorney's Office, the opposite was true. Most of the career people were liberal. I did not see, except maybe at the very margins, any real impact of that, of that divide between liberal and conservative as a line prosecutor. When I went to the Department of Justice, when I went to Maine Justice in Washington to work for Eric Holder directly and lead child exploitation efforts for the Department of Justice, that's when I started to really see politicization because it was very clear that policy is being set based on political views. Civil rights violations are far more important than child exploitation, for example.

Finding police agencies that might be doing something wrong or you think they're doing something wrong because they are arresting a lot of offenders is far more important to you than prosecuting illegal reentry. As we used to call it, I prosecute a bunch of illegal reentry cases, which is people who had initially crossed the border illegally. They'd been removed, kicked out, deported for committing a felony. and then they'd snuck back in. I can't tell you any cases of those we had. And we prosecuted them when George Bush was the president. When President Obama was the president, that was not a priority. So we had to turn to something like else.

It's like guns. When President Bush was the president, we prosecuted a ton of felon in possession cases in Atlanta, which is considered kind of piddly for a U.S. attorney. But it was important to help with violence. And now to help with violence, they want to, you know, sick the FBI on parents at school board meetings. I mean, so to your point, as far as my industry now, because I'm in the TV business, it's weird being a conservative in the TV business.

One of the biggest things that happened recently when Jim and I debated, because Jim, my co-host on Best Case, Worst Case, knows Brett Kavanaugh personally. They worked together on the Whitewater investigation of the Clintons way back in the 90s. And so he knew Brett personally. He calls him Brett. I call him Justice Kavanaugh. I don't know. I never met him, but he calls him Brett. And he knew Brett personally.

And so when the confirmation was going on, when all those accusations from Christine Blasey Ford and a couple of other women were happening, Jim and I had serious discussions about it. I think we had five episodes we devoted to what was happening in the Kavanaugh hearings. And on our Facebook page, I got called a rape apologist. Of course. That happens every single freaking time. Me! A rape apologist. All I've done my whole career is fight for women and girls who've been.

sexually abused. My whole career against massive odds with no resources when it was just her word against his. I can't tell you how many times I've done that. And they called me a rape apologist. That's politics today, though. Because I was defending Kavanaugh against what I think were false charges. And I explained step by step by step why in my... Give the Spark Notes version of why you think her testimony.

I know this is a few years old at this point, but it's still interesting to me. Why was her testimony not credible in your opinion? Your professional opinion. Well, she was inconsistent. Things changed. She scrubbed her social media before she came forward. The story that she gave was internally inconsistent with what other people at the time recollected. Her story was also rather outlandish.

She labeled Kavanaugh a violent sexual predator. And certainly one of the other women that came forward said that he had participated in gang rape with another, at least one other guy. This kind of violent predatory behavior would have been seen afterwards. You don't just do that at 15 and never again. She lied. She talked about the reason that she couldn't appear at the hearing because she was afraid of flying. Because of the sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh when they were 15, in spite of the fact that she'd left the country a bunch of times over her life on vacation. So just a lot of internally inconsistent things. But most importantly, the story itself didn't make sense.

While I myself have prosecuted gang rape cases, it does exist. It's very unusual. And it's usually a mob mentality, not in a house with, only three or four people and with someone else watching who's not participating. Yeah. Her story internally doesn't make sense. Those are some of the things that we talked about. And Jim and I, and you know, Jim and I is no, Jim, sorry, Jim and I, Jim is no conservative. But he and I agreed that Blasey Ford's account was not credible. It just wasn't credible. And the other two women that came forward afterward were just kukes. I mean, let's just be honest. They were cooks and they were easily determined to be lying. But Blasey Ford's attitude during the hearing also, some of the things that she said she couldn't recall, didn't make any sense. Her testimony itself

was not credible. She was not credible. Her story was incredible. And this is something that I know. I know better than most people because that's what I did as a prosecutor was assess the credibility of victim stories. And so when you saw those comments saying that you're a rape apologist and all this stuff. I mean, how much did that affect you? Because I get mean, I mean, terrible, terrible, terrible things said to me threats or whatever on a daily basis. It is few and far between when they really do hurt where I cry over them. It doesn't happen often. But sometimes somebody will just say that one thing that sets me off. And that was just not what I needed to hear that day. Yeah. How much did it sting to see those comments? You know, the only things that hurt my feelings

are usually when people like call me fat or say, I need to go to a fat farm or maybe stop eating burgers, which really, it's not burgers, by the way. It's like brownies. But anyway, those things hurt. Let's be honest. No one likes to be called ugly. I mean, who likes that? Nobody. It's, it's hurtful. But being called a rape apologist just made me angry because I have spent my life fighting for victims alone with no resources. And so what I said to, I responded to every one of those people that said something like that. And the thrust of my argument was, where were you when I was standing alone in a courtroom with a victim on one side and the defendant's entire family and high paid defense attorneys

on the other? I was fighting for her. What were you doing? You weren't there with me. You didn't volunteer at the Child Advocacy Center to help girls like this. Where were you? Because that was me every day for 16 years. What did you do?

It's like you can't even give that kind of stuff the time of day at those points because you know the truth and you know it's just a straight up lie. Of course. Well, of course it's a lie. But that doesn't mean you don't respond. One of the things I don't do on our Facebook page is I don't delete people's comments. I can. I'm in charge of it. I let them comment because I'm a conservative. I've had to fight for my opinion and my values and defend my policy positions my whole life, unlike liberals, who don't have to do that because everyone agrees with them. So I'm going to, if you want to get into an argument with me, bring it on. You and Jim get into it. We do. Which I love. And one of the things that you have frequently gotten into it over is the FBI. And because he is a former FBI agent and profiler, yeah. Yeah, serial killer profiler.

Yes. Which is, I hope he can come on the spillover at some point. He promises. Okay, good. So. I wouldn't ask him about politics, though. We talked about Gabby Petito. That's in the case.

We also just saw the bombshell that the FBI completely dropped the ball on the Larry Nassar case. Yeah. What is going on with the FBI? You know, Alex, that's a great question. And in fact, that's what Jim and I most recently fought over. Not that he thought the FBI did the right thing there because he didn't. But we recently dropped an episode of the podcast where we talked about what the FBI did there. And I made the comment that at minimum, the FBI should have turned over this information the minute they had it to the state and locals.

Because state and local crimes against children and detectives have far more experience in child sexual abuse than the FBI does. which is when we got into an argument because he didn't agree with me at all. We really got into it and I actually had our editor cut some of that out because we really, we were like shouting at each other and I thought to myself later I thought who really wants to listen to that? Like in their ear

you know what I'm saying? It was just a lot of shouting. So we did cut some of the worst part of the shouting because we were really shouting at each other. I was very angry and he was very angry. He was defending the FBI's experience and how great it is. And look, there are plenty of FBI agents who have experience. I don't dispute that. Jim has a lot.

But the rank in five, there are 18,000 police agencies in the United States. 18,000. You know how many federal agencies there are that do crimes against children? A few, like three. So there are just more state and locals that do it all day, every day. There aren't FBI agents, generally, who do it all day every day. So that was my main point. But with regard to Nassar, I wish I could say I was shocked, but I wasn't.

Because from the time I was an assistant U.S. attorney to the time I was at the Department of Justice under Eric Holder and everywhere in between, the FBI was trying to get out of the business of prosecuting child exploitation. Why? Under Robert Mueller. Because Mueller came into the FBI like on 9-11 or maybe it was the day before 9-11. That's when Mueller started as FBI director. And so his entire next trajectory until he left the FBI was. terrorism. He didn't want them doing bank robbery cases. He didn't want them doing child exploitation cases. He wanted them focused 100% on terrorism. But the truth of international terrorism.

The truth is, there wasn't enough international terrorism to keep the thousands of agents of the FBI busy. It just isn't. And state and locals could use help with internet pornography and exploitation. So that's why they did it. But Mueller made them kick and scream to get to do it. And so he would pull resources from this state. There were whole states in this country where not a single FBI agent was working on crimes against children, not one. And so I wasn't shocked to hear that the special agent in charge and a couple of his underlings in this field office in Indianapolis didn't do their job when they heard about Nassar. Instead, they just sat on it.

Why? I can really not explain it other than there is a real bias amongst some people in law enforcement when it comes to sexual assault of women or girls who are over a certain age. I guarantee you if one of Nassar's victims that the FBI talked to in that case in that initial talking to one of the three women had been eight, they would have behaved differently. But they were young teenage girls. And it was icky.

And it was a doctor, and he had high status, and there were Olympians involved. And so maybe these girls were just kind of, you know, making it up because it made them feel good. That's the attitude. And I've seen it myself in my career.

And it's not just men, by the way. I've seen female detectives, female agents, with the same attitude. And I think there's just a real bias in this country. Think about it. If I brought, and I did, one of the very few child abuse cases I ever lost was a girl who was 14 years old when her stepfather molested her. And the jury acquitted him. And he was guilty as sin. But they didn't believe her. Because she was a teenager. What is it? I don't understand what it has to do with it. Because teenagers lie. Anyone can lie. Adults lie. That's right. That's exactly right.

The FBI lied about Russiagate. Believe me, I know. I've written about that. They totally did. But yeah, but that's the attitude is teenage girls are untrustworthy. Okay, so let me ask you this, Francie, as we wrap up. By the way, I just want to say, that's not what I think. That's the attitude I'm trying to explain.

Right. Yeah. So let me ask you this as we wrap up. The FBI butcher's Nassar. They butcher the Russiagate hoax. They also, we know of multiple mass shootings that they had prior knowledge that these people were likely to shoot up their schools. These kids did nothing. Set on the information.

So just yes or no, in your professional opinion is the FBI at this point a credible law enforcement agency? I think they need serious reform. That's fair. I think they need serious reform. We'll take that. Okay, so you did mention CASA volunteers a little bit earlier, and I'm going to talk about that in a few minutes, and I'll go into detail because I'm actually a CASA volunteer.

That's a court-appointed special advocate. Yeah. Fantastic. So I wanted to ask you just from a law enforcement perspective, how crucial are court-appointed special advocate volunteers to cases involving child abuse? Yeah, the CASA program is critical, especially in places that don't have child advocacy centers,

and there are a lot of places that don't have child advocacy centers. The court system, think of an adult woman who gets sexually assaulted, gets raped. Think of all that she has to go through. The sexual assault exam is a horrific thing. The court process, she's going to be accused of lying. Her entire sexual history is going to be delved into

by the defense. She's going to have to tell the story of the worst thing that ever happened to her to a jury of 12 people and stare at the defendant the whole time as he accuses her of lying. lying or of agreeing to have sex with them. And now imagine that you're eight.

And that's what you need. And in about, this is my estimate, in about 70% of the cases, the mom is on the offender's side, not the child. Her own child, she sides against her own child. So the child is alone as they go through this court process. So having someone there for them, a victim advocate, a CASA or both, is so crucial to help these children so that they can have a reasonably positive experience so it traumatizes them less as they have to go through the court process. Francie, tell us where we can find you, what projects you have coming up that you're excited about, where to follow you, all that good stuff. You can follow me on Twitter at Francie Hakes.

Also, you can check out best case, worst case. We have a Facebook page. We have lots of projects out on Audible. our most recent was after the fall, which is the inside story of the FBI, the largest case in FBI history, that is the investigation into 9-11 after the towers fell,

which is, by the way, a very impressive piece of work, the FBI, I mean, but also our, the Audible original, and that's on Audible. You can also hear Shootout, the Battle for North Hollywood, which is on Audible, all kinds, but one of the things I'm most excited about

is a project I have coming up. I hope is going to be released in November. I can't tell everyone all about it yet, but it is about an unsolved cold rape case, a serial rapist who has assaulted 15 women over a very long period of time and remains uncought. And we interviewed the women, the law enforcement professionals trying to find the man and a bunch of other people involved. And I hope that when that audible original comes out, that people will listen and someone will recognize. recognize the offender and we can catch him. So I don't have Audible, but that's going to end after this. I hope so.

I'm getting it for sure because I'm so excited about that. So what do I search for to find all of these different audible things that you've done? Well, we always announce it on Twitter. You can also go to our production website, which is XGProductions.com. We're always announcing our projects on XGProductions.com website. So you can check that out there. You can send emails to us. We always have those announcements.

Francie, thank you for coming on the spillover. Thanks for inviting me, Alex. I admire Francie Hakes so much because not everyone can do what she does, and that's okay. Not everyone has the ability to take on the heartbreaking task of working with abused children, just like I don't have the stomach to work in medicine. At this point in my life, I think career-wise, I'm where God wants me to be. Maybe you're looking for a change in your career, or you're in high school or college, and you're still trying to figure out what you want to do.

And maybe Francie's career path inspires you to go in a legal direction defending children. Maybe you want to help abuse kids in a volunteer capacity. So I've got some info on something that you may really find fulfilling to do because I do it. And it has totally changed my life. So consider this being a CASA volunteer or a court-appointed special advocate. Now, if you're in the cute servatives Facebook group, then I've talked about this on there and I've given updates on where I'm at and getting my new case and all that kind of stuff. So if you're not in there, you need to join cute servitives on Facebook.

But this is what I was talking to Francie about earlier. Acasa is someone who volunteers to be assigned a different child's case in the foster care system. So obviously any child in foster care has endured abuse in some way, shape, or form, whether that's physical, emotional, sexual, some kind of neglect. and you go through about 90 hours of training when you volunteer, and then you actually get to pick a case that really speaks to you. And once you pick one, after reading their entire file, you literally get to know everything about this kid. You also get to know them in person,

and then everyone in their case that's in their life. They're biological parents and whoever they're living with, whether that's a family member or a foster parent, you find out everything that this child needs and wants. Do they need glasses for the new school year? Would they love to join a gymnastics team? Would they benefit from a tutor? What about time to visit their best friend from their old neighborhood?

Would that help them emotionally? Whatever it is, you as the CASA get to tell the court. And every so often your CASA child's case will have a court hearing where they discuss any updates in the case and if they're moving towards reunification with the parents or adoption. And you get to write a few notes and then stand up in court and tell the court. court about what you've observed with your child's current living situation. If they're old enough to talk, you can actually tell the court what they've told you. Maybe they really want to go back to living with their dad. And he's done everything that the court has asked in order to get custody back.

So you recommend, hey, I think, you know, Jane Doe really wants to go live with her dad. Or maybe they are thriving with their grandparent and they want to be adopted by their grandfather more than anything. That was the CASA case that I had in a previous state that I worked in. Without a CASA, the court doesn't have this information as soon as they should. And so you actually help move that case along faster and you help personalize the case for the judge when they're making decisions. At that point, it's not just a name on a sheet of paper. They know this kid. They know that this kid loves to eat apples with peanut butter or that they love watching Dora the Explorer. If this sounds like something that you'd like to do, it is so easy.

All you have to do is just Google CASA and your county, and you're going to be able to find your local child advocate organization and then get in touch with them to learn more. If you like the spillover and the types of guests and interviews that we've done so far, support us by subscribing, leave a five-star review. And tell me which episode that you've liked the most so far. New episodes come out every Friday, midnight Eastern, and Thursdays 9 p.m. Pacific, those lucky West Coast people. I'm Alex Clark and this is the spillover. Love you, mean it. Bye.