Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - Empowering Language Special Presentation

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Today's episode is a special presentation! Shaun participated in a panel at the True Crime and Paranormal Podcast Festival in July 2023 with the lovely people from Navigating Advocacy Whitney and Melissa, along with Haley Grey to talk about Empowering Language in Podcasting.They recently did a webinar on that same topic, and we think youll find it interesting. There are so many expressions we use every day with problematic origins. Let us know what you think!https://truecrimepodcastfestval.comhttps://navigatingadvocacy.comhttps://truecrimepodcasttraining.comDomestic Violence Resourceshttp://sinspod.co/resourcesClick here to become a member of our Patreon!https://sinspod.co/patreonVisit and join our Patreon now and access our ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content & schwag! Get ad-free access for only $1 a month or ad-free and bonus episodes for $3 a monthApple Podcast Subscriptionshttps://sinspod.co/appleWe're now offering premium membership benefits on Apple Podcast Subscriptions! On your mobile deviceLet us know what you think about the episodehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2248640/open_sms Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sins-survivors-a-las-vegas-true-crime-podcast--6173686/support.

To listen ad-free, visit Zinspod.co slash subscribe. Starting at $2.99 a month, you'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show! Hello, everyone. We hope that all of you are having a warm and enjoyable holiday season, celebrating with family and friends, or not, if that's your jam. Next week, we will be bringing you our annual holiday episode, Missing at the Holidays,

and sharing with you some of the updates and stories of missing people from around the country, in the hopes that someone knows something and comes forward with new information. For our subscribers this week, we will be covering the story of Emma Cusack, a teen girl who was arrested for murdering a 36-year-old man in a hotel room at the Luxor last year. And the details of the crime and her arrest left us with many questions, including the fact that the media said that the two of them were on a date. If you're interested in hearing that, head over to sinspod.co slash subscribe, and you can join our Patreon, or you can join Apple Podcast subscriptions. We just sent out our special holiday cards to thank our subscribers, and we really appreciate all of your support. Back in October, I was a guest for the monthly True Crime Podcast training webinar with Melissa and Whitney from Navigating Advocacy and hosted by Haley Gray, the founder of the True Crime Podcast Training Course. The topic was empowering language, which you've heard Sean and I mentioned a few times on the

podcast. We won't spoil it here, but it was really fun and interesting, and you'll definitely learn something. So let us know what you think. You can always email us at podcast at sinsandsurvivors.com. All right. Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for being here at this month's True Crime Podcast Training webinar. Tonight, we're talking about empowering language and how thoughtful language choices shape respectful storytelling. I'm Haley Gray, a researcher and writer for multiple podcasts and the co-founder of True Crime Podcast Training. I'm honored to have Sean from Sins and Survivors Podcast here with me, along with Melissa and Whitney from Navigating Advocacy. Sean, would you mind starting us off and introduce yourself? No. Hey, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. I'm Sean Malika. Like Haley said, I'm one half of the hosts behind

Sins and Survivors, which is a true crime podcast focused on Las Vegas and domestic violence. And I'm a law school graduate and I've worked in victim services probably for about 20 years now. So, and I'm a TC, PT graduate. So thanks Haley. And I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much for being here. Melissa, you've been part of our webinars before, but for anyone who hasn't been here, would you mind introducing yourself? Sure. I'm Melissa Leinweber, one half of the podcast Navigating Advocacy, also co-founder of AdvocacyCon, a conference that brings together experts, nonprofits, anything with victims' families to kind of help them

navigate this world that they have been thrown into together. I have two teenage boys. I live in Florida. There's a hurricane here right now. So that's about me. Oh my gosh. Well, if everything goes dark, we know it was the hurricane that came. Yeah, it should be good. I think it's mainly past us by now. So. Okay, good. And then Whitney, you are always here with me. Usually you're behind the screen, but tonight you're in front of it. Can you please introduce yourself for anyone who may not know who you are? Sure.

I am the other half of Navigating Advocacy. I am also a co-founder of AdvocacyCon. I also have two boys, and I play a very small role in the TCPT team occasionally when they need me. It's more than occasionally. She's literally, you should see our text. It's like, can you look over this, please? Let me know if it looks okay. But just to give some background before um i'm actually going to hand

things over to melissa to um host everything tonight um i just wanted to give some background and say that sean um this was her idea this whole um webinar she came to whitney I a month ago with an idea about how to use respectful language. And she wanted to talk about her expertise in domestic violence, which, and just in victim services, which come, you know, she has so much experience that we're very lucky to have her here. And then also Whitney and Melissa are huge advocates. They are actually the people that inspired me to be more hands-on with families. And so my career would not be where it is without them inspiring me. And just also so lucky to learn from Sean and all of her experience. And she's been so helpful this last, oh, just over a year since we met. So yeah, I'm so thankful for all three of you

being here with me tonight, helping everyone here learn. And yes, Gemma just brought this up. So we actually did this panel in Denver at True Crime Podcast Festival. We've kind of revamped it a little bit for this one, but we're really excited to talk to everyone about language choices and how important they can be. So with that, I'm going to turn everything over to Melissa, and she's going to host tonight. That way I can participate in the conversation. So thank you, Melissa. Perfect. No, thank you. So for those of

you that are listening, we welcome you to share any of your ideas, your experiences in the chat as we go. All of us will really be monitoring that. So just throw them out there as you see fit. Please feel free to ask any questions related to what we're talking about in the chat. However, if you have any questions that aren't exactly related to whatever we're talking about, we will have a Q&A at the end for you to ask those general types of questions. So let's start off by talking about what people-first language is. Haley, what is this type of language and why is it so important? Yeah, so people-first language, it's all about putting the individual before their circumstances. So it's a way of reminding ourselves that people aren't defined by what's happened to them or any of the challenges they face.

For example, instead of saying a drug addict, we could say a person with a substance abuse disorder. Or rather than saying a schizophrenic, we'd say a person with schizophrenia. And this may seem like a small change, but it's actually a really important part of storytelling. It helps us honor the dignity of victims and their families by keeping the focus on their humanity. And again, not by what's happened to them or a diagnosis they may have or a challenge they faced, anything like that. Again, it just helps us focus on the person and who they are. And when we're using people-first language, we're acknowledging that they're more than their experiences. They're real people with real lives, loved ones, and stories that deserve respect and empathy. And all of this is a simple shift

that can make a big difference in how we approach and understand true crime stories. Yeah, I really love that, Haley. It's just so important. These labels that we use on people, they're just so weighted. And if we can avoid labeling someone as a diabetic or schizophrenic and put their person self first, I think it just helps everyone build on that empathy to connect with these people

and the stories we're trying to tell. Yeah. I agree. I think this is something that I learned in the four years that we've been a podcast. It was part of that evolution of when you tell a story, you are taking on responsibility for that story and for that subject matter and treating these people with respect and showing that they are human and putting them first before whatever their story whatever negative things in their story or even positive things put the person first it makes a world of difference in the storytelling right i think when you say like a schizo like that person's a schizophrenic like that's what people are going to take away from this is just to be mindful of what you're saying. Like, you're not going to be perfect. None of us are perfect. I think we all say at least one thing that we're like, oh, I really got to work on that, you know?

But it's just about being mindful and just remembering that we're trying to put the person person first. And I had some other examples here that I wanted to bring up. And so there are other words that can kind of have, you know, like a negative connotation again with like when we say a drug addict that usually has, you know, a stigma to it. But, you know, other things that we could change when we're talking about respectful language instead of ex-convict or, you know, something like that, or an ex-felon. You could say a person with a history of incarceration or a formerly incarcerated person. And that just puts it on like, they a person that's their past you know we can separate the two and um you know instead of this is a big one that i think um a lot of people in the true crime field have made changes but we don't really say prostitute anymore um because that again has

negative connotations to it so you could say a person involved in sex work or a person who has engaged in sex work. It gets a little trippy. I don't know if any of you have dealt with this before, but if you're working on a case where somebody is charged with prostitution, that's literally the crime. And so it can be a little hard to know how to word that. But again, just trying to remind people that it's, you know, a person and then whatever is going on. Yeah. So yeah, sorry, Haley. One that popped up for us quite a bit, and this is something that I've noticed in the Austin community where I live, we have a ton of unhoused population here in Austin. And when we first worked with Vlad's family, Vlad at Caswell's family, he was a big part in the unhoused community.

He volunteered there. He worked there. He was unhoused for a time being and could potentially still be a member of the unhoused population. And I think that that was a big one for me because I've heard homeless so much my whole life. Transitioning to member of the unhoused or member of the unsheltered community was really, it was one of the light bulb moments for me. Yeah. Some of those words are so, they feel so heavy with like the weight of stigma or just assumptions. And it's, we've worked on this like our whole life, right? We're all kind of part of the same generation. We've seen our language and what's

acceptable evolve over time. And I think it's great for all of us to continue to be in that evolution. Like you said, none of us are perfect in this, but we're always taking in new information and trying to, you know, do better and be better. And I think that's a great example of that, Whitney. Just how, you know, if we label someone as homeless, it gives people pictures in their mind of what that looks like, what kind of person they are. So if we can flip it around and describe it as someone who's experiencing being unhoused, it just kind of pulls that stigma off of them. And then you can like really see somebody like Vlad come through and not be weighed down by stereotypes.

Right. That's so true because, you know, somebody experiencing homelessness, like that looks, that could be completely different for a lot of people. Like, I, I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I love Reddit because you can see so many people's experiences. And I've seen things where people are like, I'm part of the homeless community and I live out of my car. Like I have a nine to five, 40 hour job week, but I can't afford to have like to have, you know, a home. And so I live out of my car. And so it really is a spectrum of things. And we don't want to, you know, just like put people in a box and again, make those assumptions of how somebody is living. So I really like having these conversations with people because I always learn something new. Like Whitney said, before we did the project with Lottix family last year, I probably didn't say unsheltered community or experiencing homelessness because it just wasn't something that I thought about. But then after I was, you know, putting, we were putting together

the materials and I was talking to people, I was like, no, I really need to make this change because it's important. So I think these are all things that come to you at different times in your life. Like we didn't make all of these changes overnight, you know, they're things we learned. Like the one that I think I learned was like master bedroom. That came with the Black Lives Matter movement. And I learned that master bedroom has like racist connotations to it. And I think we'll talk about this later. But that was one where I was likeheltered community came at a different time. So I will quit blabbing. We're all still like students. We're all listening. We're all like, what's Haley talking about?

Love it. Love it. It definitely takes, it shows that there's a person more than just that one circumstance of their life. That's what I like love about taking away those labels because that's one aspect of their life. It doesn't define who they are. So we should not be doing that. Okay. So I'd love to talk about how it's important to respect everyone in the case that you're speaking about, not just the victims. Can you guys talk a little bit about that? John and I, John, he's in the audience tonight. He's my co-host. We had a case recently that we covered where a young woman was murdered

by her boyfriend. The woman's name was Maureen. Her boyfriend's name was Chris. Chris was convicted of her murder and sentenced to, I believe it was 20 to life, but still eligible for parole. And he was, I think, about 21 years old when he was sentenced. And just recently, so this murder happened many years ago, he ended up dying in prison under suspicious circumstances where it appeared, especially to his mother, that the Department of Corrections was covering up what actually happened to him. we see Chris as someone who committed this horrific crime. John and I chose our words very carefully because we understood that in some ways, Chris himself was a victim, a victim of a system, of a violent system, and he himself was likely murdered,

possibly by the people who were in charge of the prison in some way. So we did not, we wanted to understand that for her, his mother, an innocent person in all of this on some level, that she could suffer if she heard us label her son, still her son, the three of us are moms, you know, as beings. Even though I might want to call him names, I might not have a lot of respect for him. I have respect for her. And I want to not put my anger out there where she might hear it because she's mourning the loss of her son. And I think that's important. I don't know what John's saying in the chat. I want to see.

Oh, he's telling us about how, oh yeah. In the marketing world, they used to say things like blacklisted, but now it's blocklisted. And this one is so crazy to me. And I'm just going to go ahead and say it because I don't think people who watch this will be able to see the chat. But, and this is so crazy to me. In like the IT world,

they used to have terms called master and slave databases at at what point ever was that okay i'm utterly crazy but now they call it primary and backup or secondary which those were words back when they named the original name so i don't understand that um but again this is just these are just examples look like how important the language can be and i mean and uh how important it is to incorporate purpose changes. Yeah, and be willing to. I mean, we're talking about an industry, an entire industry that really should be taking a look at themselves too

and saying like, why do we have this? And can we just get rid of it? And just like working towards that. I think that can be a big ask, but hopefully they're looking at that and they're not just the company John works for, but all companies are taking a look at that because it's so offensive and it never should have happened in the first place. underscale that I can't comprehend because I'm not smart enough to know IT. But he has mentioned those same things. And I've never, until just now, like I just had that aha moment of, oh my gosh, that is a thing. Why have they not changed the name of that? Because my world didn't revolve

around that. It wasn't something I used daily. So it's interesting to have those aha moments. Yeah, definitely. And I wanted to go back to Sean's point about respecting everyone. I know it can be really hard to want to respect, you know, a murderer or something like that. But again, it's just important because their families are listening. And if their families weren't involved, you know, they're, they're hurting too. Um, and also if, for example, if you're working on a case and you don't, and the person, um, who was the killer was, let's just say a trans person um if you choose not to respect the fact that they're a trans person then you're kind of you're offending a whole group of people and instead of just the person who you think doesn't deserve your respect but it's like a grander scale of thing i don't think i'm able to put this into words very well but basically it's, it's not just that one person that you're attacking and being negative about it's everyone.

And so that's why we just have a blanket rule when we're working to just be respectful to everyone. And then you're being, then yeah, you're being respectful to everyone. So anyway, I don't think I'm wording that well, but. No, you're doing great. Yeah, you're doing great. You're not, just because this person made poor decisions and did these horrible actions doesn't mean you have to be negative about that person. You could easily harm a entire subset of people that you didn't mean to by putting this person down because they have

their transgender or maybe they have a specific character trait maybe they have brown hair who knows you could easily harm someone unintentionally just by putting down the perpetrator yeah definitely now i'm all for you all for, you know, you can, you know, be rude, like say rude things about their actions, what they did, but when it comes to, you know, who they are, who they identify as or any of those things, it's just not appropriate. So I guess that, I mean, that's my take on it. All right. Let's talk about using trauma-informed language. When would you use this?

How would you use it? And why is it important? This anecdote that I've shared, I shared on the panel, is partly what inspired me to approach you all to put it together because where I was working at the time for a domestic violence agency, we were all working on just cleaning up our language and trying to get rid of all the violent idioms that we use every day because you just never know who you're talking to and it just might not be appropriate and it could be traumatizing. So like things like hold her feet to the fire or I'll take a stab at it or like I wish you would just kill me. I'll shoot you an email. Yeah, I'll shoot you an email. Like things like that because we just have so many

expressions and if you think about them or you like kind of turn your ears on and you're like ready for them, you'll see them come up all the time. And we just, as an agency, kind of challenged ourselves to kind of stop using that language as much because it is, it's violent when it doesn't, it's just inappropriate. You're talking to someone who may have experienced something violent and it's just not the kind of environment you want to set as like a baseline where you're just kind of using these you know you know you don't have to hold a gun to my head kind of expressions it's it's really interesting how many exist in our just our American idioms are they called idioms I think so expressions I think um I also relate with charter. That's a great one, Whitney. Yeah, that's a great one.

I think your point to you never know who you're talking to is really important. And that's kind of how I try to approach when I've tried to remove those things from my vocabulary. Because, again, you never know who you're talking to. And then also I know a lot of us talk to families of, you know, people who have gone through tragic situations and you would never want to slip up and say those things to them. And so I think if you can just remember to not use those things, you'll just be better safe than sorry and um i you know i would just really hate if i said you know to a family member like all right i'll shoot you an email and then i remember like oh my gosh their loved one was killed with a gun and then you're like why did i say that you know and um so it's just really important to try and keep the, again, just keep them, being mindful is the most important thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. So one of the biggest things that I have learned, Melissa and I have learned while going through this,

is when we've talked to family members, we try not to say your loved one's case because it feels cold. It puts them in a box or a folder. There's no emotion there, and it's not personal at all. You want to say, I would love to hear your loved one's story. We, of course, always talk about that person first language again. We want to humanize these people, not minimize them to some stacks of paper or a dusty box in the corner of a police station. That's what they're dealing with lots of times. So making sure you don't say case, talk about their story, and it's just, it's warmer. Yeah, I completely agree. I'll say something like, can I help spread awareness of your loved one's story? Again, because case does feel so cold and it just, yeah, when you're working one-on-one with families, you realize that it's more than a case to them.

You know, it's their life. It's their story, too. It's their journey. It's everything. And really, like you said, reducing it down to like a case file. But it's not, you know, it's not okay. This is also not something we had talked about before, but it's something that you actually taught me, Haley. Listen when they talk,

because some family members speak in the present tense. They'll say, my loved one is, and my loved one, as opposed to my loved one was. So getting to their level, seeing them where they're at and making sure you're using that same tense, because that's important to them too. They don't want to talk about their loved ones in past tense. Don't talk about them and their loved one in past tense. And that's one that has been really

difficult for me to really pay close attention to because Melissa and I only work with unsolved cases. Most times ours are older cases. So it's easy for us to go to that past tense and talk in that past tense. So that's one that I try to really pay attention to as well. Yeah, I think that's really important. And I try to do that. I won't find myself slipping up, you know, here or there, but I try to just pay attention to what they say. You know, like if I'm working on a case where the loved one is missing, but the family believes that they're murdered, you know, I might include, like yesterday was National Day for Remembering Murder Victims. And I included a couple people on there who are technically still missing, but their families know that they were

murder victims. And so I feel like that's okay because that's how the family feels. But if a family feels like that loved one is still out there alive, I would never do that. So it's just paying attention to what families say. And also going back to what we talked about earlier with people first language, if you are working with someone and they do call themselves the schizophrenic or they call themselves a drug addict, you know, I think it's okay to use those words, but let people know, this is how they refer to themselves. Or you could make a, I know Melissa, you talked about this, you put a disclaimer, you know, because you, Melissa and Whitney, if you haven't listened to the podcast, they include audio from interviews in there. And so they'll put a little disclaimer

that's like, this is how I'm going to refer to the person because this is respectful, but you'll hear them refer to it this way or something like that. So I think just really paying attention now people talk about themselves or their loved ones and then kind of go from there is okay too. Agreed. So are there any other negative words that we should all avoid or try to avoid using? Let's break out the list. I try to stay away from things, from sensational phrases that would be like brutal murder

or horrific crime. I try to stay away from those and kind of use neutral terms by just saying like the homicide or the crime. And this just helps maintain a focus on the facts of the case and not sensationalizing them because isn't every murder pretty, it's brutal and it's horrific, you know know so I don't think we need those um little disclaimers on there and also it just kind of feels gross like in my mind whenever I'm working on an episode I try to think if the victim's parents were listening to this what would they think what would they would that be upsetting to them you know would they like to hear those words being used to describe their loved one's death? So I just try to stay away from that. That's just one example. I'll let other

people provide some too. I was thinking about suicide, how we've worked to stop saying the person committed suicide and we'd rather say they they died by suicide because when you put commit in front of it, it's like, we say you committed a crime, you committed an assault. It sounds as if what they did was criminal. And that can be pretty painful for people to hear and think about too. So that was one that I thought of something you said, made me remember that one as being something that we've worked on too. And here's an example. I've not heard, well, I have heard someone say death by suicide,

but I've also heard saying completed suicide as opposed to committed. Those are two other things. This is a prime example of when you don't know, you Google, because I wouldn't know which way to properly say that. So I would Google that, to be honest, to make sure that I am providing proper language. One that Haley has said in the past, as she said at TCPF, was dumped, dumping a body. It's very negative. It's very cold. It's very disturbing and sensationalized. You could say her body was left here or found here. You do not have to say dumped or a dead end street or the case has come to a dead end. It's too visual. It doesn't have to be that visual. Yeah, I really hate dumped or disposed.

It just feels so gross and like the person didn't matter. And I know that they clearly didn't matter to the person that killed them, but they matter to the people, their loved ones. And I wouldn't want my loved one to be talked about like that. They're not trash. Could be, you know, thrown out. So yeah, just those tiny little changes can really make a difference. Let's talk about the history of certain phrases and how they could have racist or otherwise harmful beginnings. This was a hot topic at our panel we did. Everyone was chiming in with various ones they had heard. So yeah, what do you guys have? What do you know

about any of these? Haley kind of already touched on this a little bit with the master bedroom versus primary bedroom. That's a pretty tame one that we have heard from the audience and a pretty common one that people have discussed. Ones that I learned when we discussed this, Grandfathered In is one that I had not known before this year. Again, the Blacklist versus Whitelist, Stakeholders, Peanut Gallery. I feel like we had a list of 15, 20, 30 just from the audience alone. Too many. Pretty much everything we say is rooted in race. Yeah.

I wish I could remember all the details, but I know the one that I learned like basically the night before the panel was Cakewalk. I'll get that. That Cakewalk was some kind of performance that enslaved people would be asked to perform for their slavers. So, you know, we probably shouldn't use that to mean like a phrase, like something that's really easy. It's going to be a total cakewalk is probably not something we should say anymore. We should think about that one. But some of that stuff is just so baked into our history and our language, it's really hard to let it go. But it's like we were saying,

just always educating yourself and thinking about where some of this stuff comes from. Yeah, I even growing up, we had like school carnivals where we would do literal cake walks. You know, I looked up a few because I wanted to add some that we hadn't talked about before. One that I found really interesting was roll up them. This phrase is sometimes linked to an old myth that a man could legally like hit his wife with a stick no thicker than his them and um that's horrible and um it was i was reading about the whole story about before that i hope i don't butcher it well there i go saying something proof that i'm not perfect i've been watching all night um i hope i don't mess this up um

but basically it has been um it was a statement that went like far far back back, but in the seventies or eighties, an article said that like, this was a real law that men could hit their wives with a stick that was no thicker than their thumb. And then for like decades, domestic violence advocates have had to like try and tell people that that's not a real law and it's just crazy and then the other one that i i don't know why i never thought about this before ever and i feel like my dad said this all the time growing up it was like long time no see um and or no can do and these phrases have origins um in the way that indigenous and chinese people's english was mocked in the 19th and early 20th century so they were used as a way to mimic and belittle non-native english speakers and once you learn that it makes sense right yeah i'm so Yeah. I am so embarrassed because when I see someone, I would say, like, long time no see.

But now I am going to try not to see that anymore. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's a new one. I did not know that. Wow. Okay.

Okay. Everyone take note right oh now where were we um let's see so are there any other phrases or anything like that that you guys can think about or that you guys can think of that we should be talking about did we kind of miss any? We sometimes talk about trailer park. Oh, yes. That there's really no need to describe where someone lives as being like a trailer park or that they live in a mobile home

because similar to like some of those words we talked about, like schizophrenic, it gives you a picture in your head about what this person's life is like and maybe that's not fair, that's burning them, because we have so many stereotypes about things like that. Or using the word ghetto, we don't want to use that word. We'll just straight up say exactly where they did live and what part of town. I'm always a big proponent for just saying more. Don't apply the label. Just say what you're trying to say instead of the label. You don't have to call someone an alcoholic.

You can say their families observed them hiding bottles of liquor around their house or the things that might cause someone to reach that conclusion without labeling someone. So I might say that they lived in, you know, in, you know, the southeast part of town or in the older part of town. I might say that, but I wouldn't want to label their life by saying they lived in the ghetto. I would never say that. We use a lot of geographical description as well. Like you said, the southwestern corner of the town or north of a major highway that runs through the town, just to kind of give a general idea, but also pulling in statistics from the area of, okay, these streets or this neighborhood experienced a 10% higher level of crime rate. That's a statistic. That's a fact. That's not labeling and that's not stereotyping. It's easy to describe a neighborhood with those facts.

Yeah. Rather than like labeling it in a certain way that people think, oh, I think I know what it looks like. Life looks like there. We can actually tell what life might look like there. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Some that I try not to use would be like OCD or bipolar or, you know, oh, they're crazy or oh, they're psycho or somebody will be like, I'm so OCD about my desk. That really minimizes the experience of people who are actually diagnosed with, you know, OCD or diagnosis, schizophrenia or bipolar, you know, being like, oh, you're so bipolar when their mood shifts, you know, like that's just offensive to people who actually do live with those conditions. But again, you're applying those, you know, assumptions that you have about

bipolar people or people who are diagnosed with bipolar, you're, you know, putting all of those things on them. And not every person, um, who has, um, you know know who has been diagnosed with bipolar has like major you know mood swings like that and it doesn't work the way that people are trying to apply it and things like that so um it's just better to use different words like shawn was saying like just you just describe them the way that you would don't use some sort of term you know to define them like you instead of saying i'm so ocd about my desk you could say like i'm detail oriented or i'm particular because just because you like your desk to be organized so it's i mean you're ocd and we don't want to be reinforcing those stereotypes that you're talking about by

describe by almost like diagnosing people with our words by labeling that in an article. And it's important to the story then included. versus sex worker. You know, there's also, you know, illegal immigrants. That's an undocumented migrant. There's different ways to say things. I also think it's important to think about how the wordage has changed. For instance, we no longer use child pornography because pornography is a word that is now, the connotation behind pornography is that it was willingly given in most cases, children can't do that. So now that's called child sex abuse material. Hopefully this doesn't affect your website. Haley.

I didn't think about that before I started talking about this topic. Hopefully they won't ding you on that. It's important to bring up because I feel like that is a new one that people are trying to um to change and i think it is really important because like you said they're not giving consent they are being abused and that needs to be brought up precisely but the same goes for a victim versus survivor sean this is one that you talked about a domestic violence victim as opposed to a survivor of domestic violence those are two very could be the same thing but two very different ways to say it one's more powerful, more positive, and one is very stereotypical, very label-based. But we don't really have time to go into victim blaming, but just being a victim is something that

also comes with a lot of judgment for a lot of people. So yeah, in all instances, it's great to be able to avoid using that word to label someone yeah we did um uh last year our first webinar for true crime podcast training was with on domestic violence and it was through the ywca and they talked about how there's been a shift towards saying victim survivors or just survivors but also they said to listen to what people refer to themselves as that you could use that. But I think you were telling us, Sean, that there's also some people don't even like to say domestic violence. Some people like to say is it interpersonal? Yeah. Interpersonal violence or relationship violence or dating violence,

to be more specific, because I think the word domestic, I mean, in the laws where I live, it kind of encompasses any violence that happens between any family members. So that could be child parent or, you know, adult parent, older adult, like just anything that could happen within a family unit or a house. And I think most of the time when I say domestic violence, I'm thinking about two people in like a romantic relationship. And so for some people, it really muddies the waters and it's probably better to say interpersonal violence or dating violence if they're not married and they're just dating. So it's, again, I think it's just thinking about what the effect is of what you're saying, right?

So it's kind of like, if I think the audience that I'm talking to might be confused by me using that phrase, then maybe I won't use that phrase. But I think, I almost feel like we might've missed our window in changing the name, even though there are plenty of agencies that will still say IPV instead of DV. Yeah. So do you think it's OK to still use DV or do you think we should be making the switch? I think it's OK to still to still use it.

I think most of us know what it means and I don't think there's any negative connotation that comes to it. It just might be too big of an umbrella term. But we usually, if we're talking about child abuse or elder abuse, we usually use those phrases, you know, child abuse and neglect, or we say elder abuse or elder neglect. So I think we commonly draw those distinctions. And I might call it domestic violence, even if they don't live under the same roof, they're just dating. But when you're describing, again, describing rather than labeling what the situation is with the people, then you can make sure you're clear in what you're

saying. But I don't see calling something domestic violence. Maybe it's less precise, but it's not as insulting to anyone, I think, to call it that. Might be jarring for some people. They might not want to accept that that's what we would label what they've gone through. So again, if you're in that situation, it's always to follow that person's lead with what they want to talk about with their situation, how they describe themselves and what they went through. Yeah, again, just goes back to just paying attention to how people talk about themselves and what they went through. Yeah, again, just goes back to just paying attention to how people talk about themselves and, you know, kind of taking that into mind.

All right, for my last major question, let's talk about how to keep up with the ever-evolving language changes, because this is a lot of information and given a year or two from now, this couldn't be completely wrong. So there are lots of changes are being made. Haley, I know you address this in your training program. So can you start us off? What can we do to keep up with it? Yeah, so one, there's a lot of different ways you can keep up with this. One thing that I suggest is looking up style guides that's focused on specific topics. For example, in the chat, if you're paying attention, Gemma said that she recently read the GLAAD guide, and that talks about LGBTQ+, you know, guides on how to use that language when you're talking about people in that community.

So basically, if you're focusing on a very specific topic and you don't know the right language to use, you could go view a guide. And you can usually just Google those, you know, like it's google is your friend you don't have to get it right ever you know you could just say something like lgbtq plus style guide or you know media guide or something like that um now if you only have one or two things that you're unsure about you could just do a quick google search. Like you could say, what's the proper term or insert word or phrase today. Um, for example, we don't say like, um, mentally handicapped anymore. That's not correct. We would say like intellectually disabled. So if I didn't know what that was, I would look up like, what's the proper term for mentally handicapped today? You know, it's okay to put those things in there and just ask because how else are you going to learn?

And you'll usually find some answers there. But if you're working on a project that has just a bunch of different things that you need to consider and the style guides aren't working for you and you're really nervous about not getting it right, you can always hire a content advisor and they can help you make sure that your language is accurate and respectful. But in the end, it's all about just learning to adapt and being willing to make changes. Yeah, so Google, I think in the end, the moral of this whole video is that Google is your friend. Also, your peers. Ask your peers. I know we, Melissa and I, are part of probably, I don't know, 15 different group messages where we have put in there, hey, we're working on a case. This is the scenario.

How would y'all phrase it? Is this correct? Am I doing anything wrong? Because we have a wide variety of peers that have been in this industry a lot longer than us who may have different careers, like Sean is well-versed in the interpersonal violence now. And I have lots of questions about that because I don't know. That's not my skill set. So just being willing to ask the questions also is important. Yeah, absolutely. And I am in my little bucket, but I am lucky to have peers that have been doing this for much longer and have a lot of experience. So it's always great to just reach out to someone and just say,

am I on the right track here? Or I completely agree. I've even messaged Haley questions about my kids' homework when I'm not quite sure what they should be writing in an essay. So it helps. Yeah. All right. Awesome. Okay. So let's go ahead and hold the Q&A. So please leave your questions about really anything appropriate in the chat. While you're typing those out, Whitney is going to share an amazing handout that she made. If you're at TCPF, surprise, it's the same one. It's similar. So this is kind of all the topics we kind of discussed just a little bit of this and that

to kind of give um just a little bit of example to to show kind of what we're talking about i love it and you're going to share a link right with everyone yes yes so you can see it here the link is here no questions sometimes we don't have questions and that's okay but if you have questions definitely put them in the chat and let us know or if you're too shy you can always reach out after yeah i'm just looking through the comments here some things that people have said that we should avoid saying um white trash definitely um wrong side of the smoking gun. Yeah, so there's a lot in there. It's just, again, just making those tiny changes as you go, as you learn, is super important.

Here is a question. Is there ever a time that being vague in our descriptions is disrespectful to a victim's memory or family? I don't think so. As long as you're just trying to be respectful. Sometimes you may want to not bring up certain things about a victim because you don't want people to judge them. For example, if I was working on a case where the victim was a sex worker, but they weren't killed, they didn't have their murder, didn't have anything to do with them being a sex worker.

I probably wouldn't bring that up now because I think there's anything wrong with being a sex worker. I'm absolutely okay with that. And if I was listening, I wouldn't judge the podcast is that I want people to care about the victim when they leave and unfortunately not everyone is you know not everyone is going to not think badly about the victim so I think it's okay um what do you guys think about that so I think if it's if it's not pertinent to the case, just like you were saying, if it's not vital information that has to do with what happened to this person, it's definitely best to leave it out. There's no need to say anything that might get people judging because you would be surprised at people that listen to even these true crime podcasts that will judge the victim probably just as harshly as they do the perpetrator.

And so anytime that we can shine a spotlight on everything good that that person did, I think it's much better. We also always let our families listen to the episodes before they go live. So if they didn't like any aspect of it, we could definitely change it prior to it going live,

which kind of helps, but it's also very, it's still nerve wracking when the family listens. I think the only risk might be in a missing persons or unsolved, where if you think you yourself make a judgment call that you think a certain detail about a person's life is not relevant, then maybe leaving that detail out could actually be relevant to how they disappeared

because you're like, oh, I don't want to describe them as being part of the unhoused community because I really think people might judge them for that, but that might actually be a lead for someone or lead someone to remember that they saw them or encountered them at some point. So I guess that would only be like the risk. I don't think it would be disrespectful to the family, but if your goal would be to generate leads about something,

there might be certain facts that you have to kind of include, even if you're a little nervous about doing that or you're concerned. I always think that's the tricky one. Yeah, I think with unsolved, you should include as much as you find just because you never know what might, you know, cause someone to remember something important. So if it was an unresolved case, then I definitely would include all of that. But then again, using that person first language and trauma informed language, like you can't always not include that information. Sometimes you do have to bring it up, but then you do it respectfully and you don't focus on it and you just continue on. Because if the victim was a sex worker, that was just their profession. They had everything else about them that you can still talk about. You don't need to focus on that part precisely yeah all right i'll give my hosting duties back over

to hayley all right thank you so much um for hosting melissa um And thank you to Sean and Whitney for being here with me tonight. Is there anything else that you all would like to talk about before we leave? I'll just mention that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Speaking of domestic violence, and I know that Haley and Whitney and Melissa can talk a little bit about the projects they're doing, but our podcast will be doing a whole month of special episodes, having some feed drops from our partner podcasts to talk about different cases. So we're, we're, I think we're going to be doing 10 episodes next month. So it's going to be really exciting. So I just want to, you know, kind of share that, that if you're interested in these kinds of cases, like, I hope you'll follow us and get to hear some of these really moving stories and learn more about domestic violence during this month. And it's Sins and Survivors. And you're on every podcast. Every place you can find us everywhere

and all our social media is Sins and Survivors, at Sins and Survivors. Yeah. And thanks for having me, Haley. Yeah, thank you. This was all of your idea and I appreciate it so much. Whitney and Melissa, what do you have going on? Not much, I've heard.

Not planning a festival or not a festival, a conference. Not a festival. Conference. Yeah, so we are in the, I keep saying the preliminary stages, but we're well past the preliminary stages. We've been working on this for over a year at this point. We are planning AdvocacyCon, which is a conference like no other. It's not your typical crime conference. We are putting family members in the same room as nonprofits, resources, PIs, ethical content creators, other family members to know that they're not going through this alone and

giving them all the tools that we can possibly think of for them to help advance their loved one's stories. It's us along with Eric Carter-Londin, and it'll be in March 28th, March 28th through 30th of next year in Indianapolis. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. I'm really looking forward to it. All right. Well, Melissa, Whitney, and I have been working on a project for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. You'll be able to see more about that on our social medias on October 1st. But basically, we are going to be hosting a drive where we are going to be donating essential items to domestic violence shelters around the country. So we're just encouraging everyone to get involved and donate

bags in their own areas. And we have everything already figured out for you, what goes in the bag, where to buy it, all those things. So you'll be able to find more information about that on October 1st on our social medias. And we're really looking forward to that and hoping to get as many people involved as possible. And we worked really hard on that. And one thing I never even thought about to put in the bags, which I think Whitney came up with, either Whitney or Melissa, but phone chargers. It's huge. So a lot of the times domestic violence survivors or victims, victim survivors, they leave their homes with nothing, literally nothing. And so these bags provide essentials to them, you know, body wash, shampoo, conditioner, a brush, socks. So we're really excited about this project and can't wait for people to get involved.

I just want to thank everyone again, Sean, Whitney, Melissa, and our audience. Thank you so much for being here. And you can stay up to date on our next webinar by following True Crime Podcast Training on social media. But until then, I'll see you later. Thank you. Bye, y'all. Thank you. Thanks for listening.

Visit sinspod.co slash subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad-free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Threads at Sins and Survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at questions at SinsAndSurvivors.com. If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or needs support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website, sinsandsurvivors.com. Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, is research written and produced by your hosts, Sean and John.

The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, sinsandsurvivors.com. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.