Something Was Wrong - S19 Ep8: (3/3) [Sarah] Taking Your Power Back

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

*Content Warning: violence, suicidal ideation, domestic violence, religious abuse, medical abuse, workplace abuse, peeking while loitering (‘Peeping Tom’), stalking, cyber stalking, rape, sexual violence, gun violence, death. *Sources:  Robert Douglas Braudway mugshot: www.facebook.com/MissouriMugshots/posts/d41d8cd9/3289427961102763/  Missouri State Sex Offender Registry: Robert Douglas Braudway: https://www.mshp.dps.missouri.gov/CJ38/OffenderDetails?page=0&column=name&id=1173463 Warning: Robert Douglas Braudway is a Tier III offender, “Tier III offenders have a lifetime registration requirement and shall report to the CLEO in person every 90-days. Tier III offenders are not eligible to file petition for removal from the sex offender registry, unless the requirement to register results from an adjudicated delinquent (juvenile) adjudication, after 25 years, and the clean record removal is met.” “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim; he, or she, has become a threat.” -  James Baldwin wrote in The Devil Finds Work SWW S19 Artwork by the amazing Sara Stewart: Instagram.com/greaterthanokay *Resources:  FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): https://www.ic3.gov/  Stalking Prevention, Awareness, Statistics & Resource Center (SPARC): https://www.stalkingawareness.org/  Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources  Something Was Wrong: somethingwaswrong.com  Something Was Wrong on IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcast SWW on TikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast  Tiffany Reese: tiffanyreese.me  Tiffany Reese on IG: instagram.com/lookieboo 

Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences, as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder. Content warnings for each episode and confidential resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes. Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes. pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own. and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, broken cycle media, or Wondery.

The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. Thank you so much for listening. That following December, there's an event that happens every year. in Springfield. It's called Imagine, and it's a huge Beatles tribute show. And so I was going,

and these friends from the church went with me. So we're there enjoying the show. And my friend that was in Florida, she knew enough. I told her about the shit. Obviously, you tell your best friend everything, but I also didn't tell her everything because I didn't want her to be disappointed in me. but she knew enough to know she already hated him. She had had a few cocktails that night. She found out that Doug had put his hands on me. That was one of those things that I hadn't told her about, but my friends from the church had known about it.

They were definitely concerned. They told her. And she came unglued when she found that out. She just let him have it. She dug into him and called him. and called him abuser, like at the top of her lungs. She was screaming at him at this event, telling him what a piece of shit he was. And I don't remember.

But it was great. It was like all the things that, you know, you always want to say, but I never had the strength to say. It was enough that he finally took off. He obviously didn't want to be in that environment anymore. And this is the first time that I did not run after him. It was a big turning point to watch her stand up for me in that way and hear her say those things. I was like, I'm going to stay. I'm not going to chase him this time. She's right. After spending time

with these people who had been building me up, like I was finally starting to get some strength to say no and not to do everything that he wanted me to do. It was amazing. And it absolutely pumped me up. It gave me strength. They helped me see. And it's sad that you have to get validation from other people. Those are things I've worked through. But it was something that I had never experienced and to feel that for the first time was very empowering. After that event in December, where my friend had called him out, and I'm spending some time strengthening myself, getting friends and growing my community and feeling better about myself and standing up for myself, he hated it. He absolutely hated it that he was losing that

control. And sometime in the end of January, I couldn't tell you the date because it was the worst of all the experiences that I went through. I need to preface that my daughter was not in the house at this time. She was with her dad. So thankfully, she was not home. We were standing in my kitchen having another conversation that Doug didn't want to have. And he got really tired of me pressing this issue that he didn't want to talk about so much so that we went from talking to him throwing an elbow and hitting me in the face. I just stopped. I was in shock. I stopped talking. I stopped talking. I didn't know what to do. I fell to the ground. It was, again, fight or flight. I fell to the ground and went into the fetal position where he started kicking me while I was on the

floor. While he was kicking me, he was screaming, like, I don't want to do this to you. Why are you making me do this to you? And he started crying, playing the victim in the situation. And then he ran and locked himself in the guest room and had some kind of emotional breakdown where he was just bawling at the top of his lungs about what he had just put me through. I was really scared. I mean, I was in the fetal position on the ground. I just remember getting up, and it was like I had composure, and I called my friend, the friend that had been basically with me through all of this. And I called her, and I told her what had happened. And she made a beeline to my house. She came and sat with me for the rest of the night.

And she told him he needed to leave. He did leave. And I don't know where he went. But from that moment on, I started making moves like, we need to figure out how to get you out of the house. He knew what he had done was wrong. After that incident,

he was very apologetic. After that night, he left. He tried to contact me a little bit, but I wasn't having it. I blocked his phone number. So he started sending me emails because he couldn't text me. I received an email from him, and the subject line was with all my love.

There had been silence for a few days, obviously, because I blocked him. So this is the first correspondence we've had in a while. And it reads, I want you to know from the bottom of my heart how sorry I am for hurting you. Nothing I say or do will ever take away the pain I've caused you. I can only hope that you will meet a man that will never take your kindness or overpouring of love for granted. You deserve the best of the best. I want to be that for you. I'm sorry I failed. You were and are the absolute love of my life, my best friend in the entire world. I cannot thank you enough for the time I shared with you. Though you are hurt and want to remember your hurt to help you forget about me, I can only remember the good. The chemistry we shared that drew us together, the laughter we shared, the love we made, the countless

moments in our day today that made me feel like the luckiest man on the planet. I was brought to a place where I wanted to make you feel as lucky and happy. You have truly inspired transformation in my heart and mind. You showed me for the first time in my life what true love is, something I've never experienced until I met you. I'm so sorry for the mistakes I made in the beginning and have left a devastating impact on you and us. I may never forgive myself for being so selfish and careless in those first few months of dating you. Though I have fallen short in the beginning, my life completely changed the moment I gave you my heart.

It was like a light went through me. I radiated with a happiness I never knew could exist. I found my person, my partner in life. The one I would grow old with and spend the rest of my life with making memories and sharing the ups and downs that would come our way. I found my future. I cannot even begin to fathom spending the rest of my days without you. I'm completely lost.

If there is any love in your heart for me beneath all of your pain and hate for me, then please pray for me to have the strength to continue in this life. I can honestly say my divorce did not hurt half as bad as I'm hurting now. I knew my marriage ended. I had married the wrong person. Losing you, I know without a doubt in my mind that you are who God had for me all along and I ruined it. I just can't live with it. To see you hurt and angry like you are now is crushing.

To know I have caused you to feel that way as beyond what I can handle. Please know with everything that I am, I am truly sorry for the mistakes I have made and have caused you so much pain. Some things you should know. You are absolutely gorgeous. You are beautiful inside and out. You are so funny. You are incredibly smart and witty. You have an amazing ability to light up any room and make anyone feel like a friend.

You are an amazing mother. You are the most amazing partner any man could ever ask for. You have inspired me in all the areas of my life. Your heart is the biggest, kindest heart I've ever known. Your kiss is electric, and the connection we shared on all levels will be one I may never experience again in this life. I am completely broken. The things you've been told are not true.

In your heart of hearts, you have to know that I am not the monster you've been coached into believing I am. My heart has been yours for more than a year. Yours and only yours. I would never dream of going back to who I was before I knew you. I'm sorry for everything. I know how I have hurt you and I'm hurting with you. I'm the happiest when you are happy.

I'm the lowest when I know you are hurting. I'm struggling to find the strength to carry on. Please just know that you are the absolute love of my life and there's nothing I wouldn't have done to prove my love and loyalty to you. Even if it took the rest of my life working every day to rebuild trust from the ways I've lied and hurt you, you are the best thing to ever walk in my life. I will always love you. And can I mention that that was the first time that there were several notes about him not being able to live? He brought that up a lot from this point forward of how he couldn't go on.

that's a common tactic. Absolutely. You can't do this to me. You can't hold me accountable and hurt me by holding me accountable for my behavior. How dare you? In your heart of hearts, you have to know that I am not the monster. You've been coached into believing I am. What the fuck is he talking about?

I mean, that goes back to any time I brought something up or like my friend would bring something up. It was always they don't want us to be happy. They just want to make me look bad. It was you're being coached to. not like me because nobody wants us to be together. I'm the lowest when I know you're hurting. Interesting. You have a funny way of showing it.

I was working as a navigator for the Affordable Care Act, so we were in open enrollment, and it was really important for me to be at my office every day helping people enroll in insurance. I got up, I went into the office, and I was sitting there helping this older man sign up for insurance, and he stopped me in the middle of our appointment. And he's just like, hey, you know you have a black guy, right? I was so still in shock. I don't think I even looked at myself in the mirror because when I was getting ready in the morning,

I had no idea that I had a black eye. I was walking through life obliviously. I remember feeling so ashamed. This old man, he was like, are you okay? Do you need help? And it was a very big, how did I get myself in this situation? How am I here? I never thought I would be the person that's here.

But with that email, it was good enough to bring me back in, and I agreed to go to one more couples counseling session with Doug. We sat down with our church counselor, and I told him everything. I told him the entire story. We talked about the infidelity before, because that was our biggest problem and what Doug never wanted to talk about. But I told him about the abuse, and I'll never forget. He asked me what I did to deserve it.

The therapist asked me that. After that, I decided I was in a safe enough space, at least with a witness, that I was going to end it. And I took that opportunity in that session with a witness to tell Doug that I officially did not want to be with him anymore. And he threw a big tantrum, and he ran out of the office, screaming and crying and peeled out of the parking lot in his Jeep. And then when I was getting into my car, came back around. and was just hanging out his window yelling at me. How could you do this to us? Do you even know what you're doing?

You're a monster. You're breaking me. Also, there was a lot of, I'm not going to be able to live. I can't live with myself. Do you know what I'm going to do? It was ways to make me feel very bad and guilty. Fuck that guy for saying,

what did you do to deserve it? Do you even remember what you said in response to him? No, I don't. I think I was so. totally taken aback. So disgusting. So after the peel-out incident, is he like blowing your phone up? He came back around

and intimidated me in the parking lot and he was making a lot enough spectacle that the counselor, not that he was probably very much good for anything, but he came out to be like, is everything okay out here? Because he could hear him yelling at me. I took that opportunity to get in my

car. I was like, it's fine. And I got in my car and I took off and I just wanted to get away. But Doug followed me all the way home. I called my friend and I called my mom. My mom was at home with my daughter watching her while I was doing this. So he didn't even dare come in the house. But he followed me all the way home. And then he sat outside my house while I went in. And that is what started of him stalking me. I couldn't go anywhere without him following me around. At that point, he didn't have a travel assignment anymore. He was back in Springfield. So he had a lot more time on his hands.

He would email me, and I've got tons of great email content listed in here. During the day, he would email me about how much he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Then there was a time. I went out to dinner with a male friend. He was just a friend, and he wanted to buy me one of those security poles that you can put under your door knob because Doug had made several drive-bys. He would follow me to the gym and sit outside the gym.

He would sit outside my house. would always show up. If I went to go see a local band play, he would show up. He was everywhere that I went. He would email me about how beautiful I looked or how much he loved me and it was incessant. He wouldn't stop. I went out to dinner with this friend who bought me this security pole to put under my doorknob at the end of March. And I immediately get an email that says, you have destroyed my heart. I hope he was worth it. And he basically, he basically, said that he was standing outside my window watching us have sex. And I was like, well, first of all, I have curtains. And second of all, like, we did not even touch. So I don't know what you think you saw.

But email after email about, how could you? I saw you fucking him. Terrible. Terrible things. And if I wouldn't answer, he'd say, cat got your tongue. I should have blocked his email. But also, I think at this point, it was helping build my case because he was burying himself more. I had known that I was going to seek a restraining order. And all of this was just more proof of look at what he's doing. He's following me around, looking in my windows. Looking at the email chain now, all of March, he's emailing you, and he's trying to manipulate you. Like, I noticed he's like, do you miss me? Don't you love me? Don't you miss our family? And you're like, of course I do. I'm not heartless. I'm just trying to move on with my life. You're making it very clear in as kind of way as possible. Leave me the

alone. And his responses are just completely fucking unhinged and not respecting that. His response to that begins, I wanted to make you my wife and spend the rest of my life with you. That's his response to you saying, I want to move on with my life. Basically, please respect my privacy. He's like, well, if you so love me and you say you love me and you miss me and your family, then why isn't it worth giving it a second chance? First of all, motherfucker, you're on like your millionth chance. Millionth, yeah, exactly. It's a lot of, I'm going to try being nice. I'm going to try being manipulative. I'm going to try it this way. I'm going to try this way. He's trying to get at you and get a response out of you any way he can. Oh, yeah. Some time in March, I finally told him,

you got to stop. I'm pursuing a restraining order. And he kept going, of course. He even says, you've got nothing. He says that he deleted everything so that there's no sign of me anymore in his inbox. I submitted for the ex parte order, which is just like the initial step you have to take in order to get the restraining order and they have to set the hearing after you submit the ex parte. I submitted the ex parte on March 23rd and they set the hearing for April 3rd. On March 26th, the ex parte was served to Doug so he knew that this was actually going to happen that I was going for the restraining order and this is when he starts to get vicious. He again is showing up everywhere that I am and now he's bringing women to try to rub it in my

face. And it's always women that I had suspicion of. He's bringing them around. There was the one that he cheated on me with that he said was Wendy Williams playing in the background. She makes an appearance several times. He's bringing her everywhere to try to get a rise out of me. April 3rd, the full order of protection was submitted finally. And on the fourth, it was served to him at his house. At this point, he's not allowed to contact me, but on the 11th of April, I get a text, and he says he accidentally sent me a text message because he was talking to another woman named Sarah, and he got us mixed up. I had unblocked him at this time, because I was honestly trying to catch him, because it only made my case stronger that he's crazed. On April 12th, he hires his lawyer, and this guy is the worst of the worst in Springfield.

He's known in town for helping scummy guys get out of the... situations. Let's just call her April. So April comes in at this time because she's working for this lawyer that he has hired and she's helping Doug out. I think she gives him some legal help for free and like many women, buys into his story of this crazy woman is taking me to court for a protection order. Who knows what his spin was on the story. But he obviously won her over. Our hearing kept getting pushed off, as they often do. As you probably know, the legal process is not always in the favor of women. And so I went for a restraining order in the spring and didn't get our hearing until July. But July 11th, he shows up with her. And she's in this cheering section in our battle for this

restraining order. She heard everything. She heard Doug make a fool of himself because even with these lawyers that he hired, he kept interjecting, speaking out of turn and showing his ass. The judge ended up not only granting the order, but made the order even harsher. He couldn't come within 50 feet of me, or he would go directly to jail. But he was already in this mode to make my life hell. He hated me, and he was on a tirade of telling the entire city of Springfield any way he could what a crazy human I was. And he had a new girlfriend. He had April by his side. So he was happy not stalking me. We joke about it now because we're very close now. We've been through the same hell and there's a bonding experience in that. And so we're very close. But right away, she took his side and went on to social media and ran a smear campaign about how I was a bad mother, that I was addicted to cocaine. I don't think I'd even seen cocaine at this point in my life. It was wild.

The good that came out of this is in September, what my case had done is open up this look into who Doug is in the system. That's when we crack open this case that had been lost that Doug had actually been convicted of a rape in 2007. And because of the clerical error, it just had never gone into his record. When I was going through my stuff with him, we uncovered that way before me, when he was in high school even, he raped a girl. He was charged with this rape. So they proved in a court of law that he did this crime. He was charged. He was forced to be put on a registry, a sexual registry in Missouri. And the Missouri courts filed his name wrong in the system. So that had allowed him to get a registry. nursing license because they found this error, they were able to get it back into his record and get him on the registry in the state of Missouri. So then you can imagine the vitriol that came from both of them got even worse because now my case had caused him to have to put himself on the registry, the sexual predator registry in the state of Missouri, which of course he said she

was lying about, mind you, because he never did anything wrong. Anytime someone has to go on the registry, one of the roles is you have to give your address to the registry. You can't move and not update your address. Well, in September of 2019, he had moved to a new address and he gave the sheriff's office a false address. And they ended up showing up at the address to check on it to make sure, it was correct. And the person at the door was like, no, Doug hasn't lived here in years. So it was a dress that he had once lived in, but he didn't currently live there. Really, in the eyes of the law, a strike like that for someone who's on the registry is pretty serious. It's basically like a one-way ticket to jail. I think they just gave him a slap on the wrist and told him he couldn't do it again. And he did it

several more times. That started the chain of Doug lying about where he lived. He and April were getting really serious. We're into 2019 now and she got pregnant and they had a child together. So of course, him being on the registry fucked up her life too, I'm sure, because they couldn't live near a school. And what does that look like having a kid with a predator? I'm sure she didn't enjoy it. The abuse on me, the attacks, they didn't really lighten up for a few years. It was just a smear campaign all the time of me and my character, which wasn't great. I've always been one to be very vocal about fighting for anyone who's oppressed. I didn't do a great job of standing up for myself, but I've always been one to be very loud about it, whether it's like women in women's

rights or BLM, I am there for the marches. I'm there and I'm loud. I think that this attack kept helping me even grow my armor more because I knew it was out of desperation. The more they attacked me, the more I was loud about it. I started telling my story to anybody who would listen because I think it's a tale that happens way too frequently and it's way easy to overlook and it's obviously easy to get yourself into the situation, and it's not easy to get out of the situation. And I have felt very passionately since then about making it my mission to tell my story so that it doesn't happen to other women or that other women can spot these red flags earlier than I did, or at least know somebody in the situation that had to go through this and have the strength to say, okay, I recognize

this. I'm going to walk away. I'm not going to do this too. I know what this is. I didn't have any contact with either of them for a while. And then May of 2020, I get a message on one of the social media apps from April. She's like, can we talk? I know. I've been really nasty to you. I was like, of course, absolutely. And she sent me a barrage of pictures of her pregnant belly covered in bruises and said, you know, it wasn't very long after I started dating Doug that he was doing the same things to me that he was doing to you. And I'm so sorry. She was so apologetic. She was going through the same thing that I went through and couldn't get herself out of it. She also was raised with some trauma. And so I think her self-esteem might have taken some of the same hits mine had. And we actually

have a lot in common. People say that we look alike all the time. I think he definitely has a type. but she apologized and told me her story and all of the horrible things he's done to her and asked if I would help her and stand with her while she started her journey through the court systems with him. To this day, I think I told you, the day before you sent me a message about this, they had dropped another one her cases because now they're going through custody battles and the courts have not been fair to her. It doesn't even matter that his case net record is three or four pages long. In the state of Missouri, men and women now get 50-50 custody no matter what.

And she has to live with the fact that she has a child with a man that is abusive. We know he's abusive, but she has to share her child with him. So I've been staying with her, and I've been fighting the good fight with her as much as I possibly can. We had a case come in one of the times that he didn't update his address. He was sending her text, even though she had a restraining order. She got him arrested. He finally at least got arrested and put into jail. He was held on a bond.

It was probably like $10,000, nothing too huge in terms of bond and was immediately bailed out. But whenever that happened, we went on a path of trying to find any other victims we could to come forward. and we were able to get five women total to come forward and say that they had similar occurrences with Doug. And we took this to the district attorney who was working on this case. He eventually came back and told us, I'm sorry, it's not enough. We don't have a case. Like five women, I guess is not enough. So they ended up dropping those charges and letting him go.

Her story is full of her going to court and them telling her, She doesn't have enough evidence that he is abusive. One of them, she was pretty traumatized, and I was surprised that we even got her. She wrote a victim impact statement. She gave it to the courts. I won't even go into detail of what he had done to her, but it was brutal. We wrote our statements in hopes that we were going to get to sit in the trial and read them, and they didn't give us that opportunity.

I think it's important to note that when I was first fighting to get Doug into jail. I put out a Facebook notice. This was in a Springfield Facebook post, mind you, but anyone in the surrounding area who had had a experience with this man, please come forward because we were trying to get as many people to come forward as possible. And I had a girl reach out from Memphis, Tennessee, who told me that she dated Doug. And that, in fact, when I was visiting, she was actually his girlfriend. She thought he was her boyfriend. They were living together. That was the person he was living. with. He was renting one of her rooms. They were dating and she finally kicked him out because he raped her. I can't ever not think now what if that makeup was hers? It probably was hers. It's just

really eerie and ominous to think about that fact that that's probably why he was late coming to see me. I honestly have no idea how she found me. I think I hashtaged all the places he had been stationed, and she just said, I came across your Facebook, and I saw his face, and I had to reach out and tell you. If you look at his caseness record, it's just full of these aggressions, one aggression after another. There's one in there where, when he was working out of hospital in Springfield, still, his side of the story is this patient out of nowhere just said, I'm going to get you, like, you better watch your back. And so Doug waited for him in the parking lot, a patient. patient and pulled a gun on this guy. But it was self-defense because this guy threatened him.

That was Doug's side of the story. In the time that we dated, I don't know about in St. Louis or Memphis, per se, but when he came back to Springfield and worked in a little town called Bolivar, he was let go for an incident there because he was inappropriate with a woman. And this was after I had already started going through my court stuff with him, but she ended up filing a restraining order with him. And that was his move. He would get let go from a place and go to another place. Or if he started wearing out his welcome at one place, he would go to another. Or I think a couple times he got to a point where he wasn't going to be able to pass a drug test because he had smoked weed and then found out he was going to have to pee and he wasn't going to be able to pass. So he would quit and get

another travel assignment or just move on to the next place. That was absolutely his move. Wow. It's really scary what I've learned about the medical board and how they determine what is allowed people who are allowed to continue to practice medicine. It's really scary. He had to put himself back on the registry, update all of his information, and the nursing board still didn't take his nursing license away. So he's a convicted rapist on the sexual predator, on the registry, and he still has a nursing license. And he takes care of kids and women. And it's just abhorrent to think about. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's so bizarre how he essentially got away with getting his nursing license because of this error. Somebody had just typed one key off. I mean, if they hadn't messed that up, he wouldn't have ever gotten his license, right?

I would assume. Well, not only that, but like me and others, I know that he's dated, we're big casnet people. So before you date someone, you caset them. because you want to see what you're getting into. And I can guarantee you I would not have gone out with this man if I knew he was a convicted rapist, especially with a daughter. I got a call from a man named Paul who was working on this case for the state after I filed my restraining order. And it was in 2007. A female victim made a report that Doug had raped her.

She won her case, but they misspelled his name. Wow. I think it's really important to note that in the state of Missouri, this man who is a registered sex offender and has lots of acts of aggression on his case net history, he's still able to have a nursing license. I think that says a lot about where our legal system is right now and how he's able to continue working in a profession where he's around children and women and vulnerable people all the time. He's been reported, right? His nursing license has been reported since the change in his record. It has a couple times, a couple times by myself. I feel like I've been a squeaky wheel in that situation. That's insane to me. It's insane to me as well. I know he can't get travel assignments anymore. I don't know all the details. But last I heard, because again, April keeps me very much

in the loop. He was working in a nursing home in Rogersville, Missouri. And beat two elderly people so bad. One had to get stitches, and they just fired him. No charges were pressed. I don't even know if they told the families of these people. They just let him go. She is the ultimate sluth. She's trying to get him away from her kid, rightfully. So it sounds like such a small town type of atmosphere. Somebody knows somebody who tells somebody something, and then you find it out. Yep. I know he lost the job. They fired him, but they just left it at that. I'm sure it was probably a bigger legal case for them if they had called the cops like, why is this man even working for them in the first place? They would rather the victim be ignored and not get justice than have their

reputation be tarnished, whether it's schools, school districts, churches, colleges, hospitals, it's just fucking appalling. He targets the most vulnerable with his abuse. It's got to change. It has to change. After I got to know his story, son's mom, she told me that he never wanted to be around his dad because his dad was always introducing him to new women. There was just like a revolving door of women and he was seeing how Doug treats these women and he saw right through him from a pretty early age. I don't think Doug really paid child support very frequently and so he was not a good dad that he sold himself out to be. I didn't find that out right away. He definitely used his children to paint this picture of being a good

dad so that he could attract women. He'd introduce them to women and be like, these are my boys. Like, aren't they so great? They're so great. That was later. We did not get close and have these types of conversations until after I was already done with him. As we're walking through these stories, it's really easy to forget that even for myself. When I'm like, well, Damn, Sarah, why did you stay? Why did you stay through these events? Right away, there were red flags. How did you not turn and run?

And it's because I was willing to do anything, not to be alone. That's pretty sad, but I'm a lot stronger now after going through that. You absolutely are. The thing that I tell myself, when I find myself in those kinds of feelings, is I did the best I could with the information I had at the time. For me, that's like my meditation, because I'm so good at kicking my own ass. I think as survivors of childhood trauma, there's so much deprogramming we have to do. It's a privilege to be able to access care to be able to sort through that with professionals.

Not everybody's that lucky and not everybody's lucky to make it out alive. Yeah, exactly. And think about, I mean, how expensive therapy is. It's definitely a luxury item for a lot of people to have in their life. When I was dating Doug as a single mother, I definitely could not afford good therapy. staying in this for even as long as I did with my daughter. I had a lot of regrets and I think anybody would in the situation, but she was honestly so young and I never left her alone with him ever. I've asked her about it a couple of times. I'm like, do you remember this man? She does not even remember him. I bring his name up sometimes. She tells me still anytime I talk about it that she does not remember this guy at all. That's a win. I think it's very big of you that you were willing to

reopen yourself to this person when you were under absolutely no obligation to do so. And not only have done that, but of championed for her and helped champion for the other victims as well. I'm not here to like stand as a martyr. I just feel very strongly. I tell my story to anybody who'll listen because I'm tired of seeing it happen. I'm so tired. of watching this constantly happen to women. And in Missouri, the conviction rate for male abusers is basically nil. It's awful. It feels like in 2023, we're in a time that we've got to be past this.

Like, when are women going to be able to feel safe in their homes, walking down the street? I want my story to be told because I don't want another woman to be impacted by Doug Broadway. Well, I cannot thank you enough for all of the time and energy you put into your timeline, gathering everything. I appreciate you so much. And I'm so thankful that we've been able to connect through this opportunity. Well, thank you. Thank you for giving people like us a platform. It's not often that victims are able to be heard. I actually, real quick, I have to share with you. You may have heard this quote, but it's super empowering to me. James Baldwin has this quote,

The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim. He or she has become a threat. And that's very much why I'm so appreciative of you in this platform, because you are giving victims a platform to tell their story and regain their strength. And that is something that a lot of victims never get the opportunity to do. Well, I'm totally crying. Shocker. Wow, I love that. Isn't that good? It's true. We're coming for you, motherfuckers. You're taking your power back. You're amazing. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the time,

the energy, the thoughtfulness, and being willing to fight to spread the word to protect other women. That's a big thing. It's very brave and it's difficult to do, especially as childhood abuse victims, when we've shared our feelings before and haven't been met with empathy or support. It can be even scary to do that. And sometimes it takes us longer to get out of things than we want to. But look at you now. Everything you're doing, everything you've accomplished. I don't know how much you want to share about your personal life now, but like you're on the other side of things. Absolutely. Yeah. I have to say after this experience, I was fully on the no male train. I had convinced myself, hey, I'm bisexual. I can date women for sure. So I was looking for.

a lady partner, well, let me backtrack and say, I also took time. I took two years off from dating anyone. I made a bet with a friend because this codependency and me having to have a partner was so strong that like even my friends didn't think that I could be by myself without somebody else. And so I was like, let's bet. And it started at six months. I'm going to be single for six months. And then it went on to a year. And then it went on to two years. I took that time to like find myself. I took my daughter to the UK because my best friend who was in Florida was now in the UK. And I wanted to take my daughter as a single woman. That was so empowering to be able to take her overseas by myself, go adventure the world together. We built our relationship. I worked on being a mom and finding

myself in one of my trips over there because I've gone several times now. My friend was like, hey, I have a guy I want to introduce you to. I was like, okay, absolutely not. I don't even have luck with men in the United States. Why would I want to date someone in the UK? But I appeased her. And I was like, fine. I'll meet your friend. Nothing is going to come of this. We had this barbecue the day before I was supposed to leave to come back to the States. And he walks in and we just lock eyes and we talk about it now as like our oh shit moment because we both were just like, oh no, this is different. He smiled at me and something felt electric. As cheesy as that is to say, it felt different that night because I was supposed to leave the next day. So we spent time playing games

and we stayed up to like four or five a.m. talking, talking about everything because we had such little time to get to know one another that it was like, let's cram our entire life stories into this little time. He had just lost both of his parents. He did not go into that situation either, like I'm ready to date anyone mentally. But the next day, I didn't get a negative COVID result, which at the time, it was 2021. And so traveling between countries, you had to have that negative COVID test before you could get back into the States. And so I had to extend my trip another day, like as kismid as it is. And we spent that whole day, like he made a cheesecake with my daughter. He took the time to spend time to get to know her. You can tell when people are trying hard.

because they want to impress you. It was nothing like that. They were genuinely enjoying one another. He took me to the airport with my friend the next day and we exchanged numbers. We both knew something was different about this connection. We talked every day on WhatsApp for months. I decided I needed more. I didn't have enough time.

And so I ended up going back in July for my birthday. And this man had planned an entire music festival for my birthday. He had gone to this trouble of planning my very own music festival. I had never had anyone do anything like that for me in my entire life. We did that long distance for a year talking on WhatsApp or FaceTiming as much as possible and really getting to know one another. I think it was the first time I started a relationship that was purely communication. We had to work on communication before anything else.

And after the year, I took my family. my father and his significant other to the UK with me and my daughter for Christmas. So they got to meet him. And we decided on that trip as more of a business negotiation, not very romantic, but we were like, we don't want to do this back and forth. We don't want to keep paying for the airfare to see one another. Like we want to live in the same place. But the only way to do that easily is if we get married.

So we decided to do it to take the leap. And we were married in. June of 2022. And honestly, it's the most secure relationship. He is himself and I am me and we love each other for exactly who we are. And I've never experienced anything like it. He's my best friend. It's all the things that you hear a good, strong relationship are supposed to be. He is completely the best stepfather to my child. She loves him so much. They are inseparable. I mean, he's sitting right now with her while I do this podcast. They are so good to one another and just very much in love. And we just recently found out that we're going to be having a child of our own. So we're going to

be continuing to grow our little family and are over the moon about it. And it just feels like it's exactly what was supposed to happen. You're getting what you deserve. Finally, main character energy. And I love that you highlighted that you took two years to heal and focus on yourself and your daughter and what you needed and recognize that this doesn't change if nothing changes and you did the work. I just love that you have this supportive partner. I'm so happy for your growing family, Mazel Tov. I just wish nothing but the best for all of you in the future and I'm so thankful you found your person and somebody who treats you the way that you deserve to be treated. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time,

Stay safe, friends. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram at Something Was Wrong podcast. Our theme song was composed by Gladrags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much.