Something Was Wrong - S26 Ep12: [Iris] Just a Kid

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

*Content Warning: religious trauma, grooming, child sexual abuse material, sexual assault, and rape.Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources   SWW Sticker Shop!: https://brokencyclemedia.com/sticker-shop SWW S26 Theme Song & Artwork: The S26 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart instagram.com/okaynotgreat/  Follow Something Was Wrong: Website: somethingwaswrong.com  IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcast TikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast  Follow Tiffany Reese: Website: tiffanyreese.me  IG: instagram.com/lookieboo

If you love Something Was Wrong and you'd like to help support the show, become a community contributor on Apple Podcasts, or purchase a sticker from our shop at brokencyclemedia.com. Thank you so much. Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and includes topics that can be upsetting, so please listen with care. All names in this chapter have been changed for anonymity purposes.

Opinions expressed by the guests of the show are their own and don't necessarily represent the views of Broken Cycle Media. sources and resources can be found in the episode notes this podcast and any linked materials or opinion should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice if you're a survivor looking for resources please visit something was wrong.com slash resources thank you so much hi my name is iris i grew up in church like everybody in the south did i thought that i had a really normal experience and as I've grown up I've realized that some of my experience was not so normal but I am just here to tell my story. I grew up first in a city that was a very small town,

normal amount of church for religious people so every Sunday and then Wednesday if there was youth group or children's church. But then we moved into a city that was a lot more religious That was a lot of being focused on the church and on missions. I started attending the Christian school that was attached to the megachurch in the city in fifth grade and then went all the way up through 12th grade. My dad was also a teacher at the school. Life changed a lot and I began going to school every day, had Bible class and then had church at least. Sunday and Wednesday, but usually on Friday nights or Saturday nights or some kind of event. I would say I spent at least six days a week on that campus. It really became my full life,

and I could not have imagined my life without that community at that point. Would you say your overall experience as a kid, like elementary school age, was pretty positive within the church, or what was that like for you individually? I think it was overall positive. I definitely remember being told that I was a sinner and I was going to hell before I even had my first memory. So obviously there are some questionable points to that. Being five years old and waking up wondering if I'm going to hell is not great. But I really did enjoy the church. I enjoyed the community that it built and I enjoyed music and my friends. There are definitely some questionable decisions that I probably wouldn't. do with my own children. But overall, it was a decently positive experience. I didn't even realize that they were an issue until I had left. I didn't understand that they were concerning until I saw it through somebody else's eyes and told my story and realized that, oh, that's actually really harmful. Around the age of 12, that's when things started to shift for you. Can you talk a bit about that?

Yeah, so that was middle school time that I was really getting involved in the church. Things started going a bit awry, I suppose. I feel like about 12-ish. I was pretty much told that my job in life is to be a Proverbs 31 woman and to seek a husband, and that my whole meaning was for that. At 14, my dad told me to write down everything that I was looking for in a husband with Bible references on each trait. As someone who has been a teacher of high school students, 14 is way too young to be thinking about a husband. It was pushed on me of pregnant barefoot in the kitchen.

That was all that I could do was to be a really good wife and a really good mom someday. Did it feel like those were kind of your only options? Or just that's the preferred way of being? That was the preferred way. I started being really involved in probably eighth grade. And I went to every winter retreat. I was on the worship team and all of the fun things that you can do as a kid in these groups. I started being a Sunday school teacher for three-year-olds when I was 13.

I think I was waiting for my birthday because, they didn't take volunteers under 13. So on my 13th birthday, I went and started volunteering to teach three-year-olds in the Sunday school, which I love three-year-olds. And that was such a great time. And then I became a lot more involved in the youth group as well. They would have first service and second service of church. And I would go and teach Sunday school the first service. And then I would go to the youth group service for the second service. I attended a lot. I went to all of the youth retreats and Friday night things. We didn't do summer camp because my dad was a teacher. And because my dad was a teacher, like he already had off the summer. But we did do the winter

retreat. Looking back, it was such a safe place for me to be. Mostly. And we were able to hang out with kids our age in ways that were appropriate and we played games and we had fun. Also, we were taught about hell at the same time. There are so many positives that come with youth group. And it's really hard for me to separate those really fun adventures that I had as a kid from being told that I wasn't good enough and being told that I needed to do better, even at my best. So there are definitely a lot of positives, but the negatives sometimes outweigh them. That can also be influential because for a lot of folks, it is a source of community and support for many reasons. Even looking at my parents' perspective, on Wednesday nights, they would give us food.

And so that's a whole night that you don't have to think about what's for dinner. And now that I'm an adult, I understand how big of a deal that is. Not having to think about what's for dinner and not having to watch my 13-year-old school. scroll on her phone sounds great to me. And so I definitely see the positives and I definitely see how you can become so ingrained in it. I guess that's the whole point. Did you feel impacted by purity culture within this religious environment? I definitely knew all of the purity culture terms. In high school, we had chapel every week where we went and listened to some pastor. They would separate the girls and the boys. The girls would go and have a conversation about purity and how it was

our responsibility to make sure that we weren't a stumbling block and how to say no in a way that makes him still want you as a wife. Because then as soon as you get married, you're expected to be the term of the youth pasture saying, my smoking hot wife. And then as soon as you're a wife, you're supposed to be this toy for your husband, but until that night, you are supposed to be completely and totally pure. And that was a bit overwhelming. The boys, on the other hand, went to chapel and learned about pornography. I had every single boyfriend that I've ever had in the church sit me down to have a conversation about how he used to watch pornography, and now he doesn't. So I don't need to worry about it anymore. How did we live the same exact life experience? But seriously,

like, I remember so many dudes having that conversation. And I'm just like, can we actually not talk about self-pleasure at Bible study right now? I'm good. This is a lot for 530 on Wednesday. And they were never really told that masturbation was incorrect for men. It wasn't recommended specifically for girls. Obviously, that was dirty. But, for, for women. But, for, for the boys, it was just kind of unspoken. They just didn't talk about it. They talked about not watching porn, but I guess if you want to do other things, then. And I think also as young women, it begins this sort of grooming of the idea that we are somehow responsible for the behavior of men. Because the messaging is like, you probably don't even know that you're doing this.

You need to really avoid basically existing in any way that could be sexual because you are making them stumble. It was, though. It really was our problem. There's a lot of problematic messaging there. I think that even if people do have a religious calling to a certain idea, there's probably less psychologically harmful ways to discuss it with teenagers than it's typically described to me. But how did that impact your sense of self as a young woman thinking about marriage and the recommended path, so to speak. I want to say that it ruined my self-image, but honestly, it didn't because I thought I was better than everybody else. I was so incredibly involved in the church and I was so good by

pretty much everybody's standards other than maybe my parents. And I was going to find the perfect husband because I had saved myself and had become this wife material person. I had a lot of issues later on, feeling a lot of guilt about different things, even just like making out with my boyfriend. I was having a ton of guilt and would have to have conversations with my boyfriend about how last time we let things go too far. And this time, we can't do that anymore because Jesus said so. Which sounds so silly now, but I had a lot of those conversations with a lot of boyfriends. Speaking to your youth pastors that you had during your high school years, was that consistently like the same group of staff or did that change year to year or how did that work? A little bit of both. First, they had a group of staff that would work with the middle schoolers and a group of staff that would work with the high schoolers.

The highest staff position would be the high school youth pastor or the middle school youth pastor. usually it would be you finish eighth grade and the ninth grade you start in a new group but our leader was awesome and wanted to move up with us most of the people would stay in their age group so the six through eighth grader leaders would stay as six through eighth grader leaders and they would get a new group of kids once they had graduated out once i had moved on to the high school group i was in In 10th grade-ish, I heard one of the leaders from the middle school group was arrested for CSAM. I was so shocked. I was in the high school group and he was in the middle school group at that point. The girls have girl leaders and the guys have guy leaders. So I didn't know him, but I had seen his face around and I knew of him.

We heard about it because it was on the news, but they did not talk about it. They never came to the big group and said, we know that you were around when he was working here and did anything happen and do we need to know anything? They never brought it up or even just to say like, we do not want anything to do with this person. We disagree with their decisions. That was the craziest part. And I didn't really realize it at the time. But now looking back, I can tell that that was one of the biggest red flags and that was where things really started to get swept. under the rug and I just didn't notice until way after. Did your parents talk to you about it?

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I got asked if I wanted to apply for a internship. And I applied and I called this internship. And this was within the youth group, the internship? Yeah. So we had a group of less than 10 of us that would sit down with the youth pastor. We would have monthly meetings where we had to read a book of the habitudes and we learned how to be good leaders. I don't really know what kind of background checks they did. I don't remember at the time that I became a leader having to do a background check. Obviously they did it with staff and people who were paid, but I don't think the volunteers, they really checked into that. The youth pastor was in his 40s, but the leaders were all over the place. It was all ages of who could be a volunteer.

We kind of blurred the lines of who was a leader and who was a student. And I think that kind of gave leeway for all of this to really start happening. Once I became this intern, it kind of gave the real group volunteers a passive event. asking things of us. There was one leader. He was really my brother's small group leader. When I first saw him at youth retreat, I was 14 and all 14-year-old girls are like, ooh, I pick him. How old was John? When I first started being an intern, he was 26 and I was 16. Wednesdays were where we had small groups, so I wouldn't see him, but I would see him every Sunday. And starting around 16, once I became that intern, he started giving me hugs every Sunday at church.

And looking back, they were very long, intimate hugs in front of everybody. Nobody said anything to me. And he would tell me, you know, your hugs are what I look forward to. I come to church so I can get hugs from you. I was still in high school and he would message me on Facebook and say, say, hey, I have a new kid who's coming to church and he needs somebody to sit with him. You're an intern, so that's your job. Please take care of him. Make sure that he feels welcome. Which is totally normal and perfectly fine. It started out that way and then it became more of just talking normally.

There was one time that we had this really big party at school. I was not invited. He asked me where his invite was for this party, which now, looking back, at 27-year-old asking for an invite to a high schooler's party is so incredibly weird. He was saying that it would have been a better party if he was there, and I said, oh, well, I wasn't invited either. And he's like, yeah, but I'm cooler than you or whatever. I didn't really see it as a problem then. It was just talking to my friend on Facebook Messenger. but now looking back, there's no way that at 26 I would have asked to be invited to a high schooler's party, especially when I told him that all of these kids got suspended or expelled because they were drinking underage and you want to be there?

I didn't even want to be there. Why would you want to be there? I thought that it was odd, but not to the point that I do now. It started on Facebook Messenger. Then he asked me to add him on Snapchat. and on Instagram and started really DMing and Snapchatting me all the time and saying, oh, you'll love my Snapchats. It's super creepy. He says, you still need to send me that video.

I need to impress girls with it. And then you say something about trying to send a file, but it's too big. And then he says, that's what she said. Yeah. And looking at the dates on that, I am not even in my senior year yet. It's so inappropriate. While I was texting him still in high school, there were text messages from him asking about my boyfriend. And when he gets to meet my boyfriend and approve my boyfriend, I didn't think anything of it at the time.

I was just, oh, he's a friend. He's trying to approve the guy I'm going to date. And then making that's what she said jokes to a high schooler, which is so yucky. And then asking me, why weren't you at church today? Oh, I missed you so much. I guess I'll see you at retreat then. We'll get to spend the whole week together. Things like that.

I'm still in high school. I have comments of me saying, oh, my little brother wanted to say hi because John is my brother's leader. He's still saying all of these things. Well, my little brother, who's only two years younger than me, is in his group. How did it strike you at the time versus now when you're looking at this and seeing it through a different perspective, I imagine.

At the time, it felt like a compliment. It was somebody older than me that wanted to hang out with me that thought I was pretty and told me about it all the time. It didn't feel in any way predatory at the time. I laugh at the, that's what she said, joke. And that's all that happened. And now I'm reading it. And it's just, obviously, I hate it.

Since I was trying to find a husband and was trying to be somebody's wife at that point at 17, I was okay with him being older because then he could provide for me. I thought that this was all appropriate and it just wasn't directly after I graduate high school. I started being a volunteer leader instead of an intern at the youth group. We talked on a lot of different platforms and were talking about everything. I had a boyfriend at the time I was a serial monogamist. Obviously, I was trying to find a husband, so I had to be. And after I graduated, he started messaging me more on Instagram. And he was asking me who I was dating and are you guys officially dating? And I was kind of avoiding the conversation. And he said, I didn't think you'd replace me so quickly. My response is, ha ha, you didn't ask me out. His comment back was, and I don't think people would be happy I was dating a teenager. But hey, when you hit 20 and are still single, I'm all yours. I had just

graduated high school a month ago. Do you recall how you emotionally felt when you got that response from him about when you're 20, I'm all yours? I was into it. I felt complimented. I didn't see any issues with it. I knew that being 18 and him being 28 would probably be questionable. They might have been talking behind her backs, but I don't think they would have said anything to us. It sounds like the power dynamics at play were not a consideration in this sort of setting. In terms of him being older and more of an authority figure and you formally being a student, do you feel like that would have stood out necessarily in this? environment or would that be more considered pretty typical? I want to say that it would stand out,

but I really, really don't think it would. I don't think anybody would have asked when we started talking. This is a month after I graduate and he's a leader. He's asking who I'm dating and when I'm single and I was flirting back. It wasn't one-sided. I wasn't turning him down. That's for sure. Do you feel like at the time a part of you felt kind of chosen because of his position? Oh, yeah. I guess it felt like I was getting what I wanted, and that was all that mattered at the time. I was deciding what I wanted to do of having a full ride scholarship to go to college and literally telling my friends I was only going for an MRS degree. I believe John then officially asked you out on a date. How did that develop? It was a continual flirtation from the time I was 17. He was giving me these long hugs up until I had turned 20 and was single. We have text messages of when I had a boyfriend of him saying maybe if you marry me or are you still dating him? Why are you dating him? I'm there in spirit. I'm jealous of him. And calling me hot, making comments about my body. just continuous things, which I definitely saw an issue of because I was dating someone and thought

that that was inappropriate to be saying to me while I was dating someone. When I was 20, I had broken up with my long-term boyfriend at the time. I really, really thought I was going to marry him. And so I was having a really hard time with the breakup. He started asking me out on a date, saying, well, you're not together anymore so you can go on a date with me. And I told him no all the time, I was telling him I didn't want to do that. I wasn't ready for that. I was still sad from the relationship and he was like, well, I'm going to be here. I can be a rebound. At that point, I got flowers sent to my house with date, question mark. And I had no idea who it was from because I was newly single. I was confused. And he finally texted me and said, hey,

to get the flowers that I sent you? And I was like, oh, I guess I was. I was. I was. I guess I go on the state with you. I told him very seriously that I had just broken up with this guy that I was really in love with. I would go out with him on the state, but I didn't want anything to go on, that we were just going as friends, and that was all. Did your parents know you were going on a date with this dude? Oh, absolutely not. I didn't tell them about who was dating. A lot of their reaction probably would have been, even though you've known him since you were 14, why are you out with this guy? He took me to go stargazing and we had a picnic blanket. I wasn't uncomfortable by the start of it.

Just sitting there watching the stars talking. That's fine. And then I started to get this feeling that he was trying to do more of he was trying to hold my hand. And I was, okay, well, he's just holding my hand. It's not a big deal. And then he was pulling me closer to him. And, okay, well, it's just a hug. like we've hugged many times.

Yes, we're laying down on this picnic blanket now, but it's fine. And then he kissed me, and I told him I didn't want to do that. I felt so violated because he was the first person to kiss me after this boyfriend that I really cared about. And I didn't want to kiss anybody else. I was so clear saying, I don't want anything going on. And as soon as he had kissed me, I was a little bit. over it and I told him to take me home. I didn't talk to him again for a year. A year later, he reached out to me. John says, hi, so I feel like I owe you an apology that's about a year overdue.

I don't know why this has been on my mind for the past few days, but it has so I wanted to get it off my chest. When we went on our date last year, back when people could still do that, I shouldn't have kissed you. I remember the day after I felt like a total scumbag because I felt like I had made you feel like I didn't genuinely care about you at the time and was only interested in the physical aspect of a relationship or that I only saw you as an object and not a person with feelings. Maybe I'll look back at this and think this was dumb to do, but regardless, you deserve better than the kind of treatment I gave you. Maybe you didn't think anything of it, but either way, please understand that I really did care about you a lot at the time and I was genuinely

interested in a relationship and did not see you as some personal sex toy, but I see now that I may have made you feel that way, and I sincerely apologize for my behavior. I hope things are going well, and if you don't feel like responding, don't sweat it. What do you make of it now, and what did you make of it then? I really genuinely don't wish the worst on this person. I do think that he messed up, and the apology meant nothing to me. It genuinely didn't. I wish it would have. I wish it would have fixed things and made me feel better about it. But even just saying that I know I made you feel that way means you probably knew you were making me feel that way at the time. We did have a couple of conversations between then when he was, you know, why am I not texting back? Why am I not engaging in conversation anymore? And I told him, I told you that I didn't want anything to happen and you still did it. I don't think he wanted anything out of the relationship at that point. I think he knew that. I was done and didn't want anything else to do with them. And I still don't. Even to me now, looking back that I am around his age now, I realized that he is only apologizing for taking that

one day too far. And he didn't say, I really shouldn't have had these conversations with you when you were 16. I really shouldn't have had this relationship to you while you were just recently graduated. So even with the apology, and I appreciate the apology in some aspects, but there's a lot more that needs to be apologized for. It's not just the one day. It was the years of making a 16-year-old feel like you wanted her. It makes me really sad for a 16-year-old me of wanting attention and wanting a husband so badly that this 28-year-old loser who didn't have anywhere else to go except for a high school party wanted me. And that was so important. Did you have anybody in your life that you felt like you could talk to about these circumstances? I didn't think it was a circumstance. I never thought of it

as an assault genuinely until we had our first meeting and you said, at what point did you realize that was an assault? And I was thinking in my head, right now when you just said that, I just thought of it as bad communication as a situation that happened and that was it. I didn't tell anybody for years because I didn't think of it as an assault. I thought of it as a bad date and that was it. I know there was a second incident. This person was also related to the same church. Yeah. Everything that I experienced was all in this one church and that kind of makes it feel worse. Our experience with Ryan was a much shorter experience. He was still very involved with the church when I was younger. He was a photographer for the youth group, so he took pictures for everything. I don't know if he was paid or if he was volunteer.

I have pictures of us together on a mission trip, senior trip, and I was very much underage. And so I know that he knew who I was before I was 18 and before I had graduated. His job was photography for like the website and stuff. Right. Make the social media posts and all of that, the marketing, I guess, of the group. So I knew him in high school, but things started to progress more when I was out of high school. He started being a little flirty. And how old was he?

He was 32. I wasn't nearly as into it as I was with John. I kind of thought that 32 was too old for me at 19. 28 was fine, but 32. no way. I was a leader and he was a leader and he asked me if I would come over to a park across the street from his house and do some modeling for him, which I had done in the past for different little brands or different friends. So I told him, yeah, that's no big deal. And he would send me some cool pictures to put on Instagram because that was very important then. So I went over to

the park across the street from his house. I did not plan on going to his house. He was just taking the photos and everything was fine. And then he asked me if I wanted to go back to his apartment and see the photos that he had just taken. This is just a friend. This is just somebody that I knew from church. And so I told him yes. And I went back to the house. I saw no issues with it. I was just going to see these pictures that he had just taken and maybe talk about editing. We went back to the house and we started out looking at the pictures and it escalated very quickly. I don't even know how it happened, but he was on top of me and I didn't have my shirt on. He was trying to take off my bra and I was so overwhelmed.

I had no idea what was going on. I didn't know how this had gotten this far already. He got up for a second and I grabbed my shirt, put everything on and just left and never said anything else. That was it. I didn't tell anyone at all until probably a couple years. later, then it still was only my best friend and she was the only one that knew up until I started interviewing with you guys. I knew that I was going to get blamed for it. Why were you there? My turtleneck wasn't enough armor, I guess. At the time, was that a different experience where you

instantly knew it was wrong? I knew it was wrong. I knew that it was uncomfortable. I knew that I wasn't happy. But out of all of these chapels that we had about sexuality and things, we never had a chapel about consent or assault or rape. I knew what rape was. I knew he didn't rape me. I thought that it was a bad situation where I was uncomfortable and I knew I didn't like it because I immediately blocked him on everything. I never conversed with him again. I knew that it was wrong, but I did not have the words for it and I definitely did not have any resources I'm so sorry that you experienced this. I'm curious if you could speak to the harm that it brought to you or the impact that it had on you.

Looking back, it affected me so much that I didn't trust anybody to talk about it and be vulnerable with somebody. I thought so much that it was my fault that I would rather suffer alone than have people tell me that I did something wrong. I mean, it made me a lot stronger now. I am very clear and very direct about things now that I never would have been at that time. I had no idea what fawning was. I felt like there was nothing else that I could do except for just be there. I didn't have a way out at the time or any of those things. And I heard a fire or flight if an animal was chasing you,

but I had no idea that that was something that I was going to experience with someone that I would call a friend. I appreciate now that I'm able to talk about it. I think that those people that are suffering by themselves, and I know that there are so many, because I didn't even feel like mine was good enough to tell on a podcast. I told my husband genuinely. I sent in this email to something was wrong, but I don't think I have enough to tell them.

I feel like mine is just normal. I don't know if it's even something that anybody cares about, because that's just what happens there. And so those people that are suffering in silence and that are feeling the way I do and haven't had somebody tell them that it wasn't their fault, you don't need to talk about it to be valid. And you don't need to have somebody's authorization of whether you were right or wrong because you weren't. You never did anything wrong. It didn't matter what you were wearing. It didn't matter where you were or any of those things. You need to just know in yourself and that you can give a. to 16 year old some grace because there's no 16 year old now that I would look at and say that that was

your fault. I don't know why I would ever talk to a 16 year old me any different than I would talk to a 16 year old now. So I just have to give myself grace and give myself kindness and understand that there were a lot of people who should have done me better. Another thing that like really made me realize how gross this is once I was a high school teacher and I started really being around 16 year old girls. The 16 year old girls or boys would have loved to have me on Snapchat and they told me about it all the time and they would have been so excited to have me on Instagram and ask me all the time. Well, I requested you on Instagram you haven't allowed me and I told them you're not allowed until you're not a minor. And even if you are, you turn 18 while you're still in school. No,

not until you graduate. That's just the answer. There's no question about it. There was one student that I had before she was a student in my class. She was on my Instagram because we were family friends. And I had conversations with her, with her parents, with the principals of, hey, I just want to let you know. She is already following me. We are family friends. I won't be messaging her on here. But I was so incredibly vulnerable. I'm not even a teacher anymore. And if you're a minor, you're not following me. I don't want minors following me on Instagram.

That's weird. As the adult, I didn't expect a 16-year-old to stop me. I didn't expect the 16-year-old to have the boundaries. I was the adult. I think for a lot of this, I blamed myself a lot for putting myself in the situation, of being alone, having so much guilt and realizing now that he was the adult. I was just a kid and I shouldn't have to be thinking about what I should have done as a 16 year old

because I wasn't the problem. I wish I could have just been a 16 year old and not had to think about it. I wish I could look at every girl that's had a periody conversation and tell her that it wasn't her fault and tell her that it wasn't her responsibility to stop a ban. I really think that it was a lack of communication and responsibility by everyone who is in my life. I never talked about sexual assault or any of that with my parents, with my church, who often talked about sex, never talked about what assault looked like. I wish there was more communication in the beginning of knowing what it was and being able to talk to somebody about it because these are people who are still in the church and we're still leaders in the church. If I didn't say anything, who else didn't say anything?

And are they still there? I don't know who they have access to. And I wish that I had said something then. I have no desire to be involved with them at all anymore. But I wish I had been encouraged enough to know that I didn't do anything wrong. What would you say to your younger self? I think it's hard because I don't think my younger self. would have listened to me. I think that I was so ingrained in what I believed that I would not have listened to an adult and understood what they were talking about. I would have told them that I have had bad dates, sure, but I wouldn't call it that or any of those things. I would explain to her what consent really was. If it's not an enthusiastic, yes, it's a no. And the coercion

elements, especially with John, it was like wearing someone down to get a yes. I wish I could tell every 19 year old in the same position just to have their eyes more open and to really see people's intentions behind things and understand that no adult ever should want to hang out with high schoolers. If they can't make friends with their peers, that's also kind of a red flag. Right. If you're looking to be friends with high schoolers when you're significantly out of college age. That is strange. You mentioned the journey for you

coming to terms with what took place. And I'm curious how and when that journey and progression took place or what do you feel like influenced that growth the most where you got older and at least started, maybe didn't quantify it as a soul, but started to see it as harmful. I think becoming,

a high school teacher made me realize the oldest student that I had was 19. And I really had to learn really fast how to make great boundaries and what the difference of I enjoy you in my class, and that is all. I would never, ever add a minor on Snapchat. Are you kidding? So inappropriate. I am sorry, but I do not think pastors and youth pastors should be following children on social media. I understand that the lines are really blurred for some of these things, but like, these are children, and so we cannot be protective enough. And I also think things like background checks and just some semblance of accountability is probably a good start. It is really scary, and hopefully at minimum parents are thinking also about how much access other people are getting

to their children. It's really important to have open dialogue and conversations and destigmatize these things so that if things do happen, our children also feel open to us and open to potentially communicating with us so that they can gain some of that wisdom. Yeah, I think that every teenager needs some adult that they fully trust to talk about these things because maybe had I talked to an adult, they would have been able to see the red flags. But I didn't have any of that. If I had had somebody in my life that I could have been like, I had the one. worst date and told them about it and then said, uh, I think that's more than a bad date. Then maybe I would have said something earlier.

Maybe I would have not blamed myself as much as I did for a decade. I couldn't have known any better. I did the best with what information I had. I just think in general, an area of improvement for our country is protecting children. And it feels like the lives of young people and children are frequently, disregarded or not protected. As a society, we have an obligation to protect our most vulnerable and care for them. It just feels like if we can't even feel that when we're in a house of religious community, then I think we're in a really sad place. We really have to examine the rights and

autonomy that children deserve and remember that they are little human beings that are going to to grow up and be adults and they deserve respect and love and care and our protection. And so I think it's also really important for people if they see things going on to speak up, ask questions, and advocate for the children in their lives. Yeah, even if somebody had just said to me when I was 17 and he was having those really long hugs, those were in public. People were seeing that. even if someone had just said to him, hey, dude, don't do that. Yeah, most of my youth pastors stuck to a high five or a pound it. Right, absolutely.

And I just wish that somebody had either told him and stopped him, which would be ideal. You know his friends didn't say anything because it kept going on. Or somebody had said something to me of, hey, you need to avoid him. I might say this and it might sound a little harsh, but it's just the truth. If you heard my story and you thought it could have happened in your church, then you need to question that. You need to be sure why you're questioning whether it happened in your church. And if you're questioning that, then what are you doing to stop it? And what are you doing to make sure that it doesn't happen in your church so that it doesn't happen to the teenagers that you care about?

I think that when you're looking for a community, a church, a group of people that think like-mindedly, look at the mistakes and how they handled them. Because every church is going to have a bad apple. They are, and I understand that. But how did they actually deal with the situation? If they never said anything in service and they never made their stance clear, that's what I look for when I'm looking for a community, is not people who are perfect because I understand that no one is perfect and everyone

has made mistakes. But how did you handle those mistakes? If you just push them under the rug, then all I'm looking for is your rug. I don't know what the solutions are, but I do know that this is what's happening, and it's going to continue to happen unless people talk about it and make people aware that it's not right and that it is abnormal. I wish that somebody in the church would hear my story and say, wow, I am so glad that has never happened in our church, and I know it won't,

because we do this, that or the other. I can be proud of what I'm standing for because I know it's not happening in our church. And if you even have to question it, then you need to question it. I cannot thank you enough for being willing to share so much of yourself and be so vulnerable with us. Something you and I have spoken about before we recorded today is just like, sadly, how common these types of things can be here. And that you can sort of imagine it happening at almost any church or, religious entity because of how rampant it is. I'm not saying that obviously in any way to diminish

your experience. Sadly, there are so many people who can relate to that. And sometimes you don't feel necessarily seen or reflected. It is important for people to hear and see themselves. And I know you're going to provide a great amount of validation for a lot of folks. Next time on something was wrong. When we had decided it was time to go home, our friend that we had gone to watch perform had ordered us a ride to get home. The ride was going to take my friend that I arrived with home first and then take me home second. I told my then-fiance, everything that I could recollect. He asked me what I wanted to do, and I said, I think I need to call the police.

Thank you to each and every survivor and guest for sharing their experiences. with us. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production created, hosted, and executively produced by me, Tiffany Reese. Special thank you and shout out to my co-producer, Amy B. Chesler, who also hosts our sister podcast What Came Next, which you should absolutely check out if you haven't already. Thank you to our social media maven, Lauren Barkman of luxury media, and our glorious graphic artist Sarah Stewart. Thank you to our amazing audio team, our head audio engineer, Becca High, with additional editing support by Stephen Wack. Thank you to our behind-the-scenes partners, our lawyers, accountants, agents, cybersecurity, delivery

workers, and anyone who contributes to the work we do, thank you. Last but certainly not least, thank you for listening. If you want to help support the work we do, you can purchase a sticker from our shop at brokencyclemedia.com or become a community contributor on Apple Podcasts. Other ways you can help support the show are by leaving us a review or sharing the show with your loved ones. Or, hey, even those you don't love, they might need it most. Until next time, stay safe, friends.