We're All Insane - My Brother is a Pedophile

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

In this deeply personal video, our guest opens up about a very difficult and sensitive topic: her brother's imprisonment for pedophilia. This is the story of how the police discovered the truth, the impact it had on their family, and the emotional turmoil she has experienced. This subject is incredibly tough to talk about, but by sharing her perspective, our guest hopes that she can help others who might be going through similar situations. It's a journey of pain, confusion, and ultimately, seeking some form of understanding and healing. If you have a unique story you'd like to share on the podcast, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/ZiHgdoK4PLRAddiB9 or send an email to [e-mail] Business Inquiries please contact: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, it's me Devorah. I just dropped an all new bonus episode inside my new subscription channel, We're All Insane Plus. This week's bonus episode is called My Brain was slipping into my spine. Listen now by subscribing to We're All Insane Plus inside your Spotify or Apple Podcasts app or go to we're all insane.com. Basically, I'm here because my brother is serving more than 10 years in prison, federal prison, for having child abuse material, otherwise known as child porn, and attempting to meet up with a 12-year-old for sex. So that's why we're here, but I'd like to start way back when, because, you know, when something like this happens to a family, and it does happen to the entire family,

you, at least I, try and search and see what went wrong. Right. And if I, if anything is left out or you're confused, just ask me. Okay. Because this is a lot of information. I was just going to say, too, I feel like when something like that happens, it leaves you with so many questions. You, I mean, there are more questions than answers. And the theme that I've got from my searching are past is this sort of failure to be honest with ourselves.

And what happens when you're not honest with yourself is, you know, you don't have these very necessary conversations. And you are left with more questions. There's just a sort of veil of ignorance. and it's very easy to live in ignorance, and it's easy to not look at the dark side of our lives. But then we pay the price with something like this. And I'll go into why that's the sort of theme that I've taken from my research, not just thinking back into our lives, but research about pedophilia and sex offenders and what we could possibly do to prevent this from happening.

Um, so yeah, that's, that's kind of the theme for me is like personal responsibility, family responsibility, um, um, you know, being honest with ourselves and, and creating a family and a social structure, uh, such that we are able to be honest with each other. Yeah, I was going to say too, I feel like it's very easy when something like this happens to allow it to break a family apart. And I think that that, I mean, if you think about it, that's almost like the natural thing that would happen because it's like a volcano erupting in the middle of your family. It's like, what do we do now? Yep. But it's almost like on the flip side, it's a chance to really, like you said, research and figure it out and almost get closer and get, like build this stronger foundation so that you can help the world as a whole.

You would think. Right. And that's my instinct. And I'll tell you, and I'll get to. But not everybody thinks that way. Yeah. Exactly. It's hard.

It's hard to think that way. It's brave. Yeah. And I'm not saying, oh, I'm so brave. But like, it's brave and courageous because the consequences, nobody likes sex offenders. You like a murder more than you like a sex offender. Because, let's think about it, you're violating not only sometimes a child when you're, you know, engaging in this stuff, but you're violating the most sacred of our human beings.

Innocence, yeah. Yeah, innocence. And the thing that bears children, you know, what is sex? It's a way to reproduce, to keep the species going. It's the most sacred thing that you could possibly have in your life and somebody's violating it. And so we have this deep disgust for these people. And that's been something I've had to reckon with.

It's like, is my brother a monster? I don't think so. But then again, he's done monstrous thing. So it's like, how do you sleep at night? And even though I'm, you know, I'll go into this too, but like I didn't raise him. Like he's not my kid, but he's my brother. It's like we share. And the thing is too, is this is just something that I feel like I've, I don't want to say

learned because, you know, everybody, everybody's going to have a different perspective on things. You know, some people are going to say that people are born this way. Some people are going to say it's because of how they were raised. Some people are going to say it's a chemical imbalance. Everybody's going to have different opinions. In my opinion, when someone does something, whether it's murder or they are just violating children in that way, I think that there's something not right. And I don't think that it's always your upbringing.

I don't think that it's always something you're necessarily born with. Right. There's just, I really, this is just my opinion. I just believe that there is some sort of imbalance in the brain that they cannot think straight. If they could, you know what I mean? I just, I agree. I'm going to tell you the research that I've done because there's not that much of it. It's easy enough to find.

But the research on this, since this is kind of unfolding naturally, when I did look into this, there's a great podcast. called Hunting Warhead. And they bring up this German study that was done. I don't remember the year. A lot of this information is very fuzzy because it's all happened over the last like four years or so. But these two journalists did this podcast on these two guys who were running a,

I don't know what you call it, basically some of the biggest websites for child porn. And they were these young guys, like early 20s. And right, one of them was kind of had this, what you're just describing as this sort of, he was incapable of seeing, he had justified it to such an extent that he was incapable of seeing how his actions were wrong. Right. The other guy was like, I should have never done this.

This is monstrous. This is horrible. And he took responsibility, you know, and they're both now serving prison sentences. but they also cover this German study where they gathered, I think it was a couple thousand guys. They did this huge public outreach campaign to interview people who were attracted to children. Nine out of ten of them were men. And what they found was exactly what you were saying inborn. Had it since they were.

Right. Now you have these other elements coming up where, you know, porn addiction was not a thing in the 1950s because guess what? We didn't have access to, you know, these things are you can get, you can see anything you want on there instantly. And so you can't convince me that. And it was like fuels and addiction more. Right. And so when you have access to it, same thing with drugs. When drugs became widely available, it was like parties on.

for these people who were predisposed to having certain vices and addictions. So you should definitely listen to it. It's called Hunting Warhead. And you can go and look at the actual German study. I believe I found it. It's been a while, but I did look online and I found this study. But many of them were not offending. Many of them were like, I'm disgusted with myself for having these thoughts.

And so it's those guys. And the other thing was that not all sex offenders have the same attractions. Some of them have them to teenagers, some of them have them to little kids. Another person you want to follow for this information is Michael Bailey. He does a lot of sex research, and he's been doing it for many decades. And so what he will tell you also, where is I going with that? well basically what between the few studies that are out there we we know that there are non-offenders most of these people if not all of them are born with the attraction but it's these guys

these non-offenders and knowing that it's inborn tells me that we don't actually have to go down the path of offending if there is a way to intervene through social means, we should probably do that. It will save children and it will save these horrible stories from happening. So that's sort of a little primer on it. Oh, that was the other thing I was going to say was what Michael Bailey found was that the lower the IQ, the lower the age of attraction. Interesting. So you're just talking about neurology. You're talking about people who, and you see this sometimes in developmental disabilities where they've never grown up. And so it's not really that surprising that they have sexual attractions towards people who are

up there. I would never even have thought about that. The other thing they found, which is interesting, not only the correlation with IQ, but they found a correlation between left-handedness. So it's not that every sex offender is left-handed. But say, I don't know what the normal distribution of left-handedness is for the general. the general population, but let's say it's like 10%. I believe it was like 30% for sex offenders.

They also found a correlation with height. Interesting. All of this stuff in my mind, okay, what are we going to do? Okay, we're not going to abort every left-handed baby, right? That's insane. We're not going to do some sort of genetic selection for this stuff. But it's, again, it comes back to knowing the truth and not being willfully ignorant. about any information that we can gather.

Yeah. And so that's kind of where I'm at is when this happened, I just consumed as much information as I possibly could because that's who I am. And I'll tell you why I am the way I am. And I think I'm a little bit different from the rest of my family in that. I think that was great too because it gives people a background and an understanding of, like you said, the research of things and not just somebody being a monster. Because I think that a lot of times when people do things like this, people's minds automatically

jump to the conclusion of they're a monster, what's wrong with them, they did this by choice. And I don't think that people really understand, like our brains are so complex. And there are so many things that can cause things to go south, so many different things, that I don't think it is just as simple as they made a choice to do that. Yep. And just to be clear, and I don't know if I said this while we're recording or not, you know, this conversation should not be about hatred for my family. Right. I would say all of this to them if they were interested. I love them deeply and I'm still connected with all of them, you know, in some capacity and some of them it's at a sort of arm's length. But I still love them and I wouldn't want to lose any sort of relationship with them. And I just want to put that out there. No matter what is said here, it is not out of a sense of hatred or anger.

Right. I just, it's better to talk about stuff than to not. I agree. It brings awareness. And there's so many things that talking about your personal stories and experiences do. But I think, like even what you just touched on, like I just said, bringing awareness to just the background of it. And then, too, if anybody knows someone in their life and they're dealing with something like this and they don't know how to cope or handle it within themselves, it makes them feel not so alone because like you said, it does affect everybody around you. I cannot tell you the level of loneliness.

Absolutely. I'm sure. And I'm just wanting to be quiet. It's not something that you want to go around and talk about naturally. None of my, so the only people that know this story fully are like maybe two or three people. Those second tier friends, they don't know anything about this. And so, but you're absolutely right. I think talking about it is better than not talking about it.

And if you do have somebody in your life who's, and I'll get into this too, who's struggling with literally any vice, like, let's try and be there for each other. Like our culture, I don't know if you felt this, but it feels like the social connectedness is disintegrating. Yes. And I'm not sure if it's ever been fully there in my lifetime. No, I don't think it's ever fully been there, but I definitely think, and I've said this many times on the show, I think social media can be great for things like this and for many other things. But I also think it can serve as a way of judgment and comparison and competition. And I think that all of that drives people further apart. Absolutely.

Because everybody's incompetent. Nobody wants to help somebody else. Right. You see somebody that used to be your friend on social media doing something you disagree with. And now all of a sudden... Automatic hate. Now all of a sudden, you'll never talk to them again. Right.

Or there's just a big question mark. And our friendships are so thin and brittle. And they're not... Like I said, I think there was a time in the before time, maybe before both of us were born, like where people were more socially intertwined and strongly connected, maybe when people went to church more, maybe when people had social clubs that they were more involved with volunteering. I don't know. I mean, I wasn't around. We also live in a very sensitive world where if someone doesn't agree with one thing you say, it's like they can't be friends

with you, it's the end of the world. And it's horrible. I know. Because there's so much more to life than that. And if I, if I ended a real, you know, if I ended around. relationship with everybody that I disagreed with, I would be, I would have no friends. Same. Because I have a lot of opinions. Right. I was going to say. And at the end of the day, not that we're always going to think we're right, but they're

our opinions. So we're going to take our own side. So obviously, right, we're going to think everybody else is crazy. But it's fine. Right. No, yeah, I agree, though. It's crazy. And it's unfortunate.

But that's, once again, I think that kind of circles back to why it is so important to have conversations like this. Exactly. Exactly. And that's a big theme too, social connectedness. that I keep coming back to, you know, over the last couple of weeks that I've been thinking about this conversation, you know, it's different to talk to a stranger about this because you have to lay out all of the things you think are important to, or pertinent to the incident.

Whereas I'm talking to my wife, well, she already knows my brother. She already knows my family. She already knows me. She already knows. But this is like, I'm going to have to think about every detail that I think. is going to help a completely, an audience full of strangers to try and see at least how I saw this whole thing unfolding. So that, I guess, if you want, I can start kind of where we grew up. Yeah, childhood. Yeah. Go ahead.

So we grew up in a wealthy suburb. Weren't at the upper echelons of that wealth. But we were kind of upper middle class in terms of like, you know, where the whole country where the Western world sits in terms of economics we didn't want for anything. You know, we were raised with, you know, I think decent morals. And like, you know, those first 10 years of life are so important, but they're also kind of easy. It's like you teach a kid, like, don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat. And, but I think for, you know, as far as it goes, we had it really good. I would not have.

have asked for any sort of different childhood. We were not abused, we were not neglected, as far as I know he wasn't. And, you know, we had friends. We were both, you know, socially had it good. We played sports. No complaints. And I'm going to tell you about my adolescence and, you know, later my early adulthood, because I think it matters.

to the story. But basically up until, and a lot of girls go through this, when puberty hits, it's like a whirlwind of depression and anxiety. And for me it was. There's definitely some depression that runs on the female side of my family. And I throughout middle school on and off was severely depressed, like not able to get out of bed. And so high school hit.

I found drugs and alcohol. And I think at some points they saved my life, and then at the end, it almost killed me. So throughout basically the end of freshman year, until the time I got sober, I was doing, went from, of course, the natural progression of pot and alcohol to harder drugs, party drugs.

And this was in the early 2000s. So it was sort of the, my story was the classic opioid crisis story where you found a pill bottle and an adult's medicine cabinet and it's party time but then the oxy-cotton becomes too expensive and so you end up doing heroin every day by the time I was 16 that's what I was doing every day and um you know I didn't see a lot of purpose in school I didn't I felt like simultaneously like stupid and also completely bored and unchallenged. You know, and there's a lot of reasons for our education system completely failing us.

But I think smart and also contrarian kids like me, like I can be a real asshole. And I can say no a lot. And kids like me do not do well in the traditional school system. And I didn't, and, you know, luckily I did graduate, but it was kind of like the skin of my teeth because I was doing drugs. every single day. And so I'm going to slow down here because, you know, one of the things is I was looking through my lens of this incident with my brother was I started thinking back to that those years from 13 until 19 where things obviously got progressively worse.

I thought I was getting away with everything. I thought I was like the master. You know, I was doing super adult things and like, you know, because I had no meaning in my life, this all of a sudden gave me like a mission. Like I was going to do hard drugs every single day and nobody was going to know about it. Of course people knew about it. And nobody did anything about it. It took me getting arrested three times.

The first and not some of them had to do with alcohol, but they were all drug and alcohol-related. The first was I punched my dad in the face because he told me I couldn't drink in the basement. This was the only time that anybody ever tried to impose rules on me. And boy, did they learn their lesson. And they didn't, I don't think they ever really tried again. You know, like I said, I punched him in the face. I ended up getting arrested for that. And things just continued downhill from there.

I ended up getting arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin. I ended up getting arrested for larceny because I was stealing things out of people's cars. to get drugs at 18 years old. And I would find out later that, like I said, they did actually have an idea of what was going on. They expressed, and I'm going to try and just keep this as vague as possible, because the individuals don't really matter here. The lesson is what matters.

But they knew, and I know they knew because, you know, family members would tell me I was scared of going into your house or your room and finding you dead. And I just, as an adult now, especially an adult with a kid, it's baffling to me to not take that kid by the shirt and say, this is done. This is not happening anymore. We're not doing this anymore. Get up.

We're going to treatment. That didn't happen. It took the law. It took getting arrested to force me. into treatment. And the first time I didn't take at 18, and then the second rehab, it did. So I've been sober now since August 2005.

And I thank God I was, you know, introduced to a certain spiritual program and saved my life. It gave me that discipline of sit down, shut up, take the cotton out of your ears, put it in your mouth. we're going to give you the guide for living, right? Moral guide, not just do your homework, don't be late. That stuff's important, but we're going to actually give you a spiritual and moral values-based guide for living.

So that, I think, is what gives me a little bit of a different perspective from my family. And I don't think they're bad people. I've quite the contrary. I think they're part of the masses of people who do not have an instruction manual for life. And that doesn't make me any better. It doesn't make them worse.

It's just, it makes me sad. Yeah. So, yeah, like I said, I was grateful to be in the program. I still am. That's where I go when I'm lost. I go there even before I get lost, right? Because these social connections,

that we talked about earlier, it's difficult to go to people with difficult stuff when there's no foundation of, well, I trust you already. And so now that shit's hitting the fan, I'm going to come to you. If you don't have the foundation of like seeing people every week or every day or, you know, on a regular basis and just checking in, if you don't have that, how can you really expect somebody to come to you when things are going wrong? And so I'm just so grateful that I was brought into into that program. And so, yeah, I guess over and basically began living my life. You know, always had their support, my family's support, like financially.

That's the other thing is like financial support's always there. That's how most people I think support. That's what they consider support. And to be fair, too, like I said, it was probably long before we were born and maybe before our parents were born that there was you know a more structured way of teaching your kids how to behave and and teaching self-restraint and discipline and like you know it could all the way back to when Nietzsche said god is dead you know it's like and you don't necessarily have to be religious to understand that but you can understand

that when we did throw the sort of moral guide for living out the window, you know, everything else all apart too. Because at least we had, even if you didn't believe in God, you had a structure in which to play, right? Your parents handed you down, you know, whatever religion you're born into, and you can either, you know, throw it out and you can break it or you can adjust it and you can play with it. but at least it was something to work with. Yeah. And now it's like we don't have anything. It's like make up your morals as you go.

Right. And there's so much to it. You know, I feel like there's the one side of things where you want your child to have these morals and follow some sort of, not guide, but like you were saying, like understand life and the importance of life and how the best way you can live it. And then there's the other side of things, which is the emotional side of raising a child, which something you mentioned with the financial support, that's great, you know? And that's something that I've always said about my childhood and growing up with my mom. She's always been so great. And I never needed or wanted anything more than I had.

But I'm not trying to, because she listens to the podcast. So I'm like trying to be. My mom. Right. But, and she was a great mom, very loving. It's not even to say that she wasn't. Right. I just think that there is this lack when it comes to your child and their mental health.

People don't really know. I mean, it's hard enough to deal with her own mental health. So it's like then you have a child and you have to almost cater to their mental health. And there's not much education on that. Yeah. And I think that that's why it's so easy for things to fall off. Because if one thing goes wrong, if there's one trauma and trauma to everybody is very different, but if trauma happens to someone and that's not addressed, sometimes even if it is addressed,

like it can just open this door to so many problems, unfortunately. And it's just, it has to be known, I think, to parents how important every single aspect is when it comes to raising a child. Because if any of those things are neglected, I feel like some people get lucky and, you know, there's children that have the worst childhood and they turn out to be the best people. But then I think that there's other times that people go through so many things and they hold it in and they bottle it up and then they explode. Yeah. And how that explosion happens can come out in a million different ways. And then unraveling that and going backwards is years and years of healing and

therapy. And then it's like it just, it's unfortunate. But I feel like that is a very common trend. even just from doing this show. Oh, yeah. It's like I hear these things that happen and it's like, damn. Yeah. And that's why I say sometimes I don't even know if I want. I never have known if I really want a children. But then hearing how fragile children actually are, like their brains.

See, I would push back on that. I would push back because I'm a therapist and I do counseling for living. And I think there's a lot of misunderstanding like about humans and their resilience. Yeah. And so a lot of people, especially young people, will come to me and, and think that they're not strong. And I have to kind of coach them and tell them like, you actually are very strong. You are very resilient. If nobody's ever told you that, I'm sorry about that. And I'm telling you right now that you are perfectly capable. And I agree with that 100%. I think too, every human has these abilities that they don't even know.

And everyone is so strong and it has the ability to overcome anything that they can set their mind to. But getting someone to that point. Exactly. There are some people that you tell them once or they hear it once and they're on it. They're ready to go. I feel like I'm kind of like that. Right. But then there's other people.

It's like you explain it and you explain it. And if they're not ready or they're not there yet, it's talking to a wall. I think there's a big culture of victimhood that's going on. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I don't know how you feel about all that. Like, this is why I don't see a lot of young people, like under 25 in my practice because they're just not, they've grown up with this message. It's very different.

Yeah, was this message that. Entitlement. Well, entitlement. And that, you know, if you have been, you know, if you have had some adversity or some maybe even trauma that that, that you have a, you know, even like you said, like a long road ahead of you, maybe, maybe. but also like nine out of people who experience actual trauma, nine out of ten people who experience actual trauma, like being blown up in Vietnam, actually get better without any counseling at all.

And so there's these like misconceptions about resilience and, but I think the mindset of victimhood is very addictive. Yeah. Because it excuses us of all responsibility. Any negative mindset that I feel like is held on to a very strong emotion, is going to be addicting and hard to let go of for people. Yep. And yeah, I think it kind of goes back to what I said.

If somebody on top of not being ready, but if they also have this mindset of being a victim and almost liking being a victim, they might not even think that they do. But right, it's comfortable. Yeah, just hold me in that blanket of I can't, you know, there's nothing I could possibly do. So, you know, I'm just going to sit here in my nice comfy blanket.

It's totally understandable. But I think, yeah, so I think we got off track. I know, we did. I'm sorry. No, no, it's fine. Totally. Where were you? I love it.

I love it. No, no, no. It's great because I'm going to do the same thing. Okay, good. So, I think where you kind of ended was you did the program. Yes. So you were about, how old were you at this point? It was 19.

Okay. So I started my life, you know, as a young adult, went to school, got my bachelor's, and master's in social work in my 20s. And it became clear that as I was going through my mid to late 20s, you know, my brother's a few years younger than me, it became clear that he was not on the same trajectory of like, yeah, and this is what we were talking about, was I had the program to tell me, you're better than this.

You are capable of whatever you want to do. You know, you're smart, you're hardworking. Live up to that. And it doesn't seem that my brother got that message. So, you know, we'd hear things like, well, he dropped out of his bachelor's program with a semester left. You know, working sort of dead-end jobs, which there's no shame in changing up your career and exploring, excuse me, new pathways and taking menial jobs in the meantime. I have no issue with finding yourself and starting over. But this was now a pattern.

This was now like, you know, we see, at least I've seen in my practice and in my friends' lives, that there's this sort of failure to launch thing for men especially in their kind of mid-20s through their 30s, and then, you know, all of a sudden they're 40 and living in their parents' basement, playing video games all day. And it's just such wasted potential. And I saw that seemed to be kind of the pattern that was happening with my brother through our 20s. And I didn't pry because I'm like, hey, this is his life. Right. He's figuring things out.

Still young. Yes. And like I said, I'm not opposed to starting over going back home. But yeah, he left college at some point. ended up going back home working barista jobs and stuff like that um you know no shame in that uh but when it lasts a long time and you don't actually find something that you want to commit yourself to and like suffer for like i'm going to i'm going to finish my bachelor's bachelor's bachelor's degree i'm going to finish a master's degree i'm going to stick with a job there was no other plan yes no guidance

again this sort of lack of discipline lack of structure lack of consequences smoking pot all day. You know, I don't know exactly what the regimen was of that, but at the end, it was really bad, like physical withdrawals from marijuana. So, you know, I would just kind of sit back and watch and listen to my family, say what was going on with him and see him as I would come home to visit. And eventually, now I believe this was a year or two before I got married. So like, maybe 2013, 2014, his girlfriend got into a program, a master's program, and they moved away to go so that she could go to school in this program. And he moved to one of the most expensive places in the country. And, you know, again, there are reasons why one would want to live like in New York

City or somewhere in California or wherever. Maybe you have a job there, but there was no, there was just this program. And I just couldn't help but see these sort of little breadcrumbs to like somebody who really needs a kick in the ass and wasn't getting it, you know, a loving kick in the ass. Like what I got from the program that I'm in. Right. And, you know, it's not really my place to do it. I kind of look back and kick myself for not doing it, but we weren't super close at that time we didn't have much in common. I was figuring out myself professionally, becoming completely jaded with the nonprofit world and all that. And so, you know, we would come back home and hear these stories about how we needed money again and how, you know, the car payment was, you know,

his car was getting repossessed or it wasn't getting repossessed because family was paying it off. or and then of course when the pandemic hit and um and uh everybody got their rent paid or got their rent canceled and they got paychecks for not working and my at this time was also a shift for me because I had decided that the nonprofit world was crazy and what we needed was nice landlords right people who could help people get off the street and help people who are struggling and give them a second chance, very naive of me. And if you ever want to become embittered and disgusted with humanity, just become a landlord. I'm telling you this. And so that's what I was going through at the time. And so, you know, for example, when the pandemic hit, you know, like I said, not only did people

get paid for not working, but they also didn't have to pay rent. And so to this day, I still have a tenant who owes me like $10,000. And when I went to go apply for the emergency assistance, which I did not get, I look at her taxes and I see that she indeed was one of the people who got $10,000 more than the year before for not working and still didn't pay rent. And I'm like, and so I'm having my illusions of helping people shattered. I'm like, this is crazy. People are actually, if they don't have rules and structure and consequences, like they do oftentimes.

make these bad decisions. Not all the time, but like I'd say eight out of the ten tenants I had just, just were awful. And even though they knew that the intent of me bringing them into this housing was to give them a second chance. And so I, like I said, I was going through my own disillusionment with humanity and human nature and what we do when we have the opportunity to do the wrong thing and to get away with something. And so it was very interesting the coinciding of the two things because I would find out later that my brother was one of those people who got paid from the government and didn't pay his rent.

And so we're sitting here on two different sides of this equation, me being a landlord who actually got into it to help people. And my brother, who, you know, one of the things that I think kind of highlights the different paths that we, we took sitting here, you know, being one of the people who disillusioned me so deeply. And I just want to be clear, too, you know, being a freeloader or whatever you want to call, you know, I'm saying that, you know, ingest. But like, you know, not paying your bills and having your bills paid by somebody else

does not mean you're going to become a sex offender. Obviously. Yeah. That's not the point. But, you know, go with me on this journey, if you will. And just to show the difference and just the different paths. Right. There's different philosophies and how we came to view life differently.

And I'm also going to say, you know, the addictions that we had, and I am calling it an addiction for reasons I'll explain later, but his vice call it. And my vice are obviously very different. I did not, aside from myself being a child, I did not hurt children. The consequences of these two active addictions are night and day, right? And I was also a child when I did this. He was a grown man. It's just getting that out of the way, right? Just to not be confused about this, obviously.

For sure. Yeah. But like you said, at the beginning, this is not just, if this were somebody who was, like, successful in every area of his life, had his shit together, completely, you know, self-disciplined and structured and still did this stuff, I probably wouldn't be. sitting here because I wouldn't have all of this kind of information about like what went wrong. And I think too, because the crazy thing per se is that that can happen too. There could be people. And I think those people are just better at what would the word be for that? I don't want to say having like a front, but they.

Yeah. They're just better. And almost I think for some people, I mean that goes into a whole other realm. I feel like a mental stuff. But yeah, it's crazy to me how, because then that's what makes research hard. Exactly. Is that it can be so different. It's right.

Exactly. And the reason I'm thinking about this stuff at all is because, you know, to go back a little bit to backtrack like who my brother is, he's not some kind of psychopath. He was never, you know, he loves animals. He loves people. He's a sweet guy. If anything, he might be a little simple. Yeah. But the reason that I bring all of this stuff up about like social structure and cohesion and, you know, supporting each other and encouraging honesty is because I cannot, I mean, if anybody would have benefited from that.

Like, he wasn't the asshole contrarian that I was. He wasn't the rebel that I was. If anybody would have benefited from social structure, it would have been him. Right. He's easily influenced. and if he had had some consequences, he was, I sort of compare us like I was a crash and burn airplane. He was like on the slow train to help. Every stop along the way, people saying, okay, keep going, keep going. And again, like I said, anybody can get into this mess if you're born, if you're predisposed to this attraction, absolutely. It's more like the preventative,

like what can we do? Thank you. Couldn't have said it better. Um, so, So, yeah, I sort of saw this slow train happening, this slow train crash, I guess, slow train to hell. And I would sort of leave because I'm social worker and I'm very, I've learned to restrain my words in such a way that will offer, you know, confidence and hope in people rather than, you know, if I see somebody doing the wrong thing, like if my family says, well, oh, he needed to be bailed down on his rent again. He needed to be bailed down on his car payment again, whatever.

You'd be like, oh, you know, when's, when do you think you're going to draw the line here? Like gently, super gently. Because this isn't about, again, anger or hatred or, you know, shaming anybody. This is about figuring out what we could have done differently. And so I would come back home to visit and hear these stories and, no, when are you guys going to draw the line here? he may need to like step up and and start taking responsibility for his financial situation. Excuse me. And nothing.

Nothing would change all the way up through the end, even with paying for attorneys and paying for expensive psychological evaluations. But before I get into that, I guess I'll just describe kind of what happened because I think it was within the year. I'm a little fuzzy on the timeline. Pain does that to you. Yeah. But I think within the year after the pandemic started, we get this call.

Your brother got arrested. The cops beat him up. And remember all the craziness with the cops and everything. Yeah. I was like, oh my God. But I'm like, wow, like that's horrible. He was the victim of police brutality. You know, he was pulled up.

out of his car for no reason. And, you know, then it was like, okay, well, what was the reason? Well, they said they found stuff on my, you know, phone or there was some files on my computer that, you know, this is my brother, that were, you know, child porn. And, you know, I would never do that. And, you know, I'm being set up. He had had a stalker. So we were like, well, the internet's a crazy place. I've definitely worked with domestic violence victims who have had their phones hacked by their boyfriends and stuff like that. Um, so I'm like, oh, crazier things have happened. Sure. Okay. Maybe the stalker guy, you know, hijacked your phone and put some stuff on it or sent you stuff that you didn't actually want. Um, that was plausible to me. And, and so over the course of,

you know, of this happening, we, we now referred to my brother as not your brother. You're rich brother because we're going to sue the police department and get a lot of money. And looking back, it's very sad. Because what really happened was they did have actual evidence that no, he did actually have a ton of files downloaded to his devices. And he did, in fact, have conversations with who he thought was a 12-year-old, was actually a detective, and had brought, you know, this really sick stuff.

I mean, it's public information if you wanted to find it, but, so I'm just going to say it, he had things like soda and candy and weed in his car that had been discussed in this online conversation with this fake 12-year-old that he was bringing to offer this, you know, girl. And they had pictures. And but because we didn't know all of that for the next, let's see, I guess we'll, I'll take you through that first year after the arrest.

Nobody knew anything. Nobody had any of the evidence except the police department. And I guess they spoke to his public defender or whoever my parents. Hey, I'm Jeremy Schwartz from American Criminal. On this season, robbery gone wrong or cold-blooded murder. Either way, Boston will never be the same. Listen to American Criminal, the murder of Carol Stewart, wherever you get your podcasts. Or to get early ad free access, subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at American Criminal.com.

It's hired. And in that first year, was he still saying that, was he still denying it? Oh, yeah. Okay. The whole time. This wasn't me. And so, right, he was denying it. And we believed, I believe him.

Right. And they did. The cops did drag him out of the car. He, I guess, did not move quick enough for them. You know, I guess he had his hands up and didn't move fast enough to exit the car. They pulled him out, tased him a couple of times. Which if you are thinking your brother is an innocent person, that seems a little extreme. Yeah.

He was not. And so, like I said earlier, nobody likes sex offenders. I'm sure the police were not happy with him for these conversations. doesn't justify it, but you can see now why they did that. And so, yeah, he denied, denied, denied. I believe, I can't remember at what point the ankle bracelet came on, but he spent most of that, those two years with an ankle bracelet unable to leave a certain radius. So he had actually started, finally, he had started a small,

business, that was somewhat successful. He was transporting dogs from shelters to their new homes. Super necessary service. Awesome. Loved it. But he could no longer transport them outside of a certain radius from his house. And so that, you know, was unfortunate, but it was so sad because finally you stumbled into something that was going to be successful. And I kind of, you I'm grateful that it's something he could still do when he gets out. He does have, you know, the skill set. You don't need to do anything. You don't need to have, like, you know, a clean background check to run a small business like that one.

Anyway. So, yeah, he was doing that, still assuring everybody that he was innocent, including, and this is important to highlight where on the spectrum of sex offenders, my brother, sits. He had a long-term girlfriend since I told you right. Yeah, they went out for for her master's program. They moved away. But what this tells me, him sustaining a long-term relationship with an adult woman, this is what tells me that he could have absolutely, like, even if you were born with this predisposition for this attraction to children, you know, if you're able to have a meaningful relationship with another adult, this didn't have to happen. You could have built your

life around the things that actually were healthy for you. You were not doomed to a life of solitude and loneliness because you were not attracted to adults. No, he was. He was perfectly happy. And so that's kind of why I conceptualize this as a sort of addiction. Right. We're similar to people like me who, you know, not everybody deals with addiction this way, but abstinence was the way for me. If I do anything, I will go, you know, I say, if I, if I drink, I break out in handcuffs, right? Like, I'm, I cannot smoke pot. I cannot drink. I cannot do anything because I will go down that same path. You can conceptualize this in the same way where you cannot touch internet. You cannot touch whatever the things that lead to this damage, this danger, just don't do it.

And let's figure out. It's the temptation. Exactly. Let's figure out a way to prevent it. And so, yeah, he was doing that job. And had the girlfriend. Had the girlfriend, had the business. I don't know where the money was going.

I don't know the ins and outs of the financials, but obviously they still had to pay for stuff. my family did and had to. They didn't have to. That's the thing. You didn't have to get the fancy attorney. You didn't have to get, you know, pay the rent, which I later found out that not only they were helping him, but the government was helping.

And I'm just like, oh, man, you know, a little responsibility goes a long way. It's not everything, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt. And so the state, charges. First, they only brought state charges against him. And from what I understand, the prosecutor was new on the job. She was inexperienced. I think it was she was inexperienced. And there was some technicality that got it thrown out. And so he could have at that point taken probation. He could have taken probation and never served a day in jail. And this is sort of the arrogance that comes

with this sense of blissful ignorance is you think you can get away with everything by just saying it didn't happen. And all state charges were dropped. Oh, well, everybody believes me. I don't have to admit everything and I never have to pay the consequence. And I never have to admit it. And so it's almost like this sick, God's sick humor, right? Like, oh, yeah, you'll get the state charges dropped, but just you wait. Because when that happened and he still, and he explored suing the police department, and he still didn't admit to anything and he didn't accept a plea deal and this prosecutor screwed up in some way. And the charges were dropped.

boy was the federal government mad. This is my understanding of it. That because, I'm pretty sure this is why, because when you transmit things online, it bounces through all sorts of IP addresses and different states from my understanding and whatever pornography, whatever child abuse material is filmed in different places

makes it to whatever state you're in. My understanding is it becomes a federal offense. It's no longer. just in your particular state. Got it. And so the federal prosecutor was like, oh, well, that's fine. We'll just bring federal charges against you. And then it was on.

Then it was like, game on. You fucked up. You should have just taken the probation and admitted, you know. And so we thought we were in the clear of the state charges dropped or overturn on technicality or whatever. but the federal charges came and had to hire another attorney. They didn't have to, but that's what you do, I guess. When you have no other, you know, guidance or structure to offer your kid, you give them money.

And again, I'm, I can't, just want to be clear, I love my family. The reason I am, first of all, I've already told you I'm kind of an asshole. I'm kind of, you know, I guess judgmental or whatever. I think more just straightforward and blunt. Thank you. But the thing is, if anybody wanted to have a conversation about this, I'd be more than happy to do it because I do love them. And I think part of loving somebody is telling them the truth. Absolutely.

And I think we're starved for the truth and we're starved for guidance in our culture today. And nobody wants to feel or hear that they, not that they were wrong, but that they might have done things to enable. Exactly. Exactly. Because then it falls on them. Right. And that, right, that's the issue with that.

So the feds brought the charges. And I believe my family paid for a federal attorney to defend him. But things kept getting kicked out and kicked out as they sometimes do in court. Continued, continued. And he, I can't remember at what point in the... the timeline. Not only was he made to wear an ankle bracelet, but he had to go to these groups. And we thought it was, because we still believed him at this time. We thought it was preposterous. You have to go to a group with a bunch of sex offenders, like, who are convicted.

You know, how dare they make you go to these groups? Well, now we see exactly why. And so, yeah, he was doing this, and nobody knew, actually, And I may get the terms for this wrong. I should know because half of my family is lawyers, but I may get the court date names wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was during the submitting his plea. When he finally accepted during these federal charges, that the jig was up, that the game was over,

and that he would have to accept some sort of plea bargain, he pled guilty. And I believe it was during that, that even his girlfriend did not know the seriousness of these charges and all of the evidence that they had against him. We were still in the dark. Right. At this point, it was still his word against the charges, not really the evidence yet. Because we didn't see it. Okay. His lawyer had it. But of course, my brother didn't want us to see the indictment.

Okay. And so it was about two days before the plea bargain, I believe it was, the plea submission of a guilty plea, that one of my family members sent me a copy of the indictment, which lists out a summary of not only the charges, but a summary of the evidence in specific detail. And that was the point at which everything changed. It became, oh, he's, this happened. This actually happened. And kind of what Carl Jung, the psychiatrist, calls an ego death. When your whole world, everything you were standing on, your foundation crumbles. And you realize that everything you thought you knew,

is not true. If that's not true, then what about this? If that's not true, then what about that? And it's like, your whole world just kind of falls apart. Because even if we weren't close, it's still you share half of your DNA with this person. It's your family. Yeah. Again, my brother was not the kind of, even I wasn't that bad, but he was not like some kind of tornado growing up.

Like you said, this could be anybody. It could be the stockbroker. it could be the homeless guy in the street. Like, it could be, anybody could be sort of inflicted with these predilections. But you would hope, you know, any reasonable person would hope they would see red flags. And there were just not. And so all of these, the world that you thought existed, all of a sudden does not exist. and there were a few nights of like crazy like panic attacks and like hyperventilating and like

well if this is true then not only is he a monster but he's also at risk of getting beaten up and possibly murdered in prison and maybe suicide thoughts of that and it's like all these things go through your head and you're like this is just fought. And so after reading this and world coming down, call my brother a day before the plea deal will be submitted to the court. I said, you need to be honest with me. Now's the time. This is it. We might not see you after you go to court on whatever day it was.

nope didn't do it didn't do it I'm like okay I'm asking you one last time right um and even even family like

who kind of lived near where they moved like he was he would see other members of my extended family um they asked him too did you do this no and we're not a family that would

You know, I was listening the other day to the radio. I know nobody listens to the radio anymore. I was listening to this country station. And they had the like morning talk show on. And they have these like anonymous phone calls where people call in and they like give their problems. And the DJs will like say they're two cents. And and this guy called in and he had described kind of the opposite of what my family

did, which was the guy who called. called in say he was, he was me and he was talking and he was talking about his brother having done something bad. And the entire family cut him off and refused to talk to him or forgive him or help, any sort of, any sort of support. And he was on the fence. Like, I, there's, you know, maybe he did it, maybe he didn't. But I'm kind of this, you know, the lone wolf here, you know, trying to be there for my brother. Well, in this case, you know, everybody else seemed to kind of be in denial in my family. And I was the only one saying, well, maybe we should talk about this.

And I just thought it was funny. I heard that the other day. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, I was pressing him before that day before court. And nope, nope, didn't do it. Wasn't me. I don't know what happened. and stuff just ended up on my phone.

And, um, said the same thing to my cousin who had asked him. And, um, and then the day came and all the entire indictment was read out in court. And his girlfriend also did not know of these specific charges and all of the evidence until it was read out by the judge in the courtroom. She completely lost it. You know, what I had gone through the 48 hours prior, when I received the indictment, she was now going through in the courtroom.

Horrible, horrible. I mean, somebody you're with for 15 years, right, since college. So I think at that point, you know, everybody kind of goes into, and my family goes into action mode, and his girlfriend's family, trying to get her back home and clean up the apartment, figure out what to do with all their animals. A lot of animals, because they were doing this transport business, and so they ended up sort of keeping the ones that were either not adopted yet

or some sort of, you know, error in the adoption or whatever. But yeah, they had to figure out all of that. And I just kind of, that was. not this past Thanksgiving, but the one before that. It was just before that. And I remember because three things happened all at once. A deer jumped in front of my car, told him my car, that happened. And my dad had some sort of health scare. That's how I remember that. That part of the timeline's accurate. But I remember I came home to try and support my family. and just be there for them and like be the strong person.

Because if I was falling apart, like, they must have been even worse. And so I tried to do the right thing and to, you know, just show up. Because a lot of support is just like being present and physically there in case somebody needs something. You know, like I skipped out on my wife's, I think both holidays that year because it was, it was so crazy and I just wanted to be with my family. But nothing was really talked about. I think everybody was kind of still in denial. Except me, of course, I did my crying and my hyperventilating

and talking to my support system. And, you know, it's not a ton of people, but I do have my people that keep me going. Yeah. And so as time went on, now that the guilty plea was in, everything was about sentencing. And how to, again, you know, not have a lengthy sentence. Nobody ever talking about, you know, well, why did you lie to us for so long?

talking about how we got here. And that was, you know, it was like a deafening silence, right? Like, for somebody like me to not bluntly talk about this stuff is very painful because I'm like, the way you get through things is you talk about them until there's nothing else to talk about and then you move on and take responsibility. It's not how my family works. And so there was an expensive attorney. hired and like I said the psychological tests and this is when you know like you said at the beginning

you kind of have two broad pads in this the family can come together and face what's happening and be strong for each other or you can kind of be in denial and not talk about it and pretend it's going to go away it's there but it's just not being spoken about exactly and And so me, and it was about, I want to say a year ago, that, you know, one of my family members calls me. It's pretty late at night, not super late, it was like nine, well, after nine, these psychological tests are happening. And, you know, I'm in the field, mental health field and human services. And so this family member calls me, it's a couple, two of them were on the, line and they're like, do you think your brother's autistic? Like, no, no, he's not. No, not everybody who's a little

awkward is autistic. Sorry, hate to break it to you culture. You know, that's, this is the, diagnosis du jour, like bipolar was back in the 80s and 90s and even, you know, after that. No, he is not autistic. He is, he gets along socially with everybody. Um, no, he's not. Uh, you know, and I was kind of having this like lighthearted conversation. Didn't see where this was going at all. Quick question. Sure. Did you guys as a family decide to run those tests or were these tests done by? These were recommended by whatever specialist he was seeing. Okay. So like they hired the lawyer. The lawyer recommended this person to do this testing. Okay.

Fine. Right. But if you're going to. to ask me, I'm blunt. I'm going to be honest with you. No, I don't think he's autistic. I think at this point, you know, at this point he, when I had, I had talked to him pretty much weekly on the phone, not about anything in particular, oh, how's the food, they let you go outside, are you able to work out, you know, how's your roommate, you know, all this just surface level stuff. And at that point, you know, like I said, I had done my part to take care of my health, my mental health and all that. But I was kind of getting annoyed

because now it had been from before Thanksgiving to the spring. And he was awaiting sentencing in the local jail. And at this point, you know, even though I had been taking care of myself and pretty mentally okay, I was kind of getting annoyed

that this whole charade was still going on, that nobody was going to actually talk about what happened. Right. He wasn't going to apologize. Exactly. It's almost like for yourself, you almost wanted the closure of like, listen, tell me you did it.

Let's have whatever conversation we need to have. And then when it comes to your family, like, can we all just address that this is happening? Right. Elephant in the room. Because then it's like this, the door is still open to it. Right. Exactly. And I'm not, you know, I'm not a super mushy person.

Right. I don't need to go on and on crying and all this stuff. You know, I'm very like straightforward. Let's just get it out of the way. Let's just admit it. Exactly. And so. And understand.

Right. And part of my program too, when I came into recovery was you take responsibility. You make amends, right? And you say you're sorry. And I should not have done that. Right. Part of, I see a lot of people in my practice and they want to know, they don't know they want to know, but once they realize, say, like, say I'm doing like a couple's thing, and, you know,

one of them is realized has finally accepted that they've done something wrong. And it seems like a lot of us have never been taught how to make amends with another person, how to apologize properly. And the way I was taught is like, you say what you think you did to hurt the person. Listen, I did A, B, and C, that clearly hurt you. You can tell me. if I did something else to hurt you, but I want to apologize for that and tell you that I should not have done that. And if I could go back, I would have done things differently. What can I do to make it right? Right? Pretty simple, but not things that were taught. Yeah. You know, and or is I going to that? Yeah, so that's where I was coming from. And I kind of, when you get sober young in this sort of

program, you kind of forget that the world doesn't, just because you grew up, doesn't mean the world grew up. And that most adults walking around are actually super immature. And you forget that because you don't know any better. I was a 19 year old. Not everybody's on the same path and in the same place. There's no, you know, all these other people don't have a guide to say, this is how you might want to consider living, you know? Like if you screw up, this is how you might want to consider making amends for it. And so I try to keep that in mind. So I'm having this conversation back to the phone call. And, you know, I'm on the phone with these two family members. And they're talking about, is he autistic? I'm saying, oh, he's not autistic. That's funny that they're even thinking about that

because we know him and he's not socially awkward. And it's kind of a lighthearted conversation at this point. My guard is down. And I say, you know, because it is kind of annoying me at this point, I say, you know, has he on any of your phone calls with him, shown any kind of remorse or like taking responsibility or any accountability? Have you guys even talked about what happened with him, like, honestly? and the reaction I got was so full of rage.

And so it was like I had accidentally stumbled into a very sore nerve, you know, an open wound. And the rage that I got back was basically saying, you shouldn't be asking these questions because you were a drug addict. Wow. Yes. And like I said, I have nothing but love for. my family but when I say my the way I was made to mature by my program is not the way most of the

world was made to mature this is a great example I think it's sad too because and this is just speaking outside of someone being your friend your family anything some people resort to a jab when they feel like they need to be defensive and they're angry and they're sad because of the and all that they, I think, knew how to do was just pull a knife out. You got it. Right. And me, I felt like I was stumbling into it because I was not, I thought we were having sort of a casual conversation and I could sort of just slip it in there and just feel

out what their conversations have been like. And boy, I had no idea. And so because I was blindsided by it, I went into a fucking rage. Right. Right. Blind rage. I don't even remember what I said. I said something like, this is a grown man, child predator.

I was a child and I took responsibility for my life. And I have no idea what was said, really. Yeah. Just hung up. And that was something I wasn't sure I was going to be able to salvage the relationship after that. Because when you're dragging down one sibling to hold up another, I just don't see how that's a sustainable relationship. but we had just had a baby, right?

That throws another curveball into the situation where my wife, you know, we had him in March. So that spring, and then a couple months later is when that conversation happened, almost positive. Like I said, my timeline's a little fuzzy. But yeah, at the time, I was like, I can't believe, you know, you would be saying this, risking your relationship with your, you know, my baby. And I'm not the one to advocate cutting people out. I know that's a big thing these days.

I would rather go to any length to save a relationship with family because you only have one biological family. Well, also, too, I think that you're not coming at it in a way to even talk bad about him. It's more so to once again understand and to address the situation and to gain more insight. Not, you know what I mean? I just. And just to say, I don't think, I don't think there's any shame in taking responsibility. No.

It's actually a point of pride. So I guess, and obviously if there's anything I ever asked and you don't want to answer, let me know. So I guess at this point, your family maybe deep down they knew it was true. based on the evidence, but overall, you think that for the most part they still kind of wanted to be in denial about it? I don't want to speak to that because I don't know what was going on in their heads, but my impression from these conversations was, well, minimizing it. Okay.

Easier, maybe easier too, just not to get into it. Well, the answer, I think, after, I think it was on that phone call, even. that one of them said, I never should have sent you the indictment. That was the response to this. It wasn't, it wasn't, you know, I'm angry at him too for not taking responsibility. It was, I should have covered this up more. And so my, you know, this is like, my brain just like short circuits. Right.

Like my whole fucking soul just short circuits. And I'm just like, what the fuck does that even mean? Yeah. So your answer to. to this, your solution to this wouldn't be to go back and have all of us take responsibility for whatever our part in this was, but your response to this is to hide the truth, to cover it up. And so to answer your question, I think there was, of course, you can't ignore what's written on that page, what the police found. And you can't ignore the ages of those people

that were on his phone. I just don't understand how you can live in a world and live in that level of denial, right? Again, it's not out of a place of hatred. It's not out of a place of a place of deep, deep disappointment and sadness. Yeah. Because this stuff, you don't, I'm not asking for perfection. I'm a very forgiving person.

I've worked with sex offenders before. I wrote this in the letter to the judge. You know, I've worked with some pretty, people who have done very bad things, right, in my professional life. So for me, anybody who knows me would know that, yeah, I'm blunt, I'm straightforward, but, like, it's for a higher purpose.

It's to, like, get to the truth so we can get better. And so, yeah. Yeah, there was a bunch of denial. And at that time, like I said, the baby was there. I didn't want this fracture in our family to cause an ending of a relationship between my newborn baby and my family. I still wanted, even if these two people weren't able to have a healthy relationship, I still wanted to be able to share him with my family. Yeah.

And I was already a mess, you know, in knots about the fact that, like, I did not want my brother to see my baby because... And that's a whole other just sadness for you, I'm sure. Oh, my God. It's like a... I mean, I don't want to say a desk, but it's like a death. It's a complete breaking of any bond between them. And, you know, and these, you know, these same family members were in such denial that they didn't understand why I didn't want to send, like, pictures of the baby to my brother in prison and jail.

I'm like, isn't that kind of like giving, sending heroin to a heroin addict in jail? Not trying to be an asshole, but like, let's be real. Right. And. And also, it comes down to your comfort. your wife's comfort, and ultimately the safety of your child. Exactly. It's like at that point, and that's something that I think a lot of people have problem with

is the separation. Yeah. You know, it's like at that point, it doesn't matter who's family, who's not. It's just, you're just doing in your heart what's right. Safety. Right. Exactly. You're taking the extra precautions and measures and why not.

Can't hurt. I don't even see that as extra. I see that as like, listen, we're just going to. going to make sure we're not putting my brother in an awkward position. But you're not, yeah. Putting my son in an awkward position. My wife. Like,

I want everything to be good too, but for us to close our eyes and pretend that it's good is not going to make it good. And so I'd rather just like, be safe and not make it weird. Like, we'll figure it out as we go. Exactly. Don't make me feel weird for not wanting to involve.

my baby. And this is all within the last year. So this was all, yep, yep. Yeah. So yeah. And then what was his sentence? So this is interesting as well. We want to think about the whole timeline of everything. He could have had probation if he had just taken those state charges. And then the reason why he didn't is because he went on to try to sue the police and then it kind of. I think it was a mixture of that and him just saying this wasn't me. Okay. Nope. Got it. wasn't me. I'm not going to admit to this. But yeah, no, it was just the failure to admit. Failure to admit. They just wanted him to plead guilty, take the probation, and go. Now, do you think that if he would have taken the probation, that all of you guys would have

believed that it didn't actually happen? Maybe. Maybe. I mean, that's, I don't see why. Isn't that so interesting to think about? Because would we have even seen the indictment? Right. Maybe he still would have been out there with his girlfriend. I mean, but this almost makes me think, like, did this have to happen for, well, one, for him to be stopped, right? Who knows what access he would have had to internet, to whatever? Yeah. Maybe none, but who knows?

But for the bullshit to be stopped, for the lying to be stopped. This is, in my mind, this had to happen. Because like you said, we still may have been on this narrative of, um, Didn't do it. Someone put it here. I had to take the plea to not go to prison. But yeah, we still might have been there. It's crazy what happens when you deny the truth, you know?

Yeah. Then we, yeah, I don't know. But yeah, that happened, I believe it in the last year. Yeah. Yeah, because he's only 14 months. I asked the sentence. Oh, the sentence, yes, thank you. So, right, we're thinking about how he could have had no jail time.

And now we were looking at, and I may be fuzzy on this, but I generally know because, so I'll tell you why I know this, a reporter picked up on the case specifically because of my letter of support for my brother. and how it was different from my families. And I got in contact with her. She did very respectful, objective reporting on it. And I said, you know, because she had written in this article that he could have gotten a lot more. The sentence was extremely high for, or the proposed sentence was extremely high based on these specific charges in comparison to other people who have had these charges.

But my theory is that the prosecutors were so mad that the state's charges got dropped on a technicality and that he was so stubborn and not admitting that he did this that I think they went for, I think it was like 30 years. Wow. Right. And so eventually as negotiations went on, my brother and his lawyers basically, are you willing to? Are you willing to? Are you willing to? my brother and his lawyers basically said, you know, are you willing to have us accept these particular charges, drop these two, I'll plead guilty to these. I don't remember the exact wording of the charges. I think they were still basically what I told you before, possession of the child abuse material

and attempting to meet up with a 12-year-old for sex in legal terms. And they accepted that. but we still didn't know until the day of sentencing what the judge was going to agree to because ultimately it's up to the judge, my understanding of it. And so he could have gotten 30 years and I think the minimum was somewhere around 10. And so he ended up getting about 12. And the reason I'm sort of scoffing is because the people, the family members who went to the sentencing to support him, came away from the court date

with the impression that he got the max. And as I just told you, no, the max was a lot more. The max was like 30 years, if I remember correctly from talking to that reporter. And so no, he did not get the max. He was no longer a victim. Okay, he, the prosecutor and the judge, because I ordered the transcripts myself, I wanted to see exactly what was said in that courtroom. And both from what I remember, because I read it a while back, I don't want to look at this stuff again, but over the winter, I read that the prosecutors and the judge agreed that he did have a supportive family network and that they were okay with not. doing the max. And so again, you have this

misalignment or misunderstanding or willful misunderstanding. I'm not sure if it's willful or not. We can convince ourselves of, you know, like I said, the victimhood mentality, oh, he got the max. He did not get the max, right? We can convince ourselves still, as he's being taken away in handcuffs, that he is somehow a victim of like the system or something. And, you know, I was under the impression until I talked to that.

reporter that he got some maximum sentence. It was a high sentence because prosecutors were pissed, but it was not the max that they had initially suggested to the court. And so, yeah, about 12 years. And he had already been in county jail for, I think, Thanksgiving, a year and change. Okay. Something like that, a year and a half. And is that counted towards the 12?

Yep. Okay. And so now I think he's scheduled to. come out 2035-ish, something like that. But yeah, then the reason I was bringing up, I didn't want there to be a fracture in my family because of the baby, you know, not a lot of us are having babies these days,

and I think it's important to salvage whatever family you have. but I I tried my best to have you know to bring the baby to you know family gathering apparently you know after I had had this falling out with these two family members

one of them had told the rest or at least multiple other family members that I had like disowned my brother and that I had not given him that was what they took away from this conversation even though I had spoken him every week on the phone. I had written him a letter of support. I had even spoken to the psychiatrist or the psychologist

when she was doing the psyche valve. And so, again, another example of like, what kind of delusion do you have to live in to make these stories up about the one person in the family who wants to tell the truth? That's how dangerous I am. to these delusions, I guess. And it was just so disappointed because I was trying to salvage the family and I go and I bring

the baby down for this gathering and that's what I hear from my other family members that I have not forgiven my brother. And first of all, forgiven what exactly? Because I haven't gotten an amends. And that's what I was going to ask you. So up into this point, he still hasn't. I don't, I think he, I don't know if he had basically said, yes, I did this when I pressed him on it at that point. But I'm basically sure, I guess.

But like I said, nobody, nobody has told you how to make amends and to say and to be mature and take responsibility. If I were in his position, I'm not sure I would know how to formulate the words either. But I certainly don't hate him for that. Right. But I'm also not going to beat around the bush here. Like, you need to figure this out. You need to figure out how to save your life. Right.

And then with your family, have you guys had any type of conversation? So to the person who made those comments about like comparing us and I had written them a letter saying, you know, you've been so hurtful. you can't talk to me like that. This is why what you said is wrong, and I have to seriously think about a relationship going forward. So that over the last year has slowly, that person basically, again, doesn't know how to take responsibility.

And so, you know, I've done my best to forgive and to try and just move forward, but it's an arm's length relationship. So it is what it is. I mean, I don't hate them. I wish they would do better, but what can you do? They're not, if you're not, you know, the whole student is ready, the teacher will appear. Literally the student has to be ready.

The teacher can be there the whole time, right? The right thing, the lesson can be there right in front of your face. But unless the student is ready, you don't see it. Yeah. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like obviously there's multiple different factors that kind of pour into why I think you. went out on your own and did research. Like obviously your career path plays a role.

But also I think because within this actual experience when it came to your family and your brother, there was never this concrete conversation or honesty or openness that I almost feel like it pushed you into having to do this research so that you can almost get an understanding and a sense of some sort of closure on a situation. since you can't really get it from the direct source. Absolutely right. Absolutely. I mean, like you said, first of all, that's my natural curiosity.

Right. And I, when tragedy strikes, shower me in facts. Please, I need to understand even the possible explanations for why this happened. But absolutely, if he had said to me, you know, this is how life went. This is what happened. This is how I ended up there. me to this point, right. There's nothing.

I actually came to him on one of these phone calls with this research. And I said, you know, which, you know, where do you fall into all this? Because I want to know for my peace of mind. And, you know, one of the interesting things, too, about the German study was a lot of men reported, this is why I bring up the porn addiction stuff. A lot of men reported starting out with a just basic porn addiction. you know, multiple times a day, unable to stop, but almost treating it like an extreme sport. Yeah.

Where that's not enough. What about this? We do that for a couple months and that's not enough either. How much can you take? And that was kind of what he copped to being the category that he was in. I don't know, though, because when somebody lies to you for two years, nothing they say can be trusted. And then there's, then it leads into the possibility that he might not even know. Exactly.

Exactly. It could have been, yeah, maybe, maybe the long-term girlfriend was a front. I don't know. Right. I have no idea. And so when I say all of this about responsibility and social cohesion and, you know, family structure and morals and all that, I don't know. It may still have happened.

Right. I have no idea. But what else can I do? Like, it certainly wouldn't have hurt. It's more so, I think. too, and this is we've been saying this in just different ways, but it's more so to understand the importance of conversation and honesty and openness and all these different foundations as you're a child and growing up and just throughout your life and why they're so important.

Because obviously there's only so much we can control and prevent. But if we have a better understanding and we know that we're taking the responsibility for ourselves and those around us and vice versa, that we're doing the right thing and like all that we can do. You said, I mean, I couldn't say it any better. That's, that's kind of where I'm coming from. Like, that's exactly where I'm coming from. Right.

Because, right, when I was 19 years old and given these tools for how to live and how to be honest and how to take responsibility and how to be there for people and engage in actual genuine relationships, I'm not sure I ever had that. even as great as my childhood was, like I said, it's, it's easy to raise a kid from zero to 10, you know, teach them, don't lie, don't steal, blah, blah, blah. But then once you get into the real world and that child is no longer a child, like, where's the guidance? Yeah. Where's the, how are you coaching them when it comes to the tough decisions?

Right. Where there are real tradeoffs. This is a real tradeoff. You admit that you're a sex offender and you have this stamped. on you for the rest of your life, but you have probation. Like, that's a fucking trade-off. And if you don't know how to handle those tough decisions with your values, firmly in hand, what kind of life do you have?

Yeah. We end up here. So, yeah, like I said that then my family thought I was, like, abandoning my brother. And I would never do that. even if it was just sort of a surface level relationship that's like an arm's length, I wouldn't just be like, fuck off, I never want to talk to you again. Like that's just not who I am. Same goes to the rest of my family.

But it was really heartbreaking to hear that this person had told them that I had done that. And I don't know what, again, what kind of delusion you have to live in to get that from these conversations. But it goes, again, it just reinforces this idea that, like, I'm not living in the same world as these people. And, yeah, I'm just thinking back through my career, too, and, like, you know, picking up homeless sex offenders out of the gutter and taking them to detox, like, the lengths I've gone through to help people. And to think that my own family wouldn't believe that, um, that I would be compassionate and that I would be forgiving and that I would I'm waiting. I'll wait until my last breath. I'll wait beyond that.

I'm here, you know. And that's the thing too is people have to understand that everyone's going to handle and approach things very differently. And I think that most of the time, as a human, we want answers. And it's frustrating when we don't get them. And other people, they might be fine with not getting an answer because it, is easier and they don't have to deal with the emotion that comes with that. And I think that when you start stepping on on that, people don't know how to handle it. And that's not to say anything

mean. It's just to state the truth. And that's just how it is. And it's unfortunate, but everyone is different. Yep. You got it. You got it. Yep. Exactly. And I come here today to a wide audience to say, like if there's a message, if there's a lesson in this. And just to be clear, like I said, I have forgiven all these people. I have no, and it's not like condescending forgiveness. It's like actual love. Like, I don't want to lose you. Right.

But I come here with the lesson that if there was ever more social cohesion and connection in our culture, like it's not here now. And we need it desperately. And it's on the foundation that you described. Honesty, responsibility, actual genuine conversations where we're getting to the bottom of things and figuring out how best do I live, right? Yeah. And I think the thing too to realize is even with these conversations and research and understandings,

we might not ever get concrete answers, but at least we're trying and at least we're talking. because the more that we don't speak and we keep our mouth shut, I think the further it drives a wedge and the more distance there is in humanity and people and relationships. And that's key to solving problems and keeping people together and preventing bad things from happening. And we can only prevent so much, but at least if we know that we're trying, it's a step in the right direction. Exactly.

Exactly. It's not going to hurt. Right. Right. It can't hurt, exactly. Yeah, as long as the- Well, can hurt is staying quiet. Staying quiet.

And then like we talked about earlier, you know, becoming so divisive and so dug in in our opinions that we can't have conversations because they're too violent. Like they're too angry. It's like, that's not good either. We need to have like actual human connection where we're hearing each other. Yeah. I'm open, you know, I do it for a living.

Right. So, you know, if that's, if that's, If there's any lesson from this, that's what I take from it, I think. Yeah. And it's a very important conversation to have for so many different reasons, like we were saying in the beginning too, whether it's somebody that might know somebody or be related to someone that has done something. It doesn't even have to be the exact same thing.

It could be anything where you don't agree or it affects you. because like we just said, what the decisions people make around us, they usually do have an effect. And people don't always know how to cope with it and deal with it. And it can be very easy, too, to shut your own beliefs down because you're trying to make others happy. And I feel like even in your situation, that could have been an easy thing for you to do because you're like, I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to step on anyone's toes. but that doesn't mean you should just conform to what everybody else, what's easier for everybody else, you know.

You just hit on something too, like the power of our convictions. Like I feel like we have convictions now and like these strong beliefs, a lot of them are like political and it's like, you know, they're not rooted in the same sort of convictions I think that we used to have. Yeah. Which is honesty, truth, responsibility. you know, these sort of Western values that like, maybe we shouldn't throw them in the garbage so fast, right, for pleasing people. And, you know, I'm taking a risk. Like, if somebody recognizes

me on here, like, could be over. Like, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. But that's why I say, like, I come here with the best of intentions, not to throw dirt on anyone's name. Like, this is a big risk because I'm a very private person. Like, I don't even have any, like, personal social media accounts or anything. I have like some, I've actually started a couple that I'll give you that are, you know, kind of more anonymous. But like, but like I don't, like I said, even my second tier friends don't know about this. And so I'm, you know, I've got to say like this is a risk.

Right. Somebody recognizes me. It's like, could be game over. There's like two sides of it. It's like the one side of it is this is your personal life. This is your family. This is your story. And then on the other side, I bring it.

it back to again, in a way, this is your career to help people and to educate. And I feel like it serves both of those things so well because it shows people that it's relatable. You get it, you understand, but then it also gives people an insight on the understanding and the knowledge behind it and what can really happen and how it trickles down the family tree most and affects the people that are around. And not even the educational career side, but like my actual values, Like, do I stay quiet? Are my values, you know, I was talking about this with my wife last night. Like, is this the right thing to do?

Well, my values are, truth, honesty, same thing, responsibility. And so if that's maybe, if one person hears this story and says, well, maybe I should reach out to my family member or my friend that's struggling or just to say hi. So like I said, you build the foundation before shit hits the fan. Exactly. If one person does that, my job will have been done. So, yeah. Absolutely.

Well, I think this was amazing. You did such a great job. Seriously. Like, I think it was great. You couldn't have done anything better. And I appreciate you wanting to come on here and share this story. It means so much to me. I think it's such a great episode.

It's so important. And I appreciate it so much. So thank you. Thanks for having me.