We're All Insane - My Daughter Has Been Abducted for 15 Years

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

#foryou #podcast In 2010, two days after Christmas, Iain hugged his daughter goodbye—believing she was simply going to the library. He never saw her again. What followed was a shocking case of familial human trafficking, international abduction, and systemic failure. The U.S. Embassy called it “out of jurisdiction.” Courts ignored his pleas. Desperate, he confronted the man he believed was his daughter’s abuser—only to be incarcerated for 50 months in Poland. Iain spent four years in prison, wrote a book, and is now speaking worldwide, still fighting to be heard. Iain's Links: https://www.iloveyoulikeone.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Love-You-Like-One-Daughter/dp/B0D3NSZ9YV/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086719568994 https://www.instagram.com/iloveyoulikeone/ Time Stamps: 00:00:00 — What is it really like starting your career inside a tiny music label? 00:02:15 — Why do some bosses immediately bad-mouth the person you replaced? 00:04:02 — How do toxic workplaces subtly make you question your worth? 00:05:48 — Why do young women get “wing-clipped” by industry executives? 00:07:40 — How does being told “you’ll never be an artist” affect your identity? 00:10:12 — Why do manipulative leaders discourage employees from dreaming? 00:12:44 — What are early red flags when joining a new label or startup? 00:14:50 — How does constant phone access become a form of control? 00:16:30 — Why do some bosses require hours-long daily phone calls? 00:18:55 — How do toxic workplaces blur personal and professional boundaries? 00:20:48 — What does emotional manipulation look like in the music industry? 00:23:12 — How does a “golden child” dynamic trap people in bad jobs? 00:25:30 — Why do young employees feel guilty for wanting to quit? 00:27:44 — How does psychological dependency form inside toxic jobs? 00:30:05 — Why do uncomfortable comments from coworkers get normalized? 00:32:12 — How do older male coworkers cross personal boundaries? 00:34:40 — What makes people stay even when a job feels unsafe? 00:37:15 — How do artists get shaped and controlled behind the scenes? 00:39:28 — Why are some labels treating artists like products instead of people? 00:41:50 — How does power imbalance show up in the music business? 00:43:59 — Why do some executives call employees after hours to vent opinions? 00:52:02 — Why would a boss want an employee in a “position he can control”? 00:53:12 — How do racist political comments from a boss impact an employee? 00:58:40 — Why do some artists feel broken down by their own label? 01:00:58 — How does creative control get taken away from developing artists? 01:02:14 — Why do employees feel responsible for the harm being done? 01:16:35 — What does workplace abuse look like when you don’t realize it’s abuse? 01:17:52 — How does self-doubt keep people stuck in manipulative jobs? 01:19:14 — Why do toxic leaders resist fixing illegal or unethical contracts? 01:24:45 — Why do older industry men hide their intentions from young women? 01:26:30 — How do people rebuild their careers after leaving a toxic industry? Topics: Child Abduction, Cult, System Failure, International Kidnapping, Familial Betrayal, Exploitation 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] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, it's me DeVora. 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. My name's Ian Bryson. I live in Connecticut and I have been fighting for my daughter for this is the 15th year now. Two days after Christmas in 2010, I gave her a hug thinking she was going to the library and never saw her after that. I gave her hug. She walked down the stairs. I called my best friend to get advice because things had been crazy in my house with my first wife for the previous three weeks. She had been telling me she was taking our daughter back to Poland

that her family is a cult and other things that just I couldn't wrap my head around what she was telling me. I knew that there were issues in her and in her Polish family, but I had no frame of reference to know what it could be. So I had been trying to get her to get help and begging her to get help for these three weeks, but she just kept saying, I'm taking her back to Poland. My family's a cult. And I just thought she was crazy. I thought that I had seen this before because there was a cycle of everything's good and then everything is terrible. So I saw, I'd seen it before. I just wanted to get her back to being healthy. So in your mind it was more like a mental illness kind of thing, maybe that you were thinking was going on? I thought it was a mental illness. I thought it was trauma-related.

So for years we had been talking about it off and on and I had brought up borderline personality disorder, incest, just trying to get in and understand what she was dealing with. But there was always a wall there. And I also felt weird asking her those questions. So I never pried too much. It was more I would make comments here and there and also try to. to get her to go to therapy for our entire marriage. Because I had indications that something was wrong with her trauma related since the first week or two we were dating. So how did you guys meet? So I was living in Norwich, Connecticut, and just graduated from college. And she came over with other

Polish people on three-month work visas. So they were living in an apartment down the street. She was working at a local casino and my friend called me up and just said come on over there's some Polish people here so I drove over and the moment I laid eyes on her I we just connected in a way that it's hard to define you just know like I knew I knew she was she was going to be my wife pretty much even though she she was she came over from Poland with her boyfriend wow so but it was weird like I just I was young and didn't care and a couple days later I had to her move in with me. Oh my gosh.

And it just went from there. We were engaged a couple weeks after that. She took a plastic ring off her finger and said, give it back to me and asked me to marry you. And I complied. And yeah, I just dove in and committed really early on. And I don't regret it. Yeah. But I was a bit naive, you know, like unexperienced and just thought that this was love it

first sight. So how old were you? I was, um, I was like 25. Okay. And then you guys were together how long before she got pregnant? Two years. Okay. And then did you ever meet her family in that time? So they, she was over on the three month visa and so she had to go back to Poland in order to renew her visa. She couldn't do it from here. So I, she went back to Poland and then I followed and lived with, her parents and her and we waited for a fiance visa so then we when we got the fiance visa then we moved back to Connecticut and what did you think of her family her family was strange um that like right away there were there were big red flags um her father's severe alcoholic like to the point where we'd go out and play basketball and instead of instead of water he had beer and just waking up with

beer and vodka just constantly. She had no memories of her childhood, so that was weird to me. There were no pictures. She didn't have a relationship with her father. Her father and her grandfather would say very strange things to me, like ask me how she is in bed. My fiancé at the time would say my dad says he likes young boobies. And I would just be like, what the, what the hell is going on? But I'd just be like, what the hell is going on? But I'd I chalked it up to just cultural differences and, you know, this is her family. We'll deal with it. We're not, we weren't planning on living in Poland anyways.

But it was strange and I developed panic disorder from being in that environment and being just, it was chaotic. It was weird. It's uncomfortable. The energy, the spiritual stuff going on. Like I couldn't define it, but I was having panic attacks whenever I was in that house. So you were there for how long living with them? This couple months.

Okay. And then you guys moved back to Connecticut. Yes. And throughout this time, you said that she was kind of having these moments where she was good and then not so good. Yeah. And you just chalked it up to being like family related things. I mean, in the, in my journal from the first month we were together, I started listing possibilities that I thought it was. And it was all trauma.

immediately I thought it was borderline personality disorder because well that was the best fit at the time but she was she would one day she would love me the next day she would hate me and and believe both of those things but at first I thought she was lying because her everything would switch from just like the snap of the fingers about what she said what she believed what she thought and and I would we had these long conversations you know why are you lying to me I can deal with anything if it's true the truth. You know, I love you, I'm not going to leave you, no matter what. And it took me years to get to the fact where she really believes both of these scenarios. You know, when she loves me, she loves me. When she hates me, she hates me. But there were other things going on. Like she would

tell me stories about her childhood that were just weird and vague. And like those are the only stories that she had. She would say like the nicest thing my dad ever did was bring me one cup of tea. That was like a recurring thing she would say to me about her dad. And it just blew my mind. Like how could how could the nicest thing he did be bring you one cup of tea? Like I brought you two cups of tea today. Yeah. You know, and I would just have the try to try to dig in there and get more information. And she would just repeat the same thing again. So it was a, It was very frustrating. And, yeah, just other weird things, like she would kind of go into like a trance and just

start staring. And I would like playfully knock on her head as anyone there. But trying to communicate with her was was near impossible because she didn't have, she didn't know the answers to questions. She didn't she didn't have any answers to give me other than. her like one cup of tea or I don't know why but I've never had a relationship with my dad and you know it or the yeah so so then when did she start talking about her family being a cult so that that was in the three weeks prior to so prior to that she never really said anything

she never did anything like in that in that interim we lived we lived in Connecticut our daughter was born two years after we were married and it was still like that that chaos up and down black and white was happening and as soon as our daughter was born she wanted to be closer to her family in Poland it was like this impulse that she had to move to closer to Poland so she convinced me to move to the Netherlands it was 2008 the euro was double the dollar my degrees in political science so she thought she convinced me I could get a job in a court in the Hague and I was up for the adventure and how was it living over there the Netherlands is a nice place I really I enjoyed it I worked for an online university the it's much more laid back

the people are just like okay with life and okay with waiting and it's a I liked it a lot of it for for me that after a couple years that I wanted to move back to the U.S. because no matter what, you're still an immigrant over there, I didn't speak Dutch. And even though they all speak English, it's still like you can't really disconnect. Yeah, you can't fit in. You can't understand everything.

So in the United States, despite the problems here, like I know how things work. I know I know how to navigate through this world. have here. And during that time were you guys visiting her family with your daughter? And how are they around her? We, it was like she would just say I have to go to Poland and take our daughter. And it was strange.

Like her dad, like so when we went to Poland, she would say, when I'm here, I'm not, I'm not with you. I am my dad's. And she would just disappear for nights, for days, take our daughter. And I would just be like in the apartment by myself, couldn't speak to anybody because nobody spoke English, just just terrified and panicking and just passing the time until we could go back to the Netherlands. But yes, she just, she would have to go back. And it was always like those trips would trigger. I would think she's healing in our home and like everything would be great.

I thought she was the happiest woman in the world. You know, we're doing everything as a family, dancing together, you know, focusing on our daughter. And then we'd go to Poland and she'd go to Poland or we'd go to Poland. And that would always snap back into, like, I hate you. And just weird things with her dad that I couldn't, I had no idea. So how old was your daughter when she took her? She was a month from four years old. Okay.

So walk me through that day. Or let's start with the three weeks. weeks prior of her saying about the cold, her family being a cold. Yeah, so I'll go back a little bit further. Okay. So we had gone through a cycle of the I hate you and on that for a month or two earlier in the year. After we went through that and we were back to, she was, I love you and everything's good. She said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry that will never happen again.

And I just, I hope not. You know, I didn't know what to think about it. I was trying to get us into counseling, but that I felt like we needed to move to the United States. She agreed. We applied for her visa. And I went back to the United States for three months by myself to work and look for a place for us to live. I sent them to Poland during this time. I had no no fear about it. I thought she's stronger than she's ever been. Things are great. I can send them to Poland. So the three months when I'm in the United States, they're in Poland, we're communicating. every day. I could see her falling apart and I would just try to lift her up and tell her we're

going to be back together soon. So we met back at our house in the Hague. I sprinted, sprinted home from the tram, wrote her a love letter like on the way back when I was on the train. I'm just so excited to be back. I knock on my door, my wife and daughter come down the stairs. She's holding her and and I could just immediately sense that something was wrong. It was like they came down with a dark cloud. My daughter didn't look up from, you know, she was just staring off somewhere and out of it. She wasn't excited at all that I was home.

My wife wouldn't look at me. We walked up to stairs and I tried to kiss my wife. And she jumped away and said, you're hurting me. I hate you. And it went from there. Then I hate you. I've always hated you. I'm taking our daughter back.

back to Poland. My family's a cult. I have Stockholm syndrome, she said. And I just, I had no idea what this even meant. So I told her like, I've seen this before. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't believe you. We need to get help. So that three weeks was me trying to convince her to get help. She was mostly in bed with a migraine or just chain smoking her cigarettes and sitting in the kitchen listening to Polish radio. And I was taking care of our daughter. And happily so, I hadn't seen her in three months. But I was kind of just playing the long game of,

all right, we're back in our home. Everything's safe. I'm going to get to the bottom of this. And I have to make sure this doesn't happen again, whatever it is. So during the day, I would go out with my daughter. And in the evening, once we put her to bed, I would just try to convince her why we needed help and even like draw her maps logically.

We know we know something happened in your childhood. We know that there is trauma there. We don't know the extent to which that's relevant, but we need to explore that because maybe it's, maybe it's small, maybe it's big. So I was trying to convince her to get help thinking that she, you know, she loves our daughter, of course. she's going to listen to me and go get another opinion. And she was blowing off the psychologist

that I was trying to have contact her and just repeating to me the same things over and over again. So I went and saw the psychologist told him that my wife was threatening to flee with our daughter. He assured me that that was illegal and she couldn't do it. And I wasn't satisfied with that because she was adamant that that was what she was going to do but I then I went down eventually I went to the police which I never do I don't I don't like going to the police I don't believe in going to the police in in cases such as marriage and the police gave me I said my my wife is saying she's leaving with our daughter to go back to Poland she has our daughter's passport and the police just handed me a pre-printed list of family attorneys and said we can't help you

So I went back home, just, you know, nobody's helping me. I didn't have family in the Netherlands. I didn't have friends that were close by. So I'm just all alone trying to figure this out. Going down, I was contemplating, like, taking my daughter and getting her to the embassy or taking her to a doctor because my daughter had signs of abuse. But I was very tentative about betraying my wife and making her. too big of a move.

Yeah. And I just thought I had things under control because they were in our home. And I thought I had time. But yeah, just that Christmas happened. My wife was miserable. And then she kept, then it amped up. She started saying, I'm leaving. I'm leaving.

And I said, no, you're not. I'm not going to let that happen. But, you know, I don't understand what you're saying. But we have to figure this out. And then she did. You know, she convinced me that she was taking her to the library. And I let my guard down, which I hadn't for that three weeks. I was on it.

I was just totally taking care of my daughter and reaching out to this psychologist and to a friend who lives in Arizona asking for help, to my mother asking for help. And at this time, like she worked it so that I just completely let my guard. down. I felt safe. Like I looked at her and just felt comfortable, felt like she was coming back, you know, from wherever, whatever dark place she was in. Watched them both go down the stairs and never, never saw my daughter again. So when did you realize that they were gone? So it was probably like 15 minutes later. Okay. You just like, you think it was just a gut feeling? Like you just

knew that they weren't coming back. I think it just hit me. I think like she she like put my attention somewhere else. Like I was looking at her and thinking how beautiful she is and this is my wife and we're going to be fine. And like just like when they left, I was just like, you know, just thinking about how much I love them. And just my guard was completely down.

And then as soon as she left, I just, I just, I called. called my friend and I said I don't know what to do what's happening again and as I'm speaking to him it's just like oh crap they're gone so what did you do so I told my friend I got to go I hung up the phone sprinted around my house looking for signs so that I could see that that they were gone because I wasn't sure you know I just I knew what she had told me and I knew what my feeling was and that they were gone I didn't at that point I didn't believe they were at the library I sprinted around my house I saw that my daughter's blanket and stuffed animal wasn't there, which wouldn't go to the library and a couple other things. So at that point, I had more evidence.

Then I sprinted to the police department, just feeling like my heart was going to explode. The police department door was locked, so I pounded on it and just kept pounding until someone came. And they wouldn't give me the time of day again. And I said, my wife is taking our daughter to Poland. That's illegal. I need you to stop them from leaving this country and just and evaluate my daughter. And they're just, what do you want us to do? We, you know, don't you think her mother should be able to take her back to Poland?

I'm like, no, you're not listening to me. My daughter just came back from Poland after three months there with major signs of abuse. My wife isn't well. We need to look at this child before she goes to Poland. And they wouldn't help me. So I went back home, called my friend back, told him it was going on, called my parents. My mom got me in touch with the U.S. Embassy. And the duty officer at the U.S. Embassy told me that it was out of their jurisdiction,

that even though my daughter was born in Connecticut, they couldn't do anything about it. and he recommended that I that I try to find out if they're still in the Netherlands and that if they are, I meet up with, meet up with them and re-abduct my daughter and get her to the embassy where they guaranteed me she would be evaluated. So I was sitting in my apartment looking out the window just like thinking, what kind of weird movie am I in where like I'm alone in this foreign country? my my my u.s citizen daughter is they don't care and this guy who works for the u.s government is telling me to re-abduct my daughter and like i'm i'm playing that scenario out of my head like i i don't think that

they're here because she told me they're going back to poland but if they are like what how do i how do i take a almost four-year-old and and get her to the embassy and like that you know what do i have to like take my take my wife's phone and steal that and push her to the ground or like how would that look you know yeah so i know that but that was the option that was in front of me so i i didn't cross it off the list right away but i just kept i kept hammering out emails to child protection agencies to uh the u.s embassy in poland germany the netherlands just try to get help anybody yeah yeah um i started writing to to the media i you know um Dutch child protection agencies.

And also at that time, like the, my blinders fell down. So all of the things that my wife had been telling me and all of the signs of abuse that were there, but I couldn't see them or wrap my head around them, they started to fall. So I started to see what this was and what she meant by my family as a cult. I didn't know, I didn't know what I know today, but I started, I just started to see what this was. to see how bad it was. And, you know, that my daughter coming back and talking about her grandfather's private parts and having bruises and vaginal pain and all of this was tied into who my wife was

and what she was telling me about taking our daughter back there. And I became very terrified and very desperate and started just like, I just sat at my computer rolling cigarettes and and typing emails and researching and processing until and then I would collapse and wake up and get right back to the computer and I didn't even know what day it was or what time it was I was just doing this for a while

until my dad flew over to the Netherlands I picked him up at the airport and then he was there he said he was going to help me and he said that we would get an attorney We would we would we would we would fight this and get get my daughter brought back to the country to go So we could deal with deal with it legally But and that that's a whole nother situation like my dad came over saying he's gonna help me I I believed him

But he was he was working behind my back talking to my wife and and and like and I looked like I was looking like I was sleeping I didn't care about anything else. I was just, I was frantic begging for help. And to, to my family, it looked strange. Like, what is this odd behavior that Ian's doing? What is he talking about? Nothing's happening. And my wife had their ear. So she was, she was telling them things that made sense. So they were in contact with your wife during this time. Yes. But you were not. You couldn't get hold of her? I was not. She sent, she sent me a couple emails, one that said, we're at a shelter. I'll contact you in two days and we'll get together and work this out. And I responded, please, you know, like, let's, we need to do this for our, for our daughter. And just short responses back

to her, trying to just trying to get her to talk to me or meet me, or hoping that she would snap out of whatever was compelling her to go back to Poland. And, and do what I believe she wants to do, which is get our daughter help and get her out of that family. But no, I had no communication after this. And did your family eventually know that you were telling the truth? No. So my dad stayed at our apartment for a week or two while helping me, like making sure.

He was basically watching me. Okay. But he had like a psychiatric intervention team come over to my house. So like five, five emergency psych people came up into my living room. My dad let them in my house. And they were deciding whether to involuntarily bring me to a hospital. And I just sat there at my computer and I was, I was really upset at my dad. I was just like, my daughter was taken.

I'm trying to get help. Nobody's helping me. I'm fine. And what did the people say? They, they, they, went and they listened to me tell them that they went and talked to each other and then they left. Okay.

And I told, I was very upset with my dad. I said, don't ever do that again. Like, I should kick you out right now. How can I trust you? 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 add free access subscribe in apple podcasts spotify or at american criminal.com what what do you what what do you think i need help for where is my daughter you know you know that's that's the problem if the only problem is my daughter was taken and i'm telling you that it's not a good situation in poland and i'm trying to figure that out like all of my all of my psychiatric psychological distress is because of my missing daughter

You know, that's what I need help with. So he was like, oh, I'm sorry. You know, we will help you. I'm going to fly you back to the United States. And we will get a lawyer and fight this under the Hague Convention, which is a treaty between the United States and most European countries. It says it's illegal to take a child from one country to another. And if that happens, the remedy is this treaty, which brings the child back to court in the home country. So that's what he convinced me we were going to do.

So I flew back to Connecticut from the Netherlands. My mom and my aunt picked me up in Boston. And I felt great. I was like, all right, I'm back home. We're going to get a lawyer. We're going to get to the bottom of this. And my mother and my aunt drove all the way from Boston, Connecticut to Connecticut, talking about the lawyer that we're going to get help.

And I drove straight to a hospital. my mom sat there crying and said i need to go on and get get answers i'm not doing well and because of her emotional state i was like yes she does need help i walked in there and um then they trapped me they said this you're staying and this is this is you need to be here and how long were you there for so i was i was there overnight like i i initially it kind of flipped out and i was like what what is like going on like and then they threatened me me with a halidol syringe and I'm like, okay, you know, I give up. I talked to the psychiatrist the next day. They were going to let me go. And then my mother, my aunt, my dad, my cousin called

and said they were worried. So they held me for about two weeks. And it was just, it was like being held in place while my daughter is getting further away. It wasn't an issue for me other than that because I knew my story. I knew, you know, like, that they had no basis to say that anything was going on other than a crisis happened and I'm reacting to a crisis. So they released me with a diagnosis of adjustment disorder, which is just an abnormal reaction to a life event or I guess it's not necessarily abnormal. It's normal when your child's taken and you freak out, but it's not something that's

sustainable. So that's what adjustment disorder is. And then so my family still wasn't, wasn't helping me. They released me from this place. I walked five miles through the snow to my mother's house. She gave me my car key and $20 and said, you got to go. So I went to a building my dad owned, slept on the floor with no heat, no electricity for a couple days. And then I moved in with my friend's widow and her daughter.

and she gave me a bedroom. She believed me and believed in me. And she had just lost her husband. So it was great. I got to spend time with her daughter as well. And I just, for the next three months, I stayed with her. And I kept writing emails. I kept just reaching out to anybody I could reach out to.

So could you have, did you have the resources at that time to get a lawyer to, no? to do that treaty thing? Okay. I had no money saved up. I had a car and that's it. We were in between. I had quit my job and become a state home dad. She was working and then she lost her job.

So I was applying to different places. We were thinking about moving to the United States or Switzerland or Austria. I was looking at jobs in the United Nations and courts and things. Like we were okay, like we were surviving, paying rent, but we had no money saved up. So when this happened, I was just like destitute, basically. I couldn't get any help on my own. And then, okay, so that's why you needed, that's why you were relying on your family to help you at that time. Yes.

And then during the three months that you were living with this widow, did you have any contact with your wife or she just was not responding? No, not responding at all. Okay. Do you think your family was still talking to her? I think so. Well, I know she, I know now. I thought they were back then, but now I know that my mother has had a relationship with my first wife and our daughter for this entire time. Do you think that her family actually is a cult?

Yes. Okay. Yeah, I think it's intergenerational. I think that it's, I don't think that it's only her family. I think that there's more. And why do you think that your parents are not going to be? concerned? That's a tough question. Like I think that they got fooled. I think that that's like where I was at in life was just this naive, ignorant place and I was run by my emotions and by just

the crisis that was in front of me. So when that happened, my first wife and her family were able to twist the narrative in such a way that made sense to my parents. You know, they talked about, you know, you know how Ian was using drugs. You know how he, which I wasn't at the time, but I have used drugs. So they used that to just make a story that would make sense to them. And then I think so that, and it was also like a crisis situation from my parents. So they're, you know, what's going on? What's going on with Ian?

And so they made a decision to get. me help by dropping me off at the hospital instead of the help that I was asking for. And then I think they just doubled down on it so many times that it was hard for them to backtrack and see that they had made a wrong decision. Yeah, so that I think that's what happened. I kept reaching out to my mother and just saying, Mom, she came back with bruises and vaginal pain and talking about her grandfather's private parts. like you don't have to believe me about the cult and the Stockholm syndrome and trauma-based mind

control but we let's just keep it simple does my daughter need to be evaluated yes or no and if it's yes which it obviously is from the symptoms and I had I had other I had my wife's journal I had other other small pieces that were just like we need to get this child evaluated but They just wouldn't listen to me. They kept, it was very frustrating. Do you think that your parents have visited them? My mother may have. My sister has.

I just found out about that. So, like, my sister is a good example. My sister had no relationship with my first wife. And then, like, none when we're dating, when we're engaged, when we're married, we moved to the Netherlands. And then all of a sudden my sister, a year or two ago, my sister's posting Facebook profile pictures of my first wife and saying, oh my dear sister, I've always wanted a sister.

Now I have a best friend. And it's just like, what do you really think you have a best friend of this woman who stole my child? And you have no relationship with her until after that. You can't see that she's using you. But yeah, my sister just, my sister visited Poland, did her own assessment, and just thought, oh, this family's normal. Ian's wrong. So do you have any relationship with your family today?

I'm building a relationship with my dad. My mom had, so my current wife and I moved into my mom's property when my stepdad died a couple years ago. and she had the property and a living trust for us. We had our own separate home separate from her home. When I published my book, my mom got a lawyer and evicted us. Wow. Yeah. And she doesn't speak to me.

But your dad, is he kind of starting to listen to you more now? He's starting to listen to me. He's read or is reading my book. I don't think he's gone all the way through it. But he's starting to listen to me. he still can't wrap his head around it. He doesn't, he doesn't want to go to where he needs to go to understand. He's, he's kind of living in a place of, um, I mean, don't they feel any, like, bad for you at all

that you have no relationship with your own child? I don't. I think, I think my dad, because I'm speaking to him now, he does a little bit, but it's still like just, his position is more like just move on. You know, now, now you have a second wife. What are you doing now? And for me, it's like it hasn't changed since the moment I realized she was gone. The only thing that's changed is time is gone by.

I will never stop fighting for my daughter as long as there's air in my lungs. So how old would she be now? She's 18 right now. Wow. Yeah. So from 4 to 18, you had no, you nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Other than, like I did Google searches. I could find what school she's going to. I have photographs, but no contact. And, okay, so for three months when you were living with the widow, you were doing emails and reaching out and trying to get help. You still didn't get any help. So I didn't get any help. That's the U.S. Embassy or the U.S. Secretary of State. I filed the paperwork for the Hague Abduction Treaty. And they told me it could take up to two years to get the court, get the case into a court. when they told me it could take two years, I just said no. You know, like I'm not waiting two years. This is my now four-year-old daughter who was taken from me and I know it's a horrible

situation. I'm not waiting two years. That was my position. So as soon as I heard that, I decided I had to do something. I didn't know what that was and I didn't want to do anything impulsively or make, I didn't want to make a bad decision. but I also wasn't concerned about myself or consequences of what I did. It was all, what do I need to do for my daughter as a dad

so that I can look her in the eyes and know that I did my best. That was all I was worried about. So I kind of went down the line of what are my options? And the first one was what the duty officer had recommended, which is get your daughter and get her to the embassy. So I planned for that scenario, going to Poland. I knew they have an apartment in the city, and then they have a country house. And so I knew they would be in one of those locations.

I bought binoculars and a compass. And like I had MapQuest back then. So I had everything printed out. So from either location, I could get to the Berlin Embassy, which is about an hour away. But then as I ran through that scenario, I'm like, this is very crazy. Like, I'm going to go into a foreign country, take a four-year-old from whoever's watching her, and then drive an hour across an international border. And like that's that. I felt like that would be the best option, but it's also like at that point, I'm involving my daughter in this situation by grabbing her and driving her.

And that's going to be traumatic. And, you know, what's that going to look like? I don't know the roads. I don't speak the language. Are they going to be, are they going to chase me in a helicopter? You know, that. So that one, I said, no, I can't do that. So my next one was just go over there and create a scene and be heard.

And, like, forced them to listen to me, force them to do a child abuse investigation, which I had worked. I worked for DCF in Connecticut for a little while, and I knew that, you know, if someone alleges severe child abuse in Connecticut, they supposedly have to look at it. And DCF in Connecticut's not perfect either, but there is like, they don't just say, oh, there's an allegation. Forget about it. So I just, I thought, I'll go over there. I'll create, I didn't know the specifics of what I was going to do, but I'm going to be heard.

I'm going to make them listen to me as this girl's father. and they're going to have to give me a lawyer and an interpreter. And therefore, there's going to be a child abuse investigation. So I sold my car, bought a ticket to Amsterdam, still not really knowing what I was going to do. I just knew that I had to move closer to her and that this three months was long enough. I wasn't willing to wait any longer. the widow I was staying with supported my decision and said you have to do what you have to do. And I just, which was good.

It was nice to have somebody that was listening and understood and, you know, agreed that you have to fight for your child. So she drove me to the train station and I took the train to Boston, got on a flight, flew to Amsterdam and picked up a rental car. on a prepaid visa. So there was only like $300 on there. And then I just drove across Germany to Poland and still didn't know exactly what I was gonna do.

I was just gonna show up and figure it out. So I drove straight, a 12 hour trip through Germany, got to Poland early in the morning, slept where I didn't sleep, I sat in a parking spot where my first wife and I had an apartment. during when we were engaged and just waited. And I knew, I knew, so it just kind of just fell into place what I was going to do.

I knew that my, my father-in-law, being an alcoholic, was predictable that every morning he would come out to throw his beer cans away. So I decided that that's where I would confront him. And it really, like, there wasn't any, any emotion behind this other than like desperation for my daughter. I wasn't mad at him at this point other than kind of like how you get mad at a mosquito and just wanted to stop, you know, sucking your blood. But it was, I was trying to be pragmatic. This is the, this is the perpetrator. So therefore I'm going to involve him. I'm going to draw attention to the situation and I'm going to be heard. So I parked my car looking at the

door he's going to come out of. Oh, and I also, I had a hammer. Mm-hmm. So I, as I'm driving, I stopped at a gas station, and I'm like, I should maybe have a weapon. I didn't, I didn't know if I was, what I was going to do. Yeah, just in case. I didn't know if I was going to kill them, honestly. Like, I wasn't against it.

I really didn't want to, I didn't want to, but, but like morally and ethically, when I thought about it, it's like, maybe I should. you know, if an intruder comes into my house and has a knife on my daughter's neck, I'm going to shoot him. But what's the difference three months later? So I had gone through this dilemma in my head, and I wasn't against it, but I just still didn't know. I was just kind of just moment by moment, just going to the next step and waiting for the path to become visible to me. So I looked at the knives. This gas station had knives, but the blades didn't lock. So I was like, that's not going to work.

There was used hammers hanging on the shelf, so I bought one. And I had no idea what to do with it. The thought of using it as a bludgeoning tool was hard. It was hard to be the person in this scenario, wondering what to do about the situation with my daughter. And I was just doing the best I could do. So I parked, waited for him to come out, started the car, drove towards him and around him and crashed the car into a wall to block his egress back into his apartment building. And then just without thinking, reached behind me, grabbed the hammer, stepped out of the car and started chasing him down the street.

And he squealed and ran. and I like pump faked the hammer to make him afraid. I did like making him afraid. Chaste him, he fell. And I switched the hammer to my left hand and started punching him with my right hand. And I wasn't punching him to like to try to kill him. I was just, it was almost like I was watching myself from out of body.

Just like, this is what I'm doing because of this crazy scenario, but this is not me. And I didn't hit him that much, but he had his keys in his hand and I made him hit himself with his keys. So there was some blood. And then the city guard came, which is like the unarmed cops. I submitted, they handcuffed me. And I stood tall and thought, all right, that needed to happen.

I'm glad it's done. Now I'm going to see somebody and they're going to hear my story. So I thought like the next step was, or one of the next steps was going to be getting my daughter evaluated, I felt I felt good. I felt like, you know, that things were happening as they should happen. So then they met, they sent me to Polish jail for two nights. And Polish jail, there was no toilet paper. So I just, you just have to hold it.

There's no bathroom in the cell, so you have to ask to go out. nobody spoke English a pretty ridiculous place but I was just waiting to go before the judge so they took me before the judge and you know I'm still thinking all right I'm going to get a wise judge he's going to just say what's the obvious thing to do

evaluate this man's child yeah instead he had he did not care at all why I did what I did he just was looking at oh we can get this guy for attempted murder even though I didn't hit him with the hammer he said that I wanted to hit him with a hammer and so then he he put me in pretrial prison and that's three months at a time so you're in

pretrial prison for three months up to two years and you know that that was the status at that point so they drove me in a prison put me in a cell with seven Polish guys who don't speak English, 23-hour-a-day lockdown, no phone. And I sat there for 18 months. Oh, my gosh. The U.S. Embassy visited me because they have to visit American prisoners. But they gave me like a used pencil, some candy, like a New Testament, you know, and just said, you're in Poland, you have to go through the Polish system. And I was just, just, I'm in Poland because I need my daughter evaluated. I'm not worried.

Like I'm willing to volunteer for the electric chair. I don't care about my case other than the fact that I'm here to talk about what happened with my daughter. And they just, they totally just wrote me off, said, even though my daughter was born in Connecticut, that when she's in Poland, they consider her to be a Polish citizen because her mother's Polish. and as long as the Polish prison court system isn't abusing me, that they can't do anything at all. So it was, it was, and I think part of that was because they had my mother in their ear. Yeah. So, which they shouldn't have listened to my mother because I was an adult,

but my mother was telling them things. And so I think they came with a preconception that I was wrong or that I was crazy or whatever it was. I just stuck to know I'm here to get my daughter evaluated. They did nothing for me. The interpreter that the Polish court gave me was this young girl who didn't speak English. Like she passed the test somehow, but I would try to talk about complex trauma

and she would just translate it as rape and stuff like that. So it made me look even more ridiculous. I tried to tell the US Embassy, please just get me a good interpreter. They didn't do it. anything for me. So I was just in prison for 18 months going back and forth to court, trying to prepare my own legal defense. And yeah, that's, I didn't know, I didn't know what was going to happen. Like when I first got to prison, I thought they're going to let me out of

here any day. Yeah. You know, like they're going to come and say, sorry. They're going, they're going to pat me on the back and I'm going to see my daughter. And there were some guards that did that that came up to me and shook my hand and said, you know, this is, this is Poland, not USA. That's those, that was the words they gave me and it's, or they would, one of them would say, you're going to do 20 years for this. And I'm like, I don't, I don't care. Like, that's not my, that's not my concern at all. Right. It wasn't about you. Yeah, it wasn't about me. So what happened after the 18 months was up? After the 18, so during that time I was going to trial. And my background is political science, law, public law. So I was able to prepare my own case,

even though they gave me a public defender. The public defender was ridiculous. And she was communicating with me through this interpreter who didn't speak English, nor she didn't speak English well. So the public defender was useless. I went in there and tried to question my wife, question other other witnesses that they had was she in there your wife I saw her in there yeah but your daughter was not my daughter was not okay so I like I had a whole plan because I knew my wife was running a script and I knew that I could break that down and that she wouldn't be able to answer my questions so they I started to do that and she started to like unravel and then the judge banned me from trial I wasn't even allowed to participate

in my defense. I wasn't allowed to call witnesses on my behalf or get a second opinion from like another psychiatrist. This was just the court psychiatrist. And I had witnesses in the Netherlands that would have came and said, you know, that we were in counseling for what we thought was borderline personality disorder, that I had like my wife's psychiatric questionnaires where she's saying there's trauma and she doesn't know the extent of the impact on our family because of it. So I was just trying to, like I wanted to present that case. It's like there's more going on than what this side of the story is telling. Like it's a he said, she said of sorts.

So let's let's look at this deeper for the child. Like I'm absolutely not trying to defend myself, although they're lying. But of course they're lying. That's how this thing works. So let's look at what we're. we can look at but they yeah no witnesses banned from trial and and i wasn't allowed to bring up my daughter in the court it was all you know they they turn it into it's attempted murder because that's what we think you wanted to do even though the medical report didn't show any you know

hammer damage just that's what you wanted to do this situation looks like you came here to kill him so we're going to get you with attempted murder and the judge even said what you're what you did was assault, but what you wanted to do was attempted murder. So you're looking at eight to 25 years. And I just kept going back to my daughter, my daughter, my daughter. So what happened there was they had the court psychiatrist evaluate me. And I say my daughter's being abused. The prosecutor says they investigated and ruled out that my daughter was being abused.

Of course, they didn't evaluate her. Their investigation was talking to my wife. So like so so the prosecutor says they ruled out abuse. I say abuse. The court psychiatrist takes that and says, okay, Ian must be delusional. So I got I got diagnosed by the court psychologist as delusional. And you know, and I tried to I tried to question them in court too. I'm just like what is there any other side of mental illness other than I say my daughter's being abused?

They say no. You know, how do you how do you know my daughter's not? being abused well the prosecutor says so it's just like this circle of nonsense where like they don't have evidence to say she's not being abused um but they're stating they do so then the psychiatrist states takes that and says well he's he's insane he's and so then i got sent to one of the three or four maximum security psychiatric prison hospitals where i i walk in and like there's there's a guy pretending he's a John Deere tractor. There's other guys that their wrists strapped to their waist because they'll just punch people randomly, stuff like that. And at that point, I found out

I was in a trap. Once you're sent to this place, it's up to the psychiatrist to decide whether you get sent home, but the psychiatrist is working with the court who doesn't want to send you home. So the first guy I talked to the director of this hospital, he's like, I don't know why you're here. it's a mistake. But the court wants you here and you're going to be here for at least six months. And then you have to go to medium security. Then you have to go to minimum security in order to go through the system and get out. So I just, I hunker down.

They were trying to force medication on me. And this was antipsychotic medication that just shuts down your thinking. So I practiced with gum hiding the pill in my upper lip and became. pretty good at that but there was also like this rumor going around that they'll test your blood and if you don't have that in your system then they'll do injections or hold you here longer so i would take like a little piece here and there in case that happened but it was it was making it so like it felt like i poured rubber cement in my head i couldn't i couldn't watch a tv show and focus on and i couldn't read um like you know i couldn't pray i had

no connection to anything. So I really fought for my mind and just every day I was under the cameras. I'm constantly being questioned by these people. And I learned that I had to put my daughter on the shelf and get out. So my first opinion there, he said, yeah, Ian's good. I got sent to medium security across the country. And they sent me like in the shackled and handcuffed. in this plexiglass cage across the country, I get to the medium security and it's worse than

maximum security. They were giving me a low dose of that medication at this maximum security because the director didn't, he couldn't see any issues with my mental health. But he was like, everyone gets, everyone gets medication because that's what the court wants. That's what he told me. So I get to medium security and this doctor says, we're going to double your medication because they weren't really treating you. And like treating me for what? Yeah. And she doesn't have a good answer. It's treating you because the court wants you to be treated.

And at this place, it was it was literal hell. Like there were people who were trying to escape. One guy jumped over, razor wire fence. Another guy asked me to kill him. He said, take me in the bathroom, choke me. out and kill me and he was serious because this was this place was just it was torture to be there I would I would sleep as much as I could to the point where I was getting bed sores the food you were always hungry the doctor that I had to deal with was absolutely just horrific

and I would at that point I was looking at potential escape I I I I didn't ever come close to it because getting caught would have pushed me further from my daughter. And I knew that all I had to do was plod through this system and I would come out the other end. But it was to the point where like I was, this was on like the Belarus border with Poland. I was thinking, I was planning how I could get out, where I would go. If a friend from Amsterdam could come and get me up and drive me into Belarus or Russia just to get me out of Poland. and like I contemplated it because of how bad it was. And how long were you in the medium security?

I think about 11 months. Okay. And it's just one of those things where you never know what they're doing, what they're thinking. They have to send an opinion to the court every six months. So the first opinion that she sent to the court, she said, well, I don't know you well enough. So I need you to stay longer. And so that was after six months. And it's just like, you don't know me well enough.

Like you only talk to me once or twice a month. And all you say is, do you hear voices? Like we can't even communicate because there was no interpreter there. At that point, they're making me communicate in Polish, which I was learning Polish as this went on. But I couldn't communicate in Polish to express myself. Right. And so she was just like, no, we're going to hold you here. and I'm like, I was in prison for 18 months, no issues of model, model prisoner, no mental health

issues. I go to maximum security, no mental health issues, model, model prisoner. Now I come here after like three years and you're telling me that you don't know me and you have to hold me here longer. So it was, they're, they're not like, they're not real doctors. They're like psychiatrists who are wardens of the state. Yeah. But eventually I got out of there and went to minimum. And minimum was much better. It was just like a regular hospital for people with depression or suicidal ideation, stuff like that. So there were normal people off the street there.

There were females there. And it was just like night and day, which was nice, but I'm still locked up. Yeah. And I was there for at least a year. Wow. And it was the same thing, just like forced medication still. They made me go to their AA meetings and I had to say, hi, I'm Ian. I'm addicted to many substances or I said it in Polish.

And I didn't believe it because I wasn't taking any drugs. Yeah. But their thing with the drugs was anything you've tried, you're addicted to. And in Poland, like even marijuana, they look at it like heroin. Like they gave me a in prison they give you this pamphlet and they have marijuana on a spoon and you know that's where they were at And so I had I had no chance because I I did dabble in a lot of things in college I was one of those people that Like to try things so one I had to say I'm in I'm addicted to many things and go through that I had to I wrote a letter to my father-in-law apologizing and had them send it just trying to like I made it

a mistake. I made a mistake. You know, just kept saying that over again. I was wrong. I'm, I'm mentally ill and I'm going to have to take these drugs for the rest of my life because of that. I had to parrot what they wanted. To get out of there. So they could, yeah, so they would have no, no reason legally to hold me. And that, like, I didn't want to lie either. Like that's, when I first got there, that was one reason why I told them everything. I told them my old drug history. I told them everything about me the same as I do in the book. And because I just thought, you know, like, I am who I am. I'm not perfect. I'm unique in a lot of ways. And especially in Poland, there's not a lot of people like me in Poland, but the truth is the truth. And like, that's the,

that's the, that's what I've done and what I am. Now let's jump onto this other subject of my daughter. They didn't care. They just used everything I said as evidence to prove their point, a confirmation bias. You know, like, oh, Ian does drugs, that means that whatever he thinks can't be trusted. You know, that's their logic. One of the psychiatrists said, wouldn't it be nice if you were crazy? It's like, it's a mind-bending thing. Wouldn't it be nice if you're crazy?

so then your daughter isn't being abused. I just look at them like, I guess that would be great. Yeah. But that's not the reality of the situation. Yeah. And it's weird to say that to someone who you think is crazy. But that's what I was dealing with, was just people who were unwilling or unable to step outside of their blinders

and look at it any differently. And people who were taking a pass down from someone else and their job wasn't to reevaluate. It was just to treat based on what was said in court. So I had a lot of people who believed me. As I went through the system, people did believe me. There were therapists and psychologists who would tell me they believe me. It would bring me things that I needed.

Or this one therapist, I would go in her office and we would have coffee. and just chat and she would know she introduced me to her husband she brought this other friend in that she wanted to like match me with and so like there that kind of thing was was gold like just real people who could see beyond the people made you probably feel normal again yeah it made me a little yeah it made me a little yeah it made me yeah just feel like I was connected to something real because this whole experience and the system was just, it was horrible. And I was all alone going through this. Yeah.

Didn't even have your family. I didn't have my family. I had one friend in Amsterdam who was sending me some money so I could buy what I needed because I didn't have any money. All of the Polish people in prison get like a stipend so they can buy extra food. I was just there on my own, but people would help me along the way. And this friend in Amsterdam would send me money. The guy in Arizona, who I was talking to when I figured out this was happening, sent me packages.

But yeah, my parents, nothing. And when it first happened, I sent them a letter and said, I told you, I told you my daughter was abducted and is being abused. Now I'm in prison. Now you have to get a lawyer. and they just never responded. So it was just, I was very alone and very isolated from everything and just trying to get out. Yeah. So, just get out.

When you got out of the minimum, did you come back to the U.S.? I went to Amsterdam for a couple months? Okay. And my friend in Amsterdam gave me a room and a bed. And I just rode my bike around. got used to being able to close my door and just get back to life get back to life get my head back because I was I was in a survival mode for so long in a mode like where I had to be on point I couldn't ever be emotionally dysregulated I couldn't scream I couldn't I couldn't

be angry about anything I had everything's great I'm doing wonderful thank you for your help when do I get to go home like that that was my spiel for the whole four years I was locked up. So it was a process to come back and feel like I was myself again. And that space in Amsterdam allowed me to do that. And I just ride my bike around the city and talk to people and sleep in and just get used to the fact that I don't have to go talk to anybody and explain myself. And so, yeah, he provided a really nice space for that.

And then I did go back to Connecticut after spending a couple months there. And how old were you at this point? Were you in your 30s now? I was in my late 30s. Okay. Yeah. Close to 40. But yeah, like probably 37, 38.

Okay. And when you came back to the U.S., were you in your mind, were you like, okay, I'm going to start fighting again? Oh, yeah. Okay. I never, like, I only stopped fighting. I don't think you ever really stopped. It's more like just like giving, like you said, giving yourself that mental break so that you can get back to where you need to be mentally. Yes.

And also realizing that the people I'm talking to aren't listening and don't care, right? So like I was wasting my breath and digging myself into a hole by trying to get help from this judge, then this judge, the prosecutor, my own attorney, all of the child protective services in Poland, all of the media in Poland. All the government, like, so I was just, I was blasting it out. And once I realized nobody's going to do anything, I had to shelf it so that I could get out. Yeah. I was still, I was still writing letters to people, like child abuse agencies. Were they responding? Yeah, some of them were responding. There was one in the UK. Well, I got her on the phone when a maximum security, there was a pay phone. So she called me. I got her on the phone. And she just said, Ian, you have you have to do what you have to do to get out like stop talking about it realize they don't

believe you and they're not going to believe you that's not their job and most of the world doesn't want to believe this type of stuff is happening yeah and so her advice was just shut up and get out and um and that's what i did but but getting getting a phone call and spending time with her on the phone was helpful uh there's a psych a child psychologist in california who deals with complex trauma and organized abuse. She's written books and stuff. So I wrote to her. She sent me, like, she sent me overnighted me to Poland, like an article that she thought

would help with dealing with the court psychiatrist about like how, about ritual abuse and trauma-based mind control to try to educate them. I didn't give it to them because I realized like they're not here. They're not going to help me. Anything that I give them, they're going to use is evidence. that you're crazy yeah exactly so but I still have a relationship with that woman and and another another guy who's he's a professor in California sent me his book to Poland and so there were there were people and I was I was getting more connected in in the abuse

survivor community just learning how prevalent this is and there's people around the world fighting this battle and realizing that I'm just another person in this, right? Like I, my daughter was taken by a terrible family and now I've got to deal with that. And there's others like me. That people don't listen to. That people don't listen to, yeah. I feel like it's easier not to believe someone. And I think what makes it obviously even more challenging is the distance and the fact that another country is involved.

because there's just such a disconnect with that. And, you know, I feel like it's so easy for people to be like, oh, it's out of our jurisdiction. We can't help, you know. And I think the easier thing to do is brush it under the rug and not believe these more issues. You could say taboo subjects when it comes to family. And people are very quick to say cults aren't real or, you know,

especially when it's a family and things like that. And I think in some situations, you know, it's great that people want to take the mother's side. But at the same time, that doesn't mean you don't look into it. You know, it's like, at the very least, you would think that they'd be like, let's just shut this guy up and look, you know, and they couldn't even do that. Like, why even worry about you or the wife or the family? Like, worry about the child, the innocent child.

Like the worst-case scenario, you guys wasted your time and the child's okay. Best-case scenario, actually. Yep. But not even to check is insane to me. Yes. It shows how broken everything is, really. I wrote new letters to the Secretary of the State and all the embassies again, and I put him in my book because this was like recently in the big scheme of things.

This is what I've been dealing with. This is what's happened. I still need help for my daughter. And they shut me down again. When did you start writing your book? I mean, so some of it's like journal entries and emails from before I even. Before I even knew this was happening. So, like, I was writing, writing it unknowingly for my entire marriage.

And then when I was locked up, I was journaling, knowing that I was going to write. Yeah. But I didn't do any serious writing until I was back in Connecticut. Got it. From Amsterdam, I moved to Connecticut. My dad has a farm. And he just said, here's your room. He bought me a car and said, use the space.

to do what you need to do, which was wonderful, even though he still didn't know what I was talking about or believe me. He just gave me that space. And so I built, you know, put my office together and started researching and writing and just figuring out what I was going to do with that. Because I didn't, I didn't know exactly what to write or how to write it. Yeah. There was, there's so many different ways that I. And aspects to it, too. many, and it's 600 pages, so that's one. Right. And I cut out. A lot, I'm sure, right. There is no, that's the thing, too, is I feel like there's never enough pages that you can write. There's

always little things that you'll remember, little details that it's very hard to decipher what is important. I mean, it's all important, but it's like, what do I need to put in there? What's the things that people need to hear? Yep. And like, and there was a, so also like, I went through a phase of like realizing that I couldn't rely on like myself like it was it was the situation was too strong the the people and the systems I'm up against are way too strong with me so like I I want I wanted answers from God and I didn't even know what that meant I just knew that I needed something stronger than me so through that process I took all of my journals huge stacks of them from my entire prison time because I wrote constantly and I threw them in the fire and that was like

I was trying to like relieve myself of I'm going to write this book and change everything because that was the same error I saw it as the same error as me going to Poland and going to do this and then they're going to do a child abuse investigation so like I burned all that and it was like I I wanted to know exactly what story I was, I needed to tell and how to tell it. And once I got rid of that stuff, it just came to me. It started to, I started to feel good about, okay, I'm going to do this, this way and this, this way. And started to map out the book. And it just became clear.

Once I released it, then it came back and I knew what I was going to write. and I just started writing and just kind of without a plan, just writing, jumping around to different parts and chapters as it came up to me. Yeah. And then, like, I met my current wife in 2018. Okay. So I was home for about three years. She, she, we live on a, we were living on a lake, like a pond, big pond, really,

but she was living at the other side. She kayaked down. And like it was kind of the same thing as with my first wife. I looked at her and it wasn't like an attraction per se. It was like just this is this human is special, right? Like there's something about them that I know I need to talk to her more. So I talked to her. We introduced ourselves.

She disappeared for a month or so. And then one day I saw her walking down the road. again. I opened the door and I was like, Emily, and she's like, Ian. And it's like we just both knew that we had something to do together. Yeah. So we went in the barn and I just told her my whole story. Wow. And she just, she cried and basically said, what do we need to do now? Yeah, I was going to say she was probably blown away. Yeah. What is going on? She was. She had never heard of it. She just, yeah, she started research. on her own. She started looking closer at what I was saying. And we just started spending all of our

time together. And we were running a big garden at the time on my dad's farm because I didn't have like a real job. I didn't want a real job. I don't, I didn't. I didn't. How are you supposed to focus? You know, it's like, I don't want a career. I don't want money, you know, except for the purpose of getting my daughter. Exactly. So yeah, it was we just we started. We started. We started. We started. of just gardening and selling, selling vegetables, doing small landscaping jobs, and writing my book. And she types 90 words a minute. And she's an excellent editor, very sharp. And it was just like, we're meant to do this together.

So we worked on it for a couple of years, at least a couple of years, I think more, just like every day. amongst the other things we had to do to live. But knowing that this is what, it's not the be all end all. I don't know what it's going to do, but it's a step I need to take. So how long ago did you publish your book? May, 24. Okay, so only like a year ago. Only a year ago.

Okay, and what has the response been? It's been mixed. Yeah. Like the community, like the survivor community, people who are dealing with organized and ritual abuse, they totally support me. Yeah. But the world still isn't really paying attention. Right, there's nothing being actually done.

Nothing being actually done, no. So what is your next steps now? Is it just really just spreading awareness and getting the traction on your story? It is spreading awareness. I think just continues to be just doing my best. Yeah. with like I don't I don't know where we're going exactly I don't know I don't know what the next what's around the corner but I'm just going to keep keep keep going you know what's so heartbreaking

is that you don't know what they've been putting in your daughter's head for this many years you know it's like this brainwash well I know I know that she hates me right right because when I when I when I published my book, I sent copies of it to everybody, or not everybody, everybody that my father-in-law works with, but also the city, city president, the president of Poland, the Polish FBI, the Polish national police, Polish news agencies, I sent it out. And then I got, I got attacked. a letter came back from Poland to my place of employment and to the church we go to,

just like Ian, like saying things like Ian would keep his daughter in the room and make her go to the bathroom on the floor. It's like it doesn't make any, like you're saying that I'm doing what I'm saying you're doing when all I've been saying is my daughter's being abused, we need to get her evaluated. It's not logically sound to say that I'm screaming for an evaluation and I'm like this, this perpetrator that you've never even said that before. Now you're trying to twist it all back on me and just say things that people can't, people can't decipher between the truth and they're just going to just becomes a muddle.

So when I lost my job, the people in our church were fine because they know me and they have my book. They know your story. I'm a small group leader. I'm a Bible study leader. So like they're not concerned about me, but they made it so that I couldn't lead my youth group anymore because of the optics of the matter. And they don't want to deal with parents saying, oh, what about Ian? He was in prison. So like I had my youth group taken away from me.

I lost my job. I have a better job now, but it's still just like just getting hammered. Right, for something that you didn't even do. And, yeah, for something I didn't do, but yeah, I was glad, though, because it meant I was hitting a pressure point. Yeah, like if something's happening. If they're attacking me, then something's happening. Yeah, they're trying to cover their tracks. They're trying to keep the focus on me and off of them.

So I know that you mentioned that you know more now about the family being a cult. How did you figure out more information about them? So I don't have specific information about the family other than my experiences with them. Okay. My father-in-law and then my grandfather-in-law, I guess. So I believe based on my experiences and what my first wife told me, that they are perpetrators. I don't know how far it extends beyond that. So when I say I know more now, it's just it's like bird watching.

You know, you look at a bird and you're trying to figure out what kind of bird it is. So you look at all of the attributes and eventually you can identify that bird. So in this case, it's just what my wife told me about Colt, Stockholm Syndrome. And then what happened in my experience with what happened and it all coming back on me, Oh, that was the reason the red herring's on the cover is because she said, my dad created a red herring. Your drug psychological and criminal histories will be used against you. You're never going to see your daughter again. And when she was telling me that, I'm just like, what are you talking about?

Like, that's, that's crazy. Let's go, let's go right now and have them look at everything because I know that's not going to happen. But that's exactly what happened is they just, they say Ian's seen a psychologist. Ian smoked marijuana. Ian has been arrested. Ian's the bad guy. And that's how they were able to frame it. But yeah, it's just been constantly like that.

Me trying to fend off. I'm not even trying to fend it off. Like, yeah, I saw a psychologist. I diagnosed with ADHD, diagnosed with depression, diagnosed with panic disorder. What does that have to do with anything? Yeah, right. It has nothing to do with the situation. But they would try to say like with the marijuana.

They would say, oh, you move to the Netherlands. so you could have greater access to marijuana. I'm just like, there's plenty of marijuana in Connecticut. I just think it's interesting, too, because if roles were reversed, I don't think it would have happened this way. Like, if you were the one to take your daughter. Oh, no way. Right.

It's just like, which is crazy because you really never know what's going on. You know, like, and it goes beyond just your first wife. You know, she obviously was a victim as well and is so brainwashed. But just because she's the mother of the child does not mean. that she has more rights than you do, in my opinion, at all. Yeah. And in the United States, it's getting a little bit better. Like I said, at the very least, there should just be more research being done.

Yeah. Because of the case and because of the situation. It's like why somebody shouldn't be allowed to just up and go without somebody investigating it. I agree. It's like at the very least, just look into it. And I think that's all you want. That's all I wanted. Yeah.

That was what I, that was what was reasonable for me to ask for. The rest of it, go, go, let's figure it out. Yeah. Like, I realize that they have allegations. I have allegations. But why would you just, why would you just believe that side and not look at my side at all? So besides your book, when did you start really speaking out publicly about your story? Shortly before my book came out, I made a couple videos.

Okay. And then after my book came out, there were people that were waiting to interview me. So I did a couple of interviews with those people. I started looking for other channels that I could speak to. Yeah. And I got more involved with the survivor community. My wife got involved with the survivor community. She counsels two or three survivors doing parts work and deprogramming and spiritual work

with these people who are similar situations. So we're, and we just, we just bought a house. We want to, we want to start a nonprofit to help survivors. And we, I don't know the details of what we're going to do, but we know that we have to do something in this area, like this, the fact that this is on our plate means we have to do something. And it's so interesting because while it's been so many years since they left, this, I feel like this specific chapter is very, very new and fresh.

You know, like actually being able to tell your story and not feel like you have to hold back in any way and have people that actually want to listen and want to help you and get it out there. I feel like that's what you've been waiting for. It's what I've been waiting for. And I've got, I'm speaking at two conferences in September. It's amazing. So that the International Human Trafficking and Social Justice Conference, which is out of the University of Tali. and it's a big conference and I attended it last year and just maintain contact with one of the

coordinators and send in my proposal and they accepted it so that's going to be September. I'm going to Daytona Beach in September for another conference and it's all about this. Yeah. So yeah, things are happening and I know I know they're going to continue to happen. but I don't know. Like it's still hard for me day to day because all I wanted was to be my daughter's dad. All I wanted was her childhood. Now she's 18.

So that's gone. There's just so many different layers to it. It's like when it first started, you're worried about her safety. Now it's almost like you don't even know what's been put into her brain. You don't know what she's gone through. And it's like there's so many different layers in the same. sense that in the grand scheme of things, you just want to be her dad, but then you also were trying to protect her. And no one allowed that. Yep, no one allowed it. So now it's like it's about

protecting her. It's also her mother. I love her mother. And I believe that her mother told me she did what she could do. She told she she told me her family's a cult. She told me what was going to happen. I don't think she had any control over what she did. She was being coerced through trauma to carry out the plan of these perpetrators. And she set me up so that I wasn't totally destroyed so that I could come back and write a book. And I believe that they want out of this, my first wife wants out of this cult system.

But that's something. else that other people have a hard time understanding. Or now that my daughter's 18, they'll just say, well, she's going to come see you. And it's like, you don't understand. Her mother took her from me. It wasn't because of domestic issues. It was because of her father. And did your first wife ever respond to you releasing the book or you haven't heard anything?

Well, she was supposedly the author of that email that went to my church and place of work. But the email is so ridiculous. ridiculous and so poorly written that I don't I don't think it was her or I think that she was just being told what to write because her English is perfect and it's just that the way it was said and what was said, you know, Ian kept her in the bedroom and made her go to the bathroom on the floor like I had never heard that before. Yeah, just bizarre things. It was just like the accusations against me were vague.

Okay. It was we escaped in fear of our lives. And that's all I knew about the accusations for the entire time I was locked up. And I would just say, that's not what happened. She told me for three weeks she was leaving. So how was it an escape? She had the passport. She told me she was leaving.

I was trying to get help. I still want to get help. Like to like I've never had child services or the police in my life. I didn't I didn't know I had no idea what the allegations could be against me. Because I had never never dealt with it. It wasn't none of it's true. You know, other than I've said things to her that I wouldn't say now. But but that's not what they're claiming.

They're claiming that they feared for their lives. Right. It's just so so bogus, but people, people just take it and run with it. And it does come back to just look at the child and now she's 18. So it's now people think, oh, well, she's, she's free. She's her own person. It's like. But your first, your wife wasn't even free.

Exactly. Yeah. They, they're able to maintain control through trauma over the course of a life. And in a way, you know, people don't realize when it's all you know. know, which I feel like that was all she knew. So she's just kind of following along with it. And maybe she's scared. You know, you never know the depth of something.

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I know the family's not a good family. Right. I know that my first wife didn't take her because of me. And I believe that she was, like, I thought she was possessed. Yeah. When this was happening.

I had uncontrollable diarrhea. I was sweating and having to put towels down on the sheets because I was so terrified of what was happening in my home. And I told her, I wouldn't be surprised if your head started spinning around. I pulled up Henry Rollins's liar video where he's like dressed in a devil costume and saying, I'm a liar, I'm a liar. And I was like, this is what I see when I look at you. Can we please get help? Yeah. Just like I you were scared I was I was terrified and

Yeah and she she was under compulsion from outside forces from from whatever She said mind control and that's ultimately what it is is trauma based mind control matched with hypnosis and and other programming that yeah Through trauma they can do this and I didn't even know they could do it. Yeah, and so you asked me before about how I identified what it was and I was doing the bird analogy with you see a bird and you try to identify it so it was just a process of like what did she tell me what did I see what's happened what could it be and really what it comes down to is what this thing is is referred to as organized abuse or ritual abuse or satanic ritual abuse there's no there's no other

bird that it could be. Yeah. So that's how I identified what it was. And then that's a whole other topic with lots of literature, lots of research, lots of survivors with similar stories. So right now you said you and your current wife, you guys work on this. And then do you guys still do the garden business or you're doing something different? We're doing something different.

Okay. She works with survivors. She works with survivors and now she works at a school for, troubled youth. Okay. With behavior problems and complex trauma and their history. Most of them don't have families. They're under the care of Department of Children and Families.

Okay. So she just got a, she was a teacher. She was doing like long-term substituting and tutoring. And she just got this new job as like a counselor, residential counselor. So it's mostly like transporting and safety and stuff like that and teaching some educational or recreational groups. But she's only been doing that for like two weeks. Last year, I started working.

There's a state domestic violence program that people are ordered to take domestic violence classes from the court. I'm a group facilitator for that. And then I'm a program manager at a residential treatment facility. I just think it's so incredible that you literally stumbled upon some. that not only is like you got that feeling again of that connection, but then somebody that believes you and is helping you. She believes me.

She's helping me. She's not threatened by the fact that I love my first wife and I'm fighting for her as well as our daughter. Yeah. She loves my first wife and our daughter. She's put everything else aside because this issue is bigger than anything she's ever seen. Yeah.

And absolutely amazing. Yeah. I don't believe in random. Right. But I, yeah, I'm blown away and blessed to have her in my life and to be doing this with her. It's incredible. And she's an amazing person. The work that she does with survivors, I don't do that work, that type of work.

Yeah. Like she's meeting with people and helping them heal. And she put that together all on her own basically, just from educating herself and in a desire to help. Yeah. And, you know, I really do hope that not only, I mean, I know that over time, you know, your story will reach the right people. And it's only going to keep growing from here, especially now with the way social media is. Yep.

But I do hope that, you know, with time, like your daughter somehow can just break that cycle and hear you out. You know, like even if it's reading your book in our own time or something or just listening and maybe there's something that just it clicks, you know? And it's hard because like we were saying, you don't know what's being put into her head. But hopefully there's, I'm very big on intuition and your gut instincts. And hopefully, you know, there's something within her that just is like can escape on her own and get out of it and wants to get to know you on her own. I think like no matter how evil, evil gets or how much somebody tries to control somebody, you can't get all of them. Like there's still something in there that's saying, no, I'm going to fight this. I'm going to get away when I can.

Yeah. That's like all you can hope. All you can do is like you said, never stop fighting and believe. even hope for the best. I used to push her on the swing and just say, don't let go, never let go. And that was for the swing, but I feel like it's just for life too.

I didn't know what I was dealing with or what was coming up next. Just don't let go. Just, you know. And there was this, that the psychologist that I was trying to get my wife, my first wife, help from when I was telling him she was taking

our daughter to Poland. And he was saying, and that's illegal, she can't do that. He was like, just go back and just do what you do, and she'll come around again. And he told me this parable of, so there's a man swinging a sledgehammer at this big stone, and he keeps swinging and swinging and everyone looks at him

and thinks he's crazy because nothing's happening. And he just keeps swinging and swinging. And then one day the stone shatters because what everyone can't see is that there are little cracks happening all along the way. Absolutely. That's what I believe is happening. I believe good wins. I believe that things happen for a reason.

And I had this experience, which is not an experience I would have signed up for. And I lost the most important thing to me as a result of this experience. But it's also put me on a track where I see something that I wouldn't have seen. I want to fight for my daughter, first wife, and everyone else who's in this situation. It's become bigger than just my daughter, just my daughter. My eyes have been open to this in the world. It's not okay with me. Right.

So I'm willing to be used or... To spread that awareness. Yeah. It needs to be talked about. Yeah, whatever I can do, I'm willing to do. and yeah i'm going to make an audio book um good this hopefully this year i'll finish that i'm working with a polish person to have it translated into polish yeah um and just just keep going yeah do not never stop i know i don't have to tell you that but no i won't ever stop yeah no and

like i said really the way that you tell your story it's it's incredible and you've been through obviously losing your wife and your daughter is heartbreaking and horrible on its own but then everything that you went through after and having to basically lose yourself in a sense along the way like having to lie to get out of things for years and having to say a lie over and over that you know isn't true that's a different type of torture yes it is and mental pain and I feel like you've just been through so much and like I said it's incredible because I feel like this is only the beginning of of this chapter of everything. And it is crazy because I feel like it started there,

but now it is something that's so much bigger. And it's gonna bring a lot of knowledge and awareness to something that isn't talked about enough and something that I think it's easier for a lot of people to not look at and to brush under the rug because it's scary, it's uncomfortable, or people just don't believe it's happening when it is. And I think that one of the easiest solutions

is to just investigate, just check it. it out. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be some big long thing. It can just be making sure a child or a person is safe. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it doesn't have to be tricky. It's, you just have to have somebody who's aware of the who cares yeah who is aware of like what we're dealing with. Right. Like so if if you looked at it when the child was four, it would have been simple to get to the bottom of it. Now at 18. it's tougher because of, you know, she has legal rights as an adult and she might, she might decline help.

Yeah. But it's still like not, it's not this big impossible situation that we can't penetrate. It's, if you know what you're dealing with, you know what signs to look for, you know how to question somebody, you know, it blows my mind that nobody has helped. Yeah, that's gotten this far or it's had to go this far. Yeah. My recent communications with the U.S. Secretary of State again and the embassy, I sent my book to the CIA. Good for you.

I don't care. You shouldn't. No. And what you're doing is incredible, honestly. And like I said, the way that you tell your story is amazing. And I think it's so good that you're going to be, you know, continuing to tell it and speak at conferences. And you should do every interview that you can. Yeah.

Honestly, speak about it whenever you get the opportunity to, because it is your life. And you deserve to, I feel like you were silenced for so many years. and told you were crazy. So now it's like now it's time to use your voice and not be told to shut up basically or that you're nuts because you're not. Yep, yeah. It's still like that whole period of being told you're crazy

and having to act that part. It's still like there's like a trauma wound there. Oh, for sure. Like I don't care what people think. I don't, I know who I am. and I know what crazy is and what crazy isn't. But it's still just like, you know, people look at you. And even my parents don't believe me still.

Yeah. Or not my dad doesn't fully believe me. It's tough to tell him exactly where he's at other than he doesn't really want to think about it. Right. You know, the past is the past. Your daughter will come find you. That's what all of them do. You know, and he keeps it simple.

And I think most people who this isn't thrust upon. Yeah. They don't have the time or the energy to really look that close. You know, even my best friends, they're dealing with their own lives, their own children, their own jobs. Yeah. They don't have the opportunity to look into it as closely as I have. Right. And they care, but what are you going to do about it?

And I've been on this road where, like, I care and I have to find something to do about it because I won't let up. I won't give up. but everyone else, you know, they have their simple solutions and then it's like, oh, I'm done thinking about that. I have to go back to work. Right. To their reality. Which is understandable. And also, I don't, I think if it wasn't my daughter, I wouldn't want to look at it either.

So that's, that goes back to part of it as a blessing. Like I don't wonder who I am or what I'm doing here or what my purpose is. Like, it's right there in front of me. that that's like that's that's a blessing that's a blessing that I'm in a position to know that other people are also suffering and suffering because of what they're enduring and suffering because of the public and society refuses to look at it yeah despite all of the evidence that's out there now and all of the survivor testimonies it just hasn't hasn't hit the radar well I'm so glad that you were able to come and share you really

really did an incredible job. And any, besides your book, obviously, if there's any personal links or resources that you want me to share and post in the description, send them over so that people can kind of follow along and keep up and whatever else. So was there, of course, was there anything else you wanted to touch on or include? Do you think you got it all? I think we got it all. All right. You didn't, seriously, you did an incredible job. Thank you. Of course.