Sept. 27, 2023

Behind Closed Doors

Behind Closed Doors

Unspeakable: A True Crime Podcast by Kelly Jennings brings you the disturbing case of the torture mother.

Gertrude Baniszewski was an Indiana divorcee who oversaw and facilitated the prolonged torture, mutilation, and eventual murder of Sylvia...

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Unspeakable: A True Crime Podcast by Kelly Jennings brings you the disturbing case of the torture mother.

Gertrude Baniszewski was an Indiana divorcee who oversaw and facilitated the prolonged torture, mutilation, and eventual murder of Sylvia Likens, a teenage girl she had taken into her home.

The case is unique in that, while Baniszewski did play an active role in Likens' death, the majority of the torture that eventually brought about Likens' demise was carried out by Baniszewski's teenage children and other neighborhood children.

Although Baniszewski did instruct the children on several occasions, it was later discovered that they took a large degree of Likens' torture into their own hands, in what would later be called a Lord of the Flies scenario come to life. When she was convicted of first degree murder in 1965, the case was called "the single worst crime perpetuated against an individual in Indiana's history".

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Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime
podcast where I tell stories of real crimes

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with real victims, whose cases are
so shocking that many are left wondering how

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is this even real? I use
my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and

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combine with my years as a criminal
justice educator, dig deep into complex cases

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of evil acts, some so evil
many feel they are unspeakable. Warning.

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Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences.
If you are easily offended, then I'm

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not your girl. Listening discretion is
advised. Hey y'all, kJ here back

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for an other episode of Unspeakable.
How are you doing You? Probably notice

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I sound a little stuffy, but
that's because I got something going on.

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But I'm gonna fight through just for
you. I'm gonna tell a good story

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today. But before I start,
I have to give some shout outs to

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some people because we got some new
patron members in the house. Let's start

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with Miss Carly Henson from Bruley,
Louisiana and Charlene Bordelaine from Walker, Louisiana.

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I mean, hello Louisiana, peeps. I've also got Tracy Ray from

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the Great I was about to say
the Great State, but from the great

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area of Denham Springs, Louisiana.
All my Louisiana people, what's up?

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Super glad to have you now.
I also have Miss Brianna Jones and Lee

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s No last name for Lee,
but hey, Lee, you know who

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you are. Hey. Remember if
you didn't put your address on Patreon,

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I can't send you your awesome little
gifts that I like to send out.

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So go in there and make sure
that you have your address for me so

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I can get everything to you.
And then from the great state of Texas,

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I've got Miss shell Lee Faine and
Miss Sharon Dixon. How y'all doing

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over there? Hey, y'all?
And then Alabama. I cannot support your

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team. I'm sorry, Miss Jamie. I can't do it. I was

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born against it. But I can
support you and you can support me.

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How about that? So, Miss
Jamie Patterson, how are you doing?

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Then? I I can't believe it. Ohio? How are you doing?

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Ohio? This is Miss Erica Ryan. Hey there, all the way in

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Howahi in Ohio? And then just
a few little jumps over from Florida,

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Miss Laura Krause, Hi Laura.
And then last but not least, all

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the way from Australia, miss Lee, and I think it's Bassill you.

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I hope I said that right,
girl, You get me if I said

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that wrong. Okay, Lee Basill, you so glad to have you all

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the way from Australia. And wow, if that's not just, I don't

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know. It makes me feel good
to know that I'm reaching all over the

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place. And y'all listening to my
story. So thank y'all, so so

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very much. Also, y'all have
asked and I made it happen. People

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are asking about card decals. So
if you want to look at some of

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the little uh mic drop car decals
that I had made, go to unspeakable

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00:03:08.960 --> 00:03:13.000
dot com. Unspeakable the podcast dot
com. You can click on merch and

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then there's a new link. You
click there and there's a whole lot of

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new stuff. Go check it out, get you something ordered, and if

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you have anything else you want,
like someone mentioned, hey what about mousepads,

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I'm gonna get those made too,
So go check it out. Let

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me know if you want something else, and Mama will make it happen.

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Now let's jump into this story.
And dang, it seems like I got

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a lot of kid cases. The
last few weeks, but it is what

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it is. This one was requested, and so I'm following through, and

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I'm gonna do this story about a
girl named Sylvia Likns. And before we

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could start talking about Sylvia, I
gotta talk about the woman whose house this

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is gonna take place in. And
I had to do more research than I'm

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proud of to figure out how to
say her last name, because no matter

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how many times I looked it up, everybody said it different. I even

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went to a pronunciation website to figure
out how to say it, and of

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course they said it two different ways. So I'm gonna go with the way

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it was said in the police tapes
when they were doing an interview with this

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person. So it is gonna be
Benichetsky is how I'm gonna pronounce it,

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but other people pronounced it other ways. Don't come at me if you don't

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like the way I'm pronouncing it.
All right, So let's start, though.

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We're gonna be in nineteen twenty nine, so way back in the gap,

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right. This is gonna be about
a month before the Wall Street crash,

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and the US is about to go, you know, take that deep

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dive down into the Great Depression,
and we're gonna have that worst economic collapse

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of you know, the US.
And I don't know if maybe this is

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gonna be some type of foreshadowing in
a way, because someone was born that

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same year who was also going to
bring some epic terror and downfall in her

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lifetime. And her name is gonna
be Gertrude van Fawsen. Now she will

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turn into a Banichetski I mentioned a
minute ago, but for right now,

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she's going to be Gertrude van Fawsen. And she's going to be the third

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of six children born into the van
Faussen family, and they have a mixed

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heritage of both Polish and Dutch.
And she was firmly, firmly regarded as

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a daddy's girl, and all accounts
say that she was doated on by her

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daddy and she always wanted to be
with him and they had a very very

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very good relationship. Now, when
attention was all that was left that her

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father could give her because of the
collapse you know of the US, as

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far as money and luxuries of any
type, a lot of the kids in

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the in the van Faussen family started
to resent Gertrude shorthand we would call her

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Gert. Okay, a lot of
the kids in the family started to resent

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Girt because, like I said,
when there was nothing of monetary value that

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they could be given, it was
a lot to ask to get the attention

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of their father, and their father
really doated on little Gert Now. The

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mother thought it was a bit much, and eventually it shifted towards her own

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mother, hating her because of the
attention that her father gave, and that

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mother daughter relationship became pretty icy,
and the difference in the treatment of the

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children from Gert's mother was a bit
like obnoxious. It became pretty obvious that

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the mom was not very loving towards
little Girt. Now. This would also

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follow her into her school years,
and the friends of Gert's siblings would also

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in turn like to bully on Gertrude
as a like a pack Her father saw

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this issue and would even give more
attention to Gertrude as a result. The

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father ran the household back then,
if you remember that Dad's called the shots,

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and so no matter what everyone in
the family tried to do, the

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dad would always get back little Gertrude. And father and Gert you know,

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they would laugh and joke and she
would sit at the table and read her

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little books were dad, and while
money was scarce, they still had that

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loving relationship. But by one account, it was stated that they were at

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the kitchen table one day. They're
laughing and joking as they always did,

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and Gert's reading to him when he
laughs really, really hard, but then

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his eyes somewhat seemed to bulge from
his head. He's laughing so hard,

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and then he just flat out falls
over and dies. His head slams down

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into the table and he's dead.
Now, I did see another account that

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said that he was actually weeding his
garden whenever he had that heart attack.

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But I mean, just newsflash,
I wasn't there. This was nineteen twenty

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nine. So I'm just giving you
both accounts. You can decide which one

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you want to believe or not.
But I know this, no matter what

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account you believe. Gert starts screaming, right, something's wrong with her daddy,

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And the mom comes running in,
and rather than running straight to her

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father and saying, oh my god, what happened, she turns to Girt

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and screams, what did you do
to him? And immediately puts the blame

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on this child that her father has
just killed over from a heart attack,

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and Gert says, hey, I'll
run to a doctor. I'll go get

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a doctor. I'll do whatever I
need to do, and her mom just

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kind of quit back at her,
I don't have any money for a doctor.

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Do you have money for a doctor. Rather than what you would expect

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the response to be of a mom
grabbing the child and saying, come here,

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come out of here, it's okay, right, kind of sheltering them

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from what's happening and then calling for
help, no, she pretty much just

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kind of snarls back at Gert and
says, this is your fault, and

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I can't fix it because I don't
have the money to fix it. And

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so whenever her dad dies, Gert
is really maladjusted to that big change in

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her life and the one person that
gave her all the support was now gone,

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and everyone that turned against her her
family was who she was left with.

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So she was irrationally blamed by her
mother, and as a child,

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she would suffer from night terrors that
were combined with the increasingly escalating cruelty of

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her mother, and her mom would
even start to beat her and physically abuse

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her after the other kids went to
bed, and so her existence became quite

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sad pretty quickly, and over the
next three years it would just get even

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worse. She got blamed for everything
that happened in the household or didn't happen

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in the household. If there wasn't
enough food, it's because Gert ate too

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much. If something was lost,
it was because Gert took it and she

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lost it. She was always the
brunt of the blame for whatever went wrong.

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So Gert's social life remained pretty desolate
and she would suffer socially emotionally.

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She didn't have that many friends,
and she would eventually give up on female

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relationships because she saw females as the
root of her problems. So her siblings

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and her siblings friends would all start
these vicious rumors about her, saying that

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she was promiscuous and that she was
easy, that she had multiple STDs,

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and just really horrible things to say
about a kid or a teenager who doesn't

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even know how to defend themselves,
and that really just really burned this fire

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into Gertrude that she hated females.
She did not see the value in a

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female because all they do is trying
to drag her down. So when puberty

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hit, she became really really interested
in boys, right, her attention was

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really fixated on the males, and
her mother would often hiss at her,

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you know, that she was acting
inappropriate. However, flirting was really the

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only thing that Gert was ever actually
doing. There's there's no proof that she

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was being promiscuous or hyper sexualized or
anything anything like that. It seemed like

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she just was really flirtatious, but
her mom would really hammer home that she

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was just inappropriate sexually. And on
top of being accused of being a guess

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sexually immoral was the fact that she
was just an average looking girl. She

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wasn't this beauty, you know,
beauty queen. She had to work for

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the attention of the males, and
she didn't really have this outgoing personality either,

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So she didn't have a whole lot
going for her as far as beauty

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and charm. But she would quickly
realize that competition with other girls was a

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real thing if you wanted to get
that male attention, and so in order

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to overcome her lack of beauty or
her lack of charm, she did become

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promiscuous. So, I don't know, manifest destiny or something, but she

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did turn that corner and become a
promiscuous girl. When that did happen,

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then the rumor mill went wild.
But it was too late because Gert got

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a taste of attention. And when
she got that taste of attention, the

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negative you know, things that came
with it didn't really matter. Daddy was

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gone and she replaced him with other
male attention. And you can see how

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quickly that probably went down south with
other girls, you know, in her

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in her neighborhood. Now, older
men were her favorite. Okay, she

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liked those older men, but her
only real connection with a man that she

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will say she ever really had was
with her dad. That was the only

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true loving relationship that she felt.
And because I guess her dad was older,

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I could see why she would jump
towards older males. A matter of

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fact, I see that now in
young girls that lack male attention, and

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so they go for those older men, not realizing that those older men.

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You know, as a young girl, you don't have anything really to offer

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an older man, I guess other
than sexual you know, desire. You're

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not going to be this, you
know, runner of a household. You're

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not gonna be a matriarch. If
you're sixteen and you're sleeping with a thirty

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year old, it just not to
menion. It's illegal, but it's you

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know, it's not really fitting.
But young girls don't see that, you

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know. So at sixteen years old, she would drop out of school.

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She packed up her things, and
she moved out of the house and very

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quickly married a guy named John Bankowitz. Now when you read his name,

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it's look, it's like Benizuski,
and you'll see other people refer to it

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as Benizuski. But like I said, Benichetsky is how it was said in

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the police recordings, and that's why
I'm going with it. So either way,

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they only dated a few months too, So she jumped very quickly into

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this marriage. And I think anyone
in today's times would go a rut row.

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Probably not a good idea young girl
jumping into a marriage after only a

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few months. And John that she
married was an eighteen year old police officer.

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And something kind of sad too,
to mention was that when they got

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married, only his family came to
the wedding. Gert's own family didn't attend

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the wedding. She really had no
friends that were in the wedding. She

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didn't have any support from her family. Her mother disagreed with the marriage,

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and gert hated her siblings because of
all of those rumors of promiscuity and hateful

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things that they had spread about her. So she really, I guess,

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dove headfirst into this marriage thinking that
it was going to save her when you

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could probably see the riding on the
wall that that's not going to happen.

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But they settled into a life,
and it quickly became apparent to John that

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Gertrude had never been taught the things
that a girl should be taught growing up,

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things like how to cook. Again, I'll be back up real quick.

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Someone's going girls don't have to cook, Okay, touche. But I

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think in normal societal standards of the
nineteen sixties that's what happened, right,

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Women stayed home barefoot and pregnant basically, and you needed to cook and clean

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and care for your man. And
not saying it had to be that way,

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but that's what it was at that
time. And Gertrude's own mom didn't

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trust her in the kitchen. It
would never teach her to cook because she

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didn't want to spend any time with
her. She blamed her for her father's

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death, and all they did was
kind of be ousting towards her. So

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one thing though that John was aware
of what he married her was her reputation,

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and he was very much intrigued by
her sexual expertise that supposedly she had

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based on all the rumors that were
spread about her. Unfortunately, though,

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he found himself not with a submissive
woman, you know, who would basically

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mother him, but rather kind of
a dud as a wife. She kept

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the house kind of clean, but
nagged him constantly about his messes, but

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failed to clean the home. She
was overly frugal with the money, which

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he didn't like, and she always
fussed if he went to get drinks with

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the guys after work, which again
was kind of a societal normal thing back

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then. So she didn't clean house, she didn't cook very well, she

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wasn't good at doing the laundry,
and all she did was bitch about the

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money. As you can see,
it kind of wasn't off to a good

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00:15:39.960 --> 00:15:43.919
start. So something that kind of
struck me there was that it seems as

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00:15:43.919 --> 00:15:48.240
though control wasn't there for her as
a child. She was completely out of

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00:15:48.240 --> 00:15:52.799
control. So whenever she got into
this new marriage, she had no example

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00:15:52.799 --> 00:15:54.519
of what a marriage should look like. She doesn't know how to be a

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motherly, matronly wife figure, and
so what she does is she tries to

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00:16:00.600 --> 00:16:07.080
take control of every aspect when she
gets a taste of control, and it

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doesn't make John very happy. So
after about a year of marriage, he

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00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:12.919
notices, look, she's not even
growing as a wife. Her cooking still

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00:16:12.919 --> 00:16:18.679
sucks, she's not doing well around
the house. And then John is really

225
00:16:18.759 --> 00:16:23.279
let down and disappointed in the one
place he absolutely expected her to excel in,

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which was the bet. She did
not fulfill the rumors that he had

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00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:32.320
heard about her, that she was
going to be this you know, sexual

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00:16:32.360 --> 00:16:37.600
temptress as a teen. You know, she's young, she's eighteen years old.

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She was considered to be kind of
clumsy and laxa daisical in her sexual

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antics with him, and John would
argue that he kind of felt duped by

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her because he was experienced at eighteen
years old with the girls. And he

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let it be known too. He
made it very clear that she was not

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making him happy sexually, and than
her try to meet the bar of what

234
00:17:02.159 --> 00:17:07.000
he wanted, she withdrew sexually,
and John, getting fed up with every

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aspect of the marriage, became increasingly
violent towards her. So Gert would become

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00:17:12.720 --> 00:17:17.319
pregnant multiple times in the next few
years of their marriage, and they would

237
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end up having four children back to
back to back. And while I'm not

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saying that, you know, she's
a complete victim here, I think she

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00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:32.519
does have a few things going on. Mentally. She's been emotionally abused.

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I think she's blamed for the death
of her father, the one person that

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00:17:34.960 --> 00:17:38.480
she loved the most. She's not
taught how to become a woman, and

242
00:17:38.519 --> 00:17:45.839
then she becomes one very quickly and
a mother very quickly, and her husband

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00:17:45.880 --> 00:17:48.559
is just very degrading of her performance, I guess as a wife and mother.

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So what she does do is where
she lacks and taking care of John,

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00:17:55.079 --> 00:17:59.759
she flips the script and she becomes
very much engaged in her home.

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00:18:00.279 --> 00:18:03.680
So she started keeping a very clean
house for the kids, and she took

247
00:18:03.720 --> 00:18:07.559
it upon herself to learn to cook, and she even went and sought out

248
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nutritional advice from her kids doctors to
say, Okay, obviously don't know what

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00:18:11.359 --> 00:18:14.599
I'm doing. What do I need
to do here to make things better,

250
00:18:15.319 --> 00:18:19.160
she started showing way more attention to
her children, and when that happened,

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John got increasingly frustrated and really started
up up in is that not the most

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00:18:26.279 --> 00:18:29.759
Southern thing you've heard me say thus
far? Up in oh my God.

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He started increasing the beatings that he
inflicted upon Gert, and his reason was

254
00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:40.920
simply that he says she annoyed him. She absolutely annoyed him, and the

255
00:18:40.920 --> 00:18:45.400
beatings got worse. But John wanted
his police officer career to remain unblemished,

256
00:18:45.880 --> 00:18:51.119
so he was very careful with his
antics. Because he worked with abused women,

257
00:18:51.960 --> 00:18:55.000
he knew the triggers, he knew
kind of what to expect, and

258
00:18:55.079 --> 00:18:59.079
so he tried to be careful that
what he did to Girt was not something

259
00:18:59.119 --> 00:19:03.920
that was blatantly vious to the people
out in public. So Gert would become

260
00:19:03.200 --> 00:19:07.720
better at makeup, and as she
got better at makeup, she would cover

261
00:19:07.799 --> 00:19:12.200
her bruises. And she never had
been taught how to do makeup by her

262
00:19:12.200 --> 00:19:15.240
mother. She kind of had to
self teach it because all her mother would

263
00:19:15.240 --> 00:19:18.279
tell her was that if she did
make up, then that would make her

264
00:19:18.359 --> 00:19:22.799
horrsh okay. And so there was
a whole lot of sexual shame impressed upon

265
00:19:22.839 --> 00:19:26.559
Girt when she was younger, and
this would matter as this story plays out

266
00:19:26.599 --> 00:19:33.799
in her older life. And you
know, after she would have her first

267
00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:37.319
two children. Something I wanted to
mention that I forgot to put in my

268
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notes, but I remember it now
was that she was clinically suffering from a

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mental breakdown. And I think today
if she would, you know, the

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mental health the mental health standards that
we have in society today, which are

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still lacking, but we least have
some you know, semblance of mental health.

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Mattering back then in the same sees
is absolutely not even a thing as

273
00:20:02.640 --> 00:20:04.720
like it is today. And so
when she had this mental breakdown after the

274
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first two kids, when she sought
help, really the only thing that doctors

275
00:20:10.359 --> 00:20:11.519
told her was, you know,
maybe you need to pick yourself up by

276
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your bootstraps. You need to try
harder, you need to wake up,

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you need to freshen your face,
make your hair, do your makeup,

278
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be kind to your husband, and
really, you know, take control of

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00:20:22.720 --> 00:20:26.680
your destiny and then you will improve. When the reality of it is it

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more sounds like she's suffering from a
deep clinical depression, could even be some

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00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:37.599
postpartum depression, and something else that
I read said that clinically back then,

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in today's standards, they might would
even call her bipolar and maybe put her

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00:20:41.720 --> 00:20:48.240
on some bipolar medication. And that
lack of mental health care, and then

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you added two more children on top
of that. You can kind of see

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how this was a downward spiral for
this woman. And it kind of in

286
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my mind, if you remember Andrea
Yate's case, where she kept having children,

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00:21:03.799 --> 00:21:07.319
kept having children, and they went
more towards the religious route than the

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00:21:07.480 --> 00:21:10.519
medical route to help her, and
then she ends up drowning all of her

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children. I almost kind of see
that that story happening here, where she's

290
00:21:15.400 --> 00:21:18.359
just getting worse and worse, but
the times were just not helpful to her.

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00:21:19.799 --> 00:21:22.119
So she got to know some of
the women in her neighborhood, and

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that's when she first learned about divorce
from another woman in her neighborhood. And

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00:21:26.720 --> 00:21:32.279
so this idea of I don't have
to necessarily be with him starts kind of

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rolling around her brain. And then
finally John would raise his fist to her

295
00:21:36.799 --> 00:21:40.279
to punch her and beat her,
and that's when she just comes out with

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00:21:40.279 --> 00:21:41.319
it, Look, I want a
divorce from you. I don't have to

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00:21:41.319 --> 00:21:45.160
take this and I'm not gonna take
it. And John was literally stunned by

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00:21:45.160 --> 00:21:48.240
this. You know, he's the
man of the household and he's in charge,

299
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and he makes the money, and
you're the wife. You're supposed to

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be submissive and do what I want. And she kind of throws the flag

301
00:21:55.440 --> 00:21:56.160
in his face and says, nah, I don't want to do this.

302
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And by the next week after she
says that the paperwork was filed and she

303
00:22:02.279 --> 00:22:06.839
was awarded full custody of the kids. But kind of sadly, John never

304
00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:10.759
contested it. He didn't want to
take care of the kids. He almost

305
00:22:10.799 --> 00:22:17.119
kind of was winning. Still,
so they get a divorce and guess what,

306
00:22:17.319 --> 00:22:21.839
marriage number two is coming in hot
right. She wastes no time and

307
00:22:21.920 --> 00:22:26.119
she meets a man named Edward Guthrie
just a few months later and they quickly

308
00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:33.880
wed again. They get married,
So obviously Gert's not picking up on the

309
00:22:33.880 --> 00:22:36.519
fact that maybe you ought to get
to know somebody before you marry them.

310
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But again, she's got a lot
going on in her life. And as

311
00:22:40.279 --> 00:22:45.400
you might could guess, he's hashtag
he's a drunk and unemployed. That was

312
00:22:45.440 --> 00:22:48.720
her choice of man at that time. But even though he's a drunk and

313
00:22:48.799 --> 00:22:56.160
unemployed, he married her because those
child support checks that she's supposed to be

314
00:22:56.160 --> 00:23:00.680
getting from John, those were looking
pretty good too, and him Floyd man

315
00:23:00.839 --> 00:23:04.279
right, it's kind of like a
guaranteed income. So the issue would come

316
00:23:04.359 --> 00:23:10.039
that she would get her checks for
child support, but then he would spend

317
00:23:10.039 --> 00:23:12.400
half the checks on liquor before Gert
got any of the money. Again,

318
00:23:12.480 --> 00:23:15.000
the man runs the household, right, she puts the money in the account,

319
00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:19.200
he would go spend the money.
Not to mention, he didn't like

320
00:23:19.359 --> 00:23:26.079
her kids, I cannot even today. I know people that marry people and

321
00:23:26.079 --> 00:23:29.559
then they don't like the person they
married's kids. And I'm not sure how

322
00:23:29.599 --> 00:23:34.279
you expect that to work out.
Because as a woman, if you don't

323
00:23:34.359 --> 00:23:40.319
like my kids, you can go
fuck yourself. They're my number one job

324
00:23:40.359 --> 00:23:42.799
in life is to love my children, to take care of them. And

325
00:23:42.839 --> 00:23:47.920
if you don't like them, you
can kick bricks, you can get somewhere.

326
00:23:48.480 --> 00:23:51.640
But I guess because of the times
back then, it kind of was

327
00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:56.319
what it was. But he saw
those kids as basically baggage, just extra

328
00:23:56.359 --> 00:24:00.680
baggage, and he wanted the check
for for them from their from their father.

329
00:24:02.319 --> 00:24:07.000
One time, he even hit one
of the kids and he woke up

330
00:24:07.039 --> 00:24:11.279
in a ditch with a huge lump
on the back of his head. Okay,

331
00:24:11.440 --> 00:24:14.839
so Gert did get upset with him
for hitting her kids, and she

332
00:24:14.880 --> 00:24:17.759
womped him upside the head. Yeah, I said, won't write that down.

333
00:24:17.759 --> 00:24:21.160
She wamped him, Okay, upside
the head because she wasn't playing.

334
00:24:21.240 --> 00:24:25.400
She did love her children, and
you're not going to hit my kids now.

335
00:24:25.400 --> 00:24:30.279
He never tried that again because he
didn't like that. But something else

336
00:24:30.359 --> 00:24:34.519
kind of changed whenever that happened,
and Gert realized, you know what,

337
00:24:36.319 --> 00:24:40.319
if I'm not getting my way with
men and physically we're not getting along,

338
00:24:40.839 --> 00:24:45.880
like as far as relationship goes,
I have another age old tool in my

339
00:24:47.240 --> 00:24:52.960
you know box of tools that I
need to become good at. And she

340
00:24:52.119 --> 00:24:55.799
realized, you know what it is. It's sex. If I can become

341
00:24:55.920 --> 00:25:00.480
sexually amazing, then I can control
a man. Now I'm sorry, and

342
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:07.599
she is wrong. I mean,
if you can provide for a man sexually,

343
00:25:07.720 --> 00:25:10.680
I find it hard to believe a
man around here is gonna say no,

344
00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:14.839
how dare you please me? You
know I'm trying to say, like,

345
00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:18.559
Okay, maybe you do have something
kind of going on there. If

346
00:25:18.559 --> 00:25:22.960
you disagree with me whatever, I'm
just throwing it out there. So she

347
00:25:22.119 --> 00:25:26.559
upped her game. Her her golden
was all right, I may not be

348
00:25:26.599 --> 00:25:27.759
a good wife, it may suck
it cooking, it may not clean too

349
00:25:27.799 --> 00:25:32.039
well, and I may have a
shitty personality and a horrible man picker,

350
00:25:32.079 --> 00:25:34.680
but by god, I can become
sexually amazing. And so she upped the

351
00:25:34.680 --> 00:25:42.640
antie and she was even able to
get Eddie to stop drinking and was able

352
00:25:42.680 --> 00:25:48.039
to make old Eddie get a job
all by laying the booty on him.

353
00:25:48.119 --> 00:25:52.720
All right, so she started slaying
it in the bedroom and he kind of

354
00:25:52.799 --> 00:25:57.359
changed his ways, and soon thereafter, guess what, he found himself stable.

355
00:25:57.599 --> 00:26:00.559
He had an income, and he
was like, oh my god,

356
00:26:00.640 --> 00:26:03.440
it turns out if I work and
I work hard, I can advance in

357
00:26:03.480 --> 00:26:07.720
the workplace and I can I can
make money. And then it backfired on

358
00:26:07.839 --> 00:26:11.240
Girt because he said, yeah,
I'm pretty much gonna divorce you now that

359
00:26:11.640 --> 00:26:15.279
I'm making I'm making my way and
I don't have to depend on your check

360
00:26:15.359 --> 00:26:21.039
from your baby daddy. So he
filed from divorce and he didn't. Are

361
00:26:21.039 --> 00:26:26.319
you ready for this? He didn't
even tell her he filed for divorce and

362
00:26:26.440 --> 00:26:30.559
did not even tell her when she
was served the paperwork. Do you know

363
00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:37.319
what his reason and court was for
divorcing her quote unquote the kids annoyed him.

364
00:26:37.319 --> 00:26:41.000
Welcome to being a parent. Your
kids are gonna annoy you. Other

365
00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:45.519
people's kids are gonna annoy you.
But that'd gone right. So their entire

366
00:26:45.599 --> 00:26:52.319
marriage, from the day they met
through the last day and divorce was just

367
00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:55.920
a year, actually less than a
year, all right, So she had

368
00:26:56.000 --> 00:27:03.839
marriage number two under her belt.
And that's when she really starts getting kind

369
00:27:03.839 --> 00:27:07.079
of depressed. Right, she can't
keep a man. She's got all these

370
00:27:07.200 --> 00:27:15.640
kids, she's not she's poor,
you know, And so she does what

371
00:27:15.720 --> 00:27:17.960
I think a lot of women or
a lot of men too, a lot

372
00:27:17.960 --> 00:27:22.960
of us do when we're sad and
we're lonely, is that she starts kind

373
00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:26.480
of reminiscing through those rose colored glasses, you know, of her marriage to

374
00:27:26.519 --> 00:27:30.960
her original husband John, and she
starts going, you know, maybe it

375
00:27:32.000 --> 00:27:33.880
wasn't so bad, Maybe things weren't
as bad as I thought they were.

376
00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:37.559
Maybe I really should have stayed with
my husband, and we should have worked

377
00:27:37.559 --> 00:27:41.240
things out, and yeah, we
screwed up, but we're young, and

378
00:27:41.799 --> 00:27:45.480
you know we're gonna make it if
we could just you know, try again.

379
00:27:45.839 --> 00:27:49.759
So she runs into him one night
while I think he was on patrol,

380
00:27:51.240 --> 00:27:55.400
but they start having a conversation.
That conversation went really well, and

381
00:27:55.480 --> 00:27:59.000
she invites her ex husband back to
the house for dinner, and as you

382
00:27:59.039 --> 00:28:02.119
can imagine, the kids are super
excited. Right, Oh, my god,

383
00:28:02.799 --> 00:28:06.759
Daddy's back home. Mom's got him
here where they're having dinner, dat

384
00:28:06.799 --> 00:28:11.240
mama's cooking and things. Things are
just this is so exciting. Daddy's back.

385
00:28:11.319 --> 00:28:17.279
And so she got Old John liquored
up, and then she slang her

386
00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:23.200
new her newly mastered brown Chicken,
brown cow right on Old John and then

387
00:28:23.319 --> 00:28:26.559
lo and behold, if the kids
don't wake up for breakfast the next morning,

388
00:28:26.559 --> 00:28:30.400
and guess who's still there, Daddy. That's right, because Daddy spent

389
00:28:30.480 --> 00:28:38.799
the night after he got serviced by
old Girt. And amazingly, they fell

390
00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:45.400
back in love. But they had
grown apart in their you know, their

391
00:28:45.440 --> 00:28:49.240
time when they weren't together, and
they realized, you know what, we're

392
00:28:49.240 --> 00:28:52.960
still in love, even though we're
kind of on different wave lengths, and

393
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:59.519
so they got married again in a
low key affair, but this round,

394
00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:03.720
you know, was so much better. Things were going well, they were

395
00:29:03.799 --> 00:29:11.000
working together until she got pregnant again, and unfortunately she would lose the baby

396
00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:14.599
in just the last few months of
the pregnancy. It wasn't in the first

397
00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:18.000
few weeks. It was towards the
end of the pregnancy. And when that

398
00:29:18.160 --> 00:29:23.119
happened, she fell into a very
very very deep despair. And when that

399
00:29:23.240 --> 00:29:30.720
happened, rather than John doating on
her or you know, acknowledging what she

400
00:29:30.799 --> 00:29:36.200
was going through and how sad things
were, he really just kind of withdrew

401
00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:38.200
as well and was like, Okay, this sucks. And their love life

402
00:29:38.200 --> 00:29:44.839
shriveled up and it just died dead
flat right there. And so even though

403
00:29:44.880 --> 00:29:49.559
their love life fell apart, apparently
they were still having sex, because shortly

404
00:29:49.599 --> 00:29:55.759
after she lost that baby, she
found herself pregnant again. And when she

405
00:29:55.880 --> 00:29:59.640
was pregnant again, she magically snapped
right back into being a good wife.

406
00:29:59.640 --> 00:30:03.599
And so it's like flip flopping back
and forth, and John was constantly on

407
00:30:03.640 --> 00:30:07.200
the verge of leaving, but whenever
she got pregnant again, he was so

408
00:30:07.240 --> 00:30:14.599
happy with her change that he stayed
and even though he had been violent towards

409
00:30:14.640 --> 00:30:17.920
her in the past and things,
you know, had kind of gone back

410
00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:22.839
and forth, he even stopped being
really violent towards her. So in her

411
00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:30.599
mind she thought, well, maybe
maybe I deserved the violence because I had

412
00:30:30.599 --> 00:30:33.480
been a bad wife, and so
she kind of internalized it and said,

413
00:30:33.480 --> 00:30:36.599
well, I wasn't doing a good
job. He was violent towards me,

414
00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:38.400
but I'm doing a good job,
a good job now, and so he's

415
00:30:38.440 --> 00:30:44.359
been nice to me, so maybe
things will get better. But that cycle

416
00:30:44.480 --> 00:30:48.359
kind of continued for seven more years. She would get pregnant, she would

417
00:30:48.519 --> 00:30:52.039
miscarry, she would go into a
depression, he would get violent, things

418
00:30:52.079 --> 00:30:56.440
would go bad, then she'd get
pregnant again, things would get better,

419
00:30:56.720 --> 00:31:00.559
and then she would miscarry again,
and it just was on and on for

420
00:31:00.720 --> 00:31:03.480
seven years. And by the end
of the marriage the second time, she

421
00:31:03.599 --> 00:31:07.279
did have two more healthy children,
but the rest of'em would die before

422
00:31:07.279 --> 00:31:12.480
they ever got to full term.
So I think I've painted a pretty decent

423
00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:17.440
picture here that you can see that
this was just not healthy for her emotionally

424
00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:22.160
physically, their relationships suffered. It
never really recovered, They never got help,

425
00:31:22.200 --> 00:31:25.240
and they just kept spitting out more
kids rather than solving the problems,

426
00:31:25.279 --> 00:31:29.119
which we see that in society today
too. But John would eventually file for

427
00:31:29.160 --> 00:31:36.400
divorce again, and guess what,
Gert would get the kids uncontested again whenever

428
00:31:37.039 --> 00:31:41.160
it was over. So how old
is Gert now? She's about thirty seven

429
00:31:41.200 --> 00:31:45.200
years old, mentally unstable, She's
depending on her child support checks as her

430
00:31:45.200 --> 00:31:52.000
income, and she still couldn't make
ends meet. Her life is just not

431
00:31:52.160 --> 00:31:56.559
going well. So over this time
of all of these things happening, she

432
00:31:56.720 --> 00:32:02.119
just becomes flat out bitter and mean, and there's a shift. And from

433
00:32:02.160 --> 00:32:06.400
the time that she was hitting in
one of her ex husband's for hitting her

434
00:32:06.480 --> 00:32:10.680
kids too. Now she puts a
lot of blame on her children and she

435
00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:15.200
sees them as causing her issues.
That she can't get a man because she

436
00:32:15.279 --> 00:32:19.599
has all these kids and then they
act bad, so no man wants to

437
00:32:19.640 --> 00:32:22.519
be around her, and so she
hates a whole lot of that blame though,

438
00:32:22.559 --> 00:32:28.000
on her female children, on her
daughters. Now, you know,

439
00:32:28.400 --> 00:32:32.960
I don't want to blame people,
you know, who are in this situation.

440
00:32:34.440 --> 00:32:37.319
Maybe it's learned behavior, but it
sure does seem kind of like she's

441
00:32:37.400 --> 00:32:44.240
mirroring how her mother behaved when she
lost her husband aka Gert's dad. You

442
00:32:44.319 --> 00:32:47.640
know. So now though, I'm
going to introduce to you the amazing Dennis.

443
00:32:47.839 --> 00:32:50.920
Okay, this is the next man
in her life. And he's a

444
00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:54.279
fellow ten years younger than Gert,
so he's in his twenties. And even

445
00:32:54.359 --> 00:32:59.039
better is he's married. For the
love of God, when she meets him,

446
00:33:00.039 --> 00:33:04.279
it's like she cannot figure this out. You know, God will not

447
00:33:04.400 --> 00:33:08.599
send you another another woman's husband.
If you didn't know that, I don't

448
00:33:08.599 --> 00:33:14.960
think that was in revelations anywhere.
But he's a younger fella, he's married,

449
00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:22.880
he's a welder, and he's prone
to self destructive drinking, kind of

450
00:33:22.920 --> 00:33:27.880
like the other husbands that she picked. But he was willing to take on

451
00:33:28.039 --> 00:33:35.039
Gertrude and her busload of heathens.
Amazingly, this young guy, and the

452
00:33:35.079 --> 00:33:37.880
way that she was able to keep
him around during this affair that they were

453
00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:40.960
having was that she would use sex
as a means of rewarding him whenever he

454
00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:46.240
would do something that she wanted.
Right. So what ended up happening was

455
00:33:46.880 --> 00:33:52.079
Dennis's wife found out about their affair, and even though Dennis didn't want to

456
00:33:52.079 --> 00:33:55.160
be with Gert. He wanted to
be with his wife. His wife was

457
00:33:55.200 --> 00:34:00.480
like, how about no, and
she rolled out and started a new relationship

458
00:34:00.759 --> 00:34:04.720
quite quickly, and so Gert was
always there kind of saying, hey,

459
00:34:04.759 --> 00:34:07.240
I'm here, I'll sleep with you, I'll do what you want. And

460
00:34:07.279 --> 00:34:09.559
so he kind of just I guess
settled and said, well, you're here,

461
00:34:09.599 --> 00:34:13.880
and you caused you know, or
we caused my divorce, so I

462
00:34:13.880 --> 00:34:19.360
guess we can just stay hooking up. And she moved Gert moved in with

463
00:34:19.440 --> 00:34:24.760
him only one day after his wife
left. One day, like the ink

464
00:34:24.840 --> 00:34:29.480
wasn't even dry, and she moved
in. So I'm not a big fan

465
00:34:29.519 --> 00:34:32.119
of dentists either, because I don't
think that you know, he made good

466
00:34:32.119 --> 00:34:36.519
decisions even though he's only in his
twenties, but he's just like whatever I

467
00:34:36.559 --> 00:34:40.280
mean, but red flag much even
ludicrous y'all. Remember Ludicrous said you can't

468
00:34:40.320 --> 00:34:44.840
turn a hole into a house wife
posed on ac Right, y'all know that

469
00:34:44.880 --> 00:34:51.599
song, y'all remember it just me? Okay, all right? So no,

470
00:34:51.639 --> 00:34:55.679
sooner did she move in with him, she completely stops taking care of

471
00:34:55.719 --> 00:35:00.239
the house. It's this repetitive cycle
you know of sex will not keep a

472
00:35:00.239 --> 00:35:05.559
man. It's got to be a
full scope here right of you being a

473
00:35:05.599 --> 00:35:10.599
good wife and a good lover and
a good partner. And she refused to

474
00:35:10.639 --> 00:35:15.440
clean all together. There was trash
all over the floor, there was bottles

475
00:35:15.480 --> 00:35:19.360
and food everywhere. I kind of
get like an episode of hoarders in my

476
00:35:19.360 --> 00:35:21.840
mind when I start thinking about how
filthy their house was, on top of

477
00:35:21.880 --> 00:35:25.159
the fact there's kids everywhere who don't
clean up after themselves. Can I get

478
00:35:25.159 --> 00:35:29.360
an amen from every parent listening right
now? The kids aren't going to clean

479
00:35:29.400 --> 00:35:32.280
up unless you're hounded them, So
you can imagine the mess. And on

480
00:35:32.559 --> 00:35:37.639
more than one occasion it was said
that even her children, like her little

481
00:35:37.639 --> 00:35:42.639
ones, were they choked on food
and trash from the floor, like bottle

482
00:35:42.679 --> 00:35:46.519
caps and things that were just left
on the ground. But what she did

483
00:35:46.599 --> 00:35:52.599
do was be available to him sexually, and so he stuck around for a

484
00:35:52.599 --> 00:36:00.199
while because of how she would treat
him in the bedroom, but eventually he

485
00:36:00.119 --> 00:36:04.920
wanted out. The sex was not
enough, the house was filthy, the

486
00:36:04.960 --> 00:36:07.920
kids were everywhere. He didn't want
the kids, they weren't his, and

487
00:36:07.960 --> 00:36:13.480
so he planned this escape from her
without her really really knowing. The day

488
00:36:13.480 --> 00:36:16.559
he planned his escape, and he
said, Okay, I'm leaving today,

489
00:36:16.639 --> 00:36:22.599
he would say. He came home
and strangely, the house was absolutely immaculate.

490
00:36:23.760 --> 00:36:29.480
She was cooking in the kitchen and
the kids were like hanging around her

491
00:36:29.480 --> 00:36:32.719
and watching her cook, and they
were having almost normalcy in the household.

492
00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:37.280
And he was stunned. He was
like taken aback by what is this?

493
00:36:37.960 --> 00:36:42.559
But he was happy. So they
go and to have a conversation in the

494
00:36:42.639 --> 00:36:45.079
room, you know, the side
room, and she apologized for how she

495
00:36:45.119 --> 00:36:47.079
had been acting, and she promised, look, I'm gonna make it up

496
00:36:47.079 --> 00:36:53.239
to you, which included a whole
bunch of brown chicken brown goal time again.

497
00:36:53.440 --> 00:36:55.840
So she starts laying that on him. Now, if you're tired of

498
00:36:55.880 --> 00:37:00.760
hearing me talk about it, imagine
how he's he is that even doing it

499
00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:06.480
is not solving the problems of the
relationship. And after they go in the

500
00:37:06.480 --> 00:37:09.199
back and she kind of rocks his
world. She immediately starts talking about wanting

501
00:37:09.239 --> 00:37:14.199
to get married, and Dennis has
a what the fuck moment right then and

502
00:37:14.239 --> 00:37:16.280
there, he completely freaks out and
was like, wait a minute, wait

503
00:37:16.280 --> 00:37:19.760
a minute, just because we went
in the bag and you know, and

504
00:37:19.800 --> 00:37:22.079
had sex and you cooked and cleaned
the house. Doesn't mean I want to

505
00:37:22.079 --> 00:37:25.320
marry you. And he says,
look, I don't. I don't want

506
00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:29.480
this. I don't want kids with
you. I don't want any more kids.

507
00:37:29.480 --> 00:37:31.320
He felt like children were a trap
and that she was trying to trap

508
00:37:31.400 --> 00:37:35.639
him, and her response to him
was, well, I didn't want any

509
00:37:35.679 --> 00:37:38.760
of these kids after my first one
either, But here I am so kind

510
00:37:38.760 --> 00:37:45.239
of like I guess she's saying,
misery wants company. And so they would

511
00:37:45.280 --> 00:37:47.920
stick around together long enough that they
would pop out one kid together. His

512
00:37:49.000 --> 00:37:53.719
name would be Dennis Lee. And
by that point altogether Gert had seven children

513
00:37:55.079 --> 00:38:01.440
between all of these men. And
in nineteen sixty five, when this story

514
00:38:01.559 --> 00:38:06.320
that I'm going to start into really
starts to take off, this is the

515
00:38:06.360 --> 00:38:08.920
ages that all of these children are, and it's gonna matter. In the

516
00:38:09.000 --> 00:38:15.760
story, she has her eldest daughter, Paula, who is seventeen, Stephanie

517
00:38:15.920 --> 00:38:22.119
who is fifteen, John who's twelve, Marie who is eleven, Shirley who

518
00:38:22.199 --> 00:38:27.239
is ten, James who is eight, and then little Dennis Lee. Now,

519
00:38:27.280 --> 00:38:29.159
if you're like, holy crap,
Kelly, I can't keep up with

520
00:38:29.199 --> 00:38:30.920
all these kids, don't worry about
it. You're not gonna have to.

521
00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.000
I'm I'm gonna get you on track, all right. But before we go

522
00:38:34.079 --> 00:38:39.559
further, remember she's got all seven
kids, and she's seemingly restarting this cycle

523
00:38:39.599 --> 00:38:44.000
of abuse, right, And so
I kind of wanted to say, why

524
00:38:44.079 --> 00:38:49.960
do abusers continue the abuse cycle,
especially when they hated the way that they

525
00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:52.559
were treated? Right? Why does
that happen? Because it's still happening in

526
00:38:52.599 --> 00:38:55.920
today's society. So I went to
one of some of these sites that I

527
00:38:55.960 --> 00:38:59.880
look at, but one of them
is called very wellmind dot com, and

528
00:39:00.079 --> 00:39:04.159
that's where I got a little bit
of this. But the reason abusers continue

529
00:39:04.199 --> 00:39:08.280
abuse and that cycle of abuse is
simply because it feels familiar to them.

530
00:39:08.360 --> 00:39:15.280
It's what they know. So if
the connection between abuse and love is made

531
00:39:15.320 --> 00:39:22.880
early in life, the feelings of
shame and anger, which naturally happen as

532
00:39:22.920 --> 00:39:29.559
a consequence of that abuse, can
become mixed up with sexual feelings, and

533
00:39:29.599 --> 00:39:35.800
that leads to confusion in the person
who is experiencing the abuse. So if

534
00:39:35.840 --> 00:39:39.400
abuse and love kind of get mixed
up in the mind and shame and anger,

535
00:39:40.320 --> 00:39:45.159
which are the consequences of that abuse, you know what I'm saying,

536
00:39:45.639 --> 00:39:51.079
they get mixed up, and it
gives mixed signals about what should be happening

537
00:39:51.079 --> 00:39:55.360
as a result of the abuse,
and so these feelings become interpreted as feelings

538
00:39:55.400 --> 00:40:01.760
of love and passion and can sometimes
even lead to sexual arousal, even though

539
00:40:01.760 --> 00:40:06.079
it's abuse, all right, And
I'm not going super deep into this,

540
00:40:06.159 --> 00:40:07.800
but I just kind of wanted to
show you how the brain can. It's

541
00:40:07.960 --> 00:40:12.960
the brain is amazing, but sometimes
it can really get things confused in the

542
00:40:13.079 --> 00:40:19.280
child's mind. So what happens is
someone who's been abused may believe that they

543
00:40:19.280 --> 00:40:24.519
are attracted to or feel love for
their abuser, sometimes even thinking that they

544
00:40:24.519 --> 00:40:30.960
have a special connection to the abuser, and their experience so far traps them

545
00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:37.039
into feelings of intimacy, which are
associated with the abuse because it was imprinted

546
00:40:37.039 --> 00:40:39.599
on them as a very young age, and so there's a confusion between the

547
00:40:39.639 --> 00:40:45.000
two love, intimacy and abuse.
They're so intertwined it's hard to separate them

548
00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:50.280
out. So when they are later
abused, like in an intimate relationship,

549
00:40:50.679 --> 00:40:55.760
they perceive those familiar feelings of shame
and anger as love and passion. And

550
00:40:55.800 --> 00:40:59.719
so I hope you can feel that
like I can, Like when you're young

551
00:40:59.760 --> 00:41:05.119
and you're in a bad relationship and
you somehow miss you mistake hurt as part

552
00:41:05.159 --> 00:41:07.800
of the love process, Like they
hurt me because they love me. They

553
00:41:07.800 --> 00:41:10.519
wouldn't hurt me if they didn't care
type thing. But it's just wrong,

554
00:41:10.559 --> 00:41:17.159
it's not love doesn't hurt. So
another thing too, is that in those

555
00:41:17.199 --> 00:41:22.360
feelings of it being familiar, sometimes
abused abused people will become abusive and they're

556
00:41:22.440 --> 00:41:27.719
using it as an attempt to heal
themselves. So, for example, a

557
00:41:27.760 --> 00:41:35.280
survival, a survivor of childhood sexual
abuse may try to undo the abuse by

558
00:41:35.360 --> 00:41:43.119
taking their power back now real quick. If someone is raped in today's society,

559
00:41:43.199 --> 00:41:45.920
will go do a sexual assault kit
on them, right, A sane

560
00:41:45.960 --> 00:41:50.639
nerse sexual assault nurse examiner will come
do that examination on them, super invasive,

561
00:41:51.119 --> 00:41:54.400
lots of swabbing, lots of pictures
taken. And one of the big

562
00:41:54.480 --> 00:42:00.440
things or the big mantras though of
these nurses is that we are not going

563
00:42:00.519 --> 00:42:04.320
to retake the power away from the
victim. So if the victim says stop,

564
00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:06.719
I've had enough, they're going to
stop. If they say no,

565
00:42:06.760 --> 00:42:08.599
I do not want pictures taken of
me they're not going to take the pictures.

566
00:42:08.880 --> 00:42:13.800
They're not going to force someone because
their power was already taken by someone

567
00:42:13.840 --> 00:42:16.840
against their will. We are not
going to further that by taking their power

568
00:42:16.920 --> 00:42:22.920
away. Again. Well, that's
kind of where these abuses. These people

569
00:42:22.920 --> 00:42:28.840
who are abused become abuser themselves because
they're trying to heal themselves by taking back

570
00:42:28.880 --> 00:42:32.800
the power and by engaging in a
relationship with another abuser. They can try

571
00:42:32.840 --> 00:42:38.679
to relive the relationship with their original
abuser, but in this instance, they

572
00:42:38.679 --> 00:42:44.039
want to get it right because they
have the power. So similarly, by

573
00:42:44.039 --> 00:42:46.800
becoming an abuser, someone who has
been abused can play the role of the

574
00:42:46.880 --> 00:42:54.519
more powerful person in the relationship in
an attempt to overcome the powerlessness they felt,

575
00:42:54.840 --> 00:43:00.400
but unfortunately it's not effective, and
they may repeatedly dominate others in that

576
00:43:00.440 --> 00:43:06.840
feudal attempt to get over the weakness
that they experienced, but they're never healing

577
00:43:06.840 --> 00:43:09.239
themselves. And it seems like Gert
was one of those people that all this

578
00:43:09.360 --> 00:43:16.400
misinterpretive abuse or misinterpreted abuse for love
and then the power struggle. It seems

579
00:43:16.440 --> 00:43:21.920
like she's jumping right in and that's
why she herself becomes an abuser. So

580
00:43:22.119 --> 00:43:29.280
here's Gert A Haggard asthmatic chain smoker, who is now continuing to I'll say

581
00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:35.159
in quotes, raise her kids.
But she's again alone because all the men

582
00:43:35.199 --> 00:43:40.679
in her life have left her.
And the main parts of this story are

583
00:43:40.679 --> 00:43:45.320
going to start at this time when
that daughter Paula that I mentioned a moment

584
00:43:45.360 --> 00:43:52.880
ago is a teenager herself. Paula
is seventeen and she is the eldest of

585
00:43:52.920 --> 00:43:57.599
Gert's children. But Gert is more
of a friend to Paula than she is

586
00:43:57.639 --> 00:44:02.760
a mother. Now, something that
Paula had to deal with was that Gert

587
00:44:04.159 --> 00:44:07.880
would bombard her with her troubles,
and Paula was kind of forced to listen

588
00:44:07.920 --> 00:44:13.880
to all of her mother's problems and
eventually that gets to be a lot for

589
00:44:13.920 --> 00:44:17.360
a kid. Kids should not have
to shoulder adult problems, but adults do

590
00:44:17.360 --> 00:44:22.199
it to kids all the time.
Think about divorce right where they You know,

591
00:44:22.239 --> 00:44:25.000
people who are getting divorced always put
their problems on, you know,

592
00:44:25.039 --> 00:44:28.719
their seven year old kid, like
their kid is supposed to understand it all

593
00:44:28.760 --> 00:44:31.360
and the complexities of it all.
And Paula gets burned out on it.

594
00:44:32.119 --> 00:44:38.920
So Paula switches her attention as she's
now seventeen, and she starts becoming interested

595
00:44:39.000 --> 00:44:45.079
in a boy that she knows.
And she's not promiscuous like Gert was her

596
00:44:45.079 --> 00:44:50.599
mother, but she's definitely interested for
sure in this boy. So at one

597
00:44:50.599 --> 00:44:53.079
point things got really hot and heavy
and they were kissing and they were touching

598
00:44:53.079 --> 00:44:55.920
each other at the house, and
that's when her mom, Gert, busts

599
00:44:55.960 --> 00:45:04.440
in and just unleashes all out age
on the two. She grabs Paula by

600
00:45:04.519 --> 00:45:08.880
her hair and hurls her across the
room, screaming insults at her. She

601
00:45:08.920 --> 00:45:13.559
starts calling her a whore and every
other name under you under the sun.

602
00:45:14.079 --> 00:45:16.239
And the boy that she was making
out with is trying to scramble and get

603
00:45:16.239 --> 00:45:22.199
out of the house. And from
that point forward, Gert orders that her

604
00:45:22.599 --> 00:45:29.679
sons that they are going to remove
all doors in that house and there will

605
00:45:29.719 --> 00:45:32.599
be no doors in this house,
and no one will go without her being

606
00:45:32.639 --> 00:45:37.000
able to see what they are doing
at any moment's time when she wanted to

607
00:45:37.480 --> 00:45:40.400
and to really serve this, you
know, this point home, she then

608
00:45:40.519 --> 00:45:45.679
took them all outside and made them
take the doors of the house and she

609
00:45:45.840 --> 00:45:50.519
burned them in a fire so that
they all knew how permanent this was and

610
00:45:50.559 --> 00:45:53.280
there would be no privacy in the
home. And then from that point forward,

611
00:45:53.599 --> 00:46:00.920
Gert becomes obsessed with purity of her
girls, and he comes just almost

612
00:46:00.960 --> 00:46:08.320
like a cult towards her kids,
where she's giving these daily lectures about purity

613
00:46:08.519 --> 00:46:15.159
and sexual perversion, and she starts
making them go to church constantly, which,

614
00:46:15.159 --> 00:46:16.639
hey, I'm not saying church is
a bad thing, but you can't

615
00:46:16.639 --> 00:46:22.280
always be shoving it down a kid's
throat. Well. As Gert kind of

616
00:46:22.280 --> 00:46:30.159
gets over that manicness, then that
kind of starts fading and she goes back

617
00:46:30.159 --> 00:46:34.920
to her normal ways where she's kind
of zoned out, sleeping in her bedroom,

618
00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:37.880
smoking constantly, not taking care of
the kids and leaving them to their

619
00:46:37.880 --> 00:46:43.679
own devices. So Paula starts going
to bars to meet guys without her mom

620
00:46:43.800 --> 00:46:46.880
finding out. She kind of sneaks
out, and one man that she meets

621
00:46:47.079 --> 00:46:52.920
ends up being an older man she
falls for and she starts sleeping with him.

622
00:46:52.840 --> 00:46:57.800
And after she starts sleeping with him, that's when Paula finds out that

623
00:46:57.920 --> 00:47:02.800
not only is he not single,
but this older guy was married and he

624
00:47:02.920 --> 00:47:08.519
wasn't gonna be with Paula she was
just basically his side piece. So Paula

625
00:47:08.559 --> 00:47:15.880
immediately dumped this guy, and shortly
thereafter after she stops seeing him. Guess

626
00:47:15.920 --> 00:47:21.239
what, she finds herself pregnant.
So when gart finds out that her daughter,

627
00:47:21.480 --> 00:47:23.960
you know, is pregnant, she
hits a breaking point and kind of

628
00:47:24.000 --> 00:47:28.920
just completely becomes just a worthless piece
of crap, I guess is the best

629
00:47:28.920 --> 00:47:31.079
way to put it. She doesn't
have really that many redeeming values at this

630
00:47:31.119 --> 00:47:36.280
point, so she stops eating.
She becomes really bony and nasty. She's

631
00:47:36.400 --> 00:47:40.079
vicious. All she does is just
chain smoke all the time. She's not

632
00:47:40.159 --> 00:47:44.960
taking care of her kids. She
refuses to let the kids clean up,

633
00:47:45.239 --> 00:47:47.880
and she really kind of revels in
the disgustingness of their home. She's kind

634
00:47:47.880 --> 00:47:51.320
of like, no, if we're
gonna be nasty people, then we're just

635
00:47:51.320 --> 00:47:57.239
gonna be nasty people. And eventually
there's like this shift that whenever Gert kind

636
00:47:57.280 --> 00:48:01.800
of gives up and starts doing her
own thing, Paula becomes kind of the

637
00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:06.400
head of the household in a strange
way because she's the next oldest person in

638
00:48:06.440 --> 00:48:08.400
the home. Well, when you
have a seventeen year old who's pregnant,

639
00:48:08.440 --> 00:48:12.760
mind you in charge of the home. Guess what happens. It becomes a

640
00:48:12.760 --> 00:48:15.119
teen hangout. All the kids in
the neighborhood realize, oh, hey,

641
00:48:15.159 --> 00:48:17.840
we can go hang out over there, and we can do whatever we want.

642
00:48:17.880 --> 00:48:22.239
We can smoke and cuss and talk
about whatever we want to and nobody's

643
00:48:22.239 --> 00:48:29.039
gonna stop us, even if there's
an adult there. Because Gert even starts

644
00:48:29.159 --> 00:48:34.199
joining in with the teen So she's
smoking with the teenagers, talking trash.

645
00:48:34.400 --> 00:48:37.559
She even like instigates fights, and
when they'll squabble, she'll even get in

646
00:48:37.599 --> 00:48:42.920
on the fights. There's literally no
someonance of parenting going on in this home.

647
00:48:43.360 --> 00:48:45.480
But from the outside, the house
just looks like a normal middle class

648
00:48:45.519 --> 00:48:49.360
America house. And I do have
photos and I will be sharing this with

649
00:48:49.400 --> 00:48:53.320
you, But nobody on the outside
really would have known what was going on

650
00:48:53.320 --> 00:48:57.199
on the inside, and the teens
would have been fools to go share it

651
00:48:57.199 --> 00:49:00.000
and tell anybody, because then their
little honey hoole would would be described.

652
00:49:00.119 --> 00:49:05.159
Did so paul st Paula starts letting
all these teens come over. Girt's not

653
00:49:05.239 --> 00:49:10.760
really do anything about it, and
so whenever you know, this chaos is

654
00:49:10.760 --> 00:49:15.920
happening in the home. It just
becomes kind of weird that the kids do

655
00:49:15.960 --> 00:49:19.639
whatever they want to do. And
at one point, Paula says, I

656
00:49:19.719 --> 00:49:22.159
kind of need a break from the
chaos that's going on in my house.

657
00:49:22.960 --> 00:49:25.440
She had been hiding the pregnancy from
all the kids at school. She did

658
00:49:25.480 --> 00:49:30.480
try to you know, she did
try to hide it from her siblings at

659
00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:32.960
first because she was trying to keep
some type of normalcy. And at some

660
00:49:34.039 --> 00:49:37.840
point she befriended a girl named Darlene
McGuire that lived, I believe, really

661
00:49:37.840 --> 00:49:42.039
close to them, and people said
that she was a really sweet girl,

662
00:49:42.159 --> 00:49:44.840
had a heart of gold, Like
she was that kid that would take in

663
00:49:44.920 --> 00:49:47.280
animals, like stray animals all the
time. She would even try to help

664
00:49:47.320 --> 00:49:51.519
stray kids, you know, ones
that just kind of showed up or relatch

665
00:49:51.599 --> 00:49:57.920
key kids. And one day,
while they're in town, these two sisters

666
00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:04.239
were found wandering the streets and Darlene
brought them home. So sweet girl that's

667
00:50:04.280 --> 00:50:07.960
friends with now Paula brings home these
two girls that were just young and randomly

668
00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:13.880
wandering the streets. And these two
girls names were Jenny and Sylvia Likns.

669
00:50:14.679 --> 00:50:17.800
Now why were they just randomly walking
the streets. Great question, glad you

670
00:50:17.840 --> 00:50:22.039
asked. Their mom's name was Betty, who was married to their dad,

671
00:50:22.119 --> 00:50:30.719
Lester, and they were just kind
of your typical low class struggling to make

672
00:50:30.800 --> 00:50:35.199
it, kept reproducing type of family. And I'm not talking bad about them.

673
00:50:35.239 --> 00:50:39.079
I'm just saying that Lester had an
eighth grade education and Betty didn't seem

674
00:50:39.119 --> 00:50:42.960
to have much better, and they
were kind of doing I guess, the

675
00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:47.039
best they knew how, but it
wasn't very good, and Lester would sometimes

676
00:50:47.039 --> 00:50:52.199
be abusive towards Betty. And one
day Betty had enough and so she fled

677
00:50:52.239 --> 00:50:55.360
the house with you from their abusive
dad in the night, and she took

678
00:50:55.360 --> 00:51:00.880
the two girls with them. Well, when they fled, they had jumped

679
00:51:00.880 --> 00:51:07.400
on a bus and it took them
to town where they had run out of

680
00:51:07.440 --> 00:51:10.719
money. So there was the mom
with her kids and didn't have any money.

681
00:51:12.079 --> 00:51:14.760
So what she did was she went
to go try to steal some food

682
00:51:14.760 --> 00:51:16.559
for them because she had spent all
the money on the bus tickets, and

683
00:51:16.639 --> 00:51:21.519
she got caught and they arrested the
mom. Well, when they arrested Betty,

684
00:51:22.119 --> 00:51:27.000
the little girls, Sylvia and Jenny, they fled because they didn't want

685
00:51:27.000 --> 00:51:30.000
to get caught too well when they
ran, that's when they were kind of

686
00:51:30.039 --> 00:51:32.079
just wandering the streets with nowhere to
go. Their mom had been arrested and

687
00:51:32.119 --> 00:51:37.199
their dad didn't even know they were
gone. And that's when Darlene found them

688
00:51:37.239 --> 00:51:42.400
and Paula, Gert's daughter, says, hey, you can come back to

689
00:51:42.519 --> 00:51:46.079
our house. So the girls go
back with them. They're hungry, right

690
00:51:46.119 --> 00:51:52.119
and they don't have anywhere to be, and Gert strangely responds very positively to

691
00:51:52.159 --> 00:51:59.320
them showing up to the house.
She says, sure, I completely understand

692
00:51:59.360 --> 00:52:02.719
y'all are in a rough spot.
And she's very kind, and the Likings

693
00:52:02.719 --> 00:52:06.159
girls are like, oh my god, this is great. You know someone's

694
00:52:06.199 --> 00:52:09.639
willing to be kind to us,
and you know this is wonderful. So

695
00:52:09.760 --> 00:52:15.400
I want you in your mind right
now to start just a few months clock,

696
00:52:15.480 --> 00:52:17.320
because everything I'm about to tell you
from here on out is going to

697
00:52:17.360 --> 00:52:22.760
happen in just a couple of months. So it's about December of nineteen sixty

698
00:52:22.760 --> 00:52:27.159
five where we're at. And I
thought, before I go any further,

699
00:52:28.239 --> 00:52:30.880
I wanted to tell you what Sylvia
Likings was like. Okay, she was

700
00:52:30.920 --> 00:52:37.639
the older of the two girls that
were found wandering the streets. So Sylvia

701
00:52:37.760 --> 00:52:40.320
was a teenage girl of these lower
class parents, like I mentioned, who

702
00:52:40.400 --> 00:52:45.639
struggled a lot financially. I mean, they were not having a good time,

703
00:52:45.119 --> 00:52:51.840
and Sylvia was the kind of kid
that would help out. She said,

704
00:52:51.880 --> 00:52:53.679
if y'all are struggling, I'm I'm
gonna help out. And I thought

705
00:52:53.679 --> 00:52:57.679
that was rather endearing when I read
about it. But how would she help

706
00:52:57.679 --> 00:53:00.039
her parents out? Well, it
was reported that she would do odd and

707
00:53:00.119 --> 00:53:05.519
ends jobs like she would babysit,
she would run errands for people, she

708
00:53:05.559 --> 00:53:08.320
would iron for friends and neighbors,
anything that she could do that wasn't a

709
00:53:08.320 --> 00:53:12.199
lot of skill and could bring,
you know, bring some money to the

710
00:53:12.199 --> 00:53:15.760
household. And those that were close
to him knew that she would even give

711
00:53:15.840 --> 00:53:19.599
her earnings to her mom so that
her mom could try to make ends meet.

712
00:53:20.159 --> 00:53:22.400
And she loved music. She liked
the popular music at the time,

713
00:53:22.440 --> 00:53:27.840
so like she was a Beatles lover. And they people that knew or said

714
00:53:27.840 --> 00:53:30.199
that she was friendly, and she
came across as a confident girl, and

715
00:53:30.239 --> 00:53:36.119
she was full of life, and
that confidence was something that people really liked

716
00:53:36.159 --> 00:53:38.719
about her, but it was kept
in check because one time when she was

717
00:53:38.840 --> 00:53:43.639
younger, she was wrestling with her
brothers and one of her brothers accidentally kicked

718
00:53:43.639 --> 00:53:46.599
out one of her front teeth,
and so that confidence was kind of checked

719
00:53:46.599 --> 00:53:50.639
when that front tooth was kicked out. And so as a result, when

720
00:53:50.639 --> 00:53:53.320
I post pictures of Sylvia for you
to see, usually she's going to be

721
00:53:53.360 --> 00:53:58.119
sporting her long, wavy, you
know, brown hair, but she was

722
00:53:58.159 --> 00:54:00.159
gonna look well kept and you know, well put together. But her mouth

723
00:54:00.239 --> 00:54:05.280
is always closed when she smiles because
she wanted to hide that imperfection. And

724
00:54:05.360 --> 00:54:08.400
her little nickname that her friends called
her by was Cookie. But that sweet

725
00:54:08.599 --> 00:54:15.679
nickname was in contrast to how fiercely
she was protective of her younger sister Jenny.

726
00:54:15.760 --> 00:54:22.039
So her love for her little sister
was completely and utterly unchallenged. She

727
00:54:22.119 --> 00:54:27.840
loved her sister more than anything else
in her life. And she had just

728
00:54:27.880 --> 00:54:31.679
a soft spot for her sister Jenny
because Jenny suffered from the effects of polio,

729
00:54:32.159 --> 00:54:37.519
and silvio was there for her to
kind of pick up where Jenny lacked.

730
00:54:37.079 --> 00:54:42.920
She was so understanding and loving of
her sister, and the polio was

731
00:54:42.960 --> 00:54:45.320
so bad in little Jenny that she
even had to wear braces on her legs.

732
00:54:45.400 --> 00:54:47.800
She was weak, you know,
she couldn't do a lot of things

733
00:54:47.800 --> 00:54:52.360
that other kids could do. And
Sylvia made a point to spend a lot

734
00:54:52.360 --> 00:54:54.519
of her time with her little sister
Jenny, and they loved going in and

735
00:54:54.559 --> 00:54:59.320
having fun together. Even on a
couple of occasions I read about that they

736
00:54:59.320 --> 00:55:04.519
would go to the local skating rink
together and living up to her big sister

737
00:55:04.599 --> 00:55:08.400
protective status, Sylvia would help her
little sister Jenny skate because she would hold

738
00:55:08.480 --> 00:55:13.679
her hand and Jenny would skate on
her good foot that was not damaged by

739
00:55:13.679 --> 00:55:17.239
the polio. So basically, these
were two good kids just live in there

740
00:55:17.360 --> 00:55:21.840
the best life that they could.
And I thought it was kind of interesting

741
00:55:21.880 --> 00:55:24.440
too that her family they had more
kids than they could take care of.

742
00:55:24.800 --> 00:55:29.639
But I don't think it was necessarily
like on purpose, because believe it or

743
00:55:29.639 --> 00:55:34.000
not, they had two sets of
natural twins, and Sylvia was just the

744
00:55:34.039 --> 00:55:39.960
middle child between the two sets of
twins, so they had Jenny, her

745
00:55:39.960 --> 00:55:45.679
little sister, Jenny had a twin
named Benny, and then her older sister

746
00:55:46.840 --> 00:55:52.159
was also a twin. Her older
sister, Diana was also a twin to

747
00:55:52.320 --> 00:55:55.719
her other brother and you're not gonna
hear a lot about Diana though, because

748
00:55:55.719 --> 00:56:00.320
Diana got married at age eighteen and
moved out very quickly her husband's family because

749
00:56:00.559 --> 00:56:07.039
she thought that that was going to
better her situation. So these were two

750
00:56:07.079 --> 00:56:12.079
good kids. Now. The next
morning, after they went and stayed with

751
00:56:12.159 --> 00:56:17.519
Girt and her and her crew,
their dad shows up at the house after

752
00:56:17.639 --> 00:56:22.079
Darlene led him there. So he
had kind of gotten worried about where his

753
00:56:22.159 --> 00:56:24.400
family was, and that little girl, Darlene that lived on the street that

754
00:56:24.480 --> 00:56:31.519
was super sweet led him to Gertrude's
house with Paula and the way, you

755
00:56:31.559 --> 00:56:37.239
know, the mom Betty had called
him after her arrest and they reconciled over

756
00:56:37.280 --> 00:56:38.400
the phone, like this was stupid. I shouldn't have run away. I

757
00:56:38.400 --> 00:56:42.159
got arrested. He says, I'm
coming to town. I'm gonna get you.

758
00:56:42.719 --> 00:56:45.079
But what's kind of weird about this
is after he comes and finds his

759
00:56:45.159 --> 00:56:53.599
two daughters, he begs Gertrude to
keep his daughters because he and their mom

760
00:56:53.679 --> 00:57:00.039
were going to be joining the traveling
circus and there was no room for the

761
00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:01.079
girls. And I know, right
now you're like, up, here's some

762
00:57:01.119 --> 00:57:05.320
bullshit. You're joining the circus.
Y'all know it's actually true. Okay,

763
00:57:05.360 --> 00:57:07.719
I want you to think back.
This is like that Barnum and Bailey's traveling

764
00:57:07.719 --> 00:57:12.760
circus. It only happened during the
summer, and they were only going to

765
00:57:12.840 --> 00:57:15.079
be able to make the bulk of
the money that they were able to make

766
00:57:15.239 --> 00:57:21.559
at the circus selling concessions and all
that stuff. So I kind of was

767
00:57:21.599 --> 00:57:24.000
intrigued by this, and I'm like, okay, so you're just gonna dump

768
00:57:24.039 --> 00:57:28.159
your two kids with two people because
you want to run off and work for

769
00:57:28.199 --> 00:57:31.760
the circus. That sounds kind of
crappy. But the more I researched and

770
00:57:31.800 --> 00:57:35.679
I kind of started thinking about it, I kind of get where these parents

771
00:57:35.679 --> 00:57:37.960
were coming from. But don't come
at me. Just listen real quick.

772
00:57:37.679 --> 00:57:45.679
So one summer before this, they
did already work for this traveling carnival and

773
00:57:45.679 --> 00:57:47.280
it went okay. The kids were
with them, you know, it was

774
00:57:47.400 --> 00:57:53.119
long hours, but some of the
kids had gone and stayed with their grandparents

775
00:57:54.400 --> 00:58:00.360
and talking about Danny and Benny this
go round. This is the second summer

776
00:58:00.400 --> 00:58:02.119
when things were a bit different.
The oldest daughter, like I told you,

777
00:58:02.159 --> 00:58:06.760
Diana, had moved out because she
got married and This kind of left

778
00:58:06.920 --> 00:58:12.360
Danny, Binny, Jenny, and
Sylvia with their parents who couldn't afford to

779
00:58:12.360 --> 00:58:16.519
take care of them and their finances
had gotten worse. So the thinking of

780
00:58:16.559 --> 00:58:21.480
the parents was while the boys would
be fine, they could stand up and

781
00:58:21.519 --> 00:58:23.559
they could sell the treats and the
cotton candy and all that the whole day,

782
00:58:24.440 --> 00:58:29.039
and even Sylvia would be able to
help out and could help maximize their

783
00:58:29.079 --> 00:58:35.920
income. The problem was that they
were thinking about Jenny and that the workload

784
00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:37.960
was going to be too demanding for
her because of her disabilities, because she

785
00:58:38.000 --> 00:58:42.840
would have to stand all day and
with her legs in the sad condition from

786
00:58:42.880 --> 00:58:45.280
the polio, that was just going
to be super super hard for her.

787
00:58:45.840 --> 00:58:50.840
The other issue that they had was
they thought, I don't know if we

788
00:58:50.880 --> 00:58:58.719
need to be really dragging our two
girls to this traveling circus because the girls

789
00:58:58.760 --> 00:59:01.800
would be working in an environ mainly
of all adult men. And they kind

790
00:59:01.840 --> 00:59:05.000
of were like, you know,
the girls are getting older and they're pretty

791
00:59:05.039 --> 00:59:07.400
little girls, and it just doesn't
seem right to have them working in that

792
00:59:07.519 --> 00:59:13.199
environment with all adult males. Jenny
can't take care of herself, Sylvie would

793
00:59:13.199 --> 00:59:15.840
have to be taking care of Jenny
the whole time, and so I think

794
00:59:15.840 --> 00:59:19.079
in their mind they thought this would
be a good move. It's just for

795
00:59:19.119 --> 00:59:23.920
the summer, and it would help
Gert because they said, we will send

796
00:59:23.960 --> 00:59:30.639
you twenty dollars a week if you
keep them for helping out with our girls.

797
00:59:30.599 --> 00:59:35.360
Well, Gert was thrilled when she
heard this, because all she could

798
00:59:35.360 --> 00:59:37.679
think about was, all right,
twenty dollars a week for cigarette money,

799
00:59:37.719 --> 00:59:39.760
you know what I'm saying, because
you wann't gonna take care of the kids.

800
00:59:40.480 --> 00:59:45.079
The issue was that the Likings parents
never actually went into the house and

801
00:59:45.440 --> 00:59:51.079
looked around at the disgusting circumstances and
didn't realize that, yeah, this home

802
00:59:51.159 --> 00:59:54.320
is a teenager's dream if you think
about the fact that there's no rules and

803
00:59:54.360 --> 01:00:00.639
there's a teenage hierarchy with no adult
supervision. They didn't really look into that,

804
01:00:01.000 --> 01:00:09.159
so they leave their girls in this
cessed pool of nothing but problems that's

805
01:00:09.159 --> 01:00:15.679
about to turn horrifically bad for their
daughters. I think I'm gonna leave it

806
01:00:15.679 --> 01:00:19.880
there for now, because I had
to give you all this background so that

807
01:00:19.920 --> 01:00:22.079
you will know kind of how we
got where we're going to be and where

808
01:00:22.079 --> 01:00:23.519
we're heading to do not give up
on me. Don't be mad at me.

809
01:00:23.559 --> 01:00:27.599
I know I gotta make this in
multiple parts, but trust me,

810
01:00:27.800 --> 01:00:30.760
it's all about the details. Okay, It's all about the details. And

811
01:00:30.960 --> 01:00:34.920
I think something that's super sad in
my opinion about this is that, you

812
01:00:34.920 --> 01:00:37.840
know, I hate whenever kids are
involved in poor parenting and bad decisions on

813
01:00:37.880 --> 01:00:40.679
their behalf, because all they have
is innocence, you know, to work

814
01:00:40.719 --> 01:00:44.880
with to defend themselves, and innocence
is never going to be, you know,

815
01:00:44.960 --> 01:00:50.039
a good defense mechanism. And even
though Gert went through a lot in

816
01:00:50.079 --> 01:00:52.920
her lifetime, I think you can
see that she's not turning out to be

817
01:00:52.960 --> 01:00:55.360
a very good parent. She's not
a very nice person. But it's kind

818
01:00:55.360 --> 01:00:58.559
of like, I don't know what
you expect. You can't shake a hor

819
01:00:58.599 --> 01:01:00.199
tree and expect an angel to fall
out. Alt