Abused Since Birth, I Survived Sex Trafficking - Interviewing Gloria Masters

hello and welcome back to the elysee easy show second take uh we have a slightly different one this time we're doing a zoom interview because my guest is gloria masters she is from new zealand she is a child sex trafficking and abuse survivor and author hi gloria how are you again hi great great elise we're doing it we love technology it's amazing i could speak to someone all the way in new zealand but computer freaks out if you try and record but with the we're going to make it happen yay thank you for having me on the show thank you so much for coming on and thank you for your eternal patience whilst we have technical difficulties um so a little bit about gloria from the age of since you're born basically until 16 horrific abuse so viewer discretion is advised i'll be giving more of a i'll give a more disclaimer before the video actually starts we are going to be touching on some heavy subjects so yeah let's let's do this again so from a very early age you were abused by your father yes yes so yeah and from the time i was born until i was 16 and i no longer had to see him but that was pretty much 16 years of horrendous child sexual abuse trafficking leased to gangs rented out at sex parties made over 100 videos where i was the star performer where adult men women and children were involved at times got prostituted out of a nightclub in auckland red light district between the age of 11 and 16 and had many abortions forced on me at my grandmother's hands um so yes very very dark dreadful but dreadful time in my young life so why speak about now obviously i know why it's important to have your story out um but why now okay well that's a really useful question so it took me decades to heal and recover from this and the final stage of healing is where you can start to give back and three years ago i began writing my first book which is on angel's wings my flight from trauma to grace which details what i went through the reason i felt i could do it then was because i had healed enough to do it but you know what my main purpose is to actually help other child sexual abuse survivors by shining light on this topic through love and humility actually so that's my real purpose and it's because it affects so many of us out there and it's a silent endemic not just here in aotearoa but out across the world yeah we spoke about this briefly but you have the statistics on how many people this issue of that affects so across the world what are the statistics on child sexual abuse so i've been told police in new zealand tell me that they have a report that suggests up to one in three adults have experienced some form of child sexual abuse so let's just digest that one and three um and i'm just not talking women i'm talking male survivors beautiful male survivors out there who struggle so much and find it so hard to share their stories because of the huge shame attached and it's just wrong and easy we need more focus given to this we need more support and resource for our one and three and that's why i'm standing up and sharing my story um just so it can be a platform actually to expose what child sex abuses is doing out across the world yes because i suppose sexual abuse of all sorts children and adults does go vastly unreported because of the shame elements and the skill attached so um in in your position how did you start to get over the shame well that's an interesting one and i just want to talk about that for a minute with child sexual abuse adult survivors find it difficult to speak for three reasons one this all began in secrecy two it the silence was ensured because of the threats made against us should we ever speak and three the shame then rendered us incapacitated and unable to speak and we carry that shame and to me it takes the gold it's just the most horrendous big kind of weight if you like that we carry around on our shoulders you know the average age for csa child sexual abuse survivors to speak out as 52. so elizi think about that how many years of your adult life are wasted through carrying this trauma around um through shame shame is what keeps us quiet yeah and we saw that in england especially with the jimmy sabble case after he passed away uh it came out uh hundreds of people came out and they would all be in their 40s and maybe 50s is the system i know the answer for this but is the system failing people because if it's affecting up to one in three people child sexual abuse is there not not enough services in place to help with such a because if there's eight billion people on the planet that's a lot of people being abused is there just not enough manpower police power child support power what's what's going on there yeah that's a really interesting question look and i think it's multi-faceted i think there's there's many streams to this but they all go end up down the path of shut up so what happens is survivors start to talk um now it's not uncommon then to feel shamed and re-traumatized because people don't want to hear this why don't they want to hear it because it's uncomfortable or depressing [Music] but what they don't realize is when they're shutting us down because it's uncomfortable we're giving the pedophiles a free pass because it ensures the silence secrecy and shame all over again and i think we just need to find our voices even if it's just a one person and and start to share because every time we do we're handing the shame back to the abusers i'm just thinking again of the jimmy savile case i'm wondering if the internet has helped people find their voices because before we've with savile in particular sorry it's fresh on my mind because there's new documentaries and stuff coming and the light coming out about him back then when people tried to go to the police they were ignored shut down or told that this isn't going to be able to get into court it's not going to go far but now we have the internet where people can talk on forums actually it just came out in the um in the press recently that a famous dj over here uh has been accused of sexual misconduct and assault by lots of young women i'm wondering is the internet helping it helping people find their voices in this matter whereas before they could only go to the police and then if they were shut down no one else is going to hear it apart from maybe rumors that savile's not good or over he props are no good so have you found that the internet has definitely helped with you yeah i i do think so i think what happens is it's another forum for people and i know doing podcasts like this thank you um it means you've got a fair percentage of your audience actually who have experienced something and it gives them permission to think yes that's happened to me as well and so that's what i like about this because the more we share um the more we can hand the shame back and actually i've created a podcast channel called hand in the shame back and that's for survivors of child sexual abuse so that i interview them or have uplifting blogs on there for people so that they feel less alone and more supported because we we really you know that this is having such a big impact um in lots of ways um so you know when you think about trauma and the impact for instance up to 50 of suicides in our country um can be connected back to childhood trauma which tends to um contain child sexual abuse so think about that up to 50 percent can be connected to some form of childhood trauma so there's something another statistic uh you would think that the war vets vietnam vets had by far the highest percentage of ptsd no 70 of post-traumatic stress disorder is found in csa survivors is there a support system in new zealand for this type of thing is there like social services or well we we do have lots of people who are trying individually as i am to support and help but one thing we do also have in new zealand is we have what's called accident compensation commission acc and what they do is they provide counselling free counselling to survivors of this so it's called the sensitive claims unit and i just love new zealand for that thank you for that new zealand because you don't have to name who your abuser was you don't have to get the funding to choose a counsellor um on on lots of details about it it's taken as read that if you contact them and you need support you can get an acc registered counsellor and successions i think minimum are paid for so that's pretty cool i think the wider issue is that out among um the average new zealanders they they it's not that they don't believe elizi it's they don't want to believe this goes on yeah you hear that a lot you do hear a lot of oh but surely you know this wouldn't happen or people would do that because you want to think that when you have uh the police most of which are you know very fine people you'd want to think you'd be able to go and speak to them if a crime happens you'd want to believe that politicians who are elected by the people would be reliable on this type of thing but as i was just saying to you before we have a case in england of some mps uh reports came out that there were one or two mps who were engaging in this type of abuse but the government made an official statement this was several years ago i remember russell brown speaking about this that's where i got my news from uh russell brand this comedian in the uk turned like an activation yeah um yes this report came out saying it's not in the public interest to know the names of these mps uh and it'll probe come out in 50 years time where you know the people affected might not be alive anymore i'm wondering is is it a bit similar in new zealand yeah i guess um you know i would say that definitely high up in the um you know politicians police government this sort of thing goes on um and there's almost like a green light for it too and i'll tell you why because we have we've had some statewide commissions held into um you know lake ellis which is which was a home for wayward children they called them back in the day and these children were just repetitively um abused and tortured by the state carers and these were catholic brothers and nuns and all sorts involved so you know i think at the end of the day it there's a little bit of a myth out there that um it doesn't happen at our highest levels yes it does and unfortunately it doesn't mean every person at a high level is behaving in this way but it does mean that as you've found over there there are mps who what they can abuse children and and they get away with it what does that tell you i mean with our very own royal family all of the i have to say for legal reasons one instead of an eye roll the allegations surrounding prince of the accusations and allegations surrounding prince andrew one of the most elite uh positions of power you can be in in the uk the royal family still hold like the power of veto i believe and they're very much um they don't hold as much power as they used to but it's the most privileged position you can be in to be bored into the royal family in england anyway and so when you have at least one member of the family going around doing that and then you start to connect the dots and you see epstein friends of many of the rich and famous had his own island where unspeakable trauma was happening to lots of children yeah pedo island yeah it's it's a lot isn't it and then it's quite unfathomable but we can see all this stuff in in the mainstream media in the news and people still want to think oh but surely it can't really be happening you know it's very um yeah it's really sad it's really sad and there's 12 million reasons why uh prince andrew never got to court um because i converted what was paid out to um to you know your currency but but you know the point being think about it this way if a child has been abused they will be acting out in some way what happens when they're ignored or shamed or put down or or told to behave is they then become seen as the difficult one so that no one ever asked what happened to you you okay what's going on it's just a discipline or a decision made to put that child or teenager into a box of oh she or he's always been difficult but actually that's why they're not taken seriously but the point is we should be rewinding the tape and going back to what's happened to you yeah did you find that because for you it started in family the abuse of your father yes yes did you find that did you go to i guess preschool kindergarten like you know when you're five six years old did you oh we went to school at age five yeah that's when we start in new zealand yeah did you were you acting out at that age out of control at school why because school was my only safe place they couldn't hurt me there so i was free to release and i had to release somehow um but no one ever asked what's going on um and that was yeah yeah if you get labelled as a problem child then it becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because again not a bang on about savile but he had access to i think it's called the duncroft school for girls and it was like misbehaving girls so they're sent off to a private boarding school where then the cycle abuse continues because abusers will do that won't they they'll they'll go for children or people that seem vulnerable and who won't who'll be easier to isolate so they can't talk to others and if they do talk to others they're not going to be taken seriously because oh well you've always been trouble you've always been an attention seeker or this type of rhetoric so you can see how the cycle continues but if we took that right back to why is the child needing to be placed in that home if the question was asked of the child or parents who cared about that child there might have been some different outcomes and i think we have to have a bit of a do over actually in how we we decide on um whether someone's being naughty or whether actually it's a cry for help because children who are being abused will never speak it's too hard for them there's too many threats made and it's such a shameful thing to um to carry and i think too and you and i had talked about this earlier elizi the reason we stay quiet is because it starts in secrecy the whole act starts in secrecy then uh silence renders us just afraid to speak um because of the threats and they may not be made against us but if we speak your dog will be killed or your sister or your mother you know that sort of stuff and as small children we believe that don't we or even as teenagers we believe that and then the shame is what keeps us silent and quiet for so long yeah and i've also seen examples of people's life experiences where if they were being abused by a primary caregiver the threat was more of a i don't want to it like it didn't come from from this place of oh violence will happen it came from a place of but if you tell people this is our little secret and i do this because i love you and you know if you tell people then i'll be taken away and the child at that point might have some sort of stop well i don't know it's normal for children to be very attached to their primary caregivers anyway you know um but for you no that was never the case with me because i wasn't loved i was seen as an object and um i never once in all my childhood adolescence never once did my father reach out to discuss anything about life with me or give me any guidance or or protection or interest or you know show me how to be the best child i could be all he ever talked about or chose to do was to traffic me and sell me out and so it's really hard to have a good sense of self because as a small girl it's it's not until we're eight years old that our self-esteem is formed but you and daughters and small girls see themselves through their daddy's eyes and so you know how how could there be self-love or self-esteem yeah and your mother was also very vacant wasn't she she wasn't she was very absent yeah so and you know abandonment is is a term i would use and i i was just in her way if you said to me how did i feel growing up around my mother i just always felt in the way i was a nuisance and no one ever saw the joy in me or the light and me or the you know the fun and me it was just yeah yeah and i'm thinking if you know from one caregiver you're just getting horrific abuse and the other is gone so you've got abandonment um yeah you must have never experienced like physical affection like you know just just a hug and i'm wondering how did that affect you uh becoming an adult i know that we spoke about this previously that you you your brain as a way to protect itself repressed disassociated from the memories of childhood um but did you find us as an adult how did that affect you uh the fact that i was never physically loved yeah yeah yeah yeah because it's it's important like for children to because it's a comfort thing to start like you know of course it is so so um there was a family dog um that that we had so that dog got love to bits um and yes there were no safe adults ever in my life um up until the age of 16 there was no one i could trust so i had to do what i needed to but before i get to that let's talk about what you mentioned which is that dissociation yeah and i think we likened it um what csa child sexual abuse survivors do is we dissociate which we leave our bodies and we do that allezy to keep us safe because our mind can't comprehend and wants to protect so in my case i dissociated for most of those 16 years it's like for a person who hasn't experienced childhood trauma having a bad car accident you won't be able to remember that accident for a while because your mind is protecting you from the impact of the psychological impact as much as anything so if you imagine 16 years of horrendous psychological torture um physical attacks um beaten kicked tied up you know just horrendous things as well as the awful sexual abuse what happened is my mind couldn't deal so it suppressed those memories so well that it was not until i was a mum and 32 years of age that the memory started to come flooding back and look i'm grateful that happened because i think i would have gone crazy had i actually had full recall at that time so what age were you when the trafficking began right so from the time i was uh four and a half when i was first abused or penetrated by my father i was then um kind of pumped out to his extended family but it was from that age that my grandmother his his mother and one of his sisters got were designated to train me into being the best child prostitute i could be and that's abhorrent as a term but i don't know what else to call it because that's what it was and and so from the age of six i was then trafficked out to people who were paying a lot of money to do that to me and one of the places that the trafficking took place was out of my grandmother's house and her and my auntie i would see them my father giving them money so they got a commission for training me so well and as i began to grow older they included more acts so more sinister things began to happen within that trafficking and if you don't mind saying what what was your worst experience okay so my worst experience was at the age of 11. so my parents had split up and i was living in my father's house so my mother had taken the other girls and gone and i was left with him and he there were no barriers to any torture or anything he wanted me to do and nearly died a few times and the worst when i thought i would die was he trafficked me out to a gang for an initiation weekend so in new zealand at the time we had three gangs um and this one still operates today and what they did to me as an 11 year old was they um they tied me up so my hands and feet were tied on the block they call it and these gang members could do whatever they wanted to me so what i hadn't factored in and i nearly died was the brutality because it wasn't just the sexual attack and and all of that it was also they were beating me i was so pulverized allezy that my face was unrecognizable i became unconscious um and i was so badly beaten that when my father came on the sunday to get me he turned to the gang leader and do you know what he said to him oh she looks terrible or you probably don't want to do too much of that mate because she won't look that good for you anymore so that's the type of horror that i went through my father then took me back to my grandmother's house my whole face was swollen my eyes were were shut with the bruising broken ribs i i couldn't walk and i had stuff school for weeks it was one of the only times he got a doctor into my grandmother's house and the doctor happened to be part of the gentleman's club that i had been trafficked to and this is this is quite a big conglomerate across the world this is uh quite a big entity with pedophilia and rings that do a lot of this child sexual abuse and a lot of the ritualistic stuff so i recognise this doctor's voice i couldn't see um i was so badly beaten but i i couldn't see but i recognized his voice because he was the same doctor that would drug us children when we were trafficked to that group periodically um so yeah that was the absolute worst time of my life i'll never forget it that was just the fear these were big big mean um but anyway i survived it but yeah yeah i have several uh several different questions so you know where to begin firstly how can a father dehumanize their child to such an extent they're just seeing them as a waiter like a toy that makes them profit how what was what not to armchair psychoanalyse or anything but what was going on there with your father i mean he sounds like a psychopath right so you've got it um completely right what viewers need to keep in mind is this when you are seen as an object you therefore don't have um you're not seen valued loved or treated as a child i was purely an object to him absolutely right he was a great a psychopath and he was a cruel cruel one so he didn't have love for me or towards me i was purely there to make him big amounts of money all that was important to him was notoriety and hierarchy through the groups and gangs he trafficked me too it's all he wanted was money and attention is someone like that capable of feeling love for anyone no because you can't compartmentalize something that awful i remember one act of kindness in all the years i those 16 years once i turned 16 and i never had to see him again i never willingly did right but there was one act of kindness um and it was one one night and i remember he tucked my feet up because my feet were cold that's the only thing i remember that was ever kind um but you know that was by far the worst time of my life i attempted to take my own life three times during the 18 month period i was left in that house with him um when you're 11 to 12 which is that 12 and a half yeah yeah that to me it's um i don't think i even knew the concept of ending one's life when i was 11 years old i don't i don't think i actually knew or understood that as a concept so that you tried three three times yeah horrific you're a very resilient person you got very strong core to yeah yeah well look i and i also think i'm i'm very grateful because i i always had a light in me and i i always had a belief that i needed to just put one foot in front of the other but the big gift to me was i had angels around me and i could feel them and sense them and talk to them and um you know i still do today and it's why my book is called on angel's wings um because they got me through and yeah can we speak a little bit about the gangs would it be fair to call some of them cults because if you're engaging in this type of behavior it's rather cultish and this doctor was a member of this particular shall we say colt i feel like that is a good word for [Music] yeah i look i and and that doctor was not just a member of um that big big entity in new zealand i call it a gentleman's club um because they're global and they're huge and they do a lot of trafficking and ritualistic abuse of children um throughout the world and they're known for it actually but what people don't realize is they're infiltrated by people high up in our legal political police government systems which is why they they get free passes when it comes to behaviour like this and you know yes there was that connection the the gangs or cult were definitely infiltrated by this group or were there was some kind of control that went on but so was the roman catholic church and that's um that's where i became a bit of a breeding ground actually for some of these groups and members yeah and you said that some of these experiences were ritualistic in nature yes can you possibly explain more yeah the ritual side of things what what yeah so yeah so satanic um abuse and look i go into it in the book but not and not everything that happened because um you know i i don't need to um but there were there was a certain protocol and there was definitely a hierarchy with this uh satanic ritual stuff and what would happen was we the children would be taken to a particular dwelling and um there would be we would be lined up and and we would be checked out by a nurse um and then we would be drugged by the doctor that i mentioned earlier and then we would be led into the main um ceremonial room and we would be laid out in a circle so it was all raised platforms and and things but there was a very much a structured um look to this and then the chanting would begin and these men would come and wearing hoods and specific masks and things and so the chanting would get louder and louder and they would start to abuse the person who was in charge of them all got the first pick and then um they would rotate but the the interesting thing is it didn't just stay at that so there were animals and other living things sacrificed as well and i don't want to horrify your viewers but you know blood being smeared and drunk and [Music] just horror the very satanistic um [Music] yeah so look i don't want your channel to be taken down [Music] it's fine and people struggle with this but it still goes on today elizi it still goes on today yeah we've had thousands of years of this this type of i mean especially bloodletting in like the eyes of a sacrificial offering some sort of god that's happened around the world for for lots of years so i think it's so far-fetched to believe that there would be remnants of this within certain groups especially if certain groups i don't know are obsessed with certain ideas or want to chase after certain uh things do you i mean this is going to be a difficult question to answer but you do you know roughly how many of these men would engage in this behavior like how big the group would be well yeah so look there could be up to um 40 but there were chapters throughout the country and then periodically they would get together so may day was a big one first of may was a big one um and and then it would be out in the country somewhere would be taken out in the country um and police cars would line that driveway but the point is that just to be really clear this organization is um is infiltrated with these animals if you like but they have to get to a certain level within the hierarchy before all of this pedophilia and abuse starts so there are some really good men out there who possibly have joined this group and they feel like they're doing good in the community and they will be they just don't know what's happening above them so yeah it's almost not almost like but a parallel i suppose as you have um scientology i don't want to mention scientologists too much though because they get very uh they like to swallow people around but you know the first few levels it's very much a self-help group and use your self-help courses and yeah better yourself it's only after you get to level five you start to learn about the um the more interesting esoteric stuff yeah so how old were you when um you were being trafficked out to am i right and saying strip clubs yeah so the strip club there was just one it was up in k road so that's where our red light district mainly was back then um and there were a couple of nightclubs and they were just like big houses with three stories say um but the um i was taken there at age 11 and started being trafficked out of there out of their top one of their top rooms so i wasn't seen by the general public um but the other female prostitute or sex workers knew what was going on and were horrified and the transvestites that were there new as well but the year it was that was 11 but prior to that we would be taken there and have to some of the video the filming happened well before i was 11 and went right up till i was 16 so that was a place where some of the filming took took place as well so the other the um the adult sex workers they were aware what was going on uh but they they couldn't do anything they couldn't they they would tread and they were lovely they were lovely to me and they tried to look after me as much as they could and yeah hated my father hated them [Music] sounds like that might be the first place where you're outwardly showing affection by adults trying to look out for you which is yeah it's it's mind-boggling really and you're in how many pornographic films probably over 100 but they weren't what you think now with a little video camera or digital devices with big old um projector screens the big big um and brown leather cases and they had the big round wheels i used to focus on the sound of of that whirring as um as the filming was happening um so and lots of photographs were taken as well but yeah the police couldn't find the films here um but but they know they're there they just don't know where and it's so long ago now um yeah i guess i'm just here to say to all our fabulous survivors out there look there is hope there is hope and you're not alone and you're believed and supported i stand beside you i just want to give people hope um i i got through it's a miracle i'm here i'm so grateful i made it through that you guys can too so when you were 16 and you were legally obligated to see your father because you did go and live with um your your mother for for a while didn't you but then you had to go see him was it once every two weeks like you had yeah so that's a story the is that worth um telling about how i escaped from my father's custody full-time yes yes i'd been in my father's house 18 months and um [Music] came home from school one day and i could hear sounds coming from down the hallway and i could hear a woman laughing and i went down and there was my father in bed with a woman and i just panicked because i'd been conditioned to be his sex slave so it just threw me and anyway i picked up my bag and ran and i ran all the way up to my mother's house and for the first time something must have showed in my face because she asked me what had happened and i told her and so then she rang she was friends with the archbishop of auckland at the time she rang the lawyer and they said the best words i'd ever heard in my life get her out of that house it's not safe for her to be living there with an adulterer yeah like that's the main issue fine for me to be trafficked sold abused neglected tortured um [Music] but not to be with an abuser anyway i was so relieved i just cried and cried but then she made me go back and tell him by myself that i didn't want to live with him anymore she wouldn't even come with me because i had to face him by myself how did he take that oh he said you'll pay for this you're making a big mistake um but the point being i was so traumatized having to face him and then i walked out and her car was parked on the road and i went out and i went back to her place and i was so excited that it's over i can finally live with you and and she turned to me and she said no you have to go back every second weekend why why was that why did he get custody of every second weekend why did that happen no she she didn't want me to be fair she didn't want me [ __ ] that the archbishop and the lawyer said that i don't believe that for a moment this was self-interest so going back every fortnight for two days nearly broke me because i had 12 safe days right i could sleep safely i was left alone it was so such a relief but i had to prepare myself to go back into all the trafficking and abuse and he made sure i i worked hard um [Music] so interestingly all the people that he trafficked me to and all the money he made out of me and all the things these other men did to me they were nothing compared to what my father did to me um so he was so deranged and evil it was fun for him to strip me naked uh put a dog collar around my neck walk me around on all fours and i could only eat food or have water out of like a dog bowl and tie me up outside on the back deck and at one stage i wasn't allowed to speak i could only communicate through what a dog would do so to me that psychological torch and damage was almost worse than anything physical and was your mother aware of the sexual abuse but didn't care well i would say i look i have no idea i i think so um you you would have to have been a deaf dumb and blind not to realise there's a really seriously traumatized kid here every time she saw me i would have lost more weight i mean my father deliberately starved me because the pedophiles would pay more money if i was really thin because then it made me look younger you see yeah yes i was thinking that like yeah infantilization yeah absolutely so but yeah i don't think she cared enough i don't think my mother ever loved me either she was what i consider a complex narcissist so her world was about her and what i quickly learned to do in the end was to develop a false self for both parents and i became the caregiver because i worked out if i could look after my mother and feet you know feed her needs or fill her needs she might notice me and sometimes i get nice words said to me but that's what i had to do as a child to get any positive attention so again pretty pretty amazing to have made it through and how would your false self be with your father was it about okay well if i just you know serve his inquitations needs maybe maybe he won't be as hard on me maybe he won't hurt me so much 100 so i pretended i loved all the abuse and all the attacks i would try and preempt some stuff and what happened was in my childlike mind that works because sometimes it did and he would start he would sometimes be a bit kind and when i say kinder that would mean if i was in his presence i could never eat until he had eaten everything he wanted to and i got the scraps i was treated like an animal really um and as i say that was the worst but the false self and the caregiver in me i had to survive i had to survive so i just adapted who i was to um [Music] to to keep breathing actually to keep going yeah and where does that ultimately leave you because you're this age you've got these two false selves just to survive where was that where would that you wouldn't i mean it's not like many kid made kids like know who they truly are and their little kids anyway but if you're having to act out all these roles when you're by yourself what what's that feeling like disaster absolute disaster and i developed it and and worked on it and perfected it so highly i was so highly skilled at this that that was the hardest thing for me i didn't turn to drugs or or alcohol as a lot of my fellow survivors have needed to what i had to do my biggest trauma was trying to look at who who was i who am i who was the real me because i'd perfected this so it took me decades actually to finally understand this is who i am not that false person i couldn't cry for years i i was a lot older before i cried because yeah sorry continue yeah no just because i had to survive so i had to put on the smile and be all things to all people so this highly developed false self became me and if you like i then wasn't being the real me i was being a version of me and what helped keep you away from drugs and alcohol because like you say so many victims of these experiences will turn to drugs and alcohol later on uh to escape from the berries what um how did you stay away from that outlet okay well my my biggest trauma was the falseness so for them their biggest trauma may have been trying to deal with that was to go to the drugs my dealing with it was to try and sort out who the false self was and i couldn't go to drugs because from a very young age i was pumped full of barbiturates hallucinogenics alcohol and do you want to know the reason for that because no one wanted to waste money on a traumatized and frightened child so you sedate the child and they're easier to quote-unquote work with yeah that's the only reason but i got scared because you can imagine hallucigenics in a very emaciated small body i remember waking up one night it's still vivid i i it was between the ages of 11 and 12 and a half living at my father's house and i woke up one night and i swear to you i looked at my arms and i worms crawling out of them and i was terrified and i thought what can i do who can i go to and the answer was a resounding no one and i think in a way that saved me from going down the the drug scene because i was too scared it really affected me um yeah and i suppose like almost counterproductively like the drugs and alcohol and the feelings of being high or drunk would just remind you of the previous experiences so it probably would have even observed its function as a triggered yeah yeah yeah don't get me wrong i like to have a few wines but they're not heavy barbiturates or anything else i just i just couldn't do it it was just too traumatic for me hey you know i just want to make a comment in case anyone out there feels offended whatever you wonderful survivors out there have had to do to get through whether it's been drugs or alcohol you know what applaud yourselves because it was your way of coping and i just honor what whatever you had to do i get it oh yeah there's no judgment here for anyone that has still uses yeah it's just a nightmare and it's such a silent endemic the silent the power of the silence um just is is so huge um because of the shame and and i just yeah we just love love to offer to our survivors you know there's hope out there you're never alone we've got to hand the shane back eliza we've got to hand it back yeah so you're 16 when you got away from him you never had to see it again what was your life like after that point did you um but were you still in were you still in school did you get to finish school and go on to college yeah yeah i did yeah um so you know teenage years were blue really um i you know i attracted my started dating my first husband when i was 19. and of course you know as survivors do we if it's um within a family so if it's incest you um you develop a way of being or a template and as i said to you earlier i think that for a girl a young girl we see ourselves through our daddy's eyes there's poems about this and literature on this so a girl's self-esteem is formed through how her father sees her so does that give you any indication as to how i saw myself um i was never going to attract uh relationships to me where i was held in the high esteem i should have been or valued or respected now that's not the fault of you know my husband that is just i couldn't i couldn't have a healthy relationship of course i couldn't um [Music] what did what did that relationship uh looked like then well um yeah very you know dysfunctional me keeping as busy and and occupied as i could so i didn't have to think because i hadn't had any recall at that stage all i knew was i had to keep moving hip to keepers he had to keep doing things because then my mind couldn't rest and therefore nothing could emerge within me um so you know it wasn't it wasn't good for me and and um yeah i i don't really want to be disrespectful about um [Music] you know um my ex-husband it just it didn't work and and that was you know i have to take my share of that responsibility oh yeah i mean you weren't taught uh what a healthy relationship relationship wise yeah how can you and a lot of relationships like your first your first ones anyway are this learning curve and process of working out boundaries with someone else um so a lot of people's first ones can't like i certainly know that my younger relationships were a bit dysfunctional because you're having to you're suddenly in close proximity to someone you have to learn how to navigate that so it's um it's a bit dysfunctional at the best of times but coming from your background must have been difficult well it was and uh of course i wasn't going to be able to be [Music] i wasn't my real self either so it was always a bit of a show um [Music] yeah it's taken me years to to be who i am and and actually love who i am which is something survivors can struggle with as well so yeah look and the whole purpose for this you know is i really really want to um [Music] to help other survivors out there by showing these away and you know i've written that first book and it's a traumatic read just attention viewers it's traumatic um but i'm also working on my second book at the moment which is a guide for um csa survivors so i've got an idea of of what it takes to get through so that's what i'm trying to do and am i right that you were 32 when you first had your first child ah no i was 27 when i had my first child um but she was uh six years old when the memories started coming so when the memories come back how do you um do they come back in drips and drabs like a bit at a time was it this influx do you know even what might have triggered the memories coming back yeah well that's a really good good question actually because for um for survivors globally we have things called flashbacks and we have triggers and we have dissociation and we have hyper vigilance and we have a whole raft of things that are known to us and we never have to explain it because we all get it but the point is with triggers um you know it could be standing in a certain part of a room and um just hearing a sound and instantly you're triggered um by that sound because it might remind you of something that happened uh when you're a child and flashbacks are when you see a situation in your head re replay itself um but yeah all of that and i was trying to raise two small children alone at the time um and so that was that was another real challenge for me trying to deal with all the memories um you can imagine 16 years of them [Music] was there when it first happened was that almost um was there a bit of denial well he was yeah absolutely and then they they started recurring and coming more and more and and i thought but there's something going on here so i went and saw a therapist and and started speaking and out they all came so as i said took me decades and lots of healing modalities and still go to therapy um as i can or when i need to um but i feel um hand on heart touchwood that i'm i'm pretty well there i'm healed enough to talk openly and and confidently about it so did writing your book help well it was it was a few things it was it was so triggering and traumatic it was horrible um in one sense but it was so cathartic in another sense and yeah really really good really good to release it all out of me but yeah pretty tough i remember one day i was i thought right i'm doing some research for the book and i'd started writing so i drove to my old house my old father's house where i used to live with my father and i i parked outside and i dropped i walked around the area walked through my old school grounds well big mistake what a wreck i was heaving i was crying so much i was just distraught because of course i was retracing those steps so that don't don't do that viewers don't don't do that it was uh it was a big um yeah it was it was horrible and i and i rang my therapist and she said wha what are you doing and i went i'm walking around the area and she went never do that again by yourself i'll come with you um that look you know you i i have to see the humor and things because that's who i am but yeah yeah and also you know when it's your own lived experience like you can you can react how you want because a lot of us find humor can help you know like there's this thing rather i'd rather laugh at the situation than quite a situation yeah for example when so how long has your book been out so the book came out a year ago actually um may 2021 have any new zealand officials police social workers politicians have any of them been made aware of the book has anyone contacted you about this because it's a well it's a horrific case so it's within the public's interest to know that this type of stuff goes on has there been any contact from um authoritative figures regarding it zero interest from any of them um no one would publish my book so i self-published no one was interested i've reached out to media multiple times no interest initially when i published the book there was one lovely guy called steve who works for a local for a national paper and he interviewed me um it was pretty traumatic for him actually interviewing when we sat down he said i've read the book and i just don't have any words but um he was he was lovely to deal with but yes apart from him no no interest interestingly people like yourself and people in the uk and the states are very interested in my story um people in new zealand not so much why is that did um did new zealand have their own version of the metoo movement because i feel like that was a bit of a turning point uh for us because then these things started getting more attention and people started being more open and talking about uh this type of thing when the metoo movement happened and now well like like i said i don't know if i said it in this recording or the other one um the dj uh the very famous dj in the uk that's come out recently i mean that's been it that's been picked up by lots of different papers whereas maybe 20 years ago it wouldn't have been so why is it that in new zealand there's not been interest um well i get told things like people don't want to hear it people don't don't want to hear a story like that so my response is always that's fine but two things one it's true and two it still goes on so um i can't make them show interest i in new zealand we have this this um [Music] this thing we do where people can be really talented here or quite skilled in a particular way or you know have a a story like mine which is highly unusual and what they'll do is not notice it or not be interested until it gets overseas and once it starts gaining traction she's ours or he's ours and then suddenly there's interest but i think that's a shame because to me that sort of re uh yeah replicates a bit the silence or the conservativeness or people don't want to hear it because it makes them uncomfortable but i don't need to tell my story in graphic detail elizi all i'm trying to do is shed light on our one and three survivors out there and um you know the i'm talking men as well as women and i just want to say as well that women don't get a free pass here there are women women abusers as well we have a lot of fabulous men in our country who have experienced child sexual abuse at the hands of a woman and i think we need to start normalizing that conversation as well because it's really hard for them to come forward because there's jokes made about it or um no that can't be true or mothers don't do that and i think really if if we're going to stand united and stand beside each other in this we need to offer our our male survivors support belief encouragement and you know i hear you yeah there's also there's also that stereotype of well you know men they're always thinking about sex and their sex craze there's no way if a man was offered sex it could be deemed as assault you know there's this like that awful stereotype that permeates a lot of media and culture like oh you know men are just happy to like get like this expression that's coming to my sides i don't know why is get their rocks off at any given it's not the case no i mean i've i've spoken to a wonderful man who shared with me that he was 15 years old and um abused by a female teacher and um he said gloria you're the first person i've ever told why because people would make fun of it people think oh your lucky thing yeah and no not lucky traumatized him for the rest of his life so i think we need that myth blown apart actually and um you know yeah we're all surviving and it was never never your fault ever either just never so gloria you have your podcast channel for handing the shame back yep for um speaking to other survivors yes which is excellent and you have your book on angel's wings my flight from trauma to grace i've got it here but i can send you the links anyway yeah where can people buy that so your side of the world probably best on amazon and i over summer did the audible version so it's in paperback kindle and audible um people seem to like the sound of my voice for some reason it's your accent i i like your i like the uh the kiwi kiwi and australian accents i like that but i'll tell you what that triggered me uh doing the audible version was tough actually i found that yeah yeah because i've never read it out loud in a in a production studio yeah it's different when you're when you're when you're saying things as opposed to when you're um writing and the thing is the poor producer in the studio so i'm in the studio the headphones on doing the the book and he's sitting there doing all the graphics and all the things that need to happen with it and i could see him through the glass when i tense and flinch and and a poor guy i think he was in shock um but yeah so the book's been written it is a traumatic read the second book's on its way team um trying to write it um you know as a guide it's flight path to healing guide for csa survivors and the um hand in the shame back is that channel for if any of your viewers would like to be interviewed by me i'm very gentle and soft you won't be traumatized and i offer you this if we do the interview and for any reason you feel uncomfortable i will treat it as my honor to have had a conversation that will never see the light of day why because as children we never had the choice as adults i want to give you the choice so so that's that one and yeah so i do write lots of blogs as well um they're on my website um gloriamasters.com and i will keep doing this work till the day i die because you know it's time to give back no i commend you thought for it thank you so much for coming on to my channel and sharing your stories it i i know you're at a place where where you can talk about it but it mustn't be easy it can't be easy to have to but it's very important it's very important to be able to talk about this stuff so people feel that uh they're not alone yeah and that they can they can relate as horrible as it is to relate to something like this it's important that people know that others have experienced it and managed to grow yeah so we can get through it guys it's um it's a journey but i promise you it's worth it um so don't give up never alone yes thank you so much for coming my channel and everyone i will link everything that gloria has said her website and her books in the description below so you can go check that out thank you guys for watching this video along with us um make sure you comment like subscribe all of that typical youtuber stuff follow us on spotify and itunes and i'll be back again sometime soon so thank you very much bye

Channel: The Alizee Yeezy Show

Views: 137,397

Keywords: alizee, alizee yeezy, podcast, interview, the alizee yeezy show, sex trafficking documentary, sex trafficking stories, surviving sex trafficking, sex trafficking, sex trafficking surviors, real stories, human trafficking, slavery, abducted, true crime, true crime podcast, crime prodcast, Tedx, traumatic, sex trafficking victim, child sex trafficking, documentary, human trafficking stories, human trafficking story, human trafficking victim, survivor stories kidnapped, survivor story

Id: vj9Icyn0olU

Length: 73min 51sec (4431 seconds)

Published: Fri May 27 2022