Forensic Nurse Examiner-Shawn

all right Sean Sean uh so you have an interesting career you you work as a what do you call I'm a sexual assault nurse examiner sometimes referred to as a forensic nurse examiner and this is in Northeast Indiana yes and uh so you're working with people who have been assaulted yes probably all ages right yes we provide the medical forensic exam for individuals that have been sexually assaulted my youngest patient was 35 days old so about this big my oldest patient was 94 years old so we do the entire life span as well as go to the morgue for a deceased individual if there is a suspicion that sexual assault occurred wow so you must see all kinds of stuff indeed I do is it does it affect you emotionally I mean personally you're you're yeah you're weird if it didn't yeah it's you were telling me earlier you like to carry a gun with you everywhere you go yeah for protection uh yes I do um yeah it affects me it affects the people that care about me it affects everyone it's a stressful job I mean what you do you're you're hearing things all day long um I hear them see them collect evidence and it's it's hard vicarious trauma is real and I feel like I'm pretty mentally tough but there's times that um we all just don't do so good especially when we go to the morgue especially when it's a kiddo yeah what got you into this field well ironically I had never even heard of forensic nursing and I had worked as a lactation educator for like seven years for the WIC program so I was all about women's health I wanted to work in like labor and delivery when I got nursing school that's where I thought I would start and retire there and so I got a job when I was in school third shift I went to school during the day and then worked third shift at the hospital and I was in the nursery because I was little man on the totem pole so I took care of the babies in the nursery and um I actually really enjoyed that a lot and I knew I could bring the breastfeeding part of it into it to be able to help moms you know right after they've had the baby and stuff like that so it was going to be a good way for me to get my foot in the door and a couple months after I started there I had one of the charge nurses come in and she said Sean we had a fetal demise and I'm gonna need you to like take care of that and I'm like I knew what fetal meant and I do knew what demise meant and I was like wait a minute I'd never got that memo that was not part of my job description at all that I can recall and I just kind of stared at her and she's like I've got two other moms in labor I've got to go attend to them I need you to clean this baby up try to find some clothes that fit them and get like the Keepsake photos for the parents if they did you know decide they would want those later and I kind of was just looking at her like waiting for some guidance and she's like I've got to go she's like you'll be fine Sean it's over there in the corner and I'd been in this nursery for like two months I never knew what this little room was off to the left so I just kind of she left there was nothing like hey it's your first time I'll like walk you through it it was just like and I went into that room and it was like very dimly lit and there was like a little table with like this little Mound on the table with the receiving blanket over it and there was a very distinct smell in there which was the first thing I noticed and I was like well I'm cleaning this baby up so I like got a basin of warm water and brought it in and a washcloth I put some gloves on and I pulled back this little receiving blanket and um it it did not look like a baby to me and it was baby was very tiny and all I know is I had to do what I had to do so I was told what to do so I started doing it so I started cleaning the baby off and um I just remember vividly this the smell again was horrendous but it was like the skin was starting to kind of Slough off of the baby and I was like well what I'm going to take it down to the muscle like I was like this this is like not something I can do and I don't even really remember the rest of doing that other than I did it I got it done I did it I got off work I went home I drove back home got my kids off to school and had to leave and drive 45 minutes up to where I went to school and I went to my classes I acted normal I guess and on my way home as soon as I got in the car it was like the floodgates opened up and I was just like what the heck I hadn't even had time to process it at that point and I was just like I can't believe I had to do that and then I felt selfish that I felt like that because I'm like I'm worried about what I had to do when there's parents that just lost their baby and it was just it was like a lot of weird emotions that I had not had about anything remotely like that um up to that point and um I'm like this can't happen very much surely if I stay in this department I am not going to have to worry about doing that hopefully ever again well that was not the case so that happened a few more times I know this is a long way about getting to the question you asked but it's the the irony lies and when I left that job so I had to do that I think at least four or five more times with the fetal demise and I finally just one night I was like I just can't I can't do this I mean I'm tough but my psyche I was in nursing school I was under a lot of stress I was like I can't do this so um my boss worked days so when she got there I kind of gotta got you know her attention and I went to her office and I said everyone here knows I'm not a wuss because I'm very tough and I don't ever want to appear weak you know and not that there's anything wrong with that but um and I said to her I don't I can't do this like more power to the people that can I have a lot of um you know I don't even know the word I'll give them a lot of credit for the people that can do that but I can't I cannot hold and move dead babies and take photos of them I just I can't well ironically at this point in my life that is one of the things that I have to do in a much different location under much different circumstances and now when I look back those were horrible circumstances obviously that's supposed to be the happy place in the hospital not where people are going home empty-handed um but what I do now is when I go to the morgue and it's a little child and little babies um I am touching them and moving them and collecting evidence and taking photos so never would have I imagined at that point when I absolutely thought I can't do this I would be doing it and under what I have to share Works worse circumstances because not all of the kids that we see at the morgue have died at the hands of their abuser but some of them definitely have and that involves um things where I'm seeing vaginal injury anal injury ruptured spleen subdural hematomas bleeding from head to toe or excuse me bruising from head to toe and uh the tiniest body bags you've ever seen which is very disconcerting obviously so um that's only one part of my job most of the patients I see are alive and going through a lot themselves obviously by the time they get to me and we provide that medical forensic component um but we also you know offer medications for sexually transmitted infections we provide them with referrals for Counseling Services follow-up to get more testing HIV prophylaxis all that kind of stuff that we don't have available in-house so um I I will say this and you know some people might disagree but more important than anything that I can do as far as evidence collection all of those things it the way that I treat people when they come is by far what I do that's the most important thing um no one's coming to us for a good reason ever and anyone that walks through the door has suffered something horrible sometimes they can't remember because of drugs and alcohol being involved but they have and your body keeps score and I I know that the way I treat people has an impact and it can improve the outcome for them by being treated with respect and dignity right after something like that happens um I still don't think I answered your original question of how I got into it okay that's okay so when I was in nursing school after that whole the field of my stuff I was in a forensics class and I'd taken a few forensics classes some psych classes stuff like that and we had a speaker come in and she actually works where I work now and she came to talk to us about forensic nursing and I'm like this job is this I could totally do this job I'm very methodical and detail-oriented and I had never heard of forensic nursing I'd heard of rape kids because a lot of people hear that terminology I don't think I've ever said that um unless I'm saying you may know it as or you know referred to as a rape kid you see it on TV you hear about it that way and really that is what we collect we have a box and you know evidence is put into the box sometimes we have to bag other evidence up but she came and talked to us about that and I listened and I'm like hmm I think I could do that so I waited outside of the classroom and when she came out I said uh hey I really think forensic nursing is something I would be interested in and she was like little did I know at that time how much people tell us that because now that I've been there for a long time you hear it I just heard it at the pool yesterday and you know oh what a cool job I would love that job and I'm like yeah right you have no idea you want to be on call all the time have no real personal life and carry everyone's baggage along with you and I just kind of smile which is what was my my co-worker did that day so she said well after you graduate like hit us up and maybe we'll have something for you and she was being genuine but I could tell it's kind of like yeah right so um it was only like a week or two later I was on our University website which I never get on I don't know why I was on there I have no idea other than maybe that was just I was supposed to be on there so um it said pediatric assistant and it had listed the same place where the lady came just to speak to us and I was like huh it had no job description anything like that so I went ahead and made a phone call they had me come in for an interview and then they hired me and it was very interesting I was an assistant so I didn't do anything besides you know it was pediatric assistant so it was all the child population so it was 14 and under back then so that was my first taste of listening to Little Children tell us how they had been abused some of them thought it was normal because that's all they knew some kids know they will tell you they will talk about smells they will talk about how things made them feel um and that was like that wasn't that that was difficult it wasn't easy and again I'm like what am I why do I get into this kind of like job like what the heck and but I knew that I could have a huge impact there and I saw the nurses and what an impact they had on the patients and so I continued and I will say to hire people in school as a pediatric assistant was a good very uh smart of them because it would be the perfect weed out process because if you couldn't hack it doing that before you are able to actually collect evidence and do all that you're not gonna you're not gonna make it there so I did make it there um and then I went on to get my um finish my degree and then I went through all the training to become a sexual assault nurse examiner and then the preceptorship so you initially you have like a education portion and then your preceptorship is where you follow the experiencing so I did that for the adult adolescent population and then I did that for the Pediatric population so all in all that takes about a year and a half and I was doing other jobs while I was doing that so I was doing some hospice some Long-Term Care Pediatric nurse I was busy working like every weekend and a lot I was working a lot knowing that at some point I would only work where I'm working now um again the deeper you get into it the more difficult it becomes because it's just more baggage more baggage every day in some cases hits you harder than others and I will say this um one of your interviews with Eve from Connecticut she talked about afterwards and her her stuff was so horrendous I can't even imagine but she talked about how 99 of the cops were really good because we work with law enforcement DCS all these people and get to know them because we work around them so often and when she said that how that one cop acted with her in the car it ticked me off then she went on to say how crappy the nurse was that collected her evidence and that irritated me it's no end and I will say this forensic nurses are a different breed and they're very passionate about what they do and if I had to guess she was probably an ER nurse that it was already taken care of two or three patients I'm not justifying her behavior because I know we all have baggage but when you start taking care of your patients you have to be there for them you can't bring your baggage into a lot of jobs but nursing especially and how harmful that was to her and how much that hurt her by treating being treated the way she was by that nurse because I think she was kind of like here I just get down shift and this is the first thing I have to do I'm thinking man I gotta get up in the middle of the night all the time to come do these cases and I would never think of complaining to a victim of sexual assault well so I feel like this needs to be some Redemption for sexual assault nurse examiners again I think it was probably an ER nurse that was really busy and this was thrown on her yeah and because a lot of times they're asking people to do it that aren't trained to do it or they've only done a couple in some states you open this box up and it's got like instructions that could take you an hour to read I've never read the instructions in there we don't need to that's part of what we learn in forensic nursing because those instructions mean nothing when it's based on the disclosures that are made or not made because you know if I have a kid in the morgue that's deceased can he tell me what happened or can she tell me what happened no so I have to go based on I don't know what happened so I am going to do absolutely as many swabs and collect as much evidence as I can and you're asking questions if when they're alive yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's almost like what you do is a hybrid of law enforcement and nursing well there there's a distinct difference only because I'm the medical component and they are part of all the investigatory stuff so every question I ask really and we have to make that um differentiation because of testifying and stuff like that because we don't work for law enforcement we don't work for Department of Child Services all of my documentation becomes part of their investigation so the questions that I ask I'm really asking them more for it it guides the forensic exam so if they can't remember something again or they don't know then I am collecting virtually everything I can if they can specify things that happen I don't want to have to would I want to have to do anything below the waist on somebody that's already been traumatized that nothing happened on there and that's what some states will have nurses do we don't need to do we can do a head to toe exam but there's no reason for me to collect evidence from a female sex organ when everything happened orally or something like that because especially for a child what they're not going to understand why you're doing any of that so yeah the the exam itself is totally Guided by that so are the medications that we offer all that type of thing and I will say I I treat my patients with such compassion but I'm very I'm a straight shooter I'm super easy to get along with um and they feel comfortable because I luckily I'm very blessed that I can build rapport with people pretty quickly or it would make my job very difficult I think um but they will I almost always make people laugh while they're there at some point because I'm very sarcastic too and I know who to do that in front of and not and you figure that out very quickly sometimes adding a little levity yeah some humor to the situation because you're dealing with the most horrific traumatic things you can imagine you know when somebody's like I I get crap sometimes on these interviews where I'm almost laughing at the absurdity of some story that somebody's telling not laughing at that when I hear you laugh at the same time I'm laughing when I watch your videos yeah because it's like as somebody who's dealing with this stuff all the time that's how you deal with it yeah because to not do that you just break down and cry well absolutely and and the kids too they're like you're funny I'm like well I'm glad I can make you laugh and that's when they're sitting there telling me things like you know because I will always ask a kid did anyone ever tell you not to tell anyone because that's really important you can get a lot of uh perspective from asking that question and you hear some horrendous things you hear like well yeah my dad not just said not to say anything or he would kill me and my mom and the dog okay I understand why you didn't say anything you know because when I talk to a kid I've never treated even the littlest kids like babies I never talked to my three kids like babies when they were little and I think that's why I had kids were very mature in Reading when they were four and stuff like that because I wanted them to have fun and have a childhood but at the same time I you know I don't know I just wanted them to be not walking around like oh I need this or oh I can't I whining I don't I don't care for that how much of the sexual assault do you see comes from is it 100 from men or is it something oh absolutely not really nope I mean I'd be lying if I didn't say most of the perpetrators are men but some of the worst perpetrators and accomplices I know are female really yeah because we all know there's crappy parents out there um I was very abundantly blessed to have amazing parents but there's a lot of crappy parents who don't protect their kids and that's something that's really hard for me to listen to when I have a kid tell me well I told my mom and she didn't believe me like two years prior and this has continued to happen and there's times when I'm really tired I get emotional not like blue like not like that but just people can tell when you're kind of getting emotional and I've had kids before like say I've gotten three hours sleep in three days those I they tend to hate you harder when you hear something really sad which is most of what I hear but these little kids they're looking into your face and they're asking to go home with you because they feel safe already because I have boundaries I am a structure person I don't let these kids bounce off the walls and act a fool when they're there I'll give them a little bit of leeway and then I'm like now you're gonna sit here we're gonna talk about that you can go honey you don't have to be here because everyone has a choice the adults and the kids we don't do anything that people don't want us to do there not that people are like oh yeah I get to go over there and have evidence collected but at the same time I let everyone know I'm really proud of you for coming here you're very brave to come see me and I'm so happy I'm the nurse that gets to take care of you and anything that you don't want to do you don't have to do when you're here you don't have to have photos even if mommy and daddy say yes you're the boss that's scary sometimes telling a little kid they're the boss but I want them to know they have control over that situation because they absolutely had no control over what happened to them um so the the answers that we get from that like yeah telling Mom she didn't believe me or mom was a part of the sexual abuse or mom was making um their kid do something to a stepdad or let's do this and video it and it's put online or I mean we just we hear everything and one of those times when I was really tired and a kid I mean Lord knows because we hear so many things what they were saying to me it was a little boy I just remember that but my eyes just filled up with tears I was just like I can't handle this I already had so many patients and a very short period of time and this kid just broke my heart and I remember I looked at him and I'm like oh no because I could feel it like I could feel I was starting to like my eyes filled up and he he was noticed it immediately and he looked at me and he's like and here's this kid who was just sexually assaulted and had been numerous numerous times and he said are you okay I almost lost it when he asked me because I'm like seriously and I said no actually I'm not really because I'm sorry that no one protected you and that's with the kids that's the hardest because I can't fathom I was a such a protective mom and if you ask my kids I far too protective mom because um you're supposed to protect your kids and that kid was just like right but you're taking really good care of me and I'm like right because I care about you and I know that once when we provide that initial care to them even though it had been happening for a long time one of the other things I say is when I first meet them I'm kind of jumping around but when I first need a family let's just act like they're kids at that point I'll tell the the kid and the parents I used to say I will treat you just like you're my own family then I realized a lot of families don't treat their kids good and most of them understood what I meant because they could tell the sincerity in my voice but at the same time I had to rethink that because one time I joked I said and I treat my family good because they looked kind of and then I went oh the fact that I even said that that was weird too like I was like oh my gosh so what I started saying and what now what I've been saying for years and years it's along the same same lines but I say my name is Sean I'm the forensic nurse examiner and I am going to treat your kiddo just exactly how I would want my own family treated is it kind of the same and are there crappy people who might not want their kid treated well I don't understand that again I feel like it's safer when I say that because some people didn't have a good mom or dad and um they get what I'm saying um my main thing is telling them How brave they are especially the kids and I also say has did anyone tell you that this isn't your fault and they just stare at me and just recently I had a little boy say are you gonna be mad at anything I tell you and I looked at him and I was like no and he goes well mommy and daddy were mad and I said honey because I had already met his parents very appropriate good people not that people can't seem good that aren't but and I said I'm a mom and I'm a grandma and we want to most of us want to protect the people that we love and because somebody did something to you that they shouldn't have um Mommy and Daddy are upset because sometimes we feel like we should have been able to protect you or we're just upset at the person that did this or there's a lot of things and I said so you're seeing a lot of emotions in mom and dad right now anger um maybe saying words you're not used to hearing they say they want to go kill this person all kinds of things and but they're not mad at you they're mad about what happened but they're not mad at you and they don't blame you and that's when I found out that some people do blame their kids because I had a little girl one time that said um mommy said it was my fault because of the nightgown that I was wearing and she was five so I'm like well no it was not your fault it absolutely was not your fault and I'm sorry that that was said to you because it was this person's fault and they did something that was really bad and I'm so sorry that that happened to you kids are much more resilient those are the ones that impact me the most I'm not saying every sexual assault that I deal with doesn't impact me but those those like are a gut punch the kids um when they're just sitting here telling you that stuff especially when you known it's that it's gone on for long periods of time I mean your videos are the prime example your interviews that I've seen I don't know if you've heard of the ace scoring system but if the aces the the you know adverse childhood experiences that have happened to some of the people in your videos I it's amazing that they're alive a lot of them because that's the money around drugs yeah exactly the higher your a score and I had a couple um but these people have a ton and when I ca I literally will calculate their a score sometimes while I'm sitting there watching them because it's so hard to listen your your videos are not easy to listen to I'm sure you know that um but I appreciate you having them there because so many people stick their head in the sand and purposely don't make themselves aware of what's going on and that's hurtful I mean I my daughter and I see homeless people all the time when we're walking down by the river and just having eye contact with people makes a huge difference we wonder why people feel like they have no worth and then people can't even look them in the eye and I used to you know be like oh they're gonna ask me for money but I would still always say hi and you know how are you or whatever and you do and when I'm on the trail I don't have money with me I have nothing um besides well some like self preservation weapons on us sometimes yeah no we have yeah we have other things but um because you know you have to be safe but the homeless people have not been the people that I've ever been that scared of there's been other people that have made us I heard my daughter switchblade one time like in two seconds it was out and I was like good for you you are definitely my daughter and she was right on it because she my hearing is not that great the older I get and her and she heard something and she had it out in two seconds but back to giving people dignity and um showing them their self-worth is the biggest part of my job and that's what that's what I would want to convey I wish I could change things for people I can't especially by the time they get to me at my job I wish I could change things I wish I had a magic wand it could take it all away I can't but what I can do is treat people well and I was brought up in a Christian home and I made a lot of mistakes growing up and um but I always knew I had unconditional love at home and that's very different from a lot of the people that you interview and sometimes I think I almost feel guilty that I had such an amazing family and then I'm like no I'm so blessed that I had that I wish more people had that because the outcomes would be so much different I know some of the stuff that happened to me but because I had that Firm Foundation at home um and probably a lot of people sitting well not probably a lot of people sitting on the sidelines praying for me from the time I was little up till now up till right now because my parents are probably nervous about me being here because I thought when you first called I thought it was like AI like artificial like until I was like this is not this could not be him and I asked my daughter do you think it's AI what if it's like a human trafficking ring obviously I have trust issues from the job I do yes I mean even like coming up to this room I knew that was you I knew it looked like you but I was still like oh my God another reason my brother was here uh so yeah trust issues baggage well you see the worst of the worst we do and whenever I think that I've seen I can't see something worse or hear something stranger or worse sure enough I get proven wrong many times I get proven wrong in that what's the what's the worst thing you've seen um the worst thing I've seen I have to be obviously careful because of HIPAA by far dead children that died at the hands of your their abuser now I will say that there's times that I thought as horrendous as that was because there's been some really bad ones I never had to hear what happened and sometimes for me I'm an overthinker I can't even it's a toss-up between which ones worse obviously a dead child is horrendous but the kids are able to tell me everything too is then I know I have full knowledge of what happened and I just wonder and like I just literally will pray for these kids when they leave like it's got to be so difficult to let the kid go he's going back to his family right yeah sometimes the perpetrator I mean DCS Department of Child Services will always be involved if it's anyone under 18. sometimes separate them yeah and I and I know that uh again they have a very high Ace score um right away in life and you know unfortunately even Foster families I've taken care of a lot of foster kids who were sexually assaulted in foster homes because of either other foster kids or foster parents I mean you know I I am not like my dad I love my dad to death but he and he's changed a lot over over time he just I think he always wanted to think the best about people and that people were good and there are a lot of good people there are you have to find them but they're out there but there's so many foster parents um that it would be hard to have foster kids even when you're doing the best best you know you're awesome people you want the best for people I don't even know how you keep an eye on a kid that's been sexually assaulted because Unfortunately they can also become the next perpetrator which is scary too but we've had to send kids back into homes where I didn't feel like they felt safe because that's not my choice I don't get to make that choice and I have a lot of respect for Department of Child Services because I see what they have to deal with they're dealing with a lot of the same things we are and they have to make scary choices sometimes and you're trusting that a mom's going to get rid of that stepdad or their boyfriend that's been molesting their children but the system's not always going to know if they allow those people back in the house so I really can't I know which one was the hardest on me emotionally and it was a dead kid in the morgue that was literally every inch of that kid had injury and having it in the worst places because anytime it's anal vaginal anything and I I'm I because I do overthink and obsess about things like that sometimes all I could think about was what was the last few minutes of that kid's life like you know and that I just hope that when maybe they got hit in the head first that they were out at that point that they died quickly and I don't know it's it's it's really weird because like two of us usually always go to the morgue and my co-worker it seems like her and I usually are stuck together going those same days and she had a kid about that age that same age and um it was very difficult on her very difficult and we're both talkers and I remember on the way back after we left that day and we had really good law enforcement there that day that kind of warned us what we were in for that it wasn't just like a kid that looks like they're sleeping it was much worse than that and I don't think we spoke and like I said we're both talkers I don't think we spoke one word the whole way back to work and then when we get there you're not done at that point I mean you think oh God you should be able to like decompress like do whatever but no you immediately go because you have to dry the evidence package the evidence start your documentation and I think on that one I had at least five hours just in charting the injury because we chart everything by hand so you're like looking at the photos again you know for the next five so it was like now that being said that day normally I can go home and I'm weird I'm acting a little weird I feel like you're just like in this weird space but it's usually a couple days after I do those where it just like hits you yeah just like that day when I was driving home yeah and that where I can and that's why literally and who who in their right mind sorry would be watching your videos to relax because I do other things I mean I listen to music I listen to podcasts I play Pickleball I swim I paint rocks and hide them around for people to find and um actually I painted you on but I left it downstairs because I was stressed and uh just to like I have to do things that bring me joy and can take me out of that space when I get in a funk because of one of those cases but that same case I had I think I had five more exams in the next two days because I was on call that weekend so I didn't process it till Monday and Monday was not a good day I had that day off and I was just like what in the heck even like what is going on that one is stuck with me um as far as visually the most because I see it I can still I could describe it to a t right now but it's the that's the visual part of it the audio part of it there's stuff that I've heard that I can never unhear never on here stuff that I see that I cannot see stuff that I hear that I will never run here you've been doing this job for how many years 13. how have those 13 years changed you um I was very untrusting prior to this job so uh changed me you're what you're aware now of how evil the world is sometimes I knew that before I knew that before but like doing these interviews I'm shocked at how many people have been through sexual abuse well and I think that that's kind of why because somehow yours was suggested to me I don't even know what that meant but somehow it was suggested to me and I started watching them and I'm like oh my gosh this is like these were like my patients and these are like people who are self-medicating and you know when we talked about the aces before the higher the score you have the more that you answer yes to it increases your risk for chronic health problems suicide attempts mental health issues um drug abuse yeah sexual assault is such a horrible thing but at the same time I want people to have hope and I don't want them to feel like that they are um defined by what has happened to them and I think again that's part of what I want to do in my job I want people to have hope when they leave and I always after the exams are over even the youngest kids I'll be like is that as bad as you thought it would be because they have people going well you're going to re-traumatize my kid or oh my God I watched this on um SV Law and Order SVU and it's horrible and I'm like I'm not telling you this will be easy but I can assure you that I'm the perfect person to take care of you today and I you will feel empowered when you leave here I don't know how you're going to feel 24 hours from now I have no control over that but while you're here you will feel safe you will feel listened to you will know that you had good care provided and you will know that there's something different about me and you won't know what that is but you'll know okay would you say your job is fulfilling and rewarding it's fulfilling um it's absolutely fulfilling it's just hard yeah and like there's days literally I'm like why am I doing this because I can help people and that's what I want to do and there's the days I'm the most frustrated because it's just it can be a very toxic environment um because again there's no one coming there for a happy reason I do a lot of teaching and educating and those are the only people walking through our doors that it's happy because they're coming to learn about it which is not happy for them usually but I love educating and and it's kind of healing as well to do that so people know more about it and they're more aware what do you think the solution is to the the amount of sexual abuse we see as negative as it sounds I there is none it's always been happening the good parenting that you you described it's going to continue right but I had good parents and it happened to me yeah nobody more more good parenting would probably right put a big dent in it all yeah it's um pornography people don't like to listen to this or hear this it's not a popular thing but the accessibility of pornography now and the kids the things that little kids are seeing because I ask my patients so you're only seven and some of these things were happening with you and another child did you see this from someone is it something you saw on TV in a movie and a picture in a video did you walk in on your parents like where did this did something happen to you previously because we kind of want to establish we want to make sure that that kid is also we know that some of the child perpetrators are being perped on as we speak so we're always trying to back it up to be like okay this kid did something horrible what happened to that kid and then you're kind of like moving back to try to find out how many kids are being affected in this group and trying to get everybody in for forensic interviews and um the accessibility of pornography and people having their little phones all the time and these kids that have my kids if they were little would never have any of these smartphones or there would be so much blockage on it it wouldn't even there would be no point they might as well have a flip phone and there are kids who know how to get online and find all of that and I know there are just some legislation that came through recently in a couple States about trying to minimize the accessibility and age restrictions and certain entities that they make a lot of money off of that being really upset about that I feel like everyone should think that's the messed up thing is trying to well there's always going to be ways to get around things we do know that but why not have it in place can we minimize I think yeah why do we want kids to see these kind of things it's bad enough that stuff is happening to them but they're seeing it and they want to act some of the things out so it's not just kids that have been perped on it's kids that have seen these things and they end up perpetrating and it's just I wish I could say that there's a solution to getting rid of sexual assault but it'll never happen but the outcomes can be um can be changed to where they're they at least have a better chance of a positive outcome a lot of your videos that I've watched in the interviews um I don't talk about faith I'm not going to go on and on about it now because that's not the way I roll I care um but I think people seeing you're different sometimes you can plan a seed without saying things but most of the people in your videos that have had a better outcome even after some real crap like Johnny the the gang member that now is like working in jail Ministry and stuff like that I think I'm safe to say you can agree or disagree that most of the people that have had a positive outcome have said something about God or Jesus and I believe that because our worth is never going to be sorry self-worth is the huge thing with the population that you video most of the time an interview your worth is never going to be determined by where you lay your head at night how much money you have the atrocities that have happened to you um how many friends you have what kind of shoes you're wearing I believe beyond a shadow of doubt that all of us are worthy in God's eyes and that every one of us is his masterpiece and if everyone knew that and I know people say how could these horrible things happen to people if there's a God well there's a lot of horrible people and I don't regret anything that happened to me in my past some choices I've made I absolutely have some regrets about that but as far as the things that happened to me when I was younger that my parents had absolutely no control over nor did I um I don't regret it I absolutely don't because while that is not the reason that I went into forensic nursing has nothing to do with it it did not enter into it one bit um mine was more because I'm methodical and detail-oriented and all those kind of things I thought it would be fit for that job and I knew I cared about people because that's what was modeled by my parents they cared they were consistent they were punctual which you obviously know I am since I got here two hours early um but they lived out their faith every day I'm the least religious person you'll ever meet but I agree with you 100 it's nice to know I was really proud of Johnny in that video and I hadn't watched his and when you when I watched some of your interviews I was like if I say anything he might just edit it out and um so I was overthinking because that's what I do best everything that I was gonna say and when I saw that one I felt better because I knew you not only allowed it you had him come back a second time because I saw how many people watched his and how many positive comments were on his and you we all know there's a lot of haters because my daughter's like if this thing gets out there don't look at the comments because you overthink everything and you'll be like what she's right um because a lot of people don't want to hear those things like some people might think it's terrible I said dead baby I know that sounds very slang and bad because it's a deceased child um but that's literally what I thought that day I cannot take care of dead babies I can't do this so I'm not saying it disrespectfully I know it doesn't sound politically correct and I know I probably worry about that too much because nowadays everybody gets like oh gosh everything comes at you now if you say the one wrong thing um and I shouldn't care what I do anyway I work with a lot of law enforcement Child Protective Services uh therapists not really work right beside them always but we have somewhat kind of the same um job at the end of the day and there's a lot of us that are in healing Fields fields that we went into because we wanted to be a part of healing people and serving people and helping it's more actually helping than healing and a lot of those people that I've come and contact with over the years were people who suffered at the hands of abusers as well and I just have to think that that's that's also something we do for us which sounds selfish again that's never why I went into the field I'm in but it helps us too anybody that knows when you feel the crappiest and the most down that's why I paint rocks and it sounds so stupid I get them when I'm up in Alaska these perfect little smooth rocks and I paint things on them and I hide them and then people post them online because there's groups all over the world that do this and it's such a stupid little simple thing and there's people that will post I found this rock on the day my mom died and it's like that just sounds so dumb but it means something to people and if I can do that and if all the other people that I know who are in these fields can do that and just anyone like I said eye contact with a homeless person walking down the street I heard a saying and I'm probably going to butcher it but it was something along the lines of the final stage of healing is when you use what happened to you to help other people and any day that we can do that it's a good day it's a really good day what a wonderful talk thank you Sean thank you for inviting me

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

Views: 1,213,051

Keywords: soft white underbelly, swu

Id: 0L3pZAtBvZQ

Length: 49min 33sec (2973 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2023