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I came into some money when my grandma died. Grief makes you do strange things.

A short circuit for Johnny 5; a long jerk-it for Johnny 69

No, Mr. Bond.... I expect you to apologize.

I think you are projecting your situation onto this one. We don't actually know the details of what this woman's husband did to his daughter. A sentence of 25 years could very well indicate violent rape. Amazing episode by the way. To the person put off by her nervous laughter, I think it's a perfectly normal, valid response to a tragic situation. A few times I thought the laughter almost crossed into crying. I can't even begin to imagine how I would react to something like this, and I don't think it's something that should be judged. It's literally a response created by her brain sensing stress. Would you judge someone with Tourette's? It's not really that different.

Funny that you seem to know so much about this caller and are so hateful towards her. It may take awhile for it to register with you, but you were sexually abused by your own father. I won't use the word monster, but to use the word "mistake" or "judgment error" as you did is drastically underplaying your father's disgusting, manipulative, selfish actions. There's no sugarcoating it, your father abused you whether you choose to fully acknowledge that. A grope, kiss, rape, it really doesn't matter when you're talking about a parent and child. There's a line there that only sick people cross. Don't take your pent up pain and take it out on this caller. She has the right to her reaction, as you do yours. Hopefully you one day realize your mother is trying to protect you and others from a child molester, just as this caller is.

Gosh, it was nice to hear this story. Years ago, an old boyfriend opened up to me after a five year relationship about his leaving the military. After years of lies, a fight on his utilization of the GI Bill brought the truth forward. My boyfriend had been dishonorably discharged from the military for being a pedophile. (If you're reading this, woman from the podcast, I understand trying to save the person. I understand how hurt you are, and how angry. That feeling of being unclean, I get it. You aren't alone.) What I've found most awful about the experience was the lack of support for all parties. The woman on the podcast hit the nail on the head about the lack of support groups for those tangentially involved with pedophilia. It's hard to feel so disgusted with yourself, with them, with the justice system, and have to remain silent. I was afraid to research pedophilia on the internet, for fear that I would get flagged as a predator! It seems ridiculous, but it's true. There are few, almost zero mental health professionals who specialize in sexual predation, and how could they? We view predilection towards the innocent as a crime rather than a psychiatric disorder. A pedophile is a potential child predator, there is no way around that. However, there aren't many avenues for potential predators to seek the mental help they need, as pedophile and child molester have become synonymous. I wish that there was some way for the conversation to be more open, without the judgement and castigation foisted on the victim, the criminal, and the families. As our society grows more open to issues of mental health, I wonder if we could become more open to these experiences as well. Would it lower the instances of child molestation? Would it give release and comfort to those touched?

Oof. Becky, your post hurts to read a little. I can tell that that's a sentiment that will piss you off; I'm not here to get sanctimonius with you or tell you how to feel, but I ask that you hear me out. This is my mother's story. It's very different from yours in a lot of ways, except in her reaction to it, which I painfully recognise in you. My grandmother, like a lot of people in our family, was high functioning autistic. This was in the days before anyone, least of all a woman, would have received that diagnosis, but enough of her descendants now have been formally diagnosed that retrofitting that label onto her doesn't feel like an unreasonable thing to do. This context is important, because my grandmother was not a bad woman, in the sense she never intended to do harm. But she was a person of firm and strange convictions about how the world should be, in a way she could not articulate to her partner or her children. This meant they were constantly infringing on rules which she took very seriously, and they didn't understand. My mother was the oldest of three children. And until my grandmother died, I never had any sense that their childhood was in any way unhappy. My grandmother came over every christmas, bought me many of the books I loved and remain in my llibrary to this day, and taught me to speak decent anglo-saxon, which she was (now that I think about it) strangely passionate about. (I think in the modern context this would have racist connotations, but my grandmother was simply a massive beowulf fan.) And if she flew into odd rages sometimes, mum and her siblings just laughed it off. They all respected her, and defended her as an eccentric too intelligent for the rest of the world to understand. Her influence on them is clear and massive- they are all intellectuals with firm political beliefs and discomfort with emotional expression. My mum really does idolise her mother in a lot of ways- the mother is a powerful figure in anyone's imagination. But in the years since my grandmother's death, as I've become closer to my mum in a more adult way, I've started to get a sense that my mum is struggling with her evaluation of her mother. Not the least because, as it turns out, she could be savagely violent with absolutely no warning whatsoever, and my mum had had to fight for her life on more than one occasion. They never knew what would set her off. Mum recounts in a strangely normal way how, when she was eight, my grandmother chased her to the bottom of the garden with a kitchen knife because she'd brought friends over- friends my grandmother knew very well, friends who came over all the time without incident. This violence only ended when my mum got big enough that the fights they had ended with her winning- my grandmother was 5'1'' and my mum hit 5'10'' at fourteen, fortunately. My mum was genuinelly surprised I sounded shocked by that. But then a few weeks later she started saying things like, 'that wasn't really right, was it?'- like the idea hadn't occurred to her before. It was treated as such a matter of course in the family home, and has become such a joke between the siblings, that none of them have ever seriously confronted what was happening. Our relationship with our parents defines our sense of normality. Violence can be normalised. Sexual violation can be normalised. The stories that would pain a listener the most are the ones that come out of our mouths the most casually, are the most integral to our ideas of ourselves. "Yeah, that happened- what's so weird about that?" And we think that because we can reflect on these events without pain ourselves, that we haven't been damaged by it. But that's not how it works. That you can look on your abuse without pain may mean you are still not feeling the pain that warns you away from bad situations. Those who received violence as children often have no defence against it as adults. I'm not saying you need to identify as a 'victim'. I actually think that's pretty unhealthy. But you might consider reflecting on what happened to you from a perspective other than that of the five year old child you were at the time. As an adult looking in on that scene, what would you have seen? What would you feel about it now? How would you feel if it were happening to your own children?

Someone please check on Chris, I think he took the end of that call very hard lol! I totally believe the caller when he says he was at work, you could hear people talking in the background as he was trying to get off the phone. That said, not to start arguments in the forums, but to offer a differing opinion: everyone experiences addiction differently, as everyone will experience the recovery process differently. Maybe some former alcoholics/heroin addicts/meth abusers/etc can smoke pot on the weekends and consider themselves sober. Others don't consider themselves "clean" until they've kicked cigarettes and caffeine as well. I think it's important that people dealing with addiction be allowed to dictate the parameters of their sobriety (not, obviously, in the legal sense, but in the sense that they be given control over their own narratives). "Perfection is the enemy of progress", and someone who went from being a falldown drunk with a history of fist fights with his roommates might feel that just being the guy who gets a little stoned at barbeques is a far enough journey.

Jeeze, I don't know why Chris found this caller so graceful and inspiring. Human beings, even criminals, are NOT monsters. Hate speech like this is what tears families apart. My father and I had an intimate relationship when I was young and my step mom knew partly about it. When my birth mom found out she reacted the same like this caller. She called my dad a child molester and a monster and did everything she could to ensure that my dad got the longest prison sentence possible and never saw me again. Mom took on the role of hero victim, just like the caller. She told EVERYONE about my dad and me. People who play the hero victim are so encouraged and coddled by self righteous people in society. Defining me as a victim was way more abusive to me than any of the loving touches my dad and I shared. My dad served 5 years in prison and my step mom and I stood by him every step of the way. Love and support are what people in prison need, not calling them monsters. My dad is happily home with my step mom and I grew up to be happily married. People who equate sex offenders with serial killers need a reality check. Chris you really need to check yourself. You were falling all over yourself to praise the caller's strength and grace the entire hour. You were not accurate when you told her all the listeners approve of her and agree with her approach. I certainly didn't.