Tag Archives: abuse

dogs, LDS, religion, true crime, YouTube

Religion can really complicate, or even end, a person’s life…

Happy Wednesday, all. I was thinking about writing a very different post this morning, as I remember our sweet Arran. I think it’s finally sinking in for Bill and me that he’s gone. We’ve both been a little bit “blue” this week, as we realize that Arran was a constant for literally half our marriage– right down to the actual midpoint of our 20 years and 4 months together. We had Arran for 10 years and 2 months.

I’ve already had a cry this morning, as I watched a few videos on YouTube that are a dog’s eye view of a human battling breast cancer. Noyzi joined me for the last one and gazed lovingly at me. I thought maybe I’d write about how I felt after spending five months treating Arran’s lymphoma. I know there are a lot of dog folks out there who are grappling with the decision about what to do after a cancer diagnosis.

The voice they used for this dog is pretty annoying, but the dogs are adorable and so loving. Yes, this made me cry. So did the other two I watched from this channel.

But… I have decided I don’t really want to write about that today. I don’t think I’m quite ready. I’m not sorry we had five extra months with Arran, especially since he was mostly pretty well the whole time. I’m also not sorry we made the decision we did on Friday. It was time. I do miss him a lot, though. I think I will be ready to write a post about the experience as a whole soon. I suspect that many people will find it useful.

Anyway… onward to today’s topic.

Lately, I’ve heard a few tragic stories about women who married seemingly God fearing religious men, only to find out that their pious husbands are complete and total creeps. The most glaring example of such a person is Anna Duggar, who has been married to her sex pest husband, Josh, since 2008. Josh Duggar, as we know, is currently in prison for a truly disgusting crime involving sexually abusing children. He is, himself, the father of seven children with Anna. And although he hasn’t even “celebrated” a year in federal prison in Seagoville, Texas, Josh has already gotten into trouble and lost some of his “good time”. He was supposed to be released in August 2032, but now it looks like he’ll be getting out of prison in October 2032… and that’s if he doesn’t screw up again.

Josh recently got caught with a cell phone and had to spend some time in the “special housing unit”. Now, Anna can’t visit him.

Anna Duggar was raised in a Christian “fundie” cult, and she married Josh, who was also raised in a Christian “fundie” cult. She probably believed that God would provide her with a “godly” husband, who would love and protect her and their children. Instead, she got married to a criminal, had seven kids, and now has sharply limited choices. If I were Anna, I think I’d want to write a book and cash in to being married to a Duggar… but that would have its own consequences. Look at what’s happened to Prince Harry.

Josh is a creep for sure, but at least he’s not a killer. I’ve read many awful stories about women who married supposedly “Christian” men who turned out to be capable of murder. Most recently, there’s been news about a LDS dentist from Colorado named James Toliver Craig who allegedly murdered his wife, Angela.

I first heard about this case yesterday, as the news reported that Dr. Craig’s wife died rather suddenly and the dentist was being held without bond in jail. According to several news accounts, Jim Craig was having an affair. He also had issues with porn addiction and gambling, and his dental practice was being “run into the ground” by his misdeeds.

The Daily Mail is admittedly not the greatest source for information, but according to a very recent article, Angela Craig had expressed concerns about her 16 year marriage to her sister. The couple, who had six beautiful children together, appeared to be a “perfect” family. But, behind the scenes, Angela was struggling to maintain her relationship with her husband, who repaid her by being unfaithful and allegedly poisoning her to death. Every time she mentioned wanting to leave him, he somehow talked her into staying in the marriage. Not listening to her gut has, unfortunately, led her to an early grave.

Even as Angela was dying in the hospital, Dr. Craig was sending her long, “loving” messages… with no obvious clues that he was apparently behind her being hospitalized in the first place. He flew his mistress to Colorado from Texas, while Angela languished in a hospital room. Multiple news outlets have shared links to the couple’s shared Facebook account. The social media accounts paint the family as practically “perfect”, with all of the trappings of success, right down to perfect, white smiles.

If you were to go by this video, Dr. Craig might seem like a great dentist…
Mady says Dr. Craig is really “sweet and kind”. He’s been trained to come across that way. I’m sure he’s basically a competent dentist, but he’s also a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Mike likes Dr. Craig, too… or at least he did before the awful news came out this week.

I’m sure when James and Angela married, Angela had visions of him leading her to the highest echelons of Heaven, according to the Latter-day Saints’ beliefs. Mormons believe that marriage is between one man and one woman, and the couple has to be righteous, and “sealed” in the temple in order to get to the Celestial Kingdom. Children who died before they’re eight years old also go straight to the Celestial Kingdom. The first step to that highest level of glory is for a woman to marry a temple worthy man, preferably one who has served a mission for the church. I’m sure Angela thought she’d found the right man when she married James Craig, a friendly dentist who, if we’re to believe some of his customer testimonials, had a thriving business with loyal patients.

It was probably important for Angela to marry someone who had the same religious beliefs she had. I’m sure that when the couple had problems, Angela relied on her faith to help her persevere. She probably hesitated to divorce, in part, because divorcing in the LDS church can be very fraught with issues, especially a couple is “sealed”. Even a legal divorce doesn’t cancel a sealing. Men can be sealed to more than one woman, but women have to get a “cancellation of sealing”, or a “temple divorce”. They aren’t always easy to get. A lot seems to depend on who a person knows, and how much money they’ve tithed.

According to news reports, Jim Craig had a history of drugging his wife. He had drugged her on another occasion, ostensibly because he was planning to commit suicide and didn’t want her to stop him. When she was in the hospital, Angela had told her husband that she felt “drugged”. Craig’s response was,

“Given our history I know that must be triggering. Just for the record, I didn’t drug you. I am super worried though. You really looked pale before I left. Like in your lips even.”

Authorities found evidence that Craig had researched poisons on his work computer and even had some delivered to his practice. A co-worker discovered the poisons and reported finding them to the police. From ABC:

While Angela Craig was hospitalized for the final time on Wednesday, one of her husband’s business partners told a nurse about James Craig’s delivery of potassium cyanide at their medical practice, noting there was no need to have the chemical in the office, the affidavit says. The nurse then reported this to police, setting off the investigation into Angela Craig’s death.

Craig had suggested his wife was suicidal, but there were no indications of her having suicidal intentions in her medical records. When Angela Craig died on March 18th, Craig would not consent to an autopsy. He allegedly said that if the doctors couldn’t figure out what had happened to his wife when she was living, he didn’t want them poking her when she was dead. Naturally, Craig’s objections to the autopsy have now been overruled.

What does Josh Duggar have in common with Jim Craig, besides being locked up and having issues with pornography? Both are men who, on the surface, appear to be very faithful to Christian based religious beliefs. But they join a large group of religious men who turn out to be much less “godly” than they appear. The piousness is a cover up for who and what they really are. And both men are married to women who were or are determined to stay married to them, most likely because of their religious beliefs.

I’ve written at least once about Ed and Lois Smart, parents of Elizabeth Smart. The couple divorced when Ed came out as gay. I think it’s too bad that Ed couldn’t simply love the person he wanted to love, rather than spending years “faking it” in a heterosexual marriage. But, at least in the Smart family, everyone is still living. I just think it must have been very hard for the Smarts, not just because their daughter, Elizabeth, was kidnapped by a fundamentalist Mormon rapist psychopath, but also because they felt they had to live by the intrusive and restrictive rules of a religion. Lois Smart no doubt married Ed believing that he would usher her into the Celestial Kingdom someday. That can’t happen now, unless she gets a temple divorce and marries someone else who is worthy.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful. I know there are a lot of people who are very grateful to religion for helping them cope with life. However, I’ve been exposed to so many stories about people who are caught in faith related crises. Most of the people simply have issues regarding their beliefs, and whether or not they can maintain the cognitive dissonance required to keep believing in the unbelievable, as they also struggle to keep to the rules. But some people end up in truly horrifying situations that would be awful enough if religion weren’t part of them.

I mean, even if Anna Duggar weren’t a fundamentalist Christian, she’d still be struggling a lot right now. The fact that she has deep rooted religious beliefs that keep her tied to a man who will be in prison for years only complicates matters. She doesn’t have a formal education, so getting suitable work in order to support her large family is difficult. Now, she’s stuck under Jim Bob Duggar’s authority. And if she hadn’t been super religious, she might not have had seven children. I’m sure she loves all of her kids, but taking care of a family that size, especially when your husband is a notorious criminal, is an extremely difficult task… even if you do have God on your side.

And Angela Craig– just 43 years old, with plenty of time to divorce Jim Craig and find someone much better– is now dead. Her six children are now, no doubt thrust into a chaotic situation. My heart goes out to their children who are still minors, as their father is likely to be in prison for many years, if not for the rest of his life. I admit that I don’t know anything about Angela, other than what I’ve read, but I do wonder if she would have considered marrying other people who might have been better people, but weren’t members of the church.

My own husband’s experiences with religion have also led to complications. In his case, the religion was used as a parental alienation tool against him. And being in the church wasn’t very useful to him, but it cost him a lot of money in tithing and time to consider what he should be doing with his life. Ultimately, joining the LDS church didn’t save his marriage to Ex, either… but I don’t see that as a negative thing.

I think if there’s anything to learn from these cases– just two of many cases involving true crime and religion– it’s that you can’t always trust what you see on the surface. People who appear to be super religious quite often turn out to be awful people. Like anything else, they use the religion to hide what lurks deep down. According to The Daily Mail article I linked, many former patients claimed that he ripped them off by doing unnecessary work, and some wrote that the work he did wasn’t of good quality and had to be redone. But he maintained a facade of goodness, by working in an anti-bullying campaign with the Denver Police Department called “WE CAN HELP”. Yeah… it all looks good on the surface, but it’s all a front to hide something sinister and evil. Too many religious situations turn out to be abusive and hypocritical, at best.

I feel sad for Angela Craig’s family. I hope they get justice. And I hope Anna Duggar eventually wises up and divorces Josh, who, according to Katie Joy, is apparently cheating on her with a transgender inmate, anyway.

I’m not an atheist myself, but I’m really glad I’m not hyper-religious. And I’m glad Bill isn’t, either.

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law, true crime, TV, YouTube

Jared Fogle… a passenger on the Subway straight to Hell…

How’s that for a Monday morning headline? Well, that’s all I can think of, as I reflect on the three part series I watched on iTunes yesterday. As Bill was packing his bag for the rest of his TDY trip to Bavaria, I stumbled across a special called Jared From Subway: Catching a Monster. As regular readers know, I find criminals interesting, which is why I read books and watch television programs about them.

Jared Fogle in 2004.

I remembered Jared Fogle from his many ads for Subway. For fifteen years, Fogle was the spokesman for the chain restaurant after he lost 245 pounds in under a year eating two Subway sandwiches a day. I think I heard them say that Jared ate a turkey sub and a Veggie Delite every single day and walked a lot as the pounds melted from his morbidly obese frame. When Subway got wind of Jared’s big losses, they asked him to promote their company. For fifteen years, Jared– who was once an outcast in school– was the face of Subway. He became very rich and famous, and people “loved” him. Or, they loved his story, anyway.

Jared Fogle in 2006, before the truth came out about him.

Now, I am not actually a fan of Subway. I don’t remember the last time I ate at one. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve eaten at Subway. But Jared Fogle’s ads were everywhere for fifteen years, so of course I’d heard of him. Still, I was surprised and disgusted when the news came out about his penchant for molesting middle school aged children.

Suddenly, that winning facade fell apart, and Jared’s mansion was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He had married and had two very young children with his second wife, Katie McLaughlin, when his bubble burst. Currently, he is incarcerated at FCI Englewood in Jefferson County, Colorado, where he’s serving a sentence of fifteen years and eight months for traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, and distribution and receipt of child pornography. When he is released, he will be compelled to submit to supervision for the rest of his life. He also had to pay $175,000 in fines, forfeit $50,000 and $1.4 million in restitution.

Lots of people emulated Jared Fogle and also lost weight.

If and when Fogle is released, I suspect he will reoffend. Most sex offenders do. Hell, sex offender Josh Duggar is currently in the news because he got caught with a cell phone, causing him to lose some of his “good time”, and get sent to the special housing unit (SHU). Sex offenders, unfortunately, have a tendency to reoffend once they have the opportunity. They have problems with impulse control. In Jared, it’s obvious in many ways, even though he did manage to lose a stunning amount of weight by trading burgers for light sub sandwiches.

In one sitting, I watched Jared From Subway: Catching a Monster on iTunes, and learned the story about how Jared Fogle was caught. He’d made friends with a single mother of two and radio, Rochelle Herman, from Sarasota, Florida. In 2006, Herman had been asked by representatives from the American Heart Association to interview Fogle. At the time, no one knew about his dark impulses. The two became acquaintances. Initially, Fogle had been very personable and flirtatious. Rochelle told him about her children, mentioning that her daughter had wanted to meet him.

Just before their on camera interview began, Jared Fogle leaned over to Rochelle and told her how “hot” he thought middle school aged kids were. Naturally, Rochelle was flabbergasted. She did independent research to try to find out if there were any hints of what a deviant Jared seemed to be after he said those words to her. She found nothing.

For some reason, Rochelle Herman then decided that she–herself– needed to get him on tape saying those words, instead of simply reporting him to the police and letting them handle it. So, even though he made her skin crawl, Rochelle kept talking to Jared Fogle. However, she never told him she was taping him, so what she was doing was actually illegal, and would have been inadmissible in a court of law. She found this out later, when she did get Fogle on tape, talking about his attraction to children.

FBI agents told Rochelle that in order to avoid prosecution, she needed to work with them and say the “right” things so that the evidence could be used to bring Fogle to justice. So, at great personal cost, Rochelle Herman did just that. She recorded Fogle, as he grew more and more comfortable with telling her things. What he said was more and more disturbing, and Rochelle had to act like she was just fine with it all.

The special actually featured some of the recordings, which were pretty stomach turning. I’m sure they didn’t share the worst of what Fogle ever said to Herman. He spoke of doing things like going to supposedly more permissive Thailand to satisfy his desires, but he also wanted to offend at home. At one point, Herman even tried to set up a “sting” of sorts, using the guise of a fake birthday party for her son as a way to draw him out. Fogle even asked about “cute” friends her kids had. Unfortunately, the operation couldn’t happen, because Fogle’s schedule wouldn’t allow him to attend.

Piers Morgan interviews Jared before his fall from grace. I’m amazed by how very “normal” he seems.

Herman said that she’s suffered a lot because of Fogle. She developed health problems that caused her great physical pain, forcing her into a wheelchair. She now requires strong painkillers to deal with her illness. Her daughter became very angry and alienated and, it seemed from the special, that her daughter is now estranged. Rochelle’s son still talks to his mom, but he moved to Taiwan. And Rochelle says she’s “haunted” by the awful conversations she had with Fogle, and the strain of trying to act like she was okay with what he said and did.

Aside from Jared Fogle, there was another player in this drama. Fogle started a foundation for promoting healthy eating. He hired a man named Russell Taylor to run the organization. Taylor, and his wife, Angela, were raising Angela’s daughters from a previous relationship, Christian and Hannah. It turned out that couple was just as slimy as Jared was, as Russell had set up secret cameras all through their home, spying on Angela’s daughters and their friends. Taylor was also sending material depicting bestiality. The couple were producing illegal materials which they were sending to Fogle. Russell Taylor and his now ex wife, Angela, are in prison, too.

I’ve really just scratched the surface of this story, which I know will be too triggering and “gross” for many people to stomach. I thought the series was very well done and compelling, but I also suspect that a lot of people will find it very distasteful viewing on many levels. I’m just glad that Rochelle Herman had the courage to speak up about Jared Fogle. In fact, as of 2010, she and Fogle had lost touch, and she grew impatient with law enforcement. She went to the local police department and threatened to air the story on her radio show if something wasn’t done about him. It was another five years before Fogle was finally busted.

Aside from his time behind bars– albeit in a low security facility– and all of the money he had to pay, Jared Fogle’s second wife, Katie, divorced him. He paid her about $7 million in their divorce settlement.

A few years ago, someone named Steven beat the crap out of Jared in prison.

As revolting as I find Jared Fogle now, there’s a part of me that feels a little sad for him. Here was a guy who had been very fat from his childhood days. I don’t know why he got so fat, but my guess is that he might have also been abused as a child. He grew up a social outcast, even though he seemingly came from a good family. Something amazing happened to him, when he managed to lose weight by walking and eating Subway sandwiches. Suddenly, he was doing something good– and had become a role model to millions of people, some of whom emulated him and also lost weight. He had money, fame, and power. But because he had these dark impulses and deviant urges, he lost it all. Now, he’s completely disgraced, and his life is mostly ruined.

Jared’s last commercial for Subway… the real ending is not this happy at all.

This doesn’t mean I don’t think Jared Fogle is exactly where he belongs. Clearly, the man should be in prison. He certainly can’t be trusted around children. But I do wonder what in the world happened to him when he was a child. Maybe things could have been different for him. As repulsive as Jared Fogle’s crimes are, I hate to see wasted potential in anyone. I think his story is absolutely awful, but it’s also so tragic on many levels, not just for him, but for everyone who believed in him. And, of course, I also feel sad for all of his victims, and his own two children, who have to live with the stigma associated with Jared Fogle.

On another note… there are some absolutely terrible memes about Jared Fogle. People can be so sick and twisted!

You can read more about the series I watched here.

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domestic violence, good tv, movies, reviews

A rare movie night at Chez knotty’s…

Last night, something happened that rarely happens at my house these days. I actually watched two very new movies that were actual theatrical releases. This is kind of a big deal, since I usually don’t watch silver screen films until they’ve been out for awhile. Last time I went to an actual movie theater was in 2018. That was to see Bohemian Rhapsody.

Before that, my last visit to a movie theater was in 2011, when Bill and I whimsically decided to see Midnight in Paris while we were vacationing in Maine. We only did that because I was having intractable back pain that made me less interested in walking around Portland. So, after a visit to Soakology (a foot soaking place that was awesome!), we stopped by the movie theater and watched Woody Allen’s flick. I really enjoyed it, plus the foot soak actually made my back feel much better.

I didn’t go to a theater last night. Come on, now, I’m home alone… and far be it for me to get in my car and actually go somewhere. 😉 (Actually, when I was single, I did frequently go out on my own… but I’ve changed my ways. It’s not that I’m afraid– it’s more that I don’t see the point of going out and wandering around alone. Plus, now I have dogs to keep me company.). However, I did download four new films, and I actually watched two of them last night. Both were a bit depressing, yet I still enjoyed them.

The first movie I watched was The Whale, starring Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins, and the fantastic Sadie Sink. I had never seen Sadie Sink before, because I am one of the few people who doesn’t watch Stranger Things. She is quite an amazing young talent. She reminds me of McKenna Grace, who is a few years younger. Both Sadie Sink and McKenna Grace are from Texas, and both have serious acting chops, especially for their ages. Actually, as I watched Sadie last night, I was also reminded of Kirsten Dunst.

The Whale was poignant and profound on many levels to me. There’s Brendan Fraser, a man who made many films based on his good looks, portraying Charlie, a morbidly obese, reclusive, online college English professor who doesn’t show his face on screen. He’s a very good and patient teacher, but he has serious personal issues to include a deadly eating disorder.

He has a nurse friend named Liz, played by Hong Chau, who comes to see him. Liz was adopted by the leaders of a religious cult who rejected her when she rejected the cult. When a missionary named Thomas from the cult visits Charlie, whose obesity has led to congestive heart failure, Liz doesn’t react well. Charlie is near death, and Thomas thinks he needs God. Liz disagrees vehemently. As time passes, the characters evolve, and we get the heartbreaking backstory for both.

But the really amazing character, to me, anyway, is Charlie’s daughter, 17 year old Ellie, played by Sadie Sink. Ellie is beautiful and intelligent, and she’s flunking out of school. Charlie is desperate to reunite with her before he dies. His ex wife, Mary (Samantha Morton), has kept Ellie away. Charlie left Mary and Ellie when Ellie was eight years old, because he was gay, and in love with another man. So, aside from paying child support to Mary and occasionally hearing the odd snippet about Ellie, he has no relationship with her. But he has over $120,000 saved to give her.

Ellie is a complex character on so many levels. Naturally, because I’m married to a man whose daughters were alienated from him, I have a perspective of this situation that other viewers might not have. Of course, Bill didn’t leave his ex wife for me, nor is he gay, morbidly obese, or reclusive. But he does have a daughter he would love to see again someday, and he has another daughter who reconnected and will probably be the sole recipient of an inheritance from him.

This was such a good movie!

I don’t want to write more about this movie, because I really think it’s a film that should be viewed with few spoilers. I’m glad I took the time to watch it. I have so much respect for Brendan Fraser for taking on this incredible role. His prestige has climbed a few notches for pulling off this character so convincingly. If you have the means to see The Whale, and don’t mind sad movies, I recommend it wholeheartedly. Especially if you were an English major.

The second movie I watched was Alice, Darling, which stars Anna Kendrick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Wunmi Mosaku, and Charlie Carrick. I was less into Alice, Darling, than The Whale. Generally speaking, I like Anna Kendrick’s work. I saw her in her debut, 2003’s Camp, and she immediately impressed me. This film is a drama that moves a little slowly, although it’s a story that a lot of people will identify with easily.

Alice and her friends.

Anna plays Alice, a woman whose artist boyfriend, Simon (Carrick) is emotionally abusive. Her friends, Tess (Horn) and Sophie (Mosaku), know Simon is abusive. They’ve seen Alice change, becoming a shell of herself. The women decide to go on a week’s retreat at Sophie’s family’s cabin in the woods, staging sort of an intervention. The premise is Sophie’s birthday, but Alice has to lie to Simon in order for him to reluctantly let her go without a fight.

Over the course of the week, the women hang out, sing songs, drink, have bonfires, and relax. Slowly, we see Alice start to change back into who she was, after gentle encouragement from her friends… until Simon unexpectedly shows up with groceries and tries to pull Alice back into his abusive web of deceit. Alice has good friends, though, and they’ve got her back… and Alice also has a good head on her shoulders as she slips out of the FOG.

Alice, Darling is another movie that speaks to me, mainly because of Bill, who was also married to a narcissistic emotional abuser. Because of his previous marriage, I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting narcissism and relationship abuse tactics. Abusive people pretty much have a playbook that they all seem to go by, more or less. Abuse can take many forms. Simon doesn’t physically abuse Alice; his abuse is more insidious, because it’s not immediately obvious to the eye. But, eventually, it’s plain to see what he’s doing, and it’s easy to see how hard it is for Alice to break out of that predicament. Fortunately, they weren’t married and didn’t have children.

I read that some men who have seen Alice, Darling are also speaking up about their experiences with emotional abuse. I think that’s a good thing, since many people seem to believe that men can’t be abused. I’ve seen it firsthand. Unfortunately, not everyone who is the victim of an abuser has friends like Alice does. In fact, abusers try very hard to isolate their victims, so they are abandoned by people who love and care about them. It happened to Bill, and viewers can see it happening to Alice, too.

As I mentioned up post, I didn’t enjoy Alice, Darling as much as I did The Whale. It’s not because of the story, which I think is well worth sharing. I think the reason I liked this film less is because I didn’t feel like the women meshed as friends. There was no chemistry. I didn’t get the sense of a realistic bond among the three of them, so there weren’t really any profound magic moments in this film that made it feel special. The actors were all very competent.

I was actually very impressed with Wummi Mosaku, who brought a lovely maternal vibe to her character, Sophie. I liked Kaniehtiio Horn, too, in her role. But Mosaku and Horn didn’t seem like they would be friends… nor did they seem legitimately connected to Kendrick, either individually, or within their group. So, it wasn’t that believable to me that these women would try to rescue Alice from Simon. Maybe with different actors, this film would seem more profound and plausible.

I thought Charlie Carrick did a good job portraying an abusive asshole artist. But again, I just couldn’t really see him with Kendrick. They also didn’t seem to have much of a bond, that would make them seem like an actual couple. I think Kendrick does better when she’s playing strong characters. I read that she was also in an abusive relationship, which made her want to take this role. But, in spite of that personal history she has off screen, it doesn’t seem to translate to me when I see her as Alice. To me, she doesn’t come off as a meek, vulnerable, victim type, even though she’s very petite, and looks like she might be easy to control if you don’t hear her speak.

Anyway, I didn’t hate Alice, Darling, and I think it covers an important topic. I just think it would have been better with another cast.

I don’t know if I’ll watch movies tonight. I think today, I might try to make some music videos. I got a very nice comment from a Dutchman in France last night, so that’s encouraging and inspiring. Besides, it’s been a week, and I need to play with my new recording gear.

By the way… I got my new HomePod yesterday, and I hooked it up to the TV. Gotta say, that makes a big difference in the sound quality, which is probably why I decided to watch movies in the first place. I think I might order another one for our other big TV. Maybe we might actually watch it more often, if I did that. 😀

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sports, true crime, videos, YouTube

Everything else on my mind since yesterday…

If you are a regular follower of my blog, you know that I was having Internet issues yesterday morning that prevented me from writing anything of substance. As yesterday wore on, subjects I wanted to write about piled up, even as I also made a concerted effort to get further into my latest book. I watched the latest Lifetime movie, which I reviewed this morning. I watched the latest South Park episode, which I definitely want to briefly comment about today. And I noticed that I was getting shitloads of hits on a post I wrote about British gymnast and commentator Monica Phelps back in December 2020. I searched the Internet to find out what’s going on with her, and now I want to comment about that, too. So here goes…

First– South Park!

Season 26 of South Park just started up, and while I don’t necessarily think South Park is still as funny as it used to be, I do think this week’s episode is pretty damned funny! It was pretty much a treatment of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and their insistence that they want privacy, while they constantly appear in the press. I watched a few good YouTube videos about the episode that sum it up as well or better than I can… Suffice to say, I laughed hard. I enjoyed it enough to see it twice, since I had to get Bill to watch it.

This is not the first video I watched about this episode, nor is it even the best… but it can be embedded, so here’s the link.

I love how they managed to capture the reality of this situation with humor… but I have a feeling Meghan is not going to like this episode of South Park at all. It’s quite a roasting. Frankly, I think they kind of deserve it, but that’s just my humble opinion.

And second, Monica Phelps…

On a more serious note… Statcounter reported that a whole bunch of people from England and its environs were hitting my blog yesterday. I was surprised to see that, and wondered what it was all about, so I checked the news. Sure enough, there were articles in the Guardian and the BBC about Monica Rutherford Phelps’ husband, 1960s era Olympic diver, Brian Phelps, who ran a trampoline gym with her in England. In 2008, when he was 64 years old, Brian Phelps was convicted of a string of indecent assaults against three children.

Yesterday, it was reported that following the Whyte Review, in which Anne Whyte investigated abuse in British women’s gymnastics, Phelps actually had many more victims who never came forward. Phelps served six of the nine years to which he was sentenced for sexually abusing children. A 52 year old woman, using the pseudonym Emma Webb, has gone public with her story about how she was abused by Phelps. Webb started her training in 1975, when she was five years old. That was when the abuse started. It continued until she was twelve years old, when she stopped attending the Phelps’ gym, Olga.

Webb is working on a book about her experiences with the Phelps. According to the article in the Guardian, Webb doesn’t remember being molested by Monica Phelps, but she does remember the Olympian gymnast as being obsessed about her gymnasts’ bodies. She also wrote that Monica’s favorite gymnasts weren’t the same as Brian’s, and their interaction was “toxic” and “deeply disturbing”. In my blog post about Phelps, I noted the inappropriate comments Phelps made about gymnasts’ bodies in the YouTube videos of her commentary.

Admittedly, my 2020 post about Monica Phelps was kind of a silly one. I’m American, so until I wrote that post after seeing those videos by Ampli Tood on YouTube, I didn’t know who Monica and Brian Phelps are (although I actually lived in England in 1975!). I did find her comments cringeworthy in 2020, but I wasn’t thinking about how utterly horrifying they must have been to the gymnasts themselves, whose parents were probably paying a lot of money for gymnastics training at the Olga facility in Dorset, England. Emma Webb describes being taken to a basement room known as “Happyland”, where unspeakable things happened to her. The room was decorated with murals of cartoon characters, words written in “kiddie” fonts, and Disney characters, such as Snow White and Seven Dwarves. She writes of flinging every gymnastics medal she ever won into the sea… and not being able to even look at Cadbury Dairy Milk bars, because they were used as rewards.

By 1993, Webb was 22 years old and in an eating disorder treatment program in London. It took intense therapy and great effort to finally explain what had happened to her and begin to heal from the abuse. The Whyte review was apparently a mixed bag for Webb, who was glad to finally see the abuses of British gymnastics finally addressed, yet was traumatized anew by the information revealed. Even today, according to the article in the Guardian, Webb is unable to move on completely. She is constantly triggered by a broad array of things– everything from hearing about the Olympics, to being in an area near the Olga gym, to smelling sweat.

I did find Monica Phelps’s comments kind of funny in a cringey way when I was first exposed to them. Now, upon learning a bit more about what allegedly happened in the gym she ran with her husband, I’m a lot more sober in my appraisal. I wrote in my first article that the comments she made were pretty mortifying. And now I know they were just the tip of the iceberg. I noticed that she was fixated on the bodies of the gymnasts she was critiquing for British sports. Now I know that those who trained with her were subjected to far, far worse…

Monica was pretty generous toward Viktoria Karpenko… She seemed to like her.
The kiss of death…
More commentary… it seems even more cringeworthy now that this news has come out.

The Olga facility, now known as Poole Gymnastics & Trampolining Club, is still open today. The official Web site is currently down for construction, but there is an active Facebook page. Although I remain enchanted by the beauty of gymnastics, I’m glad I never pursued the sport myself… and I’m glad I don’t have children to put into it. I say this, even though I know not all coaches are abusers. I just think it’s a very physically dangerous sport to begin with, and having sex abusers in its ranks makes it even more dangerous. My heart goes out to all of the victims.

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Bill, communication, divorce, family, narcissists, psychology

“I never said it would be easy…”

I’m happy to report that I finally got my new computer going yesterday. The new VESA monitor arm arrived in the afternoon. Although the Invision 450 arm was significantly less expensive than the Ergotron model I bought last week, it was a much better purchase. I did have to put more parts together, but they were very sturdy and the process was straightforward. I didn’t have to use any YouTube videos to figure out anything. In fact, the Invision had very clear instructions and diagrams that were obviously written by someone fluent in English. So, I am very pleased with that purchase, and I’m enjoying my new computer.

Naturally, the new computer needs to be broken in, which means transferring a lot of files and upgrading equipment. I finally retired some nice Bose speakers I’ve been using for about nine years. This morning, I should be getting another Minipod to use with the one I bought a few weeks ago. That will give me a nice stereo sound in my office. Edited to add: I just figured out how to use the old Bose speakers, too… so my sound system is gonna be bangin’!

Since a lot of my music is from CDs that can’t be easily moved to the new computer, I think I might repurpose my old computer for just media tasks. I ordered a new table to put in my office so I can set up the old computer for that use. I think, once everything is set up, it’ll be very nice. However, all of this change doesn’t come without significant ass pain and inconvenience. Like they say in the LDS church… “I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be ‘worth it’… “. Or something along those lines.

Yesterday, I wrote about the “truth bombs” I delivered to younger daughter. I ended up sending her three emails. The first was a brief explanation about why her dad and I never had our own children. The second was to tell her the dogs are fine. And the third was an apology for not acknowledging younger daughter’s own struggles with having children of her own. I got so caught up explaining about the vasectomy and the reversal that I forgot to acknowledge her pain. So my third email was to do that, and to let her know how happy Bill and I both are to be talking to her after all these years of no contact.

Last night, we watched a video of younger daughter sautéing mushrooms in butter. She wanted to know if we like mushrooms. Bill loves them and told her so. I hate them, and told her so. Apparently, younger daughter’s husband, father-in-law, and two older kids don’t like them, either. Her baby likes mushrooms. We explained about my issues with mycophobia, which is a literal phobia of mushrooms.

Then, after he responded to the video about mushrooms, Bill made another video about what I had sent younger daughter in the first email. He explained in a lot more detail about why he had chosen to have a vasectomy. Younger daughter was surprisingly empathic about everything. She spoke about how her mother didn’t take care of her children. That was left up to Bill’s daughters, who had to look after the youngest two children or else they would be neglected.

Younger daughter said that when her mother stopped working, she would stay up until 5:00am and then sleep until noon. And that meant no adults were conscious to take care of the youngest kids. Of course, some of the stories Bill told were surprising to her, too. Like, I don’t think she knew about the time Ex traded in the family car and bought two more– a VW Euro Van for herself and a Miata for Bill. She did things like that a lot– spending money they didn’t have on things they didn’t really need. It meant financial ruin, and that was the state Bill was in when we met. It took years to recover from it.

In the course of the conversation about childbirth and Ex’s tendency to wig out from the pain, younger daughter said that Ex had epidurals for her youngest two and there was no trauma involved with their births. Why she didn’t do that for the three eldest kids, I don’t know. The two eldest were born in military hospitals, but younger daughter wasn’t. I can’t understand why she wouldn’t have had epidurals for all of their births, especially given her history reacting to pain. But… I have a feeling that was probably about attention seeking.

One thing younger daughter mentioned was that Ex would do things like “swoon”. Like, one time, Ex just randomly fell over, like she had fainted. But it didn’t appear to be an actual collapse. Other times, when she would try to speak to her mother in the mornings, Ex would open her eyes, then close them again… as if she was asleep. Younger daughter knew she was faking it, but the message was that she should go away and fend for herself.

Then she said something along the lines of, “I don’t know why she would have such a big family if she didn’t even really want to be a mom to us.”

I can tell her the answer to that question. If Ex is a narcissist, as I strongly suspect she is, she doesn’t see other people as individuals, worthy of regard. They are mere tools to her… extensions of herself. That’s why everyone in her sphere is Facebook friends with other people she knows. Her children with Bill are “friends” with Ex’s first husband, people in Bill’s family, and people in #3’s family. They aren’t “friends” with me or Bill, though, because we’ve been “painted black”. Ex won’t get anything from us, so we’re “bad”.

Younger daughter would probably happily be friends with Bill and me, if it didn’t mean huge drama with her mom. Bill has to be punished severely for not obeying her whims… for taking care of himself and his needs, rather than catering to hers. I don’t know why #1 still speaks to Ex. She denied him contact with his son for about twenty years. But I see that he and #3 are “friends” on social media.

I also think that of all of the people in Ex’s life, Bill was the most devastating to lose. He has more earning power than the other two husbands combined. He has the most stable family. He’s the best educated, and frankly, the best looking. He probably treated her the best, too. She pushed him too far, so he had to get away from her. She probably sees me as the mean girl who stole her favorite toy. She probably thinks of Bill as her property that was cruelly taken from her, rather than discarded. So, because her ego is injured, she paints us as “black”… evil people who didn’t appreciate Ex’s specialness.

I’m sure she blames Bill for a lot of her problems, including being married to #3. If he had just realized her divorce proposal was “high drama” that she didn’t actually mean. If he had only not agreed to her demand for a divorce and simply acquiesced to her, just as he’d always done in the past… If Bill had only continued to be loyal to her, even though she was cheating on him with #3, right down to moving him into the money pit house that she had to have because it looked like one she’d seen in a snow globe.

Bill was paying for that house, and had probably paid for the bed she and #3 were fucking in, while she was still married to Bill. That didn’t matter, though… and the fact that he still had a scintilla of self respect after almost ten years with her was more than she could take. She couldn’t admit that she was being dramatic and work toward a compromise… change some of her habits and be a better partner. No… she had to “save face”. Lucky for me.

I came along at a time when Bill was being cast out. She was trying to teach him a lesson… force him to “rock bottom”. I ruined everything for her. Or, at least that’s how she sees it. She thought he would come crawling back to her. Instead, he fell into my arms, emotionally battered, mentally bruised, physically scarred, and financially beaten. I’ve seen Ex on Twitter, apparently showing empathy to women in bad relationships. She never lets on what a sadistic partner she is, and how anyone in her sphere is basically in her own private cult. She’s always a victim.

One thing I’ve noticed when I listen to younger daughter speak is that she never refers to Ex as simply “Mom”. She calls her “my mother”. This morning, when she was responding to Bill’s video, she said “It’s sad you can’t have a family because of ‘your wife’.” At first, I thought she was talking about me, but it was soon clear that she was referring to her mother in that way. She doesn’t want to acknowledge Ex as her mother. She’s trying very hard to distance herself from her mother. I’m sure there are many layers of pain there on younger daughter’s side… things that we haven’t even scratched the surface of yet. We may never get there.

I know that younger daughter knows Bill is telling the truth, too… as outrageous as the stories are at times. She knows he’s being truthful, because she’s seen the craziness firsthand. She’s experienced it in person. As a child, she found it easier to ignore, because it was just life to her. Just as I’ve come to realize, so has she– when you become an adult, your eyes open to the truth. You start to realize the truth about people that you might have, at one time, had great love, respect, and admiration for. You start to realize that they’re just as frail and human as you, yourself, are… and some are more damaged and dysfunctional than you ever knew.

I used to think Ex was just a mean, nasty person. Now, I think that besides being mean, she’s also truly very mentally ill, and she’s done some things that may very well eventually land her in a place where she will be exposed to other mentally ill people. It’s because of enablers like her children and husbands that she’s never had to face the consequences of her actions. I think her day is coming, though. Bill isn’t the only one who’s had enough.

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