We're dealing with a person who does not have empathy, who does not have morality, and who is able to completely shapeshift their behavior for their own selfish motivations and agenda.
I'm Andrea Gunning. This is Betrayal, Season three, episode six Complexity. Justin's sentencing for rape and voyeurism marked an ending, an end to Justin's reign of terror, to years of manipulation and abuse, and to the Rutherford family worrying about whether justice would be served. Justin would be locked up for decades. Tyler was finally free of him. I told everyone, I'm ready to stop letting this shape our life. Everything's done now.
I was done with it, but Stacy wasn't done. For two years, she carried the weight of guilt, shame, horror, and deep sadness and was nurturing wounds of her own. During many conversations with Stacy, she expressed sincere interest in examining her own grief and emotions surrounding the aftermath. It's not something that comes naturally to her. After Justin was sentenced, her process was just starting, and to her credit, she was completely honest about it.
When court was finally over after three years, of dealing with this stuff. My dad was like, I'm glad it's over. We can put this all behind us and you can start moving on with your life.
From the moment Stacy learned the truth about Justin, she prioritized her kids and their healing. As you can imagine, she was concerned about Tyler and focused her energy on his needs, and then there was the support that Mikayla and the littles needed as well, so there was little to no space for herself. I've gotten to know Tyler and michaela over the last few months, and I can confidently say that Stacy raised two bright and emotionally intelligent individuals.
They were old enough to understand that Stacy was putting on a brave face and they worried about her.
When the older kids would ask me how I was doing, I would always just say to them, as long as you're okay, I'm okay.
Stacy was strong for her kids, and when it seemed like the family was finding their footing the grief she had been suppressing weird its ugly head.
I spent so much time trying to tend to this and tend to that and keep this going. And as far as my own grief. I feel like I'm just now starting to kind of get into it.
But then there was this to reckon with. How could she make sense of her own grief, let alone explain it to other people. She was a shamed of her thoughts and feelings, So we looked for someone who could help Stacy work through everything she was experiencing and maybe, in the process, enlighten the rest of us. We introduced Stacy to Jordan Dan. She is a licensed psychologist, psychoanalyst, author, teacher,
and speaker. She is also the author of Somatic Therapy for Healing Trauma and the creator of the Relationship Transformation Method. Stacy and Jordan allowed us to record their sessions. If you've listened to Betrayal season one and two, you heard a similar process with Jennifer Fason and Ashley Linton. I would like to preface this episode by saying that for the next twenty minutes, we're going to explore the many emotions, thoughts, and shame Stacy was left to work through as a
critical step to her healing. I also want to note that in our next episode, we're going to focus on Tyler and his healing journey. He's going to meet with a beloved Hollywood actor who shares a similar story at betrayal. We don't believe in zero sum thinking. There was the harm Doneto Tyler, but Stacy was also wounded in her own way. It's important for us to hold space for
their individual experiences as humans. Hearing some of the complicated feelings survivors of betrayal trauma struggle with can be hard to understand if you have not been through it, and sure it's easy to judge, compassion requires going deeper. Here is Jordan Dan.
People have difficulty tolerating uncomfortable feelings. It's easier to be in absolutes because you don't have to feel and be with the messiness.
Absolutes as in you're either good or evil.
As Stacy holds the complexity of both the betrayal and the horror and the pain, she's really oscillating between the reality of this violent behavior, this trauma that her son has experienced, and also the relationship she thought she was in that she is actually just starting to grieve.
Stacy was and still is in a lot of pain. Calling back to the good times, thinking of happy memories. The life they once lived feels like a betrayal, betraying her son, betraying herself.
If I think of the good things, I feel like I'm a bad mom. That's a slap in the face to my child that he hurt. I think that's what hurts me the most is knowing that I was the one that brought someone into their life that would do something like this to them.
But Jordan doesn't see it that way.
Of course, hindsight is twenty twenty. To say I will wish I had done something is completely understandable. Children do everything in their power to hide what is happening to them. Tyler had so much at stake, not only his own attachment to justin his own safety, the positive feelings that were a part of such an abusive relationship, but also his feelings of responsibility towards his mom, towards the whole family.
Most children, the abuse is actually easier to tolerate than the danger and fear of actually saying what's.
Happening to them.
And I think it's easiest to understand in the context of children with abusive caregivers, to be with the reality of a person who they are dependent upon for survival and is cruel and violent. Is impossible, and so they have to separate those two aspects of the person. And often because it's too impossibly painful for a child to see their parent as bad, the child ends up seeing themselves as bad.
Stacy examining her own part of where things went wrong is a good thing.
As parents, we do fail, even with our best intentions. There are moments where we do not offer the protection the care that our children deserve, and that's just a part of being human. Her ability to feel that she failed in her responsibility of protection of her son is actually a really healthy thing.
And how could Stacy offer that protection when Justin was so good at hiding who he really was? Did she really know him or the life she was leading at all?
When you get to where I'm at now, you know, you question yourself and you think, was it ever what I thought it was? Was anything that I ever felt real?
Think about the weight of that. If nothing was real? The love, the marriage, how are you supposed to reconcile all the time you spent those hours, those years, that's the substance of your life, your life's story. Is it no longer supposed to be of value because of someone else's deception?
I question that all the time, and I don't know why. I need to know. There's this part of me that just wants to know, like you know what, that part of him wasn't sick.
It's the marriage and relationship dynamic that she misses, and it doesn't just live in Stacy's mind. I've seen dozens of the Rutherford family photos and videos. They appear as a happy and loving family. Stacy and Justin stand close together and look like a couple in love. Justin plays the part.
I really have a lot of compassion for that repetitive thought that Stacy has. It's really the darkest of possibilities to face. Is actually nothing about this person, nothing about the memories we shared together are real.
Stacy has searched for that validation.
I have had conversations with his best friend where I've cried to him and said, do you think he ever loved me? And he has told me so many times he loved you. I know he did well Justin and I got together. I didn't feel like I had to do anything for his love. I just felt like he just loved me for me, and I loved him for him. So then when it slaps you in your face, that that's not who you married, and that person didn't love you. They just wanted what you had. You were just the
thruway to what he really wanted. You start to think, like, Wow, did you just pretend to love me.
Jordan's never met Justin, so she isn't going to give him any kind of diagnosis, but she did tell Stacy building this kind of facade is what sexual predators do.
I would imagine that Justin was incredibly secretive and your depth of trust and your love wouldn't have alerted you to anything that might have been dangerous. And this is true for you know, all sexual perpetrators. The whole way of grooming and creating that relationship is all based on bit and switch of care, warmth, love, and then threats
and cruelty and manipulation. We're dealing with a person who does not have empathy, who does not have morality, and is able to completely shape shift their behavior for their own selfish motivations and agenda.
Listening to Jordan, my takeaway is that sexual predators like Justin are acting at a role. They are pretending to love you and care about you, but there is an agenda and at this moment I'm grieving for Stacy because no one should be treated like that. It undermines your belief in everything. Seeing this for what it is and digesting this reality, it takes time. Stacy could not be a loving and devoted partner one day and completely uncaring and detached the next.
It's really hard to tell people that you miss that love because they're such a horrible person. But you can't just shut that off like it just doesn't go away. And that's what I think has been the hardest, with the exception of my children, being hurt, is grieving that but also being okay to grieve it.
It did there something really precious to you. You lost all of these good things and the promise of love.
You know, when I talk about the good times, I feel good about it, it makes me miss them.
Stacy misses what she calls her boring life and yearns for a time that she felt love, purpose, and contentment from her happy and healthy family unit that she thought she had. But what she thought she had and what was really going on in the darkness were two different things. So what Stacy's left with is trying to reconcile the version of Justin she knew, which was the loving husband, doctor, and family man, but the person she recently discovered a
violent predator. Fully integrating those two people is work and part of Stacy's journey.
Can you tell me who this person was to you? Actually, just look at your hand and put the good qualities of who he was in that hand.
He was like my answer to everything. He was kind, he was smart, he was funny, he loved me, and I did never feel like I had to beg for that.
And then what about what would you put in the left hand?
A monster?
What do you feel in your body, Stacy as you say monster, tightness?
You know, just like everything tightens up and it's almost like it's it's like, it's hard for me to believe that that's who I'm speaking of. It's hard for me to see that those are the same person.
I hope you know how normal that is for so many people. I mean, for people who experience domestic violence. There's strong attachment even though there's very strong violence. You're not alone in that complexity of holding both.
Yeah.
For Stacy, the path to confronting her own grief and loss could only begin when she knew Tyler was going to be okay.
I want to see Tyler be everything that he was supposed to be, Tyler living a good life, him thriving, him not being a statistic, his children not being as statistic.
Although Jordan has never met Tyler, she has listened to the podcast and heard his reasons for wanting to s his story.
What I've really valued that I have heard from Tyler is that his why for being a part of this podcast is to let other people and young men in particular, but to let other survivors know that they're not alone. That ability to feel that he can be a protector is reparative. The feeling that he can actually give to someone else what he didn't receive is such an empowering experience. When victims speak up their desire for truth and repair, so often cannot happen with the very person that they
deserve or repair from. We need to hear survivors and we actually can offer empathy and we actually are a part of repair for that other person.
Even though Tyler doesn't blame Stacy for what happened to him, Jordan says it's possible that anger could eventually bubble to the surface.
That can take a long time in the processing for the adult child to finally feel safe enough to be angry at their parent. One thing I said to Stacy at some point, you need to be ready for that to happen. Often those that are implicated and are closest to them, like a parent, will not be able to tolerate the feelings of shame or vulnerability or fear. Paradoxically, that's the only way forward to be able to tolerate the shame, admit responsibility, acknowledge the lack of protection.
But through this work, Stacy feels ready for those hard conversations whenever they may come.
I said, there may be a day that you do blame me, you do feel angry. I want you to come to me when you feel that, because we're going to need to sit with it. We're going to need to talk about it.
So Tyler and Stacy keep an open dialogue. Tyler is on a good path and healing in his own way. But what does the next chapter look like for Stacy beyond just making sure that everyone else is okay.
I really appreciate that you're centering Tyler as the most important person to receive justice, but you were also injured deeply, Stacy. Yeah, so I'm wondering what does justice look like for you?
All I ever wanted was him to tell me he was sorry, and it wouldn't have fit to bething, but I just wanted him to say one day to be Stacy, you didn't deserve any of that.
Justin actually did say those exact words to Stacy.
You were an amazing spouse and didn't deserve any of this.
But Justin's words lacked sincerity. They felt like they were more for the judge than for Stacy. They meant nothing.
When someone causes hurt to you, what you need is an empathetic expression of remorse. When repair really restoes safety, it's because the other person has access to empathy. But for someone who is actually devoid of empathy, which is part of their character disorder, that very thing can never happen. Consciousness begins when we realize we can't get from I'm another person what we've been trying to get, and freedom is when we realize we can go get it somewhere else.
Jordan challenged Stacy to look inward and ask herself what would it look like for her to create a good life and become the person she is supposed to be.
I want to be able to trust people again. I want to be able to be in a relationship with someone and not think that there's stuff going on that I don't know about. I could take you all the way back to my first husband with my guilt and my shame and my hurt that I've never dealt with that. I just went on to another man. Oh it's better. Oh, I got a new relationship, but it still followed me everywhere because I never dealt with it, and I just don't want that for the rest of my life.
This experience with Justin is not the first time you've had an experience of two parallel reality is happening simultaneously. Does that feel true for you?
Oh yeah, My first husband left me dray years for a coworker. You know. That was completely devastating. Just felt like my whole world bottomed out. It was so out of control and I couldn't control anything, and it was awful. I'm a bigger woman, so a huge thing for me is weight and self esteem. But you know, when you throw something like that on top of it, it's even more devastating.
The feeling of unworthiness frequently comes up for Stacy during their sessions. Jordan asked Stacy about her family, her childhood, and her place within her family. Her answers revealed the beginning of wounds that have shaped who's Stacy has become as an adult.
The repetition of unworthiness was not just in her first marriage. It was also in the seed of her early attachment experience with a mother who was not able to respond to her and really be there in a very present and securely attached way.
My mom was more cold and cut off. I just don't think she really knew how to be a mom, good like. She never got down and played with us. I would see other people with their moms, you know, girls going shopping and having hair day and nail days and things like that, and my mom just didn't do those kinds of things. My dad was more like the mom. He grocery shopped, he cooked, he did those kinds of things. He was very like sensitive to us.
As Stacy and her sister Heather grew up, their roles became defined. Heather needed extra attention. She was unapologetic, headstrong, rebellious. Stacy was the opposite.
I was a good child. I didn't cause any problems. I didn't do anything bad. I didn't get arrested. I didn't, you know. It was always just, oh, we don't have to worry about Stacy. Stacy's good. You know, she doesn't cause any problems.
Stacy was the easy one. She didn't appear to need much, so she didn't receive a whole lot. That was her role, and when she did need extra love and support from her mother, it wasn't there.
When my first divorce happened, I was distraught about a week after I moved back home, after my life fell apart. She said, all right, it's time for you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I don't want to hear about this anymore. We're not going to cry about it anymore. And I remember saying to her, like, oh, thank you, it's been a whole week. She just was very cut off like that. I still remember how hurtful that was.
It felt like my feelings didn't matter, or that I was just being too dramatic about this thing called divorce, Like just move on, Stacy, just move on.
Stacy didn't face this uncomfortable reality until it came time to grieve her mother. At her funeral, Stacy was at a loss.
My dad wanted my sister and I to write a eulogy, and we just couldn't think of things. It was a really horrible feeling because we knew we were loved, but my mom didn't do a lot to show us that kind of stuff.
What I'm really just appreciating is this way that you've had to learn to live from the beginning of being a kid, where you had to put away or not pay attention to things that were hard and go on functioning, and that that actually was for you as a kid,
such an incredibly important way you survived. What I'm wanting to convey is just a real deeper understanding of this pattern of being in relationship and how understandable it was for you to be paying attention to the good and actually how accustomed you have gotten to not paying attention to what's hard.
I think it's really helpful to start seeing those connections. It's painful, but it also makes sense, and that's good when not much has made sense in this.
One. Really useful part of therapy is to identify patterns and move past repeated behaviors. Jordan Dan explains how this applies in Stacy's life.
Her mother had a lack of empathy her first husband had a lack of empathy, and Justin had a lack of empathy and awareness of that pattern. Once the unconscious becomes conscious, then we are free to actually move towards people who have empathy, who are there and who are able to give us the support and connection relationship that we didn't get before. And now that I'm aware, I can make new choices and I can create a new reality, one in which I have much more power and freedom.
I always say that there's no light at the end of the tunnel. It's just a new tunnel, and it may not be as difficult as the last one. It's just always figuring out how to navigate something new, and so I don't know how I'm going to be one hundred percent to be able to do that. If I don't deal with some of the stuff that I've dealt with, I'm going into a phase where I feel like it's okay for me to start to feel things for myself and to grieve what I lost.
Stacy is working to hold the pain of her disappointment with the pain of Justin's destruction right along with the positive memories their family shared. But she's not only doing the work for herself. She's doing it for Tyler, Mikaela and the littles.
Her ability to actually hold that complexity is really crucial so that she actually passes on to her children faith and belief in the goodness of other people and is able to maintain a feeling of relationships are hard and they're also good. And if she actually just was in this absolute about who Justin is and what relationships are, that's the inheritance she'd be passing on to her children, and that would be a continuation of the trauma she's experienced.
Jordan says, life is not black and white. It's healthy for Stacy to remember good times not pretend they never happened.
This has been huge for me to see things differently and to try to help me start realizing that it's okay I don't choose to remember those moments. I don't choose to remember a smell if I smell it. For me to understand that is going to help me to get to a place where I cannot be so shameful of the thoughts and be able to move forward and be like, you know what, I can feel joy in these moments. It's okay for me to remember joy without feeling shameful.
On the next episode of Betrayal, Tyler meets Anthony Edwards, the beloved star of Er and Top Gun, shares his own story as we explore the stigma and shame that prevents men from disclosing sexual abuse.
I became a good actor because I could go into a room and I could assess everything. You get really good at playing a room to know how to survive, because surviving is the most important thing, because when your spirit's broken like that, you feel like you'll die if you don't.
If you're a man who has experienced sexual abuse or assault, or you know someone who is seeking support, go to one in six dot org. That's the number one I n number six dot org. Find a path to a happier, healthier future. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team, email us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. Also, please be sure to follow us at Glass Podcasts on Instagram for all Betrayal content, news and updates. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way, A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a vision of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning, Written by Kerrie Hartman and Caitlin Golden,
also produced by Ben Fetterman Associate producer Kristen Melcurie. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Special thanks to Jordan Dan, Stacy Rutherford, Tyler, and the rest of Stacy and Tyler's friends and family. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Zalfekio editing support from Nico Aruca. The Trails theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by Mybe Music and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.