S2: E6 - Collections

He denied it. He was like, I'm not gonna get in trouble for anything, and then I mean, at one point he admitted, yes, there were pictures of kids, but I've checked all the laws on this and there's nothing wrong with what I'm doing.

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal Episode six collections. As I mentioned in previous episodes, we heard from women all over the country. It's what made us realize there's a bigger story here. People from all walks of life are in possession of child sexual abuse material, also known as c SAM. There's no economic difference or profession that separates deviant behavior as humans. For families that are stung

I'm a marriage and family therapist. My dad was military and my oldest brother was also military. My mom had a real heart for the families that were left behind during deployments, and I think that really inspired me to become a marriage and family therapist. Someone who could understand that helping out first responders and military is impacting their lifestyle.

Aaron's mother is now deceased, but her influence remains. Erin is comfortable around military culture and its people. Through her family, she met a soldier.

Joel would come home from deployments and hang out at my brother's house where we became friends. And I had recently gone through a breakup and my brother said, you have shit tasted men. You really should date someone more like Joel because he was a soldier. He was in the military, so there were things that we thought were like inherent guarantees, you know, like he wouldn't be on drugs, he would be background checked, you know, certain things that

That friendship grew into a relationship and then into a marriage. Aaron was happy they eventually had two kids, a little boy and girl.

Ninety percent of the time, I would say it fit the mold of my perfect relationship. He was supportive and loving, and we had a symmetrical relationship where we could easily interchange parts. You know, I'd mo Thelann, he'd mow thelan. I'd change a diver, he'd change a diver. Like either of us could take over some task and knock it out and get it done.

Aaron's husband had the highest military clearance. She understood that she'd never know everything he faced.

Joel worked in explosive ordnance disposal. His job was to make sure that there were no bombs in certain areas, or if there were bombs, to send in a person or a robot to disarm that bomb. Also to pick up any debris, and sometimes that was bodies. You wouldn't leave a body behind, so you'd have to pick it up, bag it and take it home.

She knew his job had unique stressors, so she made some allowances for bad behavior. When the family relocated to a small town in Texas, it took a toll on her. She felt disconnected from people, and since that her husband was becoming more distant as well.

When I noticed that our marriage was declining. I thought it was because I was having a hard time adjusting to this new area. You know, everything was different. It was further away from my family. I felt more and more isolated from them. My mom had died just before we got married, and we had really good communication. But when Jamison got involved, that's when we would fight.

Jamison was Joel's whiskey of.

Choice when he was really under the influence of alcohol. I felt like I could I didn't reach him, I couldn't talk to him. He would kick in the door or I would ask for space. I would say, let's come back to this in an hour and let ourselves cool off, and then we can talk about this again. He would pick the lock to the bedroom.

She's a therapist, so she did the natural thing, asked for help, not just for herself but also for her husband. But the therapist was discouraging.

He said, I honestly think you should just not bring that up because he could lose his job, or he could lose his weapon, and so I would just sort of keep that to yourself.

Aaron thought about other areas where her marriage was struggling. Their sex life was one of them.

I did feel like it was very automatic, and it was very one sided. So like when you have one of those Xbox controllers and you're like up down, up down, x y Okay, it's done. Like I just like Mortal Kombat, you know, like I know exactly what to do. I know exactly what you like. And it didn't matter what I liked. But maybe this is a part of marriage, is it gets routine.

After a while, she wondered if there was something else going on.

One night, he had gone out with a friend and I had the inclination to snoop on his phone. I feel like an angel or a guardian angel just was nudging me, like, hey, something's off here. Go look through his phone, go do something. So I looked through his phone and I pulled up a picture in his search history. It was a girl in a jazz outfit. It looked like a Facebook page almost. She was maybe about six years old. She was not naked, it wasn't anything lude.

Arin wasn't buying Joel's story.

It just didn't feel right to me. I knew he had a history with porn, which I didn't necessarily mind.

But this wasn't pornography. These were disturbing comments around a little girl's photo in her husband's search history.

He gas lit me and I didn't accept it, but I didn't think it was to the point where it was something reportable because I don't know this girl. I don't know how he got to this page.

Now they were a critical mass, and Erin knew he needed help.

I got him a therapist that was experienced in the military. He was actually a retired military person, and we paid cash so there would be no record of him going to therapy, and I just tried to make it as easy as possible for him to go.

But he wasn't getting better. His behavior was growing more concerning.

We got into a fight in May. It was a silly fight, like he had been storing all night. So I went and slept on the couch so I could just finally get some sleep. And he woke me up in the morning because he wanted to have sex, and I was just so delirious and cranky. I was like, get away from me. I finally fell asleep, don't touch me. So he got upset and he was in a really grouchy, powdy mood because I had rejected him. I started making

The tension escalated. Joel said something ugly and Aaron responded in kind.

I walked away. He threw a sippy cup at my back, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but it really her like. He really threw that cup at me hard and it hit me in the shoulder. So I went in the bathroom and I cried for a while. I ended up leaving. I just got in my car and went for a drive and sat by the side of the road and cried and thought for a while.

She needed more support, but she didn't know where to turn.

I was kind of afraid to tell my family what was going on, because already they often had his back on things, and I had this reputation for being the dramatic baby sister, So I just kind of sat there and thought, like, what am I going to do with this? You know, maybe I can talk to him and get him to agree, like he shouldn't be violent with me,

So she followed her gut.

I decided to look at his computer. There was no search history, there was nothing, It was completely clean, and I went into his recently deleted files and that's where there was just a plethora of pictures the titles of these things were pretty indicative of there being young women on there, like little Miss Country USA. All different ages, all different looks. It's not like he had one kink or one fetish. It was so many people he had collected.

She was far away from friends and family.

I'm in Texas and my family live in California, so I was completely frozen in fear, not knowing what to do. And he said, do you think you can get the laptop and take it with you? Hell no, I don't even know if I can take me and take it with me. Like there was no way. I was going to go back into that lion's den and let him know that I was on to him.

But she knew now, she knew what he was doing. He had a large stash of photos. She had to get herself and her young kids out of there. He had a weapon, and he was a soldier. Now she feared him.

He was probably gone for a couple of hours. So when he came home and I am just soaked with tears, he thought it was because of our fight that morning. He said, you know, I'm really sorry. I hope you can forgive me. Let's just move past this, and so I played along. I said, yeah, you know, it really hurt, but I'll get over it. I just want to go through the kid's clothes because their dressers are overflowing, and I'm going to take some of these clothes over to

The donating clothes of a ruse. She was packing clothes for the kids, just enough for a few days. Aaron offered to take the kids on a play date so he could take a nap.

I'd packed the bag and I just got in the car and I went to the airport. Is a very small airport, so it's like one man friends the whole thing. And I think he could tell the look on my face because he said, it's going to cost you like seventeen hundred dollars to fly out tomorrow on the next flight, and I said, I don't care, let's do it, let's go.

Aaron took the kids to a hotel near the airport and stayed the night. When he called asking when they'd be home.

I just told him like, oh, I'm at one of my friend's house. The kids are watching a movie. You know, we'll be home later. Oh, the kids fell asleep. I'm just going to let them spend the night here and we'll be home in the morning. And I think he was content with that because then he could just continue to drink and play video games and kind of do

Arin returned to her hometown, where two older brothers and her father lived. Joel's parents were close by two. Now with her family, she wouldn't have to face this alone.

I went straight to my brother because he was the closest to me at that time, we were the closest in age, and so I went to his house. I called all the family over and I said, this is what I found, this is what's going on, and I don't know how to handle this situation, and I need help. My dad was like, let's think about this, because if he goes to jail or something, you're going to lose all of your military benefits. Like I give a fuck another question. They asked, well, how old are these girls?

Another one of her family members count her with words like love the sinner, hate the sin, And I realized there seems to be a kind of ignorance or impediment. There are people who just can't understand that viewing this material is egregious criminal behavior. It reminded me of what John Huber said a few episodes back.

We were getting some pushback from federal judges of why are you bringing these cases people looking at pictures? You know, what's the big deal. We thought that was a misunderstanding and that we need to communicate better to the judges what we're talking about.

But Erin understood perfectly.

If they had been seventeen or sixteen, it's still not consensual. These kids are still affected for the rest of their life. They didn't put their pictures up there. Somebody's abusing them, so like, what were you going to say that it's okay?

Even with the pain? Aarin was able to think about the long term consequences of reconnecting with him.

If I covered for him, if I didn't bring this up, if I didn't tell anyone, but I knew that this had happened, I would never feel okay with my kids having a slumber party. They could never have a birthday party at our house. How could I be sure that he would perpetrate online but not perpetrate people in real life? You know? How was I to know that it wouldn't snowball into that, Like I would have to constantly be on guard. I would have to take them to every

She wasn't getting the family support she had hoped for, but she did find someone who listened.

I saw my therapist from when I was fifteen years old. I got a hold of her and she's a really great therapist, and she made time to see me for just a few minutes. She said, so, what are you doing back in California? And I just bawled and broke down and told her. She said, if you don't report this, I'm gonna report this. And I was like, oh fuck, it's go time.

She called the office where Joel worked and reported it. His colleague asked questions, one of them was how old were the girls in the photos?

Like, maybe I don't have to report it if their birthday's coming up, you know, Like no, it's a big deal. And he really kind of acted like maybe we'd gotten in a fight. I was being a vindictive wife, Like I'm just throwing these accusations out there.

It's hard to stomach the reaction from Joel's coworker. It's another version of are you just being dramatic? This was difficult. This was a loss for Eron.

Initially, I felt like, yes, I'm doing the right thing, but I feel like someone just cut off my right arm. I just betrayed my husband, and I don't know what's going on.

She held onto a little bit of hope that there was a reason Joel had done this. Maybe it's a part of a secret mission. She couldn't know about.

What if there's some miraculous thing, like there's a reasonable explanation for this. And I just completely betrayed my best friend, you know, And now I'm shoving him out the door. I'm pushing him off the cliff. It just fell awful. I felt gas lit for a lot of years, thinking not did I do the right thing. I know I did the right thing, but I just felt gas lit because no one else could understand that, and I felt really alone and miserable.

To be honest, Aaron wasn't finding any evidence of a reasonable explanation. She was finding more suspicious activity.

I found charges on his credit card to like weird websites, and I was like, oh my god, this is not good. He's been doing this for a while. He took some of the money and started paying off those credit cards were reporting him stolen to kind of like start covering his tracks, and I was like, Okay, now I know this is bad because your reaction.

Aaron's call to the military made its way to the Office of Special Investigations the OSI.

And then OSI facetimed me and asked me again what I had seen and what I had heard, and they said, okay, well we are going to take care of this. We're not going to scare him or anything. We're not going to hurt him or anything.

Erin was upset, heartbroken and angry, but she still didn't want Joel to be injured.

And then what actually happened the next day was that they decided, because we didn't technically live on base, they passed it over to the local police department, and the local police department decided that because he had all of this top secret security clearance, because he had experienced working with bombs, that he was a high threat.

And the local police weren't taking any chances.

They went into the house with flashbangs, knocking down the door. The detective told me he was sitting at the couch with his hard drives, trying to erase everything, trying to get rid of all of this evidence. So they went in there and they arrested him, and they took all the electronics. I'm really glad we weren't there for that.

Joel was arrested and made bail soon after, and he was determined to see his wife and kids.

I think he was trying to be nice to me, hoping that I would renag or whatever, like pull back on all of this stuff. And I said, we're not going home until I fully understand what happened here, what's going on, Like, you can't have any secrets from me, So until you're ready to just spill your guts, we are not going back there at all.

She fled Texas with just her children. She had left everything, her job, her clothes, the kid's toys.

He did come out at one time after I left, to bring me some of my stuff and the kids this stuff.

His visit to California went downhill quickly. Joel returned to work in Texas.

He went back to work, and the military decided that because he wasn't convicted, he wasn't found guilty yet, that they would just put them in a different position. That's what they call like pencil whipped, you know, basically like, you're going to do paperwork over here for a while until this settles down.

Aaron says that Joel wasn't contrite about downloading the images he had collected.

He denied it. He was like, I'm not going to get in trouble for anything. And then I mean, at one point he admitted, yes, you know, there were pictures of kids, but it's art. It's considered art. I'll never forget that. H was saying, like, I've checked all the laws on this, and I know exactly what is considered art and what is considered pornography, and there's nothing wrong with what I'm doing. And I said there is, though, because those kids are not even old enough to consent

Arin didn't return to Texas. Instead, she's stayed in California with the kids, but she couldn't practice as a therapist there because she wasn't licensed. She had to walk away from an entire book of business, and.

I had left the whole client base. I had clients waiting to have their therapy session, and I had to be like, there was this huge family emergency, like I had to leave. I'm so sorry.

The family support that she was hoping for never materialized.

My brother said that his home isn't a place for children, so we couldn't stay with him. My dad's house has a lot of knick knacks everywhere, and he would have let us stay with him, but it was just kind of stressful with toddlers that want to touch everything, so we were now homeless. We stayed in a trailer in his backyard for a while, just so we could kind of have our own space.

Her father helped her pick up the kids from school. There were times her family pitched in, and she was grateful for those moments, but they felt like favors, like she owed something. Even though none of this was her fault, she still felt like she should have been prepared or seen it coming. It was these moments when she ached for her mother while trying to survive in California. Aaron kept tabs on Joel and the case.

He had to stay in Texas and keep working, and he was three for the next three years. So for three years I I had to live with this reputation of maybe Erin's lying, maybe Erin's vindictive, maybe he did something to her to make her make up all these lies.

Yes, it took nearly three years before the case went to court, and it turned out Joel wasn't an art collector after all.

He pled guilty to twenty five felony charges of child pornography. He was sentenced to eight years, and he only did three.

He served his prison sentence in Texas, but once he got out, he ended up moving back to California as well.

He got out last summer August of twenty twenty two and moved in with his parents a mile away from me, and my anxiety just came right back. I was not on antidepressants, I was not on anxiety medication, but when that ingredient is dropped back into my life, it just threw me way out of whack again. And as I understood his parents to be excited about his release, I was writing letters to the prison every year, say please

And like many parents in her position, she wonders, how do you know what is safe? How do you measure rehabilitation?

When his parents were all excited and they were like, Aaron, he's gone to church in prison, and he's made amends and he's good with Jesus, and he's coming out and he wants to be a father. This does not impress me at all, because there's only a few things to do in prison, go to church, work out, you know, like,

But you've found other parents to help fill the gap. She couldn't afford to live on her own and was forced to look for alternatives.

I've had a few really good roommates that totally understand they're single parents. They've all been single parents, and we just get it done. Somebody with their parents at school, Okay, I'll go over there. I'm off work. I can go pick them up. Somebody sick, Okay, well, I can take the day off. I'm working from home, and I whatever we needed. We were all there for each other, and we still are. We still have really good relationships with each other.

But she can't shake the deep disappointment she feels for her own family.

Even when I was in between places, I asked my other brother if I could come stay at his house until my apartment was ready, and he charged me rents. It was just really really hurtful, really worth confusing. I could feel myself getting choked up. I don't know if I ever did something to lose people's trust, or where I got this reputation put on me. I mean, my brothers were older, they were moved out, so it's not like they saw me grow up. I've never been arrested.

Aaron is working to have Joel removed as a custodial parent permanently. It's a long and difficult court battle. The kids were very young when this happened, and she wants them to continue on the successful trajectory that they're on. The case is ongoing, but there was one way she thought that they could all make a fresh start together.

I said to my kids, do you want us to keep the same last name so we all match, or do you want to change last names? Do you want to separate yourself from what's going on in this side of the family, because we have the opportunity to do that now, or it's up to you to do later on in life. And my son, who's ten, he suggested that we change our last name to Romen because he likes Romen. Such a kid idea, you know.

But all kidding aside. They all agreed on a new last name, but we're keeping that private because Aaron has worked hard for a fresh start.

Makes me feel like we don't belong to men anymore. We're not doing this misogyny of women don't know what's best for themselves or they don't know what's going on. You know, we're not doing that. We're not doing the maiden name, and we're not doing the married last name either, because you can easily google that and then you're associated. Now we have family pictures of just the three of us, we feel like a solid family.

On the next episode of a trial.

He is a threat, a danger to everyone around him, a child walking to or from school, a child at a grocery store, or even a gas station. That thought haunts me to my very core every moment of my life. Now I have seen the devastation his actions have cost.

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. To report a case of child sexual exploitation, called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's cyber tipline at one eight hundred the Lost. If you or someone you know is worried about their sexual thoughts and feelings towards children, reach out to Stop It Now dot org. In the United Kingdom go to