Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This episode contains descriptions of sexual assault listener discretion as advised, run.
Away, you already to right to the end of the line. No one need staying, No Onelllow believe in the path only line.
Sunni album.
That's Jessica Willis Fisher singing from her beautiful song River Runaway. If you haven't listened to part one of Jessica's story, do that now and then come back for more of this powerful, harrowing, and ultimately deeply inspiring story. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Secrets will eventually spill out.
Sometimes it takes generations, Sometimes it takes decades. Sometimes it takes minutes. Jessica's book is called Unspeakable for a reason. When it comes to the horrible truths for father's abuse, she simply cannot speak it. It's impossible. Her siblings aren't speaking it, and certainly her father isn't either. And it's only those few times her mother alludes to it before it's tucked away again and As the family extends, so
does the scope of this secret. One of Jessica's brothers is about to get married to a woman named Maria. He says to Jessica one day Maria knows. A little bit later, Jessica falls in love too. She and Sean become involved when they're teenagers, building a romantic connection. She doesn't divulge right away to Sean what's happened to her, but she does begin to wonder, how can I completely connect with this person if he doesn't know the truth.
So this dreadful inevitability of kind of being on this collision course.
How long are secrets like this going to be containable?
And the biggest threat to that is, yes, as we get older, there's the personal connections that we try to make as individuals, and then you know, as we're performing and stuff, there's just this bigger and bigger microscope, bigger and bigger platform where there's this more and more awareness and how are we going to kind of be able to balance that? And my brother became engaged and it was actually during my late teenage years that I was
trying to figure out how to have a relationship. But it was this disillusionment over time, realizing, oh, my dad really is never going to let me go. And I think I realized how deep that was in me by realizing I never imagine getting married. Some part of me knew like, that's probably never going to happen for me, but of course I desperately wanted that.
When Jessica's in her early twenties, she and Sean have not had sex, but their relationship is certainly sexual. She sends him some partially clad selfies and they're on her computer, and one day one of her little sisters discovers these selfies through the lens of all she's been taught at home and at church. She's confused and traumatized by these photos, unsure of why Jessa and Sean have been communicating this way.
I was secretly talking with him, and I don't think any healthy relationship is built on secrets. You know, how is it supposed to be healthy? And you are sexually developing, you are all of these things, but there's my religious teachings and this very drastic logistical thing around me, and
so you know, we were digitally communicating. We're both young adults, were both in our early twenties and when my sister saw that, I just knew how much more so, like this train is about to slow motion crash, you know, and there's no way for me to really wiggle out of this. And I was like, here, I am traumatizing like a child because this is so confusing. And I was just like, please let me tell mom and dad, and I promised her kind.
Of that it was going to be okay.
And I had this awareness, like this deep guilt of feeling like I'm an adult telling a child that's all going to be okay. And I also know that this is not going to be okay, and I think I genuinely meant to go tell my parents and I didn't.
I played it out.
It lasted a couple more weeks before basically it came out and they found out. I did not just go, you know what, this is wrong and like stand up and rebel. I basically folded and accepted that. You know, of course, a part of me, there were so many different parts of me feeling different things, but as far as my behaviors, I was like, yes, I am sinful,
I am wrong. And it got turned into kind of even though we don't talk about Dad's problems here you are, you clearly have problems, and he's the one in charge. You're the child, you need to be disciplined. And it started this weird chapter where I was the problem in the family and it created this mob like mentality where you know, I had to be managed, the kids had to be protected from me, My actions had to be monitored,
and it was really my soul at stake here. Dad was like, you know, she's she's being led astray by the devil, and parts of me resisted, but it felt too much. I was going against the whole entire system, all of my siblings, both my parents, and I had to keep up this outer shtick and roll and smile on stage, and inside it was I was losing my sanity bit by bit.
Yeah, it's so painful, this like level of control and surveillance.
It's cultish because it's the mind control. It's the bounded choice theory, where it's like I share with people that there is this time where and I have a video of it. And sometimes I'm so thankful for that video,
because otherwise I would doubt that this happened. But there's proof, and sometimes I need that proof to even be able to believe my memories of these moments, but it's this kind of kangaroo court scene where you know, Dad is telling me I have to claim my master, and he's saying, I already know you're following singe, but you have to confess it, you know, And so think inquisition, think whatever worst version of that cult leader and control mob sort
of thing. And it was in that moment that I realized that this was an escalation of dynamics that had been here forever.
There were moments.
Where I would pile on a sibling who was stepping out of line, but now how could I protest that without being so hypocritical and taking it spiritually? I would sometimes open the Bible, which was so troubling to me, and I've had such conflicting thoughts, but their scripture that says if you do not forgive others, God will not forgive you. And so it felt like I was trying to find the courage and the foothold to finally like say, Dad, you're wrong. The main problem here is what you've been
doing all this time. But unfortunately I had taken steps that, according to what I believed, was also wrong. So it was this, who are you to talk sort of thing, and it was just really a crazy making situation.
For sure.
We'll be right back. One night on tour, a set of blue flashing lights head toward the Fisher Family tour bus, which is pulled over on the side of the road. Jessica's father has been violently striking her in the face, but now a cop is here. If a cop sees what's really going on, maybe Jessica and her siblings will be rescued, will be safe. But that's not what happens.
He pulled the bus over, he continued to attack me, and a cop had pulled over. It was just the wildest feeling, so surreal, so weird.
I was just.
So terrified for my life. I was basically an animal mode.
You know.
I didn't know if this was a moment where his violence would lead to someone dying, if that would be me, if that would have made me happy. You know, I really kind of think that moment. One of the things I remember thinking is I just wish I wasn't here, because if you follow that I'm the problem, believe all the way to its end, it's you know, everybody would be better off if I wasn't here. You know, the cop comes to the door essentially, and I don't even need to be forced into the closet or or out
from you. I just kind of like a zombie go hide myself because one of my coping mechanisms was always on a dime, being able to smile, being able to pull it off.
But you can't.
You can't do that when you're bleeding. You can't do that when your face is hanging weird. My body was going to betray me, and it just felt so out of control.
And as you.
Hear this person says, there's everybody okay, you know, it's like, well, everybody was just screaming.
Maybe they're not going to be able to pull it off.
But no, there's this oh yeah, everything's fine, and just it was the depths of depression and despair because I was realizing I was still waiting.
For permission.
To ask for help, for permission to be believed, to be rescued, all of these things, and it was not going to come. And the heaviest thing was it is escalating so fast and my actual bodily safety is fleeing. I may die here, and I don't know if I have what it takes to get out. I'm the only one, like, nobody's coming. If I don't figure out how to get out of here, I'm going to die here. And I just at that moment wasn't sure it was even worth it, Like what am I escaping too?
This is my family.
I knew Sean at the time, and I part of me wanted to be in that relationship, but I hadn't fought for it, so maybe that wasn't even waiting for me.
You know.
I had to believe that I was worth, that I had value, that I deserved to be safe, and that just felt like so far away and so impossible. It was a dark couple months there, and chunks that are kind of missing. But I gave in and didn't protest and kind of took the sin on my shoulders for that period and accepted all those negative, you know, judgments of me. When I just kind of went, Okay, I surrender, I give up, I realized, well, actually, no, I'm no
longer resisting that. But some part of me cannot do the dance and smile and be happy.
That part's broken.
But I can't really execute complete nothingness either, Like there's still a part of me that wants to survive and that kind of made its way to the surface.
But there was just this normal day.
It could have been any other horrible day during the dark period, but there's an altercation with my dad, and something in me went, that is the last time that happens. And it wasn't the question, it wasn't the theological statement. It just went, that is not happening again. And it almost felt like something outside of me. I now kind of actually view it, maybe from the core of me. I think little invisible girl that had borne all of.
This time's up. That's it. I'm not putting up with any more of this.
I had sort of been learning about some narcissism and talk about vocabulary. I was trying to get the vocabulary to describe twenty years of confusing traumatic experience. So there were these glimpses of clarity of Oh, I actually know what's happening here. I can see some of these dynamics, and I would do more of that before too long, but I knew he could keep me forever. I finally had this moment of oh, the chances are in your mind, they're not actually on the door.
Most of the time. You know, like you can run. It is completely reasonable that you can run. And so when I just.
Had that knowing of that's the last time that's going to happen. I'm not going to be here by the end of the day. I'm not sure exactly how. And so it was well, what are you going to do? Where are you going to go? And I was like, give me a phone. And if they had said no, you know, maybe I would have ran that night under cover of darkness when I found a chance.
But they handed me a phone and I thought, Okay, who can I call?
And I called my dad's cousin who was around my age, and I just said, can I come, Can I come see you?
And she said sure, and I said can I bring a bag? She said sure.
It's like trying to climb this wall, so you get a foothold and it enables you to get to the next So that told me I knew I was going to get out today because if I didn't show up, other people outside my family were going to wonder. So then I had that foothold, and then it was like, well, when are you going to go?
What are you going to take?
And my dad, he'd never really been in this position, and he did all he could to make sure he felt as in control all the situation as possible, and he framed it to the family that I had to leave my choices. We're going to reflect badly on the family. So he was pushing me out. And that's another kind of before and after a moment where I think it could have gone so many different ways, but everything changed really fast after that from that moment.
It's interesting too, because there's something in there about the power of language and the power of naming things. Sean gives you this book that really describes what you know.
Pathological narcissism is what it looks like, and that's the first time it's sort of like the word molested earlier, something clicks for you, where as like that day might not have been all that different from any other day, but the thing that was finally the last straw that said no more has something to do with the arsenal of language that you had.
Now I believe that, and it's astounding how little it can take sometimes you know, just a few more words, because how would you actually feel if you were angry all the time but you didn't even have the word anger or any of his adjacent words, Like there's all this built up pressure and experience and like a lot of times very visceral feelings and there's no way to express it. And so certainly the emotional build up and
back up and just years of events. And for me it was helpful is there were a lots lots of events that I still needed to sort through, lots of feelings I needed to sort through. But when you see the dynamics and you see the pattern, and you see the way things are related to each other, concepts like narcissism, dissociation, high control groups, things like that, I started seeing, Oh, my goodness, that's what I'm in right now. And yes,
it's also in my family. Yes it's happened over years and years, and there's religion in here, and there's TV, and there's all these things.
But those surface things didn't matter as much.
The specifics don't matter. When you look at the patterns of grooming, or when you look at the patterns of abuse and violence, you notice that you can start to see the pillars that hold up how that all works, and if you disrupt that pattern, you just stop playing into that pattern. And to some degree, it's quite fragile and realizing that my dad.
Had all this power, but what power did he really have? He kind of.
Got it from all of us, yes, and trying to understand that, you know, when you're preyed on by such toxic narcissism, to remove the fuel, to remove giving my power over to prop up him. I had gotten to a point where the show couldn't really go on very well without me, and it put a lot of stress on my siblings that I would have loved to save them from. But there was kind of this awareness that I at least had at that moment, like looking at my dad, like, yeah, you have the power, but all I.
Have to do is step away, and you like, you can't do anything to me anymore. What you've done to me is what I've let you do to me.
Jessica and Sean finally get together for real. Jessica finds a really good trauma informed therapist, and she begins to learn the language of trauma, dissociation, compartmentalization, hypervigilance, putting words to experience she's been living inside her body for decades. She also hears a phrase for her therapist when she finally shares the scope of everything that has happened to her child rape Jessica had desperately wanted this to not
be the case, but it is the case. The definition of child rape fits into the parameters of what her father has done to her. She is twenty four years old, she has no academic degree of any kind, since she's only ever been homeschooled, But what she does have is strength, love, the help she needs, and the knowledge that she is finally safe.
This story is not the same without that support. It was just a marvel and it didn't really compute to me people who, for all practical purposes, didn't know me, you know. And certainly there was this compulsion to try to share, because how can you really be close, how can you really cleanse the moon.
Without just getting it all out there?
But I was I was doing that in therapy, and I was trying to, you know, get to know my husband and now my in laws, and they're welcoming community that just opened their arms to me. I was in a bad spot and I got so much help, and I know that doesn't happen for everyone. I just don't think you can separate my health journey and my recovery and everything from how critical really good trauma informed therapy really accepting.
And loving people.
And between those two things, I was also directed towards places where my therapy could be funded, you know, because I don't have my feet under me and you're trying to start our new life. It felt like, all right, I got away with my life. I'm going to try to start over. And as I'm learning and acquiring the vocabulary to understand what happened to me, whether it be learning that child rape did apply to me or oh, dissociation like that, so that means I was also learning
about predators and perpetrators. Because the work that we immediately jumped into is like, where do you start. There's there's twenty four years to address, and the newer, most recent stuff with the tendencies and that the mob meant and all that felt like not the place to start. So we just I just went to when I was youngest, when it was clearest, when it's so obviously not my fault, and to understand, hey, this is how this happens.
Many other people have gone through this.
It was devastating and yet relieving and so empowering all the same time because I was able to move so quickly and there was less, you know, judgment to myself that would come up for my teenage self and my young adult self, but as my child self. That was really helpful to learn about other victims and survivors, and also to understand that it wasn't a problem of my dad or me as a daughter, like what's wrong with me?
Understanding that this happens over and over and there is a pattern, and we have words that conscribe these things.
And it became very chilling, very quick. This is no longer just my dad or my abuser, but this is a perpetrator that is out there, and so I'm doing my best to just get my feet underbeed do this extremely excruciating, heavy therapeutic work which is going to be a lifetime effort, but very quickly, you know, within weeks, especially as my therapist came to understand more, as I shared more with her, she was very aware it is a very dangerous situation, you know, And I would basically
came to realize I was kind of needing to prepare to play a part and if this was ever going to stop, I was gonna have to talk about this, and you know, Sean and different people would ask me like can you report this?
So you're ready to tell you.
They were trying to be respectful and not force that on me because they knew I needed to try to get a sense of control and ownership over my body and my story and my experience.
You know.
The longer time went on, the more I could see that not that this whole thing is my fault, but it may be on me to stop this.
And it's becoming.
More and more of this moral weight that every day I don't do something, you know, if nothing else. I mean, hopefully my dad isn't preying on my sisters at this moment, but they're out in front of people selling a lie that is, you know, what was on the surface is totally not what was happening behind closed doors. And it was a real headspin to try to get the courage, and you just want to hide escape, but you feel like you have this huge responsibility.
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. The initial report about Jessica's father is phoned into a hotline at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and it is not made by Jessica, but rather by someone close to her family who had always suspected that something was terribly amiss. In the Willis household, Jessica is called in to give a statement. Within twenty four hours, an investigation is launched.
There are so many agents involved. It really very quickly was like, well, will someone speak firsthand to this?
Will Jessica talk or not?
And I was very much willing and went in with the headspace of feeling like, you know, I'm actually more scared about how this could go down. When you start looking at perpetrators, even serial killers like cult leaders, when you get them cornered, it gets really dangerous really fast. And because of how it looked on the outside, I honestly was afraid that people were not going to understand
the gravity of the situation. So my thought going in to this interview once I said yes to it, was I have to say as much as I can, as fast as I can, and stress to them how bad I basically have to roll out the greatest hits of the worst things that I've ever seen and have ever happened to me.
And you know, they were there.
To see if I was going to say that any sexual crimes had happened, but I was like, okay, you know, there's violence, bankings, and there's religious teachings, and there's six ar fifteens, and there's end times profits.
You know.
So I'm saying all this crazy, like not very organized stuff, but they kept bringing.
It back to like, okay, did this happen? Like what happened? How old were you? Where were you?
And you know, so in describing the sexual crimes, like you would touch me here and this and that, and they asked the best questions they can and just saying, you know, oh, did this happen like two times or five times or ten times? I was like, no, like a hundred times. I can't even tell you how many times this is. This is the least drastic thing, Like I understand it's a crime, and I'm in therapy and I'm finally coming to understand just how bad this is.
But that's the base.
We're going to add everything else on top of that. I was feeling all sorts of things, but even just to say that out loud, oh yeah, that happened hundreds of times, there's a part of me that was kind of just shocked by even hearing me say that, because there's so much to grieve, so much to acknowledge, so much to sit with, you know, twenty four years of reaction that have never had their proper time.
But there was no time for that, you know.
It was on to the next thing, trying to paint, not to exaggerate. But I finished talking for hours, and I thought, did I forget the one thing that's actually going to make this change and make this stop? And it took me a while to understand that that was connected to me thinking I must have not said it right when everythings didn't stop. Eventually you come back to
blaming yourself and saying, well, I'm the problem. And so even sitting there in that investigation room and talking to these professionals, it was like, have I done enough.
Jessica's father is arrested. He pleads guilty. Jessica is, of course, completely on edge until the moment of our father's sentencing. He'll be in prison for most of the rest of his life. He has gotten away with so much for so long long, and now he is finally being brought to justice for all the pain, havoc and abuse he has wrought. And just as her father loses his freedom, Jessica begins to gain her own. Sean asks Jessica for her hand in marriage, and she decides there's something she
still needs to share with him. For the case, she had written a fourteen page letter detailing, to the best of her ability and memory, everything that her father had done to her. This letter is used in her testimony, and while she's let Sean into some degree, she hasn't shared all the details, all the horror, in all its granularity, But she wants to enter into a marriage in which there are no more secrets, nothing hidden, only truth.
After I'd talked with TBI, I told him all I could, and I actually asked she also something that I had written be included that included some graphics, specifics of what had happened over the years, just to make sure that I was giving them all the information they needed. And they did end up making their rest warrant from part of my testimony, and you know, it didn't really feel like an option. There was nothing that I was trying to hold back. And in the days after that is
the investigations going on. You know, I'm looking at this man that I love that is getting to know me, and you know we had been kept from doing that the normal way and dating and recording, and I'm having to share the deepest, darkest, worst things that have ever happened to me with people I don't know, complete strangers, these investigators and therapists, And if he was willing, I wanted to tell him, and I didn't want to force
him to hear that. But our relationship was built on him sharing vulnerable things with me, and over time, you know, me trusting that. Yes, it's always risky to open up to someone, but I had literally lived on the edge of a cliff my entire life, and I didn't want to go in to a relationship where I was going to be judged for that. I was done with having those secrets and I lived in their power for so long. I couldn't And again, he has his choice. He doesn't
have to share everything about his past. He had shared some things to build that trust, but he said, yes, I want to all read whatever someone else has to read. And that was a big moment. You know, not a lot of fanfare or anything, but you know, to see Sean, this man that I love. And also even just having talked to the investigators too, there's something about seeing a man,
this man that I personally love. And then in the case of the investigator, someone I don't know but who kind of fits all of those stereotypical, especially the way I was raised, masculine, manly protector, you know, essentially the dat that I would have wanted internally all this time, and to see them take in my story and be moved by it, grieved by it. But also part of the proper reaction to this is anger and action, and I think, especially as a woman, those things are a lot of times taken away.
You have to be sweet, you have to be.
Kind, and you know, in my mind growing up, those were the things that.
Men were allowed to do.
Men were allowed to get passionate about what should happen, and to feel like I trusted that this investigator.
Was going to make this happen.
And then to share in vulnerability with the person that I'm coming to love and will eventually build a life with, like those were really big moments in this whole entire process.
Here's Jessica reading a passage from her memoir Unspeakable. Yes she is speaking.
We had a small wedding ceremony. By the time I stood prepared to walk myself down the aisle in front of eighty some people on that drizzly spring day, there was an anchor of calm underneath the butterflies. No one there would be giving this woman away. When I was halfway to Sean, he abandoned his post to meet me. We walked the last few steps together.
We had already won, gone ahead of it.
The boy as the Crown Hsigan. It's a.
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Accour is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight secret Z zero. That's the number zero. You can
also find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance And You're Not Alone.
I can't let you know. Leave my bottle with the lost in fom jump. Don't und you're gone ahead, them out before you look
Again.