Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here. Thanks for listening to another episode of Hey, Human podcast. This is episode 451, and my guest is Anna Rose Moore. She's an actress, writer, director, prison activist, and documentarian. I met her recently, and we chatted about her project that she's been working on over the last couple years and it exposes the horrific abuses inside of women's prison.
It's a trigger warning on this one for sexual assault and abuse and so take care of yourself as you listen. Check out heyhumanpodcast.com for links and to learn more about my guests and the show. Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human Podcast on Apple, iHeart, and Spotify podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And thank you for listening. Be well. Be loved. Take care of yourself, and here we go. Anna Rose Moore, welcome to Hey Human. Thank you so much, Susan. I am so appreciative
to be here. I'm so, so grateful. It was my pleasure. We met through Vanessa at Charles' birthday. No. That was such a special night. I just felt like I was connecting with so many wonderful, beautiful people, and, I was I felt like I was on a high after that night where we met. Yeah. Everybody was really neat. I I am never surprised at the quality of human I meet through Charles and now through Vanessa. She as well has really great friends. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about yourself,
and where did you grow up? What shaped you as a person and lead you toward what we're really gonna talk about, the meat of the conversation? I grew up in Anaberg, Michigan. It's a college town, as a lot of people know, and it's very liberal. And there's, like, lots of because of the university, there's a lot lot of different cultural influences. It's a really unique place to grow up, and I am
so grateful that I had that childhood. I really, really loved getting to being from there, and the people it's such an amazing community, and people are engaged in art and activism, and it really is a place that, like, everybody is hooked into the community. And that's not something you get everywhere. It was just it was just such a special, magical experience to grow up there. I really liked it. I'm also Jewish.
That is an identity that I hold, and being from Ann Arbor, while it didn't have a small Jewish population, it wasn't like being from Western, Michigan, where it's like a bigger community. I didn't, I always felt like an outsider, if that kind of makes sense. I always felt a little different. Raised vegetarian, so just like different things that, you know, maybe now they don't, they don't sound weird being from LA, living in LA, but I think my experience growing up was
like, I'm a little different. And like, how I don't know how people respond to me or where my place is in the world. Dad moved away to Minnesota when I was five, and so every about every other month, I would get on a plane by myself and, and fly to Minnesota. So that was also something that really shaped me was I had four families and four really wonderful, loving parents that are just my best friends. And he moved to
be with my stepmom in Minnesota. And so kind of being able to feel that I had a place and a sense of belonging in all of these places and maybe being highly adaptable was something, a skill that I learned from that experience. And adaptable was something, a skill that I learned from that experience of having to, you know, join new families around the age of, like, five and six. So they were never married. They were on and off until after about a maybe a year and a half, but they never lived
together. So I don't really have that experience of having two parents in the same house. Were you raised culturally Jewish or religiously Jewish or both? Both. But I would say that it wasn't, like, when we say religious and I are you Jewish? I I am. Yeah. Well, my father's Jewish, but my mother's Episcopalian, so technically not Jewish. But historically in the family was raised observing Jewish tradition as well as Christian tradition. Christmas, Monica,
yada yada. Yes. Yes. I did a lot of that too. So my my dad and mom are Jewish, and, my stepdad's Jewish. My stepmom is not. So that was really exciting for me when she came into the family and I finally got to start dating Christmas. Yes. So it was like, I was like, okay. All right. You'll, you can stay. And when you said, was it religious?
I think I don't want to speak for the Jews as a whole, but I think a lot of Jews that are not Orthodox would say like that even if you are observant, they don't really, we don't really feel religious, so I was raised relatively observant by my mom. My stepdad was is Jewish, but really kind of I didn't want anything to do with religion. We were observant, but it never it was never about, like, what you believe.
It's it was more about rituals and culture and heritage and finding that through celebrating holidays. Right. Growing up, you were had this external understanding, and it sounds like internal understanding of a of a wide variety of humanity. Is that what drew you toward activism? I I suppose is a good word for it, for prison reform and what goes on in prisons. Absolutely. So my my mom and stepdad are activists, have always been activists, and my stepdad, he's a civil rights attorney.
And so their worlds, growing up, I was they weren't the type of parents that would hang out with your friend's parents. They really had their own community, and that was a lot of, like, leftist lawyers. There's something called the National Lawyers Guild, which started in an answer to the National Bar Association, which didn't allow Jews and blacks. There was a time when it was like, they're very hard or prohibitive for Jewish people or black people to enter the American Bar
Association. So a group of people created the National Lawyers Guild and, it's a group of progressive lawyers. Probably every lawyer that is a part of the ACLU is in the National Lawyers Guild. That's how my parents, my my stepdad and mom met each other, which was actually happened before I was born. My stepdad, though he wasn't with my mom at the time, was at the hospital the day I was born. Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. But their activism was just like always going on in, in my home, outside of my home, people were always living with us, strangers, friends, family, activists, like, people engaged in different things, those morals and values kind of permeated every aspect of of whatever we did and who we were in conversation with and where we were going.
Like, for example, when I was eight years old, my parents flew me flew us all to Washington, DC to March for gay marriage rights, and this was just like this this was a very normal thing. That's a great upbringing. That's so wonderful. Yeah. And really, I I kind of realize now that it it's probably not a very super typical, so I am I'm very grateful for it. And that was kind of the lens that I saw everything in. I was an I was an actor. Like, when I was four, I decided
I wanna be an actor. Like, this is this is, like, this is my plan for myself. And my and they were very supportive. I don't know why, but they were very supportive of that. And as I kind of came into myself, I went to University of Michigan, then I went to New York and studied, and then I came to, and then I came to LA to pursue acting, and it just was not it wasn't going the way that I thought
it was gonna go. The mission I had in my head turns out not only is it hard to get auditions, it's hard to get roles, and not only is it like, when you do get the roles that what I was getting at the time, they weren't fulfilling and they were for it felt like a version and this is to go back to kind of always feeling like a little bit of an outsider it felt like I was trying to be the version of what I thought Hollywood, the director, the script wanted me to be, and I never felt like I fit.
And I think looking back, you know, I call myself a recovering actor. I started well, first I became a pop singer for a bit. So it took a left turn because I wanted to perform and I wasn't getting the opportunity. And I have a background in in vocal performance and it just met a producer and there were some pop tracks and I realized pretty quickly that I could write pop songs
fairly easily. So I started doing that and was, like, doing all the gay clubs in West Hollywood and music videos and had a little group. It was a lot of fun. I made no money and actually got scammed out of money. That's about right. Yeah. Welcome to the music industry. Yeah. Tale as old as time. Tale as old as time. So, yeah, the music industry is brutal. It's brutal. Went back to acting and then started getting work and more and more, and that was exciting.
And then I wanted to beef up my reel, so I wrote a short film with my friend so that we could get more content for our auditioning reels. And I joined a writers group to workshop this short film. And when I got there and, like, the first day, and I shared I shared my script and people read it out loud, and I was just like, oh, this, this is it. This is the thing. Like, I could have control over my own storytelling. I am not a pawn in somebody else's vision.
I have agency and I'm valued for something other than the exterior. And that was a big turning point for me. And, but I thought that and this happens to still be true that I was gonna go into writing as a comedy writer. That was who I was gonna be. I was excited to do comedy, but then we had this challenge to write a feature film in a month, but you had months to prepare for it. This is in the writers group. And this thing kept nagging me, this story, and I couldn't let go of it.
And what it was was a case that my stepdad had in the nineties. It was a class action lawsuit where 800 women prisoners sued the state of Michigan because they were being sexually abused and raped by their prison guards on a daily basis. And the state, in order to get the lawsuit dismissed, got the legislature to change the civil rights law regarding what a human is in Michigan, saying that under this new law, you are that prisoners are no longer human and therefore not entitled to human rights.
Therefore you cannot bring this lawsuit under a human rights violation. Wow. So these women yes. It's like, it was already bad, but then it became so much worse. And these women and their lawyers had to fight for thirteen years, all while most of them are still behind bars, getting retaliated against for being a part of this lawsuit. They finally appealed this to the Supreme Court of Michigan, where it was held for five years within this thirteen year time
span. In 02/2008, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor and reversed this law, which gave them their day in court. They got their day in court and they won the largest settlement in Michigan history, removed all men from contact positions. So this doesn't happen anymore in Michigan. So this was something that you know, happened for, it went on for thirteen years. This was the backdrop of my childhood
pretty much the whole time growing up. So I knew about this case and I knew it was important and I knew it was a landmark victory, but I didn't know anything. And when I started digging and doing the research, I I mean, I would spend days and days just sobbing and pouring over research or interviewing people, and it was so painful as just somebody learning about it, let alone those who experienced it.
So this was something that I wanted to do, and I went to my mentor and I said, I think I want to write this. And he's like, you've never written a screen guide of a feature film. Why don't you start with something simple, like a rom com, something that doesn't have to involve research? And I think I didn't really, there was a part of me that, you know, maybe at that time, like didn't, I hadn't been valued for my intellect
since maybe college. And I don't know if I really believed in myself, but there was this thing that said, I just have to do this. I have to do this. And I was going back and forth and I was actually on a plane next to Ed Solomon, who wrote Laverne and Shirley and Men in Black. And I didn't know who he was, but I ended up telling him like, I was thinking about doing this, and I didn't I had no business writing this. I'd never written before. And he was just like, you have
to do it. Do this. Don't do the rom com. So literally a day after that, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this. And it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. And I wrote this feature film and I had no ego because this is not what my training was in. So I would get notes and I would just do another
draft and another draft. And that script won the GLAAD list and the and the Athena list, and then it was optioned by Ben Stiller's company, Red Hour Films, subsequently went on to be optioned by re optioned at Trevor Noah's company, Day Zero. Currently, actually have it have the script back because it went into many forms and COVID happened, and it never went out. So I have a wonderful I can't tell you who, but I have a wonderful actress
attached right now. But because it went through so many ups and downs and almost for so many years, I decided that I needed to make the documentary of of get this story out. So the film is a story about the case, but the documentary is the story about the process of your experience making the movie, or how did where did those two things align? No. The the documentary is is about the case and the trial and all of the people that were impacted
and and lived it. The film follows is also about the the case and the trial, but follows a specific path. You know, a a film could only be so long and, it has to include, you know, tr traditional story beats and character arcs. So I wasn't able to tell the full, full story in a feature. So by doing this, I'm able to give
voice to the people that lived it. But going back a little bit, when I first started researching and writing the feature, it was like the first time ever in my life where I felt like there was a confluence of every, all of my lived experiences and my identity, like, because I was finally doing something impactful and I think I felt like my art, my being an actress and a singer, like, you know, it felt so minimal compared to what my parents were doing and had done and like, just didn't feel
that, like at least the types of projects that I was involved in, the storytelling, you know, when you're auditioning for like Bikini Girl number two, it's hard to feel a deep sense of purpose. So this is the first time that I felt purpose. The acting industry really yeah. It was brutal. It was brutal. And I I actually one of the last films I did, I I got a role in a Liam a Liam Neeson movie, and I had a whole scene, just me and him. I flew to Atlanta. We shot the thing.
He was a dream. It was so sweet. And then it got cut. And it was just like, okay. That really, that was one of, one of the many things that filled the deal. And I was just like, I'm just going to be focusing on writing and, and then over COVID. And so I, so I've been writing, I have been writing primarily comedies, but this was the first feature that I wrote. And then over the pandemic, I had two babies. After my second was born, I was feeling this loss of identity and lack of control.
And I had never admitted to anybody that I wanted to direct. I think that was the same thing with writing. I just like, I didn't see a lot of examples of female writers on the scripts that I was given. There's just not that many. That's why it's
so important for women to do it. Even I had preconceived notions of I I think I had bias against myself to enter into writing to begin with, and then directing is, like, a whole other level because you just have to bring so much confidence to the space, and you can't really have any self doubt when you're when you're doing
that. And I so I never admitted that I wanted to direct, and I called up a producer friend of mine, and I said I kinda, like, whispered it to her, like, I think I wanna direct. And I have this short film that is, a part of a broader film that I wrote. What do you think? And so she was like, send me the pages. And she got back to me and she was like, this is the funniest 10 pages I've ever read. Like, let's do it. And we didn't know how we were gonna do it, how we were gonna raise the money,
who was gonna shoot it, whatever. And I said, let's put a date on the books two months out, and we everything came together. It was, like, the most magical experience ever. Everything came together. It was so empowering. Charles Pappert, our mutual friend, was the director of photography, and we just started this we met through this project and started this beautiful friendship, but we were so in sync. Charles, for those who don't know, is,
shot all of Key and Peele. He worked on Crazy Ex Girlfriend Mindy Project and got a start in Steadicam on The West Wing and, American History X. He's just like this Yeah. He's great. He's a great guy. Industry titan and he's so smart. And so having somebody like that who just has so much more experience than I do, being able to be on a team with him and know and know that he's not gonna let me fail. We can do this
together. And we were just, like, very much had the same sensibilities of how we wanted the project to go. And one other part about that is, there was a sex scene in that short that I shot, and I actually acted in this short. And I brought on an intimacy coordinator. I really wanted to do everything right, everything that wasn't done when I was in the acting space. And I had a wonderful costar who was just so easy and brilliant to work with.
But I remember getting to, first of all, decide what I wanted to wear for the sex scene. I got I kept a bra on. I had just had a baby drop a few months prior, so, you know, I got to decide what the shot was going to be and how much of my body was going to show. And in the middle of the scene, getting to yell cut and work with my scene partner was the most empowering experience of my life.
So coming off of that project, I could start to see myself differently and start to, to embody this new person that I was becoming. I no longer like, trying to play the role of arm candy in something. I'm now directing. So who is this person? Because of that experience, I was able to start to envision the idea of directing the documentary of that feature that we talked about. Because for so many years, people I would tell people about the story and they would say, that should be a
documentary. You should make a documentary. And I was like, no, no, no. I'm not a documentarian. I like, I'm just gonna do it this way. This is the path sometimes it takes seeing to to seeing is believing and stepping into that role and starting to see myself differently. I was able to then see that I could I could make a documentary.
It's interesting to me your story of finding your voice and where you find your comfort and having people around you believing in you and giving you that confidence till you could believe in yourself, which is it's it's an important I think it's important that people around us lift us up until we figure out how to lift ourselves up. Right? That's part of growing up. It's part of the process. Absolutely.
Did you interview the people who were still incarcerated, or had you interviewed people that had been in that lawsuit and then gotten out of prison? My my stepdad was, co lead counsel, and the other lead counsel on the case is this incredible attorney named Deborah LaBelle. And she had two trials before they reached a settlement. They did two trials back to back, each one existing of 10 plaintiffs. Many of them were incarcerated at the time and some of them were out.
And she said that she vowed to her clients that she wouldn't stop for as long as it took, and she would make sure that every single one of them was released. And about four months ago, the last person was released.
My experience with talking to people who are incarcerated, and, you know, it's been a a small handful, but there is that sense that they have of not only extraordinary boredom, but feeling as if they don't have a voice and struggling to find that, especially those who have been abused, which have been the focus of the ones I've spoken with for the most part. People who have suffered at the hands of guards. And it's Yeah. It is a lot.
It's an everyday occurrence, and it's an there's more of the bad guys, I think, in there, on the side of the guards, on the good guys' side than not. At least that's what it seems like with all the research I've done and the people I've spoken with, including ex wardens and several lawyers. It's a problem. I talk to a lot of people who are incarcerated now who have, you know, their their cell phones inside, which I know you're not supposed to have.
So Wow. Yeah. I mean, they get sold those phones by the guards who then raid them and steal the phones back and then sell them to them again. It's a huge moneymaker for the guards. You know what I mean? Like, there's a lot. It's just bad. And I don't I don't wanna dominate this conversation because it's about you. But that being said, when you talk to these women
Yeah. And you are helping them find their voice, and I just I think it's an interesting parallel of those who have helped you find yours. Mhmm. And then in turn, you could have you could have taken that newfound understanding of yourself and done anything. But what did you do? You turned toward those who didn't have a voice and helped them find their voice. That's massive.
Working on this project is the the first time and continues to be the thing that is like this I feel like this is what I was quite here for. And I've always I've been working on this project, not the documentary, but I started writing this about twelve years ago. So this has been this big part of my life that is just like, like, I I know I was put here to get this story out, and, you know, I cannot wait for Hollywood to figure out this version of it so I
can go I can go make it. But to your point about talking to people who have experienced so much trauma and so much pain and are literally the most marginalized of our society, it's really difficult. And my intention in this process, and I'm about a third of the way through filming this documentary half the way, I'm trying to do my best to approach this with the utmost care and knowing that I'm gonna make missteps. This is not something I've done before. I am not a psychologist.
I am not I'm trying to educate myself through this process about trauma. I've been in contact with one of the women who was a plaintiff in this case. We've been having a lot of discussions because there are people who are on the
fence. There are people who are really enthusiastic about being part of this documentary and wanting to share their story and take ownership, and there are people who, you know, have been burned over and over and over again and understandably are on the fence or don't wanna be part of this. And I understand that too, and I'm and and they're also trying to help me understand, like, how trauma exists in the in the body for a lifetime given what you've been through.
During my interviews with the the former plaintiffs, I have brought in and will continue to bring in trauma counselors. We will pay to bring in a support person for for a support person for you of your choosing. If you don't wanna bring your own therapist or counselor, there will be one
there. And I also because everything was recorded on, because there's a video recording of the entire trial of all of their testimony, where they painstakingly went through every single thing that happened to them, which is really awful, I, approaching this, I decided that I don't wanna ask anybody to relive anything specifically, unless they want to, but it's not going to be a question of mine because I
already have that video footage. Did you interview any of the defense or any of the people who have been convicted of the crime? And are they incarcerated now? There were a few who got convicted. I think a lot of them are out. I think a lot of them weren't convicted. In my experience, they get placed into other prisons to do the same thing over again or given promotions. Oh my god. No. It's really it's it went I mean, like I said, like, this doesn't happen in Michigan women's prisons
anymore, but this still happens. Every day. And that's why it's important to tell this story because these women, they're the heroes of this story. They decided to stay with this case despite retaliation for years and years and years when nobody was believing them. And they were told nobody's gonna ever believe you. You're gonna go through this whole trial, a six week trial.
You're gonna have to relive every traumatic moment, not just in prison, but before you got to prison, or what happened to you before. And then you're gonna be on the sand, and people are gonna ask what you did to get into prison to try to paint you as as as the sum total of that experience. Human, I think, is the To dehumanize. Dehumanize. There's this conception that, well, you shouldn't do crimes in order to get in prison, but prison is filled with bright, articulate people.
It's filled with people who are uneducated and, did not see another option other than to do criminal activity in order to try and survive. There are plenty of women who are incarcerated because they fought back against their abuser. Yes. There's a lot of these things. And the majority of women are actually imprisoned for crimes that as accessories to crimes that men committed. And, and, you know, some of these women, it, like, they should have never been in prison
to begin with. Given their, given their crimes, like the crimes, like, should never, if they had a better lawyer, if they, you know, if if they were from an affluent family, they would never have gone to prison, but they weren't. Right. Right. The the central thesis was we sentence people to prison in this country. We do not sentence people to be raped. That is right. Or beaten or whatever other kinds of tortures
that will befall them. And that's that's a whole other part to the documentary of, like like, this system is so broken. What are we doing? What are we how are we serving the general population to put people away and then torture them so so that by the time they come out, they have such compounding trauma that they can't live productive lives.
Or they, or even if they aren't like many of these women went on to get multiple master's degrees and are doing so, so well, but you still have this background of trauma that you that it's very, very difficult unless you have so many tools to get out from under. So did you and did you not get a chance to talk to any of the defendants? So they weren't the defendants were the state of Michigan. The warden, I I called her. I talked to her on the phone, and she had
no interest in talking to me. Female warden. The female warden. Yes. Oh, and the female warden, she is a very fascinating person. She was also threatened by the guards, ended up getting a gun to protect herself. She was I think during the trial when she was gonna go testify, on behalf of the state, she was on her way home and was run off the highway
by one of the guards. So she was very much complicit in that she turned a blind eye and she knew what was going on and she did nothing, nothing, nothing. At the same time, she's the warden and she has a gun to protect herself from the guards that are raping these women. I cold called the attorney for the state who was in every single day of two trials and all of the deposition videos that I have. And he said, you know, I wasn't really that involved in that lawsuit.
I just mostly filed some paperwork. And it was just like, really? Because I'm watching eighty five hours of footage of you. So it's interesting, either it was a lie or in order to protect himself emotionally, his brain shut out some things, some bad things. I'm gonna keep trying to get some of these people on the phone, in person for interviews. You know? It's it's it's shameful. Have you felt in jeopardy at all? Has anyone threatened you? No. No. Well, no. You know, it's been so many years.
I I know that the attorneys were especially the female attorney, she was threatened during the during the trial a number of times. Her family was threatened. Her car was keyed. She was molested during a pat down on the way into the prison. She and my stepdad were put into a cell, and they locked the cell for hours just as a joke, or to intimidation, maybe. There's so many interesting pieces to this story. One that I was excited to talk about was
the judge. This trial completely changed his life and what he did thereafter. It was such a painful experience for everyone involved. Obviously the most painful for the women that had to relive, come and relive their experiences and hear that, oh, I'm not the only one. This is like, I'm now having to hear my friends' experiences. But the judge was just so changed by this, I think politically and spiritually. And he said he would come home he couldn't show emotion.
And he would come home at night and I got to interview his wife as well. And he would curl up into a fetal position and cry until he fell asleep and she had to hold him every night of the trial. And after the trial, he said, this there has to be a better way. We cannot conduct our legal system like this. So he started to seek out and educate himself on indigenous practices with as it pertains to
trials and courts. And so he became friendly with some tribal court justices in Michigan and started learning about the circle. It wouldn't necessarily be the trial that took place during the Neal versus MDOC, the Michigan Department of Corrections, but for, like, for those women who got to prison in the first place, it would or men or whoever commits a crime, you come to a healing circle in a courtroom.
And you have the person who committed the alleged crime and the victim, and you have a meal together before, and you're able to go around and say how this affected you, how it impacted you, and what you want to do going forward.
And you're both able the person who committed the crime is able to bring people from their life to talk about who they are in their community and what the loss of them would do to their community and how they're going to support this person in doing better and not committing further crimes. It's very interesting. His courtroom now, we actually filmed the day before he retired, so everything came down, like the night
the second our cameras stopped rolling. Everything came down off the walls, but for the last fifteen years, this courtroom has been now set up as a circle. There's no hierarchy. He's not sitting up where the judge sits. There's no box for a test testimony. Everybody's equal and everybody comes and and sees each other as humans. Because he he saw this experience and this way of dehumanizing people in the court system,
and he wanted a change. So another thing that came out of the determination of these women, these plaintiffs, to come and tell their story and to go through that horror, it changed something, at least for this person and everybody who came through his court afterwards. That's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big deal. They, they, they changed everything for women prisoners in Michigan that came after them. And they changed a fundamental part of this courthouse.
Knowing the story and being intimate with it and being in so much awe of the women that stood up for themselves and
for other women and for their lawyers. It's so important that I help get this out there so that it not only can motivate or inspire another woman, incarcerated woman or formerly incarcerated woman or man, but anyone who is feeling like they don't have a voice and they are marginalized and there is nobody's gonna believe them, These people did it, and it took a long time, but it was a watershed moment and a
landmark case. And it was, in my opinion, one of the most major civil rights victories in our court system in this century. Tell people how they can watch the documentary. How what's your process of finishing it up? Tell them how to find you, to follow your career and what you're doing. Yeah. AnnaRose official, on Instagram. That's probably the easiest way. You can you can watch my my short film there. It's a comedy, so it's literally think about this tone and go to the opposite.
But the documentary, I'll be updating my page with information about the documentary. We'll be going back to Michigan and doing some more interviews. I think it's gonna be a process, the biggest process we're gonna be fundraising soon. I have a sizzle reel that will come out probably in the next couple weeks or month, and I'm not sure if I'm gonna share that publicly. It's more for for internal fundraising. We we have to raise a little bit more money.
And then the biggest chance challenge is going to be working with the people who lived this experience and bringing them into the process in a way where, you know, they feel respected and where they feel like they have control over the way that they're they wanna tell their story, and those who don't wanna participate, you know, I I will do everything in my power to make sure that they are not a part of the documentary, because I don't want to for some people, they
not for many people, this even though it is an overwhelmingly positive story, this is justice. This is real, real justice that happened, which doesn't happen often. It's still part of a story that has so much pain. In my research currently about trauma. Just being reminded of that can can sometimes be really harmful. It's a dance. I've had to get a therapist to kinda help me navigate this too. It's pretty emotional and hard. Have you ever heard of a sin eater? No. Tell me.
The concept of a sin eater is, I'm not sure which culture started it. It it it's probably Gaelic or something. It seems like a Gaelic thing, but I might be wrong. But the idea is that there's a person that is brought in to the bedside of someone who's dying, and they basically eat the sin, absolve the the person of whatever might keep them from their great reward, as you might say. They're called sin eaters. And in a way Wow.
You're you're like a you've, like, transmuted the sin of the violence against women into something more powerful. It's into the soul, the the the zeitgeist soul. Because I think that through healing of others, we too are healed. And when there's such great atrocities happening en masse, it ripples out energetically. Whatever exists around the prisons where these things happen or in the families or it's all it's exponential.
And so by telling this story and in some way releasing this pain and allowing others to carry some of the burden of it, the viewers. Right? I think that it is it is creates a really healing thing.
Thank you for teaching me about that. I that true it's my sincere hope that the only reason I want to put this out there and to elevate these voices is for good and to inspire, like I said, anyone to rise up against what those that are oppressing them and also to give light to you and I know our prison system is so fucked up on so many levels. And I think when we typically think about an incarcerated person, the picture that a lot of people have in their head is of a man. And which is fine.
Men are incarcerated and men don't deserve any of the atrocities committed against them in prisons. But I think what if collectively we were thinking about these mothers getting taken, these daughters, these sisters who are being raped by men in prisons and, and watched. They're not just that, but they have no sense of self or privacy when they're being dressed, when they're dressing and undressing, they're being watched by men. They were in Michigan up until this case happened.
When they're showering, they're being watched by men. Open door. Men had to do 20 pat downs a day. They got to decide who and when they could break you up in the middle of the night. And there was no training for these pop bombs, so they were just groping, putting their fingers in places that they should not have been. Such a deeply traumatic environment. And I'm just hoping to add another layer to how we collectively understand what is going on in our prison
system. You're bearing witness, and therefore, we will bear witness. When I was interviewing one of the plaintiffs, in November in Michigan, Such an incredibly strong person. These these women, I'm in awe of them, and I I think, you know, knowing so much about them and researching them for so long and getting to interview them, sometimes I I, you know, feel like like I'm knit next to a celebrity. Because for me, I've been living with this story for so long, and I'm intimidated.
But she's still powerful and just she knows herself so well. And she said, After a painful interview that was so beautifully done, she said, I wasn't gonna come today. I was really debating, and I was on the fence, and my daughter said, my 14 year old daughter said, mom, you gotta go tell your story. She said, I am here because I want her to know how to stand up for herself. I am so proud of what we did. Nobody thought we were gonna win. Nobody believed us. I am so proud. We changed the system.
So hearing that after, after that interview, I was like, okay, this is, this is I'm on the right course. This is the right thing. This is my sign. Yeah. I get emotional too. Oh, it's tough out there. We are in a crisis of humanity, and it's good to know that there are still people fighting, you know, for the right Yeah. For the
right thing and on the right side. I don't know what the great cosmic plan is, but I do think there's a reason that you sat on a plane next to someone that told you to do a thing, and that that thing begat another thing, and then that thing begat another thing. There are no accidents. Those women incarcerated going through that hell experienced something that I would not wish on my worst enemy, and yet because of their endurance of that, they changed everything.
And I can't maybe that's this little naivete of hoping that if there is a greater power, which I believe in, that Yeah. We suffer on Earth in order to be of service to our fellow human. Because I can't otherwise make any kind of sense of it. Why do children and why do people you know what I mean? I I don't get there's no other thing. And I'd like to say God can be a real dick, but at the same time, I think it's more like God gave us free will and
we're we can be a real dick. But that in our suffering, good things can still happen. I I choose to believe that in order to survive just in general. You know? I yeah. I I really can relate. I think, about a year ago with everything going on in the world, I was in a dark place, and I started that's when I started to find more spirituality, which I hadn't really been open to before.
But, yeah, I I I agree with you, and I think, like, in the current reality of what we're seeing happen, play out in our country, like, part of me looking at this story, for example, and, like, everything that you uncovered in your work, talking with people and researching, like, you and I know how fucked up the prison system is. Like, our systems right now are getting fucked up, but things have been fucked up. They've been fucked up, and they make people a whole lot of money.
There are certain you know, the prison industrial complex, the privatization of our prison has created this just devil that feeds on others pain and is hopeful for recidivism. That it doesn't want to make people better. It's turning people into more of a monstrosity of themselves in in order to ensure that should they get out, they'll be back within no time. That's the reality. We're taking away so many vital community members.
And each person that you remove, it's like, you know, each person of the universe, you remove all of these people and you just strip these communities of what they need. Like, you're wondering why a community isn't like, you've taken so many people out of this community. Fathers were taken. And that's the other thing too is that, And mothers. And mothers, for sure. If the money that was invested in drug rehabilitation and education I mean, this is also a tale of
us all the time. We know what will work, and yet it makes far more money for certain people to not make those things happen. And so here we are. I think that there is also a sense of, oh, that happens to them and not me. But eventually, the powers that be run out of them and will come for the me. And that's something to be really aware of. Yeah. And I think what what you're doing, you're uplifting humanity through your podcast. And, like, we find the things we can do in this moment.
Yes. And and that's all, like It's exhausting work. It is. It's exhausting work, but it's all like, I I feel at least I'm doing this one thing. Yeah. And at least here's a story of, like, it was so dark, and now it's not as dark. And maybe that can be applied to other places in the world, you know? Yes. Absolutely. The the pinprick and the blackness lets in a whole lot of light. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really thank you thank you for bringing me on. Absolutely. It's
my honor. Such an honor. Thank you for being on the planet and for seeing humans as humanity. I think that's a rare quality anymore. So I appreciate it, and I see that in you. Well, I thank you for saying thank you for that. I appreciate
that. And I I do. And I I think that's why I wanted to be an artist to begin with is I I I feel pain of other people and, wanna, I wanna take that pain away, but also want other people to, like, back to when I was doing the research initially, I was like, if I can get my audience to feel even 10% of what I am feeling right now, I think it can move the needle. And I think I would have done my job because this is like this, this is earth
shattering. Everybody needs to know about this. This needs to be in the history book, what these women were able to accomplish and what they went through. If just one person either changes their mind about something or goes out and does something in response that is uplifting to the world at large, we've done a great we've done great. Make sure that you take care of yourself
as well. I know you said you have a therapist, which is good, but it's hard to be a container of this magnitude without causing damage. So be kind to yourself also. Thank you for that. I really appreciate that, Susan. I, I've been reaching out to other documentarians and realizing that no matter what the scope of the project or what the project involves, that they maybe it's not this kind of pain that you're absorbing, but there there is a lot of pain and you are Yeah.
You are holding it and you're a receptacle for it. So that's been helpful just to have people to talk to. You get it. It can be, I understand. I think it's I hope it's worth it. I think it is. I know we just met. I I'm very proud of you. I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be here and giving this story the platform, truly. It's my honor. Thank you. Of course. Thank you for being on the show, and thank you for listening, everybody.
And please keep me abreast of everything, and I wish you just continued success. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye. Great. Review and subscribe to Hey Human podcast on Apple iHeart, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Thanks. Bye.