I remember every detail, down to the color of the grass or what flower was in the vase.

Have you ever had your brain it'll be thinking of memories, and it's almost like if you open a book and you flip through the pages so fast, and it's like clips of memories in my brain.

Like I'll be awake during the day and just like and it can be like a memory of us sewing in the sewing room, or doing something in the kitchen, or we didn't go to the dentist so they had the dentist tools to kind of clean our teeth, you know, a memory of that, just a little random things.

There's a stickiness to Lindsay's memories.

Images and phrases crop up again and again, sometimes unprompted.

These memories are vivid, and there's this one memory that feels like a tiny encapsulation of so many things Lindsay faced back then.

A memory we came back to several times.

It's from her early days as a maiden, a time she could have gotten help, when someone could have seen something was off.

I had to go to the dentist.

I think I'd like a really bad cavity or something like that.

This was back when the maidens were still allowed to go to the dentist, they weren't using their own dental tools yet.

My mom had to take me because I'm only fourteen.

And I remember being in the dentist office in the chair, and the dental assistant noticed the ring, the gold ring Victor had given her in this spiritual marriage ceremony to mark her commitment to him.

She said how pretty it was and asked me about it then what it meant, and I froze.

I didn't know what to say.

I was not prepared for that question, and you know, I was also like scared of the outside world now too, just so afraid of pretty much everything.

And my mother answered for me.

She told the lady that it represented just my service in the church, and you know that I had made a commitment to serve in our church and everything.

And the lady was like, oh, that, you know, that's great.

I remember we didn't really talk on the ride home, like my mom and I didn't say anything to each other, but she told Victor what had happened.

And I got in trouble because I wasn't prepared to defend myself and that I didn't have an answer to give to these people.

He was definitely angry.

Basically, he told me, I needed to be prepared because we didn't want anyone maybe even getting an inkling that something wasn't right.

I needed to make sure that I was ready to have an answer if that happened again.

At this moment, maybe Lindsay's mom saw an opportunity to show her loyalty to Victor, to live in the light, as Victor would say, even if it meant turning in her own daughter.

The person she was protecting here was Victor.

Lindsay was the liability.

Now on the outside, Lindsay would have to figure things out, like how to interact with a mom who had treated her this way.

She'd have to decide what kind of a mother she would be, how to spend her time, who to trust, how to move on from her Cocoa Punch and iHeart podcasts.

This is the Turning River Road, I'm Alan Lance Lesser and I Ammerica Lance Part ten Beyond Fear.

For most of Lindsay's life, she'd been told who to be and what to believe.

Then, once she was finally out, she'd experimented and explored, totally drenched in her newfound freedom.

Now she had to start settling into who she was.

Lindsay had what was perhaps the first chance ever to build her own identity.

What would she discard from the past and what would she keep?

After Lindsay left River Road, she went to therapy and one of the topics that came up a lot was her relationship with her mom.

Her therapist encouraged her to write a letter to her mom, not to send it, but just to write it as an exercise.

Just for me to get my feelings out, let us to get that business one.

Oh yep, right here.

This was written September eighteenth, twenty twelve.

Oh boy, some of this I might not be proud of.

I think it's pretty harsh.

But here we go.

Dear mom, or is that what I should even call you?

I feel like I haven't really had a mom for the past twelve years.

I thought a mother was supposed to protect her children and love them and nurture them.

Remember when the sheep used to have lambs and how they would protect their base when the dogs came around.

I thought that's what real mothers were supposed to do.

One of the things that hurts me the most is that when I came to talk to you and Dad the first time.

You didn't even give me a chance to tell you the pain that I was living in and the hurt that I have.

You didn't even give me one chance.

All you said was, whatever you have to say, you can tell your dad.

I don't want to hear it.

You didn't even say you were sorry that I had to go through that as a child.

Do you know how much that hurt me?

What kind of a mother are you?

On the other hand, I'm going to be a great mother.

Someday.

My kids are going to be so loved, and I will support them and protect them with my life, which my real mother never did for me.

Maybe Christ will come back in five, ten or twenty years, who knows.

But if my kids want to go to the Olympics, go to college, be a lawyer, or a musician, I will do everything possible to help them achieve their dreams and goals.

You will never ever be a part of their life ever.

This may hurt you, but this is how I feel, and I'm learning through my therapist to get my feelings out and not hide them like I did for so many years.

Oh and if you are going to stick with Victor, you are sick and you have obviously decided to stay with my rapist who calls himself an apostle.

Have a good life, goodbye oof.

I haven't heard that, and probably since then, I thought maybe I would regret writing some things, but I don't honestly.

Lindsay wrote this letter in twenty twelve, the years she told her parents about the abuse.

That same year, her mom, Peggy, decided to leave Lindsay's dad.

According to what he told police, he was totally surprised when he came home to find divorce papers in their mailbox.

Peggy left no note, gave.

No warning she was gone.

She'd moved out to Washington to be near other River Road members.

A few years later, once Victor was in jail, she visited him, called him on the phone.

Peggy clearly still supported Victor, so it surprised Lindsay when she received a voicemail from Peggy.

It was twenty sixteen, in the days leading up to victor sentencing hearing.

Lindsay's daughter, Frankie was two years old.

Hello, Lindy is his mom, and I just wanted to tell you that I've been thinking so much of you and that I'm sorry for happing away over the last few years, and that I love you a lot and miss you a lot, and like I've never met Frankie, but I wanted to know if you guys had any needs that I could help with.

If you want to call me or text me, that would be great, and hopefully I'll hear from you.

Okay, I love you.

I remember when I first heard this, I was like, over the last few years, what happened to almost the majority of my life that you weren't there.

I don't know the fact that she thought me hearing that would somehow want to reach out to her after she completely took Victor's side.

Yeah, at the time, it just didn't feel genuine.

Now it still doesn't even feel genuine.

And then to have the guts to say and I've never met Frankie, Well, no shit, you know.

Like, I'm not crying about it because doesn't make me sad.

It just like makes me angry.

I couldn't imagine being a mother and putting my daughter through so much evil and abuse and then supporting Victor all the way through the trial and then leaving a voicemail like this.

Lindsay never called Peggy back after that voicemail, she didn't want her parents in her life.

She decided to cut them off.

She never looked back.

Lindsay's siblings and other family members are another story.

They still support them.

There's family members who still defend my parents and would say, oh, they were just brainwashed.

Was demon possession.

They didn't know what they were doing.

My aunt, one of her sisters, said it to me yesterday, Oh, Peggy was just brainwashed.

She didn't know what she was doing.

If she was in her right mind, she wouldn't have done that at all.

And I got off the phone call thinking, one, how dare you say that to me?

How hurtful?

All these years, it just seems like an excuse.

You were adults, you do have control, But wasn't like they were born into this.

My parents were, I had lived a normal upbringing with their families.

And were you really brainwashed?

Or is that just an excuse you say because you don't want to face the reality that you did such an awful thing in letting the man rape your daughter for all those years, I was wrestling with that one today.

I don't know.

I just it's something that especially like my family members and I always think if you guys had seen this on the news and it was some people you didn't even know, you probably would be like, oh my gosh, they deserve to be in jail.

How could they?

But because your blood related that somehow excuses them from this terrible crime that they committed.

Really, I hope every single one of them listen to this, this whole thing, because the majority of them, I don't think.

Really, I want to know what happened, and they should.

Hello, Hey Lindsay Deerica.

Hi, Hey, how are you doing good?

How are you?

I'm good?

Yeah, recently Lindsay said she needed to talk, so we got on the phone.

I feel like I've lived a month in these past two and a half weeks because trying to process this, it's been crazy.

I'm just going to jump right into what's been going on.

Yeah, totally.

I got a text.

From one of my aunts that said my mom was being rushed.

To the hospital.

She had a heart attack.

Oh and.

It's really.

Weird, you know, I think my emotions.

I wasn't really hearing about what was going on with Peggy, my mother.

So I finally reached out to one of my sisters on Wednesday.

She told me that she had just landed in Philly and was going to go see my mom and would.

Keep me updated.

So then she did text me the next day Thursday, and said that unfortunately she had suffered in an oxid brain injury, so I guess she was out of oxygen for about thirty minutes, so she was declared brain dead.

My one aunt, the one who supports Peggy.

All of my siblings were staying at.

Their beach house while my mom was in the hospital and knowing.

That they all like support my mom.

And they're talking about things, but like just feeling like the outcast again.

One of Lindsay's sisters wrote on Facebook about what an incredible mom Peggy was, that she made each of her kids feel special, that she was always there for them.

Lindsay thought, why couldn't my mom do that for me?

She had some people in her corner, two in particular, her Aunt Francis and Aunt Bird, two of Peggy's sisters.

Aunt Francis was the first person Lindsay called when she heard the news about her mom.

Lindsay told her she wasn't sure she wanted to go to her mom's funeral.

I said, the only way I will go is if you decide you want to go and bird and I will be holding your hand.

But Aunt Francis warned Lindsay to really envision how that would feel to go there on the day and hear everyone showering Peggy with praise.

After some thinking, Lindsay decided not to go, so instead of going themselves, her two aunts acted fast and got flights to visit Lindsay.

They would be with her on the day of the funeral.

We were so excited on the plane, can't wait to see Linda's muse them be so much phone.

We would tell everybody we're from Pennsylvania, but we're going down to see our niece Lindsay.

We were like little school girls, like we can't wait.

When they landed, Lindsay picked them up at the airport.

We were tracking her on fine My She'd be coming around the corner, coming around the corner, and all of a sudden.

And we're like, we saw them.

Frankie, My daughter calls Francis.

Francois.

Frankie rolls down the road.

She's like Fris whaz yelling.

She's like they're hearing Mom.

I'm just gonna jump out and go get them I'm like, no, stay in the car.

We were so exciting.

Lindsay and her aunt streams the funeral online.

It was painful to hear all these wonderful things said about her mom.

One of Lindsay's sisters called Peggy her hero, but Lindsay had Francis and dant Bird.

You hear of these cults and you think, how could anybody be drawn into that?

And then your sister is and it's like, what, Like.

It's mindful because we grew up in a normal Catholic family with normal everything, middle.

Class, We were supported, we were all involved in extracurriculars, We did well in school.

It just doesn't make any sense.

Ant Bird remembers when her sister Peggy wrote them all a letter to say she and her family were moving to Minnesota.

It was a letter that said, we're strong in our beliefs.

If you try to write us and try to dissuade us from our beliefs, we will end conversation.

You will never have contact with us again.

You will not be able to talk to our children.

We all sort of were stepping on eggshells to make sure that we didn't completely sever the communications.

So we knew from day one that it was a cull.

Ant Bird visited Lindsay's family once in two thousand out in Minnesota.

And I drive up and the kids were just standing there.

They didn't put their arms up to hug me, nothing, and I hadn't seen them in two years, and they just looked at me.

And Peggy said, you won't be seeing Lindsay this visit.

And I was like, what do you mean, it's been two years.

We're in Minnesota, and she said, you won't be seeing her.

She's living on the camp with some families.

And I was just like, so it was a terrible visit.

Peggy was on my heels.

She would not let me be in the bedroom with the kids with a door of him.

Antbird knew these kids their whole lives, and now she wasn't allowed to speak to them when they sat at the table together.

The kids wouldn't talk directly to Antbird.

They'd ask their parents questions about her, and their parents would respond for her, like the kids weren't allowed to talk directly to her.

As we were leaving, going down the lane, I was bawling.

We went back to the hotel and I just I took a shower, and I was just crying in the shower to my husband, like, why can't we see Lindsay?

I said, what if she's pregnant and they don't want us to see her because she's pregnant.

She's only thirteen, And I thought, I know that's a four out thought, but why if after two years can't we see her?

So at that point, I felt like I lost my sister.

Ant Bird's husband actually called the local police to check in on them.

They told him they knew the group was there, but they didn't really have the grounds to do anything.

But now that Lindsay is out, Aunt Bird and Aunt Francis want to be there for her.

I will never not support my niece.

I know I say it a lot, but you truly are so strong, so.

Strong, and I was so proud of her.

In the years since leaving River Road Fellowship, Lindsay had stopped relying on the family she'd been born into.

She looked for family in other places.

Maybe that meant finding a partner.

I just want that old school love that I saw in my grandparents.

I just wanted to be grand.

When she got her first boyfriend, she wondered when to bring up her past and how.

I really really liked him, and he was so handsome.

He really was great personality, killer smile, great hair, good family.

In the beginning, it was like we were just in sync.

I definitely felt like I was falling for him for sure.

I think I just remember feeling that I wanted to be open and honest with him.

I really wanted him to know me and know what I was going through at that time.

I wanted him to be there for me.

We were in his room, just hanging out.

I finally told him what had happened, and not even in super detail, but just you know.

I was in a religious cult when I was little, and my parents gave me a way at thirteen years old to be like a spiritual wife to the leader and being raped all those years.

And he said, well, you must have liked it to stay there for so long.

Now, when we have sex, all I'm going to think about is you and Victor.

I broke up with him immediately, just almost shocked that that would be his response.

I was not expecting that at all, and so I think maybe part of that is still somewhere, you know, buried deep inside, where the thought of dating and opening myself up so raw and to a person who will know me inside it out.

Maybe that's somewhat of a small fear that just being I don't know, rejected like that again, Yeah it was.

I couldn't believe he said that.

So dating on the back burner, and it stayed there for a while.

So did religion.

I got to the point where I wanted nothing to do with God if he was real, Like, why why did he leave me there for so long when I was praying when I tried to leave?

Why he would allow this to happen?

I just felt like every time I heard somebody read the Bible, all I could hear was Victor's voice reading it.

Lindsay focused on other things in her life.

She went to college.

She took a sex crimes in the law class and shared her story with the other students.

She was amazed by the response.

People cried, they asked questions, shared their own experiences.

Lindsay found it healing.

She mostly stayed away from religion for more than a decade, but then she moved to Texas and made friends with some neighbors who were involved in a church.

Even though these neighbors were religious, she felt no pressure to join.

One night, she was over at their place for dinner.

We were sitting after dinner and I said, this is going to sound crazy, but thank you for never inviting me to Bible study.

And I was.

Serious, and she started crying and was like, Lindsay, when you told me your story for the first time, I went home and wept, just tears of justice because I was so angry for you that that's the way that you heard about the Lord.

Because the God I know is full of.

Love, God's love.

The idea to Lindsay was so strange.

Now God's love, God's love.

It was all Victor and the elders and everyone around her talked about.

But it was also the phrase used for abuse, for the criticism and control, and even for the sexual assault.

Victor literally called it God's love and what kind of love is that?

After dinner, Lindsay's neighbors asked her to stay for their evening devotions, Bible reading and prayers.

They happened to sing a hymn that Lindsay knew.

I went home and I opened my Bible and it was like coming home to an old friend.

I remember crying and sitting there thinking, I can't believe you still love me.

Some former members of River Road don't want anything to do with religion now.

But after that night, Lindsay took a step she never thought she would.

She decided to try religion again.

I think maybe in the back of my mind, I was looking for something more meaningful in life, you know, seeing these people who seemed so fulfilled and content, I was maybe like searching for that, hungry for that.

Lindsay attended church with the family in Texas.

It was a Baptist church with a simple interior, gray walls and tan carpet, lines of chairs face to stage.

When I look at pictures of the church now, I see how it might have felt more familiar to Lindsay than some morenately decorated church.

It reminds me of the photos I saw of early days at the Shepherd's Camp.

People standing in front on the stage with guitars, dressed in jeans and sweats, nothing too fancy.

She and her neighbors sat near the back, and while they were singing a song, Lindsay began to cry.

Her neighbor looked over at her and grabbed her hand.

And I know that maybe sounds weird or some people like, oh, how could she even you know, trust those kind of people again.

But the timing was just perfect.

God loves me, He loves my daughter no matter what.

The struggles I still have, has just been such a comfort.

When Lindsay was twenty seven years old and pregnant with Frankie, she watched the show Gilmore Girls a lot.

She thought, maybe this is what her future could look like.

Laura li I and Rory, a young mom and her daughter, always laughing together, always close.

Lindsay was so scared back then, fresh out of a cult and unsure what her future would be like.

But now years later, she says, she and Frankie have this special bond.

When I think of my daughter's and n relationship, She's nine and I was looking at her yesterday.

You're watching a movie last night, looking at her sweet face and thinking, oh my gosh, this is the age that I'm at.

Victor.

It just hit me in that moment that is crazy to me.

And from that day on, like from the moment we met him at age nine, our lives were slowly changing.

We've had talks already, you know, about strangers, inappropriate people, even at school.

You know, if the nurse asks her to do something, you know, like saying no, like talking to me about it, like being very open.

We have really good talks about this stuff.

And I think back, I'm like, why did I not feel like I could go to my mom?

And every time I go looking for the answer, I don't think my mom had conversations like this with us that I have with her now.

Lindsay says in River Road Fellowship, no one did the children there.

It seemed like you were being conditioned to not have a voice of your own.

So even if you did bring something up that maybe you felt wasn't right, if it didn't align with what Victor the adults were saying, then you were shut down.

One thing that I can't stand is the silent treatment.

And I saw I would never ever do that with Francesca.

There were a lot of times and I would get in trouble and just get the silent treatment.

Victor wouldn't talk to you and really give you the cold shoulder, and I wouldn't even understand what I had done to deserve.

That, and him doing that made it a norm to ignore children too.

Yeah, I feel like there is this.

I don't know if it would be like a stigma in society or whatever.

But it almost is like, oh, well, they're not an adult yet.

They don't know what they're thinking, they don't even know what they're feeling.

They're just acting out when really they are a person.

You know.

When I got saved and baptized, I had to write my testimony, you know, so that the pastor could share it with the church.

Beforehand, the pastor asked Lindsay to share the story of what happened to her in River Road.

I realized in that moment that I had not told Frankie anything and some of that stuff was in there.

And talking to some friends of mine, they said this might be a good opportunity, you know, Saturday night, read it to her what's going to be read, and then talk about some things.

And so we sat down Saturday night and and in my testimony and talked about how my parents gave me away to be a concubine, which people who are older would understand that word.

I knew she wouldn't, so and like how hard it was.

And she grabbed my hand as I was reading it to her and just like started rubbing my hand.

And when we got done, she said, Mommy, were you really sad when your parents gave you away and I said yeah, she like gave me such a big hug.

She's like, Mommy, I am so so sorry that you had to go through that.

You started asking questions.

She's like, well, when I go to my new Christian school and the teacher starts saying something, how am I going to know it's not twisted like Victor taught?

And I was like, that's such such a good question, Like at her age to be thinking like that.

She told Frankie to talk to her if she ever has a weird feeling.

She said, they can always talk to someone else too.

But it's a fair question.

Can Lindsay and Frankie trust the leaders they follow going forward?

How do they differentiate what's twisted?

What kind of checks are there on that?

These are questions they'll have to keep asking.

I imagine it could be difficult, an emotional challenge every day to figure out who Lindsay can look up to, who she can trust.

A couple months later, we were talking about what superpowers we would want, and she's like, I would want to go back in time to nineteen ninety six, and we were with people all that time, so I didn't I didn't question it.

But I was like ninety six.

I wonder why she said that, and I asked her later and she's like, I want to go back then, because I would change it so that your parents never met Victor.

And like it just ough.

She is.

So sweet, so kind.

It's amazing how she gets it.

Yeah, yeah, it really is.

And she gets it clearly in a way that some other people haven't gotten it.

And even full fledged adults.

Oh, yeah, I know, I haven't gotten it.

Yeah.

Frankie's school had a father daughter dance recently.

Dad's not in the picture, so Lindsay decided to go the first school that let her go to the dance.

It was also the first time Lindsay would ever go to a dance herself.

Lindsay curled Frankie's hair, swiped a tiny bit of mescare on her eyelashes at the dance.

Watching her daughter laugh in her new dress, it really hit her.

Frankie was going to experience so many things that Lindsay never could, and that didn't make her sad, It made her happy.

Lindsay couldn't stop smiling in happy moments with her daughter Frankie.

Lindsay doesn't think about Victor, but The reality is Victor still exists in this world, serving time in prison.

We reached out to him ourselves, but he declined to speak with us.

When he began his sentence in Minnesota, his reputation as a cult leader and sex offender preceded him.

He started leading religious services inside.

It seems Victor couldn't help but try to play the role of a prophet.

But in twenty seventeen, Victor faced a reckoning when another prisoner attacked him.

You can see it on video.

The man entered Victor's cell from the main room where the other prisoners were.

Forty seconds later, the guy left the cell.

Everything seemed normal, He just walked away.

Four minutes later, the prison guard checked the cell with a flashlight.

She immediately called out on her radio.

The scene was graphic.

Blood smeared all over the floor covering Victor's face, red stains on his white T shirt.

He was barely conscious.

His injuries included a punctured lung and a traumatic brain injury.

After that, he was moved out of state to another prison at an undisclosed location.

In a TV interview, the man who attacked Victor said he didn't attack him because of what Victor was in for Although he was well aware of Victor's reputation, he said he attacked him because Victor put him in a position where he had to confront him.

He says Victor would stare him down that even the other prisoners noticed.

He said, quote, I'm going to say this as clearly as I can.

Victor Bernard is a master manipulator of unprecedented scale.

Victor Bernard had an agenda, and he only miscalculated in one area, and one area only when he picked out the person he was going to have a confrontation with.

He picked out the wrong person.

He picked me.

He thinks Victor planned the whole thing, baited him so that Victor could be moved out of state to a facility where he could be separated from other prisoners.

The attacker had a message for viewers, quote, wake up, there's evil out there.

It wasn't a human being that was in pain.

It was evil that was in pain.

Victor is still in prison, but he might not be forever.

So it looks like.

In twenty seventeen that due to a clerical error, Victor's sentence was reduced from thirty years to twenty four years.

Did you hear about that, and what was your reaction to that.

I remember being shocked.

I could not believe that he got a sentence reduced.

And I think already thirty years seemed not enough for what he had done to me and Jess and then all the others.

So then to know that they went back and argued it down, I just felt like a punch in the got.

So it went from thirty years to twenty four years.

Then one day recently, Lindsay opened a letter in the mail.

It was an update on Victor's anticipated release date.

Based on that letter, Victor's prison time would actually end up being just sixteen years, basically half of what she'd agreed to.

His anticipated release date now is twenty thirty one, which is insane to me.

It feels like that's right around the corner.

How old would he be if he survives until then.

Let's see, he was September fourteenth of nineteen sixty one is his birthday.

So of course you know that off the top of your head.

Of course, he'll be sixty nine years old the day he's scheduled to be released.

Lindsay's not worried about Victor coming after her, but she hates the thought of him getting out and reconnecting with some of his former followers.

It's just hard because you know, this is stuff all to live with for the rest of my life, and so I think for me, I was like, he should then be locked away for the rest of his life.

I can't imagine how that must have felt.

It's like, if you don't hear about this story, you just assume, oh, they put them away and you never have to think about them again.

That's not the case.

Yeah, Victor wasn't alone in creating that system that controlled Lindsay's life, though so many other adults had to buy into his plan and then enforce it.

In the community.

There were the elders who enforced the rules, elders sitting in on meetings with maiden's parents to make conversations more official, even more legitimized, and hard to stand up to.

Elders by the bonfire the night, Victor asked every maiden to recommit, pressuring fifteen year old Lindsay to return when she thought she'd finally left and was for And of course there was Jan Victor's right hand, a woman who allegedly told a child while they kneeled in a garden that at thirteen, and without realizing it, she'd made a lifelong commitment that she would never live with her family again.

Jan who allegedly gave children books about sex because Victor wanted better lovers.

Jan who convinced maidens who wanted to leave that they shouldn't because Victor was their true love.

They needed to be with him, they needed to stay in the sufferings.

The blood of the Lamb covers all sins and the parents.

Parents who didn't take the time to look into red flegs, who handed their kids over to live, often unsupervised, in a house next to a predator.

Parents who didn't ask and keep asking their daughters.

Are you okay?

Are you you safe?

Are you happy?

But other than Victor, none of them were charged with a crime, not because they couldn't have been charged, but because Pine County didn't initially pursue it.

Current County Attorney Rees Frederickson told us that when he took office, the statute of limitations had just expired.

Oh gosh, it makes me angry.

I think it's just a shame that they weren't held accountable.

There were many different victims in this group, all feeling Victor's wrath in different ways, but there's no question there were adults near the top who could have said something, who could have done something.

I see that in each community we investigate on this show, and it comes up in the real world in so many different ways.

Tiny or big people don't fully see the disparities in the power they swim in.

They we don't recognize our own power, our own privilege, and when we don't recognize it, we don't take action, We act powerless, We justify, leaving the most vulnerable to get hurt.

As a child, Lindsey did start out powerless.

She didn't have meaningful control over her life, but she ultimately fought back and took hold of that power.

She knows her power now.

I think with sharing my story, I definitely wanted victims to know that they're no matter what they go through, big or small, that there is a life after all of that, that there is hope.

I read something recently where it said you don't even have to have a hope for the future, you just have to be curious about out tomorrow, which I loved because there were moments when I remember being in such a dark place, feeling so hopeless, and the curiosity of maybe the next day helped keep me going.

It doesn't matter how dark the day is, just be curious about tomorrow.

There is a life after all of these things that is just waiting for you.

For years, Lindsay's life was so controlled by Victor.

He could make her feel worthless in an instant.

Hearing his voice or even discussing him, my heart would start racing and my palms would start sweating.

But recently we were talking to Lindsay listening to some old songs the Maidens had recorded.

When we played one of the CDs, this came on.

He is still constantly abiding.

Yeah, that was his voice.

Oh so that was Victor's voice.

How do you feel hearing his voice?

It's weird.

There's no love or affection or anything when I hear his voice.

It's almost just like no emotion.

It's like the scales have fallen from Lindsay's eyes when it comes to Victor, not only intellectually, but emotionally even physically.

She doesn't respond to the way she used to.

She doesn't get angry, she doesn't get sad, she doesn't start to question herself because after years of processing therapy, after going to the police, standing up what her own family told the world she was lying, facing Victor in court, after having Frankie, creating a family of her own, finding love that actually feels like love, not control.

After all that Victor's voice feels like nothing to her, nothing at all.

You've taken the power back in a way.

It feels freeing.

I remember Jess had this tattoo idea she wanted both of us to get, and it said beyond fear wise freedom.

Even at that time, I didn't quite get the real meaning of it.

But I feel so free, like I've broken free from that cage that he created in my mind, the things I wouldn't remember him telling me, or the way he would make me feel.

It's I've completely shattered those walls and broken out, and it's amazing.

It's so amazing, you're beaming.

I feel so free.

The Turning is a production of Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts.

It's written and produced by Alan Lance Lesser and Me.

Our story editor is Emily Foreman.

Mixing and sound designed by James Trout.

Grace Doe is our production assistant.

Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.

So many thanks to all of the people who helped and supported us with this project, including Gretchen Gabtt, Jacob Nikola and Theo Silber, Kayla Reid, Mary Lou McLachlan, Jerry and Christina Lance, Catherine Fanalosa, Andrea assoahe Mike Garth, Liz Mack, and Andrew Lesser.

Special thanks to Bethan Macaluso, Travis Dunlap, Elizabeth Walktel, our marketing lead at iHeart Podcasts, Ali Canter, and the wonderful teams at Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts for their support are Executs.

Producers are John Parratti and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch, and Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etour at iHeart Podcasts.

You can follow us on Instagram at Rococo Punch, and you can reach out via email to the Turning at Rococo punch dot com.

I'merica Lance.

Thanks for listening.