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I Need Blue
I turned around to see a masked man pointing a gun at me. It was just the beginning of a series of events, including robbery and abduction, which changed my life forever. I Need Blue, hosted by Jen Lee, is a podcast series featuring lived-experiences from survivors of life events. I NEED BLUE creates space for survivors of trauma to feel they BELONG, are LOVED, UNDERSTOOD and EMPOWERED! I called 9-1-1 and they provided me with life-saving directions to help my customer who was having a medical emergency. Law enforcement rescued us and caught the robber. Our first-responders face unique traumas every day. I NEED BLUE provides space for them too!
I Need Blue
Healing After Surviving Rape in Turkey, Jennifer's Journey
Jennifer, a sexual assault survivor, shares her harrowing experience of being deceived by a man she trusted while working abroad in Turkey. Her story highlights her incredible resilience and offers hope to survivors everywhere.
In this episode, Jennifer discusses her podcast, Trauma Rewired, which focuses on neurology, somatic healing, and how trauma is stored in the body. She aims to empower others to heal and rewrite their own narratives. Tune in to explore Jennifer's journey from trauma to spiritual wisdom and healing. Check out Trauma Rewired for more insights into recovery and empowerment.
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-need-blue/id1567450935
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Purchase my book or Audiobook: Why I Survived: How Sharing My Story Helped Me Heal from Dating Abuse, Armed Robbery, Abduction, and Other Forms of Trauma by Jennifer Lee
https://whyisurvived.com/
Remember you are stronger than you think. Don't believe me, we're about to prove it. Welcome back. This is Jen Lee, creator and host of I Need Blue podcast. True Crime to True Life. As a survivor of arm dropery and abduction, I understand the trauma and triggers survivors experience Knowing this and through my powerful podcast, I offer survivors a safe place to share their lived experiences. Survivors need blue to feel they belong, they are loved, understood and my favorite empowered. Please note I Need Blue does contain sensitive topics which could be triggering. Please seek help if needed and remember you always come first. I Need Blue episodes can be found on Apple Podcasts, spotify and many listening platforms, including my website, wwwineedbluenet. There you will find all the episodes, valuable resources, safety tips, my newly released book and e-book why I Survived by Jennifer Lee, and if your passion is to learn to podcast, you will find a learn to podcast PDF available as well. I would like to thank Shar Good, the talented violinist who composed and performed this opening music. You can find information about Shar Good on my website. As always, thank you for listening. Let's begin today's episode. Strong, resilient, resourceful and determined, saved my guest's life literally.
Speaker 1:Jennifer traveled to Turkey on a work assignment. She was well-traveled, understood different countries' cultural expectations and knew enough of their language to get by. She was excited about this new adventure. It started with her living with her boss's female cousin. All was fine until hell broke loose one day and she needed to find new accommodations. As Jennifer shared details of what followed, I found myself holding my breath, trying to imagine the scene she was describing, yet not wanting to imagine it. Several times she escaped sexual assault, which could have led to her being trafficked. Jennifer will share her story with us today. It will have you on the edge of your seats. We will discuss how she thrives and helps others. Now she has a podcast Trauma Rewired Neurology and Somatic Healing with Jennifer Wallace and Elizabeth Kristoff. The podcast teaches you about your nervous system, how trauma gets stored in the body and what you can do to heal. Only can be found on many podcast listening forums, including Apple Podcast. Jennifer, thank you for being my guest today and welcome to the I Need Blue podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Jennifer. I'm so happy to be here with you and to connect with you and your listeners. It's a really pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I am so thrilled to have you here as well. We've had some awesome conversations and getting to know each other. Like I had stated in my introduction is, when you started to tell me little pieces of your story, I was in awe. I'm so glad that, number one you are here and you are safe. You're in a spot where you can share your story. But not only that you've found a way to help others as well.
Speaker 2:I really feel like that second piece really feels purposeful, to be able to share the story, and share it from a place of groundedness and regulation, whereas telling it isn't going to dysregulate me any further or send me into something protective like a binge eating episode or something to find the safety back again in my nervous system after sharing such a big story. It's just so relevant.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's situational awareness. In today's world, especially for women, whether you're traveling abroad or even if you're just going for a walk in your neighborhood, it's so important to be aware and to know the signs and to protect yourself.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for your introduction. We share an experience that's kind of like same church, different pew. We're in a small population, what feels like a small population, although hundreds of thousands people worldwide are affected by violent crimes, sex trafficking, violent sexual assaults and all of it. Like you said, women in this day, you just can't be aware enough of your surroundings.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. While you bring that up before we start sharing your story, this happens way more than we think. Doing your podcast has that kind of opened your eyes up to that reality.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think it has. I think what it really does, too, is women knowing this story and knowing that I'm pretty open about really any of the body boundary violations I've experienced in life, I think, as someone who's a guide in the healing arts, I want women to feel really safe with me, and sharing these stories I feel like is really foundational for the work that we can do together, because they know that I've been through it I'm on the other side of it too Well thank you for all of that.
Speaker 1:And you said body boundaries. I've never heard that before. I made a little note of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talk about body boundary violations a lot From our perspective.
Speaker 2:When we think about body boundary violations, we think of that on a spectrum and on the low end of the spectrum might be someone just looking at my body, objectifying my body or maybe even talking about my body.
Speaker 2:We live in a culture, once again, women have been subjected to a lot of people talking about our bodies. Even that can trigger an emotional flashback in my body of a thread. If that thread gets pulled of, that body boundary violation where I feel like the man in front of me has that like a predatory energy to him, he's going to spin me out. I mean, he's just going to totally spin me out inside because that objectification of me is going to trigger a body boundary violation, maybe like the story I'm about to tell in Turkey, or maybe another time where I was sexually assaulted, you know, even like in my early childhood experience, right? So there's all these lived experiences from my early childhood to well, body boundary violation can happen basically anytime you walk out of the house. We always have that opportunity. But it's about how can I manage that activation from a place of higher consciousness now so that that activation doesn't then totally spin me out and spiral me.
Speaker 1:That is fascinating. You are teaching me something and you have put into words something that I have been trying to figure out for a long time. I could have another whole episode and we could talk about that. I'm sure. Awesome, I love it, thank you. Thank you so much for that, for saying those words.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:All right, Now let's move on to your story and Turkey.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I was 32 years old and I was living in London for four years. I had gone there for a fine arts degree and I had graduated and about two months later went to Turkey. I was going to Turkey by way of an opportunity. I thought I was about to live my dream life. I deeply believe in education, especially for young girls in third world countries and developing countries, and I also believe in water. So I thought I was joining forces with a foundation that was going to support these two things and then I also would be able to support my traveling habit and my art, my art career and all of it. So I really thought I was accepting my dream job and I went to Antalya, turkey. It's a beautiful place right on the Mediterranean. It's gorgeous, the food is incredible and it's kind of a hotspot tourist destination. It was like 92 degrees every day. I loved it. I loved it. I loved the Mediterranean. I mean, I just love the water.
Speaker 2:My boss you mentioned I was living with his cousin and there was a language barrier because I don't speak much Turkish. She doesn't speak much English and she had introduced me to a man who ran an IT shop man named Karem. He was about my age and so about maybe four times, five times something like that on my walk back and forth to the beach from my apartment, I would stop in sometimes and speak to him because, quite honestly, it's just really nice to speak English with somebody who's your age, who seems to be interested about like Hollywood or Britney Spears or I don't even know. You know, it's just like so random stuff to talk about. It felt pretty comfortable. I thought. I thought I was gaining a friend and an ally in this person.
Speaker 2:So one day I'm sitting in the apartment there's no windows and not even in front of me, there's no visible entry into the apartment and Fatash, my boss's cousin, comes in and she sees me sitting in a bathing suit, in a bikini. I just come off the beach, I was putting on his mafter sun and she flipped I mean she just completely flipped when she saw me sitting there in a bikini. Just, she just went off on me and she was treating me incredibly poorly and speaking me I mean, like I said, very broken language, but speaking to me very like calling me a slut. She was going there, she was going to places that were completely disproportionate to what was going on, like I'm sitting on the couch applying after sun lotion. So I didn't hold back any of the things back either. I wasn't doing anything.
Speaker 2:So I got defensive, it got heated and I went to my room. I packed a bag, I got online and I started looking at different Airbnb's and different places I could stay. I was in a resort town, so there's got to be nice places. I left my bag, I took my list up to the IT shop and I said, hey, this is what's gone down. I need a break. My boss is out of town. I just I can't. I need a nice space to be safe and relax. And so he made a couple phone calls. I mean, he looked at my list. He was like no, no, okay, okay, no, I call these couple places. So he made a phone call, got me a reservation, so off we go.
Speaker 2:As we leave his IT shop, the man who was coming through. This was interesting because my alarm bells did slightly go off at the energy of this man. He just had Bdis, he was a little bit shorter, he just had an energy to him that wasn't very kind, and so I didn't say anything, I didn't do anything, I just kept walking. We get in the car. We go up and Krim says, oh, you know what, I forgot something. He circles back, he goes inside and, in retrospect, I think this is the moment where these two get in cahoots with each other, because I don't know this, but Krim is about to Deliver me to this man's house, like I'm going to the scary BDI guys house. So Krim gets back in the car and he says hey, you know what? I have this girlfriend, this Russian girl named Elani. She's about your age, she speaks great English and her brother is out of town. He's gonna be out of town for the weekend. It's perfect, because you can just stay there for that time and you can't stay beyond that time because he's coming back. Perfect. He totally sold me, literally on this experience, great.
Speaker 2:So off we go to Elani's house and, like he said, she was very welcoming and the house looked pretty normal Instruments, artwork, you know. It looked like a lived space. We sit, we all talk, and then some time passes by and the man from the IT shop at the door comes through and a very different energy this time. He's happy, he's very kind. I think in that moment I just neglected what I had met in the shop and just put it off to. You know what? I'm in a culture. I'm in a different experience. I'm not the Equal. I'm just gonna kind of like let that go.
Speaker 2:And at some point Karem Left to go close the shop and then was gonna come back. He comes back, he's got a case of beer with him and I've never been a beer drinker. So as everybody starts to kind of party a little bit, that's not really me. I did take a few hits off of a spliff that was going around. So I think, once again, retrospect, they're trying to kind of get me a little bit out of my consciousness. What is that? It's cannabis mixed with tobacco, gotcha. But they don't know that I already have a fine history with cannabis and that that wasn't really doing anything for me or to me.
Speaker 2:So, in their probably attempt to get me a little sideways, I was, I was fine, totally so Karem leaves and as he's leaving, I'm like, oh, you know what, it's getting late, I'd really like to go to bed as well. So I go, I brush my teeth, leave my toothbrush into the little thing, and they're like no, no, please stay up with us. We really want to get to know you. Please have one drink with us and I was like, alright, I'll stay up just for a little bit longer with y'all, so that time comes and goes and I go to bed there's two twin beds in my room and as I'm sat there, the door Opens and when I look over, it's seen on and he's in his tidy whiteies. That's it. And I said to myself, literally said to yourself brace yourself, because he's coming for you. And he did, and so fight was definitely it.
Speaker 2:We carried on for Maybe five minutes, I guess, of just full on. He's going. I mean he couldn't hold my hands, my arms, my legs open. Stop me from screaming. I mean, we were really all over the place. They remind me of like the dusty guy and Charlie Brown, you know, it's like it just like scuffle everywhere and what were you?
Speaker 2:wearing. I was wearing some black plazo pants with a cotton waistband, a really thick cotton waistband like five or six inches, and they were just giant. And I was wearing a cap sleeve t-shirt with sleeves down to my elbows, and so those plazo pants aren't very hard to get down. They're the easiest pants to get down. He was, I mean, he was going there very easily. I just continued to fight and scream and at some point I Don't know why, he just stopped. He just stopped and he left the room and I was like, oh my god, and now comes the flight. How am I kidding out of here? First of all, I changed clothes. I put jeans on Because I felt like that was just a more Secure yeah, technically smart move. I changed my jeans. I put on another t-shirt on top of the one that I was already wearing, just once again, I think just to have more barrier. There's two windows In the room. When you open the door, there's one in front of you, and at the bed that I was on there's one in front of that. So I grabbed my passport, my telephone, and I'm Looking out the windows like how am I? I'm only on the second floor, I do know that, so that doesn't seem too very far down, I don't know, but there's Nothing there to catch me and I'm not two stories up, I'm more like five stories up, because it just drops down. I Think, okay, well, you're not getting out of one of these windows, but when you get out of the house you'll have your thing. So I dropped my passport, dropped my telephone and to this day of everything I know of the retrospect and the reflection I can look at, this is the one part that I cannot Figure out. I dropped my things. I've changed my clothes. Now I'm just like, okay, all right, I'm like taking it all in here.
Speaker 2:He comes busting through the door with my passport and my telephone and he's pissed. He's screaming at me something in Turkish I can't understand and he just basically starts to punch me. We go back down onto the bed and this time the fighting was way more intense. I mean, the energy behind his, his aggression, was much different. And I'm also this time I'm screaming for her. I'm screaming her name, like please come here and help me. And at some point she does open the door. She opens the door, she looks at us, we make eye contact and she shuts the door and in that moment I know like You're alone, she's in on this like this is. This is now. This is like continuing to escalate in the gravity of sort of what I'm involved in in this moment.
Speaker 2:There was a moment during the second attack where he gets my jeans a little bit down and I remember listening to an Oprah episode one time where there was this elderly black lady who had had her home broken into in the middle of the night and she found herself Awakened by the attacker on top of her and she grabbed him by the genitals so hard that he begged her to call the police. And I thought about that lady, thought about that. I thought I'm gonna try that because he's just wearing tidy whiteies, I Think before I applied the correct amount of pressure he was already sort of onto what I was doing because he was just oh man, he was mad and he got me pretty hard at one point and I remember thinking to myself like he's much stronger than you are. How long can this Go on? I mean he's a little bit shorter than me, a couple inches, but he's bigger than me is so that's sausage fingers. I mean he's got big hands.
Speaker 2:In that moment of feeling like there's a little bit of defeat starting to happen. He slid my underwear over just enough for me to feel Either his finger, his penis, something on me, and that was like all the fire I needed and it was just like no, I just continued. I just really fought back then and once again and I mean we're probably talking about seven minutes I would think of this attack and once again he just Stopped. He just stopped. He gets up, he leaves the room, start to compose myself again what the fuck am I gonna do? And I Send quorum the IT guy a text that said help me in all caps flip phone. So as soon as I send the message, send it goes doodly-doodly-doop, does a little message, a little music, to let me know that I've sent the text. Well, he hears that wherever he's at in all way. And here he comes. And he just grabbed me by the wrist. I was still holding my phone when he walked through the door. So he's trying to pull me out of the room and I'm trying to stay in the room and we are like really fighting each other and he's telling me he wants me to go into the master bedroom and sleep with them.
Speaker 2:She's in the bed in the middle of this king size bed, totally passed out, or what I think has passed out. He finally gets me out of the hallway, shoves me into this room, walks me to the far end of the bed and puts me down and then he's just like goes off. So I'm sitting there and I'm just like I start to lay down on my side and I'm trying to watch him over my shoulder just to keep an eye on him, because it's so I don't know what's happening. It's pretty erratic and obviously not safe. So I lay there and I just like cried on the bed skirt, leaving some mucus, leaving some tears, leaving my DNA. And he's in and out of the room and he's carrying around this key. There's like set of round keys that looks like something of a junkyard, you know, like all the keys, it's like a thousand keys. He's got that and he puts it on an ironing board, under a pile of clothes on the ironing board. So I'm just like, ok, well, that's not an option, but her cell phone is right here on the bedstand next to me. So I take it, I power it off and I put it in between the mattress and the bed skirt and I just laid there waiting for him to fall asleep, and laid there for hours thinking about do I try and go off this patio door? Like, should I try and sneak out of this room? Like we're talking about like five hours of just like contemplation.
Speaker 2:And at some point I've been monitoring the pace of his snores for a while and I'm like, ok, I'm going to try to get out of here, I'm going to try to get out of this room first. So I so slowly begin to get up and I'm looking for weapons everywhere, because if I start to wake him up, I've got to find something. Just grab anything, right? I start to slowly creep out of the room and the door was open slightly. I had to open it just a little bit and I've got one eye on him. I slink out of the door and I'm like, oh my god. Now I'm in the apartment. First thing I do is go grab a glass, because I thought that's a weapon. I'm going to break this, I'm going to shove it into his throat. That's going to be what's going to happen here. So I grabbed my glass and now I'm like walking around the apartment. There's a little camera from the night before where we'd all taken a picture of the three of us and I'm sure that was you know. Look at this girl that I've got.
Speaker 2:Now I go out onto the balcony and I'm like, ok, I'm going to have to jump down this balcony, I'm going to have to lower myself, I've got to figure this out and it's marble or something down there. So, once again, not a soft landing, and I've never jumped off of a balcony. Like all this stuff is going through my mind. And because, back to Oprah, oprah was my babysitter in the 80s and I know from John Walsh we don't go to the second location. I have to get out of here now, because if this goes any further, I don't know what's happening and the movie Taken had just been released. Like all this stuff is, you know, it's just so much, so much.
Speaker 2:So I go out on the balcony, I'm doing the survey. I remember the camera and the picture. I got to get that camera Because then when I go to the police I need photos of, like, who are these two people? So I go in, I grab the camera. It's bright, red, little point and shoot thing. So I can't throw ever a day in my life and I don't know what went in this moment I was thinking. But there's a giant agave plant, probably about 20 yards away, 10, 20 yards, something like that. Well, I pitch it and it lands nowhere near the agave plant, but a few feet in front of it. It's red, what am I going to do here? And I had the phone. I turned the phone on. It needed a passcode. So then that goes out the window. No telephone.
Speaker 2:I'm standing there and then, boom, he's on the balcony and I'm not even holding my glass at this point. So now I'm not feeling great about that. And as I turn around, he's shocked. I'm shocked, he's very shocked. I mean, he's just looking like a fit of, he looks like a madman. And he grabs me by the left hand, he starts pulling me in and he notices that this camera is not there and he's accusing me of taking it. And I'm like what? Why would I do that? I don't need your stupid camera. What do you mean? And then I had this moment of play nice. Try the play nice. Maybe this whole thing is just a misunderstanding and he's just going to open the door and everything is fine. Let me just see how nice I can be. So I switch my tune a little bit and I'm like, hey, so last night we were talking about going to the beach, and what do you think about that? And he's just like er, alls he can think about is this camera.
Speaker 2:He goes and wakes her up. And now the two of them are just going through the house to this camera. And when I'm going through the house, I mean she's looking in cabinets, they've looked in trash cans, and when she comes out of the bedroom and she's trying to figure she's groggy and hungover, like what's going on? He's telling her what I did the night before with my things, that I threw them out the window, my phone and my passport. And so obviously I've taken this camera and I'm doing everything I can to keep him off the balcony Because, hello, you'd have to be in a totally blind hot to see this camera. It's literally right there on the lawn. So I'm trying to keep him out of there and at one point he makes that.
Speaker 2:He goes into the bedroom, he grabs his 1,000 keys and now he is unlocking the three or four deadbolts that are holding the house and he's going to go outside. So I decide I'm going to. He's like mm-mm, he's not having it. So he grabbed me by the throat. I was with his left hand and just pushed me back until I would hit the couch behind me and sit down. And as soon as I popped down I was right back up. So keeps getting a little bit more aggressive. But he goes out the door and then on the other side, he's luck luck, locking us back in.
Speaker 2:Elani goes to the bathroom. The bathroom I was brushing my teeth in and I'm like Elani, you have to help me. You have to help me get out of here. Like I'm freaking out and trying to be reasonable, I'm trying to reason with her and she's just like you're making it worse. Just calm down, everything's fine, everything's not fine. Just tell me where your keys are right now. Help me get out of here. Like, let's just, I got to go, elani, and now here comes the keys. He's back. So I'm there. I'm stood standing in the hallway. He comes down and more arguing, more, everybody together. It was like watching charades in a language that I didn't quite understand, but I knew that they were talking about me.
Speaker 2:At one point he goes back to the bedroom. She's in the kitchen, she's going through drawers. It was crazy and I remembered from the night before that she had cut a loose string from his t-shirt with a small pair of scissors, bigger than nose, trimming. Not as big as standard, just probably a 3-inch blade, something like that and they were under the sofa table. So, while everyone was distracted, I went and grabbed those scissors and I put them beneath the back of my bra strap where it clasped.
Speaker 2:And when he comes back from the bedroom he's holding my passport and I'm like, oh great, my passport. This is always so confusing, what's going on here? So I put my passport in the side part of my bra and as he goes to walk out the door, again I'm right on him. He grabs me by the throat, pushed me down and I just decided this is enough, it's you or him, and it's not gonna be you. So I grab the scissors, I'm holding them in my hand, but I've got the blade going up my right forearm and I just had my arm down by my side and as I popped back up and grabbed them and he turns around. Now he's grabbing me by the throat. I mean, he's like I said, it's just getting more, more aggressive.
Speaker 2:And so I took the scissors out and I stabbed him two times, once in the throat and once in the face, on the nose, and from the nose I just dug as hard as I could into his face and at that time, the first time I hit him, he's like realizing what is happening and as he's got me by the throat, he releases just enough to try and like hit me in a really short space. But everything is happening very slow motion for me as I'm watching this scene unfold where I'm sure for him things were much different, but luckily I was watching that fist. I mean he just barely missed me. I mean I think he really would have like probably broken my jaw, quite honestly, had I not had the thankfully the slow, the slow motion. He is just bleeding out everywhere. I don't know how to describe this, but like there's a soft spots on your neck, right If you're going around your throat. They're just soft spots. There's a reason why there's a particular way you hurt someone in the neck area. I just did like a puncture, a giant puncture wound, basically. So he is bleeding out. I mean he is pissed.
Speaker 2:I'm back down on the couch now watching this whole scene unfold. She, elani, is cleaning. She's got rags, she's cleaning up blood. She's bandaging him up. He's looking at me, he's raging. He goes to the kitchen, he grabs a nine inch carving knife and he stands. He gets right up on me. He, before he stands me up, he is like wielding it over me, like psycho. He's just pretending like he's coming at me with this giant knife.
Speaker 2:At one point he stands me up and I said to myself I mean, I'm an only child, my mom is the most important person in my world, and I felt very sad in that moment, thinking that I had done everything I could do. And I said to myself well, you did everything that you could do and now you're going to die. And then, with it was like finish that sentence. And then this rush of it's the only thing I can describe as what people would describe as divine intervention, something came into that space. There was a very felt sense of safety, of separation, and in this moment of me, the next second was no, you're not going to die. It's like something came in and told me that. And so he sits me back down and he starts making some phone calls. He looks at me and he says the police are coming. And I'm like, oh, another interesting turn of events. The police is coming. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2:Here comes a man and a young man you know roughly our age, in his 30s, and he was in blue board shorts and a pink Ralph Lauren Polo. And I'm like this doesn't look good. They're probably going to kill me somewhere in the middle of Turkey, nowhere to be found. I don't know what kind of cop this is. Once again, the charades they're talking, the guys looking at me and looking back and I'm just like, oh my God. And then he tells me he's going to call Karem the IT guy. Great, okay. So here comes Karem. Same thing.
Speaker 2:Karem comes down, he sits in front of me and he goes Jennifer, what did you do? And I said, listen, you need to get me out of here right now. He was like this is very bad. I was like it's very bad. Very bad is an understatement. Karem, I need to get the fuck out of here, like now, for real. And he looks at me and, as we're talking, sinon is still walking around and he's still holding the knife. He's just walking around with it casually now, like at his side. So, as I'm talking to Karem, I'm like I'm the knife and back to Karem I'm the knife and back to Karem I'm the knife and back to Karem, I'm the knife, and back to Karem and finally he gets that message. He gets up, he takes the knife from Sinon, they go off. He comes back and says, go get your things.
Speaker 2:So I go pack up, I'm in a quick silver duffel and I'm walking down and to get down the staircase is a massive marble spiral staircase. I've got the duffel bag on my left side as we're spiraling down and he's behind me, karem's in front of me and I'm thinking like I'm still bracing, I'm worried that he's going to push me down this flight of stairs. And so I've got the duffel bag there ready and we get into the car and Karem looks at me and he was like he's asking about a camera. I'm like I don't have a clue about this camera and in the meantime I think I'm coming back for the camera. So off, karem and I go and he doesn't take me home at first. He takes me down to the beach.
Speaker 2:It's like 10 am. I get a coffee, he gets a beer. Everyone's looking at me. So strangely I hear I think I'm just in jeans and a t-shirt. So we go, sit down and he starts telling me basically how bad I messed up, what a scene I've caused and I'm like Karem, this man tried to rape me. Do you know what rape is? And he's like yeah, I know it is. I'm like no, you obviously do not know what rape is, so take me home. I will be on the first flight back to London. I'm going home. He's like you're not going to the cops. I'm like hell, no, I'm not. I'm getting out of this country. No, I'm not going to the cops, I'm getting on a plane, which, of course, that wasn't true either.
Speaker 2:When Karem dropped me off to my apartment, the way that it's set up there, in this particular space, was there was a little bit of a lobby and then I was on the eighth floor of like 10 floors and there's no way down. There's one way in and one way out and there's a buzzing system, but you don't get to know who's down there. You either buzz and then the person in the apartment decides I'm going to let in the stranger or not. I waited in that hallway, waited for Karem to leave, because there was no way I was going back up into the place where they know where I live and I have no way out but down. So I knew neighbors in the exact floor in the opposite apartment of me in the next building. So I went over and I went to their apartment and they buzzed me up, thankfully, when they opened the door I just wanted to fall into them but they were like whoa pushed me back and my I was wearing a yellow not jersey material, but the color of a Brazil jersey, so like the bright yellow and green and I was covered in blood. That's probably why everyone was looking at me so strangely at the beach getting coffee, because I was covered in blood. Why Karem wasn't worried about that is beyond me. But I got myself together, I changed clothes, put my clothes in a bag for the police. I called my dad.
Speaker 2:At this moment too, I don't know what Fatash's role is in this whole situation. Who are my allies? I don't really think I have any in this moment and I only know these neighbors. And I know the mayor and his daughter, and she's 14. She spoke English. She was my next phone call, called my dad and I called her and took a cab over to the mayor's house and when he arrived home me, him and his brother they took me to the police. What was that car ride like? The cab ride from the apartment to the mayor's was really sad. It was washed in shame it was, it was hard, it was dark. You know, I thought what have I? I think a lot of people will tell you once they've been through something like this.
Speaker 2:It feels shameful because, like, what did I do? How did I? It's shameful to feel like I had this experience and I just remember feeling like I let everybody down. I just I felt lonely and empty. So I felt some void. There was also the, the heightened activation of like I. I mean I just stabbed somebody, so like I have, I have engaged in something that's really kind of violent and also I won. So there's that part of it too. So it's just like it's so layered, it's so, it's so overwhelming it is, it's so much all at one time. It's just. I think that's why it feels like a void, because it's just too much all at one time and it's just so overwhelming in the system to feel just one thing in the, in the moment, and then it just all becomes too much. It's like how can? I can't feel anything actually, cause I just just too much.
Speaker 1:Like you said, and I have to imagine also you were probably wondering about the cab driver Like is he in?
Speaker 2:on it. Oh, everyone is at this point, everyone's a suspect. Like, just get me to the place, but at least I'm in contact with the young lady, bless her heart, she was 14. And when she answered the phone I said, hey, it's Jennifer. And she was, like you know, so excited. Hi, jennifer. Oh, how are you? I was like, well, something's happened. I need to talk to you. It's very serious. Is your mother with you? I need you to tell her what I'm telling you. Do you know what rape is? And oh, I can hear her little gasp Now. I can hear it right now to tell I don't want to tell a 14 year old that you know. But she was like, yes, and I said, okay, well, I, it was attempted. It hasn't been done, but that's what we're dealing with and I need to, I need to come over.
Speaker 2:They took me to the police, the police department. I had my bag of clothes and everything. I felt like all the CSI, all the John Walsh, all the Oprah paid off. All of it came together in this moment. The police chief was just amazing. I mean, he was such a kind man, he really believed everything I said and I thought I could get to the apartment that I was held in because what was? Only a few minutes from the IT shop. So me, the police chief and the the mayor left me with his brother to watch over me and we went to the IT shop. We sat there for a minute, they all talked, and the police chief let me know they were going to be there in the morning when Karem opened that shop.
Speaker 2:So off we go to find the apartment and I just want to say, like the chief of police, he was like a Turkish Tommy Lee Jones. I mean he really had like the ostrich boots on the belt, like snap. I mean he was just fantastic from, really from the inside out. He really had a good heart. We drive around. I'm just like so upset at myself I can't remember where this apartment is. They're like don't worry about it, we're going to get Karem, karem's going to take us to the apartment.
Speaker 2:So next off, we got to go to the hospital because you've got to do all the rape kit stuff. Even though there was no penetration of any kind, there still have to do all of that. And at this point even the bruises hadn't really only started to develop, like my skin was tender, but when they took pictures. Nothing was really kind of happening yet and there was no swab to take. Like I said, no penetration, no mouth stuff or anything. So but that took, oh my God, took hours. And now the mayor and his brother they own hotel in the neighboring town and they're going to take me there to stay put me up in a room.
Speaker 2:Getting back to who do you trust? So I get in this room and I start moving all the furniture Furniture in front of the. There was a patio door. I was on the ground level, so I started moving that furniture. I moved furniture in front of the door and now I get to take a shower, because I couldn't do any of that in all of these hours waiting for this hospital stuff.
Speaker 2:A whole day has probably gone by at this point and the shower was totally dry. There was no soap in there, there was nothing. I just took a water shower and I was scared to stay in there for too long also. So I got out and I was clutching my phone I'm just like in and out of sleep and I woke up to a phone call. My mom had gotten in touch with the US Embassy and the US Embassy was now involved in what was going on. Today I contacted the British Consulate because I was in. I was in Antalya. There is no US Embassy. The British Consulate's husband lives in the town where you're staying and he's coming to get you right now. Get your things. We don't know who you're involved with, we don't know who knows that you're at that hotel, but you've got to get out of there right now. So okay, and I should say too, the night before, when I was waiting for the mayor to arrive, I had my flight book back to London next day 6pm. So now it's this day. I'm flying out in the evening because I've done all the things, and so the consulate's husband comes to pick me up. Lovely man, I don't think I'd ever. What a dream to have a Scottish person pick you up in the middle of all of this.
Speaker 2:So we're riding, we're in the van, and then I get this phone call from the chief of police. He's like puts the man on the phone. He knows Turkish, so they start talking. The man's like they found the house, they're there, and he wants you to go there. The people who took you are gone, but they're at the house and now you need to go there. So he intercepts me, the police chief. We go there, I put the booties on and we start walking around. I really got a different view of where I was because, like I said, in my bedroom there were two twin beds. They were both children's comforters. One looked like a little space guy for little boys, something like Nickelodeon or something, and then mine was a really flowery young girls.
Speaker 1:So obviously it was set up for children.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it looked totally different. And then in one of the rooms that I had not had access to, there were bunk beds. I start doing basically the interpretive dance of what has happened than I before. There's my toothbrush, there's my snot, there's my mucus, there's my tears, there's his blood, because there was like a couple of little blood spots. Thankfully that she didn't clean up. They each smoked a cigarette and left it in the ashtray, so they'd thankfully left their own DNA there for us.
Speaker 2:We go all through the house. The police chief is there. He just, he hugged me. I mean, he was just so wonderful, honestly, his whole team was fantastic.
Speaker 2:And then they take me now to the consulates. We all go there, the chief, the husband and me, and this lovely lady that took such great care of me. She gave me money, she booked my flight, she, she did so much for me, and then in the end they wanted me to go back to the hospital, so she went with me. They wanted to draw my blood for some reason. After, you know, still, like I said, there was, there was nothing there.
Speaker 2:But on the way to the airport the chief took me to the airport, him and his detective, and he'd had a picture of scene on at this point because he'd had the picture from where they rented the apartment, his passport ID and I said, yeah, that's him. Except for now he's going to have a big ass scar all the way across the space. That ain't going anywhere, ever, ever. And yeah, I got a so off I go about almost nine months to the day. On May 5th 2010, I testified They'd caught him at some point and the chief told me let me know that they were going to lock down, like his. The border people would know that he was not to leave the country. And now Alani, I have no idea what happened to her. Hopefully she's safe.
Speaker 1:Was there talk between the police chief or anybody else that these people were involved in trafficking?
Speaker 2:There wasn't that known at the time. There was only the suspicion of that, but it wasn't confirmed at the time that I was in front of the police and when I testified the following May there was. When I finished, the lady was like you know, great job, we're never going to know what comes of this. And I was like really she was like our relations with Turkey aren't that close, like we're not going to know in detail how we can follow this. So I really don't know. I don't know what the outcome was of this whole thing.
Speaker 1:Wow, I'm assuming you testified virtually.
Speaker 2:I'm from Virginia and Norfolk Virginia is a huge naval air force, like all the government we have so much government in my town. So I just went down to one of the federal departments in Norfolk and live court reporter and me and the attorney. I didn't see him in that moment, it was just us in a conference room. Basically, it was very I wish I would have been able to see him again. I don't know why. Maybe the scar, maybe just to see, I mean his image is really burned in my mind. Honestly, especially when I think, you know, when you replay the scenes in your mind and it's like certain certain clips of the movie, is the face you see. And for me, one of the faces I see for him is that first time that we crossed paths in the IT shop.
Speaker 2:I guess that's part of the shame too that comes with these kind of things. Why, why didn't I feel the danger the second time? You know, I saw it the first time, I felt it the first time, but not the second time. But I think that I don't know. I think in saying that I also have, I think, this perspective or maybe this just like understanding now that being there in this experience it was just part of my story. It was just something that I was supposed to live through, maybe to talk about, to bring awareness to like. So I left Turkey. With bruises, I experienced a vine intervention that put me on a whole new spiritual path, one that I did not have before. I mean, that was really a great blessing to experience that. So you know and you remember, I was saying too like I was going to break this glass and shove it into his throat, like I probably would have killed him, and thankfully I didn't also have to experience that, even in my own defense.
Speaker 1:Had you ever thought about what you would say to him?
Speaker 2:I think I would have more questions than what I would want to say. I just would want to talk. I think it'd just be more curiosity. Why are we even on this path, dude? Like I don't know? It's so layered, I think too, because it does bring in a spiritual aspect.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And I also want to say, going back to the first time you saw him, you were like, ah, something's not right. And then the second time you met him, you were like, wow, he was really nice. We want to think the best of people, yeah.
Speaker 2:I always want to believe that people are good. And I mean my radars go off and sometimes I'll just look at someone and I'm like that's not a good person and I'll walk away. But like sending that with love to you, like I can feel something's off here, you're not a safe body, but my alarm goes off and I'm just going to walk away. It's not going to hopefully be too big of a deal in my body, you know.
Speaker 1:Getting back to those violations, Divine intervention, your journey and faith and all of those things. Let's delve into that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I love this part of the experience. I wasn't anyone who grew up with religion or didn't really understand Jesus or just any of it any of it and so this is the experience that really opened me up to wanting to understand more about the something greater that really connects us. And I have a. One of my mom's friends always tells me always, even when I was a little girl she's always tell me you have angels. And in that moment it was it really felt like I, maybe I do have angels. Like what is this? How can I explore this? And so I learned to meditate, I started to pray never prayed before and I started to just get curious about what else is there.
Speaker 2:And then I got diagnosed with breast cancer five years later, after I got back from Turkey. And this is the time in this treatment where my faith really plays a major role, because I didn't have much else to do but sit around and pray Honestly when I was going through treatment. So it really was the time that my meditation practice really got grounded in and really got solid. Because the truth is, after I got back from Turkey, those five years to to breast cancer, they were really stressful. I was really scared in my body I still had. I'm someone who if my fight flight gets activated it's likely leaning towards a fight response. I have a real prickly sensations. That happened in my body and so I can recognize that now I would be in public.
Speaker 2:I remember being at Coles after I'd returned and I wanted a gun. I was like I was. I was really dysregulated, very scared. In these years I had that divine intervention. It was curious and I would go see different healers but I wasn't in a place to really like absorb it. I was still kind of self-medicating and not in that grade of a place. But when breast cancer comes I really leaned in on that divine intervention and got to know faith like that belief, that trust, and it's been a really juicy experience. Ever since then. I've never that connection's never broke for me.
Speaker 1:Interesting question for those who are going down path of faith or have doubts because their thought is I don't think God hears me. What would you say to them?
Speaker 2:You are God. We're all made in the visions of God or the cloth of God, and we're all these iterations. We have to find the divinity within ourselves, find it in other people, and I was listening to something too. There was I'm not a Christian by definition. I really love Jesus, but I wouldn't consider myself like the traditional type of Christian. But I was reading something recently that said that so many young people nowadays just aren't into Jesus and they don't even care about Christianity and it's like Jesus is cool. I mean, that's a really cool guy, what he did, what he does, what he stands for, his stories, and that this is the teacher of our times. Right, it was the Buddha, and other times or maybe the. You know, there's been many spiritual teachers in our times and I think people are really missing out because the religion side is maybe too boxed in for people to get to an understanding of what a great teacher this person is.
Speaker 1:For you. What is the greatest lesson you have taken away from Jesus Love?
Speaker 2:Love, because we're all made in the image of God. That's what it is. We're all made in the likeness and in the image of God and if that is true, if we, I come from a belief that thinks we are all iterations of the divine expressing itself. So I'm got you, you are divine, we're all divine, and I don't think of God as this old man in the sky that is waiting to judge me on some day. I really look at it as I'm part of something really big in this experience and we're all connected. We are all connected in this.
Speaker 2:It's like one great big nervous system that we're in here, the galaxy, the stars, the cosmos, and as we walk paths of faith, there's so many different consciousness that we can connect to, that we can learn from. There's been so many incredible teachers, mother Mary, there's been so many incredible teacher that I don't think all the time gets her right of what's really due for that incredible woman. But you know, there's a lot of teachers and there's a lot of women that have been left out in spiritual spaces, back to Mother Mary or Mary Magdalene, and I think whatever calls to you, just try it out. It doesn't have to be rigid, it can be really loose. There's so many spiritual masters and teachers today for us to learn from.
Speaker 1:And I think being called is really about being open, because people get called in different ways. It isn't, you know God, just come and knock it on your door saying, hey, this is what you know, here's your purpose, this is what I want you to do. It doesn't work that way. So it's really about being open to the possibility and to reference kind of what you said about religion, not boxing yourself in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're capable of so much like our human bodies are just these incredible intelligent designs that are all divine wisdom and ancient knowledge. And look at your DNA, look at your genealogy Like we're. It's incredible what we are. If you want to believe, well, if you just give it a chance, find something. I always tell people when they're going through a diagnosis like whatever you believe in, just start believing in it hard.
Speaker 2:And getting back to what you asked me about Jesus and the, what did I learn the most? I? One of the things, too, I think about is that there is a Christ consciousness that lives within us. I think, as a teacher, he was showing us what's possible in all of our lives. I don't think Jesus would have put himself on a pedestal and seen himself in all of the homes the way that he is displayed now. I think it would be. You know, I think he's a guide. He's trying to teach us what we all can do. If we are all made in the same image, right, we're all special. We all have those powers like healing ourselves and helping other people heal, and that that that lives in us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I kind of call that the super conscious and it's almost like our moral compass in a way of you kind of understand the difference between what's right and what's wrong. You have respect for human life, because when you love others, you respect their life. You don't go out and intentionally hurt them or commit crimes, things like that. The fact that you know you're sharing this message and we're having conversation about it is so important because I think it's getting lost in the rhetoric and we can, by talking about it and creating that awareness in your passion, like, obviously, when you talk about Jesus and you love Jesus, like it comes through and it makes me I believe in Jesus, but if I didn't, it would make me curious. Like, well, who is this Jesus guy? Like these Jennifer's there all talking about Jesus?
Speaker 2:Yes, people are missing out. He's a cool guy, I love it.
Speaker 1:He really is, you know. The last thing I want to talk about is choices. We have choices. You and I kind of talked about this. You had lots of choices to make during your whole incident of am I going to choose to live or choose to die? Am I going to fight, am I not going to fight? And then even later in life, with your breast cancer? We make choices every day. We don't give enough credit to how important choices really are. So let's talk about that for a minute.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I love it. Choices there's this idea of the present moment, right, that we, when we're present, everything is possible, anything is possible in the present moment and I think that's made possible by the choices that are available in the present moment and that when we're here, when we're embodied, when we're attuned to the people with us, to the experiences, to the life that's happening, we can make choices that, like you said, it could go either way. Does this choice reflect the higher life of consciousness that I'm going towards? Or is this going to diminish my system in some way? Like, what am I doing here?
Speaker 2:And when we have those, I think, higher states of consciousness, those frontal front brain activations and you, it's almost like, well, it's massive self-abandonment to go the other way. Right, the choice of the life that we always want. It is in front of us and sometimes it's hard to make those choices. But staying present, staying grounded, and it can be fun, right, it can be fun, even after we've been through these big experiences, like you and I have been through and like some of our listeners have been through, like life can be really fun and joyful and pleasurable, and that's a choice, and sometimes that is a daily recommitment, every day when I wake up. Thank you, thank you for your attitude and what's on the day.
Speaker 1:I love what you shared. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:There's a song I listened to by Tony Jones, and she says something along the lines of my heart is beating for me every second of the day, and that's abundance. My breath, I breathe countlessly throughout the day, and that's abundance.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Those are things we take for granted.
Speaker 2:I know this beautiful body that we have right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We just assume they're going to be there, right? You have taken your experience and used it to help others by creating this podcast. Can you tell us about that and how the listeners can find your podcast?
Speaker 2:Yes, trauma Rewired I co-host that with Elizabeth Kristof. She's the founder of Brain-Based Wellness and the Neurosematic Intelligence Coaching, certification and Trauma Rewired is really a love story. It's a dedication to the nervous system and it's really educational. It's a podcast rooted in science, but in that science we also share our lived experiences and we really, in season two, we talk about the nervous system sort of as an individual and like what is trauma? How does it live in the body?
Speaker 2:What does it mean to have a fight trauma response? That, like I said, is my go-to. Or what does flight feel like? What can that look like? What is freeze and fawn? And what is perfectionism as a trauma response? Or what is dissociation Right? So we break down each thing individually and now we've just launched season three, where we're looking at the brain as a social organ and how we are developed within the neurobiology of relationships and the neuroscience of relationships, the way that we connect, the way our attachments are formed from an early age, and it still goes through the lens of complex trauma, but it's more of a, like I said, the nervous system as a whole, as society, culture, our relationships, to all of it.
Speaker 1:So if somebody is listening, they're like, how do I know what my nervous system is doing? Like what is the first step you would recommend them to do?
Speaker 2:I would recommend you listen to the podcast, honestly available, where all podcasts play Like. It's a really easily laid out for y'all to learn, like with the foundation of your nervous system. And then if you're interested in the tools that we use and the tools that we talk about, then go to rewiretrialcom. We offer two free weeks on site of nervous system training, where we're there live teaching four times a week and we love to be in community and answer your questions.
Speaker 1:That's great. That's awesome. That is a fabulous resource for listeners to. Number one, be able to listen to your podcast, but number two, to have that community. I love communities, so much I really crave it, yes, and lots of people know that they're not alone, and that's so important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely it really is. It really is. And back to the shared story it's important for us to share our stories.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, there is healing and sharing.
Speaker 2:Yes, and there's healing in community, and I don't think healing is done alone. You know, sometimes people think they might be stuck where they are, and you and I were talking a little bit before we hit record about the change. That's always possible. Change is always possible and wherever you're experiencing right now, it does not have to stay like this. You have an operating system that's your nervous system, and that operating system is trainable and it's changeable, and so I just don't ever want people to think like it's just like this. I'm just wired this way and this is just how it is and how it will always be. But we always have choice, thank you and I were talking about. We always have a choice and there's so much opportunity for that change in your nervous system.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Jennifer. Thank you for being my guest on the I Need Blue podcast. Thank you so much, jennifer.
Speaker 2:I just loved it so much. Thank you, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:We'll have to do this again. I thoroughly enjoyed it as well, and I think you bring a lot more information to my listeners that I think we can delve into. If you are interested in doing that, I am totally open to being back here again with you.
Speaker 2:This is Jen.
Speaker 1:Lee with the I Need Blue podcast. Thank you for listening today. You can find all of my episodes and everything you ever needed to know about the I Need Blue podcast on my website, wwwinadbluenet. And remember you are stronger than you think.
