Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Do you think it's hard for people to understand that you can be going through trauma and also be who you are, which is your default mode is that you're smiling. That's just your beautiful face. Yeah.
And that you do all these things, but you can also be carrying this great weight. And that's just hard for them to reconcile. Yeah. I was at an art festival a few weeks ago. And there was a woman who approached me who I didn't recognize. And she said, are you Sarah Super? And I said, yes. And she said, oh, he looks so good. And I just thought, wow.
I never anticipated hearing that statement before my 10-year high school reunion. You know? Like...
I just thought this statement is clearly coming from not me looking good for my age, but from me looking good in her mind as a survivor of sexual violence. And I thought, you know, what is it that over a year after my assault, there are people who expect me to be, I don't know, like at home crying on a Saturday morning, you know, like unable to live my life.
I think people want survivors of sexual violence to be broken because that's more understandable. I'm Nora McInerney, and this is Terrible. Thanks for asking. The show where we ask people to be honest when answering the question, how are you? Sarah Super is not broken. Sarah Super is a woman who is absolutely 100% living up to her name. Sarah is a rape survivor.
An outspoken rape survivor. In a world where a president-elect responded to accusations of sexual assault by insulting his accuser's appearances. In a world where Brock Turner could be caught raping a girl and only serve three months in prison because a judge didn't want to ruin his life. In a world where, according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, 994 rapists out of 1,000 walk free. In a world where women are told that avoiding rape is our job.
We should watch where we go and what we wear and what we drink. Sarah says no. No to all of that. And she lives up to her name every single day. To me, Sarah Super is Super Sarah. She talks about the things that nobody wants to talk about. The things that grow and survive in silence. So I asked Sarah to come to downtown St. Paul and talk to me about it. It being her rape.
by her ex-boyfriend Alec Neal. I honestly felt like he was the one. And I feel shame saying that because I think there are so many people who understand my confusion in terms of seeing this as like a really good person who did a really evil thing. And then there are people who, you know, have said things like, you know, I met him once and I got a really negative energy. And it just felt really shaming. It felt like if I was smarter or if I somehow had...
You know, a better sense of people that I would never have been in this situation. This wasn't a mysterious, shadowy figure who jumped out of the bushes. This was a person that Sarah knew and liked and fell in love with. He was a really passionate person and he was a really empathic listener. We would have really great conversations. He also loved music and dancing, which are two of my passions as well.
And I liked that he was an activist. I liked that he belonged to this group of people that I thought were examining the choices they made in their lives, and that's something that I value. And there were, like all relationships, there were flaws, but it was never violent, and it didn't feel very manipulative. He dated for? Seven months. Their relationship continued and eventually unraveled, like many do, gradually.
Sarah discovered that Alec had never finished college, that he worked for his parents' business and didn't seem to have a long-term plan. That decisions he'd made about his health and his finances didn't align with what she wanted in a long-term partner. She saw all of these red flags and then got another, bigger one in January 2014.
It was my birthday. It was actually my golden birthday. And after a full weekend of like celebrating my birthday with different people and different friends, and we did kind of double dates with some people and couples, he said he felt unappreciated.
And I'm like, you know, what? Like, unappreciated? I have just brought you along with my family and my friends for all these celebrations. Like, I don't even understand where you're coming from at this point. And I need to go to sleep because I'm, you know, presenting and I'm running out my job. I'm like, I'm so willing to talk about this, but it just needs to be another time. He wouldn't let me go to sleep. And I actually moved out to the living room couch, which I had never done before.
And I was crying and then I remember that he stood over me. It was the first time that I was scared of Alec. I said, please go, please go, please just go. And it took a long time and then I heard him finally like grab his things and when the door closed...
I don't think I'm not an athlete, but I ran so fast. And I pressed that door and locked that door closed so quickly. And I saw him outside the door just stand there for a few minutes, like in a threatening way. Were you scared then?
No, I guess I was just like, this guy is crazy. We all say that too. We all say that about our ex-boyfriends. Here's the thing I think that was so astounding to me is that my alarms didn't go off because I feel like no one had ever talked to me about what this really looks like. I think that lack of conversation and education really allowed me to be totally ignorant to the storm that was brewing in my life.
That gradual unraveling was finished, and their relationship ended. But Alec didn't want it to end, and he kept trying to reach out to Sarah. But Sarah was done. She had boundaries. And then Alec threatened suicide, and suddenly it wasn't a normal breakup anymore. No person wants to be the source of someone's suicide, right? So at that point, I got his parents involved. Alec was staying with his parents, and they said they'd watch him.
that they'd keep him away from Sarah. And Sarah felt like she'd done what she needed to do, that her relationship with Alec was over. You know, I trusted his parents. But the next night, he actually snuck out of their house, had typed up this threatening message, delivered it to my apartment door, and snuck back into their house. I mean, the whole thing probably taking about half an hour. And they didn't even know. What did the message say? It said, now that you're single, we should fuck.
And it was typed, unsigned, no punctuation. Did you call his parents about it? I did. I woke up at like 6 a.m. and saw the note wedged in my back door. So he'd like climbed the, you know, back patio staircase and wedged this note in my door. It was Valentine's Day. And it was also the day that I was leaving with my mom for a vacation in Cancun. We had planned it because I'd broken up with him. And I'm like, I don't
alone on Valentine's Day. Even at this point, you still trust his parents to... I was so upset that they didn't know that he had left their house and had come back in and they were supposed to watch him and that they had no clue. Why did you still trust them? Is that shaming or blaming? No.
have lived a life like I remember in college dropping my wallet on the 16 bus line three times and every single time I got everything back you know the world has proved to me that it's trustworthy and it's like working in my favor and that's the belief that I was functioning with. Sarah did what I would have done what so many of us who have not experienced trauma would do she kept trusting in the goodness of the world
And specifically, she kept trusting Alec's parents to do what they said they would do. Watch their son. Keep him away from Sarah. So Sarah went to Mexico like she'd planned. She didn't call Alec, and she didn't hear from him either. We are going to take a break here for a little ad. And when we get back, so does Sarah. So we're back. When we left off, Sarah was on vacation in Mexico. And now she's back.
And everything seemed to be fine. My dad picked my mom and me up from our mother-daughter vacation. And we stopped at Whole Foods on the way back to my apartment. And it was probably 7 o'clock p.m. when I got back into my apartment. My parents came upstairs with me. I hugged my parents and thanked my parents so much. And if that had been the last time I saw them, I would have been okay with that.
I totally told them how grateful I was for them and for the time that my mom and I had just spent together on this trip. And I told them both how much I loved them. My parents and I are really close. So they just told me how proud they were of me, of, you know, choosing the right path. And they left shortly after the goodbyes and dropping off my things. I was so happy. I feel like that's one of the things that really...
It just hurts me the most to think about how happy I was. I unpacked my suitcase and I had, you know, little souvenirs that I was going to bring to my office the next day and earrings to wear and things like that. And I set everything out. And I remember dancing in my apartment, which is something I actually do kind of a lot. But I just remember that that's what I did. Like I danced in my apartment as someone waited to hurt me. And...
And it's so sad to think that, like, you can go from something. I mean, it's like, isn't that how the Hallmark movie always is? But, like, it's always, like, so perfect. Okay. This is the part where we tell you to pause. What we're getting into next is graphic and horrifying and upsetting and real and true. Sarah shared these details with us, and we're sharing them here today.
Not for shock value, but because they are shocking. They're the truth of what rape is and not an abstraction, which is, I think, what that word can be sometimes. But what's about to come is very graphic. So if that is a trigger for you, you are going to want to skip ahead about eight and a half minutes. That night, when Sarah got back, she took a shower and went to bed early, that post-vacation glow.
ready to start work again the next day. And then she woke up in the middle of the night. Feeling like someone was sitting on the side of me. I can't have anyone kind of sit down the way like a mother would. I can feel the side of my right leg. He was sitting like that on the edge of my bed with a knife to my neck. So I actually woke up with the feeling of being poked by this knife on my neck. And I remember opening my eyes and thinking,
It was so dark and I felt like my eyes didn't adjust. It was almost that disorienting, like, where am I? I felt so afraid, but it was so dark. And the only way that I knew what was even happening was he started talking and he started to say all of these really awful things to me about what a terrible person I am and
for breaking up with him, that I abandoned him. That was something that he repeatedly said. He told me to take off my clothes and he set the knife on the pillow next to me.
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Like the blade pointing towards like my eye. So I was almost even scared like that if it had just like moved, you know, like if the bed moved that I would be stabbed in the face. I remember seeing him erect and just feeling like, how could you, like, it just felt like such a sick thing that someone could be sexually aroused at my horror. And he licked his hand and just like penetrated me.
And I sobbed and he would tell me, stop crying. And I don't even know when that stopped, but I remember him saying, go to the living room, get on the couch. And when we had broken up, I had gotten a new sofa to kind of re-own my space after I thought maybe this would be the guy I'd move in with. And the first time I ever was on the sofa was me being raped. And he raped me from...
And I remember turning around to look at him. And it was like seeing a monster. He had his hand, like a fist in the air with this knife from my butcher block. And that feeling of like, I'm going to die. Like I literally felt like I'm going to die tonight. And I just don't know at what instant that could happen. And I was crying and I said, I need to go to the bathroom immediately.
And he actually stopped. And we went to the bathroom and he stood over me with this knife in the air and watched me, which is kind of dehumanizing. And I didn't know this, but if you ever have been sexually assaulted and if you want to report it, going to the bathroom can actually kind of wash away some of the evidence or wipe away some of the evidence. So I went to the bathroom and then after that, he said, get dressed.
And it was at that moment where I really had just the feeling of I need to escape, like something really bad. I mean, living through rape, surviving rape is a horrific experience. But then to feel like this night is going to keep going and I have no idea, you know, what would happen if I left this space. So at that moment, I started to plan and plan.
his command to get dressed allowed me to go into this closet that I had. And given that the apartment that I was living in had been a renovated mansion, there were doors and things that you wouldn't find in one of these newer buildings.
And one of those things was that there was actually a door in my closet. I knew that he had never seen me open that door, which is an interesting thing as well. I had opened it only once before just to see where it went, kind of hoping for a secret passageway like months earlier. Harry Potter. One too many mystery novels in my past. And I just remember putting on my jeans and cracking a joke. This
This person was almost like a different person, and I wanted to do whatever I could to bring him back to seeing me as a human being. Do you remember the joke you told? Yeah. I was pulling on my jeans, and I said something along the lines of how I barely could get them on after the all-inclusive resort, and I laughed at myself. And he didn't resonate with that, and nothing changed. He was watching me with this knife in the air.
And so when he turned to get his clothes on, I switched the lock to the door in my closet to the hallway and opened the door and the flood of light from the hallway came in. And so he, of course, saw what I was doing and he swiped his knife and it just sliced the palm of my hand just right in the middle. And I screamed at the top of my lungs, call the police, call the police, call the police, call the police.
And it was a three-story building and it was just a shared hallway. No one opened their doors at the time. And I remember panicking, like, where do I go? What do I do? Because I thought, like, he could just pull me back in and lock the door and then no one would have access. Probably within a second that I made the decision to run outside and bang on my neighbor's back door.
And I said, please help me, please help me, please help me. I didn't even know if they were home or not. But they let me in. And I remember screaming, like, close the door, lock the door. And it was at that moment where the doors were locked and I was shaking. My hand was bleeding. I didn't have my phone. Alec had taken my phone during the assault. I wasn't able to say what had just happened in the moment where I was, like, still in need of help.
the police to be there. Like I really was, I was fearing my life. So my neighbor called the police and he said, my neighbor has been stabbed. And they came right away. And the police asked me what happened. It's amazing because I just had never ever thought that I would ever say the words like I've been raped or Alec raped me. But I was able to tell them what had happened. And I
I felt supported. I felt respected by the police, which I know is not every survivor's experience. I remember they allowed me to call a friend, and so I had my girlfriend came right over, and she came with me to the hospital as well. But I remember leaving my apartment building, and this was probably 12.30, 1 a.m. at this point, and just seeing all of the flashing police car lights everywhere.
Police cars were just swarming the block that I was living on. While Sarah had escaped to safety, Alec had just escaped. Sarah went to the hospital with her friend, where her mother met her. She had a rape kit done, and at some point, with the police in her hospital room, her phone rang. It was Alec. I said, where are you? And he said, I'm driving to the Gulf of Mexico.
He said, "Where are you?" And the police smiled like, "You're at home." And I'm like, "I'm at home." And I said, "You should come home."
And at that point, my mom like scoffed out loud because she, what I would later find out, I was really angry at her. I'm like, mom, I'm trying to catch a criminal. Yeah, I'm trying to CSI this right now. So I was upset that she like made a noise. But I asked her about that. I said, why did you even do that? And she goes, Sarah, I was so angry that they were using you to bring this person back. It's like, she's like, they have tracking devices. They could find him. It's like, don't put you in.
as this toy or something to coax him back. But also, you're Sarah Super, and the first thing you did was put it on speakerphone and take it over. Exactly. So, yeah, he was on speakerphone, and he confessed. I had asked him, were you in my apartment before I got home, and he said yes. Why do you think he called you? I think he thought he was going to get away with it. I think he felt like I was going to somehow feel something and say...
We're going to move beyond this. You know, there are plenty of people who are assaulted in the context of a relationship who continue on in that relationship for so many different reasons because it's really hard to just end something on the spot. But for me, I had already known that Alec wasn't the person for me, and I knew what he did was a horrific crime. And so I wasn't going to let him get away with it if I could help it. But Sarah didn't tell him that.
Instead, she urged Alec to come home. And for whatever reason, he did. He turned his car around and started driving back to the Twin Cities. He stopped three more times to call Sarah, which gave the police the ability to find him. And within hours, following a high-speed chase through the suburbs of Minneapolis, he was picked up by the police. And back at the hospital, Sarah was released around 6 a.m.
And I went back to my parents' house, and I slept for three hours. And I woke up around nine, and I remember I called Alec's parents, sobbing into the phone and saying...
where were you? Like, you were supposed to be watching him. Like, where were you in this? And I have that same question still a year and a half later when I know that he was in my apartment for more than 12 hours. You know, it's like, where were these people who had seen their son show this behavior and not do anything to fulfill their commitment to watch him? What did they say to you?
They said, "We thought he was at a friend's house." Which I'm like, "You knew my travel plans. You knew that he broke out of your house the last night that I was in town." We ended the conversation around something like, "Well, we'll let you take control of what you want to do going from here." Sarah and her family didn't know what was supposed to happen next. They'd never done this before. But her parents called a neighbor who was a defense attorney
And they started taking measures to ensure Sarah's safety. Things like bars on all the windows at her parents' house. Things like getting a restraining order against Alec. Things like arranging escorts to and from the parking lot of her office. And finding places she could stay where he wouldn't be able to find her. All of this because, yeah, he was being held on bail, but...
With wealthy parents and a bail bond, you can get out of jail. And so I was really, really afraid that he would be out and just, like, come back to finish the job he started. But it took a few days to realize that he wasn't going to be let out. Alec was charged with sexual assault a few days after being picked up by police. Which, yeah, he damn well should have been. So that felt like a huge win, you know. Justice, yeah. But then the court process kicked off.
And with that came the silence and the shaming. One of the things that my investigator told me was that because I was already doing trauma work as a profession, that one of the things they said was like possibly that I could have made that story up to further my professional career, which of course is not true. The person, the legal aid telling me not to talk about it or to be very mindful of who I talk about it with. Was that a man or was that a woman? That was a woman.
And I know that she wanted to see my perpetrator be held accountable. And I know that she wanted to protect me. And I can understand from a legal aspect how that might be the case. But I felt...
I felt like what connected with me the most was when I met with a woman who I greatly admire, who used to work with domestic violence victims and survivors. And she said, Sarah, you should just do whatever it is that you need to heal. That should be the most important thing. Even more important than...
Holding your perpetrator accountable or obeying the laws of the court, like, what's actually the most important thing from her perspective was that I did whatever I needed to heal. And for me, that was speaking about it. So that's exactly what Sarah did. In early April, about six weeks after her assault, she was profiled in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. At the time, Alec was planning to plead not guilty.
And Sarah, as the only certified trauma-sensitive yoga instructor in the state of Minnesota, was teaching classes for other survivors. It just, it got a lot of attention and a bunch of survivors reached out to me at that point. The stories that struck me the most were the people who I had grown up with, the people who I had gone to college and high school with, and now to hear them and reconnect with them after so many years over this experience of violence. ♪
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And so it was those people that I just felt like this is happening to so many of us. And sexual violence happens in the context of a relationship. So it's not necessarily a romantic relationship. It's just the relationship between two living human beings, right? It could be strangers. It could be family members. It could be school and student. It could be whoever it is. It happens between people. And so...
There are not enough kale salads and bubble baths to heal anyone from their sexual assault. And this is a huge myth that self-care heals trauma. And it simply doesn't exist because it's a total denial of understanding what trauma is and how traumatic experiences happen. To say to a person that you can heal in isolation is to actually negate the fact that the damage that's done is the damage that's been done between people and that trauma
What you really actually need, I think, is for people to rebuild your sense of trustworthiness, that people are worth trusting, that the world is ultimately good, and that people, that you are deserving of being loved. Why do you think people don't say anything? Most people have said, I didn't know what to say, or I didn't know what to do. And so...
I would like to create a culture where survivors of sexual violence can say what has happened to them and get the support and the reaction that they deserve, which I think is an outpouring of validation and compassion. And so I have actually kind of taken it on myself to try and teach some people that it's important that you say something because your silence feels like apathy. And it's the same apathy I felt from my perpetrator while he assaulted me. So it's a powerful feeling.
But not everyone was silent about what had happened to Sarah. Remember Brock Turner's case, where his dad wrote a letter to the judge and described his son's raping of an unconscious woman as 20 minutes of action? Alec's parents had also written letters to his judge and asked members of their community to do the same. So there was a full stack of letters from not only the parents of Alec, but also many people in the Twin Cities who said,
put all the weight in all the choices that Alec has made up until the night that he raped me. And I just don't understand why every guy, from their perspective, it's like, does a guy get one free rape? You know? It's like...
Really? I mean, it's like if we're putting... If you get enough letters that can verify all the other good things you do. Fortunately, Judge Judith Tilson wouldn't have it, and she was pretty sickened by that stack of letters. And I think it's appalling because I can almost understand how a parent might not react in a way that you'd want, but it's amazing to me how many people have rallied around them. And my
My feeling has always been since the first day that Alec is fully deserving of his human rights. He deserves to be safe in prison, but he also deserves to be held accountable.
Sexual violence is never committed as an act of self-protection. It's never done to support your family or to make ends meet. Committing an act of sexual violence is something very deliberate and often inflicted on someone in their most vulnerable state, such as being passed out after a party or I was sleeping in my own bedroom or a child who is helpless. So it's hard for me to even reconcile the fact that people really wanted to
Yeah.
who they are. And that's not always true. Well, and that people can contain all of these things. He can be a person who did something horrifying, and he can also be a person who once rescued a blind puppy from the side of the road. Exactly. But it doesn't mean that raping you in your apartment means less because there's some sort of checks and balances. Right. Finally, in July, despite all the letters extolling his many virtues...
Alec was sentenced to 12 years in prison. It was so incredibly powerful because I got to give a victim statement and my lawyer spoke
And then Alec's lawyer got to speak. And then Alec got to speak after his lawyer. And he gave a very, I thought, empty apology. And clearly written by a lawyer, to be honest. I was disgusted. And I think what was really awful is that clenching feeling of, is this the end? Like, does he get the last word? And because we...
settled on a plea agreement instead of like a trial or anything. Judge Judith Tilton could have had a really easy job. But instead, she really took time to say, Alec, you are exactly the kind of person who would do such a thing. And until you own that fact, if you're going to continue to defend that this isn't who you are, you're not this kind of person. She's like, then you can't heal. Then you can't move on. And so it just was a real powerful statement of
Who are rapists? You know, who are perpetrators in our community? And they really can be anybody. You know, the nice, white, educated, talented, liberal, like, white guy in South Minneapolis. You could get raped by a Democrat. It's possible. Right. I mean, you could be raped by a social activist. You know, there are people who have been assaulted. And so we can't.
Allow men to just buy this image. Silence is easy. It keeps you from the risk that you may say or do the wrong thing. But silence hurts when you're on the other end of something awful. It hurts to not be able to say what happened to you because it's too uncomfortable for someone to hear. It hurts to tell your story and be met with nothing. So Sarah started Break the Silence. Depending on the day, it's a movement or a Facebook group or an event that
But the ultimate point of it is to help people say something and help other people hear what is being said.
to break the silence that allows rape culture to grow. Very few people have ever named themselves publicly as survivors. And the idea really came to me when I stepped forward. I saw that my friends and family started to really connect with the issue and want to learn. They had to learn new language, new skills, the new way I had to be loved, which was different than being
loved before. And I recognize the fact that every single person has at least one, if not many more people in their life who are also survivors of sexual violence. So I think that the invitation needed to exist. Sarah created that invitation. Here's how it works. Survivors can come to the event and take a number. And when that number is called, they can stand up in front of the group next to a facilitator. And they basically say their name, their
that they're a survivor of sexual violence and that they're breaking the silence. And they're welcome to have like two to three minutes to share any part of their story or their healing that they feel inclined to share. But it's really not about a collection of stories. It's really about a collection of people, of faces, of names, of people that we know and can identify with and start to
see as, this is my friend, this is my colleague. This isn't a faceless issue anymore. These are many people in our community. After someone breaks the silence and shares their story, what happens? Yeah, when a survivor ends their statement, the whole room responds saying, and you are strong, you are courageous, you are inspiring.
Everyone in the audience has been writing note cards of support. And so every survivor who breaks the silence gets like a bag of all these positive and validating messages that they take home with them. And I have a private Facebook group for survivors. And the amount of trust in that group is immeasurable. People name their perpetrators. People expose their most vulnerable selves and triggers and things.
It's just survivors supporting survivors. Alec Neal is currently one and a half years into a 12-year sentence. He'll serve at least two-thirds of that sentence. And Sarah is doing incredible work, and she's very impressive. But she still has to think about what it will be like when he gets out. I fear the day he gets out. Because it wasn't just rape.
You know, because that night was going to keep going and I escaped whatever else he had planned. But there are, you know, signs, the duct tape that he filled his car with and left in my closet and the notes that he wrote. I mean, one saying, I'm going to gut you from head to gut you with a G. I'm going to gut you from head to toe.
I just, you know... He left these notes? Yeah, in the closet that he was hiding in. And face masks and gloves and bed sheets, you know. I asked the police when they were getting all this stuff, I'm like, what are the bed sheets for? And thinking maybe he would have raped me on his own clean bed sheet, and I don't know. Right, yeah. Yeah, you're like, I have sheets, why would he bring these? Like, I don't know, I'd probably ask the same thing. Yeah, and their response was usually to carry a body. ♪
I have a hard time really getting into the mindset of what would motivate him to keep living after his prison sentence as a sexual predator in the community. And if I can't figure out the motivation that he would feel, it's hard for me to believe that there would be no way in which he would commit a murder-suicide as so many domestic abusers do after they've threatened to murder their partners. So...
As much as I believe in the court's process to let him go free after he served his sentence, I can also say that I will be afraid. This is something I never expected. It has totally changed the course of my life, and it's hard for me to almost even have this recorded because there will be a day where Alec might hear it, and you don't want to give him the joy of knowing that, like, he really hurt me.
And there's really no reason, like when people say, Sarah, maybe this was meant to happen because you're doing all this good stuff now. And I just have such a hard time really thinking about that because I really don't think this was ever meant to happen to anyone. And
And the world would be better without sexual violence. Yeah. So... There are a bunch of alternate universes where this doesn't happen to you and you still make an impact on the world. And it is part of that thing where people want you to rise above this. Right. And they want you to take those lemons and, like, prove to them that the world is not a cold and terrible place and that is not your job. Yeah. So...
I don't know even what was the question. I don't remember either. The important thing is that we both cry. That's what this podcast is. But I've been thinking, too, about the fact that this is a story that you do tell. And you tell it, I don't know, a couple hundred times a year, maybe a thousand times.
Yeah, I think every person who surrounds me can say that I talk about sexual violence every day. And as much as I would say that I never wish this on anyone and I never wish this even happened to me, I can say that, like,
One thing that always stands out to me about Sarah is how she's used her voice to build support for other survivors.
While we were working on this episode, the University of Minnesota men's football team was staging a boycott in support of 10 teammates accused of raping a U of M student. And Sarah showed up on a freezing cold Minnesota day with Break the Silence to stand with the survivor to support her breaking the silence. Not every survivor gets what Sarah got, which is some semblance of justice. Most of them don't. Not every survivor gets what Sarah got,
which was to be believed. We want to know, was she drinking? What was she wearing? What signs did she miss? How could she have avoided this? Not every survivor gets what Sarah got, which was support from a bigger community. So she built one. She makes it look easier than it is. And I know that she's tired and overwhelmed some days and that the world she'd like to live in would be a world where sexual violence doesn't exist. And there's no need for her to do any of this.
But I also know that she'll keep doing all of this work as long as this world, the one we're in, still exists. At his trial, Sarah was worried that Alec would get the last word. We could have reached out to Alec for this show. It was 100% possible, but we did not. We didn't even try. Because the world hears enough from Alec and men like him, and not enough from people like Sarah.
Sarah, I want to tell you and every survivor what you tell the survivors who come to Break the Silence events. That you're strong, you're courageous, you're inspiring, that I believe you and I stand with you. I'm so in awe of the strength of people. I feel like before I would go on with my life and hear these bad things that happen to people in the newspaper and think like, how can this person keep going?
And now being that person in the newspaper, in the crime report, it's amazing to say that experientially I know the strength that exists within the human spirit. I am totally in awe of the amount of strength that people have. I continue to meet people who go through hell and who know it well, and they're still putting one foot in front of the other, and I think that takes a lot of strength.
I'm Nora McInerney, and this is Terrible. Thanks for asking. Our show is produced by Hans Butow. And I really want to thank his wife, Amy, because he should be on vacation with her right now, but instead he's in a studio with me. Amy, I'm sorry. He's doing such a good job, though. Our show is mixed this week by Veronica Rodriguez. Thank you to Sarah Super for sharing her story and for helping so many other people share theirs.
Thank you, Judge Judith Tilson. You are a badass. Special thanks to Curtis Gilbert for sitting in Studio 3A with us. It's the week after Christmas. Nobody is here. He sat in the studio with us, ignored his own work, and helped make this episode better. And then, when we were here, late, working on it, he tapped on the glass of the studio to make sure we didn't miss the sunset. What a guy. And a special thank you this week to Anna Reid.
You can check out Break the Silence on Facebook. And TTFA is in all the internet places, like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. It's at TTFAPodcast. If you are looking for a bonus episode to get you through until next Monday, we've got one for you. It's very good. So you're going to want to text TERRIBLE7 to 677-677. So you open up a text.
You send it to 677-677. In that text, you write terrible and then the numeral seven. All is one word. Terrible seven to 677-677. It's just like sending any other text where data and messaging rates apply. Our theme song is by Joffrey Wilson. TTFA is a production of American Public Media.
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