Cheryle Gail and Kelly Wallace

00:02 All right, here we are. Cheryle Gail Hi. I am 40. Sorry. 59 years young, and I am doing this interview from Murphys, California, and I am the founder of Brave Voices.

00:17 Im Kelly Wallace. Im 46 years old. Im in Portland, Oregon. And I am not related to you.

00:30 Where.

00:31 Yes. Aware. Yes.

00:34 Our appreciation for that connection.

00:38 Yes.

00:39 Great. All right. And so we're both here voluntarily.

00:43 Yes.

00:44 Our commitment is just speaking up, breaking the silence that has perpetuated childhood sexual abuse for generations.

00:50 Yes.

00:52 And tell me what your goals are by doing this interview.

01:00 My goal, through telling my story, is to help others overcome their own shame and just get my story out there publicly. I think my story is one that has been neglected, and through patriarchy and sexism, it has been suppressed and squashed.

01:25 Great. And so the arc will be you sharing the observable events that took place. So if a video recorder was filming you or recording you audioly, that's the kind of observational evidence that we want to have so that we can understand how does this happen? Right. And then move into, gosh, what were the long term ramifications of the harm? How did you move through that and get to where you are today?

02:01 Okay.

02:02 Yeah. So if you want to start with anything you want to share about what happened to you as a child when.

02:11 Well, I think it's important to address two things before I get started. So I come from on both sides, on my maternal and my paternal family side. I come from a long line of alcoholics, and sexual abuse, I believe was just ingrained within both of those family trees. So when my mom and my dad got together in 1974, I was born three years later. They were just, like, the perfect match for each other. My mom came from Maine, and she was working as a teacher and had moved to Oregon and met my dad during the summer when she was working as a waitress back in the seventies. Teachers were not paid during the summertime, so she had to go get a job. My dad happened to be at this truck stop, and that is how they met And I was born three years later, and my mom moved with my dad to a very small rural farming community called Milton Freewater, and we lived about ten minutes away from my paternal grandparents. They lived in an even smaller town called Yuma Pine, which is right along the Washington Oregon border. And my parents were married, for all told, nine years. When I was six, they got a divorce, and it was a very contentious divorce. My mom pulled my sister and I away from this family who she felt was suffocating her. She's described them as like a cult. And so she moved us to Salem, which is about 5 hours away. Salem, Oregon, 5 hours away. And I was going on visits with my dad back to the farm, and my dad had moved in with them. He had some, I think, kind of spotty unemployment or spotty employment. He had gotten his law degree and graduated from Willamette University in 1974. And so he was kind of doing all these weird jobs, like managing a city, getting fired from all these different jobs. So he just was kind of, I don't know, young, immature. And I think that was part of why my mom, you know, ended up divorcing him. But he was living with my grandparents, and I was going to their house, and I don't exactly know when, but sometime between the ages of four, and I want to say six or seven is when the child sexual abuse was happening. So I was a seven year old, six and seven year old girl who was sleeping in a waterbed with her paternal grandfather, and no one questioned that. No one thought that was weird. It was 1984. It was completely normal. And I had a yellow blanket. I was a thumbsucker until I was ten. And I would. So what would happen is my, my dad, my sister, myself, my grandmother, if she wasn't working, she worked the swing shift at a nursing home in Walla Walla, which is about 30 minutes away. So she was not around a lot. And so we would all start out watching Hee haw, fantasy island in the basement. My grandfather was an active alcoholic who was probably drinking around the clock. He could not eat solid food. And, yeah, he subsisted on beer and carnation, instant breakfast mixed with ice cream. And so he was a very active alcoholic. He would go to bed, and somehow I got entangled in this situation where I would have, I followed him upstairs and went into his bed, and that's when he was, you know, touching me. It was mostly fondling. And there was, you know, just a lot of, like, when it was happening, I was like, this feels good, but also something just feels really wrong and confusing. Like, I just couldn't quite figure it out. And so it was always very quiet when it happened. And I would leave that yellow blanket that I had down in the basement as a way to get away from him. So I would say, I'm going back down to the basement, and I would come back downstairs as if nothing would, nothing had happened, get my yellow blanket, and resume watching hee haw or fantasy island or whatever they were watching. And then my grandmother would come home from work, and I would go into bed with her and my grandfather, and then wake up the next morning again as if nothing had happened. During that time, my mother had started observing very odd behaviors with me. I was having a lot of nightmares. I was talking about wanting to die by the time that I was nine. And she just didn't know why I had all these behaviors. And so I was in the second grade, and I saw a child sexual awareness video in my second grade classroom.

08:06 About second grade.

08:07 Way back then, way back then. And I think it was probably a rare thing at such an early age. And I saw that video. What was that?

08:22 What year was that?

08:22 1984.

08:24 Okay.

08:25 Yeah. And so I saw this video in my second grade classroom. I think it was right before thanksgiving or after. My memory can be a little fuzzy on that. But I waited a little while before I told my mom. My mom and I were very close. And it was a Saturday morning. Kids Incorporated was playing on the tv. It was December. It was actually, I think, December 14. And I went into the kitchen and told her, you know, hey, this is what's happening. And she was like, oh, my God, thank you so much for telling me. I believe you. And, you know, I think that, you know, what's important to say here is that my mom came from, like I said earlier in the interview, a long line of people who were. There was a lot of sexual abuse. But my great grandmother in New Hampshire saw one of my grandmothers, my maternal grandmother's cousins, molesting her and said, knock it off and stop doing that. So I came from a kind of a line of, you know, I don't think that the police were called. I don't think anything ever really happened. But I came from that culture, I think, of being believed, and I just don't think, you know, child sexual abuse wasn't really reported until the seventies. So that would have been in, like, the thirties when that took place, the twenties or thirties. And so my mom believed me, and she called the police, and a police report was filed, and my dad happened to be working in the same county as an assistant district attorney when that was reported. And so my dad, unfortunately, because of the contentious divorce, there was a caseworker who was involved through child protective services or. No, no, like CSD children's services division. This caseworker tipped off my dad and told her, told him, Kelly has reported this. My dad took the day off of work, went to my grandparents farm, and between 05:00 p.m. and 01:00 a.m. my dad has a lot of brothers and sisters. They all had this big meeting, and they planned, and they schemed, and they came up with an alibi. That alibi was that this couldn't have happened, because my grandfather had this old injury where he had broken ribs. He had been trampled by a cow. My grandfather was a farmer. And so they concocted this old broken rib injury, even though it had been never independently verified by any medical professional. Only family members could verify that this happened. So I didn't know any of this was going on, of course, and my mom didn't know what was going on. And so he was arrested. He was bailed out by a family member here in Portland. And then I was plunged into early intervention therapy. So I was in individual therapy with a therapist. Her name is Pam Crow. She's very well known here in Oregon as working with child sexual abuse survivors, especially females. And then I was plunged into an early intervention girls therapy group with other little girls like myself, who had been molested by brothers, dads, incest, basically stepbrothers. And so I believe that having those early intervention services was integral to my success later on in life. I am a rare case of someone who, one was believed and two, was given those services. Like, I have not heard of anyone else getting that access to services so early on. So, long story short, there was a trial, but it was delayed multiple times. It was delayed three times. So by the time the trial rolled around, a full year had gone by, and my memory was not as strong. And they were just trying to get me to back down. The whole paternal family was trying, was just kind of waiting it out. My dad was showing up to my school, trying to talk to the principal, the counselor, my teacher. He was trying to talk to me and get me to back down as a witness. And I thank. My mom had to pull me from school and get a restraining order against him because of what he was doing. Now, this is the eighties, and you didn't have to. You could just show up at school. You didn't have to sign in. He just walked in off the street. And so he tried to do that again at this new school that my mom put me in, but it was a small private school. And the director, he came and the director said, get out of here, and he left. So the other important thing to know is that my grandfather had basically been drinking the farm into the ground for, like, many years, like, probably over a decade. And they took out, they spent $30,000 on his defense, which at that time was a huge sum of money. He was also a volunteer with future Farmers of America. And four h. And there were other women that came forward during the police investigation, and they. There were two, and they were interviewed by police. Their reports were documented. I have those police reports and interviews, and they, unfortunately backed down. I don't know if they were paid off. I don't know if they signed. What is that, that agreement where you don't talk? So I don't know exactly what happened. I have tried to reach out to those women multiple times. They're friends with my aunt, and neither one will talk to me. So, anyway, go to trial. I testify on the witness stand for an hour and 45 minutes. I am the only person who's in that courtroom that's packed with my paternal relatives. It's just. Yeah, it's packed. My grandfather is there across from me. I can see his cowboy hat in my peripheral. And I have a Casa volunteer with me. My mom was not allowed inside the courtroom, so they isolated me away from my only ally, and I.

15:56 How weird. Mom couldn't be allowed. All the other relatives could.

16:00 Well, what they did, and this is probably because of my dad's legal background, he. They pulled her in as a witnesse, and they asked her five basic questions. What's your name? Where do you live? And then what do you do professionally? And when you're called as a witness in a criminal proceeding, you can't be in the courtroom.

16:18 Ah, okay.

16:19 So that's what they did. And we later found out my dad was probably writing questions for my grandfather's defense team. He had concocted this storyline, put together this, like, document for my grandfather's attorneys. It was not admitted into discovery evidence. And we only know this because my grandfather was found not guilty based on my testimony, my testimony alone. The two other women, no, their testimony was not allowed. I was eight years old, and I was having meltdown after meltdown on the witness stand. And what I didn't know at that time was that only 5% of all cases ever reach a criminal charge. And then of that 5%, one and a half to 3% of all cases ever win. And I didn't know that at that time. I took it so hard. I thought, this is all my fault, and I was to blame, but. And then after. After the. After the trial, they had to file bankruptcy, and they blamed it on me, saying, oh, the cost of the trial caused us. But it was really my grandfather drinking the farm into the ground. And then my mother was a great, um, record keeper. She has kept, um, practically every to the point of, like, mom, why do we need this bill or this invoice? Like, she's a meticulous record keeper. So she. She was a graduate student getting her master's degree in teaching at that time, and she couldn't afford to get the whole transcript from that trial, but she got my testimony, which is good, because she later called the courthouse when she got a little bit of money. And she called, and the transcripts had been moved to the basement, and there was a flood. And when she called, she found out that there was another trial. So there was my. There was. The first trial was my grandfather's criminal trial. And then what we didn't know was that he had filed a civil suit against the state of Oregon. My therapist, Pam Crow, the police officers, it was a defamation suit for $1 million. But what we. He lost. He lost. But my mom was able to get that entire transcript, and it was a treasure trove of information because my dad was. He testified, and there's, like, tons of documentation about this alibi that they developed. Why didn't he believe me? All kinds of, you know, interviews with these two other women, interviews with my therapist. So there was. There was all kinds of. Of stuff going on. And so that was July 1986. So that was seven months after the trial, when the criminal trial. So there was. The criminal trial was December 1985, and then this civil was July 1986. And then shortly after. After that, a family member came forward and said that my dad had been molested, molesting her. And so that family member had been in daycare. She was five. She had been pulling little boys aside, trying to kiss them. The teachers were very concerned, and she was put into therapy. And during that time, it came out that my dad had been molesting her. And there was a police report filed against my dad, who by that time, I believe, was a district attorney in Umatilla county, where this took place. And then that relative decided to take back those allegations, which is unfortunate, but this person probably saw what I went through and decided she didn't want to have to go through what I went through. And so after that, my dad tried to get full custody of me. And he. That. So that was in. This is the third trial. This is a custody trial in the summer of 1987, I believe. So my mom has been put through the wringer with these two trials. My dad calls in 30 character witnesses. My mom's got five. She had a really hard time trying to get an attorney who would take this case. Two attorneys told her to turn it. They turned her down, and they said, you better have an escape plan. You better go to Canada or Rhode island if you're going to get away from this man and his family. And what came to light in the divorce proceedings, sorry, the custody proceedings, was the therapy notes from this relative. And so the judge saw those notes and these drawings of the disgusting things that my dad did, and he sided with my mom, and he awarded my mom full custody. And then he did this extraordinary thing where he ordered my dad to court supervised visits with us only. He had to undergo polygraph, he had to undergo sex offender treatment, and he refused. And because of his buddies back in the old boy, you know, criminal justice system in eastern Oregon, he didn't have to do any of it. So he was able to walk away from this. But unfortunately, he walked away from me and my sibling, and he became a judge.

23:11 Wow.

23:12 Years later.

23:13 Wow.

23:13 Yeah. So that is. That is like, the criminal, the judicial side of everything that happened to me. What happened after all of that was that, you know, I. I went to school. I was able to get through school, but I had. I had a lot of anxiety, but I didn't know what it was at the time. Like, we didn't have language like we do today for, like.

23:48 Symptoms. For your anxiety, because everybody has different symptoms.

23:57 I was very, very quiet in high school. There was a boy that I had a crush on. He described me. He thought I was an exchange student because I was so quiet. Just this constant worry, what are people gonna think of me, you know, from testifying? I've had some kind of neurotypical experiences where if people stare at me too long, like, it. It's like, it reminds me of being on the witness stand. So it's this. It's this thing where, you know, I. You know, and I. In my day to day job, I work with people with disabilities. And, you know, it's almost like an autistic trait that I have with that, eye contact can be difficult for me. What else? As I got into my adult years, the way that it manifested was just like a hand at my back, pushing me to go, go, go, and just, like, accomplish, do everything, not feel. But in school, I also had a learning disability that made school challenging for me. And again, my mom, who was going through her master's in special education, she was able to diagnose this disability, which is like an auditory processing disorder that makes test taking, multiple choice test taking extremely difficult. So I was able to get through elementary, middle, high school and do okay ish. I mean, I didn't have the greatest grades, but I also had all this, like, anxiety that, you know, other kids just didn't have. Like, I saw these eight straight a students, and I was like, I want to be like that, but I just can't because there's so much going on. And I had therapy, you know, in high school. I had it in, I think I had some in middle school. So I have, I've always had therapy to help with coping and stuff like that. So it's been really been a saving grace, you know, I didn't really have boyfriends in high school. I didn't really know how to, like, date. I didn't have that modeling, you know, because I was raised by a single mom who was, like, a feminist, and she was like, go chase the boys, basically. And I, you know, that's not how it worked. And so I just, I didn't have the, like, social kind of nuances or cues. Like, you don't chase guys. That's not how it works. And I became really interested in writing. I went to a writing workshop when I was 16 in Massachusetts, and I met all these amazing people who we're just, you know, like, there was one woman who went to the same private school as, like, Chelsea Clinton. And, like, I dated this guy who his dad was, like, a producer for ABC News. And in Salem, Oregon, we didn't have that, you know, we didn't have, like, the, this east coast, this northeastern, like, cultural experience. And so when I left that Massachusetts writing workshop, I was like, I want to go to college on the east coast. But the only problem was my grades sucked. And I just, I was like, who's gonna accept me? But this women's college in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York, accepted me. They gave me a bunch of money, and I went there kind of sight unseen. And I was able to do, I was a women's studies major, and so I didn't have to do that multiple choice test taking. I just focused on writing papers that was most of my grade and most of my experience in college. And, you know, I'm just gonna do.

27:58 A time check with twelve minutes.

27:59 Okay? So I had this great experience in college, you know, meeting all these people who I just connected with. Most of the women that went there were solidly middle class from upstate New York. And so it wasn't like a snobby environment at all, but it was only 350 students, and it was just, you know, I got this amazing education that I can just thank for the way that I live my life today or the career that I have today. So I knew that I didn't want to stay in upstate New York. So I came back, and during college, I started drinking heavily again. There's that, that alcoholism. And I developed an eating disorder, which is so common for sexual abuse survivors. And so I didn't really know what I was going to do with my life. All my, my co, all the other students around me, all my friends kind of knew what they were going to do. And I was like, maybe I'll go work in a coffee shop in Portland when I come back. And they were like, going to vet school, medical school. And I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do with my life. And so I came back and I was able to get sober at 23 at a very young age. And, yeah. And so I kind of fell into this career. I worked, I started.

29:34 Was there anything that helped you? Was there a trigger moment to get sober?

29:40 My mom got sober when I was six, so she saw my life and she was like, um, yeah, you, you definitely have, we call it the ism. You definitely have alcoholism. And so I was like, no, I don't. But then I went to AA meetings, and without, I didn't go to treatment or anything like that. I just went to AA meetings. And I just got, I just started realizing, yeah, this is, this is why my life is so I had developed, you know, this depression and loneliness when I was in college. That was kind of unexplained. I was doing a lot of really dumb things. I was stealing, stealing cigarettes off the bar. I was, you know those, remember the Yokiyaro dog, a taco bell? Like, they had these decals, and I would rip them off the windows. And I was like, ha ha, look at me. I'm so funny and stealing these things. And so I think my mom, I wasn't telling her about any of these things, but she just kind of saw that something was up. Like, she knew something was up. So I got sober, and slowly I started kind of putting my life together. I started working for this woman who worked with people with developmental disabilities, helping them find jobs. I worked for her for a year, and I realized that she had her own contract with the state. I realized I could do that. And so with that very good education that I got from the college I went to, I was able to start this consulting work that I do to this day. So I've been doing it for over 20 years. And in, around the same time, I started, like, a women's networking group here locally, a chapter, and I grew it to be the second largest in the United States. And I just started doing all these things partly because I have that, like, hand on my back, pushing me to go, go, go. Like, if I'm not doing something, sometimes it's like, oh, my gosh. Like, relax. What is that? So I started writing this. I've been at work on a memoir about this whole experience, and I've done lots of interviews about what happened to me. And so the memoir I've been working on for 13 years, and my hope is to send it off to a big five publisher to get a book deal. And that is, you know, my life is amazing today. I, you know, have I been able to travel the world? I travel independently. I visited, gosh, I don't even know, like, 20 countries. So this is the lifestyle that I've been able to afford thanks to the work that I do and the freedom that comes from being a small business owner.

32:52 Fantastic.

32:53 Yeah. All right.

32:55 Did you ever have reconnection with your father?

32:58 I had reconnection with my dad in 2013. We did reconciliation therapy, and we were in therapy, intensive therapy for about a year. My dad had remarried, and my stepmom came and was a part of that. And I have half siblings and a stepbrother. And for about five years, right before the pandemic, I was in contact with all of this family, and I was going to Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, and all during that time, even though we had done this work in therapy, we hadn't set a goal of my dad believing me. We set a framework for reconnecting. But at a certain point, I was not able. I just never felt comfortable talking about what had happened to me or telling my siblings about what happened and my half siblings. And so in February 2020, I hauled my dad to therapy for one last session, and I said, I need to hear it from your mouth that you believe me. And he said, no, I don't believe you. Even though my grandfather has been long dead since 1996. And so it's just sex offenders protecting each other, unfortunately. So.

34:34 And anybody else come out about, uh, your father and.

34:39 Yeah, no, but I had a cousin reach out to me in 2008 on MySpace, and she told me that she had been molested by my grandfather. We actually compared notes. Our. Our abuse was exactly the same, pretty much. She told me that many other female cousins were probably molested. And, um, unfortunately, she has severe mental illness, and I cannot be in contact with her. But a reporter. There's supposed to be a story coming out in a magazine called in these Times. A reporter did a story on the future farmers of America and four h and my grandfather's involvement, and that she was able to discover that those organizations have not had their me too moments. And neither organization has kept records of any. Okay. Like the boy scouts, they have those files. Neither FFA or four h has any documentation about who's been reported. So that article was supposed to come out in the august and the magazine. In these times, often what happens is the New York Times and other major publications will pick up stories from that particular magazine, and then legislative work usually comes out of the work that in these times does. But as of now, it's December 2023. My last contact with the reporter was that the editor that she had been working with at that magazine has left. She's pushing the story through, but, you know, it's just a waiting game right now. So it will come out eventually, but there will probably be others that come forward. I know there's a ton of them. I'm positive. Because of his work with. With FFA and four h.

36:51 Wealth of information. We've got three minutes. Is there anything that you would like documented. Documented in the Library of Congress and those who listen to this to know?

37:03 Oh, I mean, I don't know. I guess I just. You know, I'm such a strong advocate of believing, and, you know, I think that, as I've stated earlier, like, I'm one of the lucky ones, because I was believed. It takes an average of. Of seven times before a child has ever believed by an adult. And I, you know, I just thank my lucky stars, like, every single day that I had a parent that believed me and stood up for me and went to the mat for me and got me, you know, even though that was a very traumatic experience of testifying, it's much different today. Children do not have to go through what I went through, but I had access to services at a young age, and so I was able to not fall into, like, a statistic of. Of having an awful, terrible, terrible life. I am also extremely privileged in that I come from upper middle income family. I've had access to resources that many members of the BIPOC community have not had access to. So I think it's important to acknowledge and identify that and state that in every interview that I do.

38:20 Thank you. And so what I do as a. Ask everyone that I interview to go on and interview to others. Is that something that you might consider doing?

38:33 You know, it's funny because I have a podcast or that I do interview others called recognize our power. I've been able to interview Rowena Chu, Laura Davis, many other people, other writers who are victims of sexual assault. It's on hiatus right now. We're coming back in a different format, but that is the work that I'm doing and. Yeah. So I'm able to do that.

39:01 Awesome.

39:01 Yeah.

39:01 This, this the bulk of going into the library of Congress. So there is ways to take those with their permission and act.

39:12 Yes, that would be great. So right now we're in the process of converting some of those interviews that I did with them back in October, November, December, last year, and we're converting those to reels. So I'm working on getting permission slips from, from all of those people that I interviewed. So that would be one way to get those in the library of Congress.

39:36 All right, 24 seconds to go. Thank you so much.

39:40 You're welcome.

39:41 Yeah. And I look forward to more connection.

39:45 Awesome.

39:47 All right. Have a great day.

39:48 Okay. You, too.

39:49 Thank you.

39:50 Welcome.

39:56 So now I've stopped it.