It has been a little over a year since my father died. I did not write about it last year because I wanted to have some real time to reconcile and reflect before sharing my feelings online.
First and foremost, as I have healed, the consistent thing I have felt from the Holy Spirit is to be in gratitude for growing up in my parents home. I have constantly felt guided to reflect on the many, many blessings that have resulted from being the daughter of Richard and Carolyn Tripp.
A few that come to mind are being carefully and consistently taught the gospel of Jesus Christ in my daily life. I was also taught to love music, live theatre, good wholesome food crafted from scratch, gardening, and a family life that revolves around books and deep connections to extended family; wonderful grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends.
So even though I have had many years of deep distress while covered with hives all over my body, wheezing with deblitating asthma, and filled with anxiety and stress, especially on the days that I have come to identify as anniversaries to particularly heinous trauma, the consistent position I have taken is to be in gratitude for being a part of my parents family.
I was threatened with a lawsuit twenty years ago when I first started yelling publicly about the family pattern sexual abuse in my extended family. One perpetrator was jailed because of my determination to report a crime to the police. Our Bishop as a mandatory reporter backed up my decision to tell the truth.
When I consider what has taken place with Josh Dugger and his families unwillingness to report his assaults to the proper authorities amidst a belief that an “in house” correction with clergy would fix his sexual addiction, I am more reconciled with past choices.
The uncle who threatened to sue me if I did not shut up is dead, so I am not too concerned about him. But he has children and my own siblings have suggested legalities around my speech on this issue of my Father being a pedofile. They feel passionate about preserving his “legacy”.
My dad used my various bouts of mental illness as cover for his crimes against me. He said to me early on that I should not tell anyone about my psychotic break because he thought no one would understand. I believe he instinctively knew that people would understand too well what was the source of my deep distress and so he was very happy to shove the whole thing under the rug and if it came up at all he talked about the chemical imbalances in my brain which were being “fixed” with drugs.
I have found that almost all who have heard my story have been kind.
And they want to help.
My dear friend Jeanie died last month. She paid me the high compliment of believing my claims against my Dad. She believed them enough that she confronted him to his face on my behalf. I will never be able to thank her enough for this act of bravery. Her solidarity with me gave me the courage to move forward with my healing knowing she had my back.
Her death dredged up many dark and loathsome memories. But once those passed, I felt my mind flooded with the good stuff. There is always the good stuff to remember and revel in.
Music.
Always the music.
Annie, Saturdays Warrior, Dancing in the living room to Barry Manilows Copa Cabana.
The Wiz! Brand New Day.
Tubing down the hill out back, ice skating on the Rouge River, the playhouse, and mowing the lawn with the riding mower.
These are the memories of my childhood.
When we moved to Colorado Jeanie watched over me and mothered me while I had my second baby, my third baby and she invited us to her home to celebrate major holidays. I often saw her in the Denver Temple when we went to serve and it was in the Denver Temple that I told her the truth about my Dad being a child molester.
Now that I am more fully integrated into my life as a grandmother and being a senior with many happy years to come winking in the distance, my only desire at this point is to contribute to the healing of those who likewise suffer with the many layers of distress around sexual trauma.
Jenny Marie Hatch
I had a chat on Facebook with a few friends that I want to preserve here on my blog, just in case my account gets pulled again.
Usually on Fathers day weekend I write an ode to my husband Paul. He is my best friend and I love him dearly.
But since my dad died this past year, I thought it would be better to talk about him.
I watched his funeral video for the second time a few days ago and as I observed my siblings attempt to convince each other and a chapel full of mormons that he was god incarnate, I was reminded of the religion started in the Enders Game series that revolved around a person showing up at a funeral and speaking the truth about the person who died.
I have been threatened that I will be in big trouble if I speak openly about my Dads many sexual assaults on me. But I am so past living in fear of what my siblings have cooked up for me in a master file that has been gathered to prove to others that I am insane and suffering from “false memory syndrome”.
It is ironic to me that as I have healed, the Holy Spirit has guided me to remember the good things that resulted from growing up in my parents home.
And I have attempted to be in a place of graditude that I was taught the gospel of Jesus Christ, I was taught to love music and dance and live performances. I was taught to cook and bake with whole foods and garden and how to live frugally and providently. I was taught to serve and to find joy in serving my family and I was taught that allopathic medicine has its limitations and real lasting healing is to be found in nutrition and alternative healing.
I have no hope of reconciling with my mother or anyone in my extended family. I often feel that they would all be happy if I was dead.
I have no plans to exit mortality early but I would like to state publicly that if you think you were also molested or raped in the Tripp home by my Dad, I am prepared to support and believe you. When I consider the many slumber parties I hosted and the access he had to so many dear friends, I just shudder with horror.
Please feel free to contact me privately if you need support.
Jenny Marie Hatch
Jenny…I want you to know that I support you. Although I was a part of your family growing up..I personally never witnessed anything inappropriate.
I do believe ad we are part of a great awakening and disclosure of so many things that we think we know…our paradigm is about to change.
MKUltra is real and many more will come to the truth of how we have all been affected by it. I also believe as the scriptures state that all churches in the latter days will be corrupt. To think that LDS members think that excluded our church is absurd and do not understand the scriptures…and a reckoning is coming.
We know this to be true. I stand firm in my relationship with my Father, Mother and Jesus Christ and only trust them. I will never trust in the arm of the flesh. We put ourselves in great danger if we do. There are many who are being awakened …and they will need support when they do! Love you Renny! 🙂
Kimberly Measel Thanks Kim! That means so much to me. My Dad was the quintessential molester. Friendliest guy in the room, charming, and gregarious. I am grateful Heavenly Father is the one who gets to judge and not me.
I believe there is a Satanic cult that was operating in the Bloomfield Hills Stake in Michigan. And I believe many of us who grew up in that stake were traumatized by it.
Jenny Marie Hatch Are you familiar with Jessie Czebotar? She grew up in a satanic family and was high up in the echelons but found Jesus at an early age and teaches really about him and how He rescues but more importantly how we deal with Lucifer in our life. I like to know what we are up against and more importantly how to combat him. I have learned never to dismiss anything!!
Kimberly Measel
I have never heard of Jessie, but I am friends with Fiona Barnett, Sarah Ruth Ashcraft (who also grew up in the Detroit area), and I read LDS member Anne Johnsons Davis book:
I don’t know what to say. My heart goes out to you bc of the molestation you endured at the hands of the first person in the world that should have protected you, at least.
I also know the heartache of having your family turn on you and make you the goat. I’m your eternal and loyal friend, and I believe you. I feel such a big love for you bc of our common trials and bc you have suffered such loss. 😘 xo
Juliette Hummer Langston
Thankyou Juliette! For twenty long years since my brother died of an opioid overdose, I have been mostly silent because of a threat of a lawsuit if I spoke publicly.
I have personally confronted my family in a variety of ways as the years have passed, ALWAYS hoping that the perpetrators would confess and repent.
I made the phone call to the police that sent one of them to jail. This put a chill over my extended family and the relationships began to start fraying.
I have worked diligently, mostly on my own, to heal from the many rapes. But I also worked with gifted therapists and awesome Bishops and Stake Presidents, who offered perfect and timely support, which continues on today.
I have been hospitalized four times. Twice during my 21st year for post partum psychosis and suicidal depression and again in 2001 when my brother died and my repressed memories began to surface.
I was hospitalized in 2012 again for suicidal overwhelm.
This experience heralded the beginning of my healing from Satanic Ritual Abuse, for me the most difficult to reconcile and accept.
I have been ministered to by angels and have had scores of priesthood blessings.
I give Father in Heaven all of the glory for healing me.
Jenny Marie Hatch Yes, praise to Him.
How many you’ve helped on the road to healing by sharing this. Bless you, Jenny. You are very brave and wise.
Julie Beal
I have had tremendous support from fellow SRA survivors. My friend Fiona Barnett lived through the horror of reconciling Satanic Abuse and wrote a “How to Heal” book.
When you visited me that day in 2012 at Centennial Peaks, I felt like a living angel had stopped by to minister to me.
I will never forget it.
Bless you for your kindness and friendship.
Jenny you are a woman of incredible courage and faith!
Brian-Leslie Crosland Merkley
Thankyou Leslie. I like to believe I have finally worked through the worst of it.
Unfortunately rape victims tend to set themselves up for reconciliation abuse to help process what happened when we were children. So I had a second layer of abuse that revolved around the family trauma that showed up in various areas of my life.
I believe this layering was the reason it has taken twenty years to slowly and gradually heal. I also gave birth to Ben during this time and have been busy raising him.
When I was in a hopeless suicidal state in 2001, Bens spirit visited me one day and he said, “You cannot kill yourself, I want you to be my mom.” He was born about ten months later.
Since that day he has continued to give me a reason to get out of bed every day. He moved into his own space with five other guys last week.
I was programmed to kill myself if it ever appeared that I was going to remember what they did to me.
The doctor I worked with in 2012 was highly educated on ritual abuse and mind control programming. My Bishop at the time was also able to offer crucial support.
He had grown up in a family that sheltered teens who had suffered ritual abuse, so his depth of understanding was unbelievable.
I believe in miracles and hevenly father has always put people in my path who offered something to my healing process.
Here is a post I wrote about a movie that saved my life.
Love you!
Sarahs Key showed up on Netflix and I started watching it last night. I had the option to turn on the subtitles because most of the movie is in french. But I decided to leave them off and just watched. I have seen this movie several times since it came out, so I know the story well enough to follow along without the actual words running through my mind. I also read the book, which although different from the movie, gives great depth to the characters.
I was surprised to notice so much that I have missed in the past because I was always reading subtitles. The acting is absolutely stupendous and the music, filming, and overall energy of the movie just hit me hard. As I finished up the movie this morning, I decided to write this post and share my review that I wrote ten years ago.
Whenever I think of this movie, I remember the impact it had on me. It literally saved my life. As I have thought about the message and lined it up with my own walk on this earth, it just overwhelms my heart to think of the power of film and music to touch the hearts of people.
Two months after I wrote that review in 2011, I checked into a local mental hospital because I was so suicidal I could hardly stand it. This is not an unusual state of mind for me to be in but I had vowed never to go back. I had been hospitalized twice before in the same frame of mind. My youngest son was nine and as the boy in the movie was nine when Sarah killed herself, this depiction of a son losing his mom really hit me hard. When I am suicidal my thoughts generally revolve around the idea that my loved ones would be so much happier if I was gone. Thankfully my husband and children have helped tremendously as the years have played out to let me know that they love me and want me in their lives.
When I was fifteen I went through an intense suicidal depression that I told very few people about. Then I struggled mightily after the birth of my first daughter. I had thoughts of wanting to hurt her and hurt myself. I have since come to believe that those of us who have been ritualistically abused worry very much about the types of lives that our children are going to live and so for us, death feels like a welcome reprieve from a mortal walk that is filled with abuse and trauma. As I have worked through these feelings and thoughts, nothing was more helpful than crossing paths with Fiona Barnett and realizing that the best way to deal with suicidal ideation is to say out loud, “These are not my thoughts. These thoughts were implanted into my mind, but these are not my thoughts”. It really does work.
Psychiatry has very little to offer the ritualistically abused person beyond drug therapies and electro-shock. The surgeons have also re-imagined the old lobotomy and are doing more brain surgeries to mess with the frontal lobes of those who suffer.
I will always think of watching Sarah’s Key as the beginning of the time for healing the ritual abuse I suffered at the hands of Satanic People who were in my life in Michigan during the early 1970’s. They had programmed me to off myself if I ever came close to remembering what they did to me.
This is what I looked like as I was healing some of the worst of it.
I believe I have processed through the worst of the abuse and feel like I am about to pivot to a new stage that will be defined by being a grandmother and increasing my talents in acting, storytelling, movie making, and podcasting. I am also gearing up to teach a formal childbirth class again. More about that in a future post.
These ten years of healing have been so intense and overwhelming. I had many moments of thinking that I was going to die, but something always pulled me back. As I have witnessed multiple deaths of loved ones and activist friends these past few weeks, heaven feels closer than ever. Here is the review of the movie I wrote in 2011
original review of Sarah’s Key
Every once in a great while I take a chance and rent a movie from Redbox without knowing anything about it.
Most of the time what I see is the same pointless drivel that flows out of Hollywood year after year.
I was shocked to pick up Sarah’s Key the other day, and find myself transported to 1942 Paris France into the chaos of yet another Holocaust Story that nobody ever taught me about in History Class.
The pure emotion of this amazing movie, so well crafted, acted, and musically scored left me quite drained emotionally. The day after viewing it I watched the Making of the Movie documentary on the DVD and read the English subtitles as the French Writer, Director, Crew, and Actors explained the backstory of the book and movie.
Then last night I popped the disc into my player once again and watched it a second time, reveling in movie making at its very best. As the spirit of the story washed over me, I felt enlivened and overwhelmed by the tender way this story was crafted.
Today before returning the movie, I plan to watch it a third time, as my own personal holiday celebration of Family, Life, Love, and Truth. I have already put the book on my Amazon wish list and plan to purchase the movie for our home Library when I have a few extra dollars laying around. When my daughters return home from school for Christmas Break watching Sarahs Key with them will be a high priority during our three weeks of vacation together.
As I watched the second time, I found the story of the modern day journalist more compelling and relevent to my own life than Sarahs Journey…
I am curious to see how a third viewing touches my heart.
Today I am so grateful for the craft of movie making. It touches me on every level.
Greg Olsons new artwork