The Prison Podcast Episode 9: Don’t You Trust Me?
February 12, 2025
This week, Diane sits down with Tristan, who shares his journey of confronting the childhood trauma he endured. At a young age, Tristan made the difficult decision to speak out, leading to his cousin’s arrest. His cousin’s actions, which had affected not only Tristan but others as well, eventually led to his imprisonment.
Tristan’s path to healing also included a challenging step: a victim-offender dialogue with the cousin who had assaulted him. In this conversation, he was able to ask the questions that had haunted him for years, seeking understanding and closure.
This is a story of hardship, but also one of strength and resilience in the face of trauma. Tristan’s experience encourages us to reflect on important issues like justice, accountability, and the lasting impact of abuse.
Transcription
Michael: My name is Michael and I’m the Inside Communications Director for Humans of San Quentin. The contents of this episode include strong language and graphic descriptions of violent crimes that may consist of sexual assault. This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Diane: What happens when you come face to face with a person who shattered your innocence? Today we bring you a gripping and deeply personal conversation with Tristan, a survivor who made the unimaginable decision to confront his past head-on. For years, he carried a haunting sense that something was wrong. Memories buried beneath confusion, silence, and pain. But in his early thirties, Tristan did what most could never fathom. He sat down across from the very cousin who had assaulted him. In this raw and unfiltered episode, Tristan recounts the moment he finally demanded answers. The tension, the flood of memories, and the weight of looking his abuser in the eye. He walks us through the years of pain that led to his confrontation and the surprising emotions that resurfaced in the process. Was it closure? Was it justice? Or was it something far more complicated? This isn’t just a story about trauma. It’s about resilience, courage, and the pursuit of healing in the most unexpected ways. Sit with us as Tristan shares his journey, his reckoning, and what it means to reclaim your power. So welcome today, Tristan. We’re happy to have you and we’re looking forward to hearing your story.
Tristan: Thank you. First off, I feel super privileged to be here. It’s been quite a journey over the last, I’d say, two and a half years or so, to be at this point where I feel like I can openly talk about my story. At the same time, I’m realizing I’m still trying to figure out my story if that makes any sense. I feel like one of the powers of sharing is that each time I do, I glean a little bit more about what that story looks like and how it defines me. I grew up in Southern California and lived in a neighboring city to my cousin. I want to say my cousin is about 14 or 15 years older than me; I’m not a hundred percent sure about that, but there’s a big enough age gap. My cousin was the cool cousin who tried to fill the role of just being a fun person to hang out with. My mom encouraged that a lot, so I’d hang out with my cousin frequently. I have this little picture of us playing with Duplo Legos when I was probably one and a half or two, and I’ve looked at and reflected on it a lot. But anyway, my cousin probably was one of my favorite people and then he started molesting me. I want to say he thinks it probably started when I was two or three. I don’t have a memory of that personally. I don’t know. I remember I’d say the first recollections I have of when he was molesting me, I was probably maybe eight or nine. He’d take me camping, or I’d spend the night at his house, and I eventually reached a point where I started feeling very uncomfortable about things. I tried to voice that to my mom, but I don’t think she fully understood. It was always like, ‘Oh, he’s so fun,’ or whatever. My cousin says there were probably around 50 incidences of individual molestation. I estimate that it was probably at least once a month or once every month or two, throughout my childhood, around the time I was 12 or 13, maybe even a little younger. I don’t know. I was younger than that. My cousin ended up getting a job at a Christian youth camp and moved farther away. I just kind of forgot about things, if that makes sense, but they’ve still been in the back of my mind. He ended up inviting me to go to one of the camps that he had worked at. I remember not wanting to go, and my mom tells an interesting version of this story where she, I think, to this day feels bad for convincing me to go. But anyway, I ended up going to that camp. I probably don’t honestly know. I have this timeline. I’ve blocked out so many memories of my childhood, which is why I feel like every time I tell my story I’m just like I’m finding something else out about myself that I didn’t know before. I was probably like 11. My cousin thinks I was maybe a little bit younger than that. But I don’t know. Anyway, so I went up to this camp and that was the last time that I knew he molested me. Maybe it’s a funny side note, I remember bringing my little pocket knife as a little kid. I had this little Swiss army pocket knife sort of thing. And I had in my mind that I was going to cut off his penis or whatever. I don’t know the appropriate word to say in a podcast. But I was just going to cut that off if he tried anything, and I didn’t do that, and I chickened out, and to this day I think to myself what would have happened had I pulled that knife out. Anyway, he molested me there, he tried one more time and I think I was old enough, where I just said no that’s not happening, I’m not doing that and then he never tried again. And I think I forgot about it, I just forgot. I can push things out of my mind and just not remember them. All of my childhood memories that I can piece together are pretty traumatic. I have very few positive childhood memories that I can pull from. But anyway, I was probably 14. I ended up meeting some friends and one of the friends told me that they were molested as a child. I don’t know why they told me that or anything. But it just brought all these memories flooding back into my mind. And I was trying to like, sort it out and process it and part of me was like, is this real? Like, how did these things happen to me? Right around that same time, my cousin called me out of the blue and said, ‘I’m getting married, and I want you to be a groomsman,’ I think that’s what it was. I remember just freaking out about that. Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen this person in a few years, I’m having all these thoughts that I’m trying to put together, and I’m not even sure what’s real at this point, and what’s just fake, and I just don’t know. Anyway, I remember hearing his voice for the first time in a few years, and I pretended I was asleep. My mom came in with the phone. I was in my room and I just pretended I was asleep and I remember hearing his voice and was like, Oh my gosh, all of this is so real. I remember going to the shower afterward because I was like, I can’t let my mom see me cry. I was so afraid. And I remember taking a shower and just curling up in a little ball and sitting there like I just totally lost it. And somehow, by the grace of God, I was able to put myself back together and just pretend that everything was okay, get out of the shower and whatever. Anyway, I was on a campout. It was in Boy Scouts growing up. One of the assistant scoutmasters was a young guy, pretty cool. We all thought he was the cool guy or whatever. We were just on a campout, and I decided to tell him. I said, ‘Hey, these are some things,’ and he was probably about 25 at the oldest. I don’t think he had any experience with anything like this, and he had no idea how to respond. He told one of the older adults, ‘Hey, this is what I was just told. I’m so out of my league, I have no idea what I’m doing.’ But he convinced me to go report it, and a few other people from the group helped me report it. I remember somebody telling me, ‘I have to report this, and you can either report it, or I can do it. It’s going to be way harder if I have to do it.’ So, I remember sitting in a church parking lot, telling my mom shortly after that—probably the next day. I remember driving down to the County Sheriff’s department, and they put me in one of those boxes. I don’t know if you know what I mean, but there was a couch in there that I was sitting on, and a glass window in front of me. I assume it’s like what you see in movies, where they can see you, but you can’t see them. I was just sitting in there with a detective, and he started asking me all these questions. I just began telling him everything I could remember and everything I could piece together.
Diane: And how you said your mom took you, that must have been quite the conversation and convincing with her, I would imagine.
Tristan: I’ve heard a lot of survivor stories, and one of the hugest parts that a lot of survivors talk about is their parents not believing them, or the person that they tell not believing them. I just feel so grateful for all of the people that just believed me. I told my mom, and without question, she believed me. So, it’s my mom’s sister’s son, who is my cousin in this scenario. We lived in neighboring cities, very close to each other, and interacted a lot. But without question, she believed me, and I am so grateful for that.
Diane: Was she suspicious at all or she believed you because she knew you to be honest, and knew her son and all that.
Tristan: I don’t think she was suspicious at all. I think that one of the things that she regrets the most is not being suspicious or not seeing the clues. I think that still haunts her to this day, and it was 20 years ago. Anyway, I remember that the next day, a detective showed up at my house with a group of people, straight out of the movies. They were setting up, messing with all the wires on the phone, and setting up what probably looked like a device from the ’70s. It was so big and so archaic—this is my 20-year-old memory of it. Just this giant device connected to the phone, which they were going to use to record the phone call. They set it on my kitchen table and had me call my cousin to confront him on the phone. I don’t remember anything about that call to this day. I’ve been trying to remember what was said and what happened, but I just can’t. I’d love to get my hands on that recording. Anyway, they recorded the call, and my cousin admitted to it and just tried to convince me not to tell anybody. The police were able to use that call, and I’m not sure if they went the next day or the same day to the camp where he was, but they arrested him. He was originally arrested in April 2003 and sentenced in late October of 2004. There was very little in terms of court proceedings that we had to be involved in. I remember meeting with the DA a few times, and I spoke at his sentencing hearing. After that, I never saw him again. It had been almost 18 years—17 or 18 years—since that sentencing hearing, and I had moved on with my life. When the sentencing finally happened, I think I was like almost 16 or something like that.I remember telling the DA, ‘Hey, look, I want to meet with him. I want to talk to him.’ And the DA was like, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ I guess there were some laws or something, and she said you had to wait until you were at least 18 to do that. I was like, ‘Alright, fine, whatever.’ When I turned 18, though, it wasn’t even a thought. I think it may have entered my mind once, but it didn’t stick. So, I didn’t think about it again until 2021. My mom and I were just out to lunch one day, and she said, ‘Have you heard anything about… It’s been a long time. I wonder what’s going on there. I had tried to Google his name and apparently, I’d been spelling his name wrong the entire time, totally pronouncing the name wrong.And so I didn’t spell it right, and I could never find him. I told my mom, ‘I can never find him. I can’t figure it out.’ So apparently, she went home from that lunch, looked him up online, and found him no problem because she knew how to spell the last name. He had a parole hearing scheduled for a month later, which was going to be his first parole hearing. I was like, ‘What the crap? What are the odds of that happening?
Diane: How long do you think you’ve been in at that point?
Tristan:18 years at that point.
Diane: Your mom didn’t have contact with her sister?
Tristan: Yes and no. This destroyed our family, as I’m sure you can imagine. When he was arrested, his sister—my cousin’s sister—was over at our house, and we were just hanging out. She got a phone call from the police, who told her to act like everything was normal and not to tell anybody. They were coming over for something, and it was pretty common for them to be at the house, so we were just supposed to pretend like everything was normal. But while she was at our house, she got a call saying, ‘My cousin’s in jail. We’ve got to get him out. We’ve got to bail him out.’ My sister was like, ‘We know why he’s in jail, and you shouldn’t get him out,’ but they ended up bailing him out. Then, literally within the next hour or so, they arrested him again on another charge as they were discovering more things. Honestly, that’s one of the last memories I have with my other cousins. My mom didn’t talk to her sister for probably years after that. When they eventually reconciled—actually, it was around the death of one of their brothers—the agreement was, ‘We’re not talking about this, ever.’ Yeah, my mom does talk to her sister now and has a relationship with her, but that was a long time coming, and they don’t talk about this to this day.
Diane: You have one sister and he also had a sister. Are there any other kids in the event?
Tristan: He has two sisters—one older, then him, and then one younger. I have two older sisters, then me, and then two brothers. My two brothers are quite a bit younger than me.
Diane: Was he molesting your sisters or other people that you knew of?
Tristan: Yeah, I’m glad you asked that. I always wondered if he molested my brothers which he says he never did. And I believe that. I tend to believe that, given the age difference and where he was versus where they were. At the time that they were even around, he had already moved away, to the camps that I had mentioned. So he was convicted of molesting, I think, four other boys at that camp that he was a counselor at. So those are a part of his conviction, I didn’t have the word for that. I always wondered if there were more boys. He worked at a camp for quite a long time, but I think that might be one of the things that haunts me the most. I never felt guilt for what he did to me, or shame, I guess is maybe the right word, for what he did to me. I felt a lot of embarrassment, a lot of it, but I felt a lot of, for years, responsibility for those other boys. Because I was the first victim and I always thought to myself, if I was braver, smarter, or something I would have reported sooner and saved those other boys, but yeah.
Diane: Oh, you cannot beat yourself up like that, Tristan. I know it’s so hard not to. It’s like they say that playing Monday morning quarterback or when all of us get in bed usually at night when it’s dark and we’re so critical of ourselves. But we’ve got to celebrate that you did. People listening to this podcast—and those out there who never do what you’ve done—are amazing. You stopped it before it could have gotten out of control for so many. You’ve got to hug yourself and appreciate what you did.
Tristan: I don’t feel that way anymore, but for a long time I did. I feel like my story is two stories if that makes sense. So there’s all that story leading up to him getting arrested and sentencing and to that day just a few years ago where my mom and I were sitting out for lunch and then everything that’s happened after that point. So I didn’t do much healing at all in my younger teenage life or anything like that. I think I did a lot of forgetting and a lot of pretending that it didn’t exist. I didn’t know how to feel. I was not ready for any sort of real healing. So anyway, fast forward to 2021. I think it was June of 2021. My mom and I were sitting at lunch, talking about my cousin, and she looked him up. She called me up, I think the next day—it was early July because she called me on July 4th or 5th, and I remember going to a Fourth of July parade, thinking about all this. But he had a parole hearing, and I decided I was going to participate in it. So, I reached out to victim services and said, ‘I want to participate in this.’ This was still in the heart of COVID-19, so they had transitioned to doing all the parole hearings over Zoom or whatever. We did a Zoom hearing at the very end of July 2021. I remember that because, since I was a minor when everything happened, I was able to participate in the parole hearing as a John Doe. My screen was blank—you’re not allowed to have your screen blank unless you participate as a John Doe. My name appeared as John Doe on the screen, which was kind of funny. During the parole hearing, you have to go around and turn on your mic to say your name, and I just had to say ‘John Doe.’ But I knew when he heard my voice, he would know who I was. So I’m like, why the freak am I a John Doe if I have to say my name? That was probably one of the longest days of my life. I don’t know if you have sat through a parole hearing, but oh my gosh, they just go over every detail of the person’s life. What led them to prison? And I just learned so much. I had written a victim impact statement that I had the DA, the district attorney read. Because I was not going to read anything, I don’t think I could have put myself together. So I wrote this eloquent letter in my opinion that was like three pages long and the DA read that and at the end of the letter I decided to turn on my camera and just face him. I think that was the first time where I felt like I had some power over him if that makes any sense.
Diane: Yes, you had said what had happened to you and he had to look you, you would presume in the eye. You know he heard it.
Tristan: And so I decided I was going to do a VOD, a Victim Offender Dialogue, and that took almost a solid year to prepare to do the VOD. The prep work for that was insanely grueling. I ended up starting to go to a lot of group therapy and stuff like that. I was looking for groups of survivors of childhood sexual assault of men, which is so hard to find. There are not a lot of groups of men who are willing to sit around and talk about their childhood sexual trauma.
Diane: I mean It’s hard enough for most men to talk about their feelings and then to talk about them publicly and then to talk about something sexual when they’re a child. All of that I can imagine is hard, but were you able to find one?
EDIT STOPPED-Samantha
Tristan: No, I was never able to find a male support group. I have since then. There were a few online that I found and stuff. And I found a mixed-gender support group. And I was the only male there. But anyway, so I sped through that last year between 2021 and 2022 in preparation for that VOD. That was just hell living everything so much of my childhood memories. I’ve just suppressed and blocked out. And just really that year was a matter of all of these things just flooding to the surface. And so I ended up doing the VOD in late June of 2022. Barely a year ago, and I think we ended up spending seven or eight hours in the prison together.
Diane: As you’re going through this victim-offender dialogue with this group, AHINSA, they were able to get you cleared to go into the prison. Your offender has, I would assume, done some kind of therapy on his own to be able to get him to this place and, therapy on his own, but also with This group so I think it’s very rare from what I am hearing in my education that Many of the child predators are not always willing to be accountable for what they’ve done. You have this accountable man, he has come to terms with some part of it somewhere, at least enough to sit down with you, so you get cleared to go in. You two are in a prison in California together and maybe just walk us through that day.
Tristan: The AHINSA group, I had gotten in contact with them through the victim services. And then they, Ahimsa, assigned me two facilitators. One was a recently released person who had been incarcerated. And it was great to talk to that individual because they were able to provide so much context of what the prison is going to be like and everything. But yeah, so we did all that prep work for the year. They met with me on Zoom and then they met with my cousin on Zoom and there was a lot of back and forth about why he wanted to meet with me. These are some of the reasons I want to meet with you. And yeah he eventually agreed to meet with me which I am so grateful for, because like you said, there are so many people in this space that don’t get the opportunity to have that meeting. I know several people who have been convicted for very long sentences for sexually assaulting a family member, and They still deny it to this day. I don’t get that when they’re literally in prison for that and pleaded guilty for that. And then deny it after the fact, like it just doesn’t compute in my brain. Just another thing that I feel so fortunate about is that he has taken full accountability and was willing to meet with me and everything. So I flew into California with kind of this father figure that I had mentioned when I was 14. He’s still been with me for these 20-some-odd years. And he was my support person. We flew into California together and stayed in a hotel that was close to the prison and we drove to the prison.
Diane: How old were you?
Tristan: This was just a year ago. So I was 33 at the time. I’m 34 now. We go from me, reporting at 14, wanting to do some sort of thing like this, to now, here we are. Just, I think it ended up being 19 years later where I’m getting ready to walk into this prison. Anyway, we go to the gate. Oh my gosh, the clanking metal. I can’t get that sound out of my head. I’d never been in a prison before, and they check your bags and whatever, and then we were able to bring a lot of food in, because we were planning on being there the whole day, but I just remember the prison gate opened, and then we walk in, and then that one closes, and then the next one opens, and then After that second gate opened, there was this prison guard and his name was Joaquin and he was my buddy. He was assigned to me the whole day. And so he was with me the entire day, and he was just so awesome, so grateful for him. But anyway, he walks us over to this van like this 16-passenger type van, bus thing. And we ended up driving to a different section of the prison, and then We got to this other section, and we checked in there, and I remember Joaquin pulling out his keys, which is this massive wad of keys, and he just puts it into the door, and it takes two hands to open this door, and looks like it just came straight out of a movie, and so old and clunky and all this clinking metal and Anyway, once we’re through there, they had us do the VOD in the same room that they do parole hearings in a bit of a nicer room, and they took me into this, this room where there was the one-sided glass where I could see him, but he couldn’t see me, and my cousin was sitting there in, I didn’t know this at the time, but he had handcuffs underneath the table. I don’t think he wanted me to see the fact that he was in handcuffs. And so he just sat there, literally the whole time with his hands under the table. But anyway, I remember seeing him through this one-sided glass, and I lost it. I just totally lost it. I was like, oh my gosh, how the heck am I going to go in this room in just a few minutes and confront this person? Anyway, Joaquin helped me go to find the bathroom, and I went to the bathroom, and I cleared myself up, and I was ready to go, and then my father figure came out. He coached me before I went in there and he’s like, when you walk into that room, you stare him in the eye and say hello and call him by name sort of thing. I put myself together and I just walked into that room and opened, like they opened the door for me and I sat down and I said hello and I just stared at him in the eye and it was at that moment that I realized he was way, way more afraid of me than I ever was of him sinking in his chair and getting smaller. At that moment, I think I almost felt pity for him. I realized, oh my gosh, like my whole life I’ve just viewed him as this horrible monster. And I just have these horrible nightmares of things that he would do to me. At that moment, I was like he’s not a monster. He’s a pitiful human being. The transformational moment where I was changed. My paradigm was just changed. Knowing me, knowing I couldn’t talk in that room at first, I wrote a letter, another letter it was I think two pages. And I had the facilitator read that letter to start, which was like, this is why I’m here. This is what I want to do. This is how I envisioned the day going sort of thing. And then I had broken the day up into several sections, I think, three or four sections where I was going to ask him a series of questions. And then I was just going to get up and leave and then come back and ask him another series of questions and then get up and leave and then do that. And the questions got progressively harder if that makes sense. This is stupid, and it just satisfies my little 14-year-old self. But all I ever wanted as that 14-year-old was to be able to walk into prison, basically say F you, and then walk out knowing he couldn’t come out. That was all I wanted as a 14-year-old. So I was able to do that I think four times in the VOD because I would just stand up and the second I stood up there was a guard ready to escort me out. They weren’t in the room with us, but they were just on the other side of the glass. And the second I stood up, they were in there. Joaquin and I would just go walk around the yard, the prison yard and I got to do that four times, it was so great. And then, and during one of those times where I was out, like when the questions got heavier, I’d sit in that little glass room and just watch him, and one time he stood up and that’s when I realized he was in handcuffs and he had to go to the bathroom so they escorted him out to go to the bathroom or whatever. I realized he was a human being. I realized that he was more afraid of me than I was of him. And then another huge part of that day that totally transformed me as I realized he also fragmented his mind and kind of compartmentalized things. And I had so many timeline type of questions where I was like, when did this happen? When did this happen? How old was I when this happened? And even though he was quite a bit older, he had no recollection really of that. And so many times he had to say, I don’t know. And I think both of us, I realized both of us in a very. I guess like a survival mode tactic just compartmentalized and tried to block things out and forget things and realizing that he and I were just the same in that sense was, I think, humbling for me. And anyway, I did that VOD that day and then maybe even rewinded a lot. So in the process of getting ready for the VOD, my cousin, It’s to also choose a support person. And I think he had chosen this pastor that worked at the camp when my cousin was at the camp, pastor to me is such an amazing human being because he decided that Hey, if I don’t try to keep in contact with somebody, I know who’s going to prison, like, how can I call myself a Christian? And so he has kept in contact with my cousin since the day he got arrested. As a pastor, he was able to have much longer visits with him throughout the 19 years he was in jail. And so anyway, I ended up getting in contact with this pastor and we ended up becoming acquainted. And one day, in preparation for the VOD, I called him up and I was like I need to go back to this camp because I have so many fragmented memories of that day or that weekend. And I need to piece them together. And maybe for lack of being able to express experiences, I feel like I was a little kid trapped at that camp in some way my cousin molested me throughout my childhood, but at that camp, I had re-lived that event. And it was probably the most traumatic for me so many times, just over and over again. I just re-lived that event. And I think there was this little boy stuck at that camp that I needed to go there and reclaim if that makes sense. So I was like, Hey, I need you to take me to this camp. I didn’t realize how hard of a request that was going to be for him because the fallout of what happened at that camp after my cousin got arrested was massive. And this pastor dealt with all of that fallout and he hadn’t been to that camp in almost 15 years because of how just he quit shortly after everything and just was like I can’t do this but he ended up calling up the camp and saying hey look this is the situation can you make space for us there and so we went to this camp the next day so we did the VOD and then the next day I went to this camp and I was able to like, be in the room where he molested me the last time, and I had visions of it, but I couldn’t really construct it perfectly in my brain and ironically they had renovated that cabin and it was different, but standing there and the pastor described to me exactly how it looked, and I was like, yes, this is the place, and they had this ropes course at this camp, and there was this hundred foot tree that you were supposed to climb up and then jump off this platform sort of thing. And then you’d be lowered down. I went to do that right after he had molested me. And I ended up getting to the top and I was just afraid I was a kid. I don’t know exactly how I was between 10 and 12. And I just remember holding onto that ledge, feeling so afraid to jump over. And then the guy who was belaying me handed the ropes over to my cousin. And I just remember on this ledge standing or sitting there really crawling, on my hands and knees looking over this ledge and then being so afraid to jump down and my cousin says, Come on, Tristan, don’t you trust me? I was like, What the hell? What? No, I don’t trust you. I’m scared of you. Anyway, So I told the pastor, I was like, I want to climb that stupid tree and I just want to jump off of it. That’s all I want to do. I need to reclaim myself. I feel like I was probably stuck up on that stupid platform. And then the pastor also showed me the very spots that my cousin was in when he got arrested. And I got to stand there. One of the questions I had asked my cousin the day before was to tell me about that day. Tell me about the day where you got arrested and everything and he rehearsed that whole day to me and to stand there and then to also have that visual of what happened to him on that day was just beautiful in its way. So he got released from prison barely over a month later. So he’s been out of prison for just over a year. I’ve been able to go inside a prison two different times to share my story and interact with incarcerated people. I feel like the real healing has come from seeing the humanity in these incarcerated people. And most of them have committed similar crimes to what I was a victim to and to see their accountability and their humanity. And in a way to see that we’re all just people. We’ve all made mistakes. Some people’s mistakes land them in prison and some don’t. I obviously can’t speak for every person who’s incarcerated, but at least the ones that I’ve interacted with in my two different prison visits, have this desire to be accountable and improve their lives and to make the best of their lives from A really bad situation and a lot of the men that I’ve interacted with. They’re in prison for the rest of their lives. They’re not getting out or if they are, they’re going to be old people when they get out. And I’m not at all advocating that these people should not be in prison. I have a lot of conflicting views on that in my mind. But I know that many people in prison are not accountable at all, but to see those who are, and to see their humanity and their desire to try to make some sort of amends from a really bad situation it’s humbled me and helped me understand a level of forgiveness and peace that I never thought possible. I think the most healing has happened for me from interacting with incarcerated people. I don’t know the exact statistic, but somebody told me something like 70 to 80 percent of the incarcerated men in the CDCR have been molested as children. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I remember somebody telling me that. I don’t have actual data to back that, But what I do know is that finding a support group outside of prison, of people that are willing to talk about it is hard, but there are a lot of men in prison that are willing to talk about their childhood trauma and how that impacted them healing it.
Diane: It’s profound. That’s what led me to where I am now. Being a teacher inside, I was. Blown away by the truth, the vulnerability that someone can share after they have done these deep, dark, dirty things and can own it and have done the work. And the emotional intelligence that I feel with them is what has led me to sit here with you to show that we’re all broken. Somehow we’re all going through something and to think that those people who have been convicted have been convicted of it. And I haven’t met a person that’s incarcerated that wasn’t a victim first.
Tristan: Yeah, exactly.
Diane: So that for me is nice to be able to hear all sides of the story, but oh my gosh, there’s so much to unpack with everything that you just shared. So when you went in the day and you saw him, who was in the room with you? Did you have your support person from AHIMSA?
Tristan: So there was my cousin and myself and we were sitting on opposite sides of a pretty big table. I think they had put two tables together to purposely have some good spacing there. There were the two facilitators from Ahimsa, one who was recent I think he was still on parole at the time, actually, but he had been in prison, and then another one who hadn’t, and They had been working with both of us over that year. And then we were each allowed our own support person. One of the things that I wanted to do was to do this kind of myself in a way, it was part of, I think reclaiming my sense of self for claiming my power. So I was going in myself, I didn’t want to have my support person with me, but my support person who came to California with me, he drove me to the prison, and he didn’t go into the room with me, and then there was my cousin’s support person, who, in a weird sense was also my support person, cause He was this pastor, and I had talked to him a lot leading up to getting ready to do the VOD, and we were all going to the camp the next day. He and I and my other support person were going to the camp the next day. So he became a little bit of a support person for me. So it was just the five of us in the room at the time.
Diane: And are you willing to share any of those questions or what you were feeling from him? It would be interesting to hear what his take on the day was.
Tristan: Yeah, I wish I knew his take on the day, I think I had mentioned to you in our pre-call that I want to do a second VOD I’ve talked to several people who were incarcerated over the last year and just getting involved in this space, I’ve talked to several people that have been released from prison, and just how hard that is to navigate, I want to know that from his perspective, I also just want to know how like, how he’s doing, How the VOD affected him. Those are questions that I currently have, that I want answers to. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll ever get those answers. I feel very connected to him. He’s my cousin. Our families were very close. I feel like there is some blood connection there That’s hard to just sever. I am very sad that my relationship with his family has been so fragmented over the last 20-some-odd years. I wish that maybe some of those family connections could be healed in some way. I don’t want a relationship with him or anything, but I like it. I do want to know how he’s doing from time to time. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that. So that was one of my purposes in doing the VOD, if I felt like if I didn’t do it, then those family relationships would for sure be gone. I was also especially mindful of my mother in that I was afraid that when my cousin got out, her relationship with her sister would become more divided in some way, and because they’ve done a lot of work to mend that relationship and to be sisters again. And I was just really afraid that when he got released that work that they’ve worked at would be gone. And I felt like there was some element of if I could reach out and offer some sort of connection with my cousin, that might preserve my mom’s relationship with her sister, that was important to me. So I asked a lot of questions just about his family and stuff and unfortunately, there was a lot he couldn’t answer because his family, I mean his parents have been very supportive of him, but his sisters have for the most part disowned him. This is ironic because at the beginning they told me how horrible I was for reporting this and getting him thrown into jail. I would love to reconnect with his sisters, I just don’t know how that would ever work and how that would look. And I was hoping that doing the VOD would help with that. But I don’t know. So that was a part of it. Just that family connection is important to me and I wanted to do that in the VOD. That was, I think, one of my first goals in doing the VOD. I wanted to know what life was like in prison. I’ve learned so much about prison life and how easy it is to get contraband and like, all these things that I was like, I thought that was just in the movies. So hearing some of those stories is just wow. So I wanted to talk about those because I had heard some of those from his parole hearing and I wanted to get some questions about that.
Diane: Just not to mention there’s so much that happens that no one ever knows about it’s sensationalized in the media and there’s lots of truth there but then there’s A whole other story that in a whole other reality that just is not public.
Tristan: Talking to a lot of the recently released incarcerated people that I’ve met over the last year and just hearing some of those stories from them. It’s wow, I don’t have words so I wanted to ask some questions about that. I also wanted to just know about his childhood. One of the huge questions that I have that I don’t think I’ll ever have an answer to is what led him to do what he did. I don’t know if he knows. And that was humbling to me to realize. And because it wasn’t just me, there’s those 50 or whatever counts that he reports of molesting me. But then there’s all the other kids, and he also got very heavily involved in child pornography, and I just feel like you have to be hurt and sick, and Something to get to that point. I still really want to know. I don’t think so. So I don’t think I’ll ever have an answer to that. I think I mentioned earlier in the call, I had a lot of timeline questions, like what the heck is going on in my past. I have this giant piece of paper that I’ve tried to put together over the last several years where I’ve started at my birth to my current age, and I’m like, just trying to fill in all these gaps that I just can’t seem to figure out, and I was hoping he could help me fill in some of those gaps.
Diane: You also brought up a question that I couldn’t get myself to ask you were saying that this potentially happened to him.
Tristan: That might be one of the very last questions I asked him before we left. And I wanted to do this build-up where I’ve broken down some barriers. So I’ve asked him easier questions about his family and then they got progressively harder. And one of our other cousins, who’s I think older than both of us actually, swears up and down that my cousin admitted to him that he was molested when he was a kid. There’s a lot of rumor and speculation of who that was. There are maybe even two people that my other cousin says molested my cousin that molested me. So there is that. And he denies that, but at the end of the day is that going to help me if I know that? Is that going to help you put more sense into this? If I know that. I hate, with so much, just hate, that people who have been molested are oftentimes accused of being molesters themselves. I think for a huge part of my teenage life that was one of my biggest fears, that I was going to become my cousin. Because of the societal rhetoric of, oh, if you were molested, they’re going to molest somebody else. I take that very personally, because that’s me. I was molested my whole childhood and according to what society says I should go out and molest other people. That’s something that I have not processed yet. So it’s very raw. I don’t know how to talk about it. Whereas everything else in this call that I’ve talked about I feel like I’ve processed.
Diane: But that’s also accusatory of you that is Potentially sensationalized that then is put upon you those stigmas are out there But by you talking shows that look no.
Tristan: And you say that, but for me anyway, that is the current thing that I like, right at that wall where I’m like, okay, I’ve processed a lot, especially over the last two years in preparation for the VOD and this year after the VOD, but I still, I think, have that childhood fear of, oh no, I’m going to become a molester myself. Just for the record I’ve never molested anybody and for some reason, I don’t know if somebody’s told me that or anyway, so maybe to fast forward back to this question that you asked about my cousin, if you were to admit that yes, I was molested as a child and that’s one of the reasons why I molested you like I feel like that would almost like you all that insecurity that I have a little bit or that I think I need to process there’s a huge part of me that like wants him to say yes, this is what happened to me because it would like yeah. Give me something to hold on to okay, that’s why you did this to me. Cause he started molesting me when he was like 14 years old. I think like he was young and that lasted through his twenties, but like him not saying that, and he very vehemently denies that he did that. That almost gives me a sense of peace like okay, this isn’t a perpetual cycle that I have to break This is just an isolated cycle.
Diane: Which a lot of sense there’s you know, what they call intergenerational trauma which in your case there is a potentially there’s one to break But hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk to him and see where he is with that.
Tristan: Part of me thinks that if he was ever molested and I put a big if there because he denies it so vehemently and I feel like There’s a part of me that wants to trust him with that. I don’t know if he even remembers like he’s done the same thing that I’ve done where he’s compartmentalized where he is, I think, forgotten a lot. At least that’s my experience from talking to him. Yeah. There’s a huge part of me that believes that if it ever did happen to him, he legitimately doesn’t even remember.
Diane: And I think the other part to that there, is there a game for him? Who knows? And discovering that, considering he has to then deal with the trauma that’s happened with you and the other boys. So, did any of the other victims come forward?
Tristan: That’s the thing is all the other victims, this happened at a youth camp, a Christian youth camp where he was originally arrested. So obviously they’re talking to the pastor. They had to tell all the parents for the last, for every year that this person had worked at this camp, they had to tell all these parents, they had to interview, they had to, I think my cousin admitted to the ones that he was prosecuted for. And so I think it was more of a direct thing. To my knowledge, there was nobody else that came forward. Were there others that my cousin doesn’t even remember about? There was a pretty long gap in his life when he lived at those camps. And if he was molesting me on a monthly basis for so many years. Did he just get his fix of childhood with child pornography? Because the other boys were not nearly as frequent and stuff. I think two of the other boys lived at the camp with their families or something. So there was a little bit more frequency there, but not nearly as much. And so I just always have to wonder: Were there other victims that my cousin doesn’t even remember?
Diane: It would be interesting to compare the chart that you talk about in your house, looking at your life and his, how similar is it in his life where he doesn’t have those chunks of time accounted for?
Tristan: I would imagine there’s a lot of those and I would imagine that a lot of offenders, I would imagine that there is a lot of that throughout all of their experience. I think that’s one of our shared human defense mechanisms.
Diane: Are there certain triggers that you have to live with today because of the trauma that was inflicted on you for so long?
Tristan: I don’t generally care what people think about me as a person, but for some reason in the back of my mind, I always wonder if people think I’m molesting my children because I was a victim. I’ve been very open about my past over the last couple of years. That’s been one of the things that I’ve tried to do through preparing for the VOD and going to the VOD. And so I’ve been very open. I’ve only ever made two social media posts in my whole life. And both of those are about this. One of them I wrote, I think it was the day my cousin got out of jail or the day before when I posted it. And then the other one was right after I got out of prison the first time. Those are just public posts that anybody can see and they’re pretty lengthy posts. So I’ve been very open about it. I still have this fear that I don’t know how to process, are people afraid that I’m molesting my children? I didn’t. So my oldest child is nine and I didn’t give them a bath for the first probably four or five years of their life. That was just an arrangement that my wife and I had. I just wasn’t going to give my child a bath. With my second child who is four now, I had made this mental commitment. Okay, like I’m going to be a normal parent. I’m gonna help out with baths, but a lot of the molestation happened in the shower for me And so that’s just been a huge processing point and still, I mean I have a four-year-old son I think, my cousin says I think I was three when the molestation started like My four-year-old son is around that exact same age and there’s just a lot there that I don’t even know What is there if that makes sense? I just feel it there and I just don’t know how to digest it and how to Think through it and I know it’s just all disconnected Like a lot of it is I think that societal aspect of it that I can’t seem to wrestle with but yeah that’s one of the things that I struggle with a lot to this day Intimacy is hard. It’s become a lot easier. When I was very first in an intimate relationship with my wife, she would tell me that I would go curl up in the ball in the closet after having sex. Or I would go to the bathroom, lock the door and curl up in a ball in the shower and just cry. I don’t have a recollection of those. I was in my 20s and I don’t have any recollection of those moments. This goes back to me saying at the beginning of this call that like I have been so good at compartmentalizing things and forgetting things And so like I have this vague memory of this one time Curling up in a ball in the closet, but like it’s so like almost watching myself do it Or I’m not even experiencing it, I’m just watching myself do it. Luckily I haven’t been that in several years. Probably in the last five years. There was a time when a neighbor, we lived in a condo community, and a neighbor who I knew decently well, one day his door was just knocked down by the SWAT team he was arrested, and all his computers were taken. He was molesting his children, and distributing child pornography to his children. This was, I think about five years ago. I don’t think I had sex with my wife for six months after that. So much trauma. So much reliving everything, and That’s the last time I remember going into the shower and just curling up in a ball and crying after sex was around that time. I also get these compulsive scrubbing-the-shower moments, where I will just be in the shower, scrub and scrub and scrub. In my teenage life, I had my own bathroom, and we only had two showers in the house, but my mom was nice enough to respect that. I’m very grateful to my mom for allowing me to have that space.
Diane: I think what’s, a couple of things that I’ll walk away with was for you being at that camp and you being able to have the wherewithal to know that you have to go back there, and I think of it as more of a clearinghouse. I’ve gotta go to that point. To clear it out for me to able to move on or let go of what’s happened to me in the past and just like you said just looking up at that tree with that platform on it and Standing in that place where he did that to you I mean Trusting us putting your feet to the fire and living it all over again I heard you had from such a young age to be able to hold it at that moment. I think it’s just Beautiful to see that you can heal yourself and then along the way you’re healing, So many of us, me in particular, haven’t had that experience. Why was he found suitable, do you know?
Tristan: I’m so mad about this. Still to this day, I believe It is probably a good thing that he is out of prison. And I do not believe he will harm anybody else because he has to wear an ankle monitor bracelet for, I think, the rest of his life. The odds of him hurting somebody else with an ankle monitor bracelet on him are pretty low, I think. He was originally sentenced At 20 years it was a 25-year sentence where 20 years was supposed to be spent in prison and then five years out on parole, which is what he’s doing now with an ankle monitor bracelet. But then he was also sentenced for the child pornography charges, which I think was another six or seven years. So I think altogether I had 32 years where he was supposed to be in prison. And so in my mind, like I had another 12-plus years from that parole hearing. There’s some law in California where if you were under the age of 26, you’re eligible for some early parole. I’m not 100 percent sure about the logistics there. And when that law went into effect, he qualified for that because he was, I think, 25 or something when he was arrested. I can’t remember his exact age. And so that’s what the parole hearing was. I don’t think he was even supposed to ever have a parole hearing other than for that law because he was just supposed to have a terminal sentence. And so they actually found him not suitable for release at that parole hearing, and they denied him parole for three years. But because his sentence was a terminal sentence that ended a year after that parole hearing. Unless he did something really stupid in prison that added time, which I don’t think was possible at this stage for him, he was getting out in a year no matter what.
Diane: You, as a survivor, victim, you can’t get a hold of him, right?
Tristan: Right before he got released, I had a very long conversation with his parole officer. And so I have his parole officer’s phone number saved, and I can give his parole officer a call if I ever need to or whatever it is. But no, I’m legally not allowed to contact him. And that’s one of the main reasons I really want to do that second VOD because that’s the only way I can legally contact him. I don’t feel like I need another eight-hour sit down. I really just want, like An hour, to go out to lunch, sit down. And that’s the only legal way I’m allowed to do it is through the VOD program. From what I understand, he lives in a, I don’t know what they’re called a halfway house or rehabilitation house, or I think originally like he was guaranteed a job for like the first six months or first year or something. I think he’s been in there for five years for the duration of his state parole. From what I understand, that could be extended for state parole, but he’s not allowed to leave like the county that he’s in. He has nieces and nephews now. He’s not allowed to see them until they’re 18 years old. Even though I was so mad that he didn’t end up serving the sentence for the federal crimes of child pornography, because I guess his lawyer somehow made it. So he served those concurrently, federal sentencing gives him life parole for life, which is where I was told that he might have the ankle bracelet on for the rest of his life. And that would be monitored by the feds. And so that was nice to hear because that just makes it seem like the odds of him ever hurting another child are rare, and I alluded to in the call earlier to feeling somewhat responsible for the other victims. That was another huge reason why I wanted to do the VOD. I wanted to stare him in the eye and say, Don’t you dare do this again to another person. I just think that would crush me. I don’t know if I could handle that. I know I wouldn’t be responsible for that, but I don’t know if I could handle that. I wish this was a crime where I could just like, separate myself from him and We live our two distant lives on different sides of the world sort of thing, but because he is my cousin and because my mom has a relationship with his mom, and because I feel like he was such a part of my childhood I just can’t seem to let that go, if that makes any sense.
Diane: Not only is there what happened with you, but then there’s intricacies of a relationship within a family, and that he is your family member, and like you alluded to early on Blood so here is this person that you were taught to always love and be close to and supposedly trust But then there’s this whole layer on top of it. So there is that natural family connection of how are you? Are you being responsible? I know you’re growing up. I know you’re all family. I know every dollar meals we share together. All that communal Life that is the same and when you. As we get older There are not that many people that hold those interests that close So there’s probably that layered in there as well, it’s just simply a family member.
Tristan: The more I recite my story, the more I realize that there are just these little things that I still hold on to that I can’t seem to figure out if that makes any sense.
Diane: So did you take anything away from the VOD from him?
Tristan: Absolutely. I thought that he was a human being. I took that. He’s more afraid of me than I am of him and I feel like I was able to reclaim My power.
Diane: What I think would be for people that may be listening or people to know is that There might potentially be some healing in finding the person that is responsible for what they have Like exactly what you said has taken away from you
Tristan: I’ve talked to a few people who have done surrogate VODs And for some of them it satisfies Anybody that I’ve heard that has done a surrogate VOD where the crime has not been from a family member, that has been very healing. But anybody that has done a surrogate VOD where the Offender was a close family member hasn’t been as healing for them. It didn’t satisfy them.
Diane: It’s not as impactful And they don’t get out what they were hoping for or be able to all the things that you experience They potentially don’t get that power back They’re not able to look them in the eye and tell them where they are and what happened and have that Kind of healing for you or just closure, but I think what’s important to share with our audience is that Our hope during this podcast is to have both the survivor and the offender Talk in those cases where they’re not accountable or in this case may not want to talk We can find someone and interview someone who has been incarcerated or is currently incarcerated And hasn’t flipped in the same kind of car.
Tristan: That is one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed going inside the prisons. That’s a big deal for me.
Diane: Most people are afraid and you to think that you’ve had this trauma that has reconstructed your whole life and you’re willing to walk in there and I’ve been there with you and it’s at Sally Port and you have this big metal gate open up and you were put in this cell alone or with one or two other people and then the back door is shut on you and you were there and then once you’re let into that place with those ginormous cement walls and guards with guns down on you and you’re locked up being out with convicted people incarcerated. It’s daunting. Most people I know won’t do it. And what I, one thing that I enjoy when I’m in there is that typically the men that have done the work and I don’t have much experience with women, but I’ve sat with lots of them, but The men typically call them Mr. or Mrs. and often brag about their name. So they want to give credence to that person and hold them on a pedestal and very much are making amends to that person and what they’ve done to society as a whole. I so appreciate your vulnerability and your talking with us today, Tristan. It’s been an absolute joy. I feel honored to be able to hear your story and you share it with us. Thank you.
Tristan: I like I said, I enjoy telling my story because of it. Added to me, I feel like I learned more about myself from doing it and I have no expectations for this. I honestly feel honored to be a part of it.
Diane: If there’s one thing Tristan’s story makes clear, it’s that healing isn’t a straight line. Sometimes the moments that bring the most clarity happen in the last place you’d expect. Like a prison visitation room. From the shadows of his childhood to the moment he locked eyes with this perpetrator, Tristan’s journey is one of courage, reckoning, and an unexpected kind of healing. He’s learned that closure isn’t about forgetting, it’s about facing the past, owning his story, and refusing to let go. To let it define his future. Thank you for being here for this conversation. If Tristan’s story resonated with you, or if someone you know needs to hear it, please share this episode. And if you haven’t already, subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next. Until then, be kind to yourself and remember, your story is yours to tell.
