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Fraidy is raised in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community where she is forced to follow many conventions including an arranged marriage in her teens. After enduring emotional and physical abuse, Fraidy is determined to figure out a way to save herself, her children, and many, many others.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Warning,
this episode contains discussion of sexual and domestic abuse. Listener
discretion is advised. The landscape of my childhood was just poverty, abuse,

(00:21):
a fundamentalist religion. I mean, I can't think of many
redeeming qualities of my childhood. If a tough childhood creates character,
I have so much character. You don't get to choose
your family, and whoever choose my family for me shows
so you know, the poorest one with you know, the
most extreme religion's completely dysfunctional and just extreme abuse. Also,

(00:46):
my my father was extremely violent and I suffered physical
and sexual abuse when I was a child. That's Freddie
Rice activists against forced marriage, child marriage, and teenage marriage.
Activism tends to spring from moral outrage, and sometimes that
moral outrage is deeply personal. Phreds is a story that

(01:10):
contains layer after layer of secrecy, isolation, violence, and fundamentalism.

(01:30):
I'm Danny Shapiro and this is family secrets, the secrets
that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
and the secrets we keep from ourselves. One of the
most immediately obvious aspects of the ultra Orthodox Jewish community

(01:51):
and where I grew up in Brooklyn. The first thing
you notice is the large family sizes. I was from
a family of six, and that was kind of a
small family, believe it or not. So yes, a lot
of siblings and nieces and nephews and cousins and anna's
and uncle's communities really really important. I grew up really

(02:13):
very much cut off from the outside world. I didn't
have my own bedroom, I didn't have my own space.
I mean, it was always around other people, and those
other people were always also ultra Orthodox Jewish. And people
are surprised to learn just how cut off I was
from the outside world. You know, I was born in

(02:33):
in the seventies, or you know, grew up in eighties
and nineties in Brooklyn and no television, no radio, no newspapers,
no no real contact with anybody who wasn't also the
ultra Orthodox Jewish. So I didn't know basic things about culture,
and it was a lot to learn when I left,
and people were shocked. You don't know what the muppets are,

(02:54):
You've never you don't know who the Beatles are. You
don't know that Hamburgers are not made out of him.
You know, I did not know any of that, so
how would I know? English was my first language always,
which made it a lot easier when I was leaving
the community. For those for whom Yiddish is their first
language is much more difficult. And actually my my mother

(03:17):
had grown up in Hasidic family in Williamsburg and her
first language was Yiddish. And my father was believe it
or not, Cuban. He was born in Havana on His
first language was Spanish, but at home we always spoke
English and I speak very little Yiddish and not a
word of Spanish. Did your father was he also raised

(03:38):
in um an Orthodox Jewish community in Cuba. Yes, absolutely, yes,
the fundamentalism and my family goes back many, many generations.
Where were you in the order of the birth order
of siblings? I was second to youngest, so I got
exactly zero attention, which in a family that abusive and dysfunctional,
probably best case scenario. The school that I went to

(04:01):
was an ultra Orthodox Jewish school, Yeshiva Brooklyn, all girls school.
There was an Yeshiva Brooklyn for boys, but that one
was two blocks away in a separate building, so yes,
completely cut off from boys and men. So yes, um,
everywhere we went, the stores that I shopped in, any
business I had to do, and if I was allowed

(04:21):
to get a job, which was fairly limited, then it
had to be with an orthofox Jewish boss. When I
say very limited access to the outside, well we're talking
about when I showed the city bus driver my bus pass.
That was like the most contact I had with somebody
who wasn't from my safe community. What were the more

(04:42):
raise and customs around the opposite sex At any event
or party or religious gathering, a synagogue, any any time
there was there were people coming together, the men and
the women were completely separated, either in a effort room
or the women were behind a curtain of afiza uh

(05:06):
real separation barrier. And it was very very very explicit
that this was not separate but equal to the extent
that that exists. This is not separate but equal. This
is the women are less than the men. Are the
ones who are partaking in this religious activity or the

(05:26):
prayer or whatever party it is, and the women are
there as observers and bystanders, and they better be silent.
They should not be seen, they should not be heard.
And to give you a sense of just how explicit
the misogyny is in that community. In the Prayer Book,
it shows that every morning men make a blessing they

(05:46):
thank God for not making them a non Jew, a slave,
or a woman. And then for women, when the men
are saying, oh God, thank you Lord for not making
me a woman or a slaver or non Jew, women
make a blessing, thank you God for making me as
you will. It was it was, you know, like, oh boy.

(06:09):
And then imagine the message that sends as as a
girl when I was seeing this every morning in my
prior book and knowing that the men and boys were
making this blessing thanking the Lord for not making them
someone like me, which they put in the same category
as a slave or a non Jew. Because it just
gives you a sense of also the xenophobia there, like

(06:29):
anyone who's not one of us is is the equivalent
of a slave. Just how offensive all of that is.
It's so if there's so much to unpack there looking back,
I think one of the most infuriating aspects of that
is that when when we as girls would ask well,
why why are men thanking God for not making them
a non duous slave or a woman? What does that

(06:50):
mean about me as a girl or a woman? The
response was the ultimate and gas lighting. The response was,
it's because women are so special. Oh yeah, I mean
that totally explains it. That's why all the men thank
God for not making a monogious slave or a woman.
Is because women are so special. I feel better now.

(07:13):
As a child, those certain elements of the religion felt
confusing and extreme to her. FREDI doesn't exactly clock the
misogyny and xenophobia early on. She doesn't clock the abuse
that's going on at home either. How could she, It's
all she knows. This is the thing about being born
into an abusive family, especially when you don't have a

(07:36):
TV where you see the fake families that are all
happy and sweet. You don't really have a sense that
what's happening to you is not normal. There is no
real sense of, oh wait, I'm not supposed to be
afraid in my own home. I'm not supposed to be
physically assaulted in my own home. My mother shouldn't be
pushed down the stairs and being with a stick like
this shouldn't be happening. There's a very little sense of

(07:58):
that when you're a child born into it. So that
part I really did not question or complain about. And
even the misogynistic aspects of the religion. I questioned some
of it and got into trouble because one of the
roles in that community is the messages you're a woman,
shut the funk up, you have a vagina. Who are

(08:19):
you to ask questions? So even the small questions that
I asked, I got into trouble for asking. But also
I asked them not as uh, well, this is all bullshit.
I don't want any part of it. It was you know.
I asked them based on the premise that obviously, this
is my religion, this is my life in it, this
is the right way, this is what God wants. There

(08:41):
is a God. I believe that back then as well,
And um, you know, I'm not going to lead, I'm
not going to rebel. None of that. That didn't even
occurred to me. So leaving her religion or her home
never occurs to Freddie. At this time, her mom is
told to leave her marriage. If is almost unheard of
in the community, but the rabbis know how violent her

(09:04):
father is. The rabbis tell Freddy's mom, listen, he's going
to kill you. He's going to kill the kids. You
have to get out. Even then when she left, because
of the deeply misogynistic laws in that religion, only a
man is allowed to grant a get a Jewish divorce.

(09:24):
A woman doesn't have that right. She can ask for
a divorce, but he can just say no, and then
what happens to hers, She just becomes what's known in
that community as an aguna, a changed woman, a woman
who is literally chained to a dead marriage and forever
a second class citizen. I think second class is too generous.
I mean, we're talking about someone who is just further

(09:47):
abused by the entire community, really really looked down upon.
Being single on that community is already considered shameful, but
being an aguna, everybody will absolutely blame the victim in
that situation and just treat and now gun not like
just complete hurt, as if it's somehow her fault. And
that's exactly what happened to my mother for seven years. Obviously,

(10:08):
this violent, abusive man was not going to just willingly
let her out of this abusive, violent marriage. And I
saw the way the community treated her, and I heard
her crying herself to sleep, and that I used to
as a child, remember hearing her sobbing when she thought
that we couldn't hear her, And I questioned that. I

(10:29):
questioned that, why, why, how does it make sense? How
does it make sense that a woman can't grant to get?
And then I remember asking, also, why can't a woman
say kaddish? That's the prayer for the dead. There was
no one in my life that had died that I
wanted to say kattage for but it just it just
didn't make sense to me. And I would ask these
questions and the response was, you know, shut the funk

(10:51):
up and set the funk down. And by the way,
why aren't you cooking and cleaning? You're a woman or
a girl. So there was no answer. Freddie is four
when her mother takes her and her siblings away from
her father. They flee with the clothing on their backs,
first to Los Angeles and then back to Brooklyn to

(11:12):
live with Freddy's grandparents. This is where she spends the
rest of her childhood. She's eleven when her father finally
gives her mother a get a Jewish divorce. Why did
he finally give her a get? My understanding is that
someone convinced him some clever person convinced him that if

(11:32):
he gave my mother a get, he would show her
what a nice person he was and she would come
back to him. So you're like eleven or twelve years
old when your mother is no longer an abuna, right right,
So but then, yeah, she's not an aguna, but now
she's a divorce which is almost as bad in that community.
Not as bad, I mean agunas is a whole new level,

(11:55):
or a really low level. But even as a divorce woman,
that the abuse that she got, the treatment that she
got was absolutely horrifying. So were you sort of at
that point watching your older siblings start to get married,
start to have families. I mean, if you're if you're

(12:17):
the second to the youngest when you were a teenager,
was that starting to happen around you? Yes, when I
was twelve, my oldest sister got engaged. She was nineteen,
so she was really old. It was time for her
to marry. And by the way, very very difficult for
my mother to arrange all of our marriages because we
are now the children of divorce and that's just so

(12:39):
looked down upon in that community. So not only was
my mother punished for being first snaguna and then a divorcee.
But then we were all punished. I mean, I had
girls in my class at Yeshiva of Brooklyn whose parents
would not let them talk to me. That's all. You
can't talk to Fred, her parents are divorced. It was
that extreme. And the other thing that didn't occur to
me at the time, and looking back at this, the

(13:00):
really really gets to me is my mother's marriage was
arranged or forced, whatever you want to call it. I
call it force because there's no there's no real opportunity
for either party to consent to his marriage. So her
parents forced her into this marriage to a stranger, and
it turned out to be I mean, such a horrifying,
terrible experience for her. She mean, she was abuse every

(13:25):
single day for the fourteen years that she lived with
my father. He tortured her. And yet less than a
year after she finally got her religious of force and
got out of that, she was already forcing all of
her children into marriages to strangers. And I don't think
it ever occurred to her that this system doesn't make sense.

(13:46):
This is a problematic system. You cannot just marry people
off without their consent to strangers and then have it
turned out well. So yes, I went from watching her
get her get and then to my sister being married
off to a stranger, and then, as far as I know,
my oldest sister, her marriage was not, as far as

(14:07):
I know, an unhappy marriage, although I wouldn't necessarily know that,
But she got pregnant right away, which is was supposed
to happen in that community. And her oldest son was
born with really profound disability, very very very sick, and
spent most of his life in a hospital and a home.
He couldn't see, he couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, and

(14:28):
he um and he died when he was eighteen. So
I was twelve or thirteen when he was born. Yes see,
this was my first nephew, and I just I just
fell in love with YESI I still remember the first
time I saw him in the hospital, hooked up to
all kinds of machines. He had his first surgery as
soon as he was born. He had hydrocephalus, and back

(14:50):
then the treatments for that we're really limited. And I
just fell in love with him. This is what I
was witnessing. My sister was twenty years old. And she
has a son with profound disabilities that she now has
to care for when she's because she's basically a child herself.

(15:13):
And then she has to keep having children because that's
what's required in that community. So I mean, she continued
having children and then trying to to juggle all of
that when she herself had not even had a chance
to grow up. I mean, it's just so heartbreaking. In
the bridal classes that are mandatory for all engaged women

(15:35):
in the community, women are taught that you are required
to have unprotected sex with your spouse on a monthly basis,
and it's time for when you're ovulating, so it's forced sex,
forced unprotected sex, which leads to forced parenthood. Freddie watches
her sister go through this and is aware that before
long she'll be paired off with someone too. I mean,

(15:56):
I was just waiting to be married off, and I
had no hopes and dreams for the future other than
I want to be a wife and a mother, because
that's all I was taught. There's a term for a
girl when she reaches high school in the Orthodox Jewish community.
They call her a columnate. All it's just a bridal girl,
just a girl waiting to become a bride. That's all

(16:18):
really I was. I was required to sign two different
forms promising that I wouldn't take driver's head and promising
that I wouldn't take s A T S. It's very,
very very cheerfully orchestrated that as a girl, I was
completely financially dependent on my what would have been parents.
My father was out of the picture by then, so
it was completely financially dependent on my mother. Had to

(16:41):
live in her home, not allowed to move out on
my own. The only way I could move out was
when I got married, so that I was just never
allowed to become independent. And there's also lack of education.
Wasn't allowed to get a real education at issue for
worklen and we learned how to cook and sew, and
I was not allowed to go to college. So all

(17:01):
of this really just conspires against you. We'll be right back.

(17:23):
So when Freddie is a teenager, the official matchmaking process
kicks off. She's seen this play out for her older
siblings and now it's her time to be forced into
a relationship with a stranger, a partner chose by someone else,
the matchmaker. There is no courtship, it's just a match.

(17:44):
I was one of those couples, those hilariously awkward couples
sitting five feet away from each other in the lounge
of a hotel, drinking soda and asking, so, how many
children do you want to have? What's your favorite? So yeah, okay,
let's get married. Well it's not even let's get married,
because that's decide, but the matchmaker, I mean that whole exercise.

(18:09):
I shouldn't laugh, because there is really nothing funny about
forcing strangers to marriage when they've never been allowed to
be alone together. So there has to be in that
public place, never allowed to have any physical contact, and
they have a matchmaker arranging the whole thing. And by
the time you get to go on on one of
those they call that a date. I would really really,

(18:29):
I think that's a bit of a stretch to call
that kind of meeting a date. But by the time
you get to go on this so called date, both
families have all and the matchmaker have already decided this
match is happening. So it's really it's not do you
want to marry him, it's you're gonna marry him? Right,
And to say no to that is incredibly, incredibly difficult.

(18:51):
And especially there's some socioeconomic element to this. So if
my parents had not been divorced, if I had a
father who was a famous rabbi or was very wealthy,
then I probably would have felt comfortable saying no to
to a few matches. So if you know, the first
guy that that the matchmaker matches me with, perhaps I

(19:13):
could have said no, I don't I don't like his nose,
or I don't like you know, he likes sprite and
I like Coca cola, so obviously we're not compatible. Uh
you know. Perhaps, But because I was from such a
poor family and my parents were divorced, I knew if
I said no, there was probably not going to be
another match. And the other thing is there's no real

(19:37):
basis to say no. I mean, you know, I joke
about how he likes sprite and I like Coca cola.
I mean, really, other than that, how much can you
possibly get to know somebody sitting in that lounge five
ft apart from each other, you know, talking about how
many children do you want to have and what's your
favorite soda? There's very little that you can learn. I
remember talking to this one woman who said she's also

(20:00):
grew up a fundamentalist Hasidic community that she came from,
and she told her mother after this, she actually got
to meet this guy for a half hour, and by then,
like the wine had been pouring, the cookies had been
put out. I mean, both families were there. They were
just waiting for her to say yes. And after the
half hour meeting, she went back into the kitchen and
from the living room she tilled her mother, I just
I just don't like him. And her mother said, how

(20:23):
could you not like him? You don't even know him,
and not understanding the irony of what she was saying, like,
you can marry this guy, but you can't not like him.
You have no basis not to like him. You've met
him for half hour. How could you not like him?
And there's a lot I had a lot of that
feeling as well. How can I say no? My mother
has said this is the right guy for me, His
family has said this is the right guy for me.

(20:43):
The matchmaker I always compare the matchmakers to use car salespeople.
They get paid only if there's an engagement, so they
go hard. I mean this, They're they're gonna make sure
that this match happens. In my case. It was my
mother's first cousin, and she's telling me, this is the
right guy for you. And it's very much a sense
of I've never dated before, I don't know, I don't
know anything. I mean, I'm a nineteen year old, clueless virgin.

(21:07):
I'm gonna turn twenty this year. And then you don't
want to turn twenty and still be single. In that community,
that's basically a death sentence. When I saw him, we
remember him standing there on the porch, and my initial
instinct was, oh God, this is not at all what
the matchmaker had promised had told me. He was unkempt,
his suit was like a little disheveled. I I'm very

(21:29):
into clothing, like guy. I always liked to dress well.
I always always really put together, and he was just
kind of a mess and he was pretty significantly overweight
and just just not at all what the matchmaker had
said to me. And I remember thinking, God, this was
not what I would have wanted. But then it's always

(21:50):
so drummed into you. I had been taught for years
and years physical attraction. That's something the guy um that
the non Jews the other that's what they worry about.
That's not something that we care about. Sexual attraction. That's
not a thing. Physical attraction, physical appearance. That means nothing
and absolutely nothing to do with anything. And by the way,

(22:11):
it wasn't This is how you make a decision. Don't
worry about physical appearance. Instead, look at X, Y and Z.
There was no look at X, Y and Z. No
one ever had a conversation with me about, all right,
you're gonna get to meet the guy at the lounge
of the hotel. Here's what you should ask him, here's
what you should look at, here's what you should think about.
I had no idea, and it didn't even occur to

(22:33):
me to ask, and it didn't occur to anyone around
me to tell me that. I was just basically it was,
you know, checking the box on the page. Okay, did
the matchmaker come forward, yes? Did his family say yes? Check?
Did her family say yes? Check? Did they meet three
times in the hotel lobby and talk about soda preferences? Check?
All right, and they can get engaged. I mean, it

(22:54):
was just really, it was just ridiculous. And in fact,
the average number of these fake dates in the community
at is seven. By the way, and I can't remember
exactly how many dates we had, but it was over
a period of something like eight weeks. And on two
of these so called dates, this guy got into a
physical fight with strangers on the street. There was one

(23:17):
time that he didn't like the way a guy looked
at me, and they got into a physical altercation. And
then there was another time that there was some kind
of driving incident. He was a very aggressive driver and
he got into a physical fight with with another driver.
And that was such a huge red flag. I mean,
the fact that he turned out to be violent and abusive.
Anyone who would have seen that, who had any you know,

(23:40):
I was thinking about this rationally at all, would have said,
that's a red flag. This is somebody who has violent tendencies.
But that did not occur to me, and this didn't
occur to anyone around me. Did he asked about that.
Nobody said, well, if he physically assault strangers on the
street while you're walking with him, that's a guy who
probably has violent tendencies, and you to you know, proceed

(24:01):
with caution. No. To me, in my nineteen year old brain,
it was, oh wow, he's you know, he really protect me.
This is a guy who's really, really going to protect me.
This is this is fantastic. Tell me about how you
felt walking down the aisle. I was so happy that
it's embarrassing to admit this, and it hurts me to

(24:22):
say this. I wish I could say God, I was
begging for not to happen, and I walked down the
aisle feeling like this is so unfair. I always say
I walked down the aisle to my execution wearing a
big smile and the world's ugliest gown. I wish I
had known better, but I let myself get caught up

(24:44):
in all in all of it, you know. And here's
the thing there. You say no to a match, they're
all kinds of serious repercussions, bad things will happen. You
say yes, you get a party. You get have to
be the center of attention. I was the second to
youngest of six and a girl, and and a fundamentalist religious,

(25:06):
really poor family. I had never had a birthday party.
Nobody ever made me the center of attention. I mean,
in the ultra fox Jewish community, girls don't even have
a bot mits about. Boys have apartment spob but a
girl doesn't have a bott mit spot. All of a sudden,
you get engaged, center of attention, big parties. You know,
people will buy you all kinds of gifts and a
whole new wardrobe and a set of multiple sets of

(25:28):
pops and pans and dishes. And then also, I didn't
feel safe at home. I was unsafe at home. My
brother was very abusive. I did not feel safe at home.
And I get to move out. I get I get
to get out of this abusive home. I get to
go someplace where I imagined in my head I would
be safe. Finally, for the first time in my life.
I'd be away from my abusive father and away from

(25:51):
my abusive brothers. I get to just live in safety
with all these new pots and pans I have nineteen.
I can't imagine, you know, getting a bitter deal. So yeah,
I walked down the aisle. I'll skip in. I'm like,
this is fantastic way to go Freddy. Freddy and her

(26:11):
new husband begin their life together. They move into a
little basement apartment on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, a wide,
busy boulevard lined with synagogues, yeshiva's, and Jewish businesses. So
one of the you know, beautiful homes on Ocean Parkway
in the dinky basement with like one little window, basically

(26:32):
a prison, which I guess is fitting. So living in
this little, tiny apartment. And the first thing that became
very very clear right away was that my then husband
and I were just not compatible. I mean, it was
very clear that we had nothing at all in common,
and that having a conversation was going to be a

(26:54):
challenge with this man because the way we approached life
was so different. So, for example, he would make Helen
Keller jokes where he mocked people who were blind or
people had physical disabilities. I remember us talking about my nephew, Yesie,
who loved more than anyone in the world, who was
blind and he was in a wheelchair. And every time

(27:14):
my husband made a joke about Helen Keller, I would
start to cry. You know, I beg him, please don't
make jokes about that. It really hurts me. I feel
like you're really offending. Yes see, why is it his
fault that he's blind? And the more I cry, the
funnier he found it. Sevent days after our wedding, he
woke up late one morning and he was late for

(27:36):
an appointment, and he was furious. Oh my God, I
woke up late. He wasn't even angry at me. He
was angry at himself and flew into a violent rage
the likes of which I, um, well, I can't say
I had never seen, because obviously there were a lot
of violent rages in my childhood home. But it was
not what I was expecting from my marriage. But also
he was cursing in a way that I had never

(27:57):
heard before, and I was terrified. So, you know, he
were talking about a big guy. He was six ft tall,
and he's two forty pounds, jumping up and down and
screaming at the top of his lungs, and I'm just terrified.
I was like, what is happening. I don't know what
to do, Like he's a stranger, just completely lost his ship,

(28:21):
screaming and yelling. So I was cowering in a corner.
And then, in his like final active rage, he punched
his fist through the wall really hard. I left a
big hole in the wall, and then ran out to
whatever appointment he was laid for. And that was when
I said, oh my god, oh my god. And I'll
never forget Just standing there looking at that hole in

(28:43):
the wall, shaking, I thought I was going to be
safe here. I thought I was going to be safe.
This was supposed to be different. What just happened? What?
This is what he acts like when he wakes up late,
and you know, on Ocean Parkway, there's um there's a park,
a little plate ground across the street. And so I
remember after he left, I walked across the street to

(29:04):
this playground and sat on a swing just crying crises,
just swinging for hours and crying, oh my god, what
is going to happen to me? And I Am I
going to end up like my mother? Did you tell anyone? Well,
at first I didn't. It was like two or three
days after that. Um, he threatened to kill me for

(29:26):
the first time, and that's something that became the norm
in our marriage. He would he would threaten to kill me,
and he would get very graphic with the detail. He
would describe to me how he was going to kill me.
And he would do this while he was screaming in
a rage and breaking things and throwing things, and so
even though he didn't have his hands on me, he
would describe to me like I'm gonna you know, like

(29:47):
one time he was going to put his fingers around
my neck and he was gonna squeeze really hard, and
he was going to watch me as i you know,
struggle to breathe, and then he was going to watch
me take my last breath. I mean, he described this
whole thing. And it was another time he was going
to go to the kitchen and he was going to
get a knife, and then he described what he's going
to do with the knife, and you know, it was
beyond terrifying. It was very believable that he was going

(30:10):
to do these things to me because a why would
he describe it in such graphic detail if he didn't
actually plan to do it. And be he was doing
at the same time that he was smashing and breaking things,
so he was clearly capable of violence. But he didn't
beat me up. So he would throw things at me,
he would shove me, or he loved to do this
thing where he was a really wild driver. And so

(30:32):
whenever whenever we were going anywhere, obviously he would drive.
He wouldn't let me drive, and he would do this
thing where he would speed up to a hundred miles
an hour and then sam on the brake to send
me flying, to send me flying into the windshield. Within
a couple of weeks, I started saying, this is a problem.
I went to my mother for help with this. I
went to his father. Um, I made an appointment with

(30:55):
a rabbi, like you know, a rabbi and one of
the big rabbis in the community, to try to get
how up. And with everyone it was what did he
hit you? And I said, no, he didn't hit me,
but he saw me. He's gonna kill me if he
didn't hit you. Why are you complaining? And especially with
my mother, like I remember thinking, how could he even
complain about this to my mother? I mean, my mother

(31:16):
had broken bones, she had black on blue marks. I'm
going to complain that this guy, you know, punched his
fist through the wall. It didn't even seem fair. So
they all, you know, they all just try to convince
me that the problem was me, that I was being
my standards were too high, that I was being unreasonable,
that he was really young. He's twenty two years old.
He just needs time to grow up. And and you know,

(31:38):
you have to be good to him, and you can
and upset him, and you really can't complain when he's
not even hitting you. You saw your mother went through,
You're going to complain that the guys that I'm gonna
kill you? Did he kill you? No? So why are
you complaining? So I just lived in fair every day
that he was going to kill me. And then when
I had kids, I lived in fair that he was

(31:59):
going to kill them too, And he would say that,
I say, I'm going to kill you, and I'm going
to kill them, and then I'm going to kill myself.
That was his plan. How far into your into your
marriage were your daughters born eleven months? That's what happens
when you are forced to have unprotected sex. Got pregnant
two months after my wedding, gave birth nine months later

(32:21):
after that, so um, so eleven months from my first one,
and then my next one was four years later. I
had never heard the term reproductive rights. I had never
you know, didn't have any sense of consenting to sex
or anything like that. All I knew was my marriage
was a disaster. My husband was a violent just awful awful.

(32:47):
The way he treated me was absolutely unspeakably awful. And
my first pregnancy was a nightmare. I mean, I was
the morning sickness I had all day, every day the
entire nine months I kept losing weight. I couldn't keep
any food down. I was hospitalized for dehydration. At a
certain point, I was having trouble with my kidney and

(33:09):
there was urologist who told me that we're going to
have to deliver the baby early and remove my kidney.
I mean, it was like, really an awful pregnancy, and
I just knew I didn't want to do that again.
And I knew that I wasn't happy in my marriage,
you know, I was stuck in it. And I went
to my gynecologist and I said, you need to give
me birth control. And I give her credit, and she

(33:32):
used ultra Orthodox Jewish And by the way, she's the
same kind ofcologist who when I was a bride, performed
a virginity exam on me to confirm that my hyman
was intact and I was a so called virgin. So
I am, in hindsight surprise that she did this. But
she gave me birth control, and then my husband lost it.
He said, how dare you? And he took us. He

(33:53):
took me to the rabbi, who said, you're not allowed
to use birth control. And I looked at the rabbi
in the eye and I said, it is my body,
not yours. And he said, you know what, if you
feel like I I can need a break, you can use
birth control for one year, but then you have to stop.
And I said, what part of my body do you
not understand? I am not doing this for one year.

(34:14):
I am never having another child. And the Rebert told
my husband, don't worry. After a year, she'll stop. And
after a year, I didn't stop until I finally caved
into the pressure and had a baby four years later.
I was lucky that I had only two. And then
all of this just it's just chains getting tighter and
tighter and tighter around you, and for me, it started

(34:36):
really feeling like it was tightening around my neck and
I was going to die. We'll be back in a
moment with more family secrets. Despite the vice that grips her,

(35:05):
Freddie has an escape plan. She's going to go to
college though she's not supposed to. She's going to find
a way out for herself and her daughters. It was
a sense of survival. It was the realization after a
particularly traumatic incident where my family and my community just

(35:28):
we're not coming through. For me, I finally realized I
need to get out on my own if I say,
this man is going to kill me and he's going
to kill my two daughters. He made that very clear.
When you feel that your life is in danger, you've
become capable of doing things you never thought you could.
And that's what it was for me. It was it

(35:48):
was a sense of survival. It was a sense of
this is the only way I'm going to get at
it here alive. So I have to get out on
my own, and the only way I can do that
is if I have an education in some way to
support myself financially. Freddy has not been allowed to have
a job, or a bank account or a credit card,

(36:08):
so in order to gain this financial independence, an education
would be a must. Before pursuing the education on her own, though,
she asks her family, her mother, who surely would understand
what she's going through right for help. Originally, I did
not think I would go to college or get out
on my own after years and years of just suffering

(36:31):
in this abusive marriage. When I was twenty seven, it
was this time that my mother happened to come over
to the house after a really violent outbursts from my
then husband, where he had kicked in the front or
we had a dead boatlock and um and he had
left in a rage, and I locked the door behind him,

(36:52):
and he came back. I wanted to get back in,
you screaming, and I said, I'm not going to let
you back in until you calm down, and he kicked
in the front door and and she came over in
the aftermath of that, so she saw the physical signs
of it, and she saw me sitting there crying, and
the kids were there crying, and and that was when
I finally said to her, I said, you know, I'm
really I'm scared for my life. I'm afraid for my

(37:14):
kids lives. I don't know why next step is, but
can I just move in with you temporarily, just, you know,
just to let I figure out where I go from here,
and just so that I can be safe. And her
her answer was she turned around and walked out of
the room without saying anything. And and I remember my

(37:37):
my older daughter who was seven at the time. She
was in the room and she heard this, and she
said to me, why didn't Bobby answer you? And I
told her that was her answer. It's incredibly hurtful too,
you know this this memory is so painful when I
think about it, and how she never forgave her parents

(37:59):
for marrying her off to an abusive man, and then
she turned her back on me when I asked her
for help, and and I think about, you know, all
the reasons that possibly she did that, and maybe it
was because of guilt or because she just you know,
the trauma it triggered, it was triggering for her. I
don't know what it was. But at the end of
the day, she did me such a favor. If I

(38:19):
had moved in with her, I would have just continued
the cycle, and I would have become an aguna, and
I would have, you know, just remained a victim my
whole life. And instead, she, for better or worse, forced
me to take matters into my own hands and to
leave on my own terms, to get my college degree,

(38:40):
to save up cash, and to leave and get out
and leave not only my abusive marriage, but leave this
whole misogynistic, abusive community and really create a much happier well.
I can't even see much happier there was loving happy
about that life. So finally a happy, safe, in free

(39:02):
life for myself and my daughters. During this time, Freddie
also seeks therapy. In fact, it's the therapist that helps
her device and pursue her escape. The therapist she seeks
is outside the ultra orthodox community, a radical, and, as
it turns out, a essential move on Freddy's part. How

(39:28):
did you figure out who to talk to? I had
a friend who I didn't tell her what was going on,
that I was afraid or you know, that my marriage
was abusive. And apparently I didn't have to because one
day she said to me, you know, I have a
name of a therapist that that I've been seeing. Nobody
knows it's you know it was. She had to keep

(39:48):
it a secret also, and she just slipped me a
paper and she said, it's just the name and a number.
You know. She didn't ask questions, she didn't say why
she gave me the paper. She just clearly saw that
something was wrong, and she said, you know, this is
just in case you in case you want to talk
to somebody, here's a name. And so I reached out.

(40:09):
It was really hard to go because you know, if
I got caught, the repercussions would have been great. So
I couldn't write it down in my calendar. I had
to pay cash because I couldn't write at a check
or have any kind of paper trail, I mean, and
then I had to have a cover story for where
I was going during that time, so I actually went
only twice. But this therapist was the first person who

(40:32):
explained to me what domestic violence was. I mean, imagine
that I had grown up in that really abusive, violent
household and I had been married to this abusive guy
for for at that point eight years, and I had
no idea what domestic violence was. And she explained it
to me. And then she was also the first person

(40:52):
who said, it doesn't matter if he's never slapped you
across the face of broken your bone, that is domestic violence.
She went over like what the mess of violence looks like,
and the power and control will and the cycle of violence,
and it was it was such an eye opening experience.
I mean, it was literally life altering. I always it

(41:13):
was a social work, and I always tell social workers,
I mean, you have no idea the power you have.
This woman saved my life. She also explained that I
had legal rights and that there's something called a restraining order.
You can get a restraining order against an abusive husband.
The police will remove him from your house and then
he's not a goot to come near you, so he

(41:33):
cannot abuse you or threatened you. Was talking anymore. Now
I had this new knowledge that this was, that this
was an option, and it was. It was my family
and communities reaction to the restraining order that actually ended
up leading to my five year plan to escape, because
you know, the police gave me there was this temporary
restraining order, served it on my then husband, removing from

(41:55):
the house. And then immediately I started getting phone calls
from everyone I knew, not only my family, but my
friends and my neighbors and rabbis, just all saying, what
the hell is wrong with you? Are you crazy? Who
does this? You went to the police, you got a
restraeting order? Are you out of your mind? Miss Era?
I had always been taught, miss Era, of turning over

(42:16):
your fellow Jew to the to the police. That's literally
punishable by death, and I had committed that sin. And
then the rabbis sent an attorney to my house. An
Orthodox Jewish mail attorney showed up at my house. He
drove with me to family court in Tons River, New Jersey,

(42:37):
and you know, went with me in front of the judge.
You had me tell the judge that I wanted to
drop the restraining order, and it was it was in
that surreal moment when the judge asked me whether I
was doing this of my own free will, and I
was looking at him and looking at my attorney and thinking,
how can I possibly explain to the judge what's happening here?
He looks at me, he think he he thinks this
is my attorney standing next to me, thinks I retained.

(42:59):
This guy thinks I'm here willingly. How could I possibly
explain what's going on? I have not a single friend
or sibling or relative, anyone in the world who is
on my side who will back me up here. I
don't know what to do. So I lied to the
judge and I said, yes, your honor, you know, an
answer to his question about whether I was dropping the
restraining letter willingly. And then I went home and I said,

(43:21):
I need to get out, and I need to do
it on my own, because these people are gonna let
me die here. Don't let this guy my husband kill
me before they will help me, and the hell with us.
I'm just going to get out on my own. I'll
get a college degree, I'll save up money, I'll get
out on my own. And that's what you did, and

(43:43):
that's what I did. So without telling anybody, I secretly
applied to Redger's and became the first person in my
family to go to college man or woman, by the way,
and um, and I started saving up cash in the
only place in the house that my abusive then husband
wouldn't look. He would look through all my personal belongings
to make sure that I didn't have anything that I

(44:04):
was hiding from him, and to show me that I
belonged to him and everything I owned belonged to him.
He would start in front of me. You would go
through the pockets of my scarts hanging in the closet,
and he would go through all my personal belongings. So
I found the one place in the house I knew
he wouldn't look, a box of whole grain total in
the pantry closet, and I would put cash in there.
And I started going to college. And everybody in my

(44:25):
family freaked out, how did you go to college? What
is this about? And try to talk me out of it,
and I, especially my then husband, was furious, and I said, nothing,
absolutely nothing that you can do to stop me. From
going to Rutgers. You know, good luck trying. I started
to feel much stronger, said, you know, I have this

(44:45):
great plan. I'm going to get out. I'm stating up cash,
I'm getting my college degree, which felt really great. I
really it was a great student. I really really loved
my time at Rutgers. It would seem that you were
also being exposed to other people out side of this
insular community, like really for the first time. Absolutely, that
was also exhilarating. Really just making friends for the first

(45:09):
time in my life. That was the first time in
my life I made friends with people who were not
also Orthodox Jewish. Here I made friends with this Palestinian
Muslim woman who had almost the exact same life story
that I did, except I used to like to say
her story started in Ramala and mine started in Borough Park.
But um, but she also had been forced to marry
and eighteen also had two kids as the neges as

(45:31):
my kids. But yeah, that was that was part of
the just the enormity of the experience of going to Rutgers,
and it was really what made part of what made
me feel ready to take my next rebellious step, which
is while I was still a student there, I stopped
wearing the head covering that is required of Orthodox Jewish women.

(45:52):
And that was when my family think we were already
upset that I was a college student. I mean, how
embarrassing is that? But know, the neighbors don't necessarily have
to know. You can kind of try to keep that quiet.
But for an Orthodox Jewish woman to walk outside the house,
a married woman without a head covering, it's like walking
around naked. That's how much of a statement it makes.

(46:13):
They couldn't ignore that, They could not accept that if
they saw that as just too much of a slap
in their face and too much of an affront, and
the flat that they would get from the community just
too much for them to bear. So that was when
they shunned me. They cut off all contact. And I
have one sister who was the only one I could
reach briefly kept in touch with me at first. I've

(46:36):
since lost contact with her as well, but she kept
in touch briefly at first and told me that the
rest of my family was planning to sit shiffl for
you go through the Jewish morning ritual for me as
if I had literally died. And this is because I
walked outside of the house with my natural hair on
my head, despite being ostracized by her family. Freddy p

(47:00):
Severes At Rutger's not only does she graduate, but at
the graduation ceremony, she's the commencement speaker, an extraordinary accomplishment
for someone who had signed a piece of paper promising
not to take the SA T S once I graduated.
By then, my family had already shunned me. So you
can't kill somebody twice. That probably was their mistake. So

(47:23):
at that point I was really able to do whatever
I wanted. So I was able to change the locks
file for divorce. And my original plan had been to
leave my abusive marriage. But at that point I said, ha,
this my family declared me dead because I stopped wearing
a head covering. This is nuts. Once I started, you know,
going to college and learning things and making other friends

(47:46):
and started thinking about life in an adult way, which
I never got a chance, and you before I was married,
because I was married as a team. It just really
really wasn't comfortable for me at all. I said, I
don't belong in this whole religion. This is not me.
So not only was I able thanks to my family
shunning me, and not only was able to get out
of my abusive marriage, but I was able to just

(48:07):
leave the entire religion because you know, normally that would
be a scary thing to do, because your family might shun,
you might lose your whole family. Well, guess what, I
had already lost my whole family. To me, the religion
felt so oppressive. There was a god, and I believed
in him back then. I mean, I'm an atheist now,
but back then, I very, very strongly believed that there

(48:29):
was a god. But he was not a god of
joy or love. He was a god who was there
to punish you. He was he was a god. It
was like my father, he was like my brothers, He
was like my ex husband. He was an angry, abusive god,
and he was watching you every second of the day,
just waiting for you to slip up. And by the way,
there are so many ways to slip up, biting your

(48:50):
lip on Saturdays, slipping up. There were so many rules
in so many ways to mess up, and every time
you missed up, you're going to get punished. And now
you were the total people on Saturday. And wow, I
saw when you washed your hands, you were supposed to
do a twice on the right and twice on the left.
You missed the second time. It was only twice on
the right, and one of the halftimes on the left,
God is watching in place of religion. Frady continues to

(49:14):
focus on her education and her career. She's carving her
own path, freed from the peril of her marriage and
thrust into a professional landscape so refreshingly and restorative. Lee
far from where she started. So I was at first
I got my degree in journalism and loved, really loved journalism,
and I was an investigative reporter. And then because journalism

(49:37):
was a really tough time for journalism at the time,
everybody was getting laid off. In an attempt to avoid
getting laid off, I became a private investigator for the
investigations from Corol, which at the time was the world's
largest investigations firm. And then I became financially independent enough
while I was there to buy a small house for
myself and my two daughters. Is a little a little
cape cod which I of course named the palaisd Trion

(50:00):
because it was just such a triumphant moment for me
to be able to to make it far enough out
of my traumatic situation to actually buy a house for myself.
And I imagine, but I am the first woman in
the history of my entire family ever to buy your
own home. And I was at the closing for the house,
and if you've ever been at the closing, you know
how boring it is, still signing your name again and

(50:23):
again and again until your hand cramps up. And even
the seller of the house wasn't there because they had
already moved out of state. So I was just in
a room with a couple of lawyers and just signing
my name again and again, and I kept trying to
explain to them what a big moment this was. I think,
you Amber sandwhat a big deal this is what I'm
buying a house. I was, you know, trying to explain
I had been forced into a marriage to this abusive
guy and trapped and then my whole family showned me

(50:45):
and I managed to get out and they did not
care at all. And so it was at this it
was this anti climatic moment where I'm signing my name
again and again to buy the CALLI to trio before
I said, you know, I need to do something to
celebrate this moment, and there was also this guilt. It
was like a survivor's guilt almost where how did I
get out? And there are so many people I know,

(51:07):
I mean in my former community and in so many
other communities who are still trapped in the situation that
I got out of. So it was at the closing
where I said, you know what I'm gonna do. I'm
going to start a nonprofit. I'm going to help those
other people. And this is just what Freddie does. She

(51:27):
helps people. She creates a company called Unchained at Last,
the only organization in the United States dedicated to ending
forced and child marriage through direct services and advocacy. When
I found it Unchained at Last, I was working full
time as a single mom, working full time, commuting from
New Jersey into Manhattan, you know, very little free time.

(51:50):
But I said, you know, this is just going to
be a couple of hours a week. On the side
I was there was no budget, any expense would just
come right out of my pocket. At first Life, but
it was focused specifically on direct services. I wrote up
a business plan just gonna help five women the first year,
ten women the second year, just you know, provide some

(52:11):
support and try to get them free legal representation, just
like to start begging attorneys to help represent them for
free while they're getting divorced. And that was basically the plan.
And at the time, by the way, Unshane at Last
was the only organization in the entire world with this
mission of helping people in the US escape force marriages,
and it still is the only one with that mission.

(52:34):
By the end of the first year, we had thirty clients.
From my original plan of five, we were at thirty.
This was already a second full time job, just unpaid,
and I realized we're onto something here, like this is this,
this is something bigger. This has not helped five women
on budget of zero with a staff of zero, like
this is an actual thing. There are a lot of

(52:55):
people out there who need help. We were not marketing
in any way. That was all word of mouth. Thirty
people reach out to us for help, and so it's
just continued to grow from there. Remember Freddy's Muslim Palestinian
friend from college who was also a survivor of a
forced marriage. Well, that friend becomes the first president of

(53:16):
the board of Directors of Unchained at Last, together with
other dedicated members of the organization. They strive to help
women everywhere break free from their toxic and unsafe arrangements.
So from the beginning I knew that, yes, this is
happening in my former community, but I knew it was
not limited to that. So my I was determined from

(53:37):
the start to make this uh, you know, from any community, culture, religion,
any background. If you are in or escaping a forced marriage,
reach out to us and we will try to help you.
You know, at first most of our clients were from
the ultra Orthodox Jewish community, and now ultra Orthodox is
you know, a small percentage of the overall clients that

(53:59):
we help. Actually, so because we've helped people from almost
any religion you can think of. I mean, we've helped
people from religions where I had to google that I
had never even heard of it, and from secular backgrounds.
I mean, this is of course not only a religious issue.
So as the years went on, so first of all,
our staff and budgets sort of growing, it became very
clear we can't just do this on the the kindness

(54:20):
of volunteers and this. So after four years we had
enough funding that I was able to take a salary
so that I could leave my other job. And now
we're actually seven of us were a team of seven.
I mean we have an actual office, so we don't
have to work out of my dining room anymore. Um.
And and we have a budget now of over seven

(54:42):
hundred thousand, where it was from a budget of zero.
And then the other big thing that has changed is
where at first we thought this was all going to
be direct services, what we realized within the first few
years was that in addition to the forced marriage problem
we have in the United States, there is a significant
child marriage problem. And because more and more girls underage

(55:05):
a team, we're reaching out to us asking for the
same help. And we operate nationally. So these are girls
from across the US just calling and asking for the
same help that we give adults, and we realize, oh crap,
there's nothing we can do for them. If we help
them leave home, we could be charged criminally. We get
them to a domestic violence shelter, the shelters turn them away.
They can't bring a legal action in their own name.
If in many states, you could be forced into marriage

(55:27):
before eighteen with without any input from you, your parents
sign a form or a judge you know, stamps the
page and you're forced into this marriage, and you can't
even freaking fall for divorce until you're a team, because
you can't bring a legal action in your own name.
There's almost nothing we can do for these girls when
they reach out to us. So in two thousand fifteen,
even though we're we're a tiny team at the time,

(55:48):
there were I think two or three of us on
a tiny budget, working out of a little office in
New Jersey in an undisclosed location because we get all
kinds of obnoxious threats. So for security reasons, we have
a you know, a office in a secret location. And
we said, you know what, in our spare time, we're
gonna take on this little project. We're gonna end child marriage.

(56:09):
In the United States. At the time, it was legal
in all fifty U s. States. Marriage before eighteen was
legal in all fifty states. Even though it's recognized, I
said to human rights abuse, and even though minors cyplicate
can't fall for divorce and you can't get into his
mystic violence shelter, it's just an absurd, an evil legal
construct where we have here miners can be forced into

(56:29):
marriage before they have a legal right to get out
of it. And in um since two thousand and fifteen.
Well took us until two thousand eighteen to convince the
first U. S State to end child marriage, and since
then we have convinced six U. S. States we have
helped to end child marriage. We passed legislation, and we
have only forty four states to go. The work Freighty

(56:53):
has done with Unchained at Last has saved countless lives
hers included. Working with us who have suffered similar circumstances
has become her vocation. It's been enormously healing too. I
use that word healing all the time. I actually use
healing and empowering to be able to take my own

(57:16):
trauma and instead of trying to forget it or get
past it, instead using it as a way to help others.
That is truly healing and empowering. And what I what
I get out of Unchained is so much bigger than
what I put into it. As hard as this work is,
that type of healing, I mean, I don't know any

(57:37):
other way I could have been I could have gotten that.
And it's tough, you know, many days, just the sadness,
the stories that we get to, the survivors that I
direct with who shares some of the worst of humanity.
I mean the most horrific, unspeakable things that that people

(57:58):
do to each other, and in this case, it's almost
always parents doing it to their own children. It's so
overwhelmingly sad, and it can turn depressing, it can it
can be really tough and triggering for me, since this
is so close to the trauma that I myself have
have overcome. But it's also so healing and empowering. And

(58:21):
and every time someone says to me, you know, I
see you did it, you got out of it, and
you rebuild your life. You give me hope, you give
me inspiration, you make you prove to me that I
can do it too. What more can I ask? Family

(58:45):
Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly z
a Core is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is
the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your
story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You

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can also find me on Instagram at Danny Writer. And
if you'd like to know more about the story that
inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more

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podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.