Total Depravity

In the first part of this harrowing two-part episode, writer and musician Jessica Willis Fisher courageously speaks the unspeakable truths of the abuse she faced at the hands of her father. But this is just the beginning.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This episode contains
descriptions of sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
M History has written.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
At the hands of those who win.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
The battle must be over for the writing to begin.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Take a piece of paper, an open thing, the feather
and the finger pulls against gray.

Speaker 4 (00:57):
Oh, my stary blast to me, I will try to
build a better life for me. No else will byecause say.

Speaker 5 (01:17):
I'm a survivor, and you'll be mine to me.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
That's Jessica Willis Fisher singing her beautiful and moving song
My History from her album Brand New Day.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
I had been told that to be a good daughter,
I must obey that to be a good Christian, I
must submit that to be safe, I had to stay silent.
I had given up my voice to survive. It was
time I took it back. Every beautiful and broken part
of my story was mine.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Jessica's is a story of stunning resilience in the face
of duplicity, deceit, gaslighting, and a childhood marked by ongoing
incessant abuse. It's also the story of being saved by
an indomitable spirit and by a transcendent gift. And just
so you know, this finale of our eighth season is

(02:21):
going to be a two parter. A thank you to
all our amazing and devoted Family Secrets listeners. My story.

(02:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Why childhood our stories start before we even show up
on the scene with all of us. And I had
a story that you know, at two and a half
years old, there was a tragedy in my extended family,
and some of my earliest memories were very much framed
and influenced by this very recent occurrence. And by the

(03:26):
time I have a more solid chronological memory starting three
and a half four years old, it was already so
shaped by these really kind of hard and traumatic events
that all the adults around me were dealing with. And
the way that showed up for me was I knew

(03:48):
that even as my life was getting started, death could
be kind of even just a second away. Being a
super young child and knowing that other young children were
suddenly gone overnight, I think that really shapes you in

(04:09):
a nutshell. I had some aunts and uncles that had
passed away in a car accident, and I remember that
being one of the earliest things that I learned about.
I think I had a really kind of loving and innocent,
you know, early life and early years. I was homeschooled.
I was constantly around my mother, who was bright and attentive,

(04:33):
loved to teach, loved babies, loved children, and by the
time I was four years old, there were four kids
in my family. So we learned at home with mom
while dad went to work nine to five for a
company in Chicago. And we would play blocks, and we

(04:54):
would do our flash cards, and we would learn our
numbers and our shape, you know, as many children do,
whether it's in the home, whether it's maybe preschool. But
we would go to church on Sundays where my grandpa
was the pastor, and I'd seen my little friends there
at church, and occasionally my cousins who lived out of

(05:17):
state but not too far would come in and there
was like a really predictable, kind of wholesome rhythm to
my life. Again, with the asterisk, you know, hanging over
everything is that life isn't necessarily guaranteed, because tragedy can
strike at any moment. Through my young eyes. I thought

(05:41):
my mom was just so full of light and so beautiful.
She had these freckles on her nose and her eyes.
You know, it's a cliche, but they really did seem
to sparkle. She had a beautiful smile. She just really
seemed to love what she was doing when she interacted

(06:02):
with us, whether that be teaching us, whether that be
making food and you know, letting us participate. And I
felt really close to her. Initially, the first nine years
of my life didn't have any huge changes. It was just,
you know, school got a little bit more complex and

(06:24):
challenging and fun. We learned to play, you know, songs
on the piano. We would observe kind of the rhythm
of as each year went by, things like Easter. You know,
you're just kind of storing up these memories of the
holidays and the special times and the rhythm with my
dad going to work. You know, our time with him

(06:46):
was in the evenings and the weekends. Basically every year
to aft there was there was a new kid. And
how do we even know what normal is or if
normal is even a real thing. You know, whatever we
experience day to day that that's all that we know,
especially when we're so young. And the one thing that

(07:06):
did seem maybe a little outside the norm is I
knew that not all families had six kids that close together.
But I would say, because of our religion and our
extended family, there were enough families that had lots of
kids that didn't even feel so strange just because of
the environment that I was in.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
And was homeschooling part of your parents' religious belief system.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
Well, the way that I would have understood that is that,
particularly on my dad's side of the family, I said,
my grandfather was a pastor, and I very much interpreted
and understood that there were a number of things that
were passed down that Dad was bringing from his family
and his upbringing, and we're going to be really important

(07:57):
and foundational in the family that we were building. I
would say those things would be our religion, Protestant Evangelical Christianity.
My grandpa was a Baptist pastor, and then you know,
not just a religion that we observe once a week
on the weekend, but also this deep principle that some
of life's biggest decisions should be made through the lens

(08:21):
of our religion, and whether that be having a bunch
of kids. But also homeschooling was something that was a
part of my dad's upbringing. And you know, my mom
had gone to Christian High School, Christian College. My dad
and mom had met at the Christian high school briefly

(08:41):
they overlapped a little bit there, and so the idea
that whether it was homeschooling or not, that the education
should be essentially a Christian education, and what better way
to do that than in the home with the Christian parents.
And my mom had studied secondary education anyway, so she
definitely had a you know, a skill set there and
a passion there. So that just really felt like a

(09:03):
natural extension of things that my grandparents had decided and
incorporated and then had been passed down. And we were
the you know, the next generation carrying on these traditions
and these principles.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
So you're living in Chicago with your five other siblings,
all very close in age, and every one of your
names begins with the letter J. There's Jess, Jerregeen, jet Jack,
and Jedi Is that right?

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yes? Correct? Jedi fuel name is Jedediah, but we would
call him Jedi.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
What was with the Jays?

Speaker 3 (09:40):
As far as I understood it. The story was that
if there had been more boys, it would have been
the prophets. It would have been you know, Jeremiah, Daniel Ezekiel,
those sorts of things. They were going to kind of
stick with that theme. But there were three girls in
the first four kids, and they just kind of agreed
on a name by name, and when they got down

(10:01):
to the fifth kid, they went, it's kind of weird
to not have Jay's at this point. So I guess
they just stuck with that momentum after after the fourth kid.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
In nineteen ninety nine, Jessica's family's life changes. The tragic
accident that occurred when she was an infant, in which
her aunts and uncles lost their lives eventually results in
a wrongful death civil suit and a massive, I mean
one hundred million dollar a massive settlement. As one of
the beneficiaries of the settlement, her father receives a very

(10:35):
significant sum of money.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
I did not know kind of what that number was
or what that meant in a very real way for
my family, my extended family. You know. I just remember
being like, oh, Dad's going to do something called retire.
He's going to retire, and that just means that I'm
going to get to, you know, play blocks with Daddy

(11:02):
on more than just the evenings and the weekends. You know,
Daddy's not going to have to go to work, which
was just crazy because everybody's daddy worked or maybe their
mommy as well, you know. And it didn't happen right away,
but eventually my grandfather also would step back from his pastorship.
That took a little while, but you know, the biggest
measurable difference was, oh, we're going to be able to

(11:23):
get a bigger house. To my recollection, nobody brought in
the you know, the kids under ten and sat down
and went, hey, comprehensively, this is what it means for
our family, and this is what the road map is.
You know, this was unforeseen for all of us, so,
you know, it was this windfall, and I think it
eventually turned into the shape of tragedy followed by blessing.

(11:44):
I certainly had already learned plenty of Bible stories where
that kind of dynamic was evident. We didn't know exactly
what was going to follow. I was just happy that
we're going to get more bedrooms now instead of having
all the kids in in one room. You know, and
I didn't know any different. I didn't dislike that. I

(12:04):
was always surrounded by siblings and like I said, you know,
toys in school and all of that. But I just
knew big change was coming. Never dreamed that we would
be moving so far away and that those changes would
be so far reaching. So my parents looked for homes
in the greater Chicagoland area for a while. I believe

(12:24):
it was multiple years, and it started getting a little strange.
I remember going to a couple of these places and
just feeling like they were palaces. I'd never even seen
a house that big, and just my dad being very
unhappy with that. So I guess that started giving me
a little more context on just how much things had changed.
You know, if Dad could kind of not be happy

(12:47):
with this, you know, what is he looking for? And
I think the other thing that's important, and I could
even feel at the time, was that when my grandfather
did leave, the church was at odds with the kind
of the changing of the guard, and I probably will
never understand all the minutia about that. But another large

(13:08):
family with a bunch of kids kind of came in
and the father was going to become the new pastor,
and Dad was not getting along with him, and you know,
the finer points of the theology or the philosophy was
again a little bit beside the point and above my head.
But I knew that that was a source of tension.

(13:29):
And you know, our community other than our family was
this church, and to kind of feel like maybe that
was not going to continue. So we were looking for
a new home, and you know, maybe we were going
to have to be looking for a new church as well.
So more and more of the bonds were kind of
loosening around us. And I remember being told at one

(13:51):
point that they had been looking at houses in all
sorts of different states. Now, my parents saw this amazing
house and property online in nash which I'd never heard of,
and Dad went on a trip and he called my
mom and said, like, this is it. We're going to
make an offer. We're not going to look whatever that
adult conversation was is just this immediate kind of overnight

(14:14):
all right, We're going to go see this new house
in this place called Nashville.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
We live life forward, of course, but when it comes
to our earliest memories, especially when those memories are traumatic,
we're left to put together the pieces as we've become
adults and we're able to understand in retrospect and supply
language to what it is that we remember.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Along with the jumble of earliest memories, is you know,
a memory that does not have that much unique about
it other than I remember being in my parents' bed
and my father was touching me, talking to me. And
as you do as a child, there are many things
that you experience or see or learn about that you

(15:05):
don't have words for or you don't really understand. And
there's a certain amount of trust that, oh, the caretakers
and the adults around me can help me with this,
or I'm going to eventually learn the vocabulary that describes
this new food that I've tried, or this new activity
that I've been taught or something. But in this moment

(15:27):
of this interaction with my dad, the moment that my
mom kind of came into my view, I was just
just etched in my memory. The next time I saw
my mother's face, I think it was just maybe minutes
later or whatever, but I had been in their bedroom
and she was coming out of their bathroom, and her
skin was clean, and her hair was up in a

(15:47):
towel and it was just I had this overwhelming sense
that I should say something to her, that I should
kind of maybe tell her what happened, but I didn't
know what to say. I didn't have names for the
body part involved, They didn't you know, I didn't really
know how to convey to her what had just happened.
I also didn't know why I felt compelled to say something,

(16:07):
So it felt kind of like I was, you know,
a secret was created in that moment, but not because
I didn't want to tell. I just didn't know how.
And it speaks to how young I was. Again, that
was probably around three and a half years old or
four years old. I only have a handful of memories
that go back that far. And there's some things about
this memory that makes me wonder. This might not have

(16:30):
been the first time that my father, you know, had
behaved inappropriately towards me. It's just the first one that
I can remember. So, you know, throughout these younger years homeschooling,
you know, nine and under, there were continued touching and
interactions with my dad that never happened with either anyone
else in the room at all, or maybe as he

(16:52):
was tucking me into bed at night, he would say
a little something or do little something, and you know,
over time and pattern, it was very clear that this
was something. You know, we didn't ever talk about it
in front of anybody else, No one else was ever involved,
and glaringly obvious my mom was was very much not involved,
and so I did wonder as to why that was.

(17:15):
And other than the actions themselves, I think the only
kind of what I would now understand to be grooming
that was happening was that my dad would kind of
drop information. He would kind of frame it as if
he was teaching me something, Oh, you need to do this,
you know, it'll make you feel this way, or it's
something you need to learn so that one day when

(17:35):
you're the mommy, you know, mommies and daddies do this,
like that sort of narrative, and then working in occasionally
you know, mom doesn't know that he would say things
that were negative towards my mom, which at some point
I just kind of filled in the blanks like, oh,
Mom's not involved in this, because this is maybe even

(17:56):
a reaction to like something that's adult that I don't understand,
and maybe my dad is madam my mom about or
there's something that's not quite right. But he's teaching me
so that I will know and kind of be special
and be better and I won't have these same struggles.
But you know, not talked about a lot at all,
even between us, but when he needed to frame it,

(18:19):
that's kind of the frame that he gave it. And
I would say prior to us moving to Tennessee, prior
to me turning nine, because I turned mind just after removed.
You know, I did not attach any sort of pain
or overwhelm or panic to any of those interactions with

(18:42):
my dad. I was very eager to please. I loved him.
I wanted him to be proud of me. He was
very much in control of the whole system. I had
already ingested that Dad was at the top. Mom was
there to help and support and submit to, and that
his frame was a really beautiful, wonderful thing that God

(19:04):
had said this was the best way to raise your family,
and it was all going to work out. Daddy was
our protector and our leader, and Mom was the caretaker.
And you know, if there was ever a moment of
concern or knowing that something was wrong, it actually wasn't
about what Dad was doing to me. I remember really
being disturbed one day when I realized that, hey, something

(19:27):
is off between my mom and my dad, and I
care and love for my dad. I care and love
for my mom, and she was really upset and kind
of scared for him to come home one random day
from work. And it was the first time I had
ever noticed her anxiety and unhappiness, and I didn't understand

(19:47):
the reason for it, but I just kind of realized, Oh,
mom cares for me, Mom cares for my siblings, Mom
cares for dad. Who cares for mom? Like I realized
that when you set up the system in that way,
you know, there's this lack of care and support, and
you know that I saw that. I glimpsed in my

(20:09):
mother and I internalized that as much as possible, I
needed to take care of her. And I was told
in my role at the best way to fit into
our family system was to obey, to not be disobedient,
to not be you know, too much or hard to handle.
You know, I wanted to please and make my dad happy.

(20:30):
Most of those ways weren't this secret, confusing thing, but
that was included, and with my mom it was, you know,
I don't know what the issue is here. Something seems
wrong about it, But I'm going to try to do
all that I can to make her smile and make
her happy because she was just so full of light
and so like, how could you not want her to
be happy and cared for?

Speaker 1 (20:52):
And to add to that the insidiousness of and this
I guess is part of the grooming process, is that
you dad would compare you to your mom and say,
you know, you do that so much better than your mom,
or your mom doesn't know how to do that, And
so I can imagine the shame, guilt, responsibility, love for

(21:15):
your mother and this dawning realization that there's something really
difficult going on for her. She's in some kind of
real trouble, you know, and doesn't have anyone protecting her. Yeah,
we'll be right back. When Jessica's family moves into their

(21:42):
new expansive house in Nashville, it seems their whole world
is expanding too. Her parents have more children pretty soon.
Jessica is one of twelve kids. The homeschooling continues, but
it's different now, bigger, more involved. It's no longer just
Jessica's mom making little lesson plans. Now they have living

(22:03):
teachers for all sorts of subjects, dance, music, horseback riding. Meanwhile,
the house itself is in a constant state of renovation.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
The house was kind of under construction the whole time
we were there. But really, you got to imagine a
child like in Narnia when they go to the country
and they're they're exploring this huge house, and around every
corner is something that feels magical, and you know, it
is a nine thousand square foot home from a two
bedroom apartment. You look at it, it's quite a privileged life.

(22:37):
It was a rich life, and I was so young
that there was a lot I was not appreciating about it.
But even just the land itself was over one hundred
and eighty two acres at the time, and you know,
we came just before spring, so there is this real,
just magical, elemental, overwhelming bounty of a southern spring that

(22:58):
I've never in my life you've seen. So I loved it.
And our life was now not the same as most
people that we met, and they were all new people,
you know, because we're coming into a new community. We
were not very cut off. We found another church, you know,
we were pretty integrated with that church. For quite a while.

(23:20):
We would offer our home and our land and church
events what happen there, and you know, you try to
kind of make friends again, mostly through church or some
other neighbor families because we're way more out in the
country now, so getting to know your neighbors. You know,
neighbor is a loose term when you're on a piece
of land that's you know, hundreds of acres. But you know,

(23:42):
other homeschooling families we kind of got connected to, and
you know, I would counter other kids whose lives were
so different. They went to public school, they may or
may not have been religious, they did not have lived
dance teachers and music teachers and all these kind of
extracurricular things. Maybe they played soccer or something, and you know,
I'd laid with what's your favorite book? Because I was

(24:03):
a voracious reader, and they would just go, I don't
really like books. And I would have this reaction that
came from the way my parents talked about the philosophical
choices they were making, and I just thought, Wow, these kids'
parents really aren't raising them right, you know. And I'm
like ten years old thanking this, But the space between
not really being able to connect with my peers and

(24:26):
other children. We either had nothing in common or there
was this dynamic of but I wish I was in
your family. It just looks so fun, And I was like,
I know, it is so fun, but.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Of course it's not all fun. In fact, it's dangerous.
Jessica understands that much of her lifestyle is one of privilege,
and she knows why other kids are envious, but that's
just how things look from the outside. Inside, the abuse
from Jessica's father continues.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
You know, when I'm nine ten, we are still attending church.
There's this idea of right and wrong and things that
are appropriate, things are inappropriate, and so I have gotten
this understanding that something about that is definitely not right,
to the point where I'm not just going to casually
bring it up and just see what happens. I feel

(25:16):
the need to kind of make sure this doesn't come
to light. And still I think just kind of giving
my dad that benefit of the doubt, and that well,
he's the adult, you know, And yes, I know I
have another adult present here in a way, but you know,
I've already kind of been inoculated from going to her

(25:37):
because she is either wrong in this situation or doesn't
know about the situation, you know, and it did feel
like I was going to protect her by not I
kind of need to go to her for help. But
I feel like, one she can't help me, and two
that's going to undermine this idea of trying to protect
her and not give her more. You know, she's now

(25:58):
has seven kids, eights, and she's always pregnant. There's always something.
She's kind of running this drastically big household, so there's
never this one on one time, you know, even compared
to how it used to be. There's so much less
time with her. So what ended up happening is during

(26:19):
the renovations that are happening in this house, you know,
there was this time where we all kind of were
sleeping in the same area. There was this master bedroom
suite that frankly was as big as our previous whole home.
I think I was just very over the top. And anyway,
we're all sleeping in there for a short amount of time.

(26:41):
And so that's what helps me understand that this is
quite early in our move to Tennessee, because it is
kind of one of the first things that happened with
the house and the construction. But I woke up to
my dad lifting me out of bed, and he took
me around kind of the corner again of suite and
there was a sink area, and he put me up

(27:03):
on the sink and did something he had never done before,
and it was way more invasive, and it was an
extremely uncomfortable, unpleasant experience in a way that none of
the other stuff had been. And to just show how
how much I would go along with this, Dad would

(27:25):
tell me that I was supposed to touch myself and
would ask me if I had, and I would say yes,
and you know, it was just our routine. And one
time he asked me, you know, have you done this?
And I said yes, and I told him I'd done
it a lot of times and he just kind of
laughed at me and called me a liar. And again,
still just really over my head, not something that I
was worried about. I was more worried about blying to

(27:48):
my dad than I was, you know, trying to say, hey,
this is wrong or this is unsafe. But this moment
was totally different. I wanted to get out of my
body and it was the first time you kind of
have this, you know, they say out of body experience,
and I would have loved to be out of my

(28:08):
body because there was kind of no place to hide.
And that is a deeply traumatic moment for me. It
colored everything that came before, because I very much understood
that this was connected, you know, to actions that on
the surface were different, but I understood that they were sexual.

(28:29):
I understood that they were inappropriate. And now I understood
that whether he had the plan to come to this
moment all the way at the beginning or not, these
were very much connected and I never wanted this particular
thing to happen again.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Well, and they were escalating. That was an escalation.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
Yes, I understood then and certainly understand now that's a
major escalation. My mother came to me and just asked,
straight up, was like, has Dad done anything weird? Has
he touched has he touched it? And she just kind
of gestures with her hand, and it really is quite

(29:07):
a vague question, but I knew what she was talking about.
And I'm between eights of probably nine and a half
and ten and a half somewhere in there in the stage,
and just you know, the shame, the coloring of the cheeks,
the flush of like I'm so uncomfortable. This is embarrassing.
I feel guilty. I just felt so bad. And why

(29:28):
haven't I told mom if this is bad? And I
know it's bad, why haven't I said something to her?
Why haven't I done this? And really, as this is
all happening in my head, I'm going back one to
the moment when I had first had that inclination to
tell her, Hey, something just happened. But I still feel
that same like lock on my mouth, like I don't

(29:52):
I still don't know what to say, Like how do
I explain this horrible thing that just happened. I definitely
don't have the vocabulary for that. And I'm also immediately
feeling relief because I'm nod and she doesn't ask any
for the questions. She says, Okay, he has Okay, it's
not your fault. It's all gonna be okay. And I'm

(30:16):
so relieved to hear this, because I certainly don't want
to be talking about the details. I just try to
forget it happens. As soon as something happens, and now
it'll stop, and thank goodness, the adults. There's still so
much I don't understand about this. But if it's just
gonna stop. I'm fine not interrogating the issue and just
moving on.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
But that's not what happens, No, not at all.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Initially. You know, I hear my mom raise her voice
to Dad, which really stands out. I have no memory
of that prior to this moment. I cannot hear what
they're saying, but I interpreted that as, Wow, she's really
kind of confronting him, and I think, I mean, certainly,
the reason it sticks out is Mom confronting Dad does

(31:04):
not fit with that pecking order, that hierarchy of how
the whole family system is supposed to work. And I
fail to grasp that, of course, this is really going
to have no effect because my dad still has all
of that kind of god given authority, and you know,
my mom, she's still going to be there the next morning,

(31:26):
serving him, serving us, being our mother. You know, nothing
changes day to day. There were periods where it would
be a nightly thing, and there'd be periods where it
didn't happen for a while, and it would start up
and be slightly different or escalate a little and it
stops dead cold. But you know, time will tell, and
unfortunately things do pick up before long but there's this

(31:50):
process before that where Dad definitely starts changing his interaction
with me. There's what I would now call much more
hypical grooming efforts. It's, hey, I have a gift for you. Hey,
you know I want to get a hug from you.
Oh you're pulling away from me. Don't be cold, you know,

(32:13):
really pouring on that what you need to do to
be special and get certain privileges. And you know, I
have not suddenly overnight changed to seeing my dad as
this horrible beast. He is still number one, the person
in charge, but number two someone that I love and
have spent my whole life so far trying to live

(32:35):
up to whatever it is that he would like me
to be. So he starts, you know, finding ways to
get close with me and isolate me even within our home.
Why don't you come over to the side of the
house and do this special project with me and no
one else is around. And I vaguely remember there being
a conversation with my mom that amounted to something like, hey,

(32:59):
all you sisters and girls, don't be alone with dad.
Like it wasn't some Hey, this is what I figured out.
Let me explain what happened. Let me. It wasn't I
need more information. It was just kind of, hey, let's
let's make sure we're being smart. And you know, I
don't know what all that means at that time, and
so it's just kind of vaguely there. I know some
conversation like that happened, but if it was hey, don't

(33:22):
be alone with dad, well, what am I actually supposed
to do next time? He gives me a command? And
that just seemed like there was no teeth behind that rule.
It's like having a law, but there's no way to
uphold it. And eventually he worked back up to kind
of touching me again. But I don't tell my mom,

(33:42):
and it just really does come back down to like, actually,
that didn't change anything. So like I tell her, and
it's still not going to change anything. And it's not
my job. I'm the child, and I think it's so
hard not to look back and be hard on myself
and or hard on my mom. And there's accountability, of course,
that needs to be there, but I mean my actions

(34:04):
kind of speak for themselves, and that I didn't trust
that it was really going to change anything, so I didn't,
you know, she kind of asked, Hey, help me protect you, like,
you know, don't do these things, and I did them anyway,
but I kind of felt like I didn't really have
a choice.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah, I mean that seems clear from the fact that
you did. You know, you did take that risk, and
you did say yes, you're a child, and you you
finally you speak what is unspeakable, and nothing changes. So
why would you think that anything would or that it
would be safe or useful to say anything else.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
I was just glad I didn't get in trouble.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Were you afraid of your father? Because there is this
threat of violence that's running throughout and beatings and hitting
your mother and hitting your kids, and these wrestling games
that aren't really games.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
And kind of like everything else, it starts in one
location and ends up a million miles in another place.
And yet I think there's a clear thread, the clear escalation.
I think we didn't change paths. You know, I can
look back at the beginning and see that these seeds
had been growing for a long time and initially, you know,
just the teaching of how discipline was going to happen

(35:20):
is that the Bible told parents to spake their children
to discipline them, to modify their behavior. But Also there
was this larger teaching that I heard from multiple pulpits
and teachings and sermons and things, that we're all sinners,
and we are all bad at heart. Our bodies are

(35:42):
the flesh tempts us, you know, as children will be
tempted to pinch our brothers. As adults, there's things like
murder and adultery, you know, right here in the Ten Commandments,
which we would constantly go over with Mom and a
Sunday school and things. And so this teaching, a lot
of times it's called total depravity, is like the theological word,
and I certainly heard a lot of theological phrases between

(36:04):
my dad my grandpa. A lot of kids wouldn't even
hear things like this unless they were going to seminary
at some point and they're an adult. But I actually
did hear these things as kids. And so the teaching
of you know, children are born naturally bad with the
sin nature, and that the proper way a parent to

(36:26):
truly love their child is to instruct them in the
way that they should go so that they will become
good adults. And that's thinking is definitely a part of that.
And there's something to be said about where do we
know that something like that is wrong? Our body tells us.
You know, my body told me that incident when Dad

(36:47):
did something new and it was horrible. It was my
body that was telling me a no, no, no, I
got to get out. I did not have a thought
or a teaching that told me it was wrong. It
was a really visceral physical sense. And as far as
you know, the spanking and stuff, my mom was so
so viewed it as having a place, a proper place.

(37:10):
But she much rather talk to us, much rather reason
with us, appeal to our better natures, have this right
a couple of Bible verses, or apologize, you know, as
opposed to I'm just going to spank you. In fact,
if that felt necessary, she would usually well Dad is
going to spank you. So she wasn't even really seen
as a person who could do the worst version of that.

(37:33):
I stole something when I was really a little still
in Chicago, and I think I had done that maybe
a couple times, and it started bothering my parents. I
was like, okay, wait a second, do we have a
little kleptomaniac on our hands? And I got whooked. I
mean it was it was bad had bruises, and I

(37:54):
did not view that as wrong, but my body was
so terrified, you know. And so this is quite young.
And although I loved being a perfect little girl, you know,
occasionally I would get in trouble. And it really is
a great motivator to not be bad. Whatever that standard is,

(38:15):
whatever your parents, you know, are saying, this is what
a good girl does, is what a bad girl does.
The punishment is pretty darn severe. And even when I
wasn't in trouble, I have all these other younger siblings,
and some of them were quite troublesome according to my parents.
And you know, by the time we're living in Tennessee,
by the time I'm going, wait, there's this thing that
I'm a part of, and I don't feel safe. If

(38:36):
you ask me, am I afraid of my dad? There
is a part of me that lives in fear of
not crossing a line to where I'm going to be
under that paddle and if I scream or move, he's
going to start over and it's going to be dozens
and dozens of hits. And I'm going to live for that,
you know. And that sounds extreme, and I'm not trying

(38:57):
to just be sensational. But I mean, how many times
is that have to happen for you to straighten up?
As you graduate up, it's no longer just don't pinch
your brother, It's be sweet, be kind, do not, under
any circumstances turn into a worldly teenager that talks back
to their parents. And I'm starting to approach that threshold

(39:19):
and certainly want to do whatever I can to fit
into this system and this family and this religion and
so learning about the fruits of the spirit and everything.
And I saw my mom work so hard to smile,
to be kind and long suffering and all of these things,
and see her struggle and crack at times. And now

(39:41):
I have this frustration of she hasn't been able to
stop this, she hasn't been able to help me. And
now I'm feeling that if I get angry, I'm wrong.
How am I supposed to never be angry, never be upset,
never be petty, never be reactive. And I don't succeed,

(40:01):
and you know, I start to have this reputation of like, oh,
you're turning into a teenager, and you know, there is
this war to kind of try to be a good
Christian girl while understanding that some very not good things
were happening.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
In the midst of all else going on in Jessica's home,
her parents become very set on their children, all twelve

(40:38):
of them, becoming musical performers. This begins at home with
music tutors and continues in church, and then it escalates.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
I think that some of my siblings are very naturally gifted,
naturally talented, and pretty much that always means, though whether
there's initial interest or ability was also per with For example,
the second sibling, my brother, he worked very hard, obsessively.
He would sit and you know, play his whistle over
and over. But he was nine years old and able

(41:11):
to play full speed music that matched the records like this,
really complex Irish folk music as good as the professionals.
And you know, I mean, I think that's where a
lot of people throw around the word prodigy, and we
don't usually mean that someone sat down and never practiced
and just automatically was amazing. But with work and with
this ability to really have skill at quite a young age.

(41:33):
So there was that happening for me, I wanted to
keep up. This is my younger brother, slightly younger brother,
and as he got to do things, I want to
be a part of that. You know. I think there's
naturally kind of competition within families as in you know,
especially when there's a lot of people on the scene.
Dad really wanted all of us to develop as many

(41:54):
skills as possible, and then that put him in the
position of having these adults come and say, how do
you get your kids to do this? We're not breaking
any records here, we're not making albums. The art itself
is not that remarkable. Usually at this time, it's just
the fact that we're so young and we're with the program.
And my dad would joke with people, wonderful well meeting

(42:16):
people that you know, we're in our lives and our
neighborhoods and our communities, just going how do you do
this with your kids? And Dad would joke and say, well,
it's amazing what you can do when you don't feed them,
you know. And we were not starved little urchins, but
at times, yes, food and even psychological safety was threatened.

(42:37):
What child would be if they're not responding to this bankings,
then they're locked out of the house or they're left
on the side of the road. And again it's not
an everyday occurrence, but how many times does it have
to happen for you to get a message of oh,
I better get this program. And so my dad was
really leading this charge, and I think it was a
natural extension that just wanting to attract more and more

(43:00):
people and show off. He sawt as his philosophy that
was developing us children. And we were told that from
the very beginning. It wasn't like, Wow, my kids are
so great, I'm so proud of them too. It's like, well,
that's what happens when you have a parent that you
know has this vision and has this ability. But my
dad was still putting most of his attention into his business.

(43:23):
Dad had this wrestling league, and this taps way back
into my own dad's upbringing, in his own dreams, and
this business is a way to reconnect with this sport
that he loves. Dad has quit all of that into
this wrestling league. Well, as it gets to this critical point,

(43:44):
we don't know exactly what's happened to all this money.
But between this huge house and the land of the
upkeep and the just bank carolling so many different things
and the business. It just really seems like it's in
this critical time. And it wasn't until that was no
law longer there taking up his attention that I feel
like he then came to look at us as, hey,

(44:08):
I've invested all of this time, and you know what
you are now going to be my next time's up.
I need my investment back and you're actually going to
be my next business venture.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
To make critical matters more critical. Around this time, the
Fisher family's nine thousand square foot home burns to the ground.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
It was the day after Christmas. We were without power.
We cleared off our driveway, left the house because the
heat wasn't working, and it was like forty degrees or
something in the house, and we returned to the whole
thing just being a blaze on fire. The fire and
news are already there. They run out of water. They're

(44:55):
trying to bring in more water, and the house was
kind of l shaped and so the short end of
the was completely level except for you know, chimneys and
a really mangled roof. There's a most shocking thing you
can see. And my dad jumped out to try to
help the firefighters or just check in what was going on,
and you know, he had his offices for his whole

(45:16):
business there, he had tapes for the next season of
the televised competition and all this again lots of details
I don't necessarily know, but you know, very definitive end
to that chapter of my story. And it was super
weird because it felt like such a tragedy and yet

(45:39):
remembering that, at least for us older kids, there was
this fiery tragedy at the very beginning of our lives
and people died in it. Our aunts and uncles died,
and nobody died in this. The house was gone, and
did I love it? Yes, all my toys, all my instruments.
While everything was inside, I had started writing, so I
was like my writing, you know. But we were all

(46:01):
in the car, and we were all safe, and there
was something like immediately this idea that our extended family testimony.
There's tragedy every day, But the thing that stood out
in people's minds was when that happens, and you praise
God or you don't, at least at least you don't
curse God. You know, you view this in a long

(46:23):
term kind of religious view. So there really was no
question that that was what we were going to like
that's all that we knew is that, you know, and
especially when there was like six of my siblings could
have died and we're all here.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
But still it ends up feeling like it's a a
before and after moment, it seems, for sure, and your
father's behavior seems to escalate, at least in terms of
his temper and his violent outbursts. After that.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, there's this weird in between time the next couple year,
because dad tried to keep the business going. You know,
are we going to rebuild the house? What's going to happen?
My dad was really trying to retain control. He was
not ready to give up I think this vision of
what he had been building, and so we tried to
keep up with the same sort of thing, but you know,
we didn't have the same money. The kids that were

(47:20):
born in that house view it, you know, so differently.
But I was like, okay, it actually in some level
makes sense to me. Here we go, we go back
to having a place where we all have one bathroom,
like it just I was like, Okay, this was too
good to be true. It didn't last. The business eventually
completely failed. The house there was eventual clarity that it's

(47:43):
never going to be rebuilt a gradual thing. But you know,
within a couple of years, all of a sudden, we
looked around and Dad was kind of riding us with
a bullet. Dad basically took the reins for my mom
and said, you are not doing a good enough job
with these kids. You know, none of you are performing
to my standards. So now I'm your coach. Now, I'm

(48:03):
your dance teacher now. And the truth is he couldn't
afford to pay anyone else now, but he just was like,
you know what, what's actually most important about this is
me and my teachings, and I'm going to turn you
into something that's profitable. And it started with a dance
exhibition once a year, and then it turned into once
a month, and then you know, we played our first

(48:24):
little music gig not long after the house had burned down,
and that just escalated over time. I would say the
years of like two thousand and five, even up to
like twenty twelve was the slow march of developing an act.
So those years really blur together, and then it gets
really weird around twenty twelve.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
By twenty twelve, Jessica's father's dreams have gotten bigger. They
are in fact too big. He has major plans for
the kids. They will record their music, they will perform
well paying get they will make a profit, and in
the meantime he's been advised to set up a financial
annuity which will not only keep them afloat, but also

(49:09):
enable them to buy musical equipment and to go on tour.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
So now we're traveling everywhere in a fifteen passenger van
and you just plump up against realizing that most of
society isn't set up for a family of fourteen. You know,
you can't get a table at a restaurant. You can't,
you know, and people stare at you, and so, you
know what, that's okay. Dad was steering us in a
direction that was obviously more and more strange and sensational,

(49:36):
to the point where we'd go to the grocery store
and we'd hear, you should have your own TV show.
And there's families that have been on TV at that point,
and Dad had kind of been on the outskirts of
TV stuff, and I think that got in his head
and he, you know, he realized it's one thing to
have twelve kids in a row, get up and do
a little dance together, or do a concert together. But

(49:58):
what everybody's interested and is the fact that we're all
in a family. How do you get your kids to
do that? You know, it's that same question, But now
we're years down the road. In twenty twelve, we made
our first record, and a big part of what we
did was compete, and since we got started in Irish
music in Chicago, it was part of our heritage. We

(50:19):
had continued going to Ireland and competing, and we basically
got a title in twenty twelve in one of the
band competitions that was a World Championship title, and we
put out an album and that now felt there was
something cool about what we were doing. And you work
so hard and you're pushed so far, and then you

(50:42):
start to get a little bit of traction. And what
I loved was getting to see other people, getting to travel,
getting to have these experiences. And I was very willing
to trade my kind of attention and time and skills
to be able to kind of experience more of that.
And right around that time was kind of also the

(51:06):
end of the graphic sexual abuse for me. It was
almost like Dad was ready to ask me for something else,
like there was something else you wanted more from me,
And I don't know that I could have really kind
of sustained both of those things that now he wanted
what I was writing and my voice and my skill.
He had to push me to become this kind of

(51:28):
spokes person and developed me into this entity.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Jessica and her siblings become a successful touring band. She's
around eighteen or nineteen, and her dad hasn't sexually abused
her for two or three years, but the abuse itself
hasn't stopped. Her mother is worried it's happening with another child,
and she brings it up with Jessica again, and her
mother uses a word Jessica hasn't heard before. The word

(52:01):
is molested. This is the first time Jessica understands that
her dad could actually go to jail for the things
he's done.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
My response was to expend all the energy I could
to just pretend that never happens, never think about it,
move forward. I worked so hard not to remember it.
But because it wasn't happening specifically with me, he was
abusing others in the family. But I never asked, Hey,
this particular sister did this particular thing happen? It was, Oh,

(52:32):
something else has triggered this. Mom is paranoid all over again.
We all kind of talk about the problem. And when
I say we all, you know, initially it's just me
and mom, and then it's me and mom and a
few sisters, and then afterwards it just goes back to,
you know, we're all a little bit more paranoid, we're
all a little bit more on edge, but we are
still doing the same thing in ignoring it. And again,

(52:56):
I want to be really careful that I'm not speaking
to other people's experiences or mindfrel so at least for me,
just don't think about it, don't let it happened, just
move forward. And this moment really shakes that for the
first time because Mom says a few specific things. She says, hey,
this particular sister said Dad has been doing stuff. And

(53:16):
just to show you how some of the dialogue was
talking about it without talking about it, Mom says, you know,
Dad is doing stuff to the sister, and I say,
like me, and Mom just goes worse. And I remember thinking,
wait a second, I've never told you what he's done.
And since the last time I talked to you. You know,

(53:36):
it's been this whole escalating behavior over years, but how
can you say worse or better, you know, compare? And
so I'm in this moment struggling with like, I can't
believe I'm here again. What's going on? I don't really
want to know? And my brother comes in and asks
what's going on? And mom says dad has been molesting
the girl, And I'm just shocked because I was like,

(54:00):
if we're using this word now, why do we use
that word before? I know it's kind of this official
feeling word, and I still have a very limited vocabulary,
but I knew that that did apply to my situation.
And speaking of vocabulary, my brother asks, did he rape them?
And both my mom and I like screamed no. I

(54:21):
wasn't really clear on what that word even necessarily meant.
Most of us have some idea in our head of
what that means, but there's a range of things. So
it's a really confusing jumble of time, and there's certain
things that feel very distinct and clear to me that
have like not faded with the years at all, and
other trunks that are missing. But what was really new

(54:43):
about that is that one of my brothers found out,
but Dad did not confirm anything. Nobody talks specifics. I
did not volunteer specifics. I did not go to any
of my sisters and ask specifics. And what was so
crazy was that once again that incident was treated the
exact same way.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
This is the closed depart one of Jessica's story. There's more,
much more to come. Here's Jessica singing from River Runaway.

(55:39):
Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Acre 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
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

(56:00):
me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd like
to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.

Speaker 5 (56:09):
Shre Line, Pull Me On to Hell, It come in
Pool with the Window, Sunshine coming down to the same.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.