November 20, 2025 • 54 mins
CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses domestic violence and sexual assault.
Crystal Harris escaped the man who terrorized her, and in the process, challenged the institutions that failed her.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you are not alone. RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support in English and en Español. Call (800) 656-HOPE (4673) or Text HOPE to 64673.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, It's Andrea Gunning. Before we start this episode,
I want to let you know that we will be
talking explicitly about the realities of domestic violence and sexual assault,
so please be mindful with this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I came up with my plan, which was I'm going
to buy a gun. That's my way out. I still
remember walking into this gun store thinking that I cannot
believe this is my life. I can't believe this is
my life.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I have a thick skin. You're not going to be
able to offend me. I don't ever give off a
vibe of it's okay to mess with me.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
That's Crystal Harris.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Her story is.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
One of an intimate and personal betrayal, but it's also
a story of an institutional one. Crystal grew up in
the seventies in southern California, which.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
At the time was all orange groves. We lived out
in the middle of nowhere, and my parents were hippies.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
From an early age, Crystal was confident.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I have pictured myself as an adult since I was little,
I mean five years old, and the vision that always
came to me was a quote business woman. You know,
I saw myself with a briefcase and high heels.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
She's always been the kind of person who visualizes what
she wants and makes it happen.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I had my life all planned out. Just as I
saw myself as a business woman, I also saw myself
as a wife and mother. My plan was to graduate
at twenty one. Hopefully I would have met my husband
at some point in college, and we would get married
around twenty three after I started my career, and then
(02:23):
I wanted to have kids when I was thirty. That
was my plan.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Crystal's parents divorced when she was eight and she moved
in with her dad.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I saw my mom after the divorce. She didn't really
have a profession. She had married my dad when she
was eighteen, and she never went to school, and so
she had to like scramble a little bit. And it
made me realize I would never want to be left
in that position where I had to rely on someone
(02:56):
else for my financial security. So I entered my high
school in college years thinking I've got to have a skill,
I've got to know how to do something. It was
a formative lesson for Crystal. I was sixteen years old
and I said, I'm going to be a financial advisor.
And so once I graduated from high school, I got
(03:17):
accepted to college and chose finance as my major and
was off from there.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
During her last summer of college, Crystal was at home
in southern California working as a server at a restaurant.
One day, a new guy showed up at work.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
There was this buzz in the restaurant. One day, everyone
kept going, oh, my gosh, Sean is back. Sean is here?
Have you seen Sean? And I was like, who's Sean.
I finally see him over at the bar, and I
was just blown over. I thought he was gorgeous. He
was so good looking. He was strong, tan and blonde
(03:59):
and must skiller.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Sean quickly became one of her favorite coworkers.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I was a waitress. He was a bus boy, and like,
if I was just standing at a table with a
cup or a plate in my hand, he'd come up
and take it from me. He would never let me
walk all the way to the dishwasher.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
He was her type, and he caught her attention. An
all American boy and a former college athlete.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
He attended a private college and he was on their
baseball team. He was the pitcher, and I was impressed.
And then I learned that he was a math major,
and I was impressed by that too, because I thought, well,
you can't fudge it, and being a math major, I
respected it.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Crystal and Sean spent the whole summer flirting.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
One night, we all decided to go out after work.
We had been dancing all night and we'd been hanging
out with our other friends from work, and we were
kind of bar hopping and there's a little bench outside
and we were sitting on it and he just kissed me.
That led into us having this really cute, fun, almost
(05:11):
magical relationship that first year.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Crystal still had a year of college left. She drove
the hour home every weekend to spend time with Sean.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I would race down after school on Friday and it
would just be like, oh my god, I missed you.
It felt like every weekend was a vacation.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Every time she was around Sean, I.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Was totally smitten. He was different. I had never dated
anybody that I thought was smarter than me, but I
thought he was smarter than me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
After she graduated from college, Crystal turned her attention to
her next goal, getting a job. She'd gotten her degree
in finance and she wanted to be a financial advisor.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I really worked hard at getting my foot in the
door somewhere. I interviewed everywhere, all the major firms on
Wall Street.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Then she found a firm who gave her a chance,
but she would have to work for it.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
They said, if you can open twenty five accounts and
bring in five hundred thousand dollars in assets, then we'll
put you into our actual training program. And I said, okay,
fair enough. I worked my ass off and I was
able to get that done within four months, and so
I got hired.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
The firm had a branch in her and Shawn's town,
but before she started working there, they sent her to
New York City for a training program. Sean and Crystal
had been dating for two years, and Sean visited her
in New York when he could.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
They would do New York for the weekend as tourists.
At some point we were up at the top of
the Statue of Liberty, like in the Crown, and that's
where he proposed to me. I quickly said yes, and
I can remember saying we can get married when like
next week or a year. He said, whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
She planned their wedding in six months. Everything was falling
into place.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I felt totally sure. I love him, he loves me.
We're starting life together, and I was really in a
happy place in my life.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Her wedding day was picture perfect.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
It was lovely, beautiful. I was happy to be married,
but it just it felt like, of course I'm getting married,
like this is what I do, it's my plan, this
is a day that's supposed to come. It's here, let's
do it next on the list. We got married in January,
and by that June we purchased our first condo. It
(07:53):
started us like building our life.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Shawn's dad owned a used car our dealership in town,
and you got a job working there. But Sean's career
would be temporary. Early on, the couple made an agreement
when they were ready to start a family, Crystal would
be the breadwinner and Sean would stay at home with
the kids.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Neither of us believed in daycare, so he had always
said he'd be happy to stay home with them. And
I just thought to myself, Wow, great, that lets me
have my career but I could still have kids.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Knowing Sean would be a stay at home dad when
the time came, allowed Crystal to focus on building her career.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
The stock market opens at six thirty am West Coast time.
It was my job to manage people's portfolios, to figure
out what a client needed, what their goals were, what
their risk tolerance was, and invest appropriately. You either make
it or you don't, and so I always liked that
(09:00):
aspect that the sky was the limit.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Her husband supported her career wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Sean literally from the time we first met. He seemed
so proud to be with me. He just loved that
I was ambitious and that I knew where I was going.
I'd close some new account and I'd come home and
he would be just as happy as I was. We
(09:27):
would totally celebrate together.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
They were a regular couple in their twenties, spending weekends
with friends. They even joined a Rex softball team together,
which was especially fun because Sean could show off his
college baseball skills.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
We played every Wednesday night, and then we would always
go for pizza and beer after. It gave me a
chance to watch him be amazing, because he really was
athletically amazing. He could run faster than any man. He
could hit the ball further. I was like, Wow, I
know he loved me, and I loved him very much.
(10:11):
That was the base of everything at home.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
He was affectionate, doting, and for a while things were
really great living together. She began to notice they had
two different approaches to conflict.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I'm the type of person if I'm mad at you,
I will tell you right now, but one minute later,
I'm fine, it's out, it's over. But Sean would do
things where let's say he got off work at six,
he wouldn't come home until like nine or ten or whatever,
and he finally just like strolled through the door and
(10:50):
I go, what the hell, why are you late? And
he would be like, well, do you remember last Wednesday
when you said such and such to me? I've been
really mad about that.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Cristel had never seen someone hold onto resentment the way
that Sean did. Two years into the marriage, one of
their cars broke down, so for a week, Kristal and
Sean had to share a car. They both needed it
to get to work. Cristal started her job at six
point thirty in the morning. She would take a break
(11:23):
around eight thirty to pick Sean up and take him
to his job at the dealership. Within just a few days,
the car became a source of tension.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Every day he'd say, come pick me up, let's say
eight forty five, and I would get there and he
would still be in bed, or still in the shower,
whatever it was. He was nowhere near ready every day,
and I had had it. I was pissed. I didn't
like how he was just so dismissive of my time.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
But one day the fight over the car became something different.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
We got in a big fight over it. Eventually we
get in the car and I'm driving him to work
and we're still fighting. He's in the passenger seat. Next
thing I know, he took his left hand, it was
in a fist, and just sort of balked me in
(12:28):
my eye, on my cheek, and I just was reeling.
I pulled the car over, and I'm trying to get
my head together, trying to figure out what just happened.
I had never been hit before by a man in
(12:49):
my life. I just remember thinking, get him to work,
and then you're on your own. You've got the car,
You've got the safety of the office. Don't provoke him anymore.
I just shut my mouth, not fighting anymore.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
She had an instinctual reaction, which was to stay calm
and get him out of her car. Once she was alone,
she knew what she had to do.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Get back to the office, Call the police, call an attorney,
Call my mom. This is huge and my marriage is over.
That is what I did. I told everybody, and I
hired a divorce attorney and filed a police report. I
(13:35):
did everything I ever said I would do if a
man hit me.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
When Crystal got home that day.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
He had broken the whole sliding glass door.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But Sean wasn't home. He'd been arrested for assaulting Crystal.
She wanted to be far away from.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Him, and I got a restraining order. By the end
of that day, he was not allowed to come in
the house.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
They were separated for some time. About a month or
so went by. Then Crystal got a call from Sean's dad.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I respected his dad very much, and he was telling
me how devastated Sean is and how this was such
a huge wake up call for him. He knows he
did wrong. His dad kept saying, you know you're a
part of this family. We love you. Sean's already going
(14:30):
to anger management classes. I remember thinking, that's great that
they have such a thing. It was court ordered, and
it just seemed official.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
This was nineteen ninety eight, when court ordered anger management
was still new. This was Crystal's first time learning about it,
and she was relieved to hear he was getting help.
Despite what Sean had done, anger management sounded like it
was just what he needed.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I really thought that could be the key to us
getting back together.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
After talking to his dad, she was open to hearing
Sean out. She wanted his apology.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
I was willing to talk to him on the phone.
Was trying to get a sense of if he understood
how bad what he did was. He really seemed like
he was sorry and he did wrong. I thought, I
love him, he loves me. I love him. All he
(15:33):
needs is a little bit of help to figure out
why he did that and we can still have our
life together.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
But she wanted to let him know he'd messed up
and he would be held accountable for what he'd done.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I slowly let him back in the house. It took
two or three months. We had our divorce proceeding in
a I dropped everything except what I did not drop.
Was the actual police charge. He did it. He hit me,
and it was important to me that that stand. So
(16:15):
he was prosecuted and pled guilty, and that did go
on his record, and.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
The consequences he faced were long lasting.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
He was on probation for three years, and I felt
sufficiently satisfied that he was getting that help he needed
and that we were going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
That moment in the car felt like an outlier, and
there otherwise steady relationship.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
There's not like an infidelity issue. There was not even
a jealousy issue. I thought that was good. We never
fought about money. He was not a drinker, never took drugs,
didn't smoke, and I just thought that's a great foundation
for a good mayor mage and we loved each other.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Over the next three years, they slowly rebuild trust. Crystal
fell grounded, and her relationship with Sean.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I just remember thinking we should start thinking about having kids,
and it was part of my plan anyway. So the
following January of two thousand and two, I went off
the pill and we started trying to have a baby,
and I got pregnant immediately.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Crystal was thrilled.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I couldn't wait for Sean to get home and tell
him in person, Like I call him immediately and I'm like,
I am pregnant. He was happy. He was so happy.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Sean and Crystal found out that they were going to
have a boy. They felt really connected through her entire pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
He's treated me great. It was a very sweet time
in our relationship.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And in two thousand and two their son was born.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Sean was there. He was crying and loving and proud
of me and cheerleading and being perfect.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Their son became their whole world. That's when Sean quit
his job and, like the couple had planned, became a
stay at home dad.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
He was home with the baby and I was on
maternity leave for like four months and then I went back.
I thought our plan was working out pretty well.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
But once he quit working, something changed in Sean.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
The whole thing about putting me in my place and
the passive aggressiveness and that kind of stuff seemed to
pick up a lot. When Sean and I would fight,
it would be bigger, things would escalate further than they
ever had. It just got to a different level after
our first son was born.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Like one time a fight got so intense that Crystal
had to escape to her neighbor's.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
House, and he followed me. He comes in there, he
grabs me. He opens their fridge and takes milk out
of the fridge and just pours it all over me,
right in front of them.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
He had humiliated her in front of her friends, and
he didn't care. Crystal felt exposed because up until this
point she had been living with Sean's escalation in private.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
After I took Sean back, I never told anyone in
my family that my life was anything but perfect. Part
of it was not even just protecting Sean, was protecting
my own ego.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Crystal wouldn't dare engage Sean after an explosive fight. She'd
wait for him to cool down, but sometimes that would
take days or weeks.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I wasn't happy, but I felt like I could tolerate
a lot to keep my family together for my kids,
like I could put up with the bullshit.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Incidents like this started happening more frequently, and oftentimes Crystal
will get the police involved to help deescalate the situation.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Never did I get physically assaulted. It was just like
more scary stuff, and I called the police a number
of times.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Things went on like this for two years, and then.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Shawn's dad got lung cancer and died a month before
our second child was born, and it sent Sean into deep,
deep depression. He was playing video games all night and
then he would sleep all day, even though he's the
(20:40):
one home with the kids.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Crystal was doing everything she could to hold their family together,
but it was getting harder.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
As time went on. I would throw out the divorce
word pretty often, just because I would say I can't
live like this. My intention in doing that was to
hopefully have him go, well, oh my gosh, I don't
want to lose her. I better straighten up.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Christel was still in love with Sean. She wanted to
fight for their family and hope that things could be different,
and she held on to that hope for five years.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
The shit was happening more and more and more, and
finally it gets to the point, early fall of two
thousand and seven, something happened. We got in a fight.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
After the altercation, Sean left the house. He didn't come
back for days. Christel had no idea where he was
or what would happen next. Eventually he showed back up, and.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
When he came back in the house, he was different,
so calm. It was like he had been meditating on
this whole new plan to keep me in line. He
came in with intent. He tells me that he is
sick of me calling the police on him. He is
(22:06):
sick of me threatening to divorce him, and that is
all ending now. That's never going to happen again. And
if I ever do it again, he's going to kill me.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
He was serious, and it was terrifying.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I believed him. I had never felt so helpless in
my life. Usually I could come up with a plan.
I had no plan that decisive, planned out person who's
got her act together found herself in a box.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
After Sean lost his father, he mentally started to unravel
worse than before. Verbal abuse was a constant in the
Harra's household. When things escalated, Crystal would often call the cops.
But after one particularly explosive altercation, Sean left the house
and after a few days, Sean came back with a
clear message he was in control and if she challenged him,
(23:28):
he would kill her.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I remember just trying to play it cool at first,
thinking maybe he's still really mad, but whenever I went
to revisit it days later, weeks later, months later and
just say, like, you didn't mean that, You're just mad.
He would double down on it and say, no, that
is what I mean.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
So Crystal fell in line. She avoided doing anything that
could upset him.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I thought, I'm going to be so nice to him.
If I'm so nice to him, how could he be
mean to me? But then he said, the meaner I
act to you, the nicer you act to me. Anything
she did to try and regain control backfired. She needed support.
For the first time in my life, I start going
(24:18):
to church because I am out of answers, I have
no plan. I feel helpless.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Crystal leaned on the church and its community. There she
felt less alone. A few months later, the church was
hosting an Easter egg hunt. Crystal wanted to take her sons.
They were five and two at the time.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I begged Sean to go to this thing with me.
Is like, the kids will have so much fun, do
it for them, and he did not want to go.
He finally, super begrudgingly agreed to come.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
The whole time, Sean was miserable. He would wander off
or snap at her. What was the supposed to be
a fun holiday event ended up being really stressful. After
the event, Crystal and Sean were pulling out of the
church parking lot. Crystal sat in the passenger seat, exhausted,
with the two boys in the back.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Sewn is starting to like flip off these cars and stuff,
and I'm like, oh my god, I'm so embarrassed because
these are people I go to church with. I just said, Sean,
do not flip these people off. And I had a
snow cone in my hand and I was looking out
the passenger window. Next thing I know, the whole thing
(25:36):
just explodes because Sean's hand has come across and whacked
it out of my face and hit my face a
little bit too, and then he takes his finger and
he puts it right in the soft part of my throat,
like right in the front, and he just starts pushing
really hard, and I'm trying to back up, but I'm
(25:58):
crying and I'm yelling and I'm him to stop. And
my son is diagonal from me, and my other son's
behind me and hearing all this. The oldest one he's
telling his daddy to stop. Nothing had ever happened in
front of the kids before. And I just realized at
that moment, how delusional I had been thinking that I
(26:21):
could keep any of this under control.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
She needed to get out, but she was afraid for
her life, and now she was afraid for her kids' lives.
In that moment, Crystal made a decision.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
I'm gonna buy a gun. That's my way out to
get out of this marriage and stay alive because I
knew he would come after me. Let's say I called
the police that moment. Like that night, I truly believed
that he would just be out the next day and
come and kill me. I felt like I could not
make any moves for safety until I had that gun.
(26:59):
It just felt like a lifeline to me.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Crystal wasted no time I went.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
That very same night, I still remember walking into this
gun store thinking that I cannot believe this is my life.
I can't believe this is my life.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
In California, there's a ten day waiting period between purchasing
a gun and taking possession of it, So for Crystal,
it was just a matter of getting through those next
ten days. Once she did pick up the gun, she
would take her and her boys and leave Sean forever.
But within a few days Sean started threatening her again.
She wanted evidence of the threats and violence against her
(27:43):
in case she would ever need it in court. This
was two thousand and eight, before iPhone's remainstream. Crystal had
to be resourceful.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I thought, I'm going to need proof this is happening
to me. So I decided I was going to get
a tape recorder.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
As a note for listeners, Crystal is about to describe
an instance of graphic domestic violence. If you'd prefer not
to hear this, you can fast forward three and a
half minutes.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
And so we get to Friday and I get home
from work and he immediately says to me, I can't
stand to be around you. Either you need to leave
or I do. I still had my high heels on
and my business suit and my nylons and everything, and
(28:32):
I just was like, okay, fine.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Crystal decided to give Sean some space. She went up
to her bedroom she'd stay out of his way for
the rest of the night.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I had just gotten in bed, and next thing I know,
he comes strolling in the room and wants to have sex.
And I said, no, no, we're not having sex. And
he starts in on me like, well, we are married,
aren't we, And then he starts saying this is not
(29:04):
up for negotiation. I can remember a flood of adrenaline
going through my body, like, oh my god, what is happening.
I'm not able to talk my way out of it.
He's two hundred and twenty pounds. I was one hundred
and twenty pounds. I couldn't hurt him if I tried,
(29:27):
whereas he could kill me. And as I realized I'm
not getting out of this, I remembered I've got that
tape recorder nearby. I couldn't physically stop this from happening,
but I could at least have proof that it was happening.
And so I started begging him to let me go
to the bathroom. And it took me a little bit,
(29:48):
but he finally let me go to the bathroom. And
as I came out of the bathroom, I stopped at
my underwear drawer and acted like I was getting something out,
and I hit that play in record button and then
I closed the drawer, and then I decided to just
try and act like maybe you didn't mean what you
were saying before I'm gonna go check on the kids,
(30:08):
like I was just trying to like get out of
there like put this off in some way, shape or form,
and he got super mad that I didn't come back
to the bed. Then I tried to leave, and he
jumped over the bed and grabbed me by the arm
and womped me upside the head and started choking me
(30:29):
and pulled me back to the bed.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
He raped her that night.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
When he's finished, I'm thinking he's maybe gonna feel bad.
I don't know. I'm walking to the bathroom to clean
up and get a hold of myself, and I'm still
reeling from what happened. But I said something like I
can't believe you just fucking raped your own wife. He
comes into the bathroom and he hits me again upside
(30:59):
the head, and he's like, don't fucking lie to me.
I kept saying, okay, I'm sorry. I was confused, okay,
And he's like, you're not confused. I'm gonna carve that
on your head when I dump your fucking body in
a ditch. And he even starts to taunt me about
(31:20):
calling the police. He's like, are you gonna call the police?
Go ahead, I wish you would. Please do give me
a reason.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Later that night, she checked the tape recorder to see
if that I captured anything.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
The audio quality was shit, but it was there. Not
only did it catch the rape on tape, it caught
his death threat, but caught everything. I kept it like
it was the most precious jewel ever. I didn't leave
it anywhere in the house. It would go with me
(31:53):
wherever I went.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Now Crystal had proof this was a serious escalation in violence.
Wednesday was five days away, and that's when she could
pick up her gun. In the meantime, she was trying
to lay low and survive.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I'm just going to be super nice to him and
just get to Wednesday. The next day, I take the
kids to Lego Land. That day was fine. I had
no interaction with Sean. Sunday, I took the kids to
where my mom lived and visited with her. And that
was the first time I told anyone what happened, because
(32:31):
now I have a plan, Like now I can tell
her this is what's been happening to me, but don't worry,
I've caught it under control. And so of course she
didn't want me to go home to him that day,
but I said I have to. I just have to
play along until I get this gun. On Wednesday, and
she agreed.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
She went back home and went to work on Monday.
The day passed without much interaction between her and Sean.
I want to mend here again that Krystal is going
to describe a final escalation in violence. If you'd prefer
not to hear this, you can fast forward a minute
and a half.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Tuesday. I had a long day just in the office,
and when I got home at like six six thirty,
he just started in on me immediately, like where have
you been all day? What have you been doing? And
he tells me that he was tracking my phone that
day and that I'm a fucking liar, And he just
(33:30):
put his hands around my neck and he started choking
me so hard and so long, and he would not
let go. I kept having this thought process in my head,
like is he trying to kill me? Is he gonna
accidentally kill me? Either way, I'm dead? And his eyes
(33:52):
were black. He did not care at all what I
was saying. Nothing I said mattered.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
He raved Crystal again. This time he was even more
violent than before.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
He finally finishes and I just remember getting up completely
naked and just walking like a zombie almost to the
bathroom and just getting in the shower and crying like
the most I've ever cried in my life, because I just.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Candn't believe all this happened to me. I also had
like a complete revelation, which was I'm not gonna die
if I leave. I'm gonna die if I stay.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Crystal was right to believe that her situation was life threatening.
A report from the Journal of Emergency Medicine in two
thousand and eight shows that strangulation is one of the
the strongest predictors of future lethal violence. Victims who have
been strangled by a partner are seven hundred and fifty
percent more likely to be killed by that same partner.
(35:11):
Crystal was violated, almost died. Sean seemed unbothered, as if
it was any other night. He logged onto play video
games with his friends.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Sean was playing this online role playing game called World
of Warcraft.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
He always played on the third floor wearing headphones, so
Crystal hoped he wouldn't be able to hear.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
What she was doing. He thought, I was going to
bed like normal. I put pillows in the bed, then
I just walked out the front door. I went all
the way out of our gate and I hid in
some bushes and I called nine one one.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
After surviving multiple violent attacks at the hands of her husband, Sean,
Crystal knew she needed to act quickly. That night, while
Sean played video games, Crystal snuck out of the house,
hid in some bushes in her neighborhood, and called nine
one one.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
I had left the door unlocked, and I gave him
permission to go in, and I told them where he
was and they just went up there to the third
floor and arrested him.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Crystal called the police at nine PM, but her night
wouldn't end until noon the next day.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
I was with the police and we were waiting on
search warrants and we were getting the kids out to
my parents. I had to go to the hospital that
night for a sexual assault rape test.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
After finishing a medical exam and filing a police report,
Crystal's attention turned to her kids. They'd been home during
both attacks, but they were in their bedrooms. Crystal was
confident that they hadn't seen or heard the attacks, but
they had been in the car a week earlier after
the Easter egg hunt.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Immediately, when I'm back with them, I tell them the truth,
because here's the thing. My son who saw Sean hit
that snow cone out of my face and kind of
choked me. Kept saying, are you gonna do something? We
(37:34):
need to call the police, but I kept telling him like,
Mommy has it under control. So this is now like
a week and a half after that, and now his
dad's in jail, and I just linked him. I just said,
remember when daddy hurt mommy. He's in jail. He hurt mommy,
And it just made complete sense to him. He was like, Okay, yeah,
(37:57):
I shouldn't have hurt you then.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
And Cristel had to tell the rest of her family
and close friends what she had been through.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
My dad was just devastated. Everyone just couldn't believe the
way that my life had been for so long.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
With Sean and jail. Christel felt relieved, but she was
surprised to find that there was another emotion, grief.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
I made vows to this man. I spent my whole
adult life with him, I made children with him. I
actually mourned for quite a long time after he was arrested,
the life I thought I was going to have with him.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
In order to cope, Cristel threw herself into work.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Work was keeping me sane and things were so crazy
every day at work.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Cristel had always been the breadwinner in her marriage with Sean.
She managed the family's finances, so when Shawan's bail was posted,
Cristel was the one in control.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
When they first arrested him, I canceled all of his
credit cards, so it made whatever was in his wallet
not work. Because I thought his bail would probably be
like twenty five grand or ten grand or something. He
had like a million three point fifty bail. I felt
safe with that.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Shawn's criminal trial took multiple years.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
The worst thing that happened during those two and a
half years is Sean finally did make bail. He's living
with his mom. He becomes a cab driver.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
While they waited for the criminal trial, Crystal and Sean
were duking it out in family court negotiating custody of
the kids. And on top of that, Sean was demanding money.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Sean wanted spousal support, and we haven't had the criminal
trial yet, and so my word is the only evidence
in the case at that point. In family court, the
judge rules that yes, there was domestic violence and rape
in this case. That's just one factor, though, and the
bigger factor is that I'm the breadwinner and it would
(40:08):
be sexist if I don't order some spousal support for
the husband. I was just so outraged. I remember leaving
court that day. Sean passed me in the car and
had a number one sign like he's the winner. He
(40:29):
rubbed it in my face. He would like laugh when
we got out of the courtroom, and I kept saying,
he's a violent rapist.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
According to the family court judge, Crystal would have to
pay the man that raped her, violated her, the man
that almost killed her. At the next hearing, the judge
ruled on how much Crystal would pay Sean espousal support.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Sean normally would have been awarded maybe three thousand dollars
a month, but because of the domestic violence finding in
this case, the judge said, I'll knock that down to
one thousand dollars a month. And I remember someone saying,
what is that the rape discount? And not only did
(41:14):
I have to pay espousal support, I also was ordered
to pay half of his attorneys. He's another forty seven
thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Crystal knew this wasn't right. Survivors shouldn't be forced to
pay their abusers.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Around that same time, I had happened to see a
dateline where a woman in California was ordered to pay
spousal support to the man who was convicted of attempting
to murder her.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
This woman had to pay the man that wanted her debt.
But instead of accepting the ruling, she had work to
change the law in California. Crystal thought that survivors espousal
rape deserved the same protections, and it got her thinking.
The next time she was.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
In court, I can remember saying to the judge, I said,
if you order me to pay this, I am going
to get the law changed. And he was like, you're
going to change the law.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
When Crystal sets her mind to something, she gets it done.
She got to work right away.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I went to my local assemblymen and when I went
into the office, I said, I'm a constituent of yours,
and I just told them what happened.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
After hearing Crystal's story, her local representatives agreed the law
needed to be changed to better protect survivors. They began
the process of writing a bill and sharing crystal story
with other California lawmakers.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Every single person that we've talked about it to would
just be horrified and stunned to find out that this
could even happen to someone, that they could be forced
to pay their own rapists spousal support.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
The bill quickly gained track.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Almost immediately. There was like twenty different lawmakers that had
their name on this bill. The district attorney also agreed
that this law should be changed and volunteered to write
the law. The fact that the district attorney wrote the
law and it was backed by the entire California District
Attorney's Association lended a huge amount of weight.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
But the process of introducing the new bill and changing
California law would take time. While Crystal and Shawn's family
court case dragged on, John's criminal trial finally began. Crystal
gathered all the evidence she had, including the tape recording
of Sean's violent attack.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I don't know what I expected. I kind of maybe
expected just to go in and be like, here's the tape,
and ask me whatever you want and just have them
believe me.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
During the trial, Crystal discovered a horrible truth.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
When you are a rape victim, you are on trial too,
your cross examined, and every move you made, every decision
you made, is scrutinized as much as his.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Crystal thought the trial would be quick because she had
a recording of the attack, and on that tape, Sean
could be heard making explicit threats against her life. The
recording was played in her trial.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
The fact that I taped what happened to me, just
for that same reason where I'm thinking, God, how is
anybody going to believe this? It just was like Wow.
In two thousand and eight, it was just not done. Nowadays,
everybody tapes everything.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
As for Shawn's legal defense, what's.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
The only defense you can come up with if there's
an audio tape? Oh, we were role playing, of course,
you know, that's his defense that he goes with. Their
defense was so insulting to me.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Sean was facing three very serious charges.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
He was charged with for storal copulation, spousal rape, and sodomy.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
When the verdict finally came down, the jury only found
him guilty on one of those three charges.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
The jury convicted him of the forur storal copulation, which
is on tape.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
But the jury was deadlocked on the two other charges
saw toom me by force and forceable spousal rape. Even
though those acts were caught on tape two. The jury
wasn't fully convinced, so the court ultimately dismissed the charges.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I was mad. I was mad at that verdict.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
It raises the question if Crystal hadn't recorded the attacks,
would there have been a trial at all Because she
was married to her rapist. Christel felt like the courts
treated her case differently. After the verdict, he was sentenced
to six years for the crime, and.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
I remember thinking, what am I going to do when
he gets out, because like it all starts again, my
fear of him killing me, my worry for my kids, everything,
it just will begin again.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
She started thinking of ways she could protect herself when
that day came, and.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
So I got a security protection trained German shepherd. He
was amazing that moment on I knew I was safe,
like between all the other stuff I had, but the dog,
like I knew Sean couldn't be hiding in my house.
It finally gave me peace of mind.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Sean would be locked up for five years. While he
was still behind bars, she worked hard to change the
law so she wouldn't have to pay him spousal support
once he got out in twenty twelve, after a year
of lobbying, California passed a bill which introduced exceptions to
spousal support payments in cases of spousal rape. The bill
(47:00):
protects spousal rape victims whose abusers have been convicted in
criminal court from being financially obligated to their attackers. Cristel
was instrumental in getting this legislation passed. She told her
story again and again to help lawmakers understand.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
If they can't put a face to the bill, it
doesn't mean anything. For some reason. You can't just introduce
this in theory like this could happen. No, you have
to be like, no, it happened to her, and she's
sitting right here at the end of it all, I'm
so proud of what I've done and what I've been
able to get done.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
But the story doesn't end there. Six years after Shawn's release,
Kristal got a call from the District Attorney's office.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
The deputy district attorney was sort of like, I'm so
sorry to bother you. I know this might be upsetting,
but I wanted to let you know that Sean Harris
has been arrested.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
After Sean got out of prison, he was arrested for
raping another woman and sexually abusing that woman's underage daughter.
Cristal felt like she'd been telling the courts for years
about how dangerous Sean was. She was enraged that it
took him harming two other people for his violence to
be taken seriously.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
He is a fucking criminal rapist, and he did it
to someone else. But here's the thing. When Sean was
arrested in twenty twenty one again for the same crime
and charged with five felonies in that case, this time
he was sentenced to one hundred years to life. Because
the conviction in my case was in the record, it
(48:38):
all counts.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
If Crystal hadn't pressed charges or hadn't documented his crimes,
Sean's sentence could have been much lighter.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
You have to get it on the record. Abusers they
don't stop. They're gonna keep doing it, and they're gonna
get worse. They're gonna escalate, and they're gonna get caught,
and you need to have it on the record all
along the way so that they can finally get what
they deserve, like Sean finally has any sentence to one
(49:09):
hundred years to life.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
That sentence gave Crystal a sense of relief to live
the rest of her life without fear.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
I'm not sure I would be where I am mentally
today without that, because there's just this level of I
would never ever have let my guard down if he
was out ever, and that's just a hard way to live.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Crystal never expected to become an advocate for survivors espousal
rape and domestic violence.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
At this age of fifty three. I just have a
compassion that I didn't have when I was young. Life
is hard. I've learned like everybody has something, and it's
shocking how many people have this, have domestic violence or
some aspect of domestic violence in their life.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
After she left Sean, she needed a break. She wanted
to prioritize herself and her kids, so she decided not
to think about dating until her kids were at least eighteen.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
I ended up going twelve years without dating. In twenty twenty,
I let myself go on a dating app for the
first time, and I met an amazing man. We're married
today and he could not be a better person.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
In the past few years, Crystal has been thriving. She
and her husband lived together on a beautiful hillside in
southern California.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
We've got ten acres and built a custom house. We
can see all the way to the ocean, all the
city lights below. It's amazing. I feel like the life
I have today is everything I sacrificed and planned for
four years ago.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
We end every episode with the same question, why do
you want to share your story?
Speaker 2 (51:12):
I loved him, I wanted everything with him. And the
fact that that same man is the one who made
me so afraid from my life, that's the betrayal. I
feel like women are not that well served by the
(51:33):
common advice that's given of just just get out. I
feel like that's too simplistic. You have to have a
shield of some sort when you get out, and that
shield is documentation. You have to think like a chessboard,
(51:54):
think all the way to the end. I just feel
like women need to hear that they're not told that
by the official sources, because it's a little bit counter
to safety. Sometimes you could get hurt doing the recording.
You could get hurt by staying long enough to get
the documentation. And it's like not the legal thing to say,
(52:15):
but I'm just telling you that's what you need if
you are victimized the way that I was, and the
way that so many people are. You should not be
the one who is living in fear.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
We pull out of our house. We get about two
blocks from the old house, and he looks at me
and he says, I think I'm getting ready to be arrested.
Within seconds of that coming out of his mouth, the
squad car let us sap and pulled us over.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com, or follow us on Instagram at
Betrayal Pod. You can also connect with me on Instagram
at It's Andrea Gunning. To access our newsletter, view additional content,
(53:29):
and connect with the Betrayal community, join our substack at
Betrayal dot substack dot com. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
A long way.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal
is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass
Entertainment Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is
executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fasin, hosted and
produced by me Andrea Gunning. This episode was written and
produced by Olivia Hewitt and Monique Leboard, with additional production
(54:07):
from Ben Fetterman, casting support from Curry Richmond. Our iHeart
team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio editing and
mixing by Matt del Vechio. Additional audio editing by Tanner Robbins.
Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bain's music library provided by
mybe Music and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
(54:29):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, everyone, It's Andrea Gunning. Before we start this episode,
I want to let you know that we will be
talking explicitly about the realities of domestic violence and sexual assault,
so please be mindful with this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I came up with my plan, which was I'm going
to buy a gun. That's my way out. I still
remember walking into this gun store thinking that I cannot
believe this is my life. I can't believe this is
my life.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I have a thick skin. You're not going to be
able to offend me. I don't ever give off a
vibe of it's okay to mess with me.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
That's Crystal Harris.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Her story is.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
One of an intimate and personal betrayal, but it's also
a story of an institutional one. Crystal grew up in
the seventies in southern California, which.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
At the time was all orange groves. We lived out
in the middle of nowhere, and my parents were hippies.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
From an early age, Crystal was confident.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I have pictured myself as an adult since I was little,
I mean five years old, and the vision that always
came to me was a quote business woman. You know,
I saw myself with a briefcase and high heels.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
She's always been the kind of person who visualizes what
she wants and makes it happen.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I had my life all planned out. Just as I
saw myself as a business woman, I also saw myself
as a wife and mother. My plan was to graduate
at twenty one. Hopefully I would have met my husband
at some point in college, and we would get married
around twenty three after I started my career, and then
(02:23):
I wanted to have kids when I was thirty. That
was my plan.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Crystal's parents divorced when she was eight and she moved
in with her dad.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I saw my mom after the divorce. She didn't really
have a profession. She had married my dad when she
was eighteen, and she never went to school, and so
she had to like scramble a little bit. And it
made me realize I would never want to be left
in that position where I had to rely on someone
(02:56):
else for my financial security. So I entered my high
school in college years thinking I've got to have a skill,
I've got to know how to do something. It was
a formative lesson for Crystal. I was sixteen years old
and I said, I'm going to be a financial advisor.
And so once I graduated from high school, I got
(03:17):
accepted to college and chose finance as my major and
was off from there.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
During her last summer of college, Crystal was at home
in southern California working as a server at a restaurant.
One day, a new guy showed up at work.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
There was this buzz in the restaurant. One day, everyone
kept going, oh, my gosh, Sean is back. Sean is here?
Have you seen Sean? And I was like, who's Sean.
I finally see him over at the bar, and I
was just blown over. I thought he was gorgeous. He
was so good looking. He was strong, tan and blonde
(03:59):
and must skiller.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Sean quickly became one of her favorite coworkers.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I was a waitress. He was a bus boy, and like,
if I was just standing at a table with a
cup or a plate in my hand, he'd come up
and take it from me. He would never let me
walk all the way to the dishwasher.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
He was her type, and he caught her attention. An
all American boy and a former college athlete.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
He attended a private college and he was on their
baseball team. He was the pitcher, and I was impressed.
And then I learned that he was a math major,
and I was impressed by that too, because I thought, well,
you can't fudge it, and being a math major, I
respected it.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Crystal and Sean spent the whole summer flirting.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
One night, we all decided to go out after work.
We had been dancing all night and we'd been hanging
out with our other friends from work, and we were
kind of bar hopping and there's a little bench outside
and we were sitting on it and he just kissed me.
That led into us having this really cute, fun, almost
(05:11):
magical relationship that first year.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Crystal still had a year of college left. She drove
the hour home every weekend to spend time with Sean.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I would race down after school on Friday and it
would just be like, oh my god, I missed you.
It felt like every weekend was a vacation.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Every time she was around Sean, I.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Was totally smitten. He was different. I had never dated
anybody that I thought was smarter than me, but I
thought he was smarter than me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
After she graduated from college, Crystal turned her attention to
her next goal, getting a job. She'd gotten her degree
in finance and she wanted to be a financial advisor.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I really worked hard at getting my foot in the
door somewhere. I interviewed everywhere, all the major firms on
Wall Street.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Then she found a firm who gave her a chance,
but she would have to work for it.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
They said, if you can open twenty five accounts and
bring in five hundred thousand dollars in assets, then we'll
put you into our actual training program. And I said, okay,
fair enough. I worked my ass off and I was
able to get that done within four months, and so
I got hired.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
The firm had a branch in her and Shawn's town,
but before she started working there, they sent her to
New York City for a training program. Sean and Crystal
had been dating for two years, and Sean visited her
in New York when he could.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
They would do New York for the weekend as tourists.
At some point we were up at the top of
the Statue of Liberty, like in the Crown, and that's
where he proposed to me. I quickly said yes, and
I can remember saying we can get married when like
next week or a year. He said, whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
She planned their wedding in six months. Everything was falling
into place.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I felt totally sure. I love him, he loves me.
We're starting life together, and I was really in a
happy place in my life.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Her wedding day was picture perfect.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
It was lovely, beautiful. I was happy to be married,
but it just it felt like, of course I'm getting married,
like this is what I do, it's my plan, this
is a day that's supposed to come. It's here, let's
do it next on the list. We got married in January,
and by that June we purchased our first condo. It
(07:53):
started us like building our life.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Shawn's dad owned a used car our dealership in town,
and you got a job working there. But Sean's career
would be temporary. Early on, the couple made an agreement
when they were ready to start a family, Crystal would
be the breadwinner and Sean would stay at home with
the kids.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Neither of us believed in daycare, so he had always
said he'd be happy to stay home with them. And
I just thought to myself, Wow, great, that lets me
have my career but I could still have kids.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Knowing Sean would be a stay at home dad when
the time came, allowed Crystal to focus on building her career.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
The stock market opens at six thirty am West Coast time.
It was my job to manage people's portfolios, to figure
out what a client needed, what their goals were, what
their risk tolerance was, and invest appropriately. You either make
it or you don't, and so I always liked that
(09:00):
aspect that the sky was the limit.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Her husband supported her career wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Sean literally from the time we first met. He seemed
so proud to be with me. He just loved that
I was ambitious and that I knew where I was going.
I'd close some new account and I'd come home and
he would be just as happy as I was. We
(09:27):
would totally celebrate together.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
They were a regular couple in their twenties, spending weekends
with friends. They even joined a Rex softball team together,
which was especially fun because Sean could show off his
college baseball skills.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
We played every Wednesday night, and then we would always
go for pizza and beer after. It gave me a
chance to watch him be amazing, because he really was
athletically amazing. He could run faster than any man. He
could hit the ball further. I was like, Wow, I
know he loved me, and I loved him very much.
(10:11):
That was the base of everything at home.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
He was affectionate, doting, and for a while things were
really great living together. She began to notice they had
two different approaches to conflict.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I'm the type of person if I'm mad at you,
I will tell you right now, but one minute later,
I'm fine, it's out, it's over. But Sean would do
things where let's say he got off work at six,
he wouldn't come home until like nine or ten or whatever,
and he finally just like strolled through the door and
(10:50):
I go, what the hell, why are you late? And
he would be like, well, do you remember last Wednesday
when you said such and such to me? I've been
really mad about that.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Cristel had never seen someone hold onto resentment the way
that Sean did. Two years into the marriage, one of
their cars broke down, so for a week, Kristal and
Sean had to share a car. They both needed it
to get to work. Cristal started her job at six
point thirty in the morning. She would take a break
(11:23):
around eight thirty to pick Sean up and take him
to his job at the dealership. Within just a few days,
the car became a source of tension.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Every day he'd say, come pick me up, let's say
eight forty five, and I would get there and he
would still be in bed, or still in the shower,
whatever it was. He was nowhere near ready every day,
and I had had it. I was pissed. I didn't
like how he was just so dismissive of my time.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
But one day the fight over the car became something different.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
We got in a big fight over it. Eventually we
get in the car and I'm driving him to work
and we're still fighting. He's in the passenger seat. Next
thing I know, he took his left hand, it was
in a fist, and just sort of balked me in
(12:28):
my eye, on my cheek, and I just was reeling.
I pulled the car over, and I'm trying to get
my head together, trying to figure out what just happened.
I had never been hit before by a man in
(12:49):
my life. I just remember thinking, get him to work,
and then you're on your own. You've got the car,
You've got the safety of the office. Don't provoke him anymore.
I just shut my mouth, not fighting anymore.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
She had an instinctual reaction, which was to stay calm
and get him out of her car. Once she was alone,
she knew what she had to do.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Get back to the office, Call the police, call an attorney,
Call my mom. This is huge and my marriage is over.
That is what I did. I told everybody, and I
hired a divorce attorney and filed a police report. I
(13:35):
did everything I ever said I would do if a
man hit me.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
When Crystal got home that day.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
He had broken the whole sliding glass door.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But Sean wasn't home. He'd been arrested for assaulting Crystal.
She wanted to be far away from.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Him, and I got a restraining order. By the end
of that day, he was not allowed to come in
the house.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
They were separated for some time. About a month or
so went by. Then Crystal got a call from Sean's dad.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I respected his dad very much, and he was telling
me how devastated Sean is and how this was such
a huge wake up call for him. He knows he
did wrong. His dad kept saying, you know you're a
part of this family. We love you. Sean's already going
(14:30):
to anger management classes. I remember thinking, that's great that
they have such a thing. It was court ordered, and
it just seemed official.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
This was nineteen ninety eight, when court ordered anger management
was still new. This was Crystal's first time learning about it,
and she was relieved to hear he was getting help.
Despite what Sean had done, anger management sounded like it
was just what he needed.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I really thought that could be the key to us
getting back together.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
After talking to his dad, she was open to hearing
Sean out. She wanted his apology.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
I was willing to talk to him on the phone.
Was trying to get a sense of if he understood
how bad what he did was. He really seemed like
he was sorry and he did wrong. I thought, I
love him, he loves me. I love him. All he
(15:33):
needs is a little bit of help to figure out
why he did that and we can still have our
life together.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
But she wanted to let him know he'd messed up
and he would be held accountable for what he'd done.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I slowly let him back in the house. It took
two or three months. We had our divorce proceeding in
a I dropped everything except what I did not drop.
Was the actual police charge. He did it. He hit me,
and it was important to me that that stand. So
(16:15):
he was prosecuted and pled guilty, and that did go
on his record, and.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
The consequences he faced were long lasting.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
He was on probation for three years, and I felt
sufficiently satisfied that he was getting that help he needed
and that we were going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
That moment in the car felt like an outlier, and
there otherwise steady relationship.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
There's not like an infidelity issue. There was not even
a jealousy issue. I thought that was good. We never
fought about money. He was not a drinker, never took drugs,
didn't smoke, and I just thought that's a great foundation
for a good mayor mage and we loved each other.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Over the next three years, they slowly rebuild trust. Crystal
fell grounded, and her relationship with Sean.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I just remember thinking we should start thinking about having kids,
and it was part of my plan anyway. So the
following January of two thousand and two, I went off
the pill and we started trying to have a baby,
and I got pregnant immediately.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Crystal was thrilled.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I couldn't wait for Sean to get home and tell
him in person, Like I call him immediately and I'm like,
I am pregnant. He was happy. He was so happy.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Sean and Crystal found out that they were going to
have a boy. They felt really connected through her entire pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
He's treated me great. It was a very sweet time
in our relationship.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And in two thousand and two their son was born.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Sean was there. He was crying and loving and proud
of me and cheerleading and being perfect.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Their son became their whole world. That's when Sean quit
his job and, like the couple had planned, became a
stay at home dad.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
He was home with the baby and I was on
maternity leave for like four months and then I went back.
I thought our plan was working out pretty well.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
But once he quit working, something changed in Sean.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
The whole thing about putting me in my place and
the passive aggressiveness and that kind of stuff seemed to
pick up a lot. When Sean and I would fight,
it would be bigger, things would escalate further than they
ever had. It just got to a different level after
our first son was born.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Like one time a fight got so intense that Crystal
had to escape to her neighbor's.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
House, and he followed me. He comes in there, he
grabs me. He opens their fridge and takes milk out
of the fridge and just pours it all over me,
right in front of them.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
He had humiliated her in front of her friends, and
he didn't care. Crystal felt exposed because up until this
point she had been living with Sean's escalation in private.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
After I took Sean back, I never told anyone in
my family that my life was anything but perfect. Part
of it was not even just protecting Sean, was protecting
my own ego.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Crystal wouldn't dare engage Sean after an explosive fight. She'd
wait for him to cool down, but sometimes that would
take days or weeks.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I wasn't happy, but I felt like I could tolerate
a lot to keep my family together for my kids,
like I could put up with the bullshit.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Incidents like this started happening more frequently, and oftentimes Crystal
will get the police involved to help deescalate the situation.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Never did I get physically assaulted. It was just like
more scary stuff, and I called the police a number
of times.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Things went on like this for two years, and then.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Shawn's dad got lung cancer and died a month before
our second child was born, and it sent Sean into deep,
deep depression. He was playing video games all night and
then he would sleep all day, even though he's the
(20:40):
one home with the kids.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Crystal was doing everything she could to hold their family together,
but it was getting harder.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
As time went on. I would throw out the divorce
word pretty often, just because I would say I can't
live like this. My intention in doing that was to
hopefully have him go, well, oh my gosh, I don't
want to lose her. I better straighten up.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Christel was still in love with Sean. She wanted to
fight for their family and hope that things could be different,
and she held on to that hope for five years.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
The shit was happening more and more and more, and
finally it gets to the point, early fall of two
thousand and seven, something happened. We got in a fight.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
After the altercation, Sean left the house. He didn't come
back for days. Christel had no idea where he was
or what would happen next. Eventually he showed back up, and.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
When he came back in the house, he was different,
so calm. It was like he had been meditating on
this whole new plan to keep me in line. He
came in with intent. He tells me that he is
sick of me calling the police on him. He is
(22:06):
sick of me threatening to divorce him, and that is
all ending now. That's never going to happen again. And
if I ever do it again, he's going to kill me.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
He was serious, and it was terrifying.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I believed him. I had never felt so helpless in
my life. Usually I could come up with a plan.
I had no plan that decisive, planned out person who's
got her act together found herself in a box.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
After Sean lost his father, he mentally started to unravel
worse than before. Verbal abuse was a constant in the
Harra's household. When things escalated, Crystal would often call the cops.
But after one particularly explosive altercation, Sean left the house
and after a few days, Sean came back with a
clear message he was in control and if she challenged him,
(23:28):
he would kill her.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I remember just trying to play it cool at first,
thinking maybe he's still really mad, but whenever I went
to revisit it days later, weeks later, months later and
just say, like, you didn't mean that, You're just mad.
He would double down on it and say, no, that
is what I mean.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
So Crystal fell in line. She avoided doing anything that
could upset him.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I thought, I'm going to be so nice to him.
If I'm so nice to him, how could he be
mean to me? But then he said, the meaner I
act to you, the nicer you act to me. Anything
she did to try and regain control backfired. She needed support.
For the first time in my life, I start going
(24:18):
to church because I am out of answers, I have
no plan. I feel helpless.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Crystal leaned on the church and its community. There she
felt less alone. A few months later, the church was
hosting an Easter egg hunt. Crystal wanted to take her sons.
They were five and two at the time.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I begged Sean to go to this thing with me.
Is like, the kids will have so much fun, do
it for them, and he did not want to go.
He finally, super begrudgingly agreed to come.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
The whole time, Sean was miserable. He would wander off
or snap at her. What was the supposed to be
a fun holiday event ended up being really stressful. After
the event, Crystal and Sean were pulling out of the
church parking lot. Crystal sat in the passenger seat, exhausted,
with the two boys in the back.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Sewn is starting to like flip off these cars and stuff,
and I'm like, oh my god, I'm so embarrassed because
these are people I go to church with. I just said, Sean,
do not flip these people off. And I had a
snow cone in my hand and I was looking out
the passenger window. Next thing I know, the whole thing
(25:36):
just explodes because Sean's hand has come across and whacked
it out of my face and hit my face a
little bit too, and then he takes his finger and
he puts it right in the soft part of my throat,
like right in the front, and he just starts pushing
really hard, and I'm trying to back up, but I'm
(25:58):
crying and I'm yelling and I'm him to stop. And
my son is diagonal from me, and my other son's
behind me and hearing all this. The oldest one he's
telling his daddy to stop. Nothing had ever happened in
front of the kids before. And I just realized at
that moment, how delusional I had been thinking that I
(26:21):
could keep any of this under control.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
She needed to get out, but she was afraid for
her life, and now she was afraid for her kids' lives.
In that moment, Crystal made a decision.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
I'm gonna buy a gun. That's my way out to
get out of this marriage and stay alive because I
knew he would come after me. Let's say I called
the police that moment. Like that night, I truly believed
that he would just be out the next day and
come and kill me. I felt like I could not
make any moves for safety until I had that gun.
(26:59):
It just felt like a lifeline to me.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Crystal wasted no time I went.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
That very same night, I still remember walking into this
gun store thinking that I cannot believe this is my life.
I can't believe this is my life.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
In California, there's a ten day waiting period between purchasing
a gun and taking possession of it, So for Crystal,
it was just a matter of getting through those next
ten days. Once she did pick up the gun, she
would take her and her boys and leave Sean forever.
But within a few days Sean started threatening her again.
She wanted evidence of the threats and violence against her
(27:43):
in case she would ever need it in court. This
was two thousand and eight, before iPhone's remainstream. Crystal had
to be resourceful.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I thought, I'm going to need proof this is happening
to me. So I decided I was going to get
a tape recorder.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
As a note for listeners, Crystal is about to describe
an instance of graphic domestic violence. If you'd prefer not
to hear this, you can fast forward three and a
half minutes.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
And so we get to Friday and I get home
from work and he immediately says to me, I can't
stand to be around you. Either you need to leave
or I do. I still had my high heels on
and my business suit and my nylons and everything, and
(28:32):
I just was like, okay, fine.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Crystal decided to give Sean some space. She went up
to her bedroom she'd stay out of his way for
the rest of the night.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I had just gotten in bed, and next thing I know,
he comes strolling in the room and wants to have sex.
And I said, no, no, we're not having sex. And
he starts in on me like, well, we are married,
aren't we, And then he starts saying this is not
(29:04):
up for negotiation. I can remember a flood of adrenaline
going through my body, like, oh my god, what is happening.
I'm not able to talk my way out of it.
He's two hundred and twenty pounds. I was one hundred
and twenty pounds. I couldn't hurt him if I tried,
(29:27):
whereas he could kill me. And as I realized I'm
not getting out of this, I remembered I've got that
tape recorder nearby. I couldn't physically stop this from happening,
but I could at least have proof that it was happening.
And so I started begging him to let me go
to the bathroom. And it took me a little bit,
(29:48):
but he finally let me go to the bathroom. And
as I came out of the bathroom, I stopped at
my underwear drawer and acted like I was getting something out,
and I hit that play in record button and then
I closed the drawer, and then I decided to just
try and act like maybe you didn't mean what you
were saying before I'm gonna go check on the kids,
(30:08):
like I was just trying to like get out of
there like put this off in some way, shape or form,
and he got super mad that I didn't come back
to the bed. Then I tried to leave, and he
jumped over the bed and grabbed me by the arm
and womped me upside the head and started choking me
(30:29):
and pulled me back to the bed.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
He raped her that night.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
When he's finished, I'm thinking he's maybe gonna feel bad.
I don't know. I'm walking to the bathroom to clean
up and get a hold of myself, and I'm still
reeling from what happened. But I said something like I
can't believe you just fucking raped your own wife. He
comes into the bathroom and he hits me again upside
(30:59):
the head, and he's like, don't fucking lie to me.
I kept saying, okay, I'm sorry. I was confused, okay,
And he's like, you're not confused. I'm gonna carve that
on your head when I dump your fucking body in
a ditch. And he even starts to taunt me about
(31:20):
calling the police. He's like, are you gonna call the police?
Go ahead, I wish you would. Please do give me
a reason.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Later that night, she checked the tape recorder to see
if that I captured anything.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
The audio quality was shit, but it was there. Not
only did it catch the rape on tape, it caught
his death threat, but caught everything. I kept it like
it was the most precious jewel ever. I didn't leave
it anywhere in the house. It would go with me
(31:53):
wherever I went.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Now Crystal had proof this was a serious escalation in violence.
Wednesday was five days away, and that's when she could
pick up her gun. In the meantime, she was trying
to lay low and survive.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I'm just going to be super nice to him and
just get to Wednesday. The next day, I take the
kids to Lego Land. That day was fine. I had
no interaction with Sean. Sunday, I took the kids to
where my mom lived and visited with her. And that
was the first time I told anyone what happened, because
(32:31):
now I have a plan, Like now I can tell
her this is what's been happening to me, but don't worry,
I've caught it under control. And so of course she
didn't want me to go home to him that day,
but I said I have to. I just have to
play along until I get this gun. On Wednesday, and
she agreed.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
She went back home and went to work on Monday.
The day passed without much interaction between her and Sean.
I want to mend here again that Krystal is going
to describe a final escalation in violence. If you'd prefer
not to hear this, you can fast forward a minute
and a half.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Tuesday. I had a long day just in the office,
and when I got home at like six six thirty,
he just started in on me immediately, like where have
you been all day? What have you been doing? And
he tells me that he was tracking my phone that
day and that I'm a fucking liar, And he just
(33:30):
put his hands around my neck and he started choking
me so hard and so long, and he would not
let go. I kept having this thought process in my head,
like is he trying to kill me? Is he gonna
accidentally kill me? Either way, I'm dead? And his eyes
(33:52):
were black. He did not care at all what I
was saying. Nothing I said mattered.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
He raved Crystal again. This time he was even more
violent than before.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
He finally finishes and I just remember getting up completely
naked and just walking like a zombie almost to the
bathroom and just getting in the shower and crying like
the most I've ever cried in my life, because I just.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Candn't believe all this happened to me. I also had
like a complete revelation, which was I'm not gonna die
if I leave. I'm gonna die if I stay.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Crystal was right to believe that her situation was life threatening.
A report from the Journal of Emergency Medicine in two
thousand and eight shows that strangulation is one of the
the strongest predictors of future lethal violence. Victims who have
been strangled by a partner are seven hundred and fifty
percent more likely to be killed by that same partner.
(35:11):
Crystal was violated, almost died. Sean seemed unbothered, as if
it was any other night. He logged onto play video
games with his friends.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Sean was playing this online role playing game called World
of Warcraft.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
He always played on the third floor wearing headphones, so
Crystal hoped he wouldn't be able to hear.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
What she was doing. He thought, I was going to
bed like normal. I put pillows in the bed, then
I just walked out the front door. I went all
the way out of our gate and I hid in
some bushes and I called nine one one.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
After surviving multiple violent attacks at the hands of her husband, Sean,
Crystal knew she needed to act quickly. That night, while
Sean played video games, Crystal snuck out of the house,
hid in some bushes in her neighborhood, and called nine
one one.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
I had left the door unlocked, and I gave him
permission to go in, and I told them where he
was and they just went up there to the third
floor and arrested him.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Crystal called the police at nine PM, but her night
wouldn't end until noon the next day.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
I was with the police and we were waiting on
search warrants and we were getting the kids out to
my parents. I had to go to the hospital that
night for a sexual assault rape test.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
After finishing a medical exam and filing a police report,
Crystal's attention turned to her kids. They'd been home during
both attacks, but they were in their bedrooms. Crystal was
confident that they hadn't seen or heard the attacks, but
they had been in the car a week earlier after
the Easter egg hunt.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Immediately, when I'm back with them, I tell them the truth,
because here's the thing. My son who saw Sean hit
that snow cone out of my face and kind of
choked me. Kept saying, are you gonna do something? We
(37:34):
need to call the police, but I kept telling him like,
Mommy has it under control. So this is now like
a week and a half after that, and now his
dad's in jail, and I just linked him. I just said,
remember when daddy hurt mommy. He's in jail. He hurt mommy,
And it just made complete sense to him. He was like, Okay, yeah,
(37:57):
I shouldn't have hurt you then.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
And Cristel had to tell the rest of her family
and close friends what she had been through.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
My dad was just devastated. Everyone just couldn't believe the
way that my life had been for so long.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
With Sean and jail. Christel felt relieved, but she was
surprised to find that there was another emotion, grief.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
I made vows to this man. I spent my whole
adult life with him, I made children with him. I
actually mourned for quite a long time after he was arrested,
the life I thought I was going to have with him.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
In order to cope, Cristel threw herself into work.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Work was keeping me sane and things were so crazy
every day at work.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Cristel had always been the breadwinner in her marriage with Sean.
She managed the family's finances, so when Shawan's bail was posted,
Cristel was the one in control.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
When they first arrested him, I canceled all of his
credit cards, so it made whatever was in his wallet
not work. Because I thought his bail would probably be
like twenty five grand or ten grand or something. He
had like a million three point fifty bail. I felt
safe with that.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Shawn's criminal trial took multiple years.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
The worst thing that happened during those two and a
half years is Sean finally did make bail. He's living
with his mom. He becomes a cab driver.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
While they waited for the criminal trial, Crystal and Sean
were duking it out in family court negotiating custody of
the kids. And on top of that, Sean was demanding money.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Sean wanted spousal support, and we haven't had the criminal
trial yet, and so my word is the only evidence
in the case at that point. In family court, the
judge rules that yes, there was domestic violence and rape
in this case. That's just one factor, though, and the
bigger factor is that I'm the breadwinner and it would
(40:08):
be sexist if I don't order some spousal support for
the husband. I was just so outraged. I remember leaving
court that day. Sean passed me in the car and
had a number one sign like he's the winner. He
(40:29):
rubbed it in my face. He would like laugh when
we got out of the courtroom, and I kept saying,
he's a violent rapist.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
According to the family court judge, Crystal would have to
pay the man that raped her, violated her, the man
that almost killed her. At the next hearing, the judge
ruled on how much Crystal would pay Sean espousal support.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Sean normally would have been awarded maybe three thousand dollars
a month, but because of the domestic violence finding in
this case, the judge said, I'll knock that down to
one thousand dollars a month. And I remember someone saying,
what is that the rape discount? And not only did
(41:14):
I have to pay espousal support, I also was ordered
to pay half of his attorneys. He's another forty seven
thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Crystal knew this wasn't right. Survivors shouldn't be forced to
pay their abusers.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Around that same time, I had happened to see a
dateline where a woman in California was ordered to pay
spousal support to the man who was convicted of attempting
to murder her.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
This woman had to pay the man that wanted her debt.
But instead of accepting the ruling, she had work to
change the law in California. Crystal thought that survivors espousal
rape deserved the same protections, and it got her thinking.
The next time she was.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
In court, I can remember saying to the judge, I said,
if you order me to pay this, I am going
to get the law changed. And he was like, you're
going to change the law.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
When Crystal sets her mind to something, she gets it done.
She got to work right away.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I went to my local assemblymen and when I went
into the office, I said, I'm a constituent of yours,
and I just told them what happened.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
After hearing Crystal's story, her local representatives agreed the law
needed to be changed to better protect survivors. They began
the process of writing a bill and sharing crystal story
with other California lawmakers.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Every single person that we've talked about it to would
just be horrified and stunned to find out that this
could even happen to someone, that they could be forced
to pay their own rapists spousal support.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
The bill quickly gained track.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Almost immediately. There was like twenty different lawmakers that had
their name on this bill. The district attorney also agreed
that this law should be changed and volunteered to write
the law. The fact that the district attorney wrote the
law and it was backed by the entire California District
Attorney's Association lended a huge amount of weight.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
But the process of introducing the new bill and changing
California law would take time. While Crystal and Shawn's family
court case dragged on, John's criminal trial finally began. Crystal
gathered all the evidence she had, including the tape recording
of Sean's violent attack.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I don't know what I expected. I kind of maybe
expected just to go in and be like, here's the tape,
and ask me whatever you want and just have them
believe me.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
During the trial, Crystal discovered a horrible truth.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
When you are a rape victim, you are on trial too,
your cross examined, and every move you made, every decision
you made, is scrutinized as much as his.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Crystal thought the trial would be quick because she had
a recording of the attack, and on that tape, Sean
could be heard making explicit threats against her life. The
recording was played in her trial.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
The fact that I taped what happened to me, just
for that same reason where I'm thinking, God, how is
anybody going to believe this? It just was like Wow.
In two thousand and eight, it was just not done. Nowadays,
everybody tapes everything.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
As for Shawn's legal defense, what's.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
The only defense you can come up with if there's
an audio tape? Oh, we were role playing, of course,
you know, that's his defense that he goes with. Their
defense was so insulting to me.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Sean was facing three very serious charges.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
He was charged with for storal copulation, spousal rape, and sodomy.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
When the verdict finally came down, the jury only found
him guilty on one of those three charges.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
The jury convicted him of the forur storal copulation, which
is on tape.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
But the jury was deadlocked on the two other charges
saw toom me by force and forceable spousal rape. Even
though those acts were caught on tape two. The jury
wasn't fully convinced, so the court ultimately dismissed the charges.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I was mad. I was mad at that verdict.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
It raises the question if Crystal hadn't recorded the attacks,
would there have been a trial at all Because she
was married to her rapist. Christel felt like the courts
treated her case differently. After the verdict, he was sentenced
to six years for the crime, and.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
I remember thinking, what am I going to do when
he gets out, because like it all starts again, my
fear of him killing me, my worry for my kids, everything,
it just will begin again.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
She started thinking of ways she could protect herself when
that day came, and.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
So I got a security protection trained German shepherd. He
was amazing that moment on I knew I was safe,
like between all the other stuff I had, but the dog,
like I knew Sean couldn't be hiding in my house.
It finally gave me peace of mind.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Sean would be locked up for five years. While he
was still behind bars, she worked hard to change the
law so she wouldn't have to pay him spousal support
once he got out in twenty twelve, after a year
of lobbying, California passed a bill which introduced exceptions to
spousal support payments in cases of spousal rape. The bill
(47:00):
protects spousal rape victims whose abusers have been convicted in
criminal court from being financially obligated to their attackers. Cristel
was instrumental in getting this legislation passed. She told her
story again and again to help lawmakers understand.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
If they can't put a face to the bill, it
doesn't mean anything. For some reason. You can't just introduce
this in theory like this could happen. No, you have
to be like, no, it happened to her, and she's
sitting right here at the end of it all, I'm
so proud of what I've done and what I've been
able to get done.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
But the story doesn't end there. Six years after Shawn's release,
Kristal got a call from the District Attorney's office.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
The deputy district attorney was sort of like, I'm so
sorry to bother you. I know this might be upsetting,
but I wanted to let you know that Sean Harris
has been arrested.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
After Sean got out of prison, he was arrested for
raping another woman and sexually abusing that woman's underage daughter.
Cristal felt like she'd been telling the courts for years
about how dangerous Sean was. She was enraged that it
took him harming two other people for his violence to
be taken seriously.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
He is a fucking criminal rapist, and he did it
to someone else. But here's the thing. When Sean was
arrested in twenty twenty one again for the same crime
and charged with five felonies in that case, this time
he was sentenced to one hundred years to life. Because
the conviction in my case was in the record, it
(48:38):
all counts.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
If Crystal hadn't pressed charges or hadn't documented his crimes,
Sean's sentence could have been much lighter.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
You have to get it on the record. Abusers they
don't stop. They're gonna keep doing it, and they're gonna
get worse. They're gonna escalate, and they're gonna get caught,
and you need to have it on the record all
along the way so that they can finally get what
they deserve, like Sean finally has any sentence to one
(49:09):
hundred years to life.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
That sentence gave Crystal a sense of relief to live
the rest of her life without fear.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
I'm not sure I would be where I am mentally
today without that, because there's just this level of I
would never ever have let my guard down if he
was out ever, and that's just a hard way to live.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Crystal never expected to become an advocate for survivors espousal
rape and domestic violence.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
At this age of fifty three. I just have a
compassion that I didn't have when I was young. Life
is hard. I've learned like everybody has something, and it's
shocking how many people have this, have domestic violence or
some aspect of domestic violence in their life.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
After she left Sean, she needed a break. She wanted
to prioritize herself and her kids, so she decided not
to think about dating until her kids were at least eighteen.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
I ended up going twelve years without dating. In twenty twenty,
I let myself go on a dating app for the
first time, and I met an amazing man. We're married
today and he could not be a better person.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
In the past few years, Crystal has been thriving. She
and her husband lived together on a beautiful hillside in
southern California.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
We've got ten acres and built a custom house. We
can see all the way to the ocean, all the
city lights below. It's amazing. I feel like the life
I have today is everything I sacrificed and planned for
four years ago.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
We end every episode with the same question, why do
you want to share your story?
Speaker 2 (51:12):
I loved him, I wanted everything with him. And the
fact that that same man is the one who made
me so afraid from my life, that's the betrayal. I
feel like women are not that well served by the
(51:33):
common advice that's given of just just get out. I
feel like that's too simplistic. You have to have a
shield of some sort when you get out, and that
shield is documentation. You have to think like a chessboard,
(51:54):
think all the way to the end. I just feel
like women need to hear that they're not told that
by the official sources, because it's a little bit counter
to safety. Sometimes you could get hurt doing the recording.
You could get hurt by staying long enough to get
the documentation. And it's like not the legal thing to say,
(52:15):
but I'm just telling you that's what you need if
you are victimized the way that I was, and the
way that so many people are. You should not be
the one who is living in fear.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
We pull out of our house. We get about two
blocks from the old house, and he looks at me
and he says, I think I'm getting ready to be arrested.
Within seconds of that coming out of his mouth, the
squad car let us sap and pulled us over.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com, or follow us on Instagram at
Betrayal Pod. You can also connect with me on Instagram
at It's Andrea Gunning. To access our newsletter, view additional content,
(53:29):
and connect with the Betrayal community, join our substack at
Betrayal dot substack dot com. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
A long way.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal
is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass
Entertainment Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is
executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fasin, hosted and
produced by me Andrea Gunning. This episode was written and
produced by Olivia Hewitt and Monique Leboard, with additional production
(54:07):
from Ben Fetterman, casting support from Curry Richmond. Our iHeart
team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio editing and
mixing by Matt del Vechio. Additional audio editing by Tanner Robbins.
Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bain's music library provided by
mybe Music and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
(54:29):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Andrea Gunning
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