Genie: I’m Engaged to a Level One Sex Offender
Genie shares her unique story of falling in love with a level one sex offender.
TRIGGER WARNING - This episode contains topics that may be triggering. Listener discretion is advised.
In an inspiring and heart-felt discussion, she dives into the complexities of such a relationship, focusing on themes of communication, cycles of abuse, mental health, and remaining hopeful. Genie's story is a powerful reminder to keep an open mind and to be understanding of the struggles faced by those who have made mistakes and are on a journey of redemption. With the help of Brianne Davis, author of a book about her experiences, Genie encourages all listeners to look beyond the label of 'sex offender' and to find empathy for those in her situation. Tune in to gain insight into the struggles of remaining in a love relationship with a sex offender and the importance of paying attention to online dangers.
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If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction, depression, trauma, sexual abuse or feeling overwhelmed, we've compiled a list of resources at secretlifepodcast.com.
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To share your secret and be a guest on the show email secretlifepodcast@icloud.com
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SECRET LIFE’S TOPICS INCLUDE:
addiction recovery, mental health, alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, love addiction, OCD, ADHD, dyslexia, eating disorders, debt & money issues, anorexia, depression, shoplifting, molestation, sexual assault, trauma, relationships, self-love, friendships, community, secrets, self-care, courage, freedom, and happiness.
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Get your copy of SECRET LIFE OF A HOLLYWOOD SEX & LOVE ADDICT -- Secret Life Novel or on Amazon
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HOW CAN I SUPPORT THE SHOW?
Connect with Brianne Davis-Gantt (@thebriannedavis)
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Transcript
[0:00:00] Genie: My fiance was set up in a sting and did not know it, but he was communicating with a said minor, but wasn't a minor.
[0:00:15] Brianne Davis: Welcome to the Secret Life Podcast. Tell me your secret, I'll tell you mine. Sometimes you have to go through the darkness to reach the light. That's what I did. After twelve years of recovery in sex and love addiction, I finally found my soulmate myself. Please join me in my novel, Secret Life of a Hollywood Sex and Love Addict, a four time bestseller on Amazon. It's a brutal, honest, raw, gnarly ride, but hilarious at the same time. Check it out now on Amazon.
Welcome to Secret Life Podcast. I'm Brianne Davis-Gantt. Today, I'm pulling back the curtains of all kinds of human secrets. We'll hear about what people are hiding from themselves or others. You know, those deep, dark secrets you probably want to take to your grave. Or those lighter, funny secrets that are just plain embarrassing. Really?
[0:01:13] Brianne Davis: The how, what, when, where, and live at all. Today. My guest is Genie. Now, Genie, I have a question for you. Dun dun dun. What is your secret?
[0:01:23] Genie: My secret is I am engaged to a level one sex offender.
[0:01:27] Brianne Davis: Oh, okay. What is a level one sex offender?
[0:01:31] Genie: Level one is usually not one that you would be able to look up on any regular data site, only because their offenses are so minimal. It could be, you know, public urination, it could be light and decent indecent exposure. And in my case, my fiance was set up in a sting and did not know it, but he was communicating with a said minor, but wasn't a minor.
[0:01:57] Brianne Davis: Okay, take us back. First of all, how long have you been with him?
[0:02:01] Genie: Well, we started dating in early 2021. That's when we met.
[0:02:06] Brianne Davis: And how did you meet?
[0:02:08] Genie: We met on an online dating site. The most popular one that's out there, tinder. But he had already been. And prior to that and what had got him to that point of communicating with that said person? He was already down a rabbit hole of addiction and being meeting people for just sex. And he was on Adult Friend finder a couple of other I call him sleazy dating sites. And he was down a dark path.
[0:02:34] Brianne Davis: So he was addicted to the fantasy of the other person online?
[0:02:41] Genie: Well, I think when the person is not naturally attracted to younger people, he was just the act of being sexually engaged with anyone who was easy and readily available. That was his target. If you were ready to go, do.
[0:02:57] Brianne Davis: You think if it's even that, is it? What did he ever say to you? And I know we're jumping already into it, and I want to backtrack a little, but did he ever say to you because it was, like, a little wrong, he was communicating with her? Because as we get more in our addiction, it gets darker. And cedar and the things you thought you wouldn't do, you find yourself doing self doing. Yes.
[0:03:23] Genie: I don't think he ever entertained that thought enough to think that he would go that direction. It was just all about real meet, have sex, be done, never talk to that person again, or if they called him back, maybe. And when I met him, his intent for me was to be a friends with Benefit. And I was like, well, okay, I see that's the route you want to go. I had been in the dating scene, too, and I didn't quite understand what the friends with benefit was completely defined as. I knew it, but I didn't know it. And when I asked him, so what is your definition of friends with Benefit? He goes, oh, two or three people. I go, don't you think that's a little unhealthy? It gets sloppy. It gets kind of you don't know. Communication can get lost, and you risk the chance of STDs and STIs. And I didn't know about this secret until three months after we started seeing each other and hanging out a lot. And because of my job, too, I worked then with the state, and he knew I was a mandated reporter.
[0:04:26] Brianne Davis: Really? Wait, so he picked a mandated reporter and didn't tell you for three months?
[0:04:32] Genie: Right. But after this, he had already been in the trial part of his case.
[0:04:36] Brianne Davis: Okay.
[0:04:37] Genie: His incident happened three months prior to me.
[0:04:40] Brianne Davis: Can you take us through what actually happened with him so people listening. I want them to hear what actually happened. So he was talking to some multiple.
[0:04:49] Genie: People he was talking to, and one of them, somebody would grab on and kind of communicate a little bit more, and they started talking about meeting up, and she mentioned something. I've read the reports. I've read the psychosexual evaluation. I've read the police reports. I've even seen a cell phone while other details on it. The said young lady said that she was scared to do it at first because she hadn't actually had sex with somebody of his stature statue and was hesitant about it. And he goes, oh, well, we can take it slow, and we can do it oral. And I said, So you did want to do this? He goes, yeah, but I kind of entertained it to the fact that I knew it was going and meeting her in a public place and meeting her to say, are you sure you really want everyone your life like this? That's what he discussed with me afterwards. And I said, So you wouldn't have met her in a private place knowing that how old she said was? And he goes, no, I don't think I could have actually went through with the act.
[0:05:39] Brianne Davis: And how old did she say she was?
[0:05:41] Genie: 1515.
[0:05:43] Brianne Davis: And how old is he?
[0:05:44] Genie: He was in his early 40s.
[0:05:47] Brianne Davis: Okay, so did he end up meeting her, or he went to the place.
[0:05:52] Genie: And then went to the public place. And as soon as he pulled up, they knew exactly what car he was, who would he look like. They immediately arrested him, didn't tell him what it was about. They took him from one place, and they grilled him, saying, how would you like this if this was your daughter? Blah, blah, blah. And he knew what was up. He knew what had happened. At that point, he did spend two nights in jail, and when he went, yes, he does. He has two, and they're adults.
[0:06:19] Brianne Davis: Boys or girls?
[0:06:20] Genie: One boy, one girl.
[0:06:21] Brianne Davis: I got you.
[0:06:22] Genie: Okay. And I have three myself, so I have two girls and a boy.
[0:06:26] Brianne Davis: Okay. How old are your kids?
[0:06:28] Genie: Well, one's 24, 21, and 19.
[0:06:32] Brianne Davis: Got it.
[0:06:33] Genie: Well, one was not an adult when I had met him, but after he had told me, I was very careful of watching him and seeing how his responses were and how he was with my kids. Because if I would have gotten any kind of feeling that there was something off, I would have immediately said, yeah, we can't do this. He disclosed it to a couple of people. After he was done, he went through treatment and did the legal treatment that was required. In addition to helping himself, he also had the opportunity of having a counselor free of charge to him. This isn't for everybody. It's only because of his service background. He has access to having extra counseling. So that benefited him, I think, in the most in his healing process and understanding and getting through those ropes of learning. What he did was wrong with the communication of an inappropriate context with a minor. It was a heavy load. When he hit me with this.
[0:07:25] Brianne Davis: I want to talk about that, actually. And then I have more questions about his healing, because I actually want to hear a little more about it. But how was that let's call it D Day when he told you, how did that go? Where were you? How did you feel?
[0:07:37] Genie: We went on a day trip that day. We were doing some cool photography of some vintage cars, and then we stopped at a restaurant, play pool, came back, and then I always drove. It just was a thing I did. And he said, I have something I really need to tell you. It's kind of my own secret. And I was like, okay. And he told me. He disclosed me because I got in trouble with the sting, and this is what happened. And I said, wow, that's a big thing that happened, and I'm really glad you told me. And I handled it very calmly. I didn't freak out on him. And of course, it took me probably about I still communicated with him, and I asked him what his intent was. As we got farther, he opened up more and more and more with me. I did go to counseling myself at that time, and I wanted to understand to me, I think I wanted to know, how can I help this person, even if it's not for me. Maybe it's the next woman that he ends up dating, that he gets the treatment, he gets he gets all the things.
[0:08:36] Genie: His kids appreciate the fact that Dad's done the things for himself, because I think that's the meaningful part. And I told him, I said, don't make this about me ever. I want this to be about what you want to do. I want it to be for your family, for your job, so you don't ever lose it, for your community involvement. Me last, and it took a while. I mean, I had a long discussion, a lot of journaling. I wrote down a lot of stuff. Oh, man, I burned that book. Actually, I called it the Burn Book. Afterwards, I wrote down all the stuff, and then I burned it. But, yes, it was it was pretty impactful, and I did end up disclosing it to my supervisor at work because I knew that I was in that position where if it were ever to be brought up legally and if it were found, I didn't want it to be contingent on me or my job.
[0:09:22] Brianne Davis: And what did they say?
[0:09:24] Genie: She understood it, and because my job the way it was at that point, she was very understanding and keeping it as confidential as possible. And I told her, I promise that he's not going to be in any settings around here, no family events until we know when the legal trial is done. And that's when he was when the legal trial was done. That's when he was labeled as one, and he was on restriction. He had to get travel things to go see me because we were in different counties.
[0:09:53] Brianne Davis: Okay?
[0:09:53] Genie: So he had to get a travel voucher from his probation officer, and he would come down once a week, and I would come up to his place every other week or so like that, and that's how we would see each other. We would go back and forth. Also, when he went to this legal thing, he had asked the judge, asked his attorney that he had hired to say, well, my girlfriend that I'm seeing does have one son that's 17 and a half. Can I put his name on the, you know, being supervised by her? And he they asked the judge that, and he granted it. Okay, so but ever since then, we I after 2021, and then we we dated for probably about a good six or seven months, and then I ended up moving into his place with his kids because then my kids all got their own places and my youngest went to their dads. And none of this was to my understanding in relation to my relationship, except for the fact that Mom's moving on.
[0:10:43] Brianne Davis: Does any of your kids know about it or is this, like, a secret a lot of people don't know?
[0:10:48] Genie: No. I had actually to talk to them a little bit about it. And then I talked to my fiance about it, and I said, this is mostly your story to tell, so if you ever want to sit down and openly talk to them about it and I asked them, I go, do you guys ever want to hear it? And they're like, no, we know what we know, and that's all we need to know. And you know what? They all have a wonder, since it's been about two and a half, almost two years, that we all have a great relationship, and it's worked out. They see him for who he is genuinely as a person now because he's overcome a lot of hurdles. And the reason why he went down that dark path and and became an addicted person because at a young age, he was pushed into being an instant father and married very quickly to a very older woman who already had kids.
[0:11:31] Brianne Davis: So he was he was sexualized very young then.
[0:11:35] Genie: Yes.
[0:11:36] Brianne Davis: If he was with an older woman, whether he was of age or not, that can be a permanent damage to you.
[0:11:42] Genie: Right. And then, of course, that marriage being as long as it was, there was a lot of online 18 years.
[0:11:49] Brianne Davis: Wow.
[0:11:49] Genie: Yeah, there was a lot of what he told me he felt like a doormat in a paycheck, probably about the same time he told me about this legal problem. He felt like a doormat and a paycheck and his wife and his wife's life.
[0:12:00] Brianne Davis: Do you think then he started acting out online to escape that relationship?
[0:12:05] Genie: Oh, he had numerous affairs while he was married.
[0:12:08] Brianne Davis: Right.
[0:12:08] Genie: He was trying to get away from that whole he wanted that connection with somebody who saw something in him, and the only thing he saw that he was useful for was for sex.
[0:12:16] Brianne Davis: Right. Yeah. I mean, listen, I am a sex addict. I'm a sex and love addict, and I totally get when we use our sexuality or try to connect with other people through that, but it's like he went to the extreme because he was so disconnected from himself and his sexuality was taken away.
[0:12:34] Genie: Exactly. Yeah.
[0:12:37] Brianne Davis: So how far did it go down? Did he ever meet any minors or was that the first and only one, or have you asked him?
[0:12:44] Genie: That was the first and only one, and I did ask him that. I asked him if he was ever attracted to him. I even went back and reading your book, too, and I asked him I go, did you ever have any incidences in your younger life where you may have been exposed to these kind of things? Because that's what I've seen a lot when I work with my former job, is seeing a pattern of exposure, and it just kind of continues. And it's one of those things that either people either can identify it, learn to get the treatment and stop it, or they can continue to choose doing that same thing over and over again until they don't see a problem with it.
[0:13:15] Brianne Davis: And what did he say when you asked him that?
[0:13:17] Genie: He never had that kind of exposure. He lost his virginity at an older age.
[0:13:22] Brianne Davis: I know, but even with porn and stuff, did he look at porn at a young age? Because that's a big factor.
[0:13:29] Genie: He may have had touch and go with that, but he never told me that he was ever addicted to the porn or anything. To me from what my background of going through the schooling that I went through and also understanding background for casework. There's nothing that significance a red flag to me that says, oh, he had this kind of exposure as a youngster, and this is why. It's just a lot of I think a lot of it mostly had to do with his parents being divorced, his dad not coming around, not having that love and connection attention, and being married to an older woman and still then falling in that whole trap of not feeling the love and connection. And it just seems like it's playing.
[0:14:07] Brianne Davis: Online and those connections that feel real but they're actually false connections and then the stakes keep getting higher to get the hit and high you want.
[0:14:16] Genie: Absolutely.
[0:14:20] Brianne Davis: Does he get online anymore now or is that a no go?
[0:14:24] Genie: Very little no. He's only on a couple of very social medias and he allows me to look at what he has.
[0:14:30] Brianne Davis: Good.
[0:14:30] Genie: He has no problem with me looking at what he has. There used to be a time in the beginning of our relationship his phone was always faced down, he'd always have notifications off. And I knew for the probably about the first six months he was still coming off of that high of being connected to those people.
[0:14:45] Brianne Davis: Yeah, it takes a while. It's very hard to go cold turkey off of online anything, even online gaming, it's hard to go cold turkey. It's very difficult.
[0:14:58] Genie: Even in the beginning of our relationship, I had caught him. He was going to hook up with some gal after we had had a huge weekend, a holiday weekend together. And then he was trying to persuade the neighbor that lived over at another place that we lived at together and I caught it and he tried to lie about it at first, but then he felt really bad and he backed down and it was just like it was wrong. I should have never flirted with her, I should have never kissed her on even though we were seeing each other, I was just thinking, I can get away with it.
[0:15:30] Brianne Davis: And that was do you know why he did that? Why you guys were getting closer, why he did that?
[0:15:36] Genie: I do, but I don't. It's like I can't go in his brain and actually pinpoint what it is, but he can only go by what he tells me.
[0:15:43] Brianne Davis: Well, it's a definite fear of intimacy. So if you're getting closer to him in real life, he does anything he can to make that disconnection and go somewhere else. It's him chasing still that fantasy at that time because it was getting too real, probably, for you guys.
[0:16:01] Genie: That is probably exactly it, because it was right before I had moved in with him.
[0:16:05] Brianne Davis: That's what always happens. I was talking with somebody and they were like, every time we go, my boyfriend and I go on a family vacation, he picks a fight with me afterwards. And I'm like, yeah, because he's terrified of real intimacy. So he picks a fight with you because it was too real, and he didn't come from that background, so he doesn't know how to process it.
[0:16:27] Genie: That's right. That's a very good analogy. One of the books that I did read with him, and I'm probably sure you're familiar with it, it's called out of the Shadows by Patrick Carnes.
[0:16:36] Brianne Davis: Yes, I love that book.
[0:16:38] Genie: Oh, my gosh. If anybody's ever going through this kind of process. And one thing I do want to disclose about him being a sex offender and I don't want people to turn away from these people. Yes, there's people that have got extreme patterns of child molestation, rape and things like that, but with his being a level one, the way it was and going through the treatment is not an easy process because these people have to pay for this. It's no different from drug rehab. You have to pay for it. And if you can't get a job anywhere because of those legal things that you have pressed against you, then how are you able to afford the treatment to go forward?
[0:17:14] Brianne Davis: Yeah, it's a lot of money. People with this addiction, this tendency, it's really hard to get recovery.
[0:17:21] Genie: Yeah, I think it was about $400 every month for him. And he would have meetings once a week, and he would tell me all about the meetings. I've never told him to tell me anything. I let him do I said, if you want to share, that's great. I'm here to be here to listen to you and help you through anything. And that's why when I read that book, I literally went through and I understood every piece of it, so I knew how to support him, and that was a big thing. And then I read well, I listened to yours on audiobook, but all those resources I got all my resources together. It's like, if I'm going to be anything, this man, I'm going to be a resource and help for him and get him through this. Like I said, I didn't want him to make it about me. I wanted it to be for himself and his family first. Yeah.
[0:18:03] Brianne Davis: And I think it's really beautiful as a partner, the non judgmental and not taking it on. It's about you. I even work with a lot of partners and help them see like, this addiction has nothing to do with you. If he's going to go do that, it has no reflection of you. It's his own. But then I always have what in you, though, are not showing up. What in you depicts somebody unavailable, but it seems like he's doing the work. So you're showing up completely available and saying, here, you have to do your work and it's all on you. But I will show up for you to see how it's different, how you're handling it. And majority of the people, because they make it about them and it's not about them. He has a disease. He has a sickness. He's trying to escape himself in some way.
[0:18:46] Genie: Exactly. Yeah. And I really dug deep into that because I wanted him to know that I want to understand every element of this. So I know everything that even when you talk about the whacka Mole addiction, like, he used to also be a smoker, and he just recently quit smoking. And so I said, so have you found yourself finding addiction to anything else? And then lately it's been I call it the TikTok rabbit hole.
[0:19:12] Brianne Davis: TikTok is a huge one. That is a huge addiction, actually. It's bad. So what is he doing now? So he's going down that rabbit hole of watching videos.
[0:19:23] Genie: Yeah, and I want to back it up just a little bit. But before then, when he was going to counseling and I was going to counseling and because we had had those hurdles of him still trying to interact with people and trying to get better and then going into counseling, I actually sat down and said, let's come up with healthy things that we can do. So we started doing more stuff in the kitchen. We started making cakes together, we started making other recipes together. We've gone camping. Another thing we did is, I don't know if you've seen those glass cubes that people put like fairy lights in, but instead of putting fairy lights in every time we went out somewhere, like even a coaster or a menu or something small that we could put in their little shrinkage, and we started collecting memory jars. We're on our fifth one right now. And they're positive things. I always told him, let's think of positive things that we can change, those negative things that you are so easily fallen into. And I think that was the biggest thing, is another part of me working with him to better himself.
[0:20:18] Brianne Davis: But I also love that, yes, I'm all about positivity, but there's a time and a place for it. So he still had to go through the negative stuff with his therapy, his groups, whatever he's doing, and then you be there next to him and then trying to expand his life instead of making it smaller.
[0:20:38] Genie: Right.
[0:20:38] Brianne Davis: I don't look at it as positivity. I just look at it as you expanding you guys'life together.
[0:20:44] Genie: That's a good way to put it. Definitely. It's like I try not to monitor him, but I do monitor him. I think that's just my fear of him going down that addiction hole. But I think we're kind of far enough away from it now. But I always do check in.
[0:20:59] Brianne Davis: I think it's important. The first five to ten years, you kind of have to do check ins. I don't ever suggest to make sure you're checking it 24/7. But when you're getting out of this specific addiction, it is the hardest one to get out of it, and you have to be diligent and little things can trigger you just even seeing something on a website. So it is always important for them to have accountability. Like for me, I had accountability with my partner. It just is it's? You showing up authentically, but there has to be no judgment on the other side. And I think that's where you have a good balance with it.
[0:21:39] Genie: Yes. And that is one of our strong suits from coming from both of our rocky marriages that we've had. And the lack of communication was the hardest part that we didn't understand a lot from our marriage. It just wasn't there. And I think that's what has helped us in our relationships, like communication, communication, communication. We have to talk about it. Even if it's the nitty gritty and it hurts and it feels like it's just ugly, we have to talk about it.
[0:22:08] Brianne Davis: You do. Communication is the most important. But I am going to ask you a question, and it's going to be might be difficult to answer, because if someone has a young child that this has happened to them, what would you say to them? How would you explain his side to them to make them feel understanding? Or maybe there's nothing you can say, so I don't know. So I was wondering if you've ever thought about that.
[0:22:36] Genie: I have thought about that. I was with him when he was really restricted as far as the restriction goes, too. They even monitor his phone. Yeah, he monitors electronic devices on any communication. Anything he searched. If you searched anything about anatomy, they would have dinged him and he would have been in trouble by his PO and heartbeat. I think when I was out in public with him, there was a lot of questions asked, even from his treatment counselor, saying, did you have a kid come up and touch you or bump into you? If something like that happens, you need to say something and express it and tell people and people in your group how you feel. I think if there was anything that I could tell that there was something discomforting, like if a kid was being too close to him and he was just like, I need to get this makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to get in trouble again. I don't want to feel like I'm going to get prosecuted for this kid coming at me. So I think it's just about us learning boundaries, and because we're much older and our kids are much older, and of course there's going to be kids coming into our life that are younger from them having their children. It's his story to tell. Again, I've always said it's his story to tell. And if he feels that it's something that's going to make him uncomfortable in a setting, in a place with lots of children around, then I've always told him, we can go.
[0:23:54] Genie: We can leave. We don't have to stay here.
[0:23:56] Brianne Davis: Okay. And if any parents that have dealt with that they're younger kids talking to older people online, what would be your advice for them just because you've dealt with it on the other side?
[0:24:09] Genie: As a parent myself, I monitored my kids devices. I paid for it, I monitor it, amen. And I hate it when people sit there. Well, my kid won't take their device away. They don't need it. You tell them you'll pick them up and drop them off, you'll be there. Do it like you did in the 80s.
[0:24:27] Brianne Davis: You didn't even have a cell phone or a phone.
[0:24:31] Genie: I'm picking you up at so and so's house, and if you're not there, I know you were lying. But also working part of my line of work that I worked with, reading cases, there were young girls who had been sexualized younger.
[0:24:44] Brianne Davis: Well, then, mostly likely, there's a brokenness about them. I work with a lot of young girls, especially 15 and 16 year olds. And anybody that's online looking for that connection is lacking a connection in their real life that's just exactly some damage was done, some abandonment, some low self esteem, fear of intimacy, fear of being loved. But I believe that this social media world we live in is making it a thousand times worse.
[0:25:15] Genie: Definitely. And it's tough. And even in the field where I'm at now, I won't disclose because I don't want too much to get out there, but I see people, even the kids that are on these cases, on Zoom, and I see their Zoom profile picture, and then they come on, and I'm like, Whoa. I would have instantly thought that person that was in that picture was over 20 years old. And I thought, how dangerous? When I know that that person that's really on that Zoom is under 18.
[0:25:42] Brianne Davis: Yeah. So scary. And wanting to grow up so quickly as well. There's always that need. As a young child, I mean, I even wanted to grow up quickly. We all do. But we have to protect the innocent, even from themselves, right? I do have one more question I'm dying to ask. I do have a son. We were just talking about the same thing. But how do I protect my son? He's four and. A half. But how do I protect him from online creditors, however they are, innocent or not, how do I protect him?
[0:26:17] Genie: Again, monitoring him? What is he going on and educating him? That's not a safe place. There's probably people in there that are not okay to talk to you. And if somebody asks you questions that you don't feel comfortable, you tell me right away. Even some of the stuff that my kids used to play, like called penguin back in the day, there was always somebody on there, and they would start cursing them. Oh, my God, mom, this person's cursing at me. And I might report them, report them right away because I don't know who they are. I don't know. There could be some 30 something year old playing around on the kids game and trying to get kids. And like I said, I monitored a lot of stuff. I monitor even snapchat. I monitored my kids on that. They told me some kid was getting ready to want to fight another kid. I said shut it down.
[0:27:04] Genie: Don't get in the middle of it, and we're going to take it to school.
[0:27:07] Brianne Davis: Yes, I love that. That's great too. I love having you on. Is there anything else you want to share that you feel like you need to come on and talk about so people understand the other side of this behavior?
[0:27:20] Genie: I don't like it when people sit there and generalize that all sex offenders are bad. They should be shot or killed or hurt or something in that way. I think as a society that's already lacking a lot of strength in the mental health field, that we really need to take a step back and saying, you know what? They're still in our community. They're still around. We don't know what it is.
[0:27:39] Brianne Davis: They're still human. They're still breathing.
[0:27:40] Genie: They're still human. And it's easy for a sex and love addict to fall in that trap because it's that fine line, and all of a sudden you could just go right over there and be like, oh, I really didn't want to go that far. And I just really wish the world or the United States in general would really focus on mental health a lot more. And I wish it wasn't so expensive so these people can get the treatment they need, so they can stop the cycle. Because when they don't get the treatment they need, they're right back on the street doing what they've been normally doing to survive.
[0:28:15] Brianne Davis: It's a survival tactic to numb out and not be in reality. That's all it is. It really is. It's living in fantasy so you don't have to live in reality with how you're feeling.
[0:28:25] Genie: Right? And there are some that are against the grain with the whole thing. Like I said, I've read cases where people are non registered sex offenders target younger young women or women in general with young kids, and they just perpetrate on them and drug habits. And it's just like, again, if we had the money going the right direction for those things, we would have a lot of healthier people.
[0:28:48] Brianne Davis: I did the extreme cases, for sure. The ones that have raped or hurt children in that way, there is a perversion that they want to take the innocence because they never had that innocence. So I was talking one time to a professional about it. She specializes in it. That is a mental health issue that you actually have to go and work on because they're stuck in this adolescent style of sexuality and wanting to connect to when they were that young.
[0:29:23] Genie: Right.
[0:29:23] Brianne Davis: She had a whole different idea around it, which I found fascinating because, you know, a lot of sexual predators are in essay and slaa and I see them all the time and I'm friends with them that have had issues in the past and they're good people. They were just struggling themselves with mental health, addiction and all of that.
[0:29:46] Genie: Yeah. One thing I explained when my fiance first got into his group setting, I said, I just want you to keep in mind, and this is something that I had to keep in mind when I've read cases a lot was these people didn't just wake up one day and decide, I'm just going to go molest people. No, it was something that the pattern behavior that had happened, something had happened to them. And I could read every psychological background that I've ever read and be like, boom, there it is.
[0:30:11] Brianne Davis: It's generational. Usually it's passed down if it happened in the family, it's usually passed down in generations. If people don't actually do the work, they need to see why that happened to them or heal from.
[0:30:24] Genie: Exactly.
[0:30:25] Brianne Davis: Just like rage, just like violence that happens. It's passed down everything. Yeah.
[0:30:30] Genie: And like I said, it's stopping it with the mental health and wanting it to stop.
[0:30:35] Brianne Davis: Well, I'm so grateful to have you on. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for reaching out to me. I'm honored and I really appreciate it.
[0:30:45] Genie: I appreciate you too. I appreciate your book and everything about it. You helped me a great deal. I had him listen to it. He loved it too. I would have really loved for him to be here, but I thought, I'm going to tell it from my story this time. I'm going to tell it from my point of view.
[0:30:59] Brianne Davis: No, I love it. Thank you. Thank you for doing that.
[0:31:02] Genie: All right, thank you.
[0:31:04] Brianne Davis: And if you want to be on the show, please email me at secretlifepodcast@icloud.com. Until next time.
[0:31:14] Genie: Bye.
[0:31:16] Brianne Davis: Thanks again for listening to the show. Please subscribe rate share or send me a note at secretlifepodcast.com. And if you'd like to check out my book, head over to secretlifenovel.com or Amazon to pick up a copy for yourself or someone you love. Thanks again. See you soon.
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