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Published Oct 20, 2022, 10:00 AM

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

Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Warning, this episode contains discussion of sexual and domestic abuse. Listener discretion is advised. The landscape of my childhood was just poverty, abuse, a fundamentalist religion. I mean, I can't think of many redeeming qualities of my childhood. If a tough childhood creates character, I have so much character. You don't get to choose your family, and whoever choose my family for me shows so you know, the poorest one with you know, the most extreme religion's completely dysfunctional and just extreme abuse. Also, my my father was extremely violent and I suffered physical and sexual abuse when I was a child. That's Freddie Rice activists against forced marriage, child marriage, and teenage marriage. Activism tends to spring from moral outrage, and sometimes that moral outrage is deeply personal. Phreds is a story that contains layer after layer of secrecy, isolation, violence, and fundamentalism. I'm Danny Shapiro and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. One of the most immediately obvious aspects of the ultra Orthodox Jewish community and where I grew up in Brooklyn. The first thing you notice is the large family sizes. I was from a family of six, and that was kind of a small family, believe it or not. So yes, a lot of siblings and nieces and nephews and cousins and anna's and uncle's communities really really important. I grew up really very much cut off from the outside world. I didn't have my own bedroom, I didn't have my own space. I mean, it was always around other people, and those other people were always also ultra Orthodox Jewish. And people are surprised to learn just how cut off I was from the outside world. You know, I was born in in the seventies, or you know, grew up in eighties and nineties in Brooklyn and no television, no radio, no newspapers, no no real contact with anybody who wasn't also the ultra Orthodox Jewish. So I didn't know basic things about culture, and it was a lot to learn when I left, and people were shocked. You don't know what the muppets are, You've never you don't know who the Beatles are. You don't know that Hamburgers are not made out of him. You know, I did not know any of that, so how would I know? English was my first language always, which made it a lot easier when I was leaving the community. For those for whom Yiddish is their first language is much more difficult. And actually my my mother had grown up in Hasidic family in Williamsburg and her first language was Yiddish. And my father was believe it or not, Cuban. He was born in Havana on His first language was Spanish, but at home we always spoke English and I speak very little Yiddish and not a word of Spanish. Did your father was he also raised in um an Orthodox Jewish community in Cuba. Yes, absolutely, yes, the fundamentalism and my family goes back many, many generations. Where were you in the order of the birth order of siblings? I was second to youngest, so I got exactly zero attention, which in a family that abusive and dysfunctional, probably best case scenario. The school that I went to was an ultra Orthodox Jewish school, Yeshiva Brooklyn, all girls school. There was an Yeshiva Brooklyn for boys, but that one was two blocks away in a separate building, so yes, completely cut off from boys and men. So yes, um, everywhere we went, the stores that I shopped in, any business I had to do, and if I was allowed to get a job, which was fairly limited, then it had to be with an orthofox Jewish boss. When I say very limited access to the outside, well we're talking about when I showed the city bus driver my bus pass. That was like the most contact I had with somebody who wasn't from my safe community. What were the more raise and customs around the opposite sex At any event or party or religious gathering, a synagogue, any any time there was there were people coming together, the men and the women were completely separated, either in a effort room or the women were behind a curtain of afiza uh real separation barrier. And it was very very very explicit that this was not separate but equal to the extent that that exists. This is not separate but equal. This is the women are less than the men. Are the ones who are partaking in this religious activity or the prayer or whatever party it is, and the women are there as observers and bystanders, and they better be silent. They should not be seen, they should not be heard. And to give you a sense of just how explicit the misogyny is in that community. In the Prayer Book, it shows that every morning men make a blessing they thank God for not making them a non Jew, a slave, or a woman. And then for women, when the men are saying, oh God, thank you Lord for not making me a woman or a slaver or non Jew, women make a blessing, thank you God for making me as you will. It was it was, you know, like, oh boy. And then imagine the message that sends as as a girl when I was seeing this every morning in my prior book and knowing that the men and boys were making this blessing thanking the Lord for not making them someone like me, which they put in the same category as a slave or a non Jew. Because it just gives you a sense of also the xenophobia there, like anyone who's not one of us is is the equivalent of a slave. Just how offensive all of that is. It's so if there's so much to unpack there looking back, I think one of the most infuriating aspects of that is that when when we as girls would ask well, why why are men thanking God for not making them a non duous slave or a woman? What does that mean about me as a girl or a woman? The response was the ultimate and gas lighting. The response was, it's because women are so special. Oh yeah, I mean that totally explains it. That's why all the men thank God for not making a monogious slave or a woman. Is because women are so special. I feel better now. As a child, those certain elements of the religion felt confusing and extreme to her. FREDI doesn't exactly clock the misogyny and xenophobia early on. She doesn't clock the abuse that's going on at home either. How could she, It's all she knows. This is the thing about being born into an abusive family, especially when you don't have a TV where you see the fake families that are all happy and sweet. You don't really have a sense that what's happening to you is not normal. There is no real sense of, oh wait, I'm not supposed to be afraid in my own home. I'm not supposed to be physically assaulted in my own home. My mother shouldn't be pushed down the stairs and being with a stick like this shouldn't be happening. There's a very little sense of that when you're a child born into it. So that part I really did not question or complain about. And even the misogynistic aspects of the religion. I questioned some of it and got into trouble because one of the roles in that community is the messages you're a woman, shut the funk up, you have a vagina. Who are you to ask questions? So even the small questions that I asked, I got into trouble for asking. But also I asked them not as uh, well, this is all bullshit. I don't want any part of it. It was you know. I asked them based on the premise that obviously, this is my religion, this is my life in it, this is the right way, this is what God wants. There is a God. I believe that back then as well, And um, you know, I'm not going to lead, I'm not going to rebel. None of that. That didn't even occurred to me. So leaving her religion or her home never occurs to Freddie. At this time, her mom is told to leave her marriage. If is almost unheard of in the community, but the rabbis know how violent her father is. The rabbis tell Freddy's mom, listen, he's going to kill you. He's going to kill the kids. You have to get out. Even then when she left, because of the deeply misogynistic laws in that religion, only a man is allowed to grant a get a Jewish divorce. A woman doesn't have that right. She can ask for a divorce, but he can just say no, and then what happens to hers, She just becomes what's known in that community as an aguna, a changed woman, a woman who is literally chained to a dead marriage and forever a second class citizen. I think second class is too generous. I mean, we're talking about someone who is just further abused by the entire community, really really looked down upon. Being single on that community is already considered shameful, but being an aguna, everybody will absolutely blame the victim in that situation and just treat and now gun not like just complete hurt, as if it's somehow her fault. And that's exactly what happened to my mother for seven years. Obviously, this violent, abusive man was not going to just willingly let her out of this abusive, violent marriage. And I saw the way the community treated her, and I heard her crying herself to sleep, and that I used to as a child, remember hearing her sobbing when she thought that we couldn't hear her, And I questioned that. I questioned that, why, why, how does it make sense? How does it make sense that a woman can't grant to get? And then I remember asking, also, why can't a woman say kaddish? That's the prayer for the dead. There was no one in my life that had died that I wanted to say kattage for but it just it just didn't make sense to me. And I would ask these questions and the response was, you know, shut the funk up and set the funk down. And by the way, why aren't you cooking and cleaning? You're a woman or a girl. So there was no answer. Freddie is four when her mother takes her and her siblings away from her father. They flee with the clothing on their backs, first to Los Angeles and then back to Brooklyn to live with Freddy's grandparents. This is where she spends the rest of her childhood. She's eleven when her father finally gives her mother a get a Jewish divorce. Why did he finally give her a get? My understanding is that someone convinced him some clever person convinced him that if he gave my mother a get, he would show her what a nice person he was and she would come back to him. So you're like eleven or twelve years old when your mother is no longer an abuna, right right, So but then, yeah, she's not an aguna, but now she's a divorce which is almost as bad in that community. Not as bad, I mean agunas is a whole new level, or a really low level. But even as a divorce woman, that the abuse that she got, the treatment that she got was absolutely horrifying. So were you sort of at that point watching your older siblings start to get married, start to have families. I mean, if you're if you're the second to the youngest when you were a teenager, was that starting to happen around you? Yes, when I was twelve, my oldest sister got engaged. She was nineteen, so she was really old. It was time for her to marry. And by the way, very very difficult for my mother to arrange all of our marriages because we are now the children of divorce and that's just so looked down upon in that community. So not only was my mother punished for being first snaguna and then a divorcee. But then we were all punished. I mean, I had girls in my class at Yeshiva of Brooklyn whose parents would not let them talk to me. That's all. You can't talk to Fred, her parents are divorced. It was that extreme. And the other thing that didn't occur to me at the time, and looking back at this, the really really gets to me is my mother's marriage was arranged or forced, whatever you want to call it. I call it force because there's no there's no real opportunity for either party to consent to his marriage. So her parents forced her into this marriage to a stranger, and it turned out to be I mean, such a horrifying, terrible experience for her. She mean, she was abuse every single day for the fourteen years that she lived with my father. He tortured her. And yet less than a year after she finally got her religious of force and got out of that, she was already forcing all of her children into marriages to strangers. And I don't think it ever occurred to her that this system doesn't make sense. This is a problematic system. You cannot just marry people off without their consent to strangers and then have it turned out well. So yes, I went from watching her get her get and then to my sister being married off to a stranger, and then, as far as I know, my oldest sister, her marriage was not, as far as I know, an unhappy marriage, although I wouldn't necessarily know that, But she got pregnant right away, which is was supposed to happen in that community. And her oldest son was born with really profound disability, very very very sick, and spent most of his life in a hospital and a home. He couldn't see, he couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, and he um and he died when he was eighteen. So I was twelve or thirteen when he was born. Yes see, this was my first nephew, and I just I just fell in love with YESI I still remember the first time I saw him in the hospital, hooked up to all kinds of machines. He had his first surgery as soon as he was born. He had hydrocephalus, and back then the treatments for that we're really limited. And I just fell in love with him. This is what I was witnessing. My sister was twenty years old. And she has a son with profound disabilities that she now has to care for when she's because she's basically a child herself. And then she has to keep having children because that's what's required in that community. So I mean, she continued having children and then trying to to juggle all of that when she herself had not even had a chance to grow up. I mean, it's just so heartbreaking. In the bridal classes that are mandatory for all engaged women in the community, women are taught that you are required to have unprotected sex with your spouse on a monthly basis, and it's time for when you're ovulating, so it's forced sex, forced unprotected sex, which leads to forced parenthood. Freddie watches her sister go through this and is aware that before long she'll be paired off with someone too. I mean, I was just waiting to be married off, and I had no hopes and dreams for the future other than I want to be a wife and a mother, because that's all I was taught. There's a term for a girl when she reaches high school in the Orthodox Jewish community. They call her a columnate. All it's just a bridal girl, just a girl waiting to become a bride. That's all really I was. I was required to sign two different forms promising that I wouldn't take driver's head and promising that I wouldn't take s A T S. It's very, very very cheerfully orchestrated that as a girl, I was completely financially dependent on my what would have been parents. My father was out of the picture by then, so it was completely financially dependent on my mother. Had to live in her home, not allowed to move out on my own. The only way I could move out was when I got married, so that I was just never allowed to become independent. And there's also lack of education. Wasn't allowed to get a real education at issue for worklen and we learned how to cook and sew, and I was not allowed to go to college. So all of this really just conspires against you. We'll be right back. So when Freddie is a teenager, the official matchmaking process kicks off. She's seen this play out for her older siblings and now it's her time to be forced into a relationship with a stranger, a partner chose by someone else, the matchmaker. There is no courtship, it's just a match. I was one of those couples, those hilariously awkward couples sitting five feet away from each other in the lounge of a hotel, drinking soda and asking, so, how many children do you want to have? What's your favorite? So yeah, okay, let's get married. Well it's not even let's get married, because that's decide, but the matchmaker, I mean that whole exercise. I shouldn't laugh, because there is really nothing funny about forcing strangers to marriage when they've never been allowed to be alone together. So there has to be in that public place, never allowed to have any physical contact, and they have a matchmaker arranging the whole thing. And by the time you get to go on on one of those they call that a date. I would really really, I think that's a bit of a stretch to call that kind of meeting a date. But by the time you get to go on this so called date, both families have all and the matchmaker have already decided this match is happening. So it's really it's not do you want to marry him, it's you're gonna marry him? Right, And to say no to that is incredibly, incredibly difficult. And especially there's some socioeconomic element to this. So if my parents had not been divorced, if I had a father who was a famous rabbi or was very wealthy, then I probably would have felt comfortable saying no to to a few matches. So if you know, the first guy that that the matchmaker matches me with, perhaps I could have said no, I don't I don't like his nose, or I don't like you know, he likes sprite and I like Coca cola, so obviously we're not compatible. Uh you know. Perhaps, But because I was from such a poor family and my parents were divorced, I knew if I said no, there was probably not going to be another match. And the other thing is there's no real basis to say no. I mean, you know, I joke about how he likes sprite and I like Coca cola. I mean, really, other than that, how much can you possibly get to know somebody sitting in that lounge five ft apart from each other, you know, talking about how many children do you want to have and what's your favorite soda? There's very little that you can learn. I remember talking to this one woman who said she's also grew up a fundamentalist Hasidic community that she came from, and she told her mother after this, she actually got to meet this guy for a half hour, and by then, like the wine had been pouring, the cookies had been put out. I mean, both families were there. They were just waiting for her to say yes. And after the half hour meeting, she went back into the kitchen and from the living room she tilled her mother, I just I just don't like him. And her mother said, how could you not like him? You don't even know him, and not understanding the irony of what she was saying, like, you can marry this guy, but you can't not like him. You have no basis not to like him. You've met him for half hour. How could you not like him? And there's a lot I had a lot of that feeling as well. How can I say no? My mother has said this is the right guy for me, His family has said this is the right guy for me. The matchmaker I always compare the matchmakers to use car salespeople. They get paid only if there's an engagement, so they go hard. I mean this, They're they're gonna make sure that this match happens. In my case. It was my mother's first cousin, and she's telling me, this is the right guy for you. And it's very much a sense of I've never dated before, I don't know, I don't know anything. I mean, I'm a nineteen year old, clueless virgin. I'm gonna turn twenty this year. And then you don't want to turn twenty and still be single. In that community, that's basically a death sentence. When I saw him, we remember him standing there on the porch, and my initial instinct was, oh God, this is not at all what the matchmaker had promised had told me. He was unkempt, his suit was like a little disheveled. I I'm very into clothing, like guy. I always liked to dress well. I always always really put together, and he was just kind of a mess and he was pretty significantly overweight and just just not at all what the matchmaker had said to me. And I remember thinking, God, this was not what I would have wanted. But then it's always so drummed into you. I had been taught for years and years physical attraction. That's something the guy um that the non Jews the other that's what they worry about. That's not something that we care about. Sexual attraction. That's not a thing. Physical attraction, physical appearance. That means nothing and absolutely nothing to do with anything. And by the way, it wasn't This is how you make a decision. Don't worry about physical appearance. Instead, look at X, Y and Z. There was no look at X, Y and Z. No one ever had a conversation with me about, all right, you're gonna get to meet the guy at the lounge of the hotel. Here's what you should ask him, here's what you should look at, here's what you should think about. I had no idea, and it didn't even occur to me to ask, and it didn't occur to anyone around me to tell me that. I was just basically it was, you know, checking the box on the page. Okay, did the matchmaker come forward, yes? Did his family say yes? Check? Did her family say yes? Check? Did they meet three times in the hotel lobby and talk about soda preferences? Check? All right, and they can get engaged. I mean, it was just really, it was just ridiculous. And in fact, the average number of these fake dates in the community at is seven. By the way, and I can't remember exactly how many dates we had, but it was over a period of something like eight weeks. And on two of these so called dates, this guy got into a physical fight with strangers on the street. There was one time that he didn't like the way a guy looked at me, and they got into a physical altercation. And then there was another time that there was some kind of driving incident. He was a very aggressive driver and he got into a physical fight with with another driver. And that was such a huge red flag. I mean, the fact that he turned out to be violent and abusive. Anyone who would have seen that, who had any you know, I was thinking about this rationally at all, would have said, that's a red flag. This is somebody who has violent tendencies. But that did not occur to me, and this didn't occur to anyone around me. Did he asked about that. Nobody said, well, if he physically assault strangers on the street while you're walking with him, that's a guy who probably has violent tendencies, and you to you know, proceed with caution. No. To me, in my nineteen year old brain, it was, oh wow, he's you know, he really protect me. This is a guy who's really, really going to protect me. This is this is fantastic. Tell me about how you felt walking down the aisle. I was so happy that it's embarrassing to admit this, and it hurts me to say this. I wish I could say God, I was begging for not to happen, and I walked down the aisle feeling like this is so unfair. I always say I walked down the aisle to my execution wearing a big smile and the world's ugliest gown. I wish I had known better, but I let myself get caught up in all in all of it, you know. And here's the thing there. You say no to a match, they're all kinds of serious repercussions, bad things will happen. You say yes, you get a party. You get have to be the center of attention. I was the second to youngest of six and a girl, and and a fundamentalist religious, really poor family. I had never had a birthday party. Nobody ever made me the center of attention. I mean, in the ultra fox Jewish community, girls don't even have a bot mits about. Boys have apartment spob but a girl doesn't have a bott mit spot. All of a sudden, you get engaged, center of attention, big parties. You know, people will buy you all kinds of gifts and a whole new wardrobe and a set of multiple sets of pops and pans and dishes. And then also, I didn't feel safe at home. I was unsafe at home. My brother was very abusive. I did not feel safe at home. And I get to move out. I get I get to get out of this abusive home. I get to go someplace where I imagined in my head I would be safe. Finally, for the first time in my life. I'd be away from my abusive father and away from my abusive brothers. I get to just live in safety with all these new pots and pans I have nineteen. I can't imagine, you know, getting a bitter deal. So yeah, I walked down the aisle. I'll skip in. I'm like, this is fantastic way to go Freddy. Freddy and her new husband begin their life together. They move into a little basement apartment on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, a wide, busy boulevard lined with synagogues, yeshiva's, and Jewish businesses. So one of the you know, beautiful homes on Ocean Parkway in the dinky basement with like one little window, basically a prison, which I guess is fitting. So living in this little, tiny apartment. And the first thing that became very very clear right away was that my then husband and I were just not compatible. I mean, it was very clear that we had nothing at all in common, and that having a conversation was going to be a challenge with this man because the way we approached life was so different. So, for example, he would make Helen Keller jokes where he mocked people who were blind or people had physical disabilities. I remember us talking about my nephew, Yesie, who loved more than anyone in the world, who was blind and he was in a wheelchair. And every time my husband made a joke about Helen Keller, I would start to cry. You know, I beg him, please don't make jokes about that. It really hurts me. I feel like you're really offending. Yes see, why is it his fault that he's blind? And the more I cry, the funnier he found it. Sevent days after our wedding, he woke up late one morning and he was late for an appointment, and he was furious. Oh my God, I woke up late. He wasn't even angry at me. He was angry at himself and flew into a violent rage the likes of which I, um, well, I can't say I had never seen, because obviously there were a lot of violent rages in my childhood home. But it was not what I was expecting from my marriage. But also he was cursing in a way that I had never heard before, and I was terrified. So, you know, he were talking about a big guy. He was six ft tall, and he's two forty pounds, jumping up and down and screaming at the top of his lungs, and I'm just terrified. I was like, what is happening. I don't know what to do, Like he's a stranger, just completely lost his ship, screaming and yelling. So I was cowering in a corner. And then, in his like final active rage, he punched his fist through the wall really hard. I left a big hole in the wall, and then ran out to whatever appointment he was laid for. And that was when I said, oh my god, oh my god. And I'll never forget Just standing there looking at that hole in the wall, shaking, I thought I was going to be safe here. I thought I was going to be safe. This was supposed to be different. What just happened? What? This is what he acts like when he wakes up late, and you know, on Ocean Parkway, there's um there's a park, a little plate ground across the street. And so I remember after he left, I walked across the street to this playground and sat on a swing just crying crises, just swinging for hours and crying, oh my god, what is going to happen to me? And I Am I going to end up like my mother? Did you tell anyone? Well, at first I didn't. It was like two or three days after that. Um, he threatened to kill me for the first time, and that's something that became the norm in our marriage. He would he would threaten to kill me, and he would get very graphic with the detail. He would describe to me how he was going to kill me. And he would do this while he was screaming in a rage and breaking things and throwing things, and so even though he didn't have his hands on me, he would describe to me like I'm gonna you know, like one time he was going to put his fingers around my neck and he was gonna squeeze really hard, and he was going to watch me as i you know, struggle to breathe, and then he was going to watch me take my last breath. I mean, he described this whole thing. And it was another time he was going to go to the kitchen and he was going to get a knife, and then he described what he's going to do with the knife, and you know, it was beyond terrifying. It was very believable that he was going to do these things to me because a why would he describe it in such graphic detail if he didn't actually plan to do it. And be he was doing at the same time that he was smashing and breaking things, so he was clearly capable of violence. But he didn't beat me up. So he would throw things at me, he would shove me, or he loved to do this thing where he was a really wild driver. And so whenever whenever we were going anywhere, obviously he would drive. He wouldn't let me drive, and he would do this thing where he would speed up to a hundred miles an hour and then sam on the brake to send me flying, to send me flying into the windshield. Within a couple of weeks, I started saying, this is a problem. I went to my mother for help with this. I went to his father. Um, I made an appointment with a rabbi, like you know, a rabbi and one of the big rabbis in the community, to try to get how up. And with everyone it was what did he hit you? And I said, no, he didn't hit me, but he saw me. He's gonna kill me if he didn't hit you. Why are you complaining? And especially with my mother, like I remember thinking, how could he even complain about this to my mother? I mean, my mother had broken bones, she had black on blue marks. I'm going to complain that this guy, you know, punched his fist through the wall. It didn't even seem fair. So they all, you know, they all just try to convince me that the problem was me, that I was being my standards were too high, that I was being unreasonable, that he was really young. He's twenty two years old. He just needs time to grow up. And and you know, you have to be good to him, and you can and upset him, and you really can't complain when he's not even hitting you. You saw your mother went through, You're going to complain that the guys that I'm gonna kill you? Did he kill you? No? So why are you complaining? So I just lived in fair every day that he was going to kill me. And then when I had kids, I lived in fair that he was going to kill them too, And he would say that, I say, I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to kill them, and then I'm going to kill myself. That was his plan. How far into your into your marriage were your daughters born eleven months? That's what happens when you are forced to have unprotected sex. Got pregnant two months after my wedding, gave birth nine months later after that, so um, so eleven months from my first one, and then my next one was four years later. I had never heard the term reproductive rights. I had never you know, didn't have any sense of consenting to sex or anything like that. All I knew was my marriage was a disaster. My husband was a violent just awful awful. The way he treated me was absolutely unspeakably awful. And my first pregnancy was a nightmare. I mean, I was the morning sickness I had all day, every day the entire nine months I kept losing weight. I couldn't keep any food down. I was hospitalized for dehydration. At a certain point, I was having trouble with my kidney and there was urologist who told me that we're going to have to deliver the baby early and remove my kidney. I mean, it was like, really an awful pregnancy, and I just knew I didn't want to do that again. And I knew that I wasn't happy in my marriage, you know, I was stuck in it. And I went to my gynecologist and I said, you need to give me birth control. And I give her credit, and she used ultra Orthodox Jewish And by the way, she's the same kind ofcologist who when I was a bride, performed a virginity exam on me to confirm that my hyman was intact and I was a so called virgin. So I am, in hindsight surprise that she did this. But she gave me birth control, and then my husband lost it. He said, how dare you? And he took us. He took me to the rabbi, who said, you're not allowed to use birth control. And I looked at the rabbi in the eye and I said, it is my body, not yours. And he said, you know what, if you feel like I I can need a break, you can use birth control for one year, but then you have to stop. And I said, what part of my body do you not understand? I am not doing this for one year. I am never having another child. And the Rebert told my husband, don't worry. After a year, she'll stop. And after a year, I didn't stop until I finally caved into the pressure and had a baby four years later. I was lucky that I had only two. And then all of this just it's just chains getting tighter and tighter and tighter around you, and for me, it started really feeling like it was tightening around my neck and I was going to die. We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. Despite the vice that grips her, Freddie has an escape plan. She's going to go to college though she's not supposed to. She's going to find a way out for herself and her daughters. It was a sense of survival. It was the realization after a particularly traumatic incident where my family and my community just we're not coming through. For me, I finally realized I need to get out on my own if I say, this man is going to kill me and he's going to kill my two daughters. He made that very clear. When you feel that your life is in danger, you've become capable of doing things you never thought you could. And that's what it was for me. It was it was a sense of survival. It was a sense of this is the only way I'm going to get at it here alive. So I have to get out on my own, and the only way I can do that is if I have an education in some way to support myself financially. Freddy has not been allowed to have a job, or a bank account or a credit card, so in order to gain this financial independence, an education would be a must. Before pursuing the education on her own, though, she asks her family, her mother, who surely would understand what she's going through right for help. Originally, I did not think I would go to college or get out on my own after years and years of just suffering in this abusive marriage. When I was twenty seven, it was this time that my mother happened to come over to the house after a really violent outbursts from my then husband, where he had kicked in the front or we had a dead boatlock and um and he had left in a rage, and I locked the door behind him, and he came back. I wanted to get back in, you screaming, and I said, I'm not going to let you back in until you calm down, and he kicked in the front door and and she came over in the aftermath of that, so she saw the physical signs of it, and she saw me sitting there crying, and the kids were there crying, and and that was when I finally said to her, I said, you know, I'm really I'm scared for my life. I'm afraid for my kids lives. I don't know why next step is, but can I just move in with you temporarily, just, you know, just to let I figure out where I go from here, and just so that I can be safe. And her her answer was she turned around and walked out of the room without saying anything. And and I remember my my older daughter who was seven at the time. She was in the room and she heard this, and she said to me, why didn't Bobby answer you? And I told her that was her answer. It's incredibly hurtful too, you know this this memory is so painful when I think about it, and how she never forgave her parents for marrying her off to an abusive man, and then she turned her back on me when I asked her for help, and and I think about, you know, all the reasons that possibly she did that, and maybe it was because of guilt or because she just you know, the trauma it triggered, it was triggering for her. I don't know what it was. But at the end of the day, she did me such a favor. If I had moved in with her, I would have just continued the cycle, and I would have become an aguna, and I would have, you know, just remained a victim my whole life. And instead, she, for better or worse, forced me to take matters into my own hands and to leave on my own terms, to get my college degree, to save up cash, and to leave and get out and leave not only my abusive marriage, but leave this whole misogynistic, abusive community and really create a much happier well. I can't even see much happier there was loving happy about that life. So finally a happy, safe, in free life for myself and my daughters. During this time, Freddie also seeks therapy. In fact, it's the therapist that helps her device and pursue her escape. The therapist she seeks is outside the ultra orthodox community, a radical, and, as it turns out, a essential move on Freddy's part. How did you figure out who to talk to? I had a friend who I didn't tell her what was going on, that I was afraid or you know, that my marriage was abusive. And apparently I didn't have to because one day she said to me, you know, I have a name of a therapist that that I've been seeing. Nobody knows it's you know it was. She had to keep it a secret also, and she just slipped me a paper and she said, it's just the name and a number. You know. She didn't ask questions, she didn't say why she gave me the paper. She just clearly saw that something was wrong, and she said, you know, this is just in case you in case you want to talk to somebody, here's a name. And so I reached out. It was really hard to go because you know, if I got caught, the repercussions would have been great. So I couldn't write it down in my calendar. I had to pay cash because I couldn't write at a check or have any kind of paper trail, I mean, and then I had to have a cover story for where I was going during that time, so I actually went only twice. But this therapist was the first person who explained to me what domestic violence was. I mean, imagine that I had grown up in that really abusive, violent household and I had been married to this abusive guy for for at that point eight years, and I had no idea what domestic violence was. And she explained it to me. And then she was also the first person who said, it doesn't matter if he's never slapped you across the face of broken your bone, that is domestic violence. She went over like what the mess of violence looks like, and the power and control will and the cycle of violence, and it was it was such an eye opening experience. I mean, it was literally life altering. I always it was a social work, and I always tell social workers, I mean, you have no idea the power you have. This woman saved my life. She also explained that I had legal rights and that there's something called a restraining order. You can get a restraining order against an abusive husband. The police will remove him from your house and then he's not a goot to come near you, so he cannot abuse you or threatened you. Was talking anymore. Now I had this new knowledge that this was, that this was an option, and it was. It was my family and communities reaction to the restraining order that actually ended up leading to my five year plan to escape, because you know, the police gave me there was this temporary restraining order, served it on my then husband, removing from the house. And then immediately I started getting phone calls from everyone I knew, not only my family, but my friends and my neighbors and rabbis, just all saying, what the hell is wrong with you? Are you crazy? Who does this? You went to the police, you got a restraeting order? Are you out of your mind? Miss Era? I had always been taught, miss Era, of turning over your fellow Jew to the to the police. That's literally punishable by death, and I had committed that sin. And then the rabbis sent an attorney to my house. An Orthodox Jewish mail attorney showed up at my house. He drove with me to family court in Tons River, New Jersey, and you know, went with me in front of the judge. You had me tell the judge that I wanted to drop the restraining order, and it was it was in that surreal moment when the judge asked me whether I was doing this of my own free will, and I was looking at him and looking at my attorney and thinking, how can I possibly explain to the judge what's happening here? He looks at me, he think he he thinks this is my attorney standing next to me, thinks I retained. This guy thinks I'm here willingly. How could I possibly explain what's going on? I have not a single friend or sibling or relative, anyone in the world who is on my side who will back me up here. I don't know what to do. So I lied to the judge and I said, yes, your honor, you know, an answer to his question about whether I was dropping the restraining letter willingly. And then I went home and I said, I need to get out, and I need to do it on my own, because these people are gonna let me die here. Don't let this guy my husband kill me before they will help me, and the hell with us. I'm just going to get out on my own. I'll get a college degree, I'll save up money, I'll get out on my own. And that's what you did, and that's what I did. So without telling anybody, I secretly applied to Redger's and became the first person in my family to go to college man or woman, by the way, and um, and I started saving up cash in the only place in the house that my abusive then husband wouldn't look. He would look through all my personal belongings to make sure that I didn't have anything that I was hiding from him, and to show me that I belonged to him and everything I owned belonged to him. He would start in front of me. You would go through the pockets of my scarts hanging in the closet, and he would go through all my personal belongings. So I found the one place in the house I knew he wouldn't look, a box of whole grain total in the pantry closet, and I would put cash in there. And I started going to college. And everybody in my family freaked out, how did you go to college? What is this about? And try to talk me out of it, and I, especially my then husband, was furious, and I said, nothing, absolutely nothing that you can do to stop me. From going to Rutgers. You know, good luck trying. I started to feel much stronger, said, you know, I have this great plan. I'm going to get out. I'm stating up cash, I'm getting my college degree, which felt really great. I really it was a great student. I really really loved my time at Rutgers. It would seem that you were also being exposed to other people out side of this insular community, like really for the first time. Absolutely, that was also exhilarating. Really just making friends for the first time in my life. That was the first time in my life I made friends with people who were not also Orthodox Jewish. Here I made friends with this Palestinian Muslim woman who had almost the exact same life story that I did, except I used to like to say her story started in Ramala and mine started in Borough Park. But um, but she also had been forced to marry and eighteen also had two kids as the neges as my kids. But yeah, that was that was part of the just the enormity of the experience of going to Rutgers, and it was really what made part of what made me feel ready to take my next rebellious step, which is while I was still a student there, I stopped wearing the head covering that is required of Orthodox Jewish women. And that was when my family think we were already upset that I was a college student. I mean, how embarrassing is that? But know, the neighbors don't necessarily have to know. You can kind of try to keep that quiet. But for an Orthodox Jewish woman to walk outside the house, a married woman without a head covering, it's like walking around naked. That's how much of a statement it makes. They couldn't ignore that, They could not accept that if they saw that as just too much of a slap in their face and too much of an affront, and the flat that they would get from the community just too much for them to bear. So that was when they shunned me. They cut off all contact. And I have one sister who was the only one I could reach briefly kept in touch with me at first. I've since lost contact with her as well, but she kept in touch briefly at first and told me that the rest of my family was planning to sit shiffl for you go through the Jewish morning ritual for me as if I had literally died. And this is because I walked outside of the house with my natural hair on my head, despite being ostracized by her family. Freddy p Severes At Rutger's not only does she graduate, but at the graduation ceremony, she's the commencement speaker, an extraordinary accomplishment for someone who had signed a piece of paper promising not to take the SA T S once I graduated. By then, my family had already shunned me. So you can't kill somebody twice. That probably was their mistake. So at that point I was really able to do whatever I wanted. So I was able to change the locks file for divorce. And my original plan had been to leave my abusive marriage. But at that point I said, ha, this my family declared me dead because I stopped wearing a head covering. This is nuts. Once I started, you know, going to college and learning things and making other friends and started thinking about life in an adult way, which I never got a chance, and you before I was married, because I was married as a team. It just really really wasn't comfortable for me at all. I said, I don't belong in this whole religion. This is not me. So not only was I able thanks to my family shunning me, and not only was able to get out of my abusive marriage, but I was able to just leave the entire religion because you know, normally that would be a scary thing to do, because your family might shun, you might lose your whole family. Well, guess what, I had already lost my whole family. To me, the religion felt so oppressive. There was a god, and I believed in him back then. I mean, I'm an atheist now, but back then, I very, very strongly believed that there was a god. But he was not a god of joy or love. He was a god who was there to punish you. He was he was a god. It was like my father, he was like my brothers, He was like my ex husband. He was an angry, abusive god, and he was watching you every second of the day, just waiting for you to slip up. And by the way, there are so many ways to slip up, biting your lip on Saturdays, slipping up. There were so many rules in so many ways to mess up, and every time you missed up, you're going to get punished. And now you were the total people on Saturday. And wow, I saw when you washed your hands, you were supposed to do a twice on the right and twice on the left. You missed the second time. It was only twice on the right, and one of the halftimes on the left, God is watching in place of religion. Frady continues to focus on her education and her career. She's carving her own path, freed from the peril of her marriage and thrust into a professional landscape so refreshingly and restorative. Lee far from where she started. So I was at first I got my degree in journalism and loved, really loved journalism, and I was an investigative reporter. And then because journalism was a really tough time for journalism at the time, everybody was getting laid off. In an attempt to avoid getting laid off, I became a private investigator for the investigations from Corol, which at the time was the world's largest investigations firm. And then I became financially independent enough while I was there to buy a small house for myself and my two daughters. Is a little a little cape cod which I of course named the palaisd Trion because it was just such a triumphant moment for me to be able to to make it far enough out of my traumatic situation to actually buy a house for myself. And I imagine, but I am the first woman in the history of my entire family ever to buy your own home. And I was at the closing for the house, and if you've ever been at the closing, you know how boring it is, still signing your name again and again and again until your hand cramps up. And even the seller of the house wasn't there because they had already moved out of state. So I was just in a room with a couple of lawyers and just signing my name again and again, and I kept trying to explain to them what a big moment this was. I think, you Amber sandwhat a big deal this is what I'm buying a house. I was, you know, trying to explain I had been forced into a marriage to this abusive guy and trapped and then my whole family showned me and I managed to get out and they did not care at all. And so it was at this it was this anti climatic moment where I'm signing my name again and again to buy the CALLI to trio before I said, you know, I need to do something to celebrate this moment, and there was also this guilt. It was like a survivor's guilt almost where how did I get out? And there are so many people I know, I mean in my former community and in so many other communities who are still trapped in the situation that I got out of. So it was at the closing where I said, you know what I'm gonna do. I'm going to start a nonprofit. I'm going to help those other people. And this is just what Freddie does. She helps people. She creates a company called Unchained at Last, the only organization in the United States dedicated to ending forced and child marriage through direct services and advocacy. When I found it Unchained at Last, I was working full time as a single mom, working full time, commuting from New Jersey into Manhattan, you know, very little free time. But I said, you know, this is just going to be a couple of hours a week. On the side I was there was no budget, any expense would just come right out of my pocket. At first Life, but it was focused specifically on direct services. I wrote up a business plan just gonna help five women the first year, ten women the second year, just you know, provide some support and try to get them free legal representation, just like to start begging attorneys to help represent them for free while they're getting divorced. And that was basically the plan. And at the time, by the way, Unshane at Last was the only organization in the entire world with this mission of helping people in the US escape force marriages, and it still is the only one with that mission. By the end of the first year, we had thirty clients. From my original plan of five, we were at thirty. This was already a second full time job, just unpaid, and I realized we're onto something here, like this is this, this is something bigger. This has not helped five women on budget of zero with a staff of zero, like this is an actual thing. There are a lot of people out there who need help. We were not marketing in any way. That was all word of mouth. Thirty people reach out to us for help, and so it's just continued to grow from there. Remember Freddy's Muslim Palestinian friend from college who was also a survivor of a forced marriage. Well, that friend becomes the first president of the board of Directors of Unchained at Last, together with other dedicated members of the organization. They strive to help women everywhere break free from their toxic and unsafe arrangements. So from the beginning I knew that, yes, this is happening in my former community, but I knew it was not limited to that. So my I was determined from the start to make this uh, you know, from any community, culture, religion, any background. If you are in or escaping a forced marriage, reach out to us and we will try to help you. You know, at first most of our clients were from the ultra Orthodox Jewish community, and now ultra Orthodox is you know, a small percentage of the overall clients that we help. Actually, so because we've helped people from almost any religion you can think of. I mean, we've helped people from religions where I had to google that I had never even heard of it, and from secular backgrounds. I mean, this is of course not only a religious issue. So as the years went on, so first of all, our staff and budgets sort of growing, it became very clear we can't just do this on the the kindness of volunteers and this. So after four years we had enough funding that I was able to take a salary so that I could leave my other job. And now we're actually seven of us were a team of seven. I mean we have an actual office, so we don't have to work out of my dining room anymore. Um. And and we have a budget now of over seven hundred thousand, where it was from a budget of zero. And then the other big thing that has changed is where at first we thought this was all going to be direct services, what we realized within the first few years was that in addition to the forced marriage problem we have in the United States, there is a significant child marriage problem. And because more and more girls underage a team, we're reaching out to us asking for the same help. And we operate nationally. So these are girls from across the US just calling and asking for the same help that we give adults, and we realize, oh crap, there's nothing we can do for them. If we help them leave home, we could be charged criminally. We get them to a domestic violence shelter, the shelters turn them away. They can't bring a legal action in their own name. If in many states, you could be forced into marriage before eighteen with without any input from you, your parents sign a form or a judge you know, stamps the page and you're forced into this marriage, and you can't even freaking fall for divorce until you're a team, because you can't bring a legal action in your own name. There's almost nothing we can do for these girls when they reach out to us. So in two thousand fifteen, even though we're we're a tiny team at the time, there were I think two or three of us on a tiny budget, working out of a little office in New Jersey in an undisclosed location because we get all kinds of obnoxious threats. So for security reasons, we have a you know, a office in a secret location. And we said, you know what, in our spare time, we're gonna take on this little project. We're gonna end child marriage. In the United States. At the time, it was legal in all fifty U s. States. Marriage before eighteen was legal in all fifty states. Even though it's recognized, I said to human rights abuse, and even though minors cyplicate can't fall for divorce and you can't get into his mystic violence shelter, it's just an absurd, an evil legal construct where we have here miners can be forced into marriage before they have a legal right to get out of it. And in um since two thousand and fifteen. Well took us until two thousand eighteen to convince the first U. S State to end child marriage, and since then we have convinced six U. S. States we have helped to end child marriage. We passed legislation, and we have only forty four states to go. The work Freighty has done with Unchained at Last has saved countless lives hers included. Working with us who have suffered similar circumstances has become her vocation. It's been enormously healing too. I use that word healing all the time. I actually use healing and empowering to be able to take my own trauma and instead of trying to forget it or get past it, instead using it as a way to help others. That is truly healing and empowering. And what I what I get out of Unchained is so much bigger than what I put into it. As hard as this work is, that type of healing, I mean, I don't know any other way I could have been I could have gotten that. And it's tough, you know, many days, just the sadness, the stories that we get to, the survivors that I direct with who shares some of the worst of humanity. I mean the most horrific, unspeakable things that that people do to each other, and in this case, it's almost always parents doing it to their own children. It's so overwhelmingly sad, and it can turn depressing, it can it can be really tough and triggering for me, since this is so close to the trauma that I myself have have overcome. But it's also so healing and empowering. And and every time someone says to me, you know, I see you did it, you got out of it, and you rebuild your life. You give me hope, you give me inspiration, you make you prove to me that I can do it too. What more can I ask? Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly z a Core is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find me on Instagram at Danny Writer. And if you'd like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Family Secrets

Family Secrets. We all have them. And while the discovery of family secrets can initially be terrify 
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