S25 Ep25: WCN Presents: [Danny Cords] An Upstander Unto Yourself

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Something Was Wrong

S25 Ep25: WCN Presents: [Danny Cords] An Upstander Unto Yourself

Date: May 29, 2026
Host: Amy B. Chesler for Broken Cycle Media
Guest: Danny Cordes

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Overview

This episode of Something Was Wrong centers on the harrowing journey of Danny Cordes, an organizational psychologist and survivor of both conversion therapy and severe cyberstalking. Danny shares his personal trauma, ongoing recovery process, and advocacy work. The episode delves deep into the failures of the legal system to respond to cyberstalking, lessons in resilience, and the importance of boundary-setting and self-advocacy. Danny reflects on the transformation from victim to ‘upstander’, highlighting the need for societal and legal reforms to protect and validate victims of technology-facilitated abuse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Danny’s Early Life and Conversion Therapy

• Coming out at 14 in a small Seattle suburb, Danny was placed in state-sanctioned conversion therapy at the urging of his parents.
• Impacts: Instilled deep shame and guilt, led to housing instability, and resulted in dropping out of high school.
  • "Just trying to survive as this adolescent, experiencing housing instability, suffering with an attack on my innate identity, thinking that I'm less than—all of these things that many of us can relate to in some form or fashion." ([03:44])
• Turning Point: Support from friends to pursue education via the GSBA LGBTQ scholarship program reframed Danny’s experiences as points of resilience and leadership.

2. Education and Advocacy

• Scholarship Experience: The GSBA (the nation’s largest LGBTQ chamber of commerce) saw Danny’s struggles not as deficits but as strengths, catalyzing his public speaking and advocacy journey.
  • "They saw that not as a deficit... but as a point of leadership and growth." ([05:34])
• Public Speaking: Speaking publicly about conversion therapy was both empowering and therapeutic.
  • "I realized that, hey, I don't have to be this quiet person living with such shame." ([06:55])

3. Relationship Dynamics and Onset of Stalking

• Marriage and Divorce: After marrying, Danny’s growing self-confidence and boundaries led to a shift in the marriage dynamic and eventual separation.
• Stalking Begins: Following the divorce, Danny was subjected to sustained harassment: targeted texts, robodialers, and impersonation online.
  • "I started getting these very targeted text messages from the neighbor... [and] then suddenly I'm getting these robo dialers." ([09:54])
• Failure of Law Enforcement: Early and repetitive attempts to report to police were met with ignorance, belittlement, and inaction.
  • "The DOJ who ended up resourcing my case said in a meeting with me, it's not illegal to be an asshole. He didn't break the law." ([10:55])
  • "The police officer says, 'What's an iPad?'" ([14:02])

4. Escalation of Digital Abuse

• Impersonation and Defamation: Ads with Danny’s information and offensive messages were posted across the internet, generating a flood of unsolicited, inappropriate contacts.
  • "My information was on [Craigslist]... They would say things like, I'm looking to get HIV come infect me." ([16:49])
• Loss of Safety and Professional Repercussions: Despite documentation, police continued dismissing Danny’s case, leading to deep depression and forced relocation. The stalking followed regardless of changed numbers and jobs.
  • "I changed my number three times. This stalker was able to follow me through all of those numbers." ([19:56])
• Malicious Allegations: The stalker escalated by impersonating journalists and fabricating sexual misconduct allegations using hacked email accounts, further impacting Danny's reputation and professional opportunities.

5. Institutional Responses—Failures and Moments of Allyship

• Workplace Experiences: Danny’s employer at a Seattle credit union was supportive, recognizing stalking as trauma and granting time off, contrasting sharply with earlier invalidation from authorities and some LGBTQ organizations.
  • "This small little credit union took it extremely seriously. They really were upstanders in the situation..." ([21:55])
• Legal Difficulties: Despite extensive documentation and legal assistance, the DOJ initially refused to take the case. Only after discovering another victim did authorities find enough connection and evidence to intervene.

6. Break in the Case & Legal Outcomes

• Technical Slip: The perpetrator, Joel, was identified after forgetting to activate his VPN, allowing authorities to trace an attack directly to him.
• Arrest and Charges: Joel was arrested after a DOJ investigation and ultimately pled guilty to two counts of cyberstalking.
  • "They were waiting for him... DOJ flew agents out to Seattle to do this, did a smash and grab..." ([27:15])
• Court Challenges: The restraining order process was emotionally fraught and mishandled, exposing Danny’s address and prematurely revealing plea details to the perpetrator.
  • "The commissioner... was really hostile to me... Not only read my address aloud about three times in front of my stalker..." ([32:41])
• Sentencing: Joel received 30 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release.
  • Judge Lasnick: "It doesn't matter if it's a gun to your head or an iPhone. Crime is crime, and you'll do the time." ([34:55])

7. Systemic Failures and Calls to Action

• Criminal Justice Gaps: Danny points to outdated laws and lack of mandatory cybercrime training for law enforcement as critical issues.
  • "We haven't updated our laws robustly in the terms of cybercrime... we're stunted in our legal protection of actually prosecuting crime against this." ([35:23])
• Recommendations:
  • Mandatory law enforcement cybercrime training
  • Better resourcing for cybercrime investigations
  • Creation of a cyberstalker registry for transparency and workplace safety

8. Healing, Advocacy, and Upstander Allyship

• Personal Recovery: Therapy, self-care, and reconnection with community were crucial.
  • "I started running. I started getting my life back. Here I am now a multi marathoner." ([39:30])
• Empowering Others: Danny emphasizes the importance of listening to and validating victims, forming survivor communities, and using one’s voice for change.
  • "Don't be a bystander, be an upstander. Intervene, but also be an upstander unto yourself, set your boundaries and lean into those boundaries." ([40:52])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On surviving conversion therapy:
  "From 14 to 17, I went through sexual orientation change efforts which really demonize your innate identity and really disorient you at a critical time in your upbringing." (Danny Cordes, [03:21])

• On invalidation by police:
  "It's not really a death threat. It's more of a question. Because he didn't say, I'm going to kill you. He asked if I was ready to die. Very philosophical." (Police response, [14:07])

• On being disbelieved:
  "Even one of my directors there once mocked me and said, okay, Danny's Lifetime Original Movie. If I could go back now and say somebody went to prison for this with two counts on a felony, how do you feel about those statements?" (Danny Cordes, [12:55])

• On the need for legal reform:
  "Now that we know the system is broken, we can choose to fix it or we can choose to let it be. And that is a choice that I am holding people accountable to." (Danny Cordes, [36:48])

• Judge Lasnick at sentencing:
  "It doesn't matter if it's a gun to your head or an iPhone. Crime is crime, and you'll do the time." ([34:55])

• On self-advocacy:
  "Be an upstander, unto yourself, set your boundaries and lean into those boundaries. Just shortcut your wellbeing for the sake of others." (Danny Cordes, [41:01])

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Important Timestamps

• Danny's early life and conversion therapy: [02:44] – [06:26]
• Meeting ex-husband, start of advocacy: [06:27] – [08:14]
• Onset of stalking and police failures: [09:54] – [14:58]
• Impersonation, depression, and moving: [16:39] – [19:56]
• Death threats escalate, dismissed by police: [20:00] – [21:47]
• Professional and reputational attacks: [22:10] – [24:30]
• Legal action and stalker’s arrest: [27:06] – [32:26]
• Court proceedings & plea deal: [32:26] – [35:04]
• Current state, legal reforms, community: [35:23] – [42:26]
• Closing reflections and host's thanks: [42:04] – [42:34]

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Tone and Language

Danny’s narration is candid, compassionate, and at times, resolute. He demonstrates vulnerability in recounting trauma and injustice but also strength in his calls for reform and validation of survivors. Amy, the host, takes a supportive and empathetic tone, grounding the conversation in hope and the importance of education and healing.

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Resources and Further Support

• For those experiencing cyberstalking, resources are recommended:
  • ntab.org
  • socialmediasafety.org
• To connect with Danny Cordes: www.dannycords.com, LinkedIn

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“Don't be a bystander, be an upstander—unto yourself.” (Danny Cordes, [41:01])

Transcript

[Danny Cordes]

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[Podcast Host Amy B. Chesler]

What Came Next is intended for mature audiences only. Episodes discuss topics that can be triggering, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, animal abuse, suicide, and murder. I am not a therapist, nor am I a doctor. If you're in need of support, please visit SomethingWasWrong.com resources for a list of nonprofit organizations that can help Opinions expressed by my guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself or Broken Cycle Media. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening.

[Narrator/Producer]

Danny Cordes is an organizational psychologist, speaker, actor, and victim advocate from Seattle. He began harnessing his voice and speaking out for others after leaving conversion therapy in his late teens, but his advocacy mission only intensified after being subjected to years of cyber stalking. He hopes to bring awareness and healing to victims all over the world, as well as legal change, too. His related and unrelated work and efforts have been featured on the stage, television, radio, podcasts, and more. The Broken Cycle Media team is extremely grateful that Danny was willing to share all that came next in his personal, professional, legal and media journeys.

[Danny Cordes]

My name is Danny Cordes and I use he and they pronouns professionally. I'm an organizational psychologist and passionately. I'm a public speaker and consultant who focuses on topics spanning from resilience to organizational change. Organizational change is the collective result of individual change. You'll hear that from just about any change manager. But what does that mean from a psychological perspective? I help leaders achieve what they want to set out to achieve. I've worked in spaces from people strategy to diversity, equity and inclusion. Right now I work with Tech Fortune 100 and I think my loved ones would say I'm compassionate, tenacious, maybe even stubborn and passionate. A large part of my narrative comes from being a conversion therapy survivor, otherwise known as reparative therapy, otherwise known as state Sanctioned sexual orientation change efforts. Coming out at 14 in a relatively small town, a suburb of Seattle. From 14 to 17, I went through sexual orientation change efforts which really demonize your innate identity and really disorient you at a critical time in your upbringing. My parents put me in conversion therapy because they thought that would be the best thing for me, and I think it helps to provide context for the situation. By no means was it okay, you'll do anything to save your kid, even pull them out of your home church, which is open and affirming, and put them into a space that you think is actually going to help them. So I see that. And then I also see shortcomings that have left me feeling less than at 17. It ended because I got kicked out of the home. I entered into this period of life where I was living prematurely in adulthood in a shadow of shame. I internalized that as something to feel guilty over. I was almost living this double life, just trying to survive as this adolescent, experiencing housing instability, suffering with an attack on my innate identity, thinking that I'm less than all of these things that many of us can relate to in some form or fashion. This was actually around the time that I met my ex husband. Here I am doing my best, just trying to make it through. I'm in my early 20s now. At this point, I'm surviving. I'm not thriving. I was looking for security. I wanted to be a musical theater actor, like so many beautiful people out there. I did this musical called Chess. Some people are really excited, probably hearing that. And the cellist was my ex husband. It was great for the beginning. I found this person that loved me, or so I felt at the time. I loved him, and he provided me security. We entered our life together. But what was really interesting is I was still living this shadow of shame. I'm not telling a lot of people that I'm a high school dropout. I'm not telling people as much about being a victim of conversion therapy because I still was going through my internal struggles there. So what does that leave? It leaves this quiet, almost shell of a human. It's still me, still fabulous, but I was only part of me. It wasn't until probably around 24, 25 that some of my friends encouraged me to go back to school. I couldn't afford to go back to school on my own, so I went to the gsba. As somebody on their exec board, I'm very proud to say that they are the largest LGBTQ chamber of commerce in the nation. They also have the oldest LGBTQ scholarship program that funds undergraduate students or trade school students for all four years of their education, sometimes more. This experience was really interesting. I'm coming in with all this guilt, with all this shame, and I go into this interview panel for this leadership scholarship. When I told them about my experiences and how it led me to housing instability and cost me my high school education, they saw that not as a deficit, which had been really ingrained into me from a young age, but as a point of leadership and growth. They underwrote my education and connected me to local politicians and local senators. We started the talking circuit where I got to share my experiences publicly. I really uncovered this resilience through connection and putting your words out there and having other people in the room say, I went through that too. And I thought I was so alone because that's exactly how I felt. So talking about it was hugely therapeutic. And I realized that, hey, I don't have to be this quiet person living with such shame. So I started applying myself even more. And about three years later, I graduated. Not just with my high school diploma, but I had a bachelor's and a dual concentration on my master's of Adult Ed and organizational behavior. What I learned going back to school and starting to speak out more publicly was that I have a voice. And that voice can actually start to influence and change the world. One of the driving things that keeps me speaking now and really inspired me back then, was one of my first keynotes that I ever delivered about conversion therapy. It felt like half the room didn't know what it was and half the room had experienced it. And so being able to speak up and have people feel heard, seen and valued was really empowering. So we were married and we were having a good time. But I think what's really important here and some grace to be given for both me and my ex husband is that the person that went into that marriage was not the person that came out of that marriage. Going in, I'm quiet and I'm shy. I'm not holding my boundaries. I'm not setting expectation. It's a very one sided relationship. I needed a caretaker and my ex husband was that caretaker. But when I found myself with my masters and starting to move into my career, I now have a voice. I'm putting up the boundaries. So at that point, the marriage started to deteriorate. Now there are three characters in my story that I think are really important. There's my ex husband. There is this piano player, Joel. I don't mind using his name. It's in the public sphere anyways. He had been in my Life for probably 13, 15 years. And then the third person is kind of a wild card here. As my marriage was crumbling and as things were failing and we were clinging onto it for dear life, perhaps too long, I come home from one of my volunteer camps. I used to volunteer with kids infected or directly affected by HIV aids and a lot of them are in the foster system. But I'm coming home from camp, my husband says, hey, listen, I'm in love with someone else. And I say, all right, I'm peace and out. Bye. My husband fell in love with a next door neighbor. Almost immediately I started getting these very targeted text messages from the neighbor. The neighbor would say things like, hey, did you see we got a new cat. Did you see I moved into your place? Now that's not the person who goes to jail. The DOJ who ended up resourcing my case said in a meeting with me, it's not illegal to be an asshole. He didn't break the law. So these texts are coming out. It's really upsetting me. I'm trying to process and grieve the loss of my life over the past decade. And they just keep coming. Then suddenly I'm getting these robo dialers. You can put somebody's number into a system and they can call you so many times in an evening. They, the attacks I thought were directly related to my ex husband. His new love interest had some concerning behavior. They got kicked out of the condo complex. Joel, my stalker, says, hey, why don't y' all move in with me and rent out one of my rooms? And they do. Then they leave the condo and move in to a place in the suburb of Seattle. And the stalking continues. Joel started stalking some of these robo dialers and repeat calls. And the really insidious thing is we were still hanging out as friends. In fact, we went on a cruise together around the time that I was getting some of these stalking instances. What we've come to learn about him through the other victims that he stalked over the course of his life is that he likes to watch his victims suffer. We're done with the cruise, right? We come back home, life is continuing. I'm still getting stalked, I'm still getting these robo dialers, I'm getting these texts. It felt really serious because I would be getting maybe even a hundred in a night. I remember going to work too, and I just remember my leadership belittling me for what I was going through. I was a top performer for a While. And then my performance started to slide because I was up all night with these calls and texts. They were just invalidating the whole thing, saying it's not that big of a deal. Even one of my directors there once mocked me and said, okay, Danny's Lifetime Original Movie. If I could go back now and say somebody went to prison for this with two counts on a felony, how do you feel about those statements? I'm still doing theater on the side, and I was doing this musical here in Seattle. It's this small show in a small theater, 90 minutes. All the characters play multiple characters with the exception of two, which means I'm on the stage the whole time. My ex husband really wanted to come see the show and he brought my stalker, Joel and the new love interest to the show. They decide to sit in the front row. I'm like, I'm not going to take the stage. And I created a stink. And they're sitting in the front row. I'm going to have to stare at them when I'm trying to work and do my thing for 90 minutes. My one safe space of theater and you're stealing it. So I actually told the producer, I'm not going on stage if they're in the audience. He said, well, you got to. And I just want to say to anyone else that is asked to minimize their boundaries, to ask to make them enter into a space that's unsafe, you don't have to do that. In that moment, I took the stage. I became a bystander unto myself. And I think we do that to make others feel comfortable. I just really regret taking the stage in that moment because it really set the tone for how those people respected me there after the show proceeds. And then a couple days later, following that instance, I get my first death threat. So now the escalation starts to begin. I was home and I get this text ready to die. It's from one of those email to text accounts. I don't know how I know this, but you can do a reverse email IP address lookup. And I did that. The address pointed back to a general area around White Center. And I'm thinking, well, that's not rocket science. That's where my ex husband, his new love interest and Joel are. I'm moderately suspecting Joel at this point, but I was really targeting the new love interest, thinking that he was behind this. But I'm terrified the text came through. I checked to see if my door was locked a couple times because I'm thinking, okay, obviously this is related. It's very invasive. It's escalating. And now my life has been threatened. So I call the police, I wait for them to show up, I show them the text, I show them the IP address and two replies came out that were really strong in this one was, it's not really a death threat. It's more of a question. Because he didn't say, I'm going to kill you. He asked if I was ready to die. Very philosophical. The other part was, which I think is really important for people to consider when they're talking about cybercrime. Cybersecurity is. The police officer says, what's an iPad? And I have to explain to him that IP is like a computer signature. It's your address. And I said, my ex husband lives in White Center. This is pointing back to White Center. I'm sure this is related. Can we do some kind of investigation? Can I get a report? And he said, there's really nothing we can do about text messages. Doesn't take a report and he leaves.

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[Danny Cordes]

I started documenting my evidence. The cop wasn't going to help me, but I thought somewhere in the system, someone will help me. And if nothing else, if I end up getting hurt, I'm going to have evidence to back it up. So I created an Excel spreadsheet. I started recording everything with as much information as possible and screenshots. The death threats continuously get worse, but this is when they started impersonating me online and put me on dating apps. Craigslist. Remember the old personal boards? I was up all over those places and my information was on there. My contact information, my location information. And it wasn't just in Seattle. Somehow this went out all over the country. If not larger. They would say things like, I'm looking to get HIV come infect me. What's unfortunate, too, is that I didn't see these ads. Whomever was behind these actions made it so that my computer couldn't see those things. How I found out about them is a former director of a show I worked on reached out to me and said, hey, this doesn't sound like you. And I tried to chat with this person, but there's some really risky behavior and I just want to make sure that you're okay. Of course it wasn't me. It was this picture that I had from when I was married. And thinking, how is this even possible? I reached back out to my ex husband. I say, this is happening. This isn't good. Now looking back, I'm just realizing that I was feeding my stalker a chance to witness my pain. Imagine what's going on with my phone. Spam dialers, getting text messages, I'm getting death threats, and now there's sex ads. And my phone is blowing up with people looking for sex from all over the country. So I go back to the police and I say, hey, this is going on. I asked for a police report to be taken. They say, again, nothing we can do. And they send me on my way. I got one detective's card and I could never get ahold of him again. My life kind of broke at this point. I entered into a deep depression, felt very unsafe. And I decided, I'm going to move. I'm going to change my number and I'm going to buy a new computer. I'm just going to flush everything out of the system. And So I move 60 miles to the south. I get a new job, and the stalking never stops. So I changed my number three times. This stalker was able to follow me through all of those numbers. It Would follow the milestones of the divorce. I had a divorce attorney. They just didn't know what to do. Somebody's bugging you every time you do a financial discovery, Every time you do an engagement with the other attorney, Whatever it was. If something happened with my divorce, you would see four or five instances of stalking for the next couple of days. And yet very few people believe me, that it was tied to my divorce or anyone in his house was involved, which still blows my mind to this day. I had evidence, but I kept on my life. I'm working my new job as a former scholar at the gsba now on their board. I had been volunteering with their scholarship program, and one night, we were getting ready to interview the next cohort of scholars to bring into the program. I'm feeling like I'm returning to some semblance of normalcy Because I'm in my hometown of Seattle doing what I love to do with a scholarship program. I get in my car, and I'm heading home. It's dark, and I'm talking to the person I was casually dating at the time. His name was Brian. And I start getting more death threats. And these death threats really up the ante. They would say, ready to die? I'm in your closet waiting for you, Ready to rip out your intestines. He signed it with a b. Why would he take the initiative to sign it with anything? But why a bee When I'm literally on the phone talking to somebody named Brian? Which made me really scared, thinking this person could be watching me. They could be tracking my location. They may have cloned my phone and know exactly what I'm up to now. They say they're in my home, in my room, in my closet, and they don't just want to kill me, but they actually want to rip my intestines out. I had a friend who was a public defender. I called her and asked her what I should be doing. I'm in the middle of nowhere. I moved out into the burbs. She says, call 911. Let them know to have a cop meet you there. You'll fill a report. They'll probably walk into your house with you, and they'll take care of you. So I arranged to do that. I call 911. The operator doesn't know what to do with me. I say, listen, somebody's threatening my life. They cannot understand that I'm being cyber stalked, and they're snippy with me. I'm like, I'm going to the police department. I expect a police Officer to be there. And that was it. So I drive there. There's no police officer. The doors are locked. There's nobody in there. About an hour and a half of waiting in this dark parking lot, not knowing if I'm being tracked. A police officer shows up. I'm shaking. I am terrified. I tell him what's up, and I show him my phone. I show him the text messages. Also, in my car, I have been carrying around of all the evidence, every piece of stalking that had happened up until that point. I pull it open and I start going through the pages. And the guy brushes it off completely. He says, you know what? They're just messing with you. Once I had a friend sign me up for a senior citizen mailer list. I'm sure it's nothing. This'll probably all just wash away. And I say, well, I at least want a police report. And he said, we don't take police reports over this sort of thing. Then he left and he sent me home, even though I had a death threat saying somebody was waiting in my closet. No police report, nothing. I called up my neighbor and said, I need you on the phone with me. I got a threat. I don't know if anyone's in my house. I enter and it's fine. The next day, I think this is really important. I emailed the police department. I talked to their chief, and I said, why wasn't a report taken? This isn't okay. And he said, well, there was no recorded incident of you meeting with this officer, and he's a really nice guy with a family. I'm sorry, I don't know how that's relevant. But that was his answer. And I just want to go on record and share that answer, because that's absurd. This is going on for now over two years. Ironically, at the same time, this was 2018, we actually saw away with state sanctioned conversion therapy for minors in Washington State Senate Bill 5722. And what I noticed is that as I was taking on interviews to talk about conversion therapy, it was in USA Today and a couple of other places I would get stalked. So my stalker didn't like me being happy. And the day that state sanctioned conversion therapy was banned for minors was a day of one of the worst attacks. I'm at work. I leave on my lunch break to go stand by the governor for the signing of the bill. We take some pictures, I do a couple of interviews, and then I come back to work that night when all of this is hitting the news and people are understanding what I spent my day doing. I get this email from an Associated Press reporter, which was something I was getting, taking on interviews. And this email was very well crafted. So Joel hacked an Associated Press reporter's email and lodged sexual misconduct allegations against me involving the campers I worked with. Again, four to 14 infected or directly affected by HIV and AIDS, many of whom are in the foster system. And he said that there were allegations of sexual misconduct. The email was spot on for an Associated Press reporter. This was a real reporter's email. So when I looked at their Twitter and when I looked them up on Google, I could see their work. What was even more so is that my stalker hacked into the camp's system to find people that were part of the founding members of the camp and some of the back end things that we wouldn't know. So I called in a panic, one of the leaders of the camp and said, this is happening. This isn't true. I can't believe it's going on. So these allegations are shared. I love the gsba, but I have to let them know this is part of their board. As somebody who works with kids, I remember that conversation very vividly. I said, listen, I got this email. It's not real. I think it's part of my stalking. I think we need to take it seriously because I don't know what else is coming. And they said, well, what do you think you should do? And I said, well, I think I should step down. They said, yes, that would be wise. Without missing a beat. They knew that my tenure was not going to continue in this capacity with them until this was all resolved. I realized that if this person's going to go after the gsba, if they're going to go after the camp, if they're going to go after my friends who were just starting to get their own stalking text messages, then they could go after my employer. So I disclosed to my employer that I had a stalker. And it was the first time I had done that. I said, listen, I don't have any police reports, but I have a stalker. This is what's happening. This small little credit union took it extremely seriously. They really were upstanders in the situation, and I could not be more proud and honored to have worked with them and have them really given me the space to feel safe, but also to feel seen by taking it seriously, by treating it like trauma. When I was going through some of the worst stalking, my leader would thank me for taking time off because I was taking care of myself. I hired C.A. goldberg out of New York City to help me, and they were trying to get the DOJ to resource my case. We have been denied, I think, two times. At this point, I'm investing in legal fees to try and get this madness to stop. When you see TV crime documentaries or even a crime series, or listen to true crime podcasts, you're only getting years of a story in an hour, 45 minutes, whatever it might be. So it paints this perception that things are going to happen overnight and that you are so well protected that you don't even have to worry that much. That's just not the reality. I'm spending a lot of money on this lawyer. My life is just going to be what it is in this reality. That's where I was resolved to now, just to close out the sexual misconduct allegations. The year that was in question was a year I wasn't even there. Obviously I wasn't there. I couldn't have done any crime. And it was completely fabricated. I go back to my lawyer and say, hey, can we get this back to the doj? They bring it back to the doj, and that same day we hear, nope, DOJ is not going to resource this case. And I'm thinking, okay, great. Nothing I can do. It wasn't a day later I was going to work, and I noticed I had a Facebook message request, and it's from a burner account. So it's a generic name. The picture is obviously not a real person. I think it was somebody from Mary Poppins. It said, danny, I'm with the Seattle Police Department. I need you to give me a call when you can. I know this looks suspicious, and I'm thinking, well, this is surely my stalker trying to get at me or someone else trying to mess with my brain. So I hand it over to my lawyer who does some investigation, and he comes back and he says, no, it's actually legit. Let's call her back. So I call the person back, and it's this detective who's investigating another stalking crime involving a major Seattle law firm. This lady was being stalked and she was getting death threats from my cell phone number. She was also stalked at work. So the law firm had liability in this because she was sitting at her desk. One of the comments to her was, I see you in your red dress. You better not go to the bathroom, or maybe you should. I can't wait to see how much you bleed. And then sent a picture of a dead corpse to her. They hired an off duty police officer to come and protect the office. They had people get Panic buttons and all the attorneys wore them ironically. Unfortunately, Joel being the head of the IT department there, was the one who installed them. So he's enjoying all of this. The police officer, though, contacts me, says this is what's going on, asks me a series of questions, rules me up in the investigation, and I send her my evidence. She's able to cross reference then what's happening to me with what's happening to her. There's a lot of overlap. So now we realize that we're looking for the same person. This is when the DOJ took the case. The stalking is coming and going in waves. We didn't know definitively who it was, but they had an idea of who it was just by observations. The problem with cybercrime and cybersecurity is that it can come from somebody's computer, it can come from somebody's cell phone, but all of those things can be hijacked. Case in point, my phone was being used to attack someone else. So it's all about proving fingers on the keyboard. Thankfully, one morning, Joel forgot to set his vpn. He went out for the attack, and they caught him right then. They were waiting for him. I think it was only a couple months from the moment that there was resource to him being caught. The next day, if not that day, the DOJ flew agents out to Seattle to do this, did a smash and grab. They banged on the door of my ex husband, his new lover, and Joel's house, drugged them out into the yard, questioned them fiercely, and took all their electronics into the system. I get a call from the DOJ with my attorney, they say, listen, we got a confession from Joel. We're going to take this on, but we can't book him because we need to gather all the evidence. Because once we book him, we can only charge him with what we can come up with. He's being released. So watch your back. That was the advice they had for me, was watch your back. Joel's free, he's going to parties, he's hanging out with friends, and we're sitting in this limbo. Also, victims can't be talking about a pending investigation. I can't be going out to my friends and saying, this is what's going on, this is what's hurting me, this is what's affecting my life. I was told to keep silent about everything. I wasn't even supposed to talk to the other victims who happened to be my best friends. So it was very isolating.

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[Danny Cordes]

They finally got enough to charge him and they were working out a plea agreement which took forever for this case. The detective from the Seattle Police Department, she was amazing, said, listen, you really need a restraining order, so go get one. I'm going to send you an official police document. It was 12 pages. I petitioned the courts. We get in for the order of protection, the restraining order. The commissioner I get was somebody that was really not wanting to be there and was really hostile to me throughout all of that's going on. Joel still hasn't seen his plea agreement, but he does show up to court that day. And in this 12 page document is a preview of the plea agreement which includes prison time, probation time, everything of his case that he had not yet seen. And so the commissioner, who had an attitude about him, not only read my address aloud about three times in front of my stalker, but the quotes that I remember that stand out in my brain is I don't get involved in this he said, she said stuff. I'm thinking, dude, you have a 12 page document from the Seattle Police Department that includes a plea deal that talks about a smash and grab by the doj. I'm asking for a restraining order with cause. Then when he read the order, he read the entire plea agreement out in front of Joel, which invalidated it because he hadn't seen it yet. He has a right to go over his plea deal with his attorney before a judge or commissioner reads it out loud in the courtroom. And it said, do not share publicly. So the restraining order goes into effect, and more time passes by. It felt like an eternity. It also felt very unsafe. The DOJ says, watch your back. And you're sitting there and you're looking at cars that might be following you. You're getting spam calls. Also, what was really interesting in the lack of resourcing in this case is that Joel was supposed to be off of electronics entirely, but he was doing things publicly without any consideration for what the court had ordered him to do. When I brought it to the court's attention, they said, well, that would be very brazen of him. I was like, yes, yes, it would. And he is. So the plea deals out. He accepts it. I did get to make a victim impact statement. I spoke at the sentencing, but in terms of the death threats, none of the police reports I requested were made. Going to sentencing was really interesting. I remember it was Judge Lasnick. He was fantastic because he made it known. The line he used was, it doesn't matter if it's a gun to your head or an iPhone. Crime is crime, and you'll do the time. What a great line. It rhymes in everything.

[Narrator/Producer]

According to a December 2018 statement by the Department of Justice, Danny Stalker pled guilty in federal court to two counts of cyberstalking against multiple Washington residents and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and three years supervised release.

[Danny Cordes]

All of which just ended, actually. So now he's walking as a free person again. Being an organizational psychologist, I live and breathe in the space of disruption, resilience, and change. So here's our current state. We haven't updated our laws robustly in the terms of cybercrime, really, since I think it was the debut of the Razer phone. So we're sitting here with this massive computer in our pocket with VPNs, with all this technology that can be used against us, and we're stunted in our legal protection of actually prosecuting crime against this. The Rand Corporation is citing that from 2014 to 2019, cyber stalking increased by 415% in the United States. In 2022, there was $10.3 billion lost to cybercrime, which is an increase of 281% from 2018. So the rates of these crimes are just through the roof. And yet we're not making it mandatory to learn about the cyberspace. In many places, but especially in law enforcement, The Department of Justice made a free and pretty robust cybersecurity training that you can opt in to take as an elective. But what is mandatory when I have a death threat and I can give you an IP address, which, by the way, did point back to the actual criminal. I got a what's the ip? I got people who didn't understand the severity of the case. So what would I change mandatory training. The second thing is resourcing. I'm a compassionate person, but what happened in my situation was a repeat failure of the system. A complete failure of even getting a single police report despite somebody going to prison with two counts on a felony. That's a failure of the system. I don't want to say failure by design, but something is broken and people aren't able to do their job. Now that we know the system is broken, we can choose to fix it or we can choose to let it be. And that is a choice that I am holding people accountable to. But we need to resource these crimes and we need to make sure that victims are taken care of. Then the last thing is accountability. Creating a stocker registry, I think that is critical as well. Wouldn't you want to know if that it professional coming in your door had scared a previous receptionist at his previous company saying, I can't wait to see how much you bleed? Even recently there was a friend, and we're kind of distant friends now, maybe because of this would say, you know, it's just a text message. What does it matter? These are just words. I mean, there are people that respond to stalking, whether they don't understand it or whatever, they invalidate it. That certainly happened in my case on many levels and still happens with people in my circle today. Being in the media, sharing an interview, sharing a testimony, people reach out to us. There's healing that can happen in that. And so I'll get people reach out about their stalking situation that they're currently in and what they're going through. There's a couple of healing parts of it. Validation, you're being seen. That was the beginning. You're not listened to for so long, you're experiencing these traumas. And then finally, like when I got my scholarship, when I said, hey, I went through this trauma and I Think it's a point of shame and guilt. And they say, no, there's actually a connection to leadership there. So coming out of stalking, where I had been constantly called a liar or my ex husband saying, you can't believe Danny's imaginings, that's a quote I captured in the text. And then to have people say, oh my gosh, this is actually a serious thing. This is something we need to be talking about. We need to believe victims is extremely healing. It's validating, it's being seen, it's being heard. The other part of it is connecting with other survivors. I just got last week an email from somebody saying this has been going on for years. I don't know who to turn to. I heard your interview. What do I do? And I was able to send them a few resources, but also talk about what it's like to go through the experience and there's a community in that. And to just be in that space with another person is one of the big reasons why I do this. I have a good relationship with media. I haven't had very many bad experiences. I find that people are great. Local media, large media people want to rally around supporting each other and protecting each other. Occasionally in the comments it gets a little nasty, but those comments don't matter. I do not take on every interview I'm asked to give. So I'm pretty selective with who I talk to about this. And also knowing that my professional self does not talk about stalking. This is something that my coworkers are going to hear by chance and be surprised about. I spent my life giving speeches on organizational psychology, on disruption and resilience and change in the workplace. Then I work in nonprofits. But this is something else. Getting yourself a good therapist that you can talk to, that you can trust has been a game changer. I had so many unlearnings to make me the person I am today. That's why in therapy it's so important to go for your family of origin. Those things show up later in life. Therapy is trying to unlearn these things and to build my self confidence and self worth. I meditated for a long time. Sleep, hygiene, let's not knock it. It's so important and I could be better at it, but it's so important. I started running. I started getting my life back. Here I am now a multi marathoner. Also, I would add, I'm really big on upstander allyship. Don't be a bystander, be an upstander. Intervene, but also be an upstander. Unto yourself, set your boundaries and lean into those boundaries. Just shortcut your wellbeing for the sake of others. We all have our experiences in life and it shapes us to who we are. I think if I had a dominant narrative life, heteronormative growing up, no conversion therapy, no stalking, I just would be a completely different person. And so seeing the world in a different way through the lens of these experiences gave me a big heart that can get me in trouble and also makes me just really passionate about this work and working with people. I don't think that I would even be a good organizational psychologist if I didn't go through stalking. I think there's a human element of just connecting with survivors and going through the process. You can find me on my website www.dannycords.com, c o r d s or on LinkedIn and I'm happy to connect with anyone that wants to connect as long as it's safe and healthy.

[Interviewer Amy]

Just saying thank you for letting this be such a beautiful conversation. Thank you for everything you've shared. I'm so sorry for everything that you've been through. I commend you for prevailing, persisting, and then for turning that into education. I'm so glad that you've entered an era of honoring yourself as well.

[Danny Cordes]

Amy, thank you so much. This has been awesome. This has been one of my favorite interviews and I really appreciate you.

[Podcast Host Amy B. Chesler]

Cyberstalking can be defined as the repeated use of electronic communications to harass or frighten someone. The incidence of cyberstalking has increased immensely over the last decade considering technological advances in and accessibility to Internet or electronic based communications have also increased greatly. According to the report by Rand Corporation, which Danny referenced earlier, 57% of all cyberstalking victims know the offender. According to the Stalking Prevention Awareness and Resource center, more than twice as many victims are stalked with technology than without. The most common technologies used in committing cyberstalking are such basic platforms as text messages, emails and phone calls. And 75% of cyberstalkers use more than one method of stalking. If you or someone you know is being cyberstalked, please visit the episode Notes for nonprofit organizations and resources that can help, such as ntab.org or socialmediasafety.org thank you so much for listening to today's episode. What Came Next is a Broken Cycle Media production co produced by Amy B. Chesler and Tiffany Reiss. If you'd like to help support what Came next, you can leave us a positive review, support our sponsors, or follow Broken Cycle Media on Instagram. Broken CycleMedia. Check out the episode notes for sources, resources, and to follow our guests. Thank you again for listening.

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