Father vs. Child Predators | The Hidden Third with Mariana van Zeller

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Hidden Third with Mariana van Zeller Episode: Father vs. Child Predators Date: December 10, 2025

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Overview

In this wrenching and deeply candid episode, Mariana van Zeller sits down with Todd Thomas—a father whose world shattered when he discovered his 12-year-old daughter was being groomed online by a child predator. The discussion traverses Todd’s own traumatic past, the devastation wrought by online predators, his controversial participation in "pedophile hunting," and his eventual journey to healing and activism. The episode examines the gray areas between vigilantism and justice, and unpacks the complicated ways trauma shapes lives and motives.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Todd’s Early Life, Trauma, and the Underground

• Todd’s Childhood Exposure to Drugs and Abuse

  • Grew up in Rockford, Illinois, started using marijuana at 7 from babysitters (01:31–02:19).
  • Early life marked by substance use, living in the woods, and exposure to a “hippie commune” lifestyle mixed with drug experimentation (03:36–04:58).
  • Todd reveals surviving ongoing sexual abuse by male and female babysitters from age 4, and being "traded at the YMCA like candy” (13:56–15:02; 81:15–86:40).

• View on Psychedelics and Self-Medication

  • Used LSD and mushrooms as a teen; later microdosing discussed with Mariana (07:43–08:57).
  • Believes psychedelics can be valuable in therapy, PTSD, depression, but not for recreation (05:52–06:10).

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The Incident: Discovering His Daughter’s Predation

• How the Grooming Happened

  • After being banned from having a phone, Todd’s daughter used a friend’s device to access the anonymous app Whisper, offering, “I’ll do anything for a cell phone."
  • A 50-year-old man responded, orchestrated meetings, provided her with a burner phone hidden in a book (20:40–21:48).
  • The man arranged for her to meet others, coerced her into sending explicit photos and videos, and manipulated her psychologically (22:06–23:44; 22:58–23:28).

• Todd’s Discovery

  • Finds the phone, sees messages from “Sugar Daddy,” and realizes the extent of the predation (24:30–24:49).
  • “I click on it and then my whole world fell apart. Absolutely fell apart. The next thing I did was grab my aluminum baseball bat. I'm gonna kill this son of a bitch.” – Todd (00:31–00:54)

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Confrontation and Legal Fallout

• Sting Operation

  • Todd, with his family and a friend for restraint, orchestrates a sting at the park; they perform a citizen’s arrest and call the police (26:09–27:57; 26:55–27:30).
  • The predator tries to erase evidence; the police take him, but do not immediately arrest him (31:29; 32:03).

• Disappointment with the System

  • The predator eventually gets only three years probation despite the gravity of his crimes (39:42–40:26).
  • Todd’s interaction with the judge:
    • “How do I tell the next dad to go the route I did, non violently, when you're going to let him only have probation?” – Todd (39:47–40:04)
    • The judge himself later faces rape charges.

• Failings in Victim Support

  • Todd seeks help for himself and his family—victim services ignore him, focusing only on his wife and daughters (33:56–34:06).
  • “When a man asks for help, we have to have something for them, because men don’t ask for help. So if they ask…and there's no one to grab that hand, they're going to fail.” – Todd (33:56–34:53)

• Impact on His Family

  • The trauma devastates family relationships; his relationship with his daughter is strained, wife avoids the topic, healing is ongoing and nonlinear (35:08–36:27; 38:03–38:24).

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Vigilantism and “Pedophile Hunting”

• Todd’s Shift to Activism

  • Disillusioned by the “justice” his family received, Todd joins and then organizes “predator hunter” groups to catch child predators online (44:52–45:55).
  • Elaborates on the structure, decoys, gathering confessions, and need for peaceful confrontation (45:55–47:41).
  • “Violence is a boy’s answer to a man’s problem.” – Todd (62:42–63:31)

• Controversy and Critique

  • Mariana questions the morality and effectiveness of vigilante stings, equating media spectacles to modern-day colosseums (47:41–50:29; 55:44–56:14).
    • “You're watching somebody whose life is about to end. You know, their life is about to end…it’s the Roman Colosseum, right today.” – Mariana (55:44–55:54)
  • Discusses the sharp rise in violent vigilantism and unethical monetization of such stings (61:15–62:42).

• Todd’s Evolving Perspective

  • Todd distances himself from exploitative groups, focusing on cases and peaceful intervention (50:29–53:57).
  • Shares poignant realization: helping others was, ultimately, self-healing (67:26–69:53).

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Healing, Accountability, and the Fathership Program

• Path to Accountability

  • Todd regrets his initial reaction (“Screaming, the yelling…at her, I reacted. I didn't respond.” – Todd, 73:24–73:45).
  • Now advocates responding with care and empathy for victimized children (79:01–79:32).

• Fathership Program

  • Created to fill gaps in support for men/fathers in crisis, particularly those seeking custody or anger management training (64:43–65:35).
  • Offers free court-accepted classes, mentorship, and emotional support nationwide (65:37–67:26; 87:48–88:18).
  • “Service is the rent we pay for the space we take on this earth.” – Todd quoting Muhammad Ali (69:53–70:21)--his guiding philosophy.

• Personal Growth and Sobriety

  • Ceased substance abuse after losing a lung and a vivid ketamine-induced spiritual experience (10:37–13:47; 75:10–77:53).
  • Pursuing further education, becoming certified in family development (72:04–72:34).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Realization of Online Danger:

  • “These cell phones are the most dangerous weapon in the world. To give one to your child, to me, is you might as well give them a loaded gun.” – Todd (15:02–15:26)

• On the System’s Failings:

  • “I did two years for growing pot. [He]. . . got three years probation for this.” – Todd (40:04–40:26)

• On Coping Through Humor:

  • “I joke that this man said things to my daughter I wouldn't say to a one night stand. And I can be a dirty bastard sometimes.” – Todd (22:06)

• On Compassion for Perpetrators:

  • “I don’t believe people are born monsters…something must have happened for this person to become who they are, this monster.” – Mariana (56:29–56:41)

• On Trauma’s Legacy:

  • “If they don’t become pedophiles, there’s a great chance they become sex addicts, which has made it hard for me to have real relationships.” – Todd (57:30–59:39)

• On Seeking and Receiving Help:

  • “I don’t have the answers…by helping others, I’m helping myself, you know.” – Todd (67:26)

• On Regret and Growth:

  • “Would she be better off today…had I responded better then? …Am I 100% responsible for her not being a good adult right now? No…I am the one who wasn’t there when she needed me…” – Todd (79:01–79:32)

• On His Mission:

  • “If more people lived by [the Muhammad Ali] quote, it'd be an amazing world…we are all one, you know, and we all need to be more at service to each other instead of in competition with each other.” – Todd (70:21–70:45)

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Important Timestamps

• Todd’s Early Drug Experience & Traumatic Childhood: 01:31–15:26
• Psychedelics, Therapy, and Purpose: 05:52–10:23; 59:39–60:10
• Discovery of Daughter’s Grooming: 19:29–25:44
• Sting Operation/Citizen’s Arrest: 26:09–29:56
• Police/Law System Response: 31:29–40:26
• Vigilantism Debate: 47:41–56:14; 61:15–62:42
• Impacts on Family and Path to Reconciliation: 35:08–38:24; 79:01–80:33
• Fathership Program, Healing, and Sobriety: 43:42–72:05; 87:48–88:18

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Tone & Takeaways

Both speakers maintain an emotionally raw, honest, and sometimes darkly humorous tone throughout. The episode oscillates between grim recounting of trauma and hopeful advocacy for peace, healing, and societal change in how we respond to both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. Todd’s story exemplifies the struggle to convert pain into purpose and the search for justice in a system rife with failures.

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Additional Resources

• Fathership Program: fathershipprogram.com
• For support and information on sexual abuse: RAINN.org

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Note:
The summary omits advertisements and focuses on substantial content and key exchanges. For anyone impacted by sexual abuse, please seek professional and confidential support in your area.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

That room and I start going through the phone to see, you know, what's going on with this phone. And I see the name sugar daddy on there. I'm like, she's 12 years old. What does she know about a sugar daddy? And I clicked on it and then my whole world fell apart. Absolutely fell apart. The next thing I did was grab my aluminum baseball bat. I'm gonna kill this son of a bitch.

[C]

Okay, so, Todd Thomas, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you. You, I love your story. Is every parent's nightmare. You found out your 12 year old daughter was being groomed online by an older man and you chose to act and you contacted me because you've been watching my show on national geographic and you had a really interesting story. I get a lot of these emails, but you actually sort of gave me a brief story about your history and what you've been doing with your life. And I invited you to have you on and I'm happy you're here. Thank you. Thank you for reaching out.

[B]

Thank you very much for having me. I'm honored.

[C]

Okay, so tell me a little bit. You grew up in California?

[B]

Actually, I grew up in Rockford, Illinois.

[C]

Okay, but you got involved in the weed business, right? Yes, early on. How did that come about?

[B]

Well, I started smoking weed when I was 7 years old from babysitters. I started.

[C]

They would give you weed?

[B]

Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, your babysitters were very different. The first bag I bought was from a babysitter's boyfriend and we took 50 cent pieces out of my dad's drawer to buy the weed from the guy down the street. I lived in a rural community and the guy down the street sold it to me and I was instantly hooked. I thought that was the life. I listened Cheech and Chong from the time I was 6, 7 years old. So when I finally found some weed, I was like, oh, I'm on, I'm on my way. This is what I want to do, you know, And I Think I planted my first plant when I was around 14, 15, and made a living for most of my life that way.

[C]

You were. You were planting. I mean, you were growing weed and then selling it.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

I lived next to a state park. It was pretty much my backyard growing up. And there are hundreds of acres before the state park of forest.

[C]

So that's where you grew.

[B]

I tried, yeah. And it was junk.

[C]

It was junk weed.

[B]

Absolutely. It was horrible. I had no idea what I was doing. It wasn't like today, where you can go online and search what you're doing. I just had seeds in a bag and knew how to plant plants. But it wasn't until I was probably 17, 18 years old, and I was living in that state park in a tent in a part where you're not supposed to be. And a girlfriend of mine's uncle introduced me to, you know, the kind bud, the good pot. And I can remember when he first told me it was $40 for an eighth. I was like, you have crazy. I pay 50 for an ounce, you know. But what's the.

[C]

What's the good pot?

[B]

It's the. The hybrids that you see today. And that's all over now, you know, but back then, everything came in bricks, you know, and you had to cut it with the chainsaw if you're getting big bricks type thing. And, you know, it was. It was fairly cheap. You get a pound for six to eight hundred dollars, depending on who, you know, back then. And when he came to me with that, I was like, man, that it better be good. And they're like, that's what you see in I times, you know. So I bought it and I was like, this is it.

[C]

This is actually pretty good.

[B]

Yeah, I was one of the, you know, first people out of the crowds I knew to have, you know, this good quality homegrown weed for sale. And that kind of, you know, gave me a name in the industry in my area. And years went on, and I got busted in a rural town for growing.

[C]

And were you still growing in parks at the time?

[B]

No, not that.

[C]

Because, you know, that's what the cartel does, you know, in. In parks here in California, national parks. You're all over California, and it's horrible because they use a lot of toxic materials and they kill animals and plants, and it's really bad for the environment.

[B]

Absolutely.

[C]

And it's really difficult to sort of control and combat because the parks are so big. So you were kind of like the.

[B]

OG I would say that there were definitely people before me and There were many people equal with me, definitely. But, you know, and there were people that I sold to and bought from, you know, but when I lived in the park, I was dropping acid every other day, running naked through fields with, you know, it started with maybe five or six of us. And that summer is the summer of 93, because I've always talked about writing a book about it, but towards the end there's probably 30, 40 of us kids staying out there all the time. And you know, we thought we would try to hunt the woods and we're going to live off the land. And I mean, we had all these great hippie commune ideas, but we, we never really did anything because we were dropping acid every other day and not paying attention to the fact that they're going to put a road through there, you know, which is, if I ever wrote a book about that would be. The key thing is that the forest was trying to tell us to save it, but we were too messed up.

[C]

To pay attention because they actually built a road and destroyed the forest.

[B]

Absolutely. The name of the road's Perryville. And it's a four lane road that they drove. It drives right through my campsite.

[C]

Oh, that is so sad.

[B]

And at the end of the summer, the police actually busted it, but I wasn't there. So they were like, all the kids that were there, they were trying to arrest and they came through in four wheelers and SUVs and they're like, where's Todd Thomas? Where's Todd Thomas? Like, he's not here.

[C]

This was in Illinois?

[B]

Yep, in Illinois, in Rock Cut State Park.

[C]

And so you guys were just like a bunch of kids who were homeless, living in tents and doing LSD and weed every day, huh?

[B]

Every other day we'd deal acid and every day we were smoking.

[C]

What was your experience with, with lsd?

[B]

I enjoyed it.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I think it was very. I mean, every time you do it, you get the answer to life, the universe and everything. But then in the morning you forget it all, you know, so you have.

[C]

To remember, you have to remind yourself.

[B]

Yeah. Or journal, if you were smart. I, I today don't think that it should be a recreational thing, but I definitely think it has merit for counseling and rehabilitation for like ptsd, depression. I think it has a lot of more research that we need to do in how it could help people in mentally.

[C]

Absolutely. You know, I did, we did a story about LSD actually, where we were trying to film a chemist, which is very impossible. We tried for months and months and then we interviewed a Chemist who does some of the sort of ingredients or substances that are used to make lsd. But we didn't actually get to a real. I mean, we did actually to an LSD chemist, but it was a former LSD chemistry. Did you watch that story?

[B]

I sure did. And he cries at the end and I love.

[C]

That's right, he cried at the end because he says he took away going to prison and the authorities taking away his power of making or ability to make LSD took away his purpose in life, which he really thought LSD had been life changing for him. And he really believed that his purpose was to allow other people to experience what he had experienced.

[B]

Open minds. Yeah, anybody that deals with LSD feels that way. I mean, even when I was 13, 14 years old, buying sheets and selling acid as well, I used to go to the Denny's and I'd have a sheet in my pocket and everybody knew it. And I'd go table to table selling doses to people and the whole restaurant would be tripping before it was done. Went to strip clubs and gave it away to strippers to the point where the bar had to close down because nobody was sober enough to dance, you know, but it brings you a sense of we are all one, you know, for sure, in a connection that is, you can't, you can't explain unless you do it right. And mushrooms are the same way. And I actually prefer the mushrooms over the LSD because it's not as speedy, you know, on lsd, you know, where the mushrooms you can go to sleep.

[C]

I've never taken either, you know, I've microdosed on mushrooms before. I've done microdoses, mushroom microdosing. And I quite enjoyed it. And the first time was actually during the pandemic. It's a funny story. I was with some friends up in a house in a cottage in the forest up in Northern California, and they had it. And I asked if I wanted some. And we were there with our kids who were, I think like 10, 11 years old at the time. And I took, I had like half, it was a chocolate and I had half a little square. And I just started laughing. It was essentially what everybody always told me weed would do, but has never done to me because I get paranoid on weed. I hate it. I've never liked it, okay, but microdosing mushrooms, I took this half a square and I was like laughing and everything was so funny. And then my son was very upset about something. He lost a game of pool with his friends or was upset about something. And he was crying, and all I could do is laugh. And he was like, mom, I need you now. All I could do is laugh, which is not a great parenting moment, but I've done it a few times since, and it's. Yeah, I haven't had the spiritual experiences yet, but. Because I've only microdosed. But it's a fun drug to do sometimes.

[B]

I went on a motorcycle run in Arizona up in Globe called Run to the Res with the Apache natives up there. And I learned that they culturally laugh at trauma instead of. So if you tell a sad story or something, they may laugh at it. Right. And I thought how cool and how healing that is, really, because laughter is the best medicine. It is, you know? So I thought that was amazing. So maybe it helped your son that you were laughing at his trauma right then? I don't know.

[C]

Maybe. I'll have to ask him.

[B]

Yeah. Right.

[C]

So lsd. So. Yeah, so one of the things. Yeah, you were absolutely right. One of the things we investigated when we did our LSD story was we spent time with somebody, a former military guy who had terrible ptsd, was really dealing with really traumatizing events that he'd gone through and started trying LSD and went on these journeys. They were actually. They had journeys with somebody in the room, sort of a therapist, or what do you call, like, a guide.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And. But in his case, he says it was really, really helping him. And I know that's helped a lot of people dealing with ptsd.

[B]

I hope that that becomes the norm soon. I know they're doing it here in California. Ketamine right now.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Which blew me away when I heard that, because I was an old raver back in the 90s, and ketamine was Special K. Right. And you snort it like cocaine, and you. You get stuck and couldn't move. And I never hallucinated or anything like that. But back in February, I went to the hospital because.

[C]

This February?

[B]

Yeah, because I had a back pain I couldn't get rid of. And when I went into my rural clinic, they said my lung had collapsed. So I had got rushed to Fresno, to St. Jude, and they had to put a tube in my side for the collapsed lung. Well, it wasn't collapsed. I actually lost a lung. I only have one now.

[C]

Oh, no.

[B]

But before they put that tube in, I was like, hey, I got bad anxiety. Knock me out before you do this. They said, we can't. You need to be awake. I was like, what are you going to do? I was like, you're going to Tie me up or something. I'm not going to be awake while you stab me in my side. And the doctor says, I got you. And he shot me up with ketamine. Right? I have. I just told you. I've done, you know, hallucinogenics my whole life. I've never had an experience like I did there in the. In that ER room. That was the best hallucinations I've ever had in my life. I left my body and talked to God. And to this day, even though I know I was on drugs, you know, and I know how crazy it sounds, but there was this being that I can't explain on the other side, that, like, just emulated light. And I saw these blues and these silvers and these golds, and I'm floating in space, and it's like, don't worry about your meat bag down there. They're taking care of that. Come with me. I want to show you something. And it started laying out how as long as I don't stress about what's about to happen to me, things are going to fall in place for me because I have a bigger purpose here on Earth.

[C]

Oh, wow. So I just had appendicitis surgery, and they definitely did not give me. I wish they had.

[B]

Well, and that's the only time they gave it to me. Later on, they couldn't get my lung to expand, so I went to the icu. They put two more tubes up here to try to get it to expand. They couldn't. And what was happening, that they took a while for them to figure out, was they call it a bleb or something like that was holding air and blowing up like a balloon in my chest. And it smashed my lung into my heart and was smashing my other lung, right? And I just. I had back pain through all this. Eventually, the doctor said, we can't do anything but remove the lung. And he told my wife that when he got in there to take my lung out, he had to actually scrape it off my rib cage. So when I touch myself like this right now, it feels like all my ribs are broken. And this was back in March. And they freeze all your nerve endings, so they're just coming back. So sometimes it'll burn real bad. It was quite the experience, but they couldn't tell me what caused it. But I decided that life is more important. I want to see my grandson grow and have his experiences and help him through that. So I'm just gonna go sober, you know, I'm not gonna smoke weed anymore for sure.

[C]

And You've smoked weed all your life?

[B]

Since I was seven years old.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, so. And I'm 51 now.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, so back in February was the last. I hit a bowl on the way to the ER and that was the last hit of weed I had. When I came home from the hospital, I packed up all my paraphernalia. I threw 90% of it away. My wife stashed some away because she dabbles every once in a great while, but nothing like we used to, you know, And I haven't touched it since.

[C]

That's probably good. I mean, now have one lung, so it's probably. It would be a terrible idea.

[B]

Yeah, it's the best way. And edibles make me feel drunk. And I won't do the hallucinogenics either, because I know, because I'm saying this and this is what my mentality is. Because when you do hallucinogenics, your thoughts beforehand will definitely affect you while you're under the influence. And I know I'll hyper fixate on the fact that I'm missing this lung and it will really mess with my mentality. It messes with me sober. You know, there's times I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm. I can't believe I only have one lung. Where's my lung? You know, it's just weird. I can't explain it.

[C]

So tell you. I remember one of the things you said was that you had experienced some sort of trauma when you were younger. And I don't know if you feel comfortable talking about this.

[B]

It actually helps to talk about it. A lot of people try to say, you know, that you should be hush about these things. And I don't believe that's the case because then you're. You're keeping your gold is the best way I can explain it. Because when you share it helps you heal. Like, I'm starting to tingle knowing I'm going to share it. Right. But not only that, but it helps others that are afraid that are stuck. And by speaking out loud, I make it harder for the. I call them monsters that are out there preying on children. I was abused by every babysitter I had, except one. I was traded at the YMCA like candy. And I thought that it was normal. I didn't know any better, you know, and male and female, it didn't matter. And what most people don't realize is children that are affected at the. It started at 4 years old. So when you're affected that way and.

[C]

What can you just. I don't know how comfortable you feel, but how do we approach this in a sensitive way. But you had a babysitter when you were four years old and they started abusing you. Had a babysitter a man or a woman?

[B]

It was a woman. Most of them were women, but some men.

[C]

What happened in your area that there are so many child molesters?

[B]

I wish I could tell you. It's not just my area. Child molesters are prevalent. They are huge. They are everywhere. And when I started hunting them, I started to realize how much and how many there really are hidden in the shadows. These cell phones are the most dangerous weapon in the world. To give one to your child, to me, is you might as well give them a loaded gun.

[C]

So this is interesting to me because as somebody who's been investigating the underworld and black markets for so long, you know, I know that there are black markets all around us and there are people doing illegal things all the time all around us.

[B]

Absolutely.

[C]

But child molesters are actually very small percent. They exist. But from what I know and from what I've researched, they're actually a very small percentage of the population. If you don't mind me, there's a website, an AI website that we've been using called Perplexity. They actually sponsor the show, but they're really great to give us sort of straight facts on sort of numbers like this. So I'm interesting. Matt, can you search for me? Yeah. What. What are the number of registered child molesters, I guess, in the United States? And of course, I'm probably sure that this is going to be underreported. It's not going to be the. The totality, but just to give us a sense of what's out there.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Just so we can.

[B]

It's. When I say that there's a lot out there, the reason I believe that is when you set up a decoy in the areas where they hunt, like on Roblox or on Discord or all these other apps that are out there, or Whisper was the one that got to my daughter. How quickly they'll hit on. On a decoy and how many makes it hard on the. On the decoy to decide which one to actually converse with that we're going to go after.

[C]

So you are. You are what. What's nowadays called the pedophile hunter. Right. And I want. I want to get into that too. And. But there's a reason why you became that. Right. Which is your own personal story, which we will get to in a second. But Here it is. It says that There are approximately 800,000, which is an enormous number, registered sex offenders in the United States. This number includes individuals convicted of various sexual offenses, including those involving children. However, the number of registered offenders specifically for child molestation is not always broken out separately. Can you do a search just for like child molesters or pedophiles? What is the estimated number of pedophiles in America?

[B]

I guess the term pedophile also has an age limit. I guess, even though to me a pedophile is 17 and under, that the actual term pedophile is much younger.

[C]

But it actually depends on the state average. Right. Because there are some states where the consenting age is 16, I believe.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[C]

So in that case, if there's a consenting 16 year old, you know, having sex with a 17, 18 year old, that person shouldn't be considered a child molester.

[B]

Right. Or I married my ex wife when I was 20 and she was 16. Right, okay. You know, so. And her parents okayed that. But for two years I was on paper like I was her dad, even though I was her husband, I was her guardian or whatever because her parents signed her over to me so we could get married. Right.

[C]

And there was nothing illegal about that?

[B]

No, it was their idea. I was homeless, you know, so.

[C]

Okay, so it says, based on available data, about 20% of convicted sex offenders in the United States are classified as pedophiles, meaning they have been convicted of offenses. So 20% of the 800,000. So 11,000 convictions. People who have been convicted.

For being pedophiles. Okay, that is a huge number.

[B]

Definitely a lot less than I thought.

[C]

Is it a lot less than I thought?

[B]

Yeah. Well, I feel like they're everywhere, you know, I'm constant and maybe that's because of my own personal experience.

[C]

Okay, so give me your own personal experience. How did you first your. Yeah, your personal interest, personal story.

[B]

So I'm a huge Star wars fan. Darth Vader ring.

[C]

Yeah, I see that you have a Darth Vader ring.

[B]

I love it. So. And it's on the sand because good comes in the sand, bad out the sand. But anyway, right hand.

[C]

So the good is on your left.

[B]

Hand because this hand's closest to your heart. That's why you wear your wedding ring on this hand. So just energy flow, you know, so in with the good, out with the bad. But anyway, so my story, my daughter, when she was 12 years old, was playing on musical ly, which is now TikTok or whatever.

[C]

Oh, I remember musically. Yeah. So they would lip sync. Those kids would lip sync. I had a niece who loved it. She would like lip sync. Write songs.

[B]

Yeah, to songs. So my daughter, when she was doing it was showing some shoulder and acting provocative and she was how old?

[C]

Sorry, 12. 12. Okay.

[B]

And on that video some YouTuber picked it up. I couldn't even tell you who it was. And for a minute and a half made fun of her, right? And I'm back in Rockford, Illinois and a friend of hers from out there and she's out here at this time, friend of hers out there is like, hey, is this your daughter? And I looked at it at first I'm like, no way. You know, and then I start watching, I'm like, yeah, that is. So I called mom and said, take her phone, you know, we're not going to pay for her to be inappropriate on the Internet. She doesn't get a phone anymore. So when I got home I explained to her, you know, you are being inappropriate on the Internet. The Internet is a scary place. Not a real place for children. You can't have a phone until you're old enough to get a job and buy it yourself. I'm not going to pay for that kind of work. So she, being the smart child that she is, goes to school and uses one of her friends phones and gets on an app called Whisper, which is completely anonymous and she puts on there, I'll do anything for a cell phone.

[C]

What is Whisper still?

[B]

You know, I'm not really sure.

[C]

So it's a place that you can send messages and sort of the messages delete and it's.

[B]

Well, I don't even know if they delete. It's just you don't have to put your information in and you can just put whatever you want out there and people can respond back and nobody's supposed to know who anybody is unless you divulge that information. So Hugo Robinson, or Robinson, or however you say it, he was some 50 year old man at the time. He responded to her and they made plans to meet at the park down the street from where we live. And she'd brought a friend and our dog. We had no idea any of this was going on. And her and her friend and our dog walked to the park and he met her at the park. He had taken a book and cut it out like you would in prison to hide stuff. He laid felt in that book and put a phone card and a burner phone in it and shut it and met her and her friend at the park and just simply said hey, here's that book you left at my house. And left her in the park.

[C]

And what did she think, what did she say about that? Why did she think at the time that he was giving her a phone?

[B]

She knew she was getting the phone because he was going to have her do things, but she felt she needed that phone because she had friends that needed her. She felt like she was a counselor to her friends and without that connection with the phone, she couldn't help them.

[C]

Right. She's also 12 years old, obviously, so she's too young to understand what, what this all means.

[B]

Right. And she. 12 year old psychiatrist or something. I don't know, you know, but. And you know, I'm the only person in the family outside of the court system that has read everything that went on. And I have, I haven't even told my closest friends everything that's in there because it's way too hard for me to talk about. But I joke because humor, like I said earlier, is the best medicine. But I joke that this man said things to my daughter I wouldn't say to a one night stand. And I can be a dirty bastard sometimes.

[C]

So he started basically communicating with her through this phone constantly.

[B]

Yes. He had her meeting people outside the house.

In the middle of the night. She'd sneak out and meet people in their car on the side of my.

[C]

House, other people, not him, other men.

[B]

You know, and stuff like that.

[C]

And you think he was making money from it?

[B]

You know, that's a great question. I know that that makes sense, but I have no proof of that, you know, but why wouldn't he, you know, he was using his own daughter to try to lure her to his house. Like you should befriend or date my lesbian daughter. And then you could stay the night at our house and your parents wouldn't even know, you know, and that's how he would get his hands on her. He wanted her to lose her virginity in a hotel room that he would sit in the corner of was another thing he wanted to do and lots of other things. So all this is going on for.

[C]

A month and these are all you're seeing? This. You found out this later when you got access to the phone and saw the messages that he was sending her.

[B]

Right. So.

[C]

And was he making her do videos?

[B]

Yes. Pictures.

[C]

Send pictures of herself.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

Making video.

[B]

Yep. And everything else. I knew it was, it was bad.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

So.

Rogue One from Star Wars. That's why I originally started talking about Star wars was dropping on the PlayStation Network at midnight. So I Waited till midnight. And that was the last movie me and my daughter ever saw in the theater together. To this day, right when it was dropping on the network, I was super excited. I run to her room. You know, she doesn't have school the next day, I swing open the door to tell her, get up. We're going to go watch this movie. And she's laying half undressed like this with a cell phone in her hand. Ripped the cell phone out of her hand. And I thought mom had got it for her, and they were hiding it from me because, you know, I was the law and mom was trying to be the good guy is how I first saw. So I.

[C]

So you thought just like, she got a phone even though she knows she's not allowed to have a phone?

[B]

Yeah. And mom and her had connived behind my back to allow it to happen because I was being too strict. So I went in, yelled and screamed at my wife. I was very toxic, you know. And then I went to my man cave and I locked the door. And this was just shortly after I had returned from Standing Rock, you know, fighting with the natives for the pipeline that they put in. So I. That spiritually had changed me, but I was still a very toxic person. I locked myself in that room, and I start going through the phone to see, you know, what's going on with this phone, and I see the name Sugar Daddy on there. I'm like, she's 12 years old. What does she know about a sugar daddy? And I clicked on it. And then my whole world fell apart. Absolutely fell apart. I didn't. The next thing I did was grab my aluminum baseball bat. I'm going to kill this son of a bitch. Absolutely. And then I remembered that I'm a pacifist. I don't like violence. You know that Standing Rock showed me that even in the worst of times, that peace is the answer. Right. So I smoked a lot of pot. I burnt a lot of sage, and I prayed, probably for my first time in 20 years, you know, because I didn't.

It's so weird how it hits me.

[C]

I'm so sorry. I know this is really hard stuff to talk about, and I appreciate you being so open.

[B]

Oh, I have to. I have to, because Dad's got to know it's okay. Men need to know that it's okay to be emotional, that it's the most manly thing you can do to hide it.

[C]

It's going to kill you 100%.

[B]

I got on the phone and I texted him, and I pretended to be My daughter.

[C]

So you texted the man who was communicating?

[B]

Absolutely. And I said, I'm tired of my parents. I can't live here anymore. Meet me where we met, where you gave me this phone. I'm running away. Today when my parents leave at three.

I loaded both my daughters, my dog, and my wife up in the car. I made my daughter tell me where she got the book. So I knew that it was at the park. And I drove to the park. I called a friend of mine who I had done protests for Anonymous with, and I said, meet me at this park. I'm busting a pedophile, and I don't want to kill him. Your job there is to keep me peaceful because I don't know if I can do it. And he came.

Oh. So we walked up, and there was a birthday party going on in one of the areas in the park off to the side. So my buddy went over and explained to them that the man sitting at the table over there is a pedophile, and we're going to have him arrested. We're doing a citizen's arrest. I had Googled what it takes to do a citizen's arrest here in California and found out that, believe it or not, in California, if you see somebody actively in the act of a felony, you can shoot them. And I was like, I didn't need to read that.

But we walked up to him, and my buddy was on one side and I was on the other. And we're like, what are you doing here? He got all starts messing with his watch. We're like, we're not here to rob you. We know why you're here. And my wife walks up, and he goes, who are you guys?

[C]

Oh, your wife was there, too?

[B]

Yeah, my wife's like, we're her parents, you know. And he sat back a little bit, and we're like, we're going to wait for the police now. They're on their way, right? And he stood up.

[C]

Had you called the police?

[B]

Absolutely. She was on the phone with the police while she's talking to him. And they had cameras in the area and in the park, so they saw everything that was going on in real time as we're waiting for the squad to get there. Well, he stood up and started to try to walk away. And I stood in front of him, said, you are not leaving. You are under arrest. And you can see in the videos and stuff, I'm kind of sitting there, my arms just, you know, watching. The videos are real short, because who was filming my buddy that I had Asked to meet me.

[C]

So he was filming. And then you're behind.

[B]

I'm in. I'm like, in the camera, standing in front of Hugo when he's trying to leave.

[C]

To leave. Okay.

[B]

I had my friend take his phone from him. Right. And he kept filming. But I didn't think we should film for some reason, and we should have filmed more. So we had maybe 12 seconds.

[C]

So it was your friend who wanted to film and you didn't want to.

[B]

And I don't know why I should have listened to him and we should have done more because it would. For things like this, it would make more sense.

[C]

You know, it's interesting because I think my first. Yeah. I wonder what my. I think even though I film a lot for a living, I think I would probably. My instinct would be not to film a situation like that, but go ahead. Sorry.

[B]

Yeah. And, you know, with my own experience, when, like, when I told my parents that I was molested, it was. Shut up, be quiet. That's society's answer. Be quiet. And just. We're not going to talk about that. We're ashamed of that.

[C]

I realize now that we didn't actually. Actually talk about the child molestation that you had, what happened to you when you were a kid. And because we started talking about the numbers of child molesters in the United States. So at one point, I do want to address that, if that's okay.

[B]

Absolutely. I don't. That's easier for me to talk about this. That's just me. You know, I can. I can take it. But with. When it was my daughter, it was different. And I'll get to that part a little bit later. So the police show up. Right. And by this time, he has taken his watch off and throwing away. What he was doing was. It was an apple watch, and he was trying to erase the conversations. Yeah. I wasn't technically.

[C]

So getting rid of all the evidence.

[B]

He's trying to get rid of the evidence as fast as he can because his phone is in my buddy's car. Because we ripped it out of his hands while he's sitting there. And that's why he.

[C]

So he's trying to figure out a way to delete it.

[B]

To delete it. Right. And I was telling. I thought he thought we were trying to rob him and he was gonna, you know, take his watch off and, you know, we don't look like we're there to abide by the law at all. He's probably pretty shocked that it didn't get violent, which is why my story went viral was because it wasn't violent. And Coryn from ABC News was probably one of the best reporters in the whole situation. I pretty much exclusively talked to him.

[C]

So he showed up.

[B]

Coryn didn't. Not yet.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

I did call the news when I was on my way to meet him because I wanted it to hit the news, but I had no idea the extent that it would hit the news.

[C]

And why did you want it to hit the news?

[B]

That's a great question. I don't know. I was manic. I wasn't thinking. I didn't know. I wanted help. I didn't have. I didn't know anybody here. I still don't know very many people out here.

[C]

I guess you wanted. You wanted it exposed, right? You wanted him.

[B]

I wanted him exposed.

[C]

You wanted to make sure that he wasn't doing this again to anyone else.

[B]

Absolutely. And they didn't arrest him that day.

[A]

This episode is brought to you by cars.com on cars.com you can shop over 2 million cars. That means over 2 million new car possibilities, like making space for your growing family, becoming the type of person who takes spontaneous weekend camping trips or upgrading your commute wherever life takes you next, or whoever you're looking to be. There's a car for that. On Cars.com, visit Cars.com to discover your next possibility.

[B]

They took him to the gas station down the street where one of the only other people I know was working. And he called his wife and his wife came and got him. And he told his wife that we tried to rob him and take. Took his car from him. And on a Facebook post, she was defending him. And I straight told her we weren't there to rob her, rob him, we were there to bust him. And if you try to keep telling the story differently, I will assume you work with him, you know, and then I was blocked and never heard nothing from her. But that's, you know, I still to this day think she does, she does work with them because she picked them up from the courthouses and stuff.

[C]

Yeah, it's difficult, obviously. It's so difficult to know that, right? I mean, relationships are complicated, and who knows what's happening there?

[B]

I'm a product of molestation. So, like, this is. It's weird that it is such a big thing. My biological mother was raped. And because of that rape, I was born in the 70s. Her mother took her from Williams, Arizona to Phoenix, Arizona to give birth to me, to hide the pregnancy. And my mother, my adopted mother, worked at the agency that the doctor who gave birth to me was at. And she adopted me from there. And I've since birth lived with my adoptive parents.

[C]

So when the police arrived, what happened? When the police arrived on location, the.

[B]

Police arrived and Coppet said he should beat his ass, you know, And I didn't agree with him on that, but I appreciated him trying to. To help me. And I told him, you know, I pulled him aside and I said, hey, I now have to be the best man I could ever be for my family, because the person that is groomed and attacked isn't the only victim in this situation. It affects the whole family. And I realized that right away. I was like, where do I go so I can get the support I need so I don't fall apart? He's like, oh, go to victim services. And he handed me this card. So the next day, me and the family load up. We go down to victim services in Fresno, and we sit in a waiting room, and there's a bunch of women behind the counter, and they talk to my wife, they talk to both my daughters, and they're like, okay, you guys have a nice day. I sat there for a minute and I walked up to the counter. I said, I'm the only person that wanted to be here, just so you know. And they were looking at me like I beat my kids or something, you know, is how I felt. So I left. And that's when I realized we can't have it like this. When a man asks for help, we have to have something for them, because men don't ask for help. So if they ask for help and they reach out and there's no one to grab that hand, they're going to fail.

[C]

So what is it that you wanted them to do that they didn't do that day? What do you think they should have.

[B]

Done that they did at least talk to me, you know, giving me some kind of tools or something because.

[C]

And they didn't at all. They didn't even talk to you guys.

[B]

They didn't even call me into the back room. They talked to all the girls in my family and just left me in the waiting room. I didn't even know what they talked about when they took them back there. And I needed the support because of course, in my experience, even to this day, I fight the, you know, two thoughts in my head. One, I should have killed that son of bitch 100%. I should have beaten with that baseball bat because he got three years probation for this.

[C]

Yeah. I was going to ask you what happened to him.

[B]

Yep. So I fight with that. Or I should have killed myself because I can't protect my family. Oh, that's definitely, you know, and that's. That's not a healthy place for any man to sit. A man that's not as strong as me would kill himself.

[C]

Okay, so you were at this place, you were seeking help, and they didn't. They talked to your wife, your two daughters, and they did not talk to you.

[B]

Right. So that's when I saw that there's a hole in the world that I need to fill. And that was the birth of my fathership program. I have no idea. At that time, this, you know, nine, ten years ago, I had no idea what it was.

[C]

Can I ask you a quick question before we get there is if you can, what were your conversations with your daughter after this? Like, when you first found out, like, how difficult was that?

[B]

And it destroyed our relationship. It really did. She was super mad at me for even getting involved. I was mad at her for, you know, allowing this monster into our life.

[C]

Why do you think she did it and why did she say she did it?

[B]

She's never given me a real reason, even to this day. And I've tried very hard to heal. I've. With her coming in and out of the house now that she's an adult.

[C]

You know, you guys still don't have a great relationship.

[B]

Well, on the surface, you know, I mean, we talk. No matter how I feel about what she's doing or who or how she's living her life, all my children know that that phone stays on. And if you call me, I'm going to answer no matter what. I'm dad. So I'm there for you, you know, more than anybody else is whether you think I'm the enemy or not. I'm here for you. And sometimes I'm the most toxic, horrible man in the world tour. And other times she wants to chat with me about everything that you could imagine.

[C]

What does your wife say?

[B]

She doesn't talk about it. To be honest.

[C]

You guys don't talk about much about it.

[B]

Not really. You know, she is very.

Optimistic about things. And when it comes to stuff like this, I'm probably the absolute opposite, you know, I think the worst, she thinks the best, and we balance each other. Well. That's my best friend. You know, we were friends years before we dated. Never thought we would date. Was supposed to be a weekend fling, and here we are 24 years later. I even joke when we're arguing. This is the longest weekend.

[C]

That's great.

[B]

But she Is my best friend.

[C]

What if you were to try to understand what do you do? I mean, she was definitely searching for something.

[B]

She was mad that we left Illinois. I know that she did not want.

[C]

To leave Illinois because she had friends there.

[B]

Yeah, she had. Her whole life was there. And we. I have a huge community there. I would go and visit several times a year because people would pay for me to go there. Even, like, I had a friend just passed away from alcoholism just a couple of weeks ago, and friends pulled together the money for me to fly there because I'm not doing well financially. I don't have the work I did anymore. You can't put cannabis runner on an application to get a job. And at 51, people are like, well, what have you been doing your life? You know, so it's made it difficult, but I'm working towards making it so I'm very hireable by going to college and stuff like that.

[C]

Oh, yeah, you're going to college right now. Yeah, we'll get to that.

[B]

But she was jealous that I was. You know, I'd be home two weeks and gone for three. Home for two weeks and gone for three. Because I was, you know, doing what I had to do to make money. And, you know, to do that, I had to go where people knew who I was and what I did to make the money.

[C]

So do you think it was, in a way, a call for help? I mean, it's so hard to try to analyze why she was doing what she was doing. But, you know, obviously, she's so young, so, you know, her brain isn't fully developed at that point. She probably didn't quite know what was right and wrong. But, yeah, I guess also sort of something missing in her life, and there was a cry for help or.

[B]

And we put her in a. In a home down here in Pasadena maybe, or something. It's a very nice house, beautiful pool in the backyard, and kids with the shoes would go and stay there, and they had horseback riding. They go surfing and counseling and all that stuff.

[C]

And so he was arrested. What happened to him in the meantime?

[B]

Well, he wasn't really arrested. Took a year because they confiscated his laptop in his car. They confiscated his car and they confiscated his phone and his watch. And it took them a year to get through all the red tape to actually get to all these stuff that him and my daughter had been talking about.

[C]

Something that you found out in just a few minutes of getting your daughter's phone. It seems like a long time to allow a person to be out there Absolutely.

[B]

So for that whole year, I thought he got away with it. And then they arrested him and he went to jail. And then I went back on the news.

[C]

So it was a court case. Did he go to.

[B]

He went to court. He actually bailed out and tried to run. He was going to go to his mom's house in England, I believe, or whatever. He's a dual citizen. So he booked a flight out of Vegas and was flying to Canada and then from Canada to England. Well, the Canadian border patrol recognized him from my story going viral and arrested him right on the spot and sent him back, is the story I was told.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

Then he got sentenced to three years probation.

[C]

And were you in the courtroom when that happened?

[B]

I was. I got to speak to the judge and I asked the judge straight to his face, I said, how do I tell the next dad to go the route I did? Non violently. When you're going to let him only have probation? You know, I did two years for growing pot.

[C]

Right. So you spoke to the judge after the sentencing?

[B]

No, during the sentencing. Before he was.

[C]

Because you were afraid he was going to get probation?

[B]

Well, I was already told by the state's attorney that that's what they're going to do. And what's funny is that judge is right now facing a rape charge.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm waiting to see what happens there and see what I can do afterwards because I didn't get justice.

[C]

So. Yeah. So what was your reaction when you heard that it was three years probation?

[B]

I was livid. I was absolutely livid. I was like, they're not going to do. There was no restitution. There was no. I mean, I did two years in prison for growing pot in the 90s, you know, so I ended up doing more time than this guy who was trying to steal my daughter from me. 100%, you know, and he. What's weird is when I was sentenced, the guy in front of me was also a pedophile and he got nine years probation. And when I was sentenced to five years, three years and two years that were ran concurrent. Right.

[C]

For weed.

[B]

For weed. Right. I had 20 plants and five pounds. When they busted me and ride out. Right. I asked, I told the judge, you know, it's a sad day in America when I'm better off screwing little girls than trying to pay my way through college.

[C]

Did you say that?

[B]

I absolutely did. It'll be on the court record. And the judge says to me, if you don't like our laws, you can get out of our country. I said, you let me out today, honor. I'll go to Amsterdam tomorrow.

You know, but yeah, little did that judge know that I used to cruise around with his son smoking pot in his Cadillac.

[C]

So this happened when? When he was sentenced to three years probation.

[B]

This was a year after everything had happened.

[C]

Which was when? 2000.

[B]

I don't remember the years that well, but 13, 14 maybe.

[C]

Okay, and where is he now?

[B]

That's a great question. Last I heard he was in Kentucky and he's not registering.

[C]

But he's a registered sex offender, right?

[B]

He's supposed to be.

[C]

Is going to be hard for him to find a job?

[B]

Well, I was told there was a limit on how long he has to register, that he only has to register for X amount of years and then he doesn't have to register anymore. And I thought that like with Megan Law, I thought that was for life.

[C]

But can you search that, Matt, actually, what happens when a person is a registered sex offender? What impact does that have on a person's life? And. And once you're a registered sex offender, is that for life?

[B]

I do know if you google Hugo Rabson that you'll immediately get, you know, my news stories and his picture and we. One of the videos he made this ugly face at us because we kept calling him a chomo. Right. And he gets mad and he makes his.

[C]

Which is a child molester. Which is what they call child molesters usually in prison. Right? That's the term they give in prison. Okay, so here it is. So this is what Perplexity says. When a person is registered sex offender in the United States, they are required to comply with a set of federal and state laws. Under the sex offender registration.

Which is part of the Adam Walsh Protection. Registration involves providing detailed information to law enforcement agencies about the offender's identity, residence, place of employment or service, school and other personal data. Offenders must periodically verify and update this information, often through in person appearances with the frequency depending on a duration of registry. The length of time one must remain on the registry varies widely. So it's not for life. Based on factors including the nature of the offense, offender classification and state law, some offenders are required to register for life, especially. Oh, some are like I'm assuming in your case you would think so.

[B]

I would be for life, but I was told that it's not. I'm not sure. But I do know that the thing.

[C]

Is like sex offender implies so many things, right? It can be an 18 year old kid having sex with a 17 year old girlfriend in a state where and.

[B]

I'm not for that. I think we need to revisit the laws a little bit and have more common sense in it. You know, like I told you, I was 20 when I married my 16 year old ex wife. You know, I don't see like at 20 years old, you're not old enough to go in the bars, but you're too old to hang out with kids who also can't go in the bars. And you're still just a kid at 20, you know, so I don't see that as bad, you know, or wrong or whatever. But if you're 20 and the kid's 13, that's definitely an issue, you know, So I think that the age, I think we need to look at the age where they say it's a 10 year difference or whatever, that makes it heinous or whatever. I think we need to look at it more. I don't think a 21 year old with a 17 year old should, should be a big deal. Right? You know?

[C]

Yeah, that's. But that's what I mean, there's a lot of gray areas. Yeah. And there's a lot. Yeah, and it does. Yeah, that's what I mean, it's, it's a, there's a lot of gray areas within. So not all these sex offenders are child molesters. And they're not, you know, not all of them are monsters or pure evil like child molesters are often portrayed or called.

[B]

That's how I see them.

[C]

Right, so. So tell me. So, okay, so that, so obviously he did not get a sentence that you think was right. You don't think you got justice?

[B]

I don't think I got justice at all.

[C]

And that led you to try to figure out how to do something about it. Right?

[B]

It's, it just led me to want to do more. And I started seeing predator hunters online quite a bit and I joined an organization that was hunting and became a hunter. So in most of your organized hunting groups, because it takes a lot more than just one person. You'll have your decoy, you'll have your paperwork, people, I guess you'd speak that, you know, keep track of everything and make sure that we're doing everything legally. And then you have your hunters that actually show up. And for that group, I actually wrote the rules for the hunters, like there needs to be three people on site. And you know, I got that idea from when I was. My dad was a union carpenter and he was the BA for the carpenter's union. And I would pick it a lot to help the carpenters out in the union. And when you pick it, you need at least two people. So there's a witness to everything that happens. So I knew that that's what we needed to do in this situation was make sure that we had a witness, the person on camera. And then we need a cameraman.

[C]

So what's the group call? I'd rather not not say the name of the group.

[B]

Yeah, and only because I left that group because they're not handling their money properly and they're very combative to their volunteers who pay to volunteer. So when you volunteer from. I think we were paying $5 a month, which isn't that big of a deal, but they're pocketing the money. They're not using it like they should.

[C]

Why film it? That's the part that I don't understand.

[B]

Right. So the reason we film it is because you're getting a confession. As citizens, we're allowed more leeway than as police officers. So when we bust them and expose them, we're trying to get them to admit to things in the chat.

[C]

How often does that happen?

[B]

100% success rate.

[C]

They confess that they were trying to every young person to have sex.

[B]

Well, not only they don't necessarily confess, but they confess to things that were said in the chat. Like one of the guys that I busted wanted to take her fishing and was going to fishing like a young girl, our decoy. So he thinks he's coming to meet a 13, 14 year old little girl or little boy, depending on whatever they bid on for the bait. And they end up meeting the group of people that she's.

[C]

So you're going after potential pedophiles, right? Not actual people that you know, have done this in the past?

[B]

No, they have to. They have to hit up our decoy. We can't. Like people called all the time. Even I get calls to this day where they're like, I know this person's going after people go after them. That doesn't work. It doesn't work legally. There's nothing I can do about that. What we do is we put a decoy in a room, right? In lots of different rooms. And then the pedophiles come to that decoy and start talking. The decoy doesn't talk sexually at all. But we make sure within the first three messages that we disclose age, which is usually 12 or 13. I think 14 is the highest they go.

[C]

So it's very much like the show To Catch a Predator, which had many seasons on NBC, which is very popular. I have A huge problem with that show and with that type of work because it is so anathema to the work that I do. And you seem like a lovely person. But I do want to talk about some of the issues that I have and I want to see what you think about them.

[B]

Absolutely.

[C]

I'd love to hear it. There are. I know I've been following this. There is an increasing number of these predator hunters. I even have a problem with the name because I find it. Yeah, just calling yourself a hunter of human beings to me isn't.

[B]

Yeah, I hear that.

[C]

I do hear that. So there's an increasing number, I think in the last two, three years. There's like all these new groups popping up. Right. And it's become popular in the last two to three years. A lot of them, from what I've looked into, actually monetize. So they're making money from, you know, destroying somebody's life. Somebody's life who's a potential criminal, who's a potential horrible person, but who until that moment perhaps has not been a horrible person. And we don't know. My job is all about contextualizing, right. And trying to understand what led a person to get there and then filming it, exposing it, and allowing our justice system to take it into their own hands. People who are trained, who are educated, who have the tools to then take care of those cases.

[B]

Right?

[C]

And what I think you guys are doing and many of these vigilante groups is that you are playing, playing, pretending that you're, you know, law enforcement or I'm not saying you in particular, but a lot of the videos that I've seen, it's essentially people playing, you know, Superman or Batman and going out there and filming it all and. And in many cases it's actually led to violence. There was a film, a video clip that. A clip that went super viral and it's a guy with a mask who goes into the house of like a 70 something year old man and beats him in his head with a hammer. Because this is a potential. Again, potential because he had no proof that he had acted on anything apart from doing the same thing, which is bait him with some underage girls. Like, none of this. I'm saying I obviously do not condone pedophilia. Obviously, it's the worst of the worst crime. I'm a mother myself, would not want this on anyone and definitely think these people should be behind bars. But there's a reason why we have a justice system, right? And there's a reason why there's law Enforcement and there are people who are trained and educated and know how to do it. It becomes very dangerous when it's regular civilians who want some purpose in life and sometimes just want money. Because there's a lot of people making a lot of money from this.

[B]

Right. That's why I left that group was because they weren't handling the money. Right. And with the way like the last bust that I did, and I do call it a bust, was down in Hollywood and it was a guy who thought he was going to meet a 13 year old girl. One of the things that I make sure that we're doing is now that we are there, we are liable for his safety as well. So we can't. We make sure that if there's a crowd, we get away from the crowd when we talk to him, when we film. We're not going live because we're not doing it for likes. We're not doing it to brag. We're doing it because we want them off the street. Right. So we, not only.

[C]

You are putting these videos online, right. You're not just handing them.

[B]

That's why I can't show you.

[C]

You are not. Okay?

[B]

No, we don't. Me and my buddy who helped me with Hugo did this last bus in Hollywood. We don't put it online.

[C]

And just to be clear, Hugo is the guy who went after your daughter.

[B]

Went after my daughter, Right.

[C]

In that case you have hard evidence that he was a horrible human being and doing terrible things to your own daughter.

[B]

Right. And the filming we did there, we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't build a case like we do today, you know, and when I say we build a case, what we do is after we have confronted this person and we film them. Right. What we're doing during the filming is we're trying to get tie them to the things that are in the text messages. So when it goes to court, they can't say I didn't text that because we have them on film saying that they did. And then while we're filming and when we confront them, we've already called the police. We're just trying to keep them there until the police can get there. And then the police arrest them, we hand the phone over and all the evidence and we say, okay, please take care of this situation.

[C]

And what, what's that group call? So this is a group you created?

[B]

Well, actually my friend who helped me, he created it and I believe it's called Guardians of the coast or Guardian Angels of the coast is the name of that group.

[C]

And that's. It's mainly him. And. Are you.

[B]

It's him and I. And he's. He's looking for more volunteers. It's mostly. It's 99.5point him. Right. And he has a decoys that work with him. He decoys very well. He's worked with other people who are more like. He tried to work with some people that are more commercial about it, and it didn't sit right with him either. Because we agree with you that a lot of people are doing it for the money. They're doing it for the Facebook likes or whatever. And that's not why we're doing it. We're doing it because we were affected by these people and we want to make sure that more people aren't. So we want to build cases that put these people away and make them answer for the crimes that they may not have committed yet. But they were willing enough to come meet those people that they thought they were going to. They were in the act of going to meet somebody just like Hugo at the park. Thought he was picking my daughter up to take her away from me forever.

[C]

Right.

[B]

You know, he didn't do it. You know, he didn't even touch her, but he would have had he been given the chance. And with that, we will decoy a person for months and get. Have them talking and chatting. And we have models that will take pictures, you know, that are of age but don't look of age, you know, because these guys are getting smarter and smarter all the time because they know these groups are out there. So they'll be like, well, I want a picture of you in a bra with a 13 on your hand, you know, so we'll ask our model, you know, and we, you know, she puts a hat on and she'll write a 13 on her hand.

[C]

And the 13 is to say her age.

[B]

I'm just saying that is I want a diamond on your hand or, you know, just something so that they know that it was a recent picture and not a file picture. And the model part is probably the hardest part because you got to find someone that's over 18, right?

[C]

Looks like.

[B]

Who looks like they're 12, you know, and is willing to do this, you know, so that's a hard part. And decoying, I can't decoy. It's way triggering for me. You know, it takes me right back to having my daughter's phone in my hand, so. But I have no problem in the confrontation part in keeping it peaceful. And again, I know Keeping it peaceful.

[C]

Is very important for you.

[B]

I'm legally responsible. I tricked him into being there. So if something happened to that predator while I'm standing there, I could be held liable. So it's a liability issue when I'm standing there confronting that person. So I got to make sure that the public doesn't know what's going on or anything like that. So in Hollywood, we actually had a security. Security guard who had walked up and said, what's going on here? And I pulled him aside and I explained it to him, and he said, I'm gonna. I'm gonna hang out and help you keep the peace. I was like, thank you. You know, I was very.

[C]

I wish more people doing this kind of stuff were more like you. Unfortunately, there aren't. There are a lot of people that are not and do it, I think, believe the wrong way. There's an excellent documentary that I encourage you to watch that I watched earlier this year called Predators, which basically is about the history of To Catch a Predator. What happened. You know why To Catch Predator ended up, right?

[B]

No, I don't.

[C]

It ended because it was still very popular, but it ended mainly. Or one of the big reasons was because one of the people that they were going to catch that day committed suicide while they were outside with their cameras approaching. He realized that they were coming, and they committed suicide and while the police was there also. And so there is something very dangerous about that approach, right?

[B]

Yes, absolutely.

[C]

And the fact that it was so popular to me really bothers me because it's almost like you are watching and this. Somebody says this in the. In this documentary, which is. You're watching somebody whose life is about to end. You know, their life is about to end.

[B]

Right? Absolutely.

[C]

And somehow people enjoy this. I mean, they enjoy watching the. The end of somebody's life. They enjoy watching.

[B]

It's the Roman Colosseum, right today.

[C]

Exactly. You could not have said that better. That is exactly it. It's the. The Roman Coliseum of today. It's almost. And there's something very gruesome about that and troubling to me that somebody wants to turn on, you know, put on a video to watch the. The, you know, show that you'll. You're seeing all these people at their worst, and it. Yeah, it's. To me, it's troubling them anyway, so.

[B]

It doesn't surprise me that that's the position you take being who you are, because you are such a humanitarian and have so much love for people, and you see past the darkness and see the light in almost everybody. And that's what's so awesome.

[C]

Thank you for that. I think in my mind, I'm constantly trying to understand something must have happened for this person to become who they are, this monster. Because I don't believe people are born monsters.

[B]

Absolutely not.

[C]

So in preparing for this conversation today, I actually did a search. I wanted to know what leads people to pedophilia. Because.

There has to be something.

[B]

Victims.

[C]

Yeah. In many ways, the vast majority of them, or a lot of them, actually. Matt, this is a good search on perplexity. What do studies out there tell us about why people become pedophiles or are pedophiles? You know, And I think one of the things that I remember reading was that a lot of them are because they themselves have been abused, sexually abused as children. And obviously not everybody who sexually abuses children become pedophiles. But there is a lot of trauma there. They say that it's also sometimes genetic and passed on.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And there's all this variety.

[B]

Like that's very possible because our mannerisms are passed through our alleles or our DNA, you know, right in our genes, gene pool or whatever. But not only that, if they don't become pedophiles, there's a great chance that they become sex addicts, which has made it hard for me to have real relationships. My wife is a saint. She put up with me being the worst person. As a boyfriend, I'm a great friend, but as a boyfriend and a lover, I was one of the worst, you know? But she saw past my darkness. She saw the man I'm trying to be every day now way before I did, you know, and she fought through it and stuck by my side no matter what. And that's how I know she's my best friend. Because she takes me for my shit and my beauty all at the same time. And she loves it all, you know, to the point where today we can joke about the horrible things I did in. In our years together before we started getting healthier, you know, And I think that's Great, but I 100% am a sex addict. 100%. If. If a woman came on to me at any point in time in my life, until I started to heal and do my shadow work, so to speak, I couldn't say no. It was like, cocaine addict with a line on the table. Yeah, I gotta have that, you know? And I think that's because being molested at such a young age, I had no value in sex, that it was a purely physical thing. There was Nothing spiritual about it whatsoever. So to sleep with your friend was no big deal. You just. It was like playing football, you know, we could play football or we could, you know, have sex, you know, and sex is a lot more fun than football because of the endorphins. So let's do that instead of play football, you know, and it, it was horrible. And I still fight with it to this day. You know, I am 100% faithful to my wife today. But it's challenging at times, you know, it really is, especially because some of those old friends will still call, you know, and I'm still friends with them. But I have to keep a boundary that's really hard to keep because it's been there for 19, 20 years or whatever, you know, so it's difficult. And I know that that's.

[C]

You're relating with somebody obviously whose sexual inclinations are much worse than yours.

[B]

Absolutely horrible.

[C]

And they can destroy lives. But in many ways you're trying to understand why they do what they do or how it came about. Right.

[B]

And I, and I do understand it because I've been through it, but I don't condone it.

[C]

No, of course not. And neither do I. And neither should anyone, quite frankly. Yeah, it says here. So this is what Perplexity search came. Psychological and development factors. Yeah. So some of the reasons why a person can become a.

Pedophile. Early childhood experiences such as emotional neglect, trauma or abuse. Developmental challenges in adolescents related to distinguishing sexual impulses from aggression, combined with low self esteem. Poor da da da. Research shows abnormalities in brain structure and function in pedophilic individuals, particularly in areas related to sexual arousal and emotional processing. Genetic predispositions. So that's, that's exactly, you understood exactly where I'm coming from. Of course I do not condone the behavior, but I have trouble with baiting somebody. Perhaps, you know, I don't know. Just who knows what's behind this and what caused it and who knows if they would even act on it. And then knowing that people are doing it in a very different way than you are. A lot of people are using violence. I searched this morning and there was a here. I wanted to know how many vigilante groups or pedophile hunters are out there that are actually using violence and being violent.

[B]

People like to send me videos of violence, of people being violent, and I hate it.

[C]

Yeah, this was the search I did this morning. In the last few years, particularly since 2023, so very recent, there have been over 170 violent vigilante attacks by so Called pedophile hunters. In the United States alone, these incidents have involved physical violence, such as chasing targets in public places, beating them, and shaving their heads. The increase in overt physical violence has been significant and concentrated over the last two years. And one of the incidents was this guy who I believe was arrested after they found out who he was, the guy with the mask who beat this old man almost to death. I think the guy was hospitalized, you know, had to have, like, surgery, brain surgery, or. It was terrible. And why did this guy do it in the end? Apparently, according to reports out there, so that he could put it online and become popular, you know, YouTuber or it wasn't actually on YouTube in this case. They. They. A lot of these guys have been banned from YouTube, so they're using other platforms, but just so he could go viral and make money. Because that's the other problem I have is that a lot of these people are using the stories and destroying people's lives and using it as a way to make money. Right. They're monetizing. Some of these groups are even. Or at least one of these groups that I read it was even sponsored to do this sort of work. You know, we'll pay you. My brand will pay you. You'll advertise our brand, and you go out there and chase pedophiles. So, yeah, that's.

[B]

That's crazy. Yeah, I don't like that. All the model with my program is violence is a boy's answer to a man's problem. And I truly believe that because we turn to violence when we can't emotionally handle or mentally work our way through the problem. And that's. That's your wounded child coming out. When we learn to control that wounded child and become a man, we learned that we're not going to get an outcome through violence ever. Violence only begets violence. So when we let that go and we learn to be emotionally mature, right, and we respond instead of react, right, that's when we find solutions. And that's what I tried to teach through my fathership program. That's why I'm back in school.

[C]

And it's, quite frankly, particularly.

Admirable for someone like you because you actually have experienced it yourself. You had your daughter go through it. In many ways, you have a lot of trauma from this. So it's particularly admirable that the way you chose to handle this is, yes, going out there and looking for people. So to make sure that this doesn't happen again to other kids, but do it in a way that's peaceful, which, quite frankly, I'm not sure. I don't know what I would do if I found out that something was happening to my. My child. I hope I would do it in a way that is as mature and.

[B]

You know, and I'm not doing it that much anymore, to be honest. Like, when I left that last group, I really fell off from doing that completely. It helped me heal. Right. But when I found out that they weren't handling it properly and they were doing it more for the T shirt and likes is like, how I told them. That's not what it was about for me. So I walked away from it. And then my partner started this other group and invited me on this hunt that we did in. In Hollywood, you know, and I was. It was more of coming back together with him.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Than it was about the hunt, you know, because that's not. That's not my focus today. My focus today.

[C]

Tell me about what you're doing now.

[B]

My focus today is fathership programs. So. And that is, you know, the name I came up with 10 years ago. I had no idea what it was going to be. We're for all men in general. The work I'm doing today right now is helping dads who are fighting for custody for their children more than anything. A lot of them are in family court, and they have to take a parenting class or an anger management class through the court. Well, that's privileged because these classes can cost anywhere from 2,400 to $5,000. Right. Well, these men are already trying to pay for lawyers, pay child support and everything else. They can't afford these classes. They don't take these classes. They lose in court. They can't get the 50, 50 that most men deserve when it comes to child custody, you know, so by get, I give these classes to them. I don't make a dollar. I've spent thousands to build this. I've never made a penny.

[C]

And those classes count when they go to court?

[B]

100%. That's amazing. And for a while, I thought I had to pay to get special certification so the courts would recognize me. Right. Is that a gal or a guardian at litem was interviewing me as a character witness for a friend of mine, Right. We talked about my friend for about four minutes. And I plugged my program because I just. When I tell you that this is something bigger than me and that things keep falling in place for this program to grow. This is my purpose. It's why I was born, it's why I was here, and I Have no idea what it was supposed to be. But it does fall in place for me in weird ways because I. I'm just a dumb stoner. I'm just this vessel that's creating this thing that I don't know even today what it will be. I just have a dream of what I want it to be. And that dream isn't even my own. It's something divine pushing me. And I'm not a religious person. I'm really not. I'm spiritual today, but I've. I've got more jokes about religion than I have faith, you know. But I do have faith that this program is what I'm supposed to do. So that being said, I can never charge my clients because it's a privilege if they could pay for it. But if I give it away, I take the privilege away. And that way, the people that can't afford these classes can take them for free. And the guardian Litem heard that, and she thought that was awesome. And she started sending me clients and recognize and telling the judges I want them to go to fathership program for the anger management program. She forgot that I also have a parenting class. So my first couple of clients are like, I can't get ahold of these people I'm supposed to take a parenting class with. I was like, well, I have one of those two. I'll call her and make sure that it's okay that you do it with me instead. So I'm giving them the parenting class and the anger management class.

[C]

So tell me about the people that have lost custody. What are their stories and what is. What's in the program that you teach.

[B]

Right. So one of the stories that I wanted to share. I can't share names.

[C]

No, that's okay. Of course.

[B]

But one of them had a child that the guardian didn't. I'm trying to figure out how to tell this story without giving too much away. Cause they might watch this too. But there was a court order that the child was supposed to be supervised visits at one house. And I have both dad and stepdad taking the courses with me. Right. So I don't have, like, feelings one way or the other for either one of them. I both want them to have their times with the kids. Well, the supervised visits weren't happening. So the gal had told the judge that dad's not going to see the kid anymore. And the kids, you know, were trying to run away when they went over there. Well, one of them runs away and stepdad's pretty upset. Right. It actually talked to me for a while on the phone because I tell my clients that you don't have to just talk to me in class. My phone stays on. You can call me anytime you want. I, I, I give a more than I probably should. So I'm invested in you when you come to me. So if you're with me, we're, we're in this for life. And you can call and talk to me anytime you want. And something I really want to say is I don't have the answers. I don't have them at all. I'm doing this because I need help, but by helping others, I'm helping myself, you know, so I'm not going to have the answers for you, but I'll walk through the fire holding your hand if you need me to, and we'll figure it out. Because if, if I haven't been through it, I've been something close to it. Well, this guy didn't want to, this stepdad didn't want to take my anger management course. He's court ordered because of his wife or girlfriend that, you know, his child is in this custody battle with dad. And he calls me up and he says, todd, I know, I've told you since day one I didn't need your anger management course. I've already been through the system. I've, I've done these courses before. He goes, but the tools you have given me stop me from doing something stupid this weekend. And people, I have lots of people in my ear, including him, telling me I need to figure out how to get paid by my clients for this. That was the biggest payment I could ever got there. You know, and you know, they're not wrong. I do need to figure out a way for the program to make money. But it's never been about the money. It's just been about, I know how I felt when I needed help and it wasn't there. And I wish I had a mentor like I'm trying to become to help me through it. So I became that mentor. And one of my biggest quotes, which is on the back of my facilitator book for Empowered Calm, is the name of my anger management.

[C]

Empowered Calm.

[B]

Empowered Calm, Yep. And the name I, I came up with on a whim. But on the back of that book, I quote Muhammad Ali, which I think is one of the smartest people ever. I love him, but his quote is, service is the rent we pay for the space we take on this earth. And I think if more people lived by that quote, it'd be an amazing world. Because like Alan Watts said, I'm just you having a me experience, and you're just me having a you experience.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. So if I take care of you the way I want someone to take care of me, I am taking care of me, you know, because we are all one, which, that's probably from the acid, who knows?

But I truly believe, like, I even saying that to you, I get chills and goosebumps because we aren't. We are all one, you know, and we all need to be more at service to each other instead of in competition with each other.

[C]

Amen. I totally believed all that.

[B]

Yeah. And men are raised to be in competition. We get in room with other men, we gotta, you know, pigeon chest up and sit back a little bit. Especially in, like, the prison systems and stuff like that. And shopping is hard, right? But I found a better way. Stitch Fix online personal styling makes it easy. I just give my stylist my size, style and budget preferences. I order boxes when I want and how I want, no subscription required. And he sends just for me pieces, plus outfit recommendations and styling tips. I keep woodworks and send back the rest. It's so easy. Make style easy. Get started today@stitch fix.com Spotify. That's stitchfix.com Spotify when I was in prison, you know, you're supposed to stick to your own. I was horrible at that. I don't know how to stick to my own. I like other cultures. So I'd go and talk to other people all the time and I'd constantly get pulled back, you know. And they called me White Cloud in there. Like, you can't be going over there doing why?

[C]

Why Cloud?

[B]

Because I was a pot smoker. Of course.

[C]

I should have thought about that.

[B]

The CEOs wouldn't even call me convict like they would the others. They called me Powell because I was a prisoner of war. Called me waste of bedspace.

[C]

The CEOs are the correctional officers. Yeah.

[B]

They didn't think I need to be there. And what's really funny is Illinois locks me up for growing. But I started going to college while I was in there for something to do. But I got certified in horticulture.

[C]

So you became even a better partner.

[B]

Even better. I understand it a lot better now, you know, but like I said, I do right now have the parenting course and the anger management course. And a lot of this is research I've done on my own. But I am also this. I'm in my third year for my bachelor's or my BA In Human and Family Development. And it will come with a CFLE license as well. And I already have two professors behind me to give me recommendations to go on for my PsyD, which is A.

[C]

So you, you. You're changing your life completely, 110%. Did what happened with your daughter lead to this or what was the catalyst?

[B]

Yes, that was. It was that. It was. It was that. And me trying to figure out how to deal with my emotions and realizing that there isn't really great structure for men who need help and wanting to be an asset for my program and then losing my lung and quitting smoking pot, you know, I mean, my life is. If 10 years ago you told me I'd be sitting here talking to you about sobriety and helping other people, I would have laughed at you. You know, I would have had some dark humor joke and laughed and said, let's go smoke.

[C]

So if you look back at that moment that changed your life, what happened to your daughter? What. How would you have reacted different in your relationship? What did you think you did wrong back then that now you know you should have done differently?

[B]

Screaming, the yelling, the. At her, I reacted. I didn't respond right. I just went completely off my emotion and I didn't take the time to try to understand what the fuck is going on with you. I sent her off to somewhere else for them, like, fix her, you know, instead of, come here, let me fix you.

[C]

Yeah. Treating her as the victim that she was.

[B]

Absolutely.

[C]

Instead of that, you treated her as.

Somebody who was guilty for doing that.

[B]

Absolutely, I did. And I. I went to a retreat for men through Sacred Sons, which is an amazing organization. I just can't afford them all the time. But I went to one here in la and it was a very amazing experience. I mean, we woke up at the crack of dawn every morning and we would greet the sun in different languages and different spiritual beliefs and every morning that we were there. And that was so neat when you got 200, 300 men all focusing their energy on the same thing is powerful, powerful. It was neat. And that. What's kind of strange is when I came home from that, the spiritual high that I had, I can't even explain. My daughter drove our car down because my wife couldn't. She drove my car down to pick me up while my wife was at work. And then we had to drive up to Paso to pick my wife up together. But having her meet me after that experience was a huge bonding moment for us.

[C]

I love your story because in many ways it was in a moment where you were needed as a father, but you failed.

[B]

According to Father 110%, I did.

[C]

But that failure as a father really transformed your life and made you want to learn and become a better father, a better version of yourself, right?

[B]

Absolutely. And I'm not there yet. I'm way better than I was even five years. Even if we went five years ago, when I was still working on building fathership program, I was still a lost soul. But sobriety has helped me see better than I did even before. I never thought I'd stop smoking pot, ever. It took me losing a lung for creator or whatever you want to call it, took that lung to wake me up. It was that hallucination under the ketamine where I went and whether it was drug induced or an actual spiritual experience, I will never know, you know, and people will be skeptic and say, well, that was the drugs. I don't, I don't care. You weren't there, you know, what was.

[C]

It about your, your use of pot that made you.

That I guess it didn't allow for, for clarity? Is that, do you think that you have a clarity now that you didn't have when you were smoking pot?

[B]

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I, I smoke non stop. You know, I had a buddy that used to drive tour bus for famous people, and he drove for Snoop Dogg once, right? And he came back and I was like, bro, just tell me, could I hang? He's like, bro, I have never been more intimidated smoking with someone than I was with Snoop Dogg. He was like, but I think you could hang. And I was like, I knew it. You know, I was like, him and Willie Nelson. I want to smoke with them both, you know, and that was a big, you know, because growing up, even Cheech and Chong were heroes to me because I, you know, I wanted to be the best pot smoker there was. And I've never met somebody that could toque for toke with me. You know, they. Most people bow out. Maybe one or two people could hang with me at the table, you know.

[C]

But yeah, now because of legalization and everything, people. It's just there's. The idea is that there's. It's just, it is. And it can actually be very beneficial, but it can also be very bad for you and impact your, your life very negatively.

[B]

Yeah, I relied on it. For any time I was having a negative emotion, instead of working through it, I'll smoke it out, you know, because I try to stay positive. I've had people tell me I'm one of the most Positive people they've met. And I'm like, oh, if you only knew my dark side. If you only knew the times I spent in my room crying because nothing's going right and I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel and I'm fighting through the idea of just ending it all. You, you know, and they, they don't see that part because when we go in public, we put on masks, you know, so I'd put on the mass of the laid back, happy hippie, which hippie is my road name for riding hard when I'm riding, you know, and has been for a long time, you know, and that's how they saw me. But they didn't see, you know, I was really good at masking it, you know, and staying positive because I didn't want to put my negative energy out there. It's not, it's not for you, it wasn't for me. You know, I just need to let it go. But I'm horrible at that.

[C]

Yeah. But it doesn't surprise me that even though you think you're kind of a pessimist, that people see you as an optimist because I, I, this is what I'm picking up on you too, is that you're trying to bring light into the life, into life and trying to teach other people and share your sage words. And maybe your sage words came because of your amazing acid experiences, trips, but it probably, it looks, I mean, it came from your own experience and what you had experienced to deal with in many ways, your own failure. And when I talk about your failure as a father, I'm not talking about what, the fact that you weren't able to protect your daughter, because I think that's an impossibility in many ways. I think that it was the way you reacted, right. Like you said, I reacted instead of absolutely correct.

[B]

I mean, I, I would be a fool to deny that. You know, I see that 110%. That's why I was asking for help, because I was shaken at the knees and didn't know how to be the man I needed to be right then. So I needed a mentor or a guide that was level headed enough to be like, calm down, take a breath, think, breathe. It's okay, she's alive, you're alive. She needs your love right now more than anything. You just need to love her right now.

[C]

Right.

[B]

You know, and I beat myself up sometimes wondering, would she be better off today, right now, as a grown woman, had I responded better then? You know, is some of her suffering today because I was so toxic. Absolutely. It is 110% on that. Am I 100% responsible for her not being a good adult right now? No, I'm not, because I'm not the one that abused her, you know, But I am the one who wasn't there when she needed me in the capacity that she needed.

[C]

And by a good adult just means you don't have a good relationship with her because maybe she is a good adult in her own way.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, she's got some amazing qualities. You know, She's. She's more like me than she wants to admit, and I think that irritates her, you know, but even my oldest daughter, who I consider one of my best friends, is a lot like me in a lot of ways. And she'll admit that it drives her, my ex wife, nuts, you know, but she's a lot like my ex wife, I mean, too. You know, so. But that doesn't. You know, that's neither here that she's one of my. When people hear me talk to my oldest daughter sometimes they're like, how do you talk to your daughter like that? You shouldn't. You shouldn't talk to your daughter like that. And I'm like, if I don't talk to her like that, somebody else is going to. So we. We don't have any boundaries set on what we talk about. I mean, we will talk about our dirt to each other and talk through it with each other. We'll talk about our good and our bad, and I mean, in lots of broad ways, but it's when people hear me talking to her about her sex life and stuff like that. Like, how do you talk to your daughter?

[C]

Yeah, you know, I have that relationship with my son too, where he's very open, and I share when I'm sad and I share when things are frustrating and I share my life, I share when I'm happy. And I talk to him a lot, ever since he was a little kid, a little boy. And I think that's allowed him to feel very comfortable sharing everything in his life. And he does. I mean, all the stuff that. All the firsts, he's shared them with me. And I really. Yeah, it's something that I'm very proud of, the relationship that we have, the.

[B]

Bond that mothers and sons have or fathers and daughters.

[C]

Daughters. Yeah.

[B]

Really hard to break if it's done properly.

[C]

That's right. And Todd, before you leave, I just wanted to go back because you mentioned how you were molested and if you're okay talking about this, which you said you are. So tell me what happened to you when you were okay.

[B]

Yeah, well, one of them I can. And I don't remember it all as well as I would like. And it wasn't until was attacked that I even remembered it. So. First time that I remember, the babysitter's watching a Cubs game in the kitchen, on a little TV on the counter, sitting in a chair, and she calls for me to come over. She had her boobs out and she's like, come sit on my lap and play with them, you know, And I just did what I was told. And then.

[C]

And you were four years old.

[B]

Yeah, I was like four or five years old. You know, I was very, very young. I mean, I was playing with Star wars toys, you know, and this was.

[C]

A very disturbed person.

[B]

Absolutely. She. And then I told my mother, probably when I was 7 or 8 years old, they were getting ready to leave, and one of those babysitters was going to come over, and I begged, pleaded and cried and said, you know, she makes me do things I'm not. I don't like doing. And my mom got mad at me and told me I was making those stories up, you know.

[C]

Did you ever talk to her about it again any other time?

[B]

Not really. And I have a little bit. And she's like, I didn't realize it was at the extent, you know, especially with the YMCA stuff.

[C]

So what was happening at the ymca?

[B]

At the ymca, there were old men that would wait in the locker rooms and they would find victims before they got to the pool, because you got a shower before you go to the pool. So they would molest young boys in the corner of the shower before they go out to the pool.

[C]

This was.

[B]

And I.

[C]

What, like years? More or less six.

[B]

I mean, in the 80s and. Yeah, this was in the 80s, early 80s, you know. And I thought that all the kids did that. I thought it was normal. And when you're molested, what exactly did they do?

[C]

So you're in the shower and they would come up and start.

[B]

Well, I would notice them looking at me while I was showering, right. And then they'd kind of, you know, come here, come here. And then I'd have to play with them. And, you know, this was known.

[C]

Like, people knew this was happening.

[B]

I don't know. I. I was just a kid. I didn't know. I didn't know any better. Like, I just. This was. I thought all the kids did this. I thought it was like, you know, all the Kids were doing what I was doing, you know, and it wasn't until I was much older that I even remembered it happening. You know, it was just kind of blocked out of my memory. And I was on the swim team for the while, all the way up into my teen years. I'm a great swimmer. You know, the great. Won lots of awards for it, but.

[C]

And did you ever report the YMCA experience?

[B]

No. No. And it's my belief that once a child has had that experience, that you become easier for the other pedophiles. It's almost like you have a radar, and you can tell that that person wants to molest you, and you seek that attention like a broken human being.

[C]

Right, A broken kid.

[B]

Absolutely. Like, I don't know that that would have happened at the ymca.

[C]

And you're saying, sorry, I cut you off, but you're saying you, as a child seek that behavior or they seek.

[B]

No. Yeah, absolutely. Because you feel like that's that validated you, you know, that you were doing something good for an adult that they appreciated you doing. So I'm not gonna say that they seeked me out every time. I'm gonna say I might have even instigated it a few times as a child, because I thought that's what they wanted.

[C]

So you thought that any adult that was showing you some sort of attention at the time possibly could want something different from you?

[B]

Absolutely. My grandmother yelled at me one day when I was visiting in Florida down at her house. We were going to see all of her friends, and she was like, so stop putting your head on all the ladies boots. And I can remember that clear as day right now. And I didn't even realize I was doing that. I just thought that that's the way a little boy would sit in a girl's lap.

[C]

Because that's what your babysitter had asked you.

[B]

That's what I was doing. Yep.

[C]

Oh, wow. That is so crazy. That is. Wow. And so at what point did you realize that this was not normal behavior?

[B]

I think I just got older and started having sex with women my own age. And just. And it always was just, you know, I don't. It. They quit being older than me, you know, but so it wasn't, you know, it just transferred from being really young. And you know what's weird is when you're a boy, you know, that's cool. You got to play with boobs at five years old, you know, but nobody really looks at how scarring that is. Now you reverse those roles and make the babysitter A man and me, a little girl. And now all of a sudden, it's horrible. You know, we look at the damage that's done, but when it's men, it's. You're, you know, you're soft for.

[C]

Right.

[B]

For even mentioning that that probably bothered you.

[C]

Yeah. In many ways, it's almost. There's also a shame associated with it. Right. In a way that, you know how rape victims have a really hard time reporting their rapists because sometimes they think it's their fault. They must have done something. Right. The victimization of oneself, the idea that maybe I shouldn't have, you know, I started the conversation or I was wearing something inappropriate, it was my fault.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

In many ways it's. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And when you're just a baby, you know, you are always seeking the approval of adults.

[C]

Right.

[B]

100. I mean, that's. Your whole life is adult approval. And I had an alcoholic father at the time. You know, he quit drinking when I was 13, but by 13, I was absolutely damaged. I was ready to leave the house, you know, and my mother was just trying to cope with the alcoholic father and raising me by herself. And, you know, I was adopted. And I'm not saying I was a perfect child. I was probably very hard to deal with, you know, especially with all the trauma at the same time and, you know.

[C]

Right. So, I mean, it's pretty incredible what you have gone through, all the trauma you've lived through, and the way you speak now about growth and about parenthood and what you're trying to do with your life. It's pretty amazing. Like, I congratulate you.

[B]

Thank you.

[C]

It's for everything.

[B]

I don't have a choice.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I have to say that this is. If I could go back to just being a stoner, playing video games and going to work, that'd be great, you know, but I won't sleep at night like creator or whatever this higher being is. Even before my hallucination experience wouldn't let me sleep unless I did at least one thing the next day to progress what I'm trying to do. And I 100% believe that if I wasn't willing to take those steps, I would have died when they took the. My lung, that my life was over, that I have to this purpose that I have to serve, and that's it. And when it's done, I'll be done.

[C]

Well, I hope everything goes great. I hope so. The organization is called Fathership Program. And is it online, people?

[B]

Yes, I have a website, fathershipprogram.com so. And my phone number is on there. I'm not hiding from anyone. My phone stays on. I answer all the calls, you know, so I have a board. We have, I have a board member in Washington. I have a board member in Arizona. I have a board member in London who's my legal advisor. We've been a actual 501c3, not for profit for two years in good standing here in California. But we are federally recognized.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, your program is important in so many ways as, as we know. There's so many kids in the US that grow up without their fathers and the father figure is very important in their lives. So, you know, and a lot of times people need help. You know, fathers need help too. And I really appreciate you reaching out and sharing your story here today.

[B]

Thank you for. I truly mean it when I say it's an honor.

[C]

Oh, thank you so much, Todd.

[B]

Thank you.

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the big best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a [e-mail] switch.

[C]

Upfront payment of $45 per three month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.