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TRANSCRIPT

Elizabeth: [00:00:00]

You are listening to Smart Talks with the Elizabeth Smart Foundation.

I'm your host, Elizabeth Smart. Smart Talks provides survivors and supporters with tools for healing, a sense of community, and empowerment so we can all heal and move forward together.

Welcome to Smart Talks. I am Elizabeth Smart, and today I am joined by Kara Robinson Chamberlain. In 2002, 15 year-old Kara was kidnapped by what she would later find out to be a serial killer. After 18 hours in captivity, Kara's will to survive led her to escaping her captor and later gathering the information to identify him as the man responsible for at least three murders committed years earlier in Virginia. Following her experience, Kara realized she survived for a very specific purpose: to spread hope and encouragement to other survivors. Upon this realization, Kara formed [00:01:00] relationships with law enforcement and went on to work with Richland County Sheriff's department as a school resource officer, investigator, and victim's advocate until the birth of her first child in 2013. Currently, Kara uses her experience to speak to groups with the mission of spreading awareness, education and inspiration. Through her social media platforms, Kara also provides advice on using fitness for healing, as well as how to support and speak to survivors. And personally, Kara is my friend and I love her and she's incredible and amazing. And we met years ago, actually, when I was a correspondent for Crime Watch Daily. And I came into contact with her and I've not never let her wiggle out of my life since then. So I am very excited to have Kara on with us today. So thank you, Kara.

Kara: Of course, I, could never say no to you. I'm so indebted to you for just being there for me and always supporting me. And I'm happy to be here. Yeah, no, you do. [00:02:00] You're such a, you're such a big advocate and supporter for people who are trying to do, whatever they feel driven to do. So I just, it's one of the things I love about you and I think that's one of the things everybody loves about you.

Elizabeth: You're sweet. And I love you and thank you. Yeah, so diving right in. Well, first of all earlier this year, Kara, she was, she has done so much this year. This is a huge year for care. First of all. So if you don't follow her on social media, you probably should. Her Instagram is always uplifting. I see pops up on my reels and all my feed, every time I get on there.

And I'm like, oh, I'm so happy to see she's amazing, and killing it. So if you need some inspiration, go follow Kara. And if you need some inspiration to get off your sofa as well, and pick up those weights, once again, follow Kara. But it is such a pleasure and she's had a documentary come out. She's, am I allowed to say on the record or no, [00:03:00] she's working on a book, maybe. Yes. Maybe. No?

She was on the cover of People Magazine. She was at uh, huge summit that was held out in Utah earlier this year about anti-sexual exploitation. She was one of our key panelists, which I'm saying our, because I obviously think it was huge because I helped plan it and I was involved in it. So, it was a huge deal to me. And it was a massive deal to have care on there.

She's been nominated for Emmys for all sorts of different awards. In my opinion, she should win them all because that's how amazing she is. She's an incredible human being and she has an amazing story, but her story is still happening.

It hasn't finished. Never close the book on Kara Robinson Chamberlain.

Kara: Thank you. You're so sweet. No, but it's true.

Elizabeth: Your story is so incredible. As I read briefly in your bio. Your story brought so much [00:04:00] closure to so many people. Because your kidnapper, was a serial murderer.

You were not his only victim. And to think that you could have gone on just to be another name in a cold case where it not for your heroic actions. Can you just begin at the beginning of the day that you were kidnapped and kind of walk us through your story a little bit?

Kara: Yeah, absolutely. So like you said, it was 2002.

I was 15 years old. I had spent the night with my friend and we were. It was summer, so we were trying to figure out what to do with our day. I had talked to my boyfriend, kind of checked in with him. I'm going to meet up with you after you get off work. And we had called some friends trying to decide what to do.

And we had a friend that lived on the lake and we decided to go out and hang out with her that day. So Heather called her mom and said, before we leave for the day, is there anything that you need us to do around here? And she asked us to water the plants outside. [00:05:00] So Heather wanted to take a shower. So I volunteered to do that.

So I went outside. I was still in what I had slept in like a t-shirt from my mom's work and, like some pajama pants and didn't have any shoes on didn't take my purse and my cell phone, anything like that, it's just going outside. So I went out there, I was watering the plants and I was getting ready to drive right, 15. Looking at cars and my mom's boyfriend at the time had a white Trans-Am and he had just let me drive it a couple of weeks earlier. And so I was just, I had been infatuated with that car. It was, it's a cool car. So when a Trans-Am drove by on the way out of the neighborhood, I obviously noticed it.

Normally I would not have necessarily noticed a car that was driving by, but I noticed that and I was like, wow, cool car. And then the car came back into the neighborhood a minute or two later and pulled directly into the driveway. So I didn't really think anything initially, like now as an adult, that [00:06:00] would seem kind of weird. But at the time I didn't really think anything was suspicious because I had just heard a story about my friend's mom had been outside and a car pulled into the driveway and it ended up being someone who drove by that went to high school with her and like stopped and talked, had seen her outside and recognize her.

So I had just heard the story it's fresh in my mind. Nothing really popped up as being strange or suspicious. So a man gets out of the car, he's wearing a button down shirt, it's tucked in, he's wearing jeans. He has on a baseball cap. It's not pulled, down low he's, relatively clean-shaven. He's not acting, suspicious, anything like that.

And so he walks over to me and he says he had some pamphlets and he was driving around, saw me outside. Wanted to stop and give them to me and asked if my parents were home. I explained that this was my friend's house and, , that her mom wasn't home. And he said, okay, well, let me give these to you and you can leave them for her mom.

So during this entire interaction, he stayed a reasonable [00:07:00] distance away from me. Outside of my personal space until that moment, because he was reaching in to hand me these pamphlets. So as he's doing that, he enters my personal space. He's handing me these, pamphlets from a binder he has in his arm.

And at the same time, he puts a gun to the side of my neck, and with this other hand and says, why don't you come with me?

Elizabeth: Oh my goodness. Like, it's a suggestion with a gun to your head,

Kara: right? Why don't you come with me and says it very calm. Right. And, and kind of quietly. And I went "stop" and he said, "no, why don't you come with me?"

And. You always hear these stories about what you should do. And, my parents had talked to me about, stranger danger. This was like the stranger danger era, right? Hold like stranger danger.

Elizabeth: In all my stranger danger training, nobody ever said what you should do if someone just like puts a gun to you. I mean, that, that was it's. Don't talk to strangers.

Kara: Right? And you and I both know that when you feel the cold [00:08:00] metal of a weapon press up against your body, you, you just can't overcome what your body does. There's no, "well, let me think about this and let me try to fight or let me scream," your body just takes over.

Right? So I did, I went with him, he kept his arm kind of around my shoulder with the gun pressed to my neck. And he walked me around to the driver's side of the car, this two-door car. He opened the driver's door, puts the seat forward and says, get in. And I look in the back seat and there's a big plastic container in the back seat.

And I said, where do I go? And he said, get in the container. And so I did. I get in the container. He sets the lid on top. Doesn't seal it and puts the seat back and sits in and backs out of the driveway. And this is instantly, I realize somehow it's like that intuition that I think a lot of us have.

, and if, as long as we don't second, guess it I think most of us have some level of intuition. And for me, my intuition was people, especially men, don't [00:09:00] kidnap young girls unless they tend to assault them. So I sort of had prepared myself for what was coming initially. And I also, again, had this intuition that he wanted me to be scared.

I had, I was far too stubborn to give him that. So my way of dealing with the trauma from right from the beginning was just shut down those emotions. And I also realized that at some point he would become complacent that I would be able to get his trust and he would let his guard down and I would escape. And so immediately. I began gathering as much information as I could so that when I did escape, because there was never a question for me, when I did escape, I would be able to identify him. So I began paying attention to the terms he was making, and I knew where we were. And I knew when we got onto the interstate that I wasn't going to know where we were. So I was paying attention to other things, the songs that were on the radio, the radio station, he was listening to the [00:10:00] type of cigarettes that he smoked. I even like recognized that smell as a certain type of cigarettes. How did I know that? I don't know.

I memorized the serial number that was on the inside of the container. And later went on to memorize many other things that I saw or heard. And so he drove for about 10 or 15 minutes before he got off the interstate and pulled kind of off the, like off the shoulder of the road and took the lid off. And I could see, as a Pontiac Trans Am, and so it has the hatchback with the glass. And so I could see kind of up through the glass and I could see that there was canopy above, like some tree cover. And he said, "okay, I'm going to restrain you now." And so he put like paper towel in my mouth and a ball gag over the paper towel and put restraints on my legs and on my wrists.

And he told me to scream as loud as I could. And he said, okay, good. And then he put the lid all the way on the container. [00:11:00] So he drove for another minute or two before he backed into a parking space. He got out of the car. I can't remember if he said anything to me before he got out of the car. But, I for some reason, thought that he was going to like rob a gas station or something because he was not talking to me during this telling me like what to expect. So I was just kind of going through this mental checklist in my head. So he gets out of the car, for a minute, comes back and takes the container with me in it. Picks it up, carries it a short way, sets it down and drags it. And I could feel it go over concrete and then over a, a threshold and into a quieter space that I later found out was his apartment. So this begins the 18 hours that I was held captive by this man who never told me his name. But he leaves me in the container for, another minute, two minutes, something like that.

Comes back, takes the lid off. He's changed [00:12:00] into like some shorts and I think maybe a t-shirt and he says, okay, I'm going to take the risk, I'll take the ball gag out. I'll take the restraints off. But you have to remember that I'll always have a gun or a weapon. And you can't scream. And I nodded, okay.

I understood. And so then he took me into the bedroom and he starts asking me questions and writing down the answers, writing down, asking me things like, what's my name? What's my friend's name? What is my boyfriend's name? Am I a virgin? What's my home address? What's my, my mom's name, my dad's name? asking what my boyfriend's address is and just kind of gathering all of this information about me and just writing down all the answers. And then he gives me some rules that basically the primary rule that was enforced and, was kind of the one that he stuck to was that he would always have a gun or weapon, and as long as I listened, [00:13:00] there would be more or less rewards, but that if I did not listen, there would be punishments and that continued to be true. And so I was in his apartment for, like I said, 18 hours. I was sexually assaulted multiple times. He did things like made me watch the news to see if anyone missed me, as he said and what I've now learned is the appease side of the fight flight freeze appease kicked in.

And that was where I was trying to remain calm and trying to gain his trust. So that he gave me a little more freedom and did not think that I was going to escape. And so I did things like I swept this kitchen floor. And I, I did that more or less so I said, is there anything I can do to help you?

Because he had offered me food. I obviously was in no position to eat at the time. And I said, but is there anything I could do for you? And I swept [00:14:00] his floor. And then I used that as an opportunity to get close to his refrigerator where I read his magnets on his refrigerator, found out who his doctor was, who his dentist was.

There was another time that we were sitting on the couch and having a conversation. And, he was asking me about different things. Like what school I went to. And, and I was asking him questions as well. Like what school did you go to? Did you grow up around here? And, and then what did you do?

And I found out he was in the Navy and he never told me his name, but I was filing away all of these little facts. I also. At one point when I was in the bathroom, I took notice of several things that were in the bathroom that led me to believe that a woman lived there. So things like feminine hygiene products and hairspray, like a women's razor.

And I saw a hairbrush with long red hair in it. So I was just stockpiling all of this information so that I could identify this person. And so. He also at one point, [00:15:00] put me back in the container so that he could make a phone call. And that was the moment when I had kind of the most severe panic attack while I was there, the remainder of the time that I was there, I really remained pretty compartmentalized and dissociated and pretty calm. But he put me back in the container and he put the gag in my mouth and he put the lid on the container so that he could make this phone call. And I had a panic attack.

And I was just in the container thinking I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I just over and over and over. And and he came in and that was the only time that I saw any type of like violence, which is like a weird thing to say. But that was when he was the most violent and angry towards me. I said, I can't breathe. I feel like I'm suffocating. And he said, okay, well, I'll give you, this Valium, basically gave me a Valium. And he said, I'll leave the lid off. If you, and take the gag out, if you promise not to [00:16:00] make any noise. And so I said, yes, I'll do that. And and then, at about 3:00 AM maybe was when he finally was like, okay, well we're going to go to sleep.

And he restrained me at that point. So we put the handcuffs back on and the handcuffs were connected with, like a quick link. It's like a carabiner with a screw clip on it. They were connected to a rope with the quick link and the rope , went between the bed and the wall. It was kind of tied to the frame of the bed.

And then I had a leg restraint on my my right leg that was tied to the foot of the bed. That's how I went to sleep and he laid down in the bed next to me and he went to sleep. And so when I woke up pretty early in the morning, the light was just beginning to filter through the window.

And that was when I realized this is the most complacent he will be. There were other times when I was being assaulted or there was a gun nearby where I thought maybe I can grab it and I could fight him off. But [00:17:00] then I realized that I was 15, I was 105 pounds and he was a grown man. He was in his thirties, he was close to 200 pounds.

That was not going to be a fight I could win. So when I woke up, he was still sleeping. I realized that this was it. This was the moment. And so I knew that the first thing I had to do was get my hands free. And so I tried to unscrew the quick link with my fingers. I wasn't able to do that. So I actually had to use my teeth to loosen it and then unscrewed the quick link and slid the handcuffs out of that.

Then I shimmied my hands down my leg. Disconnected the leg restraint from the, regular carabiner clip, disconnected that from the rope at the foot of the bed and then slid out of bed was able to slide one of my hands out of the handcuffs at that point. But the other one I could not get off.

I found I was wearing his t-shirt and I found my shorts and that was pretty much all that was left of the things that I [00:18:00] had come there with and got to the front door. It's a very small apartment that he had me in. Maybe 700 square feet, probably smaller than that. And his bedroom was right on the other side of the door from like the foyer area.

And then he, his bed was right next to the window that looked out on the front door. So I knew once I got to the front door that, if I was not successful, he was right there. And not only that, if he woke up and looked out the window as I was running and he has the gun next to him, that he could very well shoot me.

So I, get to the front door and it's more or less barricaded with just stuff. There's that plastic container is there. There is a like a closet door, accordion metal closet door with vacuum cleaner sticking out, and then there's a couple of locks on the door. And so I have to figure out how to close this noisy door, unlock the door, open it all in [00:19:00] one fell swoop. Cause I know I only have one shot at this. And so I somehow get, it's that, that adrenaline, how mothers pick cars up off of their children, right? Like that adrenaline courses through your body. And you're able to do things that you can't explain later.

I still can't explain how I moved all of that stuff and open the door all at the same time.

Elizabeth: And you were still handcuffed at the time?

Kara: I said, well, I only had one on one. Yeah.

Elizabeth: Still, a dangling handcuff. That's going to make noise. That's noisy also.

Kara: Yeah. So, I throw the door open. And I just am looking for anyone. I see a car driving across the parking lot and just full tunnel vision, start running for the car, knowing that he could wake up, he could shoot me in the back, but at least not out of the apartment at this point, someone will see me and, he'll be found and so run to the car across the parking lot, maybe a hundred yards across the parking lot. Run for it. And he, [00:20:00] there's two men in the car and I waved them down. I hold up my wrist with the handcuffs, still dangling, and I say, I was kidnapped and I escaped. And I said, "it's from that apartment" and I turned around and I looked at the apartment, and I knew it was a bottom left apartment and the apartment complex, and I knew that all of the other apartments looked exactly the same. I said, remember that apartment because I knew I wouldn't remember. And they said, okay, well, get in, where do you want to go? And I told them I wanted to go to the police. And so that's where they took me.

 Arrive at the police station I run in and it's a region. So it's not like the big police station. The regions are not generally staffed, especially early in the morning. And so I run in running through and I hear someone say, excuse me, ma'am can I help you? And, go towards the voice. And there's a deputy in there, a corporal I find out later, but there's a deputy in there and I tell him, my name's Cara [00:21:00] Robinson and I was kidnapped and I escaped.

And again, I'm holding up this handcuff dangling from my wrist is proof of and I also had the leg restraint that I had taken off in the car on my other hand. And so he begins trying to look me up and NCIC is having some trouble it's, *ding* he's like, I seem to be having a little bit of a trouble. And I felt a little bit like I wasn't believed later I realized that he was probably at a massive state of disbelief because people don't just run into the region and especially a stranger kidnapping. It's just not as common. So,

Elizabeth: I mean, stranger kidnappings are the odds. As you know, as we both know, as we both can say, they are the exception, they're not the norm.

Kara: Exactly. That's what we're taught to, to fight, but it's just not, it's not what usually occurs. And so he finds me, he notifies an investigator and he calls, my mom tells [00:22:00] her, we have your daughter come on in before my mom gets.

The investigator arrives. He's the one who takes the handcuff off. He uses handcuff key, takes the handcuffs off. And he says "the two men that brought you in don't remember the apartment. So do you think that you could ident, right?" I was like, "you had one job."

Elizabeth: You said, remember that apartment.

Kara: That's the one thing, and so he said, do you think that you would be able to identify the apartment, if we went back there? I said, "I sincerely doubt it so I can tell you, it's the bottom left apartment. That's pretty much all I know. I can tell you everything about the inside of it. And I can tell you all these other things about this guy. But that's the best I can do". And he said, "okay, well, let's go back and try."

And so we, I ride with him back over to the apartment. I can't identify it. They all look the same, but we do see a man on a golf cart, riding through the apartment complex who is more or less like the maintenance person for the apartment complex. And I tell him all of the details, it's a man [00:23:00] he's in his probably late thirties. He looks like this. There's a woman that lives there that has red hair. These are the animals that he had inside the apartment. This is the kind of car he drives. And he said, "I'm pretty sure I know what apartment that is." So before they can even get a search warrant for the information for who rents that apartment they're able to identify him from some of the other things I told them and bring me a photo lineup when I go to the hospital.

So, so we go back to the, to the Sheriff's department. My mom's there waiting , head over for the sexual assault exam at the hospital.

Elizabeth: Which is always fun.

Kara: Right. Like never had a pelvic exam before. So this is my first experience with like full pelvic exam and the fingernail scrapings, like the fingernails scraping was the worst part to me. That's not something that you expect to hurt as bad as it does. And while I'm waiting for the exam is when they bring me the photo lineup and they've identified him and he's obviously gone from the apartment. He's on the run [00:24:00] for two or three days. There's not much that, they know about where he is until his sister more or less assists with setting up a stakeout for him in Sarasota, Florida.

So I was kidnapped from Columbia, South Carolina. So Sarasota, Florida is where his sister lived in Florida. So he was supposed to be meeting her. They set up a stakeout. He sees the police and leads them on a short police chase that ended and then deploying stop sticks. And they, so he wrecked his car. They sent in a canine and the canine bit him. And at some point between the canine biting his leg and biting his arm, he shoots himself right there on the side of the road. So that's where his story ends and more or less where mine begins because they quickly find some evidence in his apartment that leads them to believe that he is responsible for some other crimes.

And it takes a couple of months, but they identify him as the person responsible for the kidnapping and murders of [00:25:00] three girls in Virginia. That's kind of how I got here and how this whole story started.

Elizabeth: I don't know if it's because we've chatted before, but as I'm sitting here listening to you, talk to you, talk through your story again. I'm just sitting there and thinking how, like truly remarkable you are, because as you're talking your way through your story, I'm sitting there thinking my way through my story. And honestly, some of the things that stand out were how calm and collected you were throughout it all. I was in a place of panic and fear and terror.

And yet you were sitting there like memorizing things and trying to remember turns and, paying attention to magnets on the fridge. Who's his doctor. Who's his dentist. You were so collected. I mean, it was, I don't want to say you were born for that because obviously no one is born for that, but [00:26:00] you were so detail oriented.

When you went into the police station and probably afterwards, as you like, told them everything that was going on, You were just so detail in your memory. I think of mine and I think of some of the things I remember, I'm like, well, that's completely useless. That's completely stupid.

Although I will say, which I am so happy you brought up cause it's one of my favorite subjects but when you talk about this moment of appeasement, everyone hears of fight flight, fight or flight. Then you heard about freeze and there's this other characteristic of, or not characteristic, but natural instinct, response, instinctual response, which is appease.

And you talk about how you're like, okay, I'm going to do what I can. I got to get him to trust me. Cause that I'm like, yeah, I had that moment too. I was like, if I can get them to like me, maybe they won't kill me. I think you were much more, brilliant, brave. Cause you're like, I am going to escape where me, I was like, I [00:27:00] just want to survive.

Kara: That's what our natural reactions are. Right? Like you don't have any control over it. Like how did maybe there was something that happened earlier in my life that kind of primed my nervous system to have a calm and collected response.

And I'm still working on that. Like how was that my programmed response to be so calm under pressure. And it, on the surface, it seems like, oh yeah, well, you dealt with your trauma in a much, and I'm very much using air quotes. You dealt with your trauma in a much better way. And it's like, no, it's,

Elizabeth: It's not better, it's just different.

Kara: It worked, it worked for me at that time, but I did not have any control over it. It was not a conscious decision, but there's also so many negatives to how I dealt with my trauma and how. How tightly compartmentalized everything was and how [00:28:00] emotionally shut down I was to my trauma because that's impacted me here we are almost 20 years later. And it has impacted me more long-term because I have realized that whenever I am under stress, I want to compartmentalize, I want to numb the pain and I want to have no emotions because that is the trauma stress reaction that was encoded in me from this big capital T trauma.

Right. So how did I do it? And what is it that made me do that? I don't know. It's just, we all have something that flips a switch within us and we don't really have much control over how we react. It just happened to be a really great way for my situation, for me to be safe.

Elizabeth: Well, I think you're, you're absolutely right when you say we just react the way we do and whether that's the trauma or the rest of our life you do just react the way that you do.

I know people for me, they've always been like how come you're so normal? How come you seem [00:29:00] fine? What's your secret? What did you do? And I'm like, I, I don't know. Like I just, I don't know. This, like I like horseback riding. I like music like this help kind of, I think. But yeah. I don't know if it was someone else, would it have made a difference? I don't know. I can't say. So, I think you definitely bring up an excellent point in that we, we all react uniquely to our own selves and. For better for worse, that's just how it is. As I sit here listening to your story, I'm like, yeah, you go tell that police, like you did it.

Like, it's so amazing.

Kara: One of the things that was funny to me that I more or less forgot. Whenever I was making the documentary and watching back interviews, cause my family never really told their side of the story. My friend never told her side of the story. My boyfriend at the time never really told his side of the story.

And those are some of the things that we included in the documentary, all of these secondary victims that were very much [00:30:00] victims of this crime that happened to me. Right. But still very much had their own trauma to that. And one of the things that I found interesting that I forgot is when my mom was interviewed, and she said that she was in there when, in the hospital room, when I was recounting all of this information to law enforcement and different people and all the things that I had remembered. And she said, she just sat there and was like, who is this? And how does she remember all this? Because this was not something that my mom had instilled in me or anything like that. And she was so shocked and I was like, oh, wow. I guess that's the common reaction, but to me, we do what we have to do to survive our trauma. And it's very interesting when we hear other people's stories, and I'm sure you will understand this as well, like you hear other people's stories and, you think, Gosh, I don't know if I could do [00:31:00] that. And then you realize that you've probably gone through something that someone else would look at and think, well, I don't know if I could do that. And, even hearing my story, I'm like, I still don't know if I could do that, but I already did.

It just goes to show that we are capable of so much more than we could ever think or imagine. And the human will is to survive and, our body will do everything that we can to survive. So for you, your survival mechanism was like, just remain calm, try to get them to not kill me.

Right. And who knows? That very well, could be the reason that you're here today. So I think trauma reactions and the parasympathetic, sympathetic nervous system is just, it's such an interesting area that I would encourage anyone who's been through, a lowercase T trauma or capital T trauma, big or little trauma to look into it and it'll help you to understand your reactions and love yourself and understand yourself a little bit better.

Elizabeth: Because you're absolutely right when you say we've all experienced something. [00:32:00] We genuinely do all have our own stories. Just this morning when I was driving here, I was talking to someone who I care a lot about, and they were telling me about how their son recently had open heart surgery.

And I just was sitting there, thinking, oh, my word. I can't even imagine how stressful and frankly traumatic that would be to see my child go in for open heart surgery. What if they never come out and I sent them in there and we're trying to help them, but what if it ultimately killed them?

I like I was saying to my friend, I was like, I think you need to go on vacation, but like once, once your child is, stable and healthy and good, like, you probably need to go on vacation to like de-stress and de-traumatize, everything you've been through recently, but it is so true in that, we all have our stories and we do react differently.

And when we hear other people's stories, you're absolutely right. You sit there and think, wow, I could not go through that. I could not go through that. Then when people hear your story, they're like, holy crap. I could not go through that. [00:33:00]

Kara: Yeah, it's just, it's an interesting dialogue on just the human condition. Right. And how we all see other people and what they've been through, because we're looking at it from a different perspective. Right. You look at it from a different perspective and you think, wow there's no way I could do that. And it's funny because I am constantly learning lessons about life and taking lessons about life.

Very often from conversations with my children. So I just had a conversation yesterday with my children where one of my sons said, "oh, we're almost at school. I know we're almost at school because I see that one gas station." And my other child said, oh, well, I know we're almost at school this, because I see this church."

And I said, that's a very interesting lesson on life guys. "we are all here in the same car at the same intersection. And you both see different things that tell you that we're almost at school. And it's like , how amazing of a lesson is that for life that, your perspective can change [00:34:00] everything."

And so when you're looking at your own story, like, I hear my story and I'm like I just did what I had to survive, but it's just, it's interesting when we hear other stories, what we think, because we have different perspective.

Elizabeth: It really is. It really is so interesting. My husband sent me this reel on Instagram, like a few days ago. This guy being like, "oh, I have a friend. And he reads two books a week and he works out twice a day and he gets up early every single morning. He pardon me, but he has sex three times a week. I don't understand what's so rough about his life, but it all, every time I talked to him, he's unhappy because he's in prison."

I laughed at first, I was like, wow, that is a really good life. And then I watched the end and I was like, oh yeah, I get it. But I mean, like kind of to support your point. It really is all about perspective. I'm not suggesting I want to be in prison. I definitely do not want to be in [00:35:00] prison, but it is so interesting everyone's perspective and how it's so different when they can be, like your children, same car, same parents, grew up in the same household, and yet they notice such different things. It is very interesting.

Kara: And they were looking out different windows, right? So like one's child is looking out the front window and the other, one's looking out the side and he's like, so imagine what your life would look like.

And this is, when you say that the content that I put on social media, this is something that I talked about yesterday on my social media channels and how you can think of your life from someone else's lens and it might look very different and how to kind of change your perspective and things that you can do to change your outlook.

Because sometimes, all of us can get a little, like ho-hum woe is me. And, there are things that you can do to change your perspective and, moving your body, like you mentioned, like exercise is a big part of my healing journey. So moving your [00:36:00] body, getting out into the sunshine, prayer, gratitude journaling, like there's things that we can do to move that needle and change our perspective.

And those are just some of the things that I, I love to tell people and I love to try to take the lessons that I've learned from my healing, because healing is this continual journey. It's not like, oh, I healed from that it's over. You know, that happened to me so long ago, I'm fine. It's this continual journey and what it looks like to kind of be in the trenches every day and the things that have helped me and the things that haven't, because it takes someone like you or I, that are not like the traditional traumatized victim that, I think the media portrays, right?

Like Law and Order SVU portrays, my reaction was not anything like that. And so it kind of set all of my family for a loop. They didn't really know how to handle me. I look like I'm dealing with things fine, but there's just so much that's deeply ingrained. And I think the more we have these conversations and the more just humans in the world see different [00:37:00] people and how they've dealt with trauma and how they've healed or not healed. And what's worked and different things. And that's how we heal people, right? People begin to see themselves and different personalities and different healing modalities and that's how healing comes.

And so that's kind of what, what my mission and my drive is everyday and sharing because you have a lot of days where I'm like, I don't want to work out and I don't want to heal. I want to lay on the couch and eat cookies and watch a movie.

Elizabeth: Can I join you? Yeah. Right. I have a couple of friends I could bring too, actually.

Kara: That sounds great. And it's been a learning process too, for me because I tend to be a very like I don't want to do something unless I can do it right. And so, I don't want to work out unless I can work out five days a week and I can work out until I feel like I'm dying. And so that's been a big part of my healing process was to learn how to be gentle and get rest.

And. Meet myself where I am. And so it's been a really interesting and beautiful [00:38:00] journey that I try to document on social media.

Elizabeth: It really is. And I love following you and I'm going to go down another road for just a second, because I know I get asked this all the time and I can give my answers.

I also say like, as I'm answering, like, I don't know if this is right by, there are more of you out there who have way more experience with this than I do. And it comes down to parenting, people ask me all the time, like, how do you talk to your children about this? What do you tell them? Like, are you a helicopter parent?

, are you constantly watching them? How do you deal with that? How do you let them leave your sight? What, what alarm system do you have? What security do you have in place? Like kind of like this never ending flow of questions about parenting, and sometimes I'm answering the questions and it's a room full of honestly, parents who have much more experience than me.

Part of me is like, I've only been a parent now for seven years. I don't know. I'm not to that point yet. They're like, have you given your children's cell phones? I was like, well, my oldest is seven. No, like I have it. They're like, well, what are you [00:39:00] gonna do? I don't know, but I'm open to suggestions, right?

So I'm going to actually turn that table on you because I'm sure you've been asked it as well. And not only are you like this incredible survivor, but then you also were, a school resource officer and you were able to investigate these kinds of sex crimes against children. And, and so now I'm going to ask you.

The same questions. How is it being a parent? And what do you tell your kids and do they know, and what safety do you have in place? And if you could just answer this waterfall of questions I'm asking you, that would be great.

Kara: I don't have any perspective for how I would have parented if I were not a victim of a crime and a survivor.

Right. So I can only say. What kind of parents I am now. I think that being a survivor probably changed my parenting because it probably made me a little more aware of things. So I can take that as like a positive for how I parent, because I feel like I would not have been as thoughtful [00:40:00] about some things, which I'll explain in a minute.

So, my children are eight and almost six, a couple of weeks away from six. And so I have two boys and they do know in an age appropriate manner, what happened to me. And that's basically someone took me from mommy and daddy when I was a little girl. And I had to tell them that because it's such a big part of my life.

But also because they have a Google speaker in their room that they use to play music. Basically, that's all they use it for. But one day, before I turned on the parental controls, they're asking who is Abraham Lincoln and asking all these questions. Right. And they say, who is Kara Chamberlain?

And Google says, Kara Chamberlain is, and then goes into like the synopsis of my story. And I was horrified. I was like, oh no, you know, it's not an age appropriate manner. So.

Elizabeth: Oh, it makes me feel better I unplugged Alexa.

Kara: [00:41:00] Yeah. Yeah. Now I was like, oh God, you cannot Google like immediately change the settings.

Like you can't, they can not search the internet any longer. But it, it was a fun thing for a while. They were asking, like jokes, things like that. So that's how much my children know. I don't consider myself a helicopter parent necessarily. I mistakenly fell into the trap for awhile of being like, well, I have boys, so I don't have to worry as much.

And then one day, like many things in parenting for me, I woke up and it felt like I was just like hit over the head with a frying pan. I was like, you idiot, like, what are you talking about? Like, that was just this mindset that I, for some reason I had fallen into. And so the groundwork for what I feel like that a lot of the protection of your children really lies in my opinion in laying this groundwork for them very early on. So from a very early age using proper anatomical terms, because you don't want a child that doesn't [00:42:00] feel safe telling you for some reason, saying to a teacher, oh, my uncle touched my cookie and they're just thinking it's cookie, because they're using an incorrect anatomical term. So that was something that I picked up from my experience when I went to child forensic interviewing school for interviewing children, if they've been allegedly, sexually assaulted and the proper way to do that. So using proper anatomical terms, because they are not dirty words, like it's a penis, it's a vagina.

Like th that's what they're called. So using those proper anatomical terms, Not making them dirty teaching children about healthy boundaries and what they look like and respecting their boundaries when you're able to. So what that looks like and how they have autonomy over their own body. So that looks like, if you go see family and they're like, oh, give grandma a hug or give your aunt a hug and the kid's not comfortable, you don't make them do that.

Because it's their body. And you explain to the adults because it's the [00:43:00] adult's responsibility to monitor and adjust their behavior for the child, because we wouldn't do that to an adult. Right. I really tried to treat my children like they are small adults and give them the respect and boundary setting that they're able to do.

Now, obviously, it's not always reasonable to do that. For instance, five degrees outside and they want to go outside without shoes, it's not very realistic necessarily, but sometimes I let them also, right. Like go outside without shoes. See what happens. I..

Elizabeth: See how long you last, go ahead and lick that freezer door. Let's see your tongue come off.

Kara: Yeah. And within reason we do that and guess what they learn, and I don't have to nag them about putting shoes on or putting on a jacket. And so letting them set those boundaries and other things like, if they're being tickled and they say, stop immediately stop.

Right. Even if someone's laughing and they seem like they're having fun because ultimately raising boys, I [00:44:00] obviously don't want them to be a victim, but I also don't ever want them to become an offender, which I think is a very tricky thing as survivor to realize is that your children very well could be victims, but they very well could one day be an offender.

So letting them see and understand healthy boundaries. Even with me, when I'm like, "Hey, I'm taking a shower, I want privacy while I do that." Right. So like letting them see that. And and I think those are the biggest things and then really instilling this sense of trust and honesty. And, and I'm by no means perfect at these things, but these are the ways that I try to protect my children.

But letting them know that I will always love them. I will always believe what they say and nothing they say will make me love them or make them any less worthy to me. And then I'm always a safe space. So those are the bigger things that I think lay the groundwork because children are more likely to be a victim by someone that they know it's, more [00:45:00] common that violence and sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone that ultimately, I want them to know that an adult should never ask you for help. And an adult should never ask you to keep a secret from your parents. And then none of that is appropriate. And so that's what we've done so far.

I will let you know when things...

Elizabeth: good if we could reconvene on this again. Yeah. I think I'd appreciate that.

Kara: Yeah. Yeah, because they do have we've entered this new era where my older son, especially he has like one of my old phones and I set him up with an Apple ID. He can message me.

He can message his grandma, he can FaceTime, but it's only connected to wifi. And let me tell you, if you do apple devices, I don't know anything about other devices. My kids have switches that are pretty much not, Nintendo switches that are pretty much not connected to the internet and they have one of them has an iPad and one of them has an old phone. They each have their own Apple ID and Apple has amazing parental controls. You can [00:46:00] control everything that your child can and cannot do. It's under the screen tabs. So you just have to, set your kids up with their own Apple ID and then you can add them to your family. And then you, as the parent on the account, you can moderate everything from the amount of time they're able to spend to who they can send messages to, who can send messages to them. If they can access the internet, like my children cannot access the internet. They're not on YouTube.

Basically, they can play Minecraft on their phone with their friends that are actual friends, not strangers. And they can send messages to their families. And can play games and that's it. And that means highly regulated for us. So that's what we're doing now. That's what works for us, but it will change as they get smarter because they will be smarter at technology than me.

They probably already are, honestly. So I just stay ahead of them.

Elizabeth: That, yeah, that is always a scary thought whenever anyone's like, can you S can you do this through this? I'm like I'm technically a [00:47:00] millennial but sometimes I feel like my mom, when she sees, like, the tv's not working, why is it not working?

How do you hook up to the internet again? And I'm like, ah, that might be more my speed. Well, I mean, I can hook up to the internet most of the time you can figure out the TV, but like other stuff I'm like, can you walk me through, can you hold my hand through this?

Kara: But that's what Google is for. Right? Like you can Google it because yeah.

There's so many things. There's so many apps there's even apps that you can put on, like your home wifi that control what sites your wifi can can access and different things like that. So there's just, there's so many amazing apps and tools out there as a parent to protect your children from online predators.

But I think really a lot of it starts with that trust and laying that groundwork on boundaries and, love right. And letting them know that you're always a safe space and you'll always love them and they can always tell you [00:48:00] anything. And, hopefully we've done a decent job of that. I don't know, remains to be seen.

Elizabeth: I think we all feel that way. I feel that way. I think it's hard. It is hard there was no handbook that came with them. Sometimes I just want to hit the pause button and go take a nap and then come back.

Kara: Right. Like, oh, can I just, I'm, being a survivor that's a parent too, and like mitigating these children it's like poking a bull and they like poke you all the time and then they set you off and they poke your open wounds and you're like, ah, like triggered and , it's fun.

Elizabeth: No kidding.

Kara: It's a whole different, I mean, this is like layer to the onion,

Elizabeth: This is like an incredibly small, trivial example. But the other day my daughter was watching me get ready and she was like, Mommy is my skin going to be like yours when I grow up and I was like, well, what's wrong with my skin? She's like, you've got lots of dots on your skin mama. And I said, I have [00:49:00] been battling hormonal acne now for three years, catching, give me a loan.

It wasn't always like this because you did this to me.

Kara: I don't know. They just, they hold the, the, these mirrors up to you. We were like, how dare you say that? Like, I, you know, I, I just had this conversation with my older son a few days ago where I was like, I know you guys think I'm strict and I know you guys think that I am this anti-fun person who just makes all these rules and enforces all these rules all the time. And he's like, that is who you are. And I was like, I was making a point. There was a "but" coming, you didn't want to hear it. He was like, yeah, you're not fun. And you are, this rule like a tyrant, basically, I'm a tyrant.

And I was like, and I I'm like, I'm not really that over protective. I just want to know, we're moving and we're moving to 45 acres on the lake. And I'm like, I just want to know where you are. Like, it's not so much to ask. I just, [00:50:00]

Elizabeth: Yes, it is. Every time I feel like I get after my kids, I'm like, it's because I want you to be safe.

And so now when I'm like, do you understand why I'm doing this? And they're like, yeah, you just want us to be safe. And I'm like, but do you, do you understand to really get it? Clearly, I need to have more conversations with you because the ones I'm having, you're just rolling your eyes at me.

Kara: Oh, I didn't wait. Why do they start rolling their eyes so soon? I have an eight year old and I'm like, are you a teenager?

Elizabeth: Oh, my five-year-old rolls his eyes at me.

Kara: Oh, it's the boys. I've learned boys, see, it feels like, and from friends who I've had conversations with, who have boys, they seem to like challenge their mothers much sooner than girls.

Like, well, it's the lions and the pride, they have to leave when they're young, because they start challenging everybody. Like here, it's so fun.

Elizabeth: Seriously. Well, I wish we could spend all day talking cause I have so much fun talking to you and I feel like I connect with you on so [00:51:00] many levels, but we are out of time.

So I just wanted to take a second and see if you had anything else that you wanted to say that we did not cover, or if there's something that you feel like is important for people who are listening to this that you want them to know.

Kara: I think the most important thing is to really give yourself grace and space to be who and where you are and just meet yourself where you are.

Don't compare your journey to anyone else's, don't compare your trauma to anyone else's and really just take your healing one day at a time and you just keep going. Really, that's what it's about. We just get up one more time, then you fall down. You're going to have bad days. You're going to have great days.

You can have everything in between. Healing's not a linear journey. There's ups, downs, back, forward, all over the place. Give yourself grace.

Elizabeth: Well, thank you, Kara. And I love you. You are my hero and thank you to everyone for tuning into this [00:52:00] episode of Smart Talks, please like and subscribe and make sure to catch our next episode coming out next week.

See you soon. Bye bye.