Tri-Con use on sex trafficking victims

TRI-CON lessons for officers and investigators in regard to dealing with trauma victims.

Compounded trauma is a very unique experience for each individual. Mainly because the trauma that formed it is different and unique for each individual.

Complex PTSD and PTSD are two different disorders. PTSD results from witnessing or experiencing a single life-threatening traumatic event, while complex PTSD results from experiencing prolonged and repeated interpersonal trauma. The main difference between the two disorders is the frequency of the trauma which caused it. While PTSD is usually caused by a single traumatic event, C-PTSD is caused by multiple, long-lasting, repeated or continuous traumas (commonly referred to as “complex trauma”)

The main difference between the two disorders is the frequency of the trauma. While PTSD is caused by a single traumatic event, C-PTSD is caused by long-lasting trauma that continues or repeats for months, even years.

My childhood was not as bad as many others, but it certainly wasn't pleasant. I spent most of my childhood alone. I am an only child. I had my own house key at 9, and when my parents divorced my dad simply became nonexistent and the only bonding experiences we had together were of the criminal nature. It started with blowing up mailboxes and pumpkins with M-80's and other homemade concoctions we devised, and ultimately graduated to him coming to "visit" me in greenlake Seattle only for me to find out later that he simply used me as an alibi after he rented out a U-Haul van and stole some poor lady's jeep cherokee while her husband was at work. We bonded over our cannabis addictions, and my father's penchant for LSD that he hid from Sarah in the freezer in his room at the antique store. It was a horribly traumatic way to know my father, as in many ways it caused a chasm between me and my stepmother Sarah because of all the lies and secrets my father insisted that I keep from her. I wasn't allowed to tell her about the money he borrowed from me incessantly because he would tell me "Sarah keeps track of every cent I have in my pocket, I'm not even allowed any free money, if she knows about the money you give me she'll take that too".... Looking back, after years of therapy I see that my dysfunctional relationship with my father was exactly what primed me for the life I began in TX after the divorce with my mother.

After the divorce my mother and I lived in a small apartment in Katy, TX. My father never paid child support, so she was forced to work all the time. She left at 6am in the morning and didn't get home until 6-7pm at night and by that time she was so tired and resented me so much she would lock herself in her room and slide the dresser in front of her door and refuse to talk to me. This would go on for 3 or 4 days at times. The only time she ever showed me any affection was when I was sick. Because then the whole family rallied around her. So, I was alone, and I met the Latin Kings, and they became the "family" that I never knew but craved so desperately. I learned dealing, and drag racing, and cars, and cat burglary.... at the time I was so young and small and agile there wasn't many places that could keep me out. Then there was the porcelain on spark plugs I learned about, but that is another story.....

I would have been lost in that world and my life would have been very different if my mother didn't start making plans to do brain surgery on me. I have a small 2cm mass on my pituitary. It doesn't grow, doesn't affect anything, and is benign. It's harmless. The only thing it does is cause me to wake up under anesthesia, which is how I wake up under and remember Phillip's "recipe". Joanie was hell bent on them removing it though, and after she went through 5 doctors to finally find someone who would do a fundoplication on an 11 year that multiple other doctors told her I didn't need, that it was a nutrition issue, that she was leaving me at home to eat nothing but raw hot dogs, and dominoes pizza, and kraft macaroni and cheese maybe I needed some vitamins and a better diet. Her ripping me out of school for incessant doctors appointments and surgeries and procedures, I grew up never having any friends, I knew no one at school, and on the days I did go I had been absent so much no one even knew who I was.

I have since had many brain scans, one done recently in the last couple years at Beth Israel in Boston. I still have the images. The doctors there said the same thing. It's benign, harmless, does nothing, doesn't grow, and it would cause more damage to try and remove it than to just leave it alone.

Then my mother moved us to live with my aunt and Uncle Rob. To this day I still believe that Pattie knew what Rob was doing she just turned the other eye because they were Lutheran and Rob ran the house. He was the only income. Rob would go into Jenny's room at night and I would wake up to her screaming and go down to check on her and he was in there with her.... then dusty started in on her. He would walk into the kitchen while she was sitting in her wheelchair drooling on herself and just slap her to make her start screaming and then sneer and walk away. Then Rob and Dusty started in on me.... it wasn't long before Dustin was getting naked and chasing me around the house waving his dick at me.

When I complained or tried to tell my mother she took me to the doctor and put me on birth control and anti-depressants and then she never spoke to me about it again. According to her it was a "mental problem" I had, and that was all the more reason I needed surgery, again."

When my mother started planning an unnecessary brain surgery with my aunt and grandmother I panicked and ran to my father. Which my mother never forgave me for because it made her look so bad in front of the family.

I got to my fathers and the woman he was dating at the time Lori... she was a real estate agent and the only money my father had ever known; he didn't care how Lori and her children treated or abused me because if he lost Lori he went back to being broke. So, one night I did the only thing I knew how to do, at 15 I snuck into my father's room at night and stole the keys to Lori's SUV and just started driving. Looking back, I cannot even fathom what I was thinking, I had no money, no gas, no map, I was just panicked and terrified because my father and Lori started making comments about how "she's so sexual" and Lori's man friends were taking notice, and it made her look bad.

I was sobbing when I drove away, like full on panic attack sobbing and swerving all over the road, and when the trooper pulled me over, I was crying so hard I couldn't even talk. He took me back to my father and Lori and it was decided to put me in COTEF. It's a military program in Bend, OR. COTEF was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I still have the picture of my group and look back on it fondly. I got my GED, and it was then I decided I was over my family, and I was joining the Navy. I made both my parents sign off and I joined as soon as I turned 17.

I was top of my class in A School electrical core. This pissed my entire class off entirely because I was the only woman in it. I loved the Navy. My Captain used to say that "when he wanted something done fast he sent the boys, but when he wanted something done right, he sent me."

Then the incident happened. And everything I loved about the Navy turned to sand. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep because my punishment for always refusing Dietz was balls to 4 watches every single night. No rotation. I was a zombie.

I got out of the Navy with my honorable discharge and a "personality disorder" designation because it was agreed that back in the early 2000's it was not something discussed or handled well in the military, I worked in the engine rooms, and the hazing would have just gotten worse.

So, I traveled, Italy, Germany, Austria, and then landed in Hawaii where Freitas popped a hole in the condom and told me "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever dated, and I've always wanted babies".... it was abuse all over again. I was on an island, alone, a "haole" until finally they wore me down and I went back to Freitas, and he did the same thing and I got pregnant with Daemon.

He was going to court for a second count of assault and Judge Bissen told him if he saw him in front of his bench again, he would go to jail and Chris just signed off full custody to me of both kids. He didn't care. He was never there. He left me and the kids stranded at his father's house while he went out and cheated with Brianna and caught herpes and parties and did drugs with Bird and Kaipo. When I refused to sleep with him because he was infected, he snuck up behind me in the shower and pushed me and almost broke my neck....

The Freitas' knew I was leaving and taking both kids and there was nothing they could do about it, so they got Chris' military cousins Brandon and Todd involved....... That's when the sex trafficking and the drugged rape with MPD started. They came to me and showed me all the videos and told me if I didn't give up the kids and leave, they would pass the videos around. I told them no; I was not leaving my children and we were leaving. So, July 26th, 2016, happened. They tortured me for 8 hours and forced me to say that I "wanted to be a whore instead of a mother".... and Phil walked away and left me there to keep his deal with Tony and Todd. Then they tortured me for the rest of the night at the party and then doused me in gasoline and made jokes about how long it would take to put me out by pissing on me. A man from the party called Todd/Sugi and told him that they were going to kill me if he didn't come get me. So, after drugging me and dropping me off, he came and carried me out of there and left me in bed at my apartment.

It was then they told me if I didn't leave, they would kill me and my son. They never cared about my son, my daughter was gorgeous and was getting modeling contract offers at 3. My son was abused by all of them from the time he could walk. I didn't know what else to do so I ran.

When I got to Greenlake and applied to pay child support they found me, and Todd and Ambrose and Reyes and Avelino started flying over and the drugged rape parties with the cops started at Crossfit Deliverance. Todd flew into town and pretended to have a "marriage" ceremony with me after they drugged and gave me laxatives and anally gang raped me and then paraded me around the party in a crap covered dress. Then he got mad at me for freaking out and throwing the ring and screaming....

And that was my supposed "marriage" to Todd.

Todd never cared. Raymond just told him that they messed up in HI and that I was loyal and that they had to fix their mistake with me. Todd didn't want to have anything to do with me.

They just faked the marriage, forged paperwork, and Todd and Annie lived the high life and started blackmailing me with my children.

I went on ONE date with Todd willingly in Wailuku, and we never even had sex. Susan goes around sneering that she has a right to abuse me because "she should have been more faithful to her husband". What husband????

That's when my cousin Ducre got involved. SPD, and he got called in one day because they had my children in an apartment next to mine in Madison Park and I begged Anthony to go get them and help us. He went and found them, and Madison had been so brainwashed she told him "Please don't take me back to my mother this is what she wanted for us".... so he took them to the hospital, and then he gave them back to Todd and Annie after they got back from their Paris shopping trip with all the money they made selling us to Fuat.

Anthony never cared about me, who I thought was my favorite cousin raped me himself and gave me a cup o' soup after then Aamodt attempted to break my back and they threw me in a dumpster and left me there. That is why I have such bad back problems now. And also why Susan demands I clean houses. She knows how much pain it causes me.

And after Anthony that was the end of it. I'll go into Manhattan, and Brookline, and Rye, and Tarrytown, and Cape Cod in the future....

I'll go into what happened after my evil estranged family got ahold of me again and I and my children became their ATM while they helped Todd abuse me later.

The point I am trying to impress in of all of this is the uselessness of certain techniques on victims. Incessant abuse like that causes a person to either go insane, or they learn to compartmentalize extremely well. My psychologist taught me to call them touch stones.

They're like little steel boxes of all the horrifying memories that I lock up in my head and organize. In this way the memories are gone, and I don't' have them bouncing around in my brain giving me daymares and night terrors. It's one of the ways I've learned to cope, and still function, and not let all the horrific memories that I'm stuck with that make 14-year Sherriff's Deputies walk out of the room and vomit cripple me. It's how I can still get up out of bed every morning and try.

That being said....

TRI-CON as it pertains to use in sex trafficking victims and trauma victims.

TRI-Con selectively enhances load of liars by surprising examinees with unanticipated questions and by requiring quick responses. Examinees are prompted about the focus of the question set to follow (e.g., “The next 11 questions concern your activities at the time of the crime”). By priming relevant episodic “truths,” prompts reduce examinees’ need to search memory to answer honestly, making cognitive load indices less ambiguous cues that show when a decision to lie and lie construction have occurred. Prompting also reduces the emotional surprise that might be caused by blindsiding examinees with questions probing sensitive issues or incriminating information. Still, the specific questions are not disclosed until asked during an exam, thus surprising examinees cognitively and reducing the rehearsal of lies. Questions are written when possible to be unclear regarding what truths are targeted until they are fully asked. This reduces further examinees’ chance of preparing lies. To obtain clear assessment of the cognitive load needed to answer completely, questions are written to be answerable with one or a few words. Examinees are instructed to answer as quickly as possible to limit further their opportunity to deceive. The high cognitive load of rapid responding to surprise questions may increase cue leakage in the form of voice pitch elevation, pupil dilation, reduced blinking, and long response times because of the limited opportunity for liars to self-monitor and control (Zuckerman et al., 1981; Buller and Burgoon, 1996; Burgoon and Buller, 2008) and may increase accidental blurting of the truth (Lane and Wegner, 1995). (f) Without adequate preparation, liars’ deceptive accounts should be incomplete. Questions are asked and then re-asked along with logically interrelated questions to increase liars’ cognitive load. Contradictions should occur with liars (Granhag and Hartwig, 2008). (g) Behavioral baselines for ground-truth answers are established for all cognitive load indices for comparison with levels of these cues of answers suspected of deception. This practice controls for individual differences in behavioral base rates and improves the accuracy of lie detection (Walters, 1996; Bond and DePaulo, 2006).

In summation, the Tri-Con technique is based on cognitive overload. A truthful person should be able to answer questions quickly with no cognitive overload.

However, in the case of severe trauma and CPTSD, and sex trafficking victims.... we compartmentalize our brains, which means some questions that are asked of us we have to go back to our touchstone boxes for and those memories are so painful to open we hesitate. Thus, giving the appearance of deception. Cognitive overload to an already overloaded and damaged nervous system via PTSD is also medically proven to more likely force a victim back into a trauma response and confusion that it does get the truth about anything. There are rules in interviews, a brain must calm down in a victim after a traumatic event. They say wait 30 minutes, otherwise the brain is so overloaded responses aren't reliable, and the Tri-Con technique on a victim with such severe trauma and years of compartmentalization essentially does nothing more than force the individual back into that first 30 minutes of trauma response. Which manuals specifically say NOT to interview during.

Police are not trained to interrogate psychological instances such as these. They are given manuals and techniques such as the SUE, and the REID, and Tri-Con.... but they do not take into account that these techniques are based on studies with criminals, not victims, and they do not take into account the mental trauma responses that they may induce in severe trauma cases which will appear as deception.

This also begs the question.... WHY was the Bay Minette Sherriff's Department, and CSPD using Tri-Con interrogation techniques on a sex trafficking victim instead of interviewing her???

Were they not trained the difference between an Interrogation and an Interview in school? I know I was.

REFERENCES

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition. American Psychiatric Association, 2015.

Lewis Herman, Judith. “Complex PTSD: A Syndrome in Survivors of Prolonged and Repeated Trauma.” Wiley Online Library, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, July 1992, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jts.2490050305.

Hyland, Philip, et al. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in DSM‐5 and ICD‐11: Clinical and Behavioral Correlates.”

Wiley Online Library, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 25 Mar. 2018, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jts.22272.

Karsen, Ethan F, et al. “Review of the Effectiveness of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Brain Stimulation, RELX, 25 Nov. 2013, https://www.brainstimjrnl.com/article/S1935-861X(13)00341-0/fulltext.