 I'm Cynthia Lee Sinclair. This is Finding Respect in the Chaos on Think Tech Hawaii, and I'm so glad that you've joined us today. I'm here today with Sawyer Stream Hobbs, who is an amazing guy and has an amazing story to tell us. And Sawyer, I want to welcome you to the show. Thank you so much for being brave and courageous enough to come out and tell your story. I think it's really amazing. Thank you. I just wanted to thank everybody that was a part of this because I understand it's you and I sitting up here, but there's so much more that goes on behind everything that we've done here and the preparation. I just wanted to say thank you and show gratitude for that. That's cool. Yes. Very much so. I love you all too. All right. So, first off, I'm going to talk about the men's walk that happened yesterday. Here in Honolulu, started at the Capitol, and I think we have some pictures of it. There were a thousand people there, a thousand fifty actually, that came and did this walk. It was a men's walk trying to get men involved in the prevention stages of domestic violence. And until we get men involved in the prevention stages, we're not going to make the kind of sustainable change that needs to be made. Women can stand and bang their fists forever. And until we get men involved too, we are not really going to make the kind of changes that we need. There were a lot of policemen that showed up. Mayor Caldwell was there. I got to talk to him for a little while and there was all kinds of mucky mucks that came and showed their support for this so important issue. The police were there in force and I think the whole force was there, I'm not sure. I think every policeman that was not out driving a car on their beat was there to support women and just be there to show that they don't want any more domestic violence to happen either. That was a really powerful thing. And then we got all kinds, I think I've got some pictures of the guys walking. We get to see, oh yeah, the Department of Justice was there, victims' rights. They were there to support. There was a huge contingent from UH that was there. This was really neat that we had a guy that was there to give some chance and bring the authentic Hawaiian element to the whole proceedings. There was all kinds of signs that were all along the way. Literally a thousand fifty people were out there walking. And then there was a big rally afterwards at Eolani Palace, oh there's another shot of them walking, it was really great. There was a lot of them. Like I said a thousand fifty people were there. And then there was a big rally. This whole thing was really organized by Domestic Violence Action Center, which is DVAC. There you go and there's a picture of some of them right there. Nancy Kriegman is the founder of DVAC and they do so much amazing work. And I know that they were a big driving force behind this whole entire day. It was really special to be there. It was special to be part of it. DVAC wasn't the only people out there with the table. We had Catholic Charities was there. We had the people from children and families. They were there. These hands are for helping, not for hurting. I love the thing, their little slogan that they have. And so it was really nice to be there with all of these people that worked so hard to be part of the proceedings for the day. So if you hear about this on the news, if you have a chance to support it in any way, even though it's over now, this is October. It is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And that's why I'm wearing this purple ribbon. And I want everyone to please come out and support victims of domestic violence. If you are a man that is not out there abusing, I want you to start standing up to the men that do abuse. Because like I said, until we get you guys involved, we're not going to get the kind of sustainable change that we need. You see, you can see the program. I brought the program with me back. And some of the things that they handed out while we were there, it was a really big day. We took a short time, but it makes such a difference. Okay, but enough of this, I want to start talking to the guests that I've got here today. Because Sawyer has a really important story to tell. And I thank you for waiting while I went through all that men's march stuff. Because I want to get to your story. It's an important story for people out there to hear. So, just how about if you tell me again exactly what happened to you when you were a young man. Okay, so at the age of three and a half, I was molested by my uncle. But at the time, my uncle was 15 years old. This whole occurrence took place within his bedroom, which was the closest room to the living room within my grandparents' house at the time. And everyone, the entirety of my family, or at least my immediate family, including my aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, my immediate siblings, which I have four of, and then my parents were all there. Oh my gosh, the whole family was in the living room, and this happened in the bedroom. What did he do? So, my recollection of that day, obviously because I was three and a half, was... Right. Didn't mean to put you on the spot, and get so specific, excuse me. I was sitting in his room, and it was basically like just a square, and in the back-left corner, the door is in the front-left corner, there's the TV, and we were watching the Simpsons. I was sitting on a chair, and he was sitting on his bed, and his bed was in the back-right corner. And I just remember him standing, watching the Simpsons, and then I shifted frames and turned to him, pulling his pants down. And he made me suck on his penis. And I don't, but none of that is recollectable. It can be primed by thinking about the situation, but all I remember is him pulling his pants down. But it goes somewhat like black and hazy, to a certain extent. And then whenever that ended, which I have no reference of time, I walk out, and there's a long hallway, which seemed like an extremely long hallway at the time, because I was so small, everything seemed so big with all the shadows and stuff. I walk out, and I say to my family, I say, I sucked Brian's dick. Wow. And my grandma is on the far corner of the living room, and she's like, would you say swear? And I said, I sucked Brian's dick. And for my grandma, that's when her memory goes black, which all she remembers was, my dad stood up, she immediately called the police, Brian walked out of his room after me. So it's a little three-and-a-half-year-old me. And then I say it, my grandfather hears it, stands up, my uncle comes out of the room, my grandma calls the police, everything goes black. Wow. So after that, I really have no idea what had kind of happened in that situation. I don't remember the police showing up, I don't remember anything my dad said or did. I don't remember any sort of aggression, I don't remember any sort of friendliness, like it's just blank. And that was really interesting. Looking back on it now, it's so weird. Because do you have the two sides of it? You have the side of it from my grandparents, where this was their son, and to have to come to terms with the fact that this is something that your son was capable of, that he would actually carry out. And then on someone else that was in your family, though, so kind of putting yourself – But we love just as much. Exactly. So what are you supposed to do there? Yeah. Side comes in, but it's really not sides, it's not a binary side, it's a oneness of we are together. But it was looked at like sides were picked. Obviously, my grandparents full willingly supported my uncle and tried to do everything they could to care for him in this time. And then my family had a different way of going about it, where my uncle immediately became my father's arch enemy, and is still to this day his arch enemy. And then my mom kind of being stuck in the middle, where it's like, okay, my dad gets extremely angry about it, doesn't like to talk about it, or like mention anything that had happened. And then my mom, who like this is her brother too, but she has a husband, and then a family, and then a son that this had just happened to. So at that point, a lot of court callings were brought together, and I was never – I never had to stand trial, I never had to sit in front of a judge. Really, you never had to go and be on the stand or even go into the judges' chambers and tell your story or anything. It just went by what all the parents had said, and the grandparents and everybody said. Yeah, so actually this is – I had sat outside of the courtroom several times apparently, which I also don't remember, which is something that was told to me all of a few years ago, within the past year actually. So I don't even remember ever being at the courthouse to have to deal with any of this. Several people within the court case read accounts of things that happened with me afterwards. They read things of my reaction. For instance, my father had once read a note that told about how at night I would scream and cry out my dad's name in fear of the fact that my uncle was coming to get me, which to my knowledge is a lie. Really? Yes. So did your mom say that that was a lie or somehow did you know it was a lie? No, so the family dynamic really changed after that. Sure, yeah, it'll do that. I know that one actually because I'm the one who's broke the silence in my family and it just split us apart. It split everyone apart. We didn't even speak – I didn't even speak to my mother for six years afterwards and it's like, where were you? Why didn't you protect me kind of thing? But when I broke the silence and told everybody it just exploded the family completely. So that's the thing. My dad was the cause of that silence because it angered him so much that he didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to bring it to light and he kind of – it seemed like he became more of the victim than I was the victim. Even though I don't – yeah, he kind of brought it upon himself and actually ended up coming out with a story about his childhood at that point. So this – obviously there's so many different things that could have come together in order for him to have to come forward and maybe this was the moment that he needed to get so much courage. So he had to take advantage of this moment that he felt the power and was able to overcome the shame of like, okay, this is happening when I was younger. Whereas it can be looked at from the perspective of he is simply trying to take the limelight. But what if it was that he had avoided this whole idea of his abuse within his life and this was the only way that he – this was the only way that he could find an outlet. Because he was angry about his own and now he's got a son that he could be angry for. Exactly. But nothing was ever communicated. That was the biggest thing. My mom never communicated to my father. My father never communicated to my mom and nobody ever communicated to me, which – so it should have been this triangulated like conversation within all of us. But it was kind of everybody was in their own frame. Everybody had their own little portion of the story that they carried with them. But it was impossible to bring together all of the chapters because they were held so singularly. Right. It's amazing how it can affect each person so differently. I know my sister is so different from her reaction to it all and my reaction and my brother too. And so it's like each one of us has our own perception of what it is. And when it's happened a long time ago, it's hard because just because of the way the memory works, you know, kind of like we've been seeing with all these things that are on the news right now with Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford who came forward against him and has – she has memories of the incident itself but not some of the extraneous memories that go around it. This memory is such a difficult thing to really define and pin down, right? Everything that happens in the hippocampus or hippocampus, excuse me, is so – it's so hard to predict and define. But okay, well, after all this, we have so much more to talk about. So I'm hoping that everyone will stay with us. We're going to take just a little bit of a break here. I'm Cynthia Sinclair and this is Finding Respect in the Chaos. So please stay with us. We'll be right back. Aloha! I'm Wendy Lowe and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech, Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha! Welcome back to Finding Respect in the Chaos. I'm Cynthia Lee Sinclair and I'm here with Sawyer Stream Hobbs, who is an amazing young man and has just a remarkable outlook on how he's brought his life full circle and how all of the things that happened to him when he was younger have shaped his life and sort of shaped his family's structure at the same time. So I'm really just so grateful that you're here and I really applaud your courage for being able to come out and and talk about these things. And I know you've like told people your whole life too, going back like to seventh grade even coming out. And I think that's just really bold and it's really remarkable because that is not the norm. It's like most people just don't ever want to say anything because of shame. And there's such an important thing that happens for men as opposed that's I should say not that it's unique to men because women feel the shame too, but men seem to feel it on a different level. It's so much more intense because it makes them question their manhood, makes them question their masculinity, all those things. And then society puts this extra light on you guys about how it affects men differently and how you need to be more shamed. And I'm just I'm really struck by how amazing it is that you don't feel that, that you have risen above it and have integrated it into who you are. And I really think that's a remarkable thing. And so I'm really happy that you're here to share all that with us. I think it's really cool. I think it's interesting that you you brought up the idea a little bit on like men versus women and how like this situation is handled, whether they are the people that this occurrence happened to or they're people that are hearing of it from someone else. So I attribute a lot of the way that I handled and like communicated about it to the fact that I have five girls in my immediate family. I have two older sisters, two younger sisters and then my mother. So I've always been extremely comfortable with women. And a lot of like my best friends growing up that like I would like find some sort of like nurturing and would be women and like good people to talk to if I ever had some sort of feelings or emotions or something that I like I had to get out. So I saw it as something where I was extremely willing to tell women about that experience that I had and talk to them about like how it made me feel. But it was really strange how this kind of idea of sexual abuse comes out in the most nuanced ways in just random conversations because it is something that is just like kind of a part of the world around us that we don't see that is kind of tried to be made this underground. You shouldn't talk about this. So just come up randomly and I would just talk about it as if it was the weather with these people and it would seem as if nothing was wrong about it because to me nothing was. I had no ability to talk about it in my home because my father never wanted to talk about it and my mother tried to respect the fact that my dad never wanted to talk about it. So therefore it was never brought up in a conversation. So I took it upon myself. It's like okay like this is something we could talk about. I was like I can just like toss this around. But I never I always kept it with my family like no I don't tell people because they I felt like they took it on as a part of their identity. So I used it as like this is my identity like I'm going to use it but I'm not going to tell anybody that this is a part of me. But I can see how because it also affected my family which is really interesting. It completely tore my family apart for the for the years after in ways that I never realized that I never saw. So I never I couldn't go into my grandparents house. I had for the first because your uncle lived there. Yes I could never go in there unless it was for certain that he wasn't there which like obviously took a lot more work and effort and like the planning preparations of going to visit my grandparents that live five minutes away for me. Oh wow. And I for the first few years we had a restraining order against my uncle and family functions were never complete family functions. Everybody saw you in fractals where like I saw like this aunt and uncle and then this aunt and uncle Christmas was by ourselves at the beginning and then my grandparents would come for two hours and then I would go see my aunt my other aunt and uncle and then like Thanksgiving's were done with like a separate part of my mom's family that wasn't even connected to this part of the family. So it's like we became this isolated orb that had to like float around from place to place to place talking and seeing these people which made it much more difficult whereas why not just gather together why can't I do that but I never saw it as like I always went on family vacations went to family dinners with just my immediate family just those seven people so that became my sphere of what the idea of family was so it made me define it much differently than kind of that holistic form which was like which is like really organic and just natural and I can go talk to any of these people but then like high school came around and I started being being able to see the gravity of what had happened instead of just using it as like this pawn piece to like okay like I'm going to tell this girl about it or I'm going to tell my best friends about it or like whoever I'm going to tell it's like okay so like I have acknowledged it outside the sphere of my family and communicating why don't we start acknowledging any in this sphere so I talked to my mom about it I remember it was like junior year of high school and I was like I've been thinking about Brian lately she's like and I have another uncle named Brian which is interesting um so I have two and so she's like okay well like like what do you mean I was like well like I haven't been able to talk to this man and I don't even know who he is he's just a concept to me like it's like this like image it's like a poster that you put on the wall but there's like something on the back side of it that leads to like a portal into like who a person actually is um so I started I started I brought it up and then it got from my mom to my grandparents my then my grandparents wanted to talk about it so I arranged a meeting with my grandparents to talk about it at their house sat there for like five hours six hours just kind of talking we were just like shooting anything like kind of just like talking the way you will like I could talk to my grandparents for days but that was a main importance was like seeing how I felt because nobody ever knew how I felt that was the thing they weren't allowed to speak yeah not necessarily it wasn't exactly allowed right yeah but you didn't because of all of the silence that had been put on there for your dad yeah so people I started following like the general flow and curve of I'm just going to go with like the status quo here um which is not even necessarily that somebody told me it was an energy that I felt that like it was hard to break out of right but like not that this opportunity came to be I was taking advantage of it I was telling people how I felt so what how was what was their reaction when you told them listen I want to talk about this that's when the lies just started unraveling just like out of their mouths out of everybody's mouths out of all of these different stories that they had gathered but nobody ever talked to me about because it's you don't talk to sorry about it because he's like psychologically has some sort of like an induced pain every single time you try to mention this when it wasn't even true it was their own perception forced on to you exactly but it wasn't even necessarily their own it was just circulated because nobody like I said nobody communicated it was nobody's fault it's just that nobody told anybody everywhere he was scared of one another well it's the silence and silence is the thing about in my mind anyway that's the thing that hurts people and more than anything is the silence and it's deafening it's very loud the silence is you know and you hear it even though it's silence all right and I know that sounds kind of backwards but but it's really true you do you kind of hear it even though it's silence I was born feet first I've been backwards ever since so base so basically what happened then is three days later I was in the same room as my uncle we were at a neutral location my great grandma's house which is about a hop a skip and a jump one street over from my grandparents house so it's a place where we can both feel comfortable we could both go walked in he's sitting down in in the chair gets up gives me a handshake my grandma's sitting there give her a hug sit down and Brian and I talk just him and I and it was really it was really incredible we didn't we obviously a lot had happened and a lot to acknowledge but we didn't see the point and the purpose of reminiscing over something that had happened that was a part of a past life we wanted to see the repercussions and consequences that came to be after the fact right so Brian told me his story for the very first time that I'd never heard he told me about everything that he had to do and he was he was in high school still he just wanted you wanted to play football so he was on probation and actually on house arrest was my grandparents had to lie every single time the probation officer came and say that he had some sort of after-school activity that he had to stay back and take a test or this that or the other just so he could play football wow and it became so excruciating for him in such a process that he had to stop playing football sure and in his counselor his counselor started telling him about how he could never have any sort of physical contact or emotional relationship with a girl because he would ruin her oh up until this point in his life he still has not which is really so it shows that yes Brian had done something at this time in his life but also a lot had to happen after the fact which were consequences for him but why should we both be living with this consequence now that's now actually becoming a consequence for our entire family right um wow we never got together as a whole so at the end of that conversation Brian and I gave each other a hug we took a picture together and I walked to my best friend's house Brian offered me a ride and I was just like no I just rather walk like I just like walking but it became normal a few months after that we had our very first ever family Christmas where we all came together wow the very first time that I ever can like remember that I had that wow everybody that I love great was in the same room that was amazing I love the idea of reconciliation after the fact um I know for me when my family finally came together it was just huge feeling that I still every time I remember I want more of you know because it split my brother and sister and I apart but just recently they came in May for my graduation and it was like and we just played together and had fun we didn't have to deal with the hard stuff we could just be people now and I think that's what you're talking about it's like your family could just be people now right instead of so destroyed by the events where it sounds like your uncle's life was kind of destroyed by the event well in a way rightfully so because you can't do those kinds of things without having a consequence that happens because if if there had been no consequence it's possible that he could have gone on to be somebody whom unless children it's very possible but because because of what happened and the intervention that happened it might have stopped him from going on any further wow I think it's remarkable that you have come full circle that you were able to to have such a great outlook on all of this we've only got another minute so is there a last thing you'd like to say maybe even to the people that are that are listening here today um over the summer I lived with my uncle I was the door next to my uncle's at my grandparents house um and that that is a total role reversal from never being able to go to my grandparents house to living in my grandparents house next to the man that I was taught to fear my whole life and the important part to remember about that though is that that didn't just happen we can talk about this in 28 minutes all of the things that had happened in a very consolidated manner but this took 15 full years of cycling over the same circle and finding a way to get out of it was breaking that cycle of lies miscommunication just like fear sorry it's there's so many things that go into it but the one thing that was able to bring us all back together was that one moment when communication was key when the opportunity presented itself but the thing was sometimes that opportunity isn't this golden sphere that is handed to you it is something that you have to create and generate for yourself and you have those people around you in any way shape and form you have it in the people that are walking past you on the street that all you need to do is stop and say help all you need to stop do is stop and say I need this because there's nothing wrong with saying I need help or I need something because we can't all do it on our own it is the most strong thing ever to have the will to overcome the silence in your own mouth that cat that it literally has your tongue and holds you into that life that is crippling you so basically all it takes is one conversation and everything can be made new again oh my um wow now you know why I introduced him as a remarkable man wow thank you so much for coming Sawyer thank you so much for being so amazing and and so articulate and so brave and and courageous to come out and tell your story like this because I believe it'll make a difference for other men that are that are locked in that silence who's who's still got that cat with a hold of their tongue right wow well everyone I want to say thank you so much for joining us today here on finding respect in the chaos we're out of time I wish we weren't but we are so I hope you'll come back and join us again here on think tech away I'm Cynthia Lee Sinclair and I want to thank you for coming