How can we protect children from sexual abuse without raising them to live in fear? My guest, Joelle Casteix, is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who turned her painful experience into a lifelong mission of advocacy, education, and prevention. After uncovering how her Catholic high school covered up abuse, Joelle became a leading voice for survivors, helping change laws and hold institutions accountable. Today, she works to prevent child sexual abuse in schools, churches, and communities while helping parents raise empowered children. Joelle and I discuss how predators use grooming and trust to target children, why organizations sometimes protect their reputations instead of victims, and the simple steps parents can take to teach body boundaries, recognize warning signs, and encourage open communication. We also explore survivor healing, the importance of believing those who speak out, and how better training and stronger reporting policies can help prevent future abuse. Joelle’s journey reminds us that even the most painful experiences can lead to meaningful change and that protecting children begins with awareness, courage, and a willingness to listen.

Highlights:

02:12 – Joelle shares her journey from childhood abuse survivor to advocate.

13:53 – Simple ways parents can teach boundaries and protect children.

23:12 – How survivor advocacy can create healing and lasting change.

30:54 – How institutions cover up abuse and predators build trust.

41:21 – Warning signs of child grooming and online exploitation.

48:42 – Why child protection policies need training and accountability.

About the Guest:

Joelle Casteix is an award-winning author, journalist, podcaster, and internationally recognized speaker—and one of the leading global advocates for survivors of child sexual abuse and institutional cover-up. A survivor of abuse in the Catholic Church, her own pursuit of justice catalyzed a decades-long career dedicated to protecting children, amplifying survivor voices, and holding powerful institutions accountable.

A trusted media voice and go-to expert for legislators, journalists, and policymakers, Joelle’s work focuses on how institutions—including religious organizations, public schools, and other youth-serving systems—enable and conceal abuse; the essential role parents and communities play in prevention; and how survivor-centered laws, accountability, and emerging technology can disrupt cycles of harm. She has testified in support of victim-friendly legislation in numerous states and was the sole survivor selected to testify on behalf of California’s landmark AB 218, which opened a three-year civil window for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Joelle is a founding board member and current Board Chair of the Zero Abuse Project, where she has helped shape national prevention and accountability strategies. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the National Center to Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation (NCSESAME), supporting national efforts to prevent educator sexual misconduct and provide resources for survivors, families, and professionals.

She is the host of the Crossing the Line podcast, featuring conversations with journalists, lawmakers, survivors, and experts working at the intersection of abuse prevention, accountability, and justice. Through national print, broadcast, and podcast appearances, Joelle translates complex institutional failures into clear, actionable insight for the public.

A leading voice on digital accountability and ethical AI in child protection, Joelle has presented to United Nations member agencies and international audiences across Europe, including at The Hague. She is the bestselling author of The Well-Armored Child: A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Child Sexual Abuse and The Power of Responsibility, based on her widely viewed TEDx talk, as well as The Compassionate Response and Scram!. She is a former adjunct faculty member at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

Ways to connect with Joelle**:**

Website: Casteix.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasteix/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joellecasteix

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crossing-the-line-the-ncsesame-podcast/id1851485137

Zero Abuse Project: https://zeroabuseproject.org/

NCSESAME: NCSESAME.org

About the Host:

Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.

Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson  00:04

What if the biggest thing holding you back isn’t what’s in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I’m your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what’s possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let’s get started. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. Today our guest is Joelle Casteix, and Joelle has an interesting story to tell. She’s been involved with child abuse at the in the Catholic Church, and I’m sure she’ll talk some about that. But that turned into, for her, a career that went in a lot of different directions in dealing with child abuse and so on. So, I’m I’m anxious to to hear her story, and and I hope everyone else is as well. I only will say about all of that that my cat says she’s constantly abused because she doesn’t get enough food, but that’s a different story. My dog says that same thing, and and I don’t listen to either of them very well. Joelle, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We’re glad you’re here.

Joelle Casteix  01:54

Thank you for having me. Yeah, all animals do that. My my dog consistently thinks that I’m starving him to death. Yeah, actually, my

Michael Hingson  02:02

cat doesn’t so much complain about not having enough food, but she wants to be petted while she eats. So, when I do podcasts, I have to close the door and put her on the outside, unless she’s just eaten and she’ll stay on the back of my desk chair for the whole podcast episode. And she has done that a couple times.

Joelle Casteix  02:22

Oh, that’s pretty cool.

Michael Hingson  02:23

Yeah, it is. It’s kind of fun to have a a cat wrapped around your head. Well, anyway, welcome to the the podcast. We’re really glad that you’re here. Why don’t we start with kind of the early Joelle? Tell us about Joelle and some of the early stuff, and we’ll go from there.

Joelle Casteix  02:39

Well, like you said, and I want to clear up. I when you say involved in sex abuse in the Catholic Church, I’m not a perpetrator. I am a I should have made that

Michael Hingson  02:50

clear. Yeah. Oh

Joelle Casteix  02:51

no, that’s that’s okay. It’s one of those words like, want to make sure you make that clear. But so I have a

Michael Hingson  02:58

son that messes with your microphone, but that’s a

Joelle Casteix  03:00

different story now. Oh yeah, so. I live in Orange County, California, where I was born and raised. And when I attended a very prestigious high school here in the area called Modern Day High School, it’s still very well known. I was sexually abused by the choir director over a period of two years, and it’s one of those things that you know you think that survivors think that they’re the only one, but as time passes, you realize that you know there were other victims, there were other victims of my perpetrator, there are other victims of many perpetrators at the school. There was an extensive cover-up. Kids like me were targeted by these bad guys because, you know, I didn’t have the greatest home life in the world. My mom had drinking had drinking problem, and my dad was in denial and trying to fix all that. So, you know, kids who fall through the cracks often fall into the the palms of child predators,

Michael Hingson  04:03

yeah.

Joelle Casteix  04:04

And so I was abused over a two year period. And what made it worse, or I guess what made the effect so much more profound, was that the school knew about it the whole time and did nothing. And so, you know, time time goes on. I’m blaming myself. I think it’s all my fault because this is the late ’80s. You know, we didn’t have the knowledge and understanding we do about abuse now, and I had been told by the school and my peers and my parents that the abuse was my fault and it was something that I had asked for and wanted. And as time passed, I began to realize that what happened to me might have been wrong. It might have been a crime. And so, in 2001, I had finished college, you know, and I had a lot of the aftereffects that a lot of survivors have. I was, you know. Suicidal. I was a mess. I had a broken marriage, and so by the time 2001 rolls around, I’m you know 30 years old, and I’m like, okay, you know, I think I got my life together. I’m working for a PR firm, and there was this big settlement here in Orange County against the former principal of my high school for sexually abusing this guy who was oh probably five or six years younger than I was when at a different high school, and I was furious because I’m like you know we all knew this there’s something wrong with this guy we all knew he had inappropriate relationships with kids we all knew that you know you’re not supposed to take a bunch of 17 year olds to Hawaii for two weeks and you’re not supposed to, you know, all this like strange behavior, and have boys over at your house and watch movies late at night and feed them alcohol and things like that went on. And so I wrote a letter to the Diocese of Orange, which is the body that over because modern day is a Catholic high school, and so I wrote a letter to the Diocese of Orange, saying, you know, I want to be a part of the solution. We all know this abuse happened, so on and so forth. And they proceeded to see that I might be a real problem because I was a PR executive by this time, and so they invited me in. Like, oh, Joel, why don’t you serve on our lay review board and you can, you know help and so on and so forth? And the lay review board for your listeners, if they look up lay review boards in these dioceses, they’ve just been a disaster from day one. And I realized that we were just being used as a basically as a beard to cover up abuse.

Michael Hingson  06:36

Yeah.

Joelle Casteix  06:37

And one day I came home from the meeting, and my boyfriend at the time. Now my husband was laying on the couch, and I’m like, you know, something just feels wrong about all this. And and Mike says, you know, Joelle, why are you doing this? You don’t need to help them. You are not helping them. And this is this is stupid. And I’m like, God, yeah, he’s right. So I I step down, and at the time, California had opened up a one-year window for survivors of child sexual abuse to come forward civilly to file complaints against, you know, file lawsuits against the person who abused them and the in the institution that covered it up. And for me, that would have been the Diocese of Orange in modern day. And I’m like, you know, I have a lot of good information now from sitting on this committee, so I’m gonna, you know, talk to one of the lawyers who’s handling a bunch of these cases because I might be able to help him out because you know I’m not I wasn’t an altar boy I’m not really a victim so on so forth and so I met with this attorney and he was the first person who sat down across from me and said you know Joelle what happened to you was wrong, and what happened to you was a crime, and it wasn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong, and that was like the first person to say that to me. Yeah, not my parents, not my peers, none of that. So I ended up taking advantage. My boyfriend

Michael Hingson  07:58

sort of did.

Joelle Casteix  07:59

Yeah, my boy. Yeah, Mike. I hear

Michael Hingson  08:01

what you’re saying.

Joelle Casteix  08:01

Yeah, he and he was at the time, and he fully understand because when I first you know was talking about it and you know working with the diocese, he would say, “Well, she’s not a victim, victim, because he saw altar boys, you know, and but he’s come full circle. He’s a good dude. We’ll keep him around. Yeah. Oh, good. Anybody with the

Michael Hingson  08:22

name of Mike has to be at least. I

Joelle Casteix  08:24

know. So he. So I ended up taking advantage of the law of the law, and I filed a lawsuit against the school in the Diocese of Orange, and basically all I wanted were the documents because the Catholic churches are excellent document keepers. They write everything down, and I wanted the documents in my case because I knew they knew about it and my abuse, and I knew they covered it up, and I knew there were other survivors, and I wanted to expose all that. And the diocese kept saying that you know I was crazy and didn’t know what I was talking about, and so on and so forth. So after two years of litigation, we ended up settling, and I got all the documents in my case, and I was able to make them public, and they’re on my blog, The Worthy Adversary. But the things like I have a signed confession from the man who abused me, I have signed confessions from administrators who covered it up, I have signed documents from the principal of the school to the diocese saying that you know, Joelle has emotional problems, so we should be able to clean this up quite quickly. And so this is 2005, and and now I’m I’m married, and and I had been a very outspoken public advocate. I did a lot of press conferences. I did a lot of you know you saw people protesting out in front of churches. That was me, you know. You saw people passing out leaflets and and trying to build awareness and standing in front of the courthouse. And when you do things like that, you kind of shoot yourself in the foot professionally, especially in the communications sphere, because you know, as a communications professional, you’re a spokesperson for an organization and. Someone looks you up on the internet and they see, you know, what at the time was, you know, pretty scandalous stuff. In Orange County, I was seen as a pariah for quite some time, and a, you know, a rusty nail that needed to be hammered down. And so I thought about it, and I’m like, well, I, you know, I can take what I have learned and help other people, or I can try to go back into communications. And I decided that you know the best thing I could do, and the best way to heal for me, because it’s it’s really all about the the healing journey and making sure that you know this kind of activity stops. And so I decided to make this advocacy my career, and I have found that you know through because I was able to I understood media and communications, and because I was able to do press conferences and interviews, I could help other survivors come forward.

Michael Hingson  10:55

Yeah,

Joelle Casteix  10:55

and it has been a crazy, crazy 20. Well, actually, it started in 2002, so it’s like 24 years now, and it’s been. I have been able to meet survivors in you know above the Arctic Circle in Alaska and help them. I’ve been able to meet survivors on Guam. I’ve been able to travel all over the country and help people who didn’t think that they had a chance or a voice, I’ve been able to, you know, help change laws in states like yeah, we got a new window here in California. I testified on behalf of that. I’ve helped change laws in New York and Arizona and Delaware and New Jersey, and I have been able to reach out to survivors all over the place, and it’s been tremendously healing. And I’ve been able to to really like diversify too, because it’s you know for the first you know 15 or so years, I was very devoted to my work of abuse in the Catholic Church, and I guess I had blinders on because I didn’t realize there was also a great big problem in schools in public schools. And so I’ve been able to now I do a lot of work with a group called NC Sesame, and they’re the organization that helps prevent and expose educator sexual misconduct. And because I was a survivor of educator sexual misconduct, it’s a perfect fit, and we’re getting a whole new crop of survivors coming forward from that. And so it has been a a tremendous journey. And I I veered into when I had my son in 2006. You know, I didn’t want to parent in fear, because I found that a lot of survivors parented in fear, and I didn’t want my kid to be scared. I wanted him to be empowered, and so when I would meet with other parents, sometimes they would like look at me and panic and say, “Jewell, you know, I’m so scared of child sexual abuse. What do I do? And I’m like, you know, I’ve talked with hundreds, probably 1000s of survivors, and they’re very easy things you can do. And so I wrote a book about it, and they call the Well Armored Child. It’s 10 years old now. It needs to be redone because some of the things are a little out of date, especially when it comes to the internet. But it’s like it’s so easy to keep your kids safe, and I found that prevention allowed me to reach out to a whole new group of survivors because the parents who wanted the most help and information about keeping kids safe were usually survivors themselves.

Michael Hingson  13:30

Yeah. What are some of the well? First of all, before we go to that, what college did you go to?

Joelle Casteix  13:37

I went to UC Santa Barbara. I’m a gaucho. Yeah.

Michael Hingson  13:41

Wow. Didn’t didn’t go to UCI, huh?

Joelle Casteix  13:44

No, I wanted to get as far away from home

Michael Hingson  13:48

I couldn’t by that

Joelle Casteix  13:49

time. So can

Michael Hingson  13:50

understand that. Yeah, nothing wrong with going to UC Santa Barbara.

Joelle Casteix  13:55

No, it was a beautiful place to go to school. Yeah, that’s a

Michael Hingson  13:57

good school.

Speaker 1  14:02

If you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we’ve created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you’ll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community.

Michael Hingson  14:34

Well, so tell me about some simple, and you say it’s simple, some simple things that the parents can do to help keep children safe. Because I, I mean, clearly this is a very insidious sort of thing, and I must admit, growing up, I never, I, I didn’t face a lot of bullying as a as a blind kid in school. A little bit, not enough to to really talk about, and certainly. Not any of the kinds of abuse that that you’re talking about, but I appreciate it and I understand it, and and I know that it’s a an epidemic of of sorts. So, what are some of the things that parents can easily do?

Joelle Casteix  15:15

Well, a lot of it is putting aside the feelings of other people and understanding your child needs to under to learn their own boundaries. So I tell parents when their kids are toddlers, you know, when we’re all kids, oh, go hug Uncle Seymour or go hug Auntie Joanne, and you’re like, no, I don’t want to. You know, she smells like mothballs. So I always tell parents never force your child to hug someone that they don’t want to, because what that tells them is that they don’t have power over their body.

Michael Hingson  15:49

Yeah.

Joelle Casteix  15:50

Another very very simple one is to teach your children from day one the biological names of their body parts, because you know we call our arm our arm and our kidney our kidney, but once we get down to genitalia, we have all these you know saccharine words because parents are embarrassed to say words like vagina and penis and labia and testicles and so on and so forth.

Michael Hingson  16:14

Yeah,

Joelle Casteix  16:15

and so I mean, in fact, I was talking about this lesson on TV in San Diego about eight or nine years ago, and they bleeped out vagina. I’m like, really? You know, how can you teach people if you’re gonna bleep it out? Because what we found is that when you normalize giving the biological names to body parts, you normal normalize to your child that they have a proper biological function, and it’s okay for your kid to say no. And we have found in studies that predators are more likely to prey upon kids who do not understand the biological names of their body parts, because it’s it’s very easy to like. Here’s an example. You know, I worked with a survivor, and she’s like, “Oh yeah, you know, I was abused by my my uncle, and it was awful. And I said, “Well, so can you tell me about the grooming process? And she’s like, “Oh, you know, I had a you know an UTI when I was a little girl, and I said, ‘Oh yeah, my ha ha itches. And he goes, “Oh, your ha ha, I like to laugh. Can I see your ha ha? And because she didn’t know, had she said, “Oh, my vagina hurts, a predator would be like, “Oh yeah, this this is a kid who knows their names, and they’re going to know how to report if I touch their vagina, if I touch their labia. And so what it does is it puts predators on alert, makes your kid a hard target, and those are the two easiest things I tell parents of little kids, and then of older kids, it’s really empowering them to report. You you know because nine times out of 10, if a kid is being sexually abused, they’re going to go to their peer and tell about it. Then they are going to go to you know an adult, and so we tell you know kids, especially starting in middle school, how to report sexual abuse. And you don’t have to be graphic about it. You know what, mom is safe. You come to mom, find five adults you can trust. You never have to keep a secret, and it’s always safe to come forward, and you won’t get in trouble.

Michael Hingson  18:18

Yeah,

Joelle Casteix  18:18

and because when a kid feels empowered to report, they’re also empowered to be like, “Oh, this has happened to me as well. I need to report it. So, I mean, there’s a whole litany of things, but those are those are the easiest and the the least, you know, intrusive.

Michael Hingson  18:34

Well, you had, you know, you talked about your parents and you had some some challenges there. Who would you have gone to talk to if you really felt empowered earlier on.

Joelle Casteix  18:43

Well, you know, one of the big things we teach kids starting levels have five people, five trusted adults that they can go to because you know one’s going to be a flake, one’s not going to understand, one’s not going to be home, and and oh, maybe one of those people will be around. And so for me, I went to a school administrator and I said, “Hey, this something’s happening. It’s weird. I don’t understand. And she’s the one who came and told me, “You know, Joelle, this you don’t say anything about this because you could get in trouble, and this is what love is, and you just need to, you know, understand that this is how adults show love, and people think I’m crazy when I tell this story, but I have all the documentation about it as well. And so I stopped right there. I didn’t go to any other adults.

Michael Hingson  19:31

Got it.

Joelle Casteix  19:32

So I went to a peer, and I told her, and she didn’t have the tools and capabilities to be able to say, “I need to tell my parents. I need to report. I need to do this or that. And so she carried it as a secret, and it ended up destroying my entire community of friends. And so you know, all that would have needed to happen is if I’d gone to the administrator and she had followed the law, and reported it, that could have helped. Number two. If my peers knew how to report, then you know, then they would have at least known that there were safe adults to go to, and this could have stopped, and I wouldn’t have been abused, and the other girls wouldn’t have been abused. So

Michael Hingson  20:13

maybe the answer is obvious, but typically speaking, when dealing with sexual abuse and so on, more girls than boys.

Joelle Casteix  20:23

Um. Yes, and in the Catholic Church, that’s flipped because access to boys is much easier, and so it’s we are seeing more girls than boys, and we are seeing the majority of abusers as being men, but then also, you know, you look at the Boy Scouts. Everyone abusing the Boy Scouts was a boy, and there wasn’t a method in place for them to be able to report and for the reported individuals to be turned into law enforcement. Instead, they had their Their files that they kept internally and knew about all the people who couldn’t volunteer again, and I know you were an Eagle Scout, so I,

Michael Hingson  21:09

but I,

Joelle Casteix  21:10

yeah, but it’s interesting because most of the survivors I’ve worked with in the Scouts ended up being Eagle Scouts and Order of the Arrow. They loved scouting. They still love scouting, and so they are very dedicated into making sure that you know scouting is fixed and continues. Whereas a lot of survivors in the Catholic Church aren’t like, oh, I love the Catholic Church, but you know, there’s a lot of loyalty in scouting.

Michael Hingson  21:40

At the same time, they’re not going to tolerate that kind of stuff going on.

Joelle Casteix  21:45

Yeah,

Michael Hingson  21:46

yeah, which is the issue.

Joelle Casteix  21:48

And we’re seeing more instances now of female predators and male teenager and younger victims. And I don’t think it’s because we all of a sudden women are getting out of control. I think it’s because we as a society are seeing that it is not cool, and because for years and years, you know, you would hear about you know famous people saying, “Oh, I was a young, I was 15, and I was seduced by this older woman who taught me the ways of the world, and it’s like no, that was abuse. You know, hot for teacher. No, that’s like that’s bad. And what we didn’t do as a society is realize the severe damage that’s done to boys who are sexually abused by women. And so there are now a lot of organizations that really focus on that. Like one of the ones I work with is one in six, and because you know the the men are not as likely to talk about it, and they are shamed if it’s a male perpetrator, and they are confused if it’s a female perpetrator, and so the pain is just it’s it’s horrific, and so finding support and other voices where you can get understanding is vitally important.

Michael Hingson  23:06

Do you think that the number of sexual abuse cases, if you will, is increasing, or are we just becoming more aware and we’re seeing it, although it’s always been there?

Joelle Casteix  23:19

I think we are just seeing it, and more kids are empowered to come forward. We, you know, 20 years ago, if a 25-year-old teacher was sexually abusing a 15-year-old student, she might not have been turned in at all. Now she’s definitely turned in.

Michael Hingson  23:37

Yeah,

Joelle Casteix  23:38

we have the internet. You know, you think 30 years ago, every every survivor in the Catholic Church until the internet thought they were the only one. The internet made them say, “Oh goodness, there are many of us, and we need to come together. And it’s the same thing with with sexual abuse. It’s because we have access to so much information that, on one hand, it’s like, “Oh my God, it seems like this out of control epidemic, but on the other hand, it’s empowering people to come forward younger and younger, and we’re finding that the age of disclosure is coming down. And when that happens, that allows law enforcement to do their jobs much much better because they they get evidence and they can put people behind bars.

Michael Hingson  24:17

And they’re doing that,

Joelle Casteix  24:18

yeah,

Michael Hingson  24:19

yeah. So you you have learned over time how to go from being a survivor to a strategist. What did you have to learn to to make that happen?

Joelle Casteix  24:32

You know, I already had the the strategist side going. I mean, I think it’s a part of like my thinking process. Have you done the Gallup’s Strengths Finder survey? They they get 36 strengths, and you you know, and they figure out. And then if you’re in a strengths organization, then you can see how other people work, and so on and so forth. It’s really cool. You should do it. And my number one strength is strategic. Because I’ve always kind of been able to see the big picture, and it you know works against me at times that you know I’m really not into you know minutia tasks. Like I love data, but don’t make me sort through it. Just give me the numbers, you know, and let’s see where we’re going with it. You know, don’t make me balance my checkbook. Just let me know how it’s been growing over the past 10 years. Yeah. So what happened is it’s really there’s there’s two sides of it. One is understanding, you know, I had strategy as a strength, and the other is to understand that it’s a we’re part of a movement, and especially any survivor led movement is going to bring with it the pain of the survivors, so it’s going to be tough, and there’s going to be a lot of trauma involved and a lot of you know long-term suffering and stuff like that. So it’s really important to be able to step back and say, you know, what is what is best for the or what can provide the most healing to the most people? And there are times where you know they say, “Oh, is doing X Y Z good for the movement? And I’m like, “Well, is it going to give people healing? And I mean, it might be great for the movement, but if it causes more trauma, we don’t want that to happen. You know, we really need to take a Hippocratic oath that they do no harm, and so it’s really understanding, you know, what the role of civil law is, you know, getting survivors to come forward. What the role of criminal law is, and how do we change laws so that law enforcement is more able to prosecute these crimes? How do we train law enforcement to to be able to get the information they need to prosecute these crimes? Because that’s you know the secondary trauma that our first responders face when it comes to dealing with child sexual abuse is profound. And so you know how do we give these people the training they need so that they have the resiliency to be able to help as many people as possible? Yeah,

Michael Hingson  27:08

and that training is so important, and I can understand where it it has to be. I guess the best word is traumatic for so many people who don’t realize what’s going on, and I’m thinking of like a law enforcement people, but hopefully the training helps them build up. I don’t want to say a resistance, but at least the ability to deal with it and build up the stamina to be able to to face it and understand that it’s something to be addressed.

Joelle Casteix  27:39

Yeah, because especially on the on the law enforcement side of things, when we’re looking talking about prosecutors and police officers and stuff like that, the stuff that they have to deal with and face is really awful and gross. And especially when we’re talking about child sex abuse materials, which we used to call child pornography, I mean that stuff. I it’s horrible, horrible. So there are. I work with an organization called Zero Abuse Project, and we have an organization called CAST. It’s Child Advocacy Studies and Training, and basically, it is a, or essentially, it is a college or university minor or certificate program, and it’s offered in schools for anyone who is going into the child protection field, so you’re a law enforcement, you’re going to become a police officer, you’re going to become a doctor, you’re going to become a nurse, all stuff, and so, and they offer real world training. You know, like they have they have the house, and you go in, you have to find the evidence, and they talk to you about you know how do you do a forensic interview so that you get as much information and evidence from the child as you can without traumatizing the child and only interviewing them once. So it’s it’s a great great program. So that you know things like that are are vitally important. And then also it’s community education too. You know, letting the community know number one, you can’t live in fear, and number two, the more we support survivors, the more we will stop the cycle of abuse, because when you believe survivors, predators are like, oh, this is this is not my place to be, and so they will go elsewhere because there will there will always be sexual predators. Unfortunately, humans are we have issues. There will always be these broken human beings who do these horrible things.

Michael Hingson  29:27

Yeah,

Joelle Casteix  29:27

our goal as a community is to make our children hard targets for these people. Make our churches, our schools, our you know our communities hard targets, and it’s it’s just so. There’s this great article that was in Psychology Today about 10 or 15 years ago, and it was written by a psychologist, and he talked about why predators are attracted to careers in the clergy, and it talks about how you know when you’re in the clergy you have you know people you have this higher place in. Society and people tell you their secrets, and you are in charge of you know a lot of things. You have charisma and stuff, and so when people say, you know, oh gosh, are all teachers bad? Are all clergy bad? It’s like no, no, no, no. Our clergy and our teachers and our scout leaders and these are the people who are going to help our community heal. What we need to do is make all those jobs unattractive for predators, and so

Michael Hingson  30:24

how do you do that?

Joelle Casteix  30:26

Well, number one, you train people how to report.

Speaker 2  30:29

Got it.

Joelle Casteix  30:29

You you train you know teachers in California. We just passed SB 868. I probably screwed up the number. Great law, and it’s it beefed up reporting requirements and training, and so I went through the training for California. And man, it’s like how to report, and and they, you know, in these videos, they say, you know, it is vitally important that you report because it can mess up your career if you don’t. And I’m like, wow, that’s that’s a way to to get through to teachers. And so you you train people to report. You train people to understand what disclosure is. If a survivor comes forward to you and says, “Yeah, my God, you know, I I I was sexually abused as a child. Do you know what to say? Most people don’t know what to say, and that’s okay. There’s a free book on my website, castex.com, and this little ebook, the Compassionate Response, and you tell people, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. It wasn’t your fault. I believe you. What can I do to help? And those are the easy things you can do. And when you, you know, when you do things like that, your whole community learns a resiliency and becomes a real hard target for predators because if you’re again if you’re listening to survivor disclosures and believing them, predator is going to be like, I don’t think I’m going to hang out here anymore.

Michael Hingson  31:50

You know, I assume that this is somewhat the case, but you’ve worked with a lot of different kinds of organizations and so on. Are there similarities in all of those organizations that have had a lot of sexual abuse and so on? Are there similarities in how people do what they do and how they conceal

Joelle Casteix  32:13

it? Oh yeah. So the reason that the Catholic Church got busted and the reason that the Boy Scouts got busted early, is because both of them were meticulous record keepers, and so in both of those organizations, I forget what they called the files in the Boy Scouts. It was a horrible name, but like in the Catholic Church, they had personnel files on every single priest, and so from the time they even they even had like their high school transcripts in there and stuff, and they documented absolutely everything. And then we were able to see, and this AI will be able to do an amazing job to pick up the patterns of behavior. We’re able to determine and see patterns of how the institution responded when someone was accused of abuse, as opposed to helping the victim. They helped the perpetrator for the Catholic Church. It was you know they had a huge investment in this guy, so they’re going to you know move him somewhere quietly because the kid is a short term problem. The kid’s going to go away, and so in the Boy Scouts, we’re seeing the same thing. We saw meticulous record keeping. We saw a institutional loyalty, like you do in the Catholic Church, where they’re like, “This would never happen here. We’re seeing the charisma of the leader, because you know, in any sexual people who sexually abuse kids, are have to be attractive to kids. So they’re charismatic, they’re interesting. All the kids love them. All the kids hang out, and that’s in the part of that process of bringing kids in is called grooming, predatory grooming, and they also groom entire communities. So when you saw, you know, a prominent Boy Scout leader or a prominent Catholic church leader or a prominent teacher is accused of abuse, the community says, “Oh no, he would never do that. Yeah,

Michael Hingson  34:00

because

Joelle Casteix  34:00

he’s so wonderful, and that’s that’s a very calculated move on the predators’ part because they are like, hey, you know, I got to make sure that I have everyone on my side here. But yeah, there are big similarities, and it’s also very similar to organizations that cover up any kind of fraud. I mean, if you look at you know Enron and stuff like that. I mean, is people have this weird? They protect the institution over the people who are being victimized, and that could be financially, that could be sexually, that can be all these different things. And it’s it’s a part of the human condition, but it’s a changeable part of the human condition, and the more that we train people and support them to to stand up and report and to be brave enough to say, “Hey, you know, I don’t like this, and I’m not going to tolerate it, and then it then it helps fixes fix these organizations.

Michael Hingson  34:55

It is amazing to me. I guess it’s my upbringing and and. The way I approach life, but it it just amazes me that these larger large organizations will cover up things like this. You know, the the church and so on doesn’t pay attention to dealing with it. And I think you, as you point out, it has to do with financial kinds of things and so many other kinds of things. Oh, this guy’s got a this great. We don’t want to lose him. We’ll just relocate him. I just don’t operate that way. But that’s me.

Joelle Casteix  35:29

Yeah, it’s it’s interesting, especially in the Catholic Church and a lot of public schools as well. The kids are seen as short term problems.

Michael Hingson  35:40

Yeah.

Joelle Casteix  35:40

So, for example, at Modern Day, where I was abused, Joelle was a short-term problem. I was only there for four years. I was only abused for two of those years, and then I graduated and gone. And then they could say that I had emotional problems, and I didn’t have any legal recourse. So they knew that you know by the time I was 19, I couldn’t come after them civilly or criminally, and so I was a short-term problem. They get rid of me. They ask the teacher to leave, and he goes on and does his thing.

Michael Hingson  36:09

Yeah,

Joelle Casteix  36:09

in in public schools, is called passing the trash because what we find is is that it is very very expensive to have a big investigation into a teacher. It’s very expensive to fire a teacher. It’s very potentially expensive to expose the teacher because the district doesn’t want to be known as the district that had this big scandal, and so it’s much easier. They they think it’s easier, and they think it’s more financially rewarding to have their lawyer draw up a non disparagement agreement and punt the guy on his way. And instead of standing up saying, “Okay, we’re reporting this to law enforcement. We’re doing, we’re telling law enforcement to do an extensive investigation. Then we’re going to do a Title IX policy investigation, and we’re going to get more help, more survivors come forward, and we’re going to take care of the problem, and so this is you know a factor of lawyers getting involved and insurance companies getting involved, and and it’s like it who cares about dollars and cents if kids are being sexually yeah

Michael Hingson  37:12

that’s the way it should be

Joelle Casteix  37:14

yeah and it’s it’s getting there it’s slowly getting there

Michael Hingson  37:17

so are we given everything that’s happened in in the Catholic Church and so on, and and of course it’s been in the news a lot over the years. Are we seeing progress?

Joelle Casteix  37:30

Yes, we are seeing progress. The the Boy Scouts we’re seeing really good progress. They are working very diligently with you know organizations to do audits and bringing in survivors to help with that process. That being said, I would I would not put my kid in the scouts until I had verification. Oh

Michael Hingson  37:51

yeah, that yeah, it’s understandable.

Joelle Casteix  37:54

The Catholic Church is doing better because of the legal exposure they have had, like in California, we’ve had numerous dioceses have to declare bankruptcy in light of hundreds and hundreds of sex abuse lawsuits. Everyone is on alert now. They do have policies. I can’t tell you how they’re being followed. I can tell you they are not treating the litigation process lightly. They are really, it’s is pretty awful what they’re doing to the survivors who are coming forward, but I think that a kid who is in a Catholic school today or serves as an altar server today is far safer than they were in the 80s and 90s and even the 2000s.

Michael Hingson  38:36

Yeah,

Joelle Casteix  38:37

and that’s because they were they they had to make those changes at the point of a legal gun, you know. When 500 victims have the right to come forward in your diocese, you things have to change. Things just have to change, and it’s because of the survivors that things have changed. So yeah, and in public schools, we’re seeing big changes. We see some legislative efforts moving forward. It’s not perfect by any stretch. There’s still a lot of loopholes. I work with groups that you know find those loopholes and go to legislators and be like, you know, this this is this is an easy fix. You know, it’s all you have to do is change the wording here, and then kids between 14 and 17 will be protected. Yeah,

Michael Hingson  39:21

yeah.

Joelle Casteix  39:21

So there, it it is better, and it’s it’s because of awareness, really because of awareness.

Michael Hingson  39:28

Well, do you find that? Well, let me do it this way. What about organizations who say, “Well, this is an isolated incident. What happens next?

Joelle Casteix  39:38

Ugh, that that happens all the time. Yeah, and I

Michael Hingson  39:41

that that sounds so disgusting, but yeah, the

Joelle Casteix  39:44

it was just one bad apple, you know, just just one bad. This is not our organization, so on and so forth. And again, it’s that desire for institutional protection, and and so we still see a lot. Of churches do that. A lot of schools do that. And the thing is, is that it’s never an isolated incident. And the reason it’s never an isolated incident is because, as I said, predators are everywhere. And if you have one predator in your school or church or community center, you might have attracted other ones that you haven’t found yet. So there needs to be some serious changes. You need to, you know, expose what’s going on. You need to reach out to survivors. You need to make sure you’re adhering to the law when it comes to reporting and policies and procedures. Because a lot of these organizations are going to say, “Oh, it’s just an isolated incident, and then you look and say, “Well, you know, you’re required by law to have posted policies and reporting and this and that, and they’ll be like, “Oh, we don’t have those. So it’s it. I always recommend that you know if someone’s sending their kid to a new school or you know join a new organization, that you know ask the tough questions. What are your policies? What is your reporting strategy? You know, how do you how do you report child sexual abuse? Know what the law is in your state. If the law says that the like in California, the the if you just have a suspicion of child sexual abuse, and you’re a mandatory reporter, you report it. Just suspicion. That’s the that’s the barrier, and most people don’t know that. And so, an organization needs to know that. Yes, we report at suspicion, and we launch. You know, we we want a law enforcement investigation, and then we do a policy investigation of our own to make sure that this won’t happen again.

Speaker 1  41:41

Yeah.

Joelle Casteix  41:41

But yeah, it’s it’s it’s expensive. It’s tough. Organizations don’t have the line items in their budget to cover it. But I think with more awareness and the more that we are sharing information, so you know, school district X Y Z does all the policies and everything else, and they publicly talk about those policies, and then they help smaller, poorer school district, ABC, implement the same thing because every kid has the right to a safe education.

Michael Hingson  42:11

What are some of the symptoms that parents might see or or can see that their child is is facing some of this,

Joelle Casteix  42:22

well, it’s interesting. It’s it’s changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Actually, since what 2006 when the smartphone came out. So what we’re finding is that children have the world in the palm of their hand, literally.

Michael Hingson  42:38

Yeah,

Joelle Casteix  42:38

and so between you know, smartphones, tablets, computers, gaming systems, any kind of texting mechanism. I mean, even we’re finding that predators are grooming kids via Google Docs. You know, sharing a Google Doc back and forth. So, is your child being secretive about technology? Is your child spending a lot of time alone with technology? Does your kid have technology that you did not purchase? Is your child being more secretive? Is your child spending time at an activity that is above and beyond the the the time that other kids are spending at this activity, and so like for example, you know, Johnny and Susie are in the choir, and Johnny comes home after after practice, but Susie hangs around in the choir room for another two or three hours. Those are the things you look for. Then you also look for behavioral changes, you know. But again, these behavioral changes are stuff that parents should be on the lookout for anyway, because it could also be a signal of eating disorders, drug addiction, bullying. You know, is your child isolated? Is your does your child seem depressed? Does your child well? In sexual cases of sexual abuse. Does your child have a sexually transmitted infection that you don’t know where it came from? Does your you know is is your child spending too much time alone? Just all the all the things, all the alarm bells that any parent would see for any of those things, and when it comes to sexual abuse, the better part is to look for signs of predatory grooming, and because the a new study came out by Elizabeth Jeglick a year or so ago, and they found in their study that 99% of child sex abuse cases had grooming involved, and predatory grooming is how a predator tricks a kid into manipulates them into the abuse. Because what do all kids want? All kids want to be loved.

Michael Hingson  44:51

Yeah,

Joelle Casteix  44:52

and all kids want to be loved by adults. It’s a kid’s job to fall in love, and a predator’s like, great, they can fall in love with me. So how do they do that? Gifts, you know, does your child have gifts in the house? You don’t know where they came from. Expensive gifts. Is does your child have secrets that he won’t tell you? Is he being he or she being showered with attention by an adult that just doesn’t quite seem appropriate? Is there an adult that seems to be blurring lines by telling jokes about sex, in inappropriate jokes about sex, or is an adult sharing personal information about their lives with your kid? You know, your algebra teacher should not be talking about their divorce with your you know 15 year old algebra one student because that is a boundary violation, and they should not be normalizing talk about sex, and they should not be normalizing touch. So, is this person known for giving big long hugs to students? Is this person be behind closed doors with students? So, these grooming mechanisms are the things you really want to look into because they are a much better way to find a predator who might be targeting five or six kids. So, and then seeing those in your kid as well if your kid is being groomed.

Michael Hingson  46:14

And I would assume that an important thing for a parent to do would be to talk to their children if they’re observing things and try to strengthen their own relationship with with the child and get the child to to talk about what’s going on,

Joelle Casteix  46:29

exactly. And that’s interestingly enough a really tough one for a lot of parents. I have no problem talking about things with my son because you know I was a sex abuse lady, but I’m constantly meeting people who are like, I don’t feel comfortable talking to my kids about sex. And I said, you don’t have to talk to your kids about sex. You have to talk to them about abuse. And how you define abuse is that it’s when someone uses sex in a in a hurtful, damaging way. Any sexual contact between adult and a child is hurtful and damaging, and so it’s very. And you start the conversation small. It’s like I always found that like car rides were a great time because that was when you know it’s like oh it just kind of seems because you’re not looking at each other, you’re kind of looking ahead, and so that’s when I could get my son to like really give me the dirt. I found that bedtime was a good time. You know, you have 1015, minutes, and just chit chat. And you always tell your kid, even if it makes you swallow really hard. It’s like you can always come to me, and it’s always going to be safe. And another thing I I do tell parents, and this is important, not to be reactive and fly off the handle at anything. Try to be as calm as possible because we found that a lot of kids don’t come forward and report if their parents fly off the handle. Yeah, because it’s it’s hard enough to deal with what’s going on without dad flipping his lid and doing all the stuff. So it’s it’s all about communication, and we don’t really teach people communication. You know, when they we hand them the baby, so it’s really a it’s a it’s a lifelong lesson to you know take a deep breath as a parent, know you’re okay, open up the doors for communication, and always be safe. Always be safe.

Michael Hingson  48:19

That’s the real tricky part because people tend to fly off the handle when they hear something that’s horrible, and they’re trying to protect, but it it doesn’t doesn’t help.

Joelle Casteix  48:29

Yeah. There’s a story. There’s this great movie called Deliver Us from Evil. It was a documentary that came out in 2006 about this priest named Oliver O’Grady, and he was this bad dude in Northern California, and there’s an interview with Angiono, who is one of his, you know, 300 survivors, and her parents were devastated. They’re like, “Why didn’t you tell us that, you know, Father Ollie was doing this to you? And she said, “Well, I heard my dad say once that if anyone did anything to hurt me, that he’d kill him, and I didn’t want my dad to go to jail. And that’s a tough one that her dad lived with. He’s he’s passed now, and he’s like, God, had I just not said that, maybe she would have disclosed, and we could have stopped it. And you know, I parenting is is a lifelong lesson in guilt and mistakes, and so we try to make as few mistakes as possible, and feel you know try to alleviate the guilt as much as we can. But even the smallest effort to talk to your kid has huge ramifications because you don’t think your kid is listening, but your kid is listening, and you don’t think your kid hears you and understands, but they do, and and that’s what’s important.

Michael Hingson  49:47

So you know, I’m sure there are a lot of people who believe in the concept that compliance equals safety, but policy alone doesn’t really necessarily deal with the issue, does it?

Joelle Casteix  49:59

No, it doesn’t. You can have the best policies in the world, and if you file them in a drawer and you don’t train people on them, they don’t work. So it’s and this is where a lot of legislation has fallen flat because they’re like, oh, you know, you have to have a policy. Okay, we have a policy, and then they just stick it in the drawer.

Michael Hingson  50:14

Yeah.

Joelle Casteix  50:15

So it’s the policy needs to be clear. It needs to be posted. It needs to be readily trained, like numerous times a year, just like a fire drill. You know, you get a fire drill, you hear it, you get up, you go outside, you know what to do. And we need to have those same kind of that same fire drill mentality when it comes to policies and procedures to prevent and expose child sexual abuse, and what it will require for a lot of people, the younger generation is far more hip on it because we’ve been working on them. But getting rid of the ick factor, people like, well, I don’t want to talk about it because it’s weird and gross, and I don’t want to talk about it because then people come forward and so on and so forth. We got to get rid of that, you know. You got to take a viewpoint that you know child sexual abuse is as common as cancer, and so if we treat it in a way that it’s like okay, it happens. We’re going to get these survivors’ help. We’re going to get the predators in jail, and and you deal with it that way, then we can get people to really, you know, okay, here’s our posted policy. Here we follow the policy. We have drills on the policy, and it just becomes like a normal, you know, we want to create muscle memory. That’s what we want to do.

Michael Hingson  51:34

Yeah. So you are involved, and you testified with AB 218 here in California, but you know the bill is great. But how do you ensure that that people follow through and and deal with it, or are their weaknesses still be even with the bill?

Joelle Casteix  51:55

Well, AB 218, it there okay, so it has done amazing, wonderful things! 1000s of survivors have come forward. 1000s, and they have come forward in public schools, private schools, Boy Scouts, churches-you know, all this stuff. But what we have found is that we didn’t have a mechanism in place to litigate all these cases, so it’s it’s been a bit of a quagmire. You know, it’s the courts are a little overburdened, and then there have been law firms who have done less than scrupulous things to get clients who were less than honest, and so there was a big settlement against the the juvenile jails in LA County, or something huge, like $4 billion. I’m like, I’m probably screwing up all the details. But what we found out is that a lot of these cases were not accurate cases. Law firms just scooped people up and signed them up, and that is unfortunately there’s bad actors in every arena. But the good that the law is doing is so much more important because we’re finding that you know we’re uncovering all kinds of abuse in all kinds of places, and what it does is it makes it makes California a harder target for predators, and it forces institutions because if you have you know 500 cases, you’re going to change your policies, and you are going to you can’t have this happen again. So you are going to button up, and you are going to do better background checks, and you are going to do better screening of people, and you are going to make sure that everybody is trained, and everybody is, you know, everyone knows the policies, and so on and so forth. So it’s, you know, it it’s kind of you know the the slap across the face to get your act in order. So the the good far outweighs the bad in all of this by all means.

Michael Hingson  53:49

Do you find that there are some organizations that are just totally flabbergasted when it’s discovered that there’s been some sort of abuse going on, and then they do the right thing to deal with it as opposed to just trying to hide.

Joelle Casteix  54:02

Yeah, we have. There are a lot of great, or you know, there’s a lot of organizations out there who have faced this very, very well. I can’t think of an example offhand, and that’s not because they don’t exist. It’s just I can’t think of one. But that’s

Michael Hingson  54:16

okay.

Joelle Casteix  54:17

There are a lot of good people out there, there are far more good people than there are bad. And when you have organizations that are open, that are and you know, so like part of the reason we had such a problem in the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church and in the Mormon Church as well is because they’re very Hierarchical, they’re all men, and when you have a hierarchical, male-dominated organization, it tends to you know so not not to bash on men, but if so, if we when you have an organization that is not so hierarchical, that is not based in secrecy. That is, you know, open to all kinds of people, and something like this happens, you find that oh, the the the way they address it is far far better.

Michael Hingson  55:11

Yeah. Well, you have a podcast crossing the line. Tell us a little bit about that.

Joelle Casteix  55:16

So it’s a it’s with NC Sesame, and again, that’s the National Center to Stop Educators’ Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation. And they’re they’ve been around for a million years, but they’re now picking up their game. And so the podcast is called Crossing the Line, and I host it, and I bring in survivors and experts and journalists dealing with the issue of educator sexual misconduct, and it’s been you know it’s just it’s just a baby pot. I don’t have like 9 million episodes like you do. I only have like five or six right now, but it’s been very very interesting because there’s so much out there that is unknown and so many experts in the field of educator sexual misconduct, the study of it and how it happens and the data, that I think it’s going to be a tremendous resource for people to, you know, for survivors to help realize they’re not alone, for legislators to learn, oh, this is the way we need to change the law, and for parents and the community to be like, oh, okay, this is this is a problem that can be fixed, and there are people out there who are experts and know what’s going on.

Michael Hingson  56:30

So I’m sure there are institutional leaders who feel overwhelmed and they want to do better. What’s the first question they should ask themselves,

Joelle Casteix  56:41

how do I get help? You know, and and the thing is, is that there is help out there. For example, you are a school administrator, and you now have this case of child sexual abuse, and it’s like you know you’re supposed to do, you know, the you know. So maybe law enforcement said there’s wasn’t enough for criminal charges, but you don’t know what to. There are organizations like Sesame out there that can help and be like, okay, this is how you do it. There’s Title IX. Every school district should have a Title IX person. So there are people out there more than willing to help with the services and and everything necessary, and some of these things available to help are free through like NC Sesame. There are organizations out there who you know that are for profit that do these trainings because they find that you know when you are when you go to school to be a teacher and then a principal, they don’t get you don’t have classes in how to do an investigation on policies and Title IX when it comes to child sexual

Speaker 1  57:45

abuse.

Joelle Casteix  57:45

So, the more that we can, you know, make sure that people know that these materials are available and out there, and you’re not alone, and that you know you don’t have to be the bad guy, and there are resources available, and and I think that people are beginning to to realize that, but yeah, there is so much help out there. So many people who want to help. No administrator, no church leader, no community director should ever feel like they’re fighting this battle alone.

Michael Hingson  58:15

And one thing that seems to me to be pretty clear is that if people ask for help, if they’ll talk, if they’ll communicate, that really is probably one of the most major steps that people can take that will start to to address the issue, and if it is occurring, we’ll we’ll stop it, and if it’s not occurring, it’ll prevent it from starting.

Joelle Casteix  58:38

Definitely, just you know, picking up the phone, raising your hand, anything you can do to ask for help and communicate your need and your problem in any aspect of life, not just when it comes to child sexual abuse, is is the number one way to stop the crime from continuing and to help the survivors and victims who need help.

Michael Hingson  59:01

Yeah, and the bottom line is that we we just tend not to be nearly as communicative as we ought to be, and I and I realize that sometimes it’s a matter of finding the right person to communicate to, because we haven’t really learned nearly as well as we probably should how to trust or who we can trust, but but the reality is that if we’re not open to at least starting to explore it, then we’re not going to go anywhere.

Joelle Casteix  59:30

Yeah, I think sometimes we just get in our own way too much. Yeah, we’re so worried about what people are going to think about us, and and to be fair, no one’s really you know I I you know if I get upset, what do people think about me? You know what? No one’s thinking about me. Everyone’s thinking about themselves, and that’s okay. So when you raise your hand, don’t worry. You know, put your ego aside and don’t get in your own way. And everything can be a a learning beneficial experience and a healing experience and something that. Keep a kid safe from abuse.

Michael Hingson  1:00:01

There you go. Well, Joelle, I want to thank you for being here. We’ve been doing this an hour.

Joelle Casteix  1:00:06

I know, huh?

Michael Hingson  1:00:07

Time flies. Well, if people want to reach out to you, and I hope they will, and and I hope mostly not because they have a problem, but because maybe they want to help. But both, how do they do that?

Joelle Casteix  1:00:20

Well, they can reach out to me through my website. It’s casteix.com, c a s c n c a s t e i x.com. And if you just look me up on the internet, Joelle Casteix, you can find my contact information, email, and all that stuff is out there. And my cell phone works, and my email works, and I love to hear from people, and I love to help out.

Michael Hingson  1:00:40

And one thing I think is true, I don’t think you’ve sent me a picture of your book cover. So if you would, I want to make sure we put that in the show notes.

Joelle Casteix  1:00:51

I will do that too.

Michael Hingson  1:00:52

Yeah, got to have it in the show notes.

Joelle Casteix  1:00:54

Okay.

Michael Hingson  1:00:56

Well, thank you, and I want to thank all of you for watching and listening today. We really appreciate it. Wherever you are, please give us a five-star rating in your podcast system. But even more important than a rating, please give us a review. This has been a wonderful and a very important episode, and your reviews will help other people be interested in watching this or listening to this podcast episode and others, so please do that. If you know anyone who needs a guest, Joelle, including you, or who who might want to be a guest, we’re always looking for guests. So please don’t hesitate to introduce us. But again, I want to thank you for being here, Joelle. This has been absolutely wonderful.

Joelle Casteix  1:01:36

Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Michael Hingson  1:01:40

Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today’s conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you’re ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset.