April 22, 2025
65- "I am 1 in 3 times 3"--George Muzzy
George's story begins with a childhood shaped by three different abusive men. From physical beatings by his foster father for minor childish behaviors to learning at age nine that the man he'd called "dad" wasn't his biological father, his early years were marked by confusion and pain.
When his stepfather entered the picture, the abuse escalated. One particularly cruel moment led to George's decision to bury his emotions completely—a survival mechanism that would last nearly four decades.
What makes George's testimony so remarkable is what happened after he finally shared his story publicly. After 40 years of emotional numbness—so complete he couldn't cry even when his beloved grandfather passed away—his feelings began to resurface. "I don't remember these feelings," he explains, describing the strange experience of navigating emotions that feel brand new at age 54.
George's journey reminds us that healing doesn't follow a timeline. Sometimes our greatest breakthroughs come decades after trauma, when we find the courage to break our silence. His story offers hope that no matter how long we've carried our burdens, it's never too late to begin the work of reclaiming our full emotional lives.
1 in 3 is intended for mature audiences. Episodes contain explicit content and may be triggering to some.
If you are in the United States and need help right now, call the national domestic violence hotline at 800-799-7233 or text the word “start” to 88788.
Contact 1 in 3:
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Thank you for listening and please remember to rate, review & subscribe!
Cover art by Laura Swift Dahlke
Music by Tim Crowe
00:48 - Introduction to George's Story
02:39 - Childhood and First Abuser
09:51 - Meeting Biological Father
15:53 - Stepfather and Escalating Abuse
25:13 - Standing Up and Walking Away
36:06 - Failed CPS Intervention
41:40 - Burying Feelings for 40 Years
45:32 - Confrontation and Closure
52:59 - Healing Through Sharing
WEBVTT
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Hi Warriors, Welcome to One in Three.
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I'm your host, Ingrid.
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As many of you know, One in Three includes not just women, but also men and children.
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Today's guest is bravely stepping forward to share his story, a story involving abuse by three separate individuals, but this isn't just a story of trauma.
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It's a story of resilience and of healing.
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Nearly 40 years later, and that is a beautiful thing here is George.
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Hey, george, thank you so much for joining me today.
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You're welcome.
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I'm glad to be here.
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I'm very happy for you to be here and just a quick catch up to those who may not know.
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George and I met because I had guested on a podcast that he's a co-host for and, as we were talking about things, he agreed to come on one and three to share his story one and three to share his story.
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All right, sounds good, okay.
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So before I actually start my original plan, as I dealt with what had happened to me, I had originally planned that my story was going to die with me and nobody.
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I wasn't going to tell anyone.
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And then I ended up telling some of my family my wife and kids and whatnot and then I joined this little chat group and got really close with them.
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I knew them all before but we hadn't really kept in touch for a while and I kind of told them and then I ended up telling them on our podcast and then I ended up telling it on our podcast.
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So I thought it was a good idea to maybe expand and have others that maybe listen to other shows hear the story.
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So my story starts.
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My grandparents had six children and my grandmother was a stay at home mom and my grandfather worked a lot of hours to pay for these to, you know, to pay the bills and everything.
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And the third oldest daughter, when she was 15, got pregnant and right after she was 16, I was born the first grandchild to my grandparents, and he had originally planned, as the kids were getting a little older and going to be moving out, drop down, but he continued to do two of the three jobs that he did the one full time and then as one part-time at the hospital, um to help support because they had agreed she was going to stay and go to school.
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She was single at the time and I was born with my grandparent with her maiden name.
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By the time I was a year old, she had gotten married and they went through the court process and I was adopted.
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Still, I still lived in my grandparents' house and my mom and her new husband sometimes were there.
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Sometimes they had an apartment until I was about five and I don't remember anything happening prior to that.
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But after we had moved, after I was done with kindergarten and I just turned six years old, we moved to a different place, to a different place, um, and I remember every time like he was, he got drunk a lot Like, like that was the first thing he thought of when he got home from work.
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My there's be my foster father and um, and I remember he would, he would spank me, and I don't mean like a couple of times, I mean like every time he did.
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I couldn't sit for a little while.
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Um, bad, um, and I remember it was all.
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I don't remember a lot of details, but I remember that it was for stuff that six and seven year old kids do, nothing really bad where like one quick spanking could have completely taken care of it, or even maybe just a talking to.
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After I turned seven, we moved into a bigger house, but we were waiting on the guy that we were buying.
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We were going to buy this bigger house.
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They actually had a house and a trailer on the property in town.
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It wasn't ready yet.
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He needed to do some things to it, so we moved into another house that he had that was big enough for everyone.
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At that time all the kids had moved out except for my mother and my foster father, so it was really just five of us living at the house.
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One time I do remember that he hit me for was I remember we were out in the country at this house.
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Out in back there was like a gully and at the bottom of the gully there was a creek and they would.
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He showed me the things.
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He would have minnow traps set up in the creek to catch minnows to use for live bait for fishing.
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And one night he came home and when him and my mom came home I'm assuming from the bar, I don't know they she would always ask me you know what'd you do today?
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You know how was your day?
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And I said, well, you know, school was okay and I came home and I played in the backyard for a while.
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I went down to the creek and, you know, played by the water.
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The next day I came home and he was, and they.
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He took me to my room and he kept.
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He was screaming at me and kept asking me why I opened the minnow traps, why I let all the minnow out, and I was like I kept telling them that I had not done it and I proceeded that day to get pretty severe beating.
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And then later I remember laying in bed, not sleeping and hearing him and my mother talk, and he said I was thinking about it and I think I left the minnow trap open.
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Yesterday when I, when I emptied them.
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I never got an apology.
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I never heard anything more about it.
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I just that's what I remember about.
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Six months after living in that house, we moved to our larger house.
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Now, the good thing about that house was the front house was big and they lived.
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My mother and foster father lived there.
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I lived out back of the house in a trailer.
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It was a rather large trailer but it was just the three of us.
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So within probably a year, apparently his anger was not taken out on me because I didn't live there, was taken out on my mother.
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So she kicked him out and he was gone.
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So I'm like okay, the abuse is gone and I didn't.
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I want to make it clear that I didn't.
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I don't attach the fact that he was an alcoholic to the abuse, because my grandfather at that time he drank, and one of them and my uncle, he drank, and I never saw them angry while they were drinking.
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Ever I've seen them angry, but usually it's just something that happened in life or whatever, but nothing.
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They never took it out on anyone else.
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And then, probably around between the time I was eight and nine, is when my foster father was gone that summer, right after I turned nine years old, cause I my birthday is in June, so I I like literally like my birthday is right before the end of the school year I decided you know what, he's gone, I'm going to spend more time during the summer at mom's house.
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Now at the house, the upstairs.
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Um was made into like two different apartments.
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There was two apartments upstairs.
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That that's kind of a key for a little bit later.
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So I was staying there and this was right after probably the first I think it was the first weekend after school had let out.
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Um, my mom didn't have a bedroom set up for me yet, she was in the process of doing it.
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But she said I have a pullout couch and she said we can set that up at least for the first weekend and you know, for the first, for the first weekend or so, and then we can go and get everything we need, cause I still wanted to keep my room and my grandparents and um.
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I remember she said I'm not going to be, I'm going out tonight with some friends and um, but we live, we live right in town.
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So she was just going uptown.
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She said just, uh, lock the door when, after dark, you know, after you come in the house and everything, and just lock the door and I'll have my key.
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I remember early in the morning, like two or three in the morning, I was awakened by stumbling and a couple of people laughing and she fumbled with the keys and got into the house and they came in to the room, to the living room, where I was sleeping Well, I wasn't sleeping anymore, but where I was in bed and they turned on the light and she was with this guy that this man, and I didn't know who he was.
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They came and sat on the bed and laughing and joking and I could you could definitely tell they were both, they'd both been drinking a lot, but they were you know, they were talking with me and everything, and probably after about two hours my mother said okay, um, I think I should introduce you properly to this guy that's here with me.
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She goes, that guy that you knew, as your father is not your father, this is your father, this is your natural born father.
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I'm like, okay, nothing, I don't, nothing much happened.
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I mean, he, he stayed for a day or two and then he was gone and I and mom mom and him explained that he had to work.
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He had to go to where he worked cause he didn't live in that town.
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He lived about 20 minutes away or so and I was like, okay, um, I remember after about two weeks, after my foster father came and knocked on the door, I was in the front of the house and my mom was in her room and I looked out the window and I went back and I naturally told, because it was still setting into me, was still setting into me, it was still setting into my mind that he's not my father, this other guy's my father.
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So I went back and naturally I said, hey, mom, dad's here she goes.
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Well, you can let him in.
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I'm like, okay, my whole walk from her bedroom to the front door.
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I'm thinking I thought they weren't getting along and I thought she kicked him out.
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Why am I letting him in?
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And they had a heated discussion, I don't know.
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Remember what it was about.
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Nothing, nothing physical, nothing happened.
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And he was there about 20, 25 minutes and then he left.
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Well, the following weekend my father shows up and at some point my mother told him the story of what had happened.
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And that was my first experience with verbal abuse from my father.
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He just degraded me and said how can you get us confused?
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And I'm nine years old, so I have no, you know, I'm like I don't know, I don't know, I just for nine years he was my father.
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You've been my father for a week or two.
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So that was my explanation Then.
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That that calmed down.
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I do remember some good times with both fathers, but at this point it took a while.
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Now my friends start coming around.
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It's summertime and Eric, who was on the show he's, that's where I met him was when I lived in this town.
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In that town, um, they all, they would come over and everything, and he would be there sometimes.
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And and I say he was there sometimes I feel almost like now, looking back, it's almost like we had visitation rights with him, like like, um, you have stepchildren and they maybe they come over every couple of weekends and then they're not there, for you know, they're not there for two weeks and then you see, and then they come over for the weekend, and that's what it seemed like.
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We wouldn't see him for a week or so and then we'd see him for three or four days and then we wouldn't see him again and then he'd come back and we'd see him for three or four days.
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So after my friends had hung out with us and come over and whatnot, when they weren't around, he would always belittle them and say that because he knew their parents, they were bad kids, they were just, you know, out to make trouble and I constantly got berated about who my friends were and the things that maybe that we did.
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Now he never physically touched me.
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A lot of verbal abuse.
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One thing that I should note about my father is that he had a lot of girlfriends and I have a lot of half-brothers and sisters.
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So during the early times I don't know how long it was after my father started coming around my mother and him announced that she was pregnant, and so about nine months after my actually nine months to the day after my birthday which is telling me that they were hanging out before I met him, my only true sibling both parents, both with the same parents was born and not.
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And sometime after that, before, not long after that, he was gone.
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My real father was gone.
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Never really an explanation or anything, he was just gone.
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At some point during that time, when my father was still around, a couple had moved in to one of the apartments upstairs.
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They had three kids.
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I ended up.
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I got to know the kids a little, you know, and one was their oldest, was about a year and a half younger than me.
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Well then, suddenly the father of these three children was hanging out with us a lot.
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Not with his kids, not with his wife none of them were with him but he was hanging out with us a lot not with his kids, not with his wife, with none of them were with him but he was hanging out at our place, he was hanging out with us.
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He even took us a couple of times to the dirt track racing, um.
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And I was like, okay, I didn't.
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I'm I'm about 10 years old, so I still don't know what's going on.
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I'm not old enough to understand what's happening here.
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Then one day came home from school and all of his stuff was in the house.
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I'm like, all right, and she said the only explanation I got for that was he.
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Him and his wife got into a fight.
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They're separating.
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He needed a place to stay and we have a big.
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Our area of the house is the whole downstairs.
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We have plenty of room.
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I'm like, okay, then why?
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And I'm thinking, why is some of his stuff in your bedroom?
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So I'm like, okay, not sure how much longer later, but they were definitely a couple talking.
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And my mother got pregnant again and by the time I'm 11, my sister is born, and they're definitely a couple at this point, and there are definitely a couple at this point, and my mother worked night shift at a nursing home as, just like a I don't know a CNA I'm not sure if that's what they're called or not, but she was also going to nursing school.
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So I would see her, probably at least Monday through Friday.
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I would probably see her for a couple hours a day at best At some point during that time.
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My stepfather they weren't I don't know if they were, even I'm not sure if they were married yet, because they were both had to have their divorces finalized before they actually got married.
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So I don't remember if it started before or after they got married, but once in a while he would spank me, but not quite as bad as my foster father, but worse than what I'd seen, like my uncle, like if my cousin did something, he would like smack him, like one time on the butt and that's it.
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This was a little bit more severe, but not quite as severe as my foster father.
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And then at some point, um, during before I was I I believe it was after I was 11, but before I was 12, he started touching me sexually and it got.
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I mean, at first it was little things and later it got way more severe, way more often, and about a little after I was 12, we moved to a farmhouse.
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Now I should also tell you that his demeanor kind of pushed some of my mother's family away and I would see them, but not as often as I would see them before, including my grandparents, who at the time lived right out back.
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So then we moved to a farmhouse, but my grandparents didn't go with us.
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So it was just me, my mom and my two brothers and sisters and his three kids who are now living with us.
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But they would go almost every weekend to their parents' house, to their mother's house, but with my mom still going to school, there was still plenty of time for him to touch me and do things.
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By the time I was starting to go through puberty he had a couple of medical issues like his.
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He had a, he had a back injury, so he was getting like full disability.
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But he was doing, he would work for a few farmers on the side under the table, um, um, a lot.
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And what?
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When I got a little older?
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Um, me and my mom and the kids were their other kids were just going up to meet them and, uh, we ended up helping and they saw that you know well, he's a pretty good worker.
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And, um, so my stepfather decided he was going to make me work.
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Now, my stepfather could make so much money with the disability, so I think he was like paying half to him on the books and half under the table.
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But he said, instead of me paying, the farmer said, instead of me paying the taxes for the kids to work, I will give you the money and then you give it to them and that'll just be, they're working for you and all that.
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Well, first of all, never saw any of that at all.
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But during that time, as I'm going through puberty, I started he didn't realize what kind of what he was doing.
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He was kind of setting himself up for failure because as I was working and working hard and he was basically sitting on the tractor cause he couldn't do a lot of the physical stuff, I was getting like built up without me going to a gym or nothing, just doing the hard farm work, without me going to a gym or nothing, just doing the hard farm work.
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And it continued.
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And you know the abuse continued both ways, no-transcript.
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After I had started doing all this farm work and getting getting toned and everything, it wasn't hurting as much because I was building muscle and and I kept, I, I kept doing the work and kept, you know, the all the abuse continued until and I couldn't go anywhere.
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I couldn't do anything because I'm not old enough.
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And then, as I got a little older, I learned there was ways I could get out of the abuse.
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Not necessarily every time, but I was able to avoid it a little, but it still happened.
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A little while after I had turned 16, now I'm technically old enough to where I could leave, but I waited.
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As I got a little closer to 16, I started.
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I knew a guy who knew, who knew judo.
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He taught it would stay after school and he would show me.
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He would just teach me a few things.
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And I'm five foot six.
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Judo is kind of a martial arts that's made designed for a smaller person because it's mostly defense and leverage.
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Now I'm a little after.
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I'm a little older than I just turned 16.
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It's during that summer after I turned 16.
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I got home a lot later than I just turned 16.
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It's during that summer after I turned 16, I got home a lot later than I was supposed to.
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Actually, I think it was actually the school year after I turned 16.
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Yeah, cause I stayed after school for something and I was.
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I got back much later.
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He started with that.
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Somebody else had to do our trip, had to do my chores, and I'm like, started with that.
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Somebody else had to do my chores.
00:23:23.826 --> 00:23:25.728
And I'm like, yes, but I do their chores.
00:23:25.728 --> 00:23:30.272
Every time they're not here, they have another house to go to.
00:23:30.272 --> 00:23:37.183
I always do their stuff when they're not around, because no one else in this house does it.
00:23:37.183 --> 00:23:41.792
You can't expect the two little ones to do this because they're five and six.
00:23:42.079 --> 00:23:45.009
So then he started talking about a couple of my friends.
00:23:45.009 --> 00:23:51.332
And just happens to be when we moved to the farmhouse is actually when I met my what?
00:23:51.332 --> 00:23:52.213
My current wife.
00:23:52.213 --> 00:24:05.946
She was one of our neighbors and he started talking and at the time we were just friends and he started talking bad about her and I was like don't you talk about my friends like that?
00:24:05.946 --> 00:24:12.760
And he came at me and I knew in my mind I have to let him hit me first.
00:24:12.760 --> 00:24:14.624
I can't, I can't be the.
00:24:14.624 --> 00:24:23.064
I can't hit first, because if I hit first, then because I'm 16, he can have me arrested or something.
00:24:23.464 --> 00:24:36.608
So he came at me and I stayed sitting right on the couch and he smacked me on the top of the head and when he did, I came up with an uppercut to his to his chin, knocked him down and we started fighting in the living room.
00:24:36.608 --> 00:24:39.885
My mother broke it up and I went.
00:24:39.885 --> 00:24:43.413
He said if you're going to act like that, you can get out.
00:24:43.413 --> 00:24:44.021
I went.
00:24:44.021 --> 00:24:45.647
I said that's fine by me.
00:24:45.647 --> 00:24:59.594
I went to my room and I got just enough stuff that I needed and, unbeknownst to any of them, I had put a lock on my door.
00:24:59.594 --> 00:25:05.703
So when I left I locked my door so they couldn't get into my room and take my stuff before I came back to get everything else.
00:25:05.984 --> 00:25:14.971
As I was leaving, he started yelling at me and screaming at me that I was leaving, and I said well, you told me to leave and now I am.
00:25:14.971 --> 00:25:18.183
And then he came at me again and again.
00:25:18.183 --> 00:25:26.666
I did not use judo at all, I wanted a brawl, I wanted this, this is it.
00:25:26.666 --> 00:25:28.587
And we swung at each other.
00:25:28.587 --> 00:25:43.106
I hit him a few times and then, when he fell to the ground, I took his head and slammed it into my mother's washing machine, grabbed my stuff and walked out the door and that was it.
00:25:43.106 --> 00:25:48.451
That was when I had decided to make a stand.
00:25:48.451 --> 00:25:57.961
But I don't know, I could have left months before, but I think I wanted to take out the aggression I had been feeling my entire life.
00:25:57.961 --> 00:26:07.976
Um, there is one part that I wanted to go back and touch on before we moved to the farmhouse.
00:26:07.976 --> 00:26:11.346
Somebody, I don't know who actually I do know.
00:26:11.426 --> 00:26:24.105
Now, later on in life, my aunt told me that she had done it, she had seen something and she had called CPS and they had come in and they were allowed to talk to me alone.
00:26:24.105 --> 00:26:30.207
And I said to her I asked her because I was concerned, because I'd heard it many times.
00:26:30.207 --> 00:26:42.083
I'd heard it many times before I was like um, what happens if, today, you think something's going on, if, when you interview me, you think something's going on?
00:26:42.083 --> 00:26:43.586
What happens today?
00:26:43.586 --> 00:26:45.922
She said, well, nothing, I would have to.
00:26:45.922 --> 00:26:56.527
And it's like four or five o'clock in the afternoon she said I would have to go back, fill out a report and file it tomorrow and then an investigation would happen.
00:26:56.527 --> 00:26:59.990
I was like, so what would happen to me short term?
00:26:59.990 --> 00:27:02.349
She said, well, you would stay here until the investigation was done.
00:27:02.349 --> 00:27:02.731
And I'm like okay.
00:27:02.731 --> 00:27:04.159
So said, well, you would stay here until the investigation was done.
00:27:04.159 --> 00:27:05.020
And I'm like okay.
00:27:05.020 --> 00:27:10.512
So I'm like I'm not telling her anything, I'm going to act like everything is fine.
00:27:10.512 --> 00:27:15.554
I've been acting like everything's fine for so long, I believe.
00:27:15.775 --> 00:27:17.318
Now the laws have changed.
00:27:17.318 --> 00:27:20.584
Where now, if they believe there's abuse?
00:27:20.584 --> 00:27:28.373
But I mean, we're talking, talking, this was probably 1982, 81.
00:27:28.373 --> 00:27:35.490
So, yeah, I was like I'm not, I can't, I don't know what he'll do if he finds out that I said something.
00:27:35.490 --> 00:27:37.501
And how old were you when that happened?
00:27:37.501 --> 00:27:39.707
Um, well, I know, I know.
00:27:39.707 --> 00:27:48.259
When we moved out of that house and into the farmhouse, I was 12, so it was sometime before that, because we were still living in that house.
00:27:48.259 --> 00:27:54.711
I remember, I remember it clear as day we were sitting in the kitchen of the dining room of that house.
00:27:54.711 --> 00:27:56.326
So I do remember that.
00:27:56.326 --> 00:27:57.965
So it was before I was 12.
00:27:57.965 --> 00:28:03.414
So and I would have turned 12 in 83, 1983.
00:28:03.414 --> 00:28:06.769
So it had to have been early 83 or before that.
00:28:07.460 --> 00:28:16.528
But still, my gosh, you're coming in, you're questioning an 11-year-old and then saying, as we investigate, you're going to stay in the same house as your abuser.
00:28:16.528 --> 00:28:18.053
Yeah, that's crazy.
00:28:18.353 --> 00:28:23.742
Yeah, and, like I said, I believe the laws have changed now If they believe there's abuse, they take them right then.
00:28:23.742 --> 00:28:27.186
I said I believe the laws have changed now If they believe there's abuse, they take them right then.
00:28:27.186 --> 00:28:30.612
Actually, I know that because our youngest son it was neglect, it wasn't abuse.
00:28:30.612 --> 00:28:33.796
At the time they didn't know if it was abuse, they just knew it was neglect.
00:28:33.796 --> 00:28:41.223
I knew they were taken out of the house that day and it was a Saturday or a Sunday.
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