#189 – Anneke Lucas
Sold Into A Pedophile Network By Her Mother
Anneke Lucas’s story is nearly impossible to comprehend. Anneke was sold by her mentally-ill mother into a murderous, pedophile network at age 6. There she endured endless hours of rape and torture at the hands of powerful men from around the world. For 5.5 years the sex slavery continued with no hope of escape. It wasn’t until she was staring at her would-be murderer that she was miraculously saved.
There began a long and impossible road of unlearning and healing from unmanageable trauma. To her dismay mental health professionals were unable and unwilling to delve into her story and help her heal. It felt as if the horrible things would remain with her forever.
It was then that she found a therapist and a yoga practice that brought hope that things might get better.
Those same practices have since brought transformation for so many others through her work as a yoga therapist. Her story proves that people can overcome even the darkest moments a human can experience.
Episode Resources
- Website | annekelucas.com
Connect with Anneke
- Instagram | @anneke.lucas
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- Podcast Website | lionrock.life/couragetochangepodcast
- Podcast Instagram | @couragetochange_podcast
- YouTube | The Courage to Change Podcast
- TikTok | @ashleyloebblassingame
- Podcast Email | podcast@lionrock.life
- Podcast Facebook | @thecouragetochangepodcast
Lionrock Resources
- Lionrock Life Mobile App | lionrock.life/mobile-app
- Support Group Meeting Schedule | lionrock.life/meetings
Episode Transcript
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Coming up on this episode of The Courage to Change sponsored by Lionrock.life.
Anneke Lucas:
It was in a castle and it was very confusing because people were dressed like hippies, but these were aristocrats that were having a costumed ball, and they were dressed as hippies. So there they were experimenting with all the drugs, but there were waiters with silver platters with drugs on them going around, so not really a hippie situation there. It was formal, and yet everybody was completely high, but I was abused on a stage in a sick S&M thing, but most people were so out of it, they barely even noticed even though it was extreme, but for me, I went to a place where I felt that if I didn’t do something now I would die.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host. Today, we have Anneke Lucas. Anneke Lucas’ story is nearly impossible to comprehend. Anneke was sold by her mentally ill mother into a murderous pedophile network at the age of six. Yes, you heard that right. There she endured endless hours of rape and torture at the hands of powerful men from around the world. For five and a half years, the sex slavery continued with no hope of escape. It wasn’t until she was staring at her would-be murderer that she was miraculously saved. There began a long and seemingly impossible road of unlearning and healing from unimaginable trauma.
To her dismay, mental health professionals were unable and unwilling to delve into her story and help her heal. It felt as if the horrible things would remain with her forever. It was then that she found a meditation and yoga practice that brought hope that things might get better. Those same practices have since brought transformation for so many others. Her story proves that people can overcome even the darkest moments a human can experience.
This interview was probably the one that will sit with me for the rest of my life. There’s so much to say about Anneke and this interview, but I want to say that I know that this stuff sounds hard to believe, but we did look into it. We did fact check. We did find court cases and corroborating evidence that these things really did happen, and that in and of itself blew my mind. We have been extremely careful about the way that we have shared Anneke’s story and the possibility of triggering people. We are bringing you what we believe is a incredible story of healing, and the interview highlights that.
It gives you enough information so that you understand the likelihood of someone in this situation finding hope and recovering while not leaving you scarred by visuals. If you want that level of detail, you can read her book. I hope you see this story for the resilience that I did and the beauty that is woven in between some of the horrors. So without further ado, I give you Anneke Lucas. Let’s do this.
You’re listening to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.
Thank you so, so much for being here. I really appreciate it. I want to say I enjoyed reading your book, but that wouldn’t be the right terminology. That wouldn’t be the word I would use. I felt that it was incredibly enlightening and I’m very grateful that you wrote it. How long ago did you write that book?
Anneke Lucas:
Oh, thank you, Ashley. So thanks for mentioning the book right away. So it’s my memoir and it’s called Quest for Love: Memoir of A Child Sex Slave. I started writing it really in 2004 and 2005. I was working on these issues back then. I had memories while writing the book. They just started flew out of my fingers I could say. Two years ago, I was working on another book, which is about the healing modality I developed over the years, and I realized suddenly that I need to actually first put my story out and that afterwards I need to put out the book, which focuses really on what is a solution that I have in terms of bringing healing on a global and a personal level. So first, my story though, that’s the first thing that needs to be revealed, is that this darkness, this stain on humanity.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It is quite a stain on humanity. I think when I first started looking into your story, and even before I read the book, but as I read the book, I think I had a similar reaction to the information that I’m assuming a lot of people have, which is that it’s hard to wrap your mind around the idea that this is happening not because we don’t believe the person, but because we can’t imagine ourselves or someone we know doing it. Our brain doesn’t stretch to that place. Thank God. Thank God it doesn’t.
Anneke Lucas:
Thank God.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So in some ways, that is the mark of a positive, healthy experience on the planet. In other ways, it’s hard to imagine a group of wealthy men and some women who like to have sex with prepubescent children and torture and murder them. It seems like something you read in a movie, but, of course, movies come from somewhere. How often do you deal with people struggle to even enter the conversation?
Anneke Lucas:
Oh, all the time. Obviously, I’ve been public for 10 years, so I certainly have had my share, and this was really why I waited so long because I’m 60 now. So I was 49 when I’m in public. The reason it took me so long was that I knew that I had to be ready for the attacks more than anything, that I had to be strong enough because I understand that very well. I also understand … It’s interesting. It’s, yes, you don’t have the experience so it’s really hard to believe that people can do that. That’s true, and yes, thank God. On the other hand, it is happening in the world and why can’t we see it? It’s not just because it’s so well hidden, but it’s also hidden in our own consciousness.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’m going to start at the beginning, but I do want to touch on the fact that there’s a narrative in the story about this perpetrator that you have this love affair with. You are 10, 11, and he’s, I believe in his twenties, and interesting how many people saw you together and you describe all these places that you’re together and, of course, there’s a backstory, but it sounds like it’s a weak backstory that people could have poked holes in relatively easily, but I had that thought of, what are we choosing not to see? How much are we paying attention when we see things that don’t add up and where’s our brain filling in the gaps to make it make sense?
Anneke Lucas:
Absolutely, and that was the perpetrator, of course, that’s mostly described in the book, which was a young gangster. He was 20 when I met him when I was 10. I had been in a network for four years back then, but before that, I was brought to the United States by a perpetrator who took me shopping on Madison Avenue. There too, nobody … Just because of the sheer power of this person, nobody would ever question him. Maybe now post-Jeffrey Epstein, I guess, maybe now people would ask questions. I don’t know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think we must all be guilty of some form of it. I think it’s almost like looking at our unconscious bias, this where do we turn a blind eye and how much can we change, and that’s why these conversations are really important so that we can have new information and stop filling in those gaps, I think, with information because we’re really filling it in with something that makes sense to us, not what makes sense in reality. We’re not able to stretch to the story that’s real because we can’t imagine it.
Anneke Lucas:
I think that has to do with us not being psychopaths.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Exactly. Actually, I had a therapist once say to me exactly that. If you could understand, then you would be like them and you can’t understand because you’re not like them, and that’s a good thing.
Anneke Lucas:
Part of that narcissism, that extreme narcissism is about getting away with things. That’s what the thrill of power is to be able to get away with things in front of people. So that was a lot of the game and then, of course, that we could never begin to imagine what is done behind closed doors and how systemic it is, how the whole power structure is influenced by those psychopaths. Everyone has these invitations to be greedy, has these invitations to abuse power as soon as you have it, and then when you get into steep power structures, you do get this same belonging means shutting up about things that are happening and often relating to sexual abuse. When we say corruption, well, it does work on blackmail.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Anneke Lucas:
You don’t get in on unless you are already so depraved. That’s to say that you keep making these choices as you climb in the power structure, in certain power structure, especially the toxic ones, but the nature of the structure is invites this power abuse. The system is very sick too that the closer you get, the more compromised you have to be, and that means every time making a choice against integrity, against personal integrity, and for power, for belonging. What I try to show is that all of that behavior is actually trauma-based, the depth of depravity of what it means to be a psychopath when nothing means anything anymore, and that means it’s just invitations to perpetrate from the position of power in every possible way, repeating your own trauma story from the place of power, which gives you a temporary sense of freedom.
Just like any addiction, you just get the relief for a moment and you feel free because you don’t have to carry that burden that was placed on you when you were traumatized, and you repeat that from the position of the perpetrator indefinitely and in greater … It’s symbolic. Let’s say maybe a child is being killed. For the person who kills that child or the people that are there, there is a symbolic death that occurs in terms of how they died inside. Now, they are actually killing a real child and it means nothing to them because they have lost all connection to the heart, and they have no awareness of an innate sense of right and wrong. So it’s like nothing means anything for these people.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The systemic piece of it is almost harder to imagine. If you read the book and you understand how compromised these people, what they need to do to get to where they’re part of this and that they’re so compromised, there’s no turning back from that.
Anneke Lucas:
That’s right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So even if they wanted to have some different experience, they’re not going to turn back from that. So it leads to a systemic response if other people are joining. So one of the things that I think a lot of us picture is you have the runaway who gets abducted or picked up and brought into sex slavery, sold either internationally or inner city, what have you. It is hard to imagine as a mother, but your mom decided she wanted to sell you into this pedophile ring. It couldn’t have just been for money.
Anneke Lucas:
No. We were not poor.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So when you look back, how do you think about how she would’ve come to that decision?
Anneke Lucas:
Well, it wasn’t a very conscious decision, that’s for sure, but it was rather that she was probably targeted, and I was targeted through her because of her mental health condition, which was never diagnosed, but I say she’s a psychopath.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. She meets criteria.
Anneke Lucas:
The female expression of that is often a woman who’s extremely fawning to all men. So she was very flirtatious, always like a little girl but a sexualized little girl. That’s how she acted to men everywhere. She would let herself get humiliated by men. Then whatever was on the other end of that, there was this incredible sense of revenge. She had power over me, and then I was her only victim-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because your brother wasn’t.
Anneke Lucas:
My brother was definitely not sold into the network, but my brother is my half brother, and my stepfather was looking out for him, but he was not looking out for me. So I think that she was targeted, my stepfather as well, who’s not often home, and also extremely, very much in denial and really wanting to belong to that powerful group, but my parents were actually never themselves in the network. I think my mother would’ve wanted to be. See, for my mother, they were both climbers. My stepfather and my mother, they both came from poor working class backgrounds in Europe. My stepfather was born before the war or they were both born before the Second World War. My stepfather fought in it. My mother was a child in it when there was starvation in the town. The war did a lot of damage in Europe, and that was palpable when I was growing up.
That trauma, that was never healed. There was no healing for it. There were no resources. You were considered crazy if you did any therapy. My mother’s what must be extensive sexual abuse certainly mixed with that war trauma and the love she certainly did not receive in her family. She wasn’t well. Because she acted like a little child, like a little girl, I think that we were targeted when we moved into that town, into that village, and then first had pimps, and then my mother took over from those pimps.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She would drive you to these places where the network was having orgies or other type of parties or sounded like some of them were just straight up almost brothels and leave you there sometimes for periods of time. Was any of that strange or surprising to you or by that time, were you so used to this and how old were you when this started?
Anneke Lucas:
So just finishing about my mother and her climbing and my stepfather’s climbing, so they really wanted to belong to these powerful people, which were aristocrats, politicians. So they really wanted to belong. My mother very much wanted to belong into that club, but she was never really invited in, but she did get paid. She did start abusing me from birth. We were alone at first, and then after she was married, I was four when she was married, and then at five, these pimps, this woman started cleaning her house. A year later, so this woman actually and her husband, they would take me for weekends. They would groom me. They would take me with other children who were not their children. Then just around my sixth birthday, they took me for the first time to an orgy, and then sometime later, my mother took me herself.
Now, surprising, let’s say that it was very difficult to live with my mother because her projection was complete. You could say whoever I am, was, there was no space for any of it. So with my mother, it was complete lie. I had to be this weak, bland, ugly little girl, and then I was good or I had to be evil and powerful, and then I was bad and there was nothing of me there. Now, in the network, as horrible as it was, sometimes there were little reflections from perpetrators that I could find myself, let’s say, that I had a reflection, which I guess children need these reflections for their emotional developments. So it was more positive sometimes, not always, in the network than with my mother. It was very hard to be around her.
So at a different personality, that came out for the network, sexualized, of course, and that was most of the time a little bit more comfortable in spite of the rapes. The rapes were there and there were horrific things happening, absolutely, but then there was also being seen, being found pretty, being seen as intelligent or whatever it was that was being mirrored that I also needed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yup, that you weren’t getting met. In some ways, it was more validating in a weird way than being at home. When did you first realize that children were being murdered or when did you first witness that?
Anneke Lucas:
The first time I was taken, I spoke out. So I was humiliated in some horrific … It was really … I’ve spoken about it before. It was in a castle, and it was very confusing because people were dressed like hippies, but these were aristocrats that were having a costumed ball, and they were dressed as hippies. So there they were experimenting with all the drugs, but there were waiters with silver platters with drugs on them going around, so not really a hippie situation there. It was formal, and yet everybody was completely high, LSD, I’m sure joints, but everything. People were very, very out of it, but I was abused on a stage in a sick S&M thing, but most people were so out of it they barely even noticed even though it was extreme, but for me, I went to a place where I felt that if I didn’t do something now I would die inside.
So with that no, with that inside no, an inner strength came that I didn’t feel mine. It didn’t feel like it was me, but I was just straightened up. I was righted by it, and I spoke out to everyone saying that they can’t do this to me and I’m going to make sure they all go to jail. People didn’t really even barely hear me or they were too out of it, but I needed to do that, but then afterwards, I was taken from there, and I don’t know where, if it was downstairs in that same castle or if I was taken someplace else, but the handler there, that was someone who was in charge of the children and organizing and who was himself a pedophile, he was the point of contact for the pimps that had taken me there. He took me separately to a basement and he led me inside and then showed me a body.
This was a young woman, but it was very clear. So he was acting very nonchalant like, “We don’t want anything to happen to you,” and it was just about because I said I was going to tell on them, and he didn’t want me to tell on them, so I had to keep the secret. So right away, I was confronted with their practices, let’s say.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were six?
Anneke Lucas:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I have two six year olds. It’s just really unimaginable. When you realized that your life was in danger, did you start to act differently?
Anneke Lucas:
Well, I was already very traumatized. The truth is that the first three years of my life, even though I was being traumatized by my mother, abused by my mother, I also had a caretaker who was very loving, which was in Brussels. So I had a mother, let’s say the first three years. So after my mother got married and we moved to Flanders, I got very sad. Again, no reflection anywhere. I had had that reflection from that wonderful lady, and then I didn’t, and then there was nothing or there were people that were nice here and there, but I didn’t really have that one person that I could trust.
So I was already very sad and careful also. I had been groomed by those pimps also. After that threat, I still wanted to tell and I tried. I had threatened to tell my stepfather because he was the mayor of our little town, and I thought, “Well, I could tell my mother,” but also, it’s not like I had any words to describe even what happened. There was no vocabulary as a six-year-old, but I did tell my mother that bad things had happened, and then she took over. From my pimps, she became my own pimp. She actually got a car. She didn’t have a car before. She didn’t have a driver’s license. She didn’t know how to drive. She got her driver’s license without having to take a driver’s test because my stepfather was the mayor. So she was very proud that she could do that. So she couldn’t drive. She used that to drive me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What were the people like in the network? Obviously, they had power. Many people are going to picture monsters, right? That’s what you can imagine, but they were all people, ultimately. What do the people who participate in this look like?
Anneke Lucas:
Well, I think energetically I would say all of them are quite cold and arrogant. That would be the main thing that sets them apart. No heart, no genuine reactions, very intelligent. So the network was a mix of depraved aristocracy, which I felt that they’ve been doing this for thousands of years, and this was what they do, and this is also indoctrinated into the families so that the children, they expose their own children to sexual abuse. Sexual abuse and incest is normalized in those circles.
Then there were people in certain positions of power. So there would be the attorney general and another minister and judges and clergy, the cardinal. Man, I didn’t know any of this. I just recognized them later. I didn’t know any of these people. I didn’t know that they were powerful. I just had all the feelings and the fear and the fear that comes with being or seeing the dark side of power, seeing what they do to maintain that position, let’s say. That was the fear I had. It’s not awe, but it’s something like that, but it’s completely rooted in fear.
They’re not normal. They’re popular. They have a big front. They’re all white, and they have very good … Their image is spotless, but it is an image whether they are … So I’m talking now about the Belgian network, but then there was the international network that I was also in for a short while, for a year. I was in the network from ’69 to ’74 in Belgium. Then from ’72 to ’73, I was taken into this international network.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were all of the people involved in this interested in the torture and killing aspect? I think everybody on the planet’s pretty familiar with pedophiles, people who are attracted to prepubescent children. The pedophile ring that the network that you were a part of had a key addition to it, which was this torture and murder aspect of it, which was another unique piece of it, I think. Was that a requirement?
Anneke Lucas:
Well, let me first address something that you said because the pedophiles are, to me, anyone who engages in any activity, sexual activity involving children. That’s the same minors, not specific to prepubescent children. I don’t want to separate the two out because that seems to me a ploy to make it easier to not think of those people that are attracted to 12-year-olds, and 13-year-olds, and 14-year-olds. Those men are also pedophiles, except that these people never thought of themselves pedophiles, but they all were because they didn’t only have sex with children or rape children, they were just very addicted in general.
The power addiction, again, there’s a triage that happens all the time. So within that, when I was talking about it being systemic, it’s like a club just at the very top levels of these secret societies, and most of what the secret societies are is just really benefiting the communities, except that they are sworn to secrecy in really crazy ways. The purpose of that, the reason for that secrecy really is only revealed at the top levels, which is always only by invitation. That’s to say there’s always a triage going on, and it’s only people that are the right profile that will be invited into the top levels that are corruptible.
So someone who has already been sexually abused and has a ton to prove they’re corruptible, they will be tested in certain ways, and then they will be titrated more and more deeply into what is then first pedophilia, and then it goes maybe to sacrifice maybe an animal, but these people are profiled. It’s those who have the least qualms, who are the most psychopaths, who have these tendencies already that will very quickly join and then reap the benefits because, of course, they do control a lot, and the rewards are real in the world. Now, spiritually, that’s a whole other matter, but in the world, the benefits are there. So to have integrity and to say no when you’re confronted with a child, then you’re out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So when we talk about human sacrifice, there’s several instances in your book, some of which people want the details of that can go and read the book. I will touch on them peripherally, which is where children were killed, whether that was shot or had to be eliminate, it seemed to me that was almost like a protocol. Either this person was no longer of use, they’re expendable as you call it or maybe they were concerned about the information getting out to the public or whatever it was that you couldn’t have this many. Was there a religious aspect to it because that part I didn’t either hear or understand of when you say sacrifice, it’s for someone else, right? What was that about?
Anneke Lucas:
So in Belgium, in the Belgium network, at the time that I was using it from ’69 to ’74, they were not religious satanists, no, but you had people that were completely sadistic-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right? Yes. That’s-
Anneke Lucas:
… that would kill children. So they were given children to kill.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That they paid for them, right?
Anneke Lucas:
I don’t know if they paid for them or not. Some of these people were there from aristocratic families, very, very old bloodlines. I don’t know if they paid or not. I don’t know their internal. I could usually tell who was more powerful than the next, but I try to stay away from those people as much as I could. I wasn’t always successful, which is why I was exposed to some things, but when I was in the international at nine years old, I was given, gifted really, to this powerful international networker who had a global profile, and suddenly that person decided that I was going to be his, and that involved a whole other level of indoctrination, and it also included that this person was what I call sincere satanist. That’s to say sacrificing for Satan to have the power. It’s a clear cut deal in a way except not as clear cut, not clear cut in that, but yes, they sold their soul. It was that, but they all were part of this satanic circle. It was religious because they had these kinds of festivities, let’s say, which were horrific, but I’ve read a book about Dionysian orgies, and it was like that in-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Tell us about. I’m unfamiliar.
Anneke Lucas:
So the Dionysian orgies in ancient Greek time, I believe that humans were sacrificed as well, but it’s these crazy orgies that go on for days. So people went completely wild for, again, those very messed up, traumatized beings that are in the network. They can just unload all their burdens in that during that time, but in the atmosphere, even though horrific things happen, there is a sense of togetherness even as-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Comradery?
Anneke Lucas:
It’s more than that. It feels it’s the replacement of spiritual feeling of togetherness, and it does come with a whole set of beliefs that they adhere to. Of course, for all intents and purposes, they’re saying, “Well, see, it’s working,” because they do have the power.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Technically, I guess, that means it is working for them.
Anneke Lucas:
Well, it is working for them on that material level, as I say, and then they have this religious experience, I believe, in these horrendous moments, in these moments that if we were to view that, we would say, “This is absolutely barbaric,” but yet you know that image of the Nazi who can kill someone horrendously and then listen to classical music? It’s like that their senses are, in one way, very refined and their intelligence is extremely sharp, but their own lack of access to their own heart turns them into monsters, and even that they need that high, but it’s all highs, and it’s all the experiences. I think, ultimately, it’s the freedom from the burden that is placed on them during the trauma. That’s how I always saw it from a psychological perspective.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you think that they did things and kept things so unbelievable that even if people spoke out that they were going to be mocked? Because you hear about the Illuminati and these are things that are in everyday parlance would be called conspiracy theories. So in many ways, do they do things that make it easy for someone coming out and talking about it to say, “Well, she’s obviously believes X, Y, Z”?
Anneke Lucas:
Yeah. So that’s of course a very common tactic is that anyone who’s a whistleblower is going to be considered crazy. A lot of survivors also end up in psychiatry and then, of course, then they’re completely labeled mentally unwell and so forth, while in fact they’re having memories and they’re being pushed into psychosis. I am called … I don’t think you can call me a conspiracy theorist because I’m not a theorist=, I’m speaking of my experience, but I have been called crazy. I have been called a liar and so forth, but my personal level and my indoctrination and my abuse was all about making sure I would not speak, that I would not speak to anyone, and the threat was if I ever spoke to anyone, they would always find out, it would all get back to them. They would punish not just me, but only also the person that I would tell. So they always made it this very close circle, there is no way out, you will always remain helpless, there is nothing for you to do, you can never speak about it. So their secret is extremely well protected.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you think made the difference between the children, one of which was your yourself who survived, and the ones that didn’t?
Anneke Lucas:
I don’t think there’s any difference, but-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Just luck?
Anneke Lucas:
Yeah. We were all survivors till we weren’t.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was the healing process like? Where did it start? What was the first movement towards healing for you? Obviously, after not being abused would probably be step one, but beyond that, what was the first movement towards healing?
Anneke Lucas:
So I do describe in the book the rescue, my rescue at age 11 with those very precise instructions that were given to me then, which I followed, and those first saved my life. Being told never to become a prostitute, that saved me because at 16 years old, I was actually in the Red District in Antwerp, and I would’ve just become a prostitute there, and then maybe died soon after. I don’t know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think for the listeners who haven’t read the book to clarify was you, and this is so much of your life is this dichotomy as I’ve read it, which is your rescuer was also a perpetrator. A rescue feels like a benevolent action, right?
Anneke Lucas:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So when you describe a rescue, I’m thinking of a liberation, I’m thinking that we come in, we pull you out of a hole or whatever, but your rescue was not like that. It was still self-serving in some ways, your instructions from your perpetrator. So why don’t you take us through the rescue because I think this story is really interesting, and it’s a great analogy for all of things that happened in your life where people were both good and evil all at the same time?
Anneke Lucas:
Right. That gangster is definitely someone who killed a lot of people and talked about it, talked about liking that. The first time I appealed to him a year earlier was when I went against him and he was impressed by that. He liked that, in fact, and he had shared with me when he was killing people that he would put a gun to their heads because he said it puts you in touch with the truth of that person, they reveal their truth. Then when he had them in that situation, he started showing his disgust, but basically would be someone trying to survive their weakness in that moment of what he calls them betraying their friends, and then he would shoot them, and then he would feel this peace, this quiet afterwards. Then he eventually told me his own trauma as a boy-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
His father, right?
Anneke Lucas:
… which his father put a gun to his head, treat him as that traitor, except it was completely convoluted because it wasn’t that situation, it wasn’t the truth. It was that father’s insanity who felt betrayed by his son when he found him in bed with his wife. So he felt the son who he was raping was betraying him rather than the wife. So crazy. So that trauma, that was his trauma, and he repeated that his whole life, and he killed people from that place of that boy feeling so ashamed and such a traitor in that moment where there was no redemption for that boy, but he liked my strength and he liked that I went against him. In the end, I was going to be killed because of him, because he had dropped me. When that started and when I was being tortured in front of him by someone else, but he was there to see it, when that began, he laughed, and I defied him.
Once again, I had the strength that came, doesn’t feel like me. It just came from the depths, and it felt like a spiritual strength and I thought, “I don’t need you. No.” There was, again, this, “No,” and that completely confused him because there, again, he’s confronted with what he felt was his weakness, and he is seeing this strength. I think when people see that strength and someone gives them hope, so he set out to rescue me, and he went, and then while I was being tortured, he went, negotiated for my life to get me out, which was something that eventually did cost him his life. It was a good deed. It was selfless in that moment. It cost him his life.
When he took me home with those instructions and he told me his whole story that I was able to piece together then later on, I feel that symbolically he gave me his story and his innocent child self to be redeemed because I had that strength, that spiritual strength that he felt he lacked. So he was selfless in that moment and maybe the only moment in his life that he was selfless, but it was selfless.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
His instructions to you, will you take us through those?
Anneke Lucas:
Yeah, sure. So it was never become a prostitute, never sleep with anyone for money, never buy drugs. You can take them, but only if they’re given to you, and you can never do anything to get them. Don’t become an alcoholic. You can have one or two glasses of wine at night. Never drink more than that, though it was very clear. He said, I should forget everything, forget him, and never speak of the network. Never do it. I should marry. I should find someone my age, not an older man who made his own fortune, but someone my age from a wealthy family, preferably a family of New York bankers, and that’s how I should marry. These instructions did become my parent and eventually put me in a situation long before the marriage, but I did end up marrying that profile of that man.
That’s why I could go to therapy. I had that privilege then to heal because it is a privilege to be able to spend. I needed all the time. I really felt like I needed a lot more time because it’s so heavy, so hard to feel that all the repressed emotions of all that horror, all that pain, that grief, oh, the horror, the grief for the other children, the grief for all the pain that was dumped on me that I was also everything, feeling all that pain. Once I started opening that box, oh, boy.
Now, there were always these points of light to keep me going. There was always some awareness. The integration process is beautiful and magical, and so I felt myself change and transform and grow, and that was definitely worth it, but it certainly was just hanging by a bare thread in terms of the progress many times, whereas the overwhelm of the darkness was very, very heavy to bear, but I could do it because of these instructions ultimately.
I started remembering things in the ’80s. I had flashbacks in the ’80s. I had really no context for any of it. I had suicide programming as well. So it wasn’t really settling. Then I really didn’t have a therapist for a long time that I was in therapy, but I didn’t really have a therapist who could handle it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was going to be my next question was, how do you, for that exact reason, how do you find clinicians? Do you have to find specialty clinicians to manage the healing?
Anneke Lucas:
The more specialty they had, the worse they were. That was my experience. The more they were expert in dealing with sexual abuse, the worse they were because the more their ego was involved and the more they needed to be needed, and the more they needed me to be their little victim client. No. I found someone who was open. All I needed was someone who was going to be there for me, with me. In the beginning, it was really important that she was not going to write a book, that my story was not going to be in any kind of book, that she was going to get the credit. No. Ten years of being with therapists who couldn’t really hold it, couldn’t handle it, and then some that projected onto me, others that it just was clear that there was this invisible wall where we could not thread others that just told me they didn’t believe me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s what they said, “I just don’t believe what you’re saying”? What did that feel like to not be believed?
Anneke Lucas:
Well, at that point, I knew. So I thought, “That’s a really bad therapist.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, yeah, there you go, there you go.
Anneke Lucas:
Yeah, no, in many ways, there was always this guilt complex that came back, guilt complex, also very much induced by not only the trauma, but also all the mind control. That is, at the end of the day, everything has to be my fault, and at the end of the day, I’m too much, it’s my problem. That was always the message. The invisible wall was, in a way, the hardest because I didn’t even try to say anything, but I knew I couldn’t go there. That was this unspoken contract. In our dynamic, she was going to help with the sexual abuse, the incest, but not with the mother, not with anything more severe.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. There were rules.
Anneke Lucas:
Yeah, and they had to remain unspoken, and that was hard. That was very hard because it left me. I knew there was more, but I thought it was my problem. Originally, it’s always my problem.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You’re back to square one with that. What kind of therapies did you do? Obviously, talk therapy was a part … Did you do any other? Did you do EMDR? Have you tried any novel approaches that work or are you seeing novel approaches work?
Anneke Lucas:
Yes. So for me, it was never the approach or the system. It was always the person. What worked for me was when a person was fully present with me when they were open, and it didn’t matter what they did. So most of it was psychotherapy. I had some hypnotherapy as well to help me. That was together with a therapist who wanted to help uncover instances of sexual trauma, but she was the one who was not open to the ritual or any kind of the organized abuse. So I ended up remembering things that were connected to the organized abuse, but not itself, the organized abuse like the pimp who had also raped me, and then something that was a little bit on the side of it. There was a rape that was not really directly these three boys. It was connected to the network, but it was not in the network so I remember that. I remembered another instance of incest, but it was always the person, the person that helped me to feel not only safe, but also that there was room for anything, and that was rare.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You have to have someone who’s done their own work.
Anneke Lucas:
Yes, exactly. My therapist who became like the second mother, who was that person, who had no knowledge of any of this, had never heard of it, but she was open. So that’s where I had the most difficult, let’s say, the first memories of these horrors, and she could hold it. I was going every day by then. Then I had yoga. Well, forget about how yoga’s taught. That was really unhelpful. Most of the time I was like, “Don’t touch.” Whatever it was, it was not working in terms of the way that it was taught. So when I started going into the prisons to teach yoga there and have this … When I was creating that organization that I ended up going into the prisons with, it was really important that I was not going to do what was done to me.
So I started to develop what is really the unconditional model is a way to be as a provider so that you can be that person that people feel safe with, and often a good-hearted person is already there, but there there’s ways in which we are taught to hold space that are often not helpful. So it just addresses all of these ways, all of the ways in which you do the work on yourself, but it’s in this context of changing the world, of changing the world by changing yourself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you go into the prison and you’re teaching yoga, I know for me yoga is an incredible way to get into your body, to experience your body in a meditative way. That was my experience too. I still struggle to be in my body. So I would imagine it’s a fantastic thing to bring to prisons and also to bring to people in prison have trauma. So I suppose those are one and the same. Since you’ve been bringing yoga into the prisons, have you come in contact with anybody who’s had similar experiences to you or who sought you out because they knew they’d be believed?
Anneke Lucas:
Oh, absolutely, yeah. That was part of the draw for me, anyway, because in my day-to-day life, I wasn’t really coming in contact with people so much with this extreme trauma. Even though I was in 12-step groups for survivors of incest at the time, I’d had a lot of healing. Yoga brought me back into my body. That’s really what it did, so powerful in that way, but then again, so many obstacles in the way that I was taught, but I knew that it was helpful and I wanted to share it in that way.
So very soon after I started going into the jails, we went into jails, prisons, state prisons, federal prisons all over New York. Soon after I had started teaching at Rikers Island, I started a group for sex trafficked women. Well, a lot of those women, and the reason I started that particular program was, together with the Department of Health, in fact, was that the women were caught, they were picked up by the police, and then they were jailed, but they were only picked up because they were refusing to name their traffickers, really, or their pimps.
So the Department of Health was saying that, obviously, they don’t trust doctors. They don’t trust most people. So I started a program with those women to help them get out of the system altogether. There was not a single woman there that was just a sex worker because she wanted to do that. They were all abused as children. So many had started to be trafficked right from the foster system. So they were all trafficking victims. That was a very powerful group. The healing that happened there was so beautiful and powerful, and people did feel strengthened to speak out and got into programs where they were protected because, of course, the reason they don’t give these names is because they are going to be killed if they do or they are going to be punished severely. Several of them went into safe programs where they did well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s amazing. I’m sure that felt really good.
Anneke Lucas:
Felt great, and still, even though their experiences were often extreme, it still wasn’t the same. It still wasn’t Satanic ritual abuse. I always knew that I was going to be working more with those people. I guess once I started to speak out, which was while I was also going into the prisons, I started to speak out publicly, and then that is how people started coming to me, and soon after, and I still have this group, a chat group, really, for survivors of SRA, which is Satanic Ritual Abuse, a private chat group, for example. I run that and, of course I do a lot in that sphere now. Today, I’m not in the prisons anymore. Most of the people that I see that I counsel are survivors of this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What are some of the resources out there for people who either have been through this and want to talk about it or maybe are trying to get out and have no idea where to go, where to start, what to do?
Anneke Lucas:
Well, to get out is absolutely very difficult, and it just is, but I have on my website, it’s annekelucas.com, there is a resource page. So there’s quite a few resources right there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For people who are interested, where can they find your book?
Anneke Lucas:
So my book is on Amazon, although it’s best also to go to my website. It’s right on the homepage, but also a special book link for every country because it’s on Amazon, but supposedly, you cannot find it when you look for it on Amazon in the all category. You have to go to the book category and then search it because if you just go and do a general search on Amazon, it just doesn’t show up or only the Kindle version shows up, but not the book.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, you’re incredible. Your story is incredible. I think that it brings us to this place where we get to look at what is and not what we want things to be necessarily, and then how we can contribute even when it feels too big for us to be a part of. If you open your eyes about this, maybe there’ll be an opportunity for you to be of service to people, and that’s what I’m hearing is there may be an opportunity for all of us to be of service. We just have to be open.
Anneke Lucas:
Yes, to be open. In a way, the reason that I can feel some compassion for those psychopaths that are still operative is because they have no access to their own soul. They have no access to spirits at all. It’s like they’ve cut off a part of themselves or it’s that they’ve been pushed outside of themselves, if that makes sense. There’s the material self, the body, the physical body, and then everything is done to keep that body comfortable and to keep that as that person to have that power in the world because what’s lacking is spirit, and this is not religion, but spirit.
When we turn to within, we go within, when we have the strength to go within, there is this natural connection to spirit that happens. I think you can’t go within unless you have some connection to spirit. So it is a battle, a spiritual battle in that sense that through experience and knowing ourselves as more than the body, that we can find what it is that we can do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I’m very, very grateful to you that you chose to speak out and were willing to come and talk to me about this. I really, really appreciate it, and I hope that your journey continues to be as powerful and rewarding as it has been to this point.
Anneke Lucas:
Thank you very much.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you.
I don’t even know how to start this.
Scott Drochelman:
This is one that, well, you and I would, just to bring everybody in, we had a lot of discussions about this one because it’s extremely dark. I described it as many dark things as I could possibly put into a single life existence almost. It’s like the betrayal of being sold into prostitution from your mother.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
At five.
Scott Drochelman:
Yes, and the obvious pieces of the constant rape that’s happening to you, the torture. The scale and-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Starvation.
Scott Drochelman:
Starvation, child murder, literally, it’s so horrible that it’s hard to comprehend. We tried to be really, really careful. We gave you 5% of what it is, and if you want the whole thing, you’re welcome to read her book where she talks about everything, but it’s unbelievable evil. The reason that we felt like it was important to bring the story is because this feels like about as dark of place as a person could be, and to be able to find healing, find people that can hold the story the way that she described it that could offer her some level of peace or healing or love or the things that she’s doing for people who are in similar circumstances is unbelievable.
So at the end of the day, that was the choice that we made is that we felt like this story, we wanted to be really careful about what we’re portraying, that this is not about a crazy story that we’re just doing for shock value, but instead, it’s truly about an unbelievable, evil, and horrible things happening to a person, and the potential, the human potential for some level of healing, some level of peace, some level of good that could potentially come out of something like this. So that’s why we chose to do this episode, but it’s hard. You took a lot of the brunt of it reading her book and getting the full dose because it’s a lot. It’s a lot.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I read the book in one go, meaning I sat down and read it from cover to cover. So when we say, “Oh, pedophile ring, child murdering, pedophile ring,” that may sound salacious. It’s not. As it relates to this story, that is a description of what happened to her. We actually decided to leave out a lot of the really clickbaity, salacious things that happened to her because I don’t and Scott does not want to trigger people to the point of having some of this stuff burned in your mind, but that being said, if you want the full story, it’s in her book, and it’s really unimaginable.
Really, I was telling Scott how it’s like a horror sci-fi that my brain is still trying to wrap its mind around. Ultimately, the value in the story, the amazing part of the story is this woman who has no reason to trust anyone or anything, could give any reason to give up on life, on love, on relationships, and on a decent human experience and she didn’t. When you talk to her, you can feel her resistance to the belief of all things are bad and evil and only evil. You can feel that she truly believes in goodness and is part of goodness and chooses goodness despite what was shown to her, and maybe it’s because of what was shown to her. That sounds so amorphous goodness, but I don’t know any other way to describe it.
Scott Drochelman:
I think there’s this thing that really stands out to me, which is when she’s talking about her healing, she’s just talking about how many people couldn’t hold this for her, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How many clinicians.
Scott Drochelman:
How many clinicians, how many people who this is their job and they couldn’t hold this for her, and just thinking about how important it can be sometimes for people to be willing to hold a horrible thing alongside them. We’re trying to save ourselves from that in some way, and we are only hearing about it. We didn’t have to experience any of this. We weren’t there with her, and still, it’s so nefarious, it’s so dark that we don’t want to hold onto it. I think trying to be in people’s lives, the person that can hold things, and again, that doesn’t mean you have to open yourself up to everybody and everything, but to be that person for somebody, what an incredible thing that can be. What a gift that can be for somebody to be just the one who holds it with them because, otherwise, they’re left there holding it all by themselves.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think you have to be careful having heard a lot of really horrifying stories, some of which will never leave my psyche. From 20 years ago. I have things that will just never leave my psyche for whatever reason. I think there is a positive self-awareness that is useful and says, “I cannot handle this,” or, “I cannot hear this,” or, “I cannot hold …” and I think that’s the problem is that people’s, and she was saying that the ego, the importance of their inability to hold it because they think they can. I think a lot of clinicians would try and not be able to maybe because it touches on their experience in some way or they have kids.
What she’s talking about, there was a moment where she said she was six in the conversation, and I just paused there because she’s six and my kids are six, and I’m thinking about them in this situation like, “Just how young that …” and I could see a clinician not being able to do that or someone not being able to do that. I do think that you’re probably doing more harm than good creating another person in their life who couldn’t handle it.
Scott Drochelman:
I want to clarify. I’m not saying you might not be the person to hold this, but I think I’m just speaking in terms more generally about, not that you take on everybody’s pain, not that you’re just like this sponge that just absorbs all of it, but-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Pain sponge?
Scott Drochelman:
Pain sponge, you’re familiar? You’re familiar with those?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I’m familiar, I’m familiar.
Scott Drochelman:
It’s an infomercial.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Scott Drochelman:
Right, but being the kind of person that maybe even if you can’t hold all of it, but just sometimes holding a piece for somebody because-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What does that mean to you because that sounds like clinical speak to a lot of people?
Scott Drochelman:
Sometimes I think it’s just as simple as hearing a part of a story and just listening and not trying to … I think it’s so common for people to hear a story and then they try to put a bandaid on it or they try to put a spin on it or they try to heal the person right away when they hear that thing or they try to … Worst of all, they try to put some blame on the person or whatever, and it’s like all these devices that are like, “Ooh, this is uncomfortable for me. Let me give it back to you somehow.” I know for me, some of the things that I have just told someone and all they did was just listened and they just sat there with me and they sat there with me while I cried and I just fell apart, and they didn’t say all the things I was worried they were going to say, it’s an incredibly powerful thing to just not have to hold it all by yourself.
The things for me are nothing on that scale, nothing, but I can tell you that when somebody is willing to, even a percentage, even a piece or whatever, and you don’t have to be the sole owner of that anymore or to her perspective, all the things that she had come to believe about herself because she had to just sit with it alone and the only people who knew about it were her perpetrators. There are stories that then get told to yourself over and over and over. So again, I hear exactly where you’re coming from, and I don’t want somebody to just open themselves up to all of the difficulties of life and everything, but I can say that just the ability to hold it, even just a percentage, can mean so much and can be the difference between someone feeling completely alone in the world and someone feeling like, “Okay, at least there’s one person who knows and it hasn’t changed the way that they think about me.” Just that validation, just that is an incredibly powerful and I think important step for a lot of people who are trying to heal from something.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think something my best friend taught me to do is say, “Are you looking for feedback or do you want me to just listen?” They might not work in every situation, but I was one of those people who felt like if you told me something you were asking me to solve your problem, and I would just grow into Ashley logical brain solve problem, blah, blah, blah, I’ll do these things, and she would tell me, “I just need you to listen.” Truly had no idea. To me, that’s so unhelpful. In my head, this is in my head, I’m like, “Gosh, you just want me … Okay. Fine, but I have the solution, so do you want that?” Sometimes people just want you to listen. As someone who doesn’t always know that because it’s not really how I am, that was a very helpful tool that has helped me figure … It has helped me more intuitively understand what people need as well just by asking and reading people, “Oh, yeah, okay. This is one of those times.”
Scott Drochelman:
So that was a really intense one. Goes without saying, we hope that after this is over or when you find yourself with an opportunity that you do something nice for yourself, we’re with you this week. Whatever you’re going through, we’re rooting for you and we know that you can get through it. Ashley, anything you want to leave the people with?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. Please go and check out Anneke’s website. The website is A-N-N-E-K-E, Lucas, LUCAS, dot com. She has workshops. You can work with her and support her, all resources for people who are struggling in this area or know someone, and of course, her book, Quest for Love: Memoir of a Child Sex Slave.
Thank you for trusting us to bring you stories that are simultaneously difficult to listen to but also educational and thought-provoking. I hope you experience Anneke’s light the same way that Scott and I did and that this podcast is a net positive for you. Please feel free to reach out to us, podcast@lionrock.life. We will answer. We will respond. Thank you so much and we will see you next week.
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