This Billionaire Girl Boss STOLE Someone's Life Story

A memoir by Amy Griffin. She's a financial visionary. In her new memoir, The Tell, Amy confronts her painful past and unravels a secret. A >> lawsuit has been filed against Amy Griffin, >> a woman who says she is a previous classmate who is named as a Jane Doe. In the lawsuit claims that Griffin's memoir, The Tell, is not based on Griffin's life events, but rather her own. This video contains detailed discussion of childhood essay, MMA assisted therapy, and a civil lawsuit involving allegations of misappropriation of essay and a survivor story. Viewer and listener discretion is advised. In March of 2025, a book landed on shelves and immediately ignited buzz amongst society's top ranks. It was called The Tell. It was written by Amy Griffin, the girl boss who funds the girl bosses we know and both love and hate. The girl boss in the shadows who for decades decided which womanowned ventures would get the funding to succeed. Amy Griffin is a venture capitalist, co-founder of G9 Ventures, close friend of Reese Witherspoon, Gwennneth Paltro, Oprah Winfrey, a woman Forbes and Time would both recognize within the same year. But one day, after funding so many women led ventures, she decided it was time to tell her own story. And that was when she came out with the book The Tell. >> The book saved my life. The book was the way through for me. >> The book was a memoir. In it, Amy described something she said she'd buried so deeply she didn't know it was there. Memories of SA she'd suffered at the hands of a teacher when she was only in middle school. Memories said she recovered decades later through MMA assisted therapy. childhood memories about deep childhood trauma >> that I've had to trust in myself to accept. This was shocking to the world of highclass elites in which Amy resided within, who all read and promoted her book. A billionaire businesswoman who endured such horrific trauma buried in the recesses of her mind and resurfaced through experimental drugs. Such a salacious story usually made for gossip at exclusive dinner tables, but Amy was deciding to share this story on her own terms. The week it debuted, The Tell New York Times non-fiction bestseller list. It sold over a 100,000 copies. Oprah called it an act of courage. Reese Witherspoon called Amy her best friend. the courage it took to put this in writing and to then offer it to the world. You should be very proud of yourself. >> Amy was celebrated in the high class circles. I mean, she had made so many of these women incredibly rich and now she was vulnerably and honestly telling her own story. Of course, they were going to help her share her truth. But what if it wasn't? 6 months after the release of the tell, a woman in California picked up a copy of the book, a copy that had been mailed to her by a New York Times reporter. She read it. According to court documents filed in LA County in March of 2026, the woman was, in the language of her own lawsuit, deeply unnerved because the story in the book she alleged was her own story. A woman who says she is a previous classmate who is named as a Jane Doe in the lawsuit claims that Griffin's memoir, The Tell, is not based on Griffin's life events, but rather her own. >> So, let's talk about Amy Griffin. The Tell and the many things left untold. My name is Madison Harish. You're watching the YouTube channel Cruel World Happy Mind. If you like this video, don't forget to give it a like, leave a comment on coverage you'd like me to do, and subscribe if you like this sort of content. And now, let's get into it. And I chose this book because I am so proud of you. I'm proud of you for having the courage to speak your truth. And I know that your truth is going to liberate so many people. >> I had been for many years a bathroom. assault memoir, The Tell, based it on attacks that actually happened to her friend. >> Uh, it launched her instantly to goddess status. >> M Do asserts that both attacks actually happened to her. >> Except it seems that she lied. >> I'm able to share my truth and it's so freeing to do so. >> Uh, the tell should have been called the steel. She has committed a moral injury and not just against these people but against every survivor of childhood. This is a rich woman. $6 billion they're worth. Amy eventually married hedge fund titan John Griffin in May of 2003. Once settled into a life of highclass wealth and decadence, Amy reinvented herself, emerging as a master of the girl boss brand. She is the girl boss. She's the founder and managing partner of G9 Ventures. >> She's a financial visionary supporting female founders of iconic brands like Goop, Bumble, Spanx, and Hello Sunshine. >> But the book she wrote and her story dives into her life before her reinvention. Amy Griffin appeared to have it all. The billionaire status, the powerhouse venture firm G9 Ventures, a client list featuring Spanx, Bumble, On Westman, Italier, Hello Sunshine, Aura, Goop, incredibly successful brands that she helped fund and bring them to the status that they are now. Her role in so many of your favorite brands is invaluable. Um, you're like a real champion of female founders. >> You have invested her own money. uh this isn't other people's money. This is her own money. >> And even the brands that I support today, it's always who are we serving? What is the greater good of this product? Is it going to last for the next do I want to be involved in 10 years? How are we going to make people happy with it? Am I happy with it? >> Yeah. >> It didn't seem like Amy's upbringing was far off from perfect either. Amy grew up in Amarillo, Texas, the Texas panhandle. Flat, wide, windswept. She was born into the small town toin totem convenience store dynasty. In the tell Amy describes her childhood as free. There was space, there was sky, and there was her family's business, the two chain of convenience stores, which her grandmother had grown from a single location to nearly 30 across the city. Another successful businesswoman, which means that Amy and her family had become welloff. Big fish in the small pond of Amarillo, Texas. I had this incredible life um of growing up in a small panhandle town called a town called Amarillo in an incredible community. >> Amarillo, Texas. >> Amarillo, Texas. I'm so grateful for and I have inc wonderful parents and siblings. But I grew up in this family where I had a I had a girl boss. I had a girl boss for a grandmother. And I watched this grand my grandmother who was a single mother of her of to my father and she went to the office every single day and she was solving problems. She was solving problems, real world problems. >> It started from just one woman and her husband and how he passed away and then she kind of just had to figure things out on her own and a really tough time for women back then. And then just the success that it's gotten to today. That's what you want. You want to grow and you want to build. And the fact that all of that started just from her is just really inspiring to me. And Amy wrote that her family chain was a big presence in a small town. Her family still owns the Totin Totem chain, which just won an award in their area for being the best chain of the year. Amy was the eldest of four siblings and had a relentless drive to be perfect for her family, her community. Maybe it was just a part of who she was. Eldest child problems. Am I right? Amy ran long distances, often alone. And that habit she wrote followed her far into adulthood. She excelled. She was popular. She was by many accounts naturally a leader. In the late 1980s, Amy attended a middle school in her hometown of Amarillo, Texas. And at some point during middle school, according to the tell, something happened to Amy that she wouldn't fully remember for more than 30 years. A teacher at the school allegedly used Amy multiple times while she was a student and one more time when she was 16 years old. >> There are millions. Thank you for being millions who are watching us who don't know what the secret is. So can you tell them what is the secret that you discovered? >> Yes. Well, the secret that I discovered was the idea that I had been for many years in a school bathroom by a teacher. >> Okay. So, you were abused by your middle school teacher for multiple years, even into high school, but you did not have a memory of it until much later in life. >> Amy describes noticing a classmate, a girl that she calls Claudia in the book. Claudia had blue eyes and blunt cut bangs. Her home life, Amy writes, was turbulent. A few weeks before Catillan, Amy learned that Claudia didn't have a dress to wear. So Amy lent her one. It was a floral dress with puffy sleeves. Amy watched Claudia walk into the dance looking beautiful. But she watched something cloud behind Claudia's eyes. She suspected something had happened to her. A shared trauma between two young girls with two completely different backgrounds. These are the opening pages of the tell. By page 26, Amy has already introduced Claudia. The dress, the dance, and this silent shared knowledge that she suspected hung between them. It's a devastating setup, but it's also, according to a civil lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County, the story of a real woman who never gave Amy Griffin permission to tell it. >> Lawsuit has been filed against Amy Griffin, Amarillo native and New York Times best-selling author. Invasion of privacy, publication of private facts, intentional and neglect, infliction of emotional distress. These are just a few of the complaints listed in the lawsuit filed by Jane Doe against Griffith, an alleged ghostriter and the publishing corporation. Was this the story of two young girls with completely different childhoods who ended up sharing a dark and disturbing secret that marked their entire lives, no matter how different they were from one another? Or is something else going on here? Let's tell the story of Amy Griffin and the tell. Before we get into the lawsuit and everything that transpired with the book, The Tell, it's important to understand who Amy Griffin became. the girl boss business empire that she built. After growing up in Amarillo, Amy attended college and eventually landed a job in marketing at Sports Illustrated magazine in New York. A successful, accomplished woman in her own right, she was in her mid20s and building a career in media. By May of 2003, she married hedge fund manager John Griffin, a man who was running a huge company called Blue Ridge Capital. John Griffin was not a minor figure, especially in the New York finance world. He was 12 years older than Amy and already successful, already very powerful. People that don't know her husband, he is the I mean just an extraordinary and I and I call him Hot John. >> You'll love this if it makes it hot John. But I will say the reason I call him Hot John is yes, he's hot. I think he's good-looking, but he has just this light within him. And if you know him, he just you just want to sit next to him. You want to talk to him. He's just this bigger than life. He founded Blueridge Capital, which was a hedge fund that at its peak managed approximately $6 billion in assets, according to routers. After closing down Blue Ridge Capital, John teaches investment strategies at UVA and Colombia Business School. He also sits on the board of the New York City organization Robin Hood and is the founding chair and board member of I mentor which connects lowincome high school students in New York City with mentors. But one of the main things that Jon occupies his time with is John is now also a major investor in MAPS which will become an important part of this story. The way that maps is working towards reintroducing psychedelics as a therapeutic option is perfectly situated within Silicon Valley. >> After John shuttered Blue Ridge in 2017 after 21 years, he became one of the most respected names in finance. At the time when Jon and Amy married, she had just left her job as a marketing manager in Sports Illustrated magazine. By 2019, John Griffin bought a 77.1 million New York City town home, the most that had ever been spent on a New York City townhouse at that time. After marrying John, Amy stepped away from the workforce for about 10 years to raise their family. Jon told her that he'd support her no matter what she wanted to do with her life. >> I can remember my husband saying, you know, if you decide you want to sit on the couch and eat bon bonss, I'll love you. And if you decide you want to work a thousand hours a week, I'll support you and love you. and had this big epiphany what it was ever it was 10 years ago. Oh, I'm stepping back in and I'm going to step back in in a really big way. >> When Amy returned to working, she did so through a door opened by a friend. A chance was presented to her to invest in a company, then another, and then another. The opportunity snowballed, as she described on the podcast, My First Million, and all of these opportunities reflected her interests back at her. Amy found over time as she made relationships and got more introductions, the things she invested in reflected herself. >> I have a very close friend um her name is Juliet Deobini who is a well-known venture capitalist, but she presented me with an opportunity to invest in something and she always said to me, Amy, you should be doing this. You should be doing this. And and I kind of knew I would and I was always interested and I would talk about companies and I would go to dinners or events or conferences uh a lot of times the guests with my husband. I mean, I started and I did one and then I did another one and they did another one and they did another one. >> G9 Ventures client list has famous names like Spanx, Goop. The list goes on. In 2019, Amy officially co-founded G9 Ventures alongside Anna Doerty. Amy never really talks about where she got the funding, but it's fair to assume that the funding came from her and her husband's shared finances, considering his incredible amount of wealth. The name G9 came from Amy's grandmother. Amy's middle name is Janine and her grandmother's name was Janine. When Amy would misspell it, her grandmother would correct her and say, "It's G9." The name was a tribute to her grandmother who had built up a business down in Amarillo, Texas, and passed it down. You think it's this uh, you know, investment firm G9, it feels very formal, but in actuality, my middle name growing up, I'm Janine, and my name is spelled G9. And as a child, I could never remember that there were two N's in the middle. So my grandmother would always say to me, Amy, it's G9. G9, that's how you remember it. Ventures focused specifically on early stage womanled companies. The G9 portfolio reads like a glossy magazine's vision board, Goop, Aura, Spanx, Bumble, Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon's company, Westminier, the list goes on. You are an incredible at helping founders, business people, Ree, I mean everyone like Gwyneith, you have been me, you have been pivotal the way you support these founders and and and these women. I mean it's invaluable. It's interesting every founder, every female founder, like you are like the the name everybody whispers that they they want to surround themselves with. >> Can you get me into this? No, I cannot. With so many girl boss companies being funded by G9 Ventures, it almost feels like Amy Griffin has defined what it means to be the modern successful girl boss or a successful woman in business. And that is an incredible amount of power and influence. A single VC defining what is a successful businesswoman, what that looks like, what their businesses are. Amy Griffin is currently on the board of the Met and Bumble. In every interview Amy has given, she's spoken about her investment philosophy, saying that she was there to help build up the company. I don't think of myself as a capitalist. She said on the Goop podcast alongside Gwennneth Paltro and Cameron Diaz and Olympic sprinter Allison Felix. We do our diligence. We do incredible amount of diligence. A lot of it is based on relationships. She considers herself a builder. She wants to see who she can help. I am a venture capitalist, but I I approach it a very different way because I also go into it very open and honestly around the idea that I don't have a data team of a hundred people who are running numbers for me every day, but have gone into it the way that I go into any relationship. >> Amy claims she prioritizes authenticity above all else. >> I don't know. That's how I see the world. I see the world in partnership through people. And so that's why when I classified as a venture capitalist, I sort of see myself as a people connector. And it makes it it's it's really fun for me every day. Amy sat on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She sat on the board of Bumble. She was named Times 100 most influential people of 2025. Amy was in every visible sense the apotheiois of the modern girl boss. The postlean-in era of women in power. Soft where it was fashionable to be soft. Fierce where it was useful, performatively feminine, and performatively powerful. lifting other women up publicly and continuously. But did she only do this when it was advantageous for herself? Was Amy really down for the cause? Amy publicly has opened up about challenges of being a woman in male-dominated industries and how the way she's pushed through that is through leaning into her feminine side as opposed to feeling like she needs to be masculine and in turn uplifting other woman-ledd spaces in business, which is a wonderful and important message overall. >> Um, and I became empowered. I started to see how business can be done different, how women having a seat at the table really truly looks. Ultimately, Amy noticed a pattern. She saw women who had stories to tell, creations to bring to life, and no one was helping them to do so. So, she breathed life into a space that had been suffocating. Maybe that was because Amy felt like she had a story to tell as well. The memories Amy recovers may be triggering for some as it's a recounting of essay. I also want to say while Amy's story has unfortunately been contested in a lawsuit. First off, I'm not here to deny anyone's story, just retell what's been going on with this situation. And that also does not lessen the gravity of CSA. So, I really wanted to relay some important statistics before diving into this chapter. One in five women in the United States have experienced completed or attempted rape during their lifetime. Nearly a quarter of men in the US experienced some form of sexual violence in their lifetime. Nationwide, 81% of women and 43% of men reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime. One in three female victims of completed or attempted rape experienced it for the first time between the ages of 11 and 17. As much as the me too movement has been seen as a very important step in survivors coming forward, that still does not mean that survivors are comfortable with coming forward, especially to authorities. 40% of rap and essays were reported to police in 2017, but only about 25% were reported to police in 2018, a year later. The prevalence of false reporting for SA crimes is low between 2% and 10%. Meaning it's not very likely that someone is going to make a false report. On top of that, child or CSA is a widespread problem. Nearly every minute, someone in the US is SA. Every 9 minutes, that someone is a child. 63,000 children a year were victims of SA. From 2009 to 2013, child protective services agencies substantiated or found strong evidence to indicate that 63,000 children a year were victims of SA, which is infuriating and definitely something that should be taken very seriously. In early 2020, as the pandemic raged, Amy claimed that the repressed memories of childhood essay by her teacher, who's named Mr. Mason in the tell were suddenly returning >> childhood memories about deep childhood trauma >> that I've had to trust in myself to accept. >> So what can you tell us what happened? Can we can you share that a little? >> Of course. I mean what happened is is I think in the last five years really was an unwinding and unraveling of taking apart and dismantling as Marielle says um of a life that in many ways and as people said to me and I I built it up such as such that it was a life with um walls and castles and what could have looked like a perfect life but this inner knowing that there was something that I just wasn't addressing. This came around the same time as her husband John Griffin's interest in psychedelic assisted therapy. So Amy sought out Olivia who was an unlicensed facilitator. Under the influence of MMA, Amy remembered everything. This raw and harrowing experience became the book the tell. It took a while for me to actually say, "No, you know what? I'm writing. I'm writing. I'm writing." I actually didn't know why I was writing. and I wrote for several years before I recognized that I would ever I'd written the book before I ever knew that I would share it with another person. >> A memoir for which Amy was paid $1 million to write and publish. This book was in turn promoted by her famous friends and crowned as Oprah's 112th book club pick in March of 2025. Oh, a memoir by Amy Griffin. Amy confronts her painful past and unravels a secret she buried deep inside for over three decades. Ultimately finding peace and freedom by writing her story. The book immediately became a sensation, selling over a 100,000 copies and hitting number two on the New York Times bestseller list. Here are the people that you might need to know in the story of the tell. They're all renamed in Amy's book, so they're not identifiable. First is Claudia, a fellow middle school student in Amy's school who Amy suspected experienced use from Mr. Mason as well. Amy loaned her a dress for Catillan. Mr. Mason, the middle school teacher that said Amy while she was in middle school and in one instance when she was 16. There's Olivia, the psychedelic facilitator Amy worked with in her three sessions. In her book, Amy says she was introduced to Olivia by John, her husband, who had also worked with her. There's also Lauren, Amy's therapist. In the tell, Amy describes her husband's enthusiasm for psychedelic assisted therapy, but said that she initially had walls up about it because she grew up in Reagan era, Texas, where drugs were categorically forbidden. But her husband had been getting really into it and going deep on the research. He strongly believed in all of it. after seeing uh both my husband and then a very dear friend at a table and I sat with her and said what what are you doing and she said I've you know I've worked with a I've worked with a therapist to um on with psychedelic assisted therapy and so there was a moment um in talking to my husband and I said I know it's time for me to go and do this I said to the therapist that day I know I need to just to confront some things that have gone on between this age and this age and she said she already could feel and knew and um we're very We were very close. I didn't know the medicine. I didn't understand um psychedelic assisted therapy. I understood what it was. I knew it was a burgeoning field and I felt compelled to go and do this. I do think that there was sort of divine intervention around me as I went in for this process. An excerpt from the towel talks about a conversation that John and Amy had. Amy, John said one day on the phone to her, I had an amazing session while you were away. Session? I said, "Oh, that's right. your drug thing. How did it go? I had walls up about it, which was a testament to how deep my resistance ran. I had grown up in Reagan era, Texas, where drugs were patently off limits, the domain of dead beats and criminals. The message was received. My brain would be a cracked egg frying in a cast iron skillet if I partok. My heaviest experimentation with mindaltering substances was pretending to take a hit off a joint at a party after graduating from college. I didn't inhale because I didn't know how. This all changes when Amy feels herself shutting down and her memories resurfacing. She needs help and decides maybe if Jon had been finding a solution with this therapy, it might not be a bad idea after all. When the pandemic arrived, it was Jon who connected Amy to Olivia. Amy starts to confront her repressed memories. Writing about the first session, Amy says in the towel, "The day of the session, I was anxious. There's something I can't face," I told Olivia. "I know something happened to me. Something I'm talking around, but I don't know what it is. It's like I can't remember. Or maybe I don't want to remember." I held the pill for a long minute, looking at it. "Can I do this?" I wondered. I was taking an illegal drug with an unlicensed therapist to do what exactly? But I trusted John and I trust Olivia. And finally, I was going to trust myself. >> For me, it was within 5 minutes I just said, "Here I go. I'm going to tell you everything and why why is this man here? Why is my teacher back in the room?" And that was the telling for me. >> Share with us that moment. Who is he? >> It was every fiber of my being knew the movements of this person, the armfold, the way this person walked, um the way that I both trusted and was fearful of this person. You say he's here and was the first memory that resurfaced that you're remembering for the first time was that in the school bathroom on the floor with the teacher you >> Yes. And then I very quickly had not to gloss over that. Yes. >> I swallowed the pill and put on an eye shade. Then I sat in darkness waiting. "How long does it take for it to kick in?" I asked. "I could hear her moving a speaker around the room. The gentle sound of Spanish acoustic guitar playing in the background." According to the tell, Amy underwent three assisted therapy sessions. In her first session, 5 minutes after ingesting the pill, she sat up abruptly and said, "Olivia, why is he here?" "Who?" Olivia asked. "Mr. Mason," Amy said. "From my middle school." And then she writes, "Suddenly I remembered." If I were to be brutally honest, from the outside looking in, while this seems like a revolutionary therapy experience to be able to uncover lost memories, almost magical of an experience and how quickly Amy was able to recover her memories. It also seems incredibly traumatizing to experience this and relive all of this while under psychedelics. But I've never done psychedelics um in this manner. So I can't attest to whether one would come out of that feeling recovered or retraumatized. And we'll have to wait and see for what the studies say for what the case is on the matter. Amy did not set out to write a book. She says this consistently in every interview she gives. After her first MMA session, she was struggling to re-enter her ordinary life, the very expensive townhouse, the children, the likely elite dinners, the board meetings, the portfolio companies. John encouraged her to journal. He said he found it helpful after his own sessions. So she decided to do it. She wrote down one sentence first saying, "I lent address to a sweet girl Claudia." From there the words came. You know, I had so many memories of standing in line at the Starbucks when I was actually in the last few years as I was writing this book and then I was in the process of doing all of this that I was standing in line looking at the cake pops and everything in the in the background and thinking I'm about to tell someone my story because so many times my story was told over a cup of coffee. The real conversation, the telling that has to happen that happened along the way in the writing of this book was the telling to my 12-year-old self, "He did not dim your light." >> And for that 12-year-old self to then say back, "You didn't let him dim your light. You don't have to show up sad at the Oprah show." >> Yeah. She wrote 150,000 words in bathrooms, closets, on the floor. She said she had no intentions of publishing. Amy said she was compelled to just get it out. On the idea of talking about use from the tell, Amy wrote, "I now understand why telling people felt so important to me, as excruciating as it was. I had kept this secret for so long, even denying it to myself, and the secrecy made me sick. Talking about it was the only remedy, the cure. It neutralized the shame. All those years I had to tell. Now I needed to tell. For many survivors, speaking truth to power can be an intimidating mountain to climb. Not only because it feels like you're facing the truth of what happened to you and making it a very real thing. Almost like once you speak it aloud, it becomes real. It's no longer something you can push into the recesses of the very back of your mind. But also, you're facing what's often a power structure put in place by abers to prevent victims from speaking out. Amy Griffin became an incredibly powerful woman. With a network of powerful women in her circle, Amy had become so powerful, she could now use that power to take down abusive systems instead of becoming those abusive systems herself. one would hope. Why was Claudia, a girl I'd barely known, the first thing I wrote about after recovering these memories? It was because there was another memory, one that had played repeatedly in my mind for years, long before the session with Olivia. Now, in a flashback, I saw it again. Mr. Mason was standing in the hallway by the cafeteria talking to Claudia. His hand was on her shoulder. I walked past, slinking behind them into the bathroom. I had never understood the significance of this memory, why it had stayed with me. Amy wrote, a literary agent named Kate Hoy, whose client list included Carrie Washington, Hoda Cotub, and Britney Spears heard there was a story. Kate asked to be introduced to Griffin. Thinking that this powerhouse investor had a story to tell, >> I've been writing for the last 5 years, and it's so important to say that I wrote this book first for me without knowing that anyone would ever read it. when I received a call from a literary agent who said, "Would you write a book about, you know, accomplishments of women in business, which couldn't have been further from actually what I was going to go and write about. I wasn't going to write about building others up about what I was doing in the business world. I was actually writing about how I'd turned myself down and how I had not been honest with myself. And that was the hardest thing to do. But to make that decision, which was such a simple press of the finger, I said to my husband after I got the phone call, I sent what I've been writing. He said, "You did what?" I said, "I sent what I've been writing for the last few years to a literary agent." And he said, "All of it?" >> Yeah. Because because all of it, that's my story. While Kate's original idea was for Amy to write a book about her experience as a girl boss business investor, Amy said she didn't think she was the right person to write a business book about women in venture capital, but that she had something else, something that she'd already written. She sent Kate Hoy what she'd been working on. In March of 2023, Amy Griffin circulated a 38page book proposal called Believe Me. According to two people with knowledge of the book deal reported by the New York Times, Amy Griffin was paid nearly $1 million for what ultimately became the memoir titled The Tell. How exactly did Amy go from documenting her story in her journal to making a $1 million deal? Apparently, Kate Hoy, the literary agent who approached her, helped broker a deal for her. Then it seems like once she landed her deal, she was connected with a ghost writer by the publisher to help her write out this memoir. Someone helped her to tell her story for her. It seems to tell the tell so that the esteemed Penguin Random House, who was paying Amy $1 million for the book deal, would be satisfied with the quality of her story and the book would sell. A compelling story with the face behind the story being an elite name with a celebrity backing. But when does such a setup start to drift away from a story about an SA survivor into being about the semantics of book sales and publicity and marketing? When is Amy telling a story that's no longer hers? Or was she never really doing that in the first place? I'm getting ahead of myself. So Amy received $1 million to write a book about taking psychedelics and uncovering lost memories of her past. It's a compelling story, but a lot of people have compelling stories. At the end of the day, Amy's experience in the publishing world is a rare way of getting a book published for the average person. For someone with wealth and name recognition, less so. Celebrity memoirs are big bestsellers, and literary agents want to connect big names with ghostriters who can write up their stories. Alongside Amy's book proposal, she listed out all her celebrity connections. people who could help her promote her book, all through her established elite network, which would help her immediately get the book into the mainstream sphere. >> I can tell you for sure that what this is going to do is release a lot of people to be free. And it's so powerful that never before have I been anywhere where Dice Withers book club and Jenna's book club on my book club. ever happened. >> And we're all here for Amy Griffith. In as cutthroat of a market as the publishing world, having whatever edge or boost in marketing is an advantage publishers are apt to take, especially when it comes to celebrity or bigname brands. Something that's especially taken off in recent years are celebrity book clubs, where trusted celebrities with a huge fan base recommend their favorite books, which boosts these titles into the stratosphere. who has celebrity book clubs. Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon. These connections that Amy is incredibly close with. Doctor A and I are in conversation with one of my best friends and chosen family, Amy Griffin, in support of her heart-wrenching memoir, The Tell, which by the way is Oprah's book club pick and has been lauded by so many others for its powerful message of healing and resilience. You guys have to read this book. It is. So, I've known Amy my whole life. I was in tears. I laughed. I cried. I I kind of couldn't believe it. So, Amy has all of these elements in place. She's an accomplished woman with the accolades to show. Has an elite background with a list of celebrities within her network and at her disposal to promote her book. Here's the main problem. Amy wrote a memoir. A memoir is a recounting of her life, her experiences, and requires a degree of accuracy. There have been major scandals in the past when a famous memoir beloved by many has been discovered to be false. The credibility is lost. The author deemed a liar. The heartfelt story they had been writing about now nothing but bittersweet falsities. Usually because of this and how much it could completely ruin not only that author's reputation but the publishing house as well, a publisher will ensure that an author has established credibility. But they might overlook this when the author is a celebrity or elite. In the podcast Commotion with Elemen Abdel Mahmood, the host interviews author and editor Jen Sukfong Lee and director of content marketing about the tell. They explain why Amy's the tell might not have been flagged for any issues when it comes to being described as a memoir. It all essentially boils down to making money as well as Amy's existing wealth. >> Okay, let me just say if you're the editor who uh acquired this book and you guys paid a million dollars in advance and you think, you know, this is like really legally concerning. Maybe we should pull this book. Do you want to be the editor that goes into that editorial meeting that says to your bosses, "We paid a million dollars for this book and I think we should pull it." Like honestly, like that is >> but maybe pause, maybe move it to the next year. >> But I also think that the influence and the money that Amy Griffin has uh paid played a big part in that. >> Jen talks about the responsibility for accuracy with Amy's memoir. >> I've written memoir. I've edited memoir. Memoir is always sort of muddy, right? Like I think everyone kind of expects that. In this case, when the author is writing about what is actually a very serious crime, and it's an allegation that carries life-changing consequences for everybody involved, I I mean, I think accuracy does matter. This isn't a book that anyone was expecting to just sell like 12 copies. Like, everybody knew it was going to sell from the very beginning. Um, and in that case, I think that accuracy really does matter. Nathan talks about the steps the publishing house should have taken. Bringing up that Penguin Random House certainly has the resources and that he imagines somewhere in the contract between Penguin Random House and Amy is a contingency for what happens if the book is false. I am so so curious about the contract between um Amy Griffin and the Dial Press because >> there's no way that nobody at Penguin Random House thought, you know, sat down Whitney Frick and said, "And if it's false, what's our plan?" >> Some degree of accuracy is important, nay essential in a memoir. And when you find out even some basic facts of a memoir are incorrect, it can ruin the entire thing. I will say that I think the reason accuracy does matter to a point is that we use memoir as a way of connecting with other people. We tell our stories so that other people can relate to them and that we can, you know, shed light on things that maybe we haven't thought about before. And if the truth is completely devoid from that process, then what are we even doing? >> Dial Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, published the book. The ghostriter was Sam Lansky, an experienced author with a long list of high-profile collaborations. The marketing machine behind the entire book release was extraordinary. On February 2025, Vogue published an excerpt of The Tell. Oprah Winfrey announced The Tell as her next book club pick on CBS Mornings in March of 2025. >> Drum roll, please. Drum roll, please. >> Drum roll. >> Thank you. The book is called The Tell. >> The Tell by Amy Griffin. You were telling me about it and I said that's a book that I should be reading. So give me that book right now. It's a memoir and it's a memoir about keeping secrets and how secrets leave you in shame and how once you are able to open up the aperture of your life experience and reveal that secret then it's empowering to you and I think this book is going to help so many other particularly people who have suffered any kind of abuse or any kind of shame. Amy talks about how she wrote this book first and foremost for herself with no intention to publish it and that writing this book helped her realize what she needed to heal. >> Well, I think the the thing for me is that I wrote this book first for myself on the bathroom floor, not knowing that anyone in the world would ever see it again. So, it was really just for me. But then as I started writing and now that I look back, there was this criminal investigation. It's a wild thriller of a ride that I went through in thinking that if I could hold this person accountable, that would be the perfect ending. But in the process of writing the book, I realized the perfect ending was actually to go and investigate myself, and that was the only way that change was really going to happen. >> On March 12th of 2025, L runs an interview with Amy for her book's release. On March 16th of 2025, Amy Griffin is in conversation with former Facebook COO Cheryl Samberg at a book promo event in Menllo Park. The Ford Foundation, New York City, hosts an event to promote the tell with talk between Amy and actress Marisa Hargatee of Law and Order SVU. That week, the book hit number 18 on USA Today bestseller list. The following week, it was number two on the New York Times non-fiction list, where it remained for 4 weeks. Sales crossed 100,000 copies. Time named the tell one of the 100 must-read books of 2025. G9 Ventures made a post about Amy's book saying, "Founder and managing partner of G9 Ventures, Amy Griffin, released her debut memoir today. As Amy's teammates, we are so fortunate to know her optimism, curiosity, and work ethic. We are beyond proud of Amy for sharing her story and for paving the way for others to share theirs. By April of 2025, Amy Griffin is named to Times the 100 most influential people of 2025 with an excerpt written by Reese Witherspoon, who says that Amy Griffin is her dear friend. Reese Witherspoon also personally posted about Amy after the publication of the book and the launch event, calling her her best friend in one of the captions. Monday was the most magical night celebrating my best friend Amy Griffin and the release of her book, The Tell. We laughed about our southern roots. We cried about secrets and shame that didn't belong to us. And we promised to tell each other stories until we're old and gray and sitting in rocking chairs. At the launch event in New York, Oprah was there. Reese Witherspoon was there. Today's show anchor Jenna Bush Hager was there. Jenna would later describe it on air as a night where only Amy Griffin could have gathered all three of them in the same room, which just goes to show the kind of power and influence Amy has. We went to a friend of ours had a has a written a memoir. It's an Oprah book club pick. Okay. Oprah comes and then she sees Reese and Jenna sitting in the audience and calls them up. I mean when Oprah said that I turned crimson. I couldn't believe it. She's like only Amy Griffin who wrote this book who's friends of Savannah and mine could get all three of us in the room. Y'all come up. It was so >> and I looked at Reese like are we really going up? >> The other two Titans of Celebrity Book Club world you know were there at the book launch. What do you make of the fact that like all of the gigantic book clubs were at this book launch ready to sort of receive this book with open arms? >> Amy Griffin is an investor in Hello Sunshine Reese's production company. So that answers question. I don't know. All rich people are friends with each other. I guess >> Marissa Hargatee, star of Law and Order SVU, promoted this book on Instagram again calling Amy her dear friend. My heart is overflowing with joy and gratitude after last night's book tour launched for Amy Griffin's The Tell. My heart is also just full of love for you at Amy Griffin. I'm so proud to call you my dear friend. Thank you for telling your story. Gwennneth Paltro, whose company Goop is a G9 Ventures portfolio company, called Amy one of my closest friends on her podcast. I had like a front row seat to this. Gwennneth Paltro also posts about the tell on her Instagram. I'll never forget the moment Amy told me her story, the weight of it, the courage it took. I was honored to hold it then, just as I'm honored to stand behind her now as she shares it with the world. The telling can be the simplest yet hardest thing to do. But in that moment, everything changes. At first glance, all of these women coming together to support a woman sharing a story of her abuse as a child using their power to support victims and shame abusers and essentially come together to say we will not stand with this and we will stand with survivors is something that warms the soul. It's touching. It's empowering. But is that what's going on here? Or at least is that all that's going on here? I tried to turn around and shut the door and say, "I'm not believed. I'm not worthy of being believed." And every time that door started to close again, I would write about it. >> And then I would have to investigate it. And then I'd say, "No, I believe myself. I believe myself." Enough such that the book changed from what I wanted to call it. So I wanted to say, "Believe me." That's what that was the first title of the book that I put up in the manuscript. I don't know if you picked up on it, but there's a moment where I say, "If I go in this room in the school and the window doesn't look, it's not the exact size, there's not a hole in the door in the classroom, then I made it all up." Like, I looked for trap doors to close so that I wouldn't believe myself because this is so difficult to believe something like this could go on in this world. Amy goes on to Oprah's book club podcast to talk about her book after being named the 112th pick of Oprah's book club. You should be very proud of yourself. And I chose this book because I am so proud of you. I'm proud of you for having the courage to speak your truth. And I know that your truth is going to liberate so many people. Amy has seemingly endless celebrity and business connections that helped her promote the book, support her, and call her a dear friend. Model and actress Molly Sims identifies Amy as a friend and girl boss. >> Girl boss. I mean, she is brilliant. She is bold and she is truly truly one of the most inspiring women that we both have the privilege of knowing. But what's truly incredible about Amy isn't just her success in the boardroom. It's her story. Amy, you are a proof that success isn't about having it all together. It's about owning your story. Amy also appeared on the Drew Barry Moore show. >> Let me say I slammed a door, which I don't think I've ever slammed another door, but I slammed a door and my incredible husband said, "What? What was that? It was in that moment, in that telling, that beginning. The word telling meant so many things to me as I was writing this book and cover what it is that's been going on in my life that has held me back. Why all the running? Why the building walls? What needs to come down? This book has made me think about what you talk about, which is secrets do build those walls up. And we are so afraid to tell our secrets, especially the traumas that have happened to us in an unjust way. We just if we've been through stuff, we're so worried for our kids to go through those things. We just think, how can we protect them? We have we even dealt with the stuff that has happened to us. And the way that you walk through this is so again, it's such a incredible compelling read. The idea was here's a woman of enormous wealth and connections using all of it not to sell a business idea but to process trauma publicly and be celebrated for it. If even Amy Griffin with everything she has carried the weight of this for 30 years. Imagine how many women are carrying something so similar right now. That being said, if you can allow me to be a little bit cynical for a moment, I'll also say that Amy's story was an easy message at the time for any woman in media to get behind. It didn't require much risk. Of course, the story is tragic and touching and important. But on the other side, did it require much risk for the other powerful, wealthy, and famous people to support Amy and the tell? Was this an easy way for these powerful celebrities to look like they were doing good in supporting Amy as she came forward to tell her story? Amy and her book and her story, it was by any measure a powerful message. And then 6 months later, everything started to unravel. Amy's husband, John Griffin, didn't just have a personal interest in psychedelic therapy. He was a major financeier of MAPS, the organization lobbying for the legalization of MMA. >> I think the way that MAPS is working towards reintroducing psychedelics as a therapeutic option is perfectly situated within Silicon Valley. MAPS is very interested in the application of MMA within a controlled setting in conjunction with psychotherapy. And to me, that makes a lot of sense >> and could potentially profit off of psychedelic therapy in the aftermath of illegalization. While Amy marketed her healing as a spiritual journey, her family stood to potentially profit from a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical shift if assisted therapy gained FDA approval. So it was more that going in to take the pill for me as someone who doesn't drink, who had never seen elicit drugs to take that pill and allow myself to have the compassion for myself to explore things I could not talk about on this earth. So what did you see in that session? We want to know what happens when you take the pill. >> I know. Explain it to us. Are you lying down? Are you sitting up? Or is somebody talking to you? We don't know what happens. Um what happens? >> I was lying down on a couch. >> Yeah. There was this beautiful flamingo music playing in the background. I put the eye shades on and I surrendered and >> and the therapist is guiding you through it. >> The therapist doesn't say one word. >> Oh, the therapist doesn't say one She didn't say a word, but I could feel the connection with her. And I could feel >> that I the connection with her was so strong and the connection with John was so strong. And in 5 minutes, I turned to the practitioner and I said, "Why is he here? Why is my teacher here?" And then I said, "I'm going to tell you everything." So talk to us about the psychedelic therapy. What does that look like for those that aren't familiar with it? >> I know, you know, it's also changed so much in the years since I explored it. And um for me, it was something I could have never imagined that I would be the person that said I explored a new kind of therapy. And it wasn't just a rash decision to go take a drug and I know it's not available to everyone and I know it's it's something that's new and people are talking about. In August of 2024, the FDA rejected the application, citing unethical conduct and data gaps, casting a shadow over the very treatment that birthed Amy's compelling story. So, to understand the tell, you have to understand a little bit about EMA. I'm sure some of you do more than others. I'm kidding. Oh gosh. Let's see if I can say this. Let's see. Three four dash methylen methylene dioxy methyl memphetamine popularized in underground therapy circles in the 1970s and early 1980s then swept into the schedule one controlled substances list under the controlled substances act. legislation that followed President Nixon's declaration in 1971 that drug abuse was America's public enemy number one. >> America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. >> Schedule one means by federal definition a substance with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Heroin is schedule one. Mara until recently was schedule one and MMA is schedule one, a classification it received despite the protests of a small number of researchers and one particularly persistent activist named Rick Doblin. >> I really don't want to say people should do this or they shouldn't do this. You know, whether people should try psychedelics or not try psychedelics is really a decision that they need to make themselves. What I can say is that under certain circumstances, psychedelics have been tremendously beneficial to me and to loads of people that I know. >> Do founded the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies known as MAPS in 1986, the same year that MMA was officially scheduled. His stated mission was to demonstrate through rigorous clinical trials that NDMA had profound and legitimate therapeutic value, particularly in treating PTSD. He sued the DEA to block the scheduling and he lost. He spent the next four decades building the case anyways. According to the MAPS site, as an organization, MAPS has raised over $140 million for psychedelic research and education. Business Insider credits Doblin as the person who legitimized and popularized psychedelics. Perhaps more than any other single person in the past half century, Doblin, now 70, is responsible for mainstreaming psychedelics and other once maligned psychoactive substances. He's a big part of why your grandma is asking you about magic mushrooms and Tik Tok influencers are trying to sell you camine therapy in between dance challenges and makeup tutorials. By the early 2020s, the psychiatric establishment was moving in this direction. Clinical trials were producing striking results mainly and kind of throughout history of these studies using these substances in relation to combat veterans suffering from severe treatment resistance PTSD. In 2014, MAPS spun off a public benefit corporation. Again, let me like really say that this organization MAPS that claims it's all about really caring about psychedelic therapy for the benefit of the public raised a bunch of money to lobby this spun off a public benefit corporation to pursue FDA approval. A company that would eventually become LOS Therapeutics. This means that LOS Therapeutics that came off of MAPS would have the ability to profit off of psychedelic therapy. the second that it's FDA approved, which MAPS had been working for decades to lobby to get FDA approval. In 2023, as LICOS awaited the FDA's decision, it raised 100 million from investors who could also profit from this. FDA approval, observers noted, could turn LICOS into a multibillion dollar pharmaceutical enterprise with exclusive US rights to sell as a therapeutic drug for a period of 6 years. This means that there's a lot of stake in legitimizing DMA therapy and LIOS investors care a lot about that. That's a lot of money, a staggering amount of money. the kind of money that would attract a certain kind of investor and support from maps came from many different prominent names. Bessel Vanderolk, the author of Body Keeps the Score, spoke at the 2025 maps conference in Denver. >> Well, Bessel, I'm I'm so delighted that you'll be one of the speakers at Psychedelic Science 2025 from June to the 20th in Denver and that you'll also be offering a workshop there. musician Reggie Watts, former Senator Kirsten Cinema, Aaron Rogers, unsurprisingly, and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, and most notably, maybe unsurprisingly at this point, if you could guess where this was going, John Griffin was a major investor. In the book, The Tell, Amy says that her husband connected her to her facilitator, Olivia. But here's how the New York Times reports it. Rick Doblin, the country's leading advocate for the therapeutic use of MMA, said that he connected Miss Amy Griffin to her therapist. In an interview this summer, he said he read several drafts of the book and called it important, probably because it further helps legitimize this therapy practice. But he played down the reliability of memories retrieved with MMA, saying they're often symbolic. What? So, what does that mean for Amy Griffin's The Tell and her entire story? Whether it's real or not, meaning whether the incident actually happened from a therapeutic perspective, it doesn't matter. He said, "A lot of times people will develop stories that help them make sense of their life." What? and this is a legitimate therapy practice that you want to have a lot of people do where they could potentially make up stories that is kind of concerning. Rick Doblin added in the therapeutic setting what Amy went through whether it's true or not has value because the emotion is real. Mr. Joblin said that frightening memories that people have pushed out of their mind come back under EMA and you have to be somewhat dubious I guess about recovered memories. Though the day before the article was published, Mr. Doblin contacted the Times and insisted that he did believe Amy Griffin's memories were real. Big yikes. As mentioned before, in August of 2024, the FDA rejected MAPS's application to approve DMA assisted therapy, asking LICOS to further study the safety and efficacy of the treatment. While publicly you'll often hear from people who have these revolutionary experiences that seem out of this world, almost magical, maybe sometimes even too good to be true. And of course, it may be the case for some of these people that this is their experience. This is not the case for all who have tried these experimental therapies. Unfortunately, there have been many who have had a bad experience. Yet, because of all of these vested financial interests, these experiences have been seemingly disregarded at times. The clinical trials have been rushed in the hopes of legitimizing the therapy practice in all the vested interests that are able to massively profit from it. On August 10th of 2024, the day after the final FDA rejection, a MAP study was retracted due to protocol violations amounting to unethical conduct at the MP4 study site by researchers associated with the project. Is it just me or does it kind of feel like those involved want psychedelic therapy to work so badly that they aren't looking at the reality of the studies, the numbers, and looking at all the input from all people and instead are allowing their biases to get in the way. According to NPR, in May of 2024, the nonprofit ICER that studies clinical trials and drug prices created a draft report that found substantial concerns about the validity of the results of the MDMA clinical trials. While ICER found that the data could point to some serious promise for MDMA in treating PTSD, the trial may have been influenced by bias on the part of the researchers by trial participants knowing who received MDMA and who received the placebo which is a welldocumented problem in MMA trials and there was possible exclusion of less favorable results. What? Following the FDA's rejection of LICOS's proposal, there was some debate over why it wasn't approved with a middle ground stance falling pure. Some researchers took a middle ground, believing that while DMA therapy showed promise, it wasn't ready for prime time. It's very possible that is a safe and effective treatment under the right conditions, said Mason Marx, lead of the project on psychedelics law and regulation at Harvard Law School's Petri Flom Center. But I don't think that was demonstrated adequately by the data and there were a lot of question marks. A citizen petition was also submitted to the FDA in April of 2024 with a call to conduct an advisory committee on FMA assisted therapy and the potential issues with LICOS approach from one of the authors of the petition. We need to listen to people in the trials who are having these experiences instead of telling them that they're liars and that they're going to ruin the psychedelic renaissance. None of us are against this as a useful tool or none of us are against treating mental health. We don't have any monetary interests in this not going through. Much of the treatment case for the use of psychedelics in a therapy setting is for those suffering from PTSD. In fact, that's usually the sole case argued for the use of the substance. Lately, psychedelic drugs for the treatment of PTSD, particularly for veterans, has become a popular right-wing position. With GOP lawmakers in 2024 leading a push to legalize psychedelics that ultimately failed while Biden was in office, this led me to wonder whether or not MAPS was behind lobbying this push. While it's hard to say specifically, MAPS has spent a lot of money lobbying. And it's safe to say that MAPS and other companies in the space are doing their best to influence the legal landscape. Unsurprisingly, at this point, because whether it's raw milk or psychedelics, his name always seems to come up. RFK Jr. is an especially prominent advocate when it comes to the legalization of psychedelics. In 2025, Texas Governor and prominent Republican Greg Abbott signed a law that allocated 50 million towards clinical trials for the psychedelic Ibagane. Just days ago, when researching for this video, Trump signed an executive order to accelerate the pathway to legalization for psychedelics in mental health care, which partially stipulates the allotment of 50 million to state governments that have programs for advancing psychedelic mental health care. The order also states that government agencies will work in accordance with the private sector for faster results. Fast and furious in the mental health field is always the safest way to go. In classic 2026 fashion, when Trump was signing this order, Joe Rogan was in the Oval Office with him. >> These experimental treatments have shown life-changing potential. >> President Trump signed an executive order on Saturday, speeding up reviews of certain psychedelic drugs. >> Can I have some, please? I'll take it. >> Popular podcaster Joe Rogan says he helped push the president on the issue. >> I sent him that information. The text message came back. Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let's do it. My biggest question is, was this Joe Rogan's main aspiration for the Trump administration? Silicon Valley tech giants also have their hands in this whole industry as well, like Peter Teal and so on, creating a psychedelic race of sorts to see whose therapy substance will be legitimized and then quickly after privatized and profited off of. That being said, I think I can already predict some of the comments in this video. If you are a believer in this therapy or in this practice or in this pastime, I am not here to burst your bubble. In fact, I'm on the fence myself and have parttook in the past. That being said, I am an advocate for proper clinical trials in place, especially when it comes to mental health as well as prioritizing access in health care for all before doing all this lobbying to privatize a new therapeutic practice so that existing billionaires can make even more money. So, I'm only here to shed light on the reality of how money moves and the financial interests and billionaires at play and how they might not be moving in a selfless way to legitimize this. They might be acting in a biased way for their own selfish reasons that ignore red flags. And all of that can circle back to Amy Griffin's heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching memoir about her childhood essay and how she went to psychedelic therapy to uncover her lost memories. Amy's memoir was a way of legitimizing this therapy practice of making it seem revolutionary. Those reading who had went through CSA, who had PTSD, might have read Amy's memoir and thought, "Hey, I should maybe try this therapy practice as well. It worked for her. Maybe it'll work for me." And they probably didn't know that Amy and her family had huge financial stakes in them believing this. That being said, at the end of the day, and interestingly enough, the legalization of psychedelics is still very much a bipartisan issue. In 2023, AOC and Republican Dan Krenshaw both passed House amendments on further studying psychedelics. Time magazine ran an op-ed about FMA and PTSD treatment in 2024. In March of 2026, AOCC's official YouTube channel posted a video of a hearing where she talks to an expert about the scheduling system and they specifically call out MMA as a mclassified schedule one drug because of its high medical potential for treating PTSD. >> We've also had a lot of limitations in medical research. Dr. Descupa, what is it? What are some examples of schedule one drugs? >> Cannabis LSD uh to see. >> Mhm. In your knowledge as an expert, is the claim that there is absolutely zero evidence that cannabis um SD MDMA have zero potential medical application? >> I think the medical literature is clear that they do have clinical benefits. >> So, so right now our law says that these drugs have zero medical application, but the science says something else. Not only that, the wealth of medical research shows that these are potential treatments for treatment resistant PTSD, traumatic brain injuries. The schedule classification really prevents researchers from continuing to do work on this. Correct. >> Yep. The New York Times spoke about how FDMA was legalized for use in therapy already in Australia and early data shows that it's hugely successful. Unsurprisingly, considering everything that's going on right now in the US surrounding psychedelic therapy and the ways in which billionaires are trying to profit off of it. Currently in Australia, this therapy is cost prohibitive. At the same time, on a personal level, it's hard not to be frustrated when healthc care still has so many issues. Yet, there are billionaires spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying to try and get a new therapy legitimized so that they can privatize a new substance that so many people have been criminalized for so that they can make more profit. Meanwhile, basic health care needs for the lower class are still unattainable. I can't help but feel incredibly frustrated by this dichotomy. I can't help but feel like, why are we even talking about this right now instead of fixing what's currently broken? Amy's memoir, The Tell, does not disclose in the text the extent to which their family finances are tied to the industry's success. The lawsuit, which we'll discuss in depth later in this video, touches on this by saying, "Among other things, the book also acts as a de facto advertisement for the efficacy of MMA therapy, an experimental treatment involving a non-FDA approved drug, in which the author concedes that she and her husband have a financial interest. Amy's memoir does not linger on her husband's financial stake. In doing so, defendants fabricated and lifted multiple key events of the tell, which were actual events from the life of a third party, plaintiff Jane Doe. Amy spent so much of her time on celebrity book clubs and talk shows advocating for survivors to speak their truth, to tell their story. So, no one possibly thought that her own story would have been a lie or stolen without consent. In its simplest form, the book is about telling. And sometimes it's the hardest thing to do. It's the hardest thing we do. But that's what we're doing right here. And that's what the book is. We think secrets keep us safe, but they keep us stuck. >> On March 4th of 2026, a Jane Doe filed a civil suit against Amy Griffin, her ghost writer, Sam Lansky, and Penguin Random House. This complaint alleged that Amy stole this anonymous person, Jane Doe's real life trauma, and added those details into her book. named as a Jane Doe in the lawsuit. >> Do states those assaults happened to her. Do claims once she found out that Griffin along with alleged ghostriter Sam Lansky had detailed her assaults in the book. She endured months of emotional harm, including being admitted to a hospital. >> Details like the soiled dress from the school dance. Traumatic horrifying stories that Amy passed off as her own. Amy then went on and included this anonymous person as a character in the book who also went through the same abuse with the teacher making it almost seemed like Jane Doe verified Amy Griffin's story when that was never really the case at all. >> Griffin along with Jane Doe according to the court documents attended Austin Middle School in Amarella while they were classmates. Do says she borrowed a dress from Griffin to wear to a school dance. This is when the lawsuit claims that Do was sexually assaulted by a teacher who also assaulted Do again a month later at school. Do says she did not report either incidents out of fear. >> Jane Doe is the person known as Claudia in the tell and Claudia is mentioned constantly in the memoir. She's first mentioned on page 26. There was a girl in my grade named Claudia who had blue eyes and blunt cut bangs. I understood that her home life was turbulent. A few weeks before Catillan, I learned that Claudia didn't have a dress to wear. I'll lend you a dress, I said. I have two options, a floral one and a pink one. Which do you want? The joy I felt being able to offer Claudia that dress was boundless. The thought of her feeling special wearing it made me feel special. I wanted to tell her that I would never tell anyone that the dress she was wearing wasn't her own. Doing that would undermine how good it felt to lend it to her. I knew how to keep a secret. I knew how to keep a secret. Amy Griffin says a quote that may come back to bite her in the ass. Jane Doe claimed she was even approached by talent agents talent agents in 2022 who tried to buy her life rights before just abruptly disappearing. The memoir claims Jane Doe, who was written as the character Claudia, was portrayed as knowingly and voluntarily speaking with Griffin's investigators, which do denies. But she does recall a meeting in California with Griffin and subsequent phone calls from people asking questions about her story. Do says those calls were recorded without her knowledge or consent, which might have been linked to Amy Griffin's book in a shady way to get away with stealing another woman's life story and trauma in order to pass it off as her own. With a hearing set for July 22, 2026, the writings of the tell and Amy Griffin's girl boss narrative now faces its ultimate judgment in a California courtroom. Recently, towards the end of June, Amy Griffin sued Jane Doe for defamation, saying that Jane Doe's statements to New York Times and Jane Doe's subsequent lawsuit are essentially false accusations. The lawsuit itself says the timing of Amy Griffin's defamation suit seems very telling, pun intended, I guess, because it's right around the court date for Jane Doe's lawsuit. Is this a PR move for Amy Griffin, a way to distract from the allegations at play by levying her own allegations, or does she actually have a legitimate case behind it? Ultimately, I guess that's for the court to prove. As of now, there aren't too many details on the trial and proceedings. So, let me know if you would like me to make an update of how everything plays out in court. The irony isn't lost on me. A woman who's the leader of all girl bosses, a pioneer and woman-ledd businesses who built herself up as a powerhouse, and who claims she's rebelling against the abusive systems that the men before her built. as a part of doing so releases the memoir which she claims is about her use to inspire other women. She uses her powerful network to boost her own story, gain more media attention, money, power. She uses the story to potentially boost her husband's work with an unregulated therapy practice. All the while, a lawsuit comes out that claims Amy was doing what powerful abers have always been doing. Using their power and money to overtake, completely overtake someone else's story, to co-opt their narratives, silence them, trample on them, and use everything within their means to do so. In September of 2025, the New York Times published its first story raising questions about the tell. According to the Daily Beast, Amy Griffin cancelled all of her publicity, and she was doing a lot of publicity around the book soon after the story dropped. At the center of the story was a woman who remained anonymous, Jane Doe, whose identity remained protected. She'd been Amy Griffin's classmate at their middle school in Amarillo. The woman is now an adult and is working as a home aid to an Alzheimer's patient for $21 an hour, and she'd never heard of the tell. A reporter contacted her and mailed her a copy of the book. She read it and immediately recognized herself and her story. According to the New York Times reporting, the woman said she'd been haunted by the abuse she suffered at their middle school for decades. She'd only confided in a small number of people close to her, including her daughter, who told the New York Times her mother had described the to her dozens of years earlier. Jane Doe remembered Amy Griffin, but in middle school, they were not friends. Amy was among the popular girls, and this woman was on the margins, looking for acceptance. Only a few times their lives intersected at school and at church. Amy had, Jane Doe said, treated her with a kind of distant benevolence. And Jane Doe had borrowed a dress once from Amy Griffin. A floral dress for a school dance. That part of the tell, it seems, was true. At that dance, she said she did leave the dance floor with a teacher, but not Mr. Mason. The teacher that Amy Griffin heavily implies in her book is the teacher who is the abuser and has passed so he can't defend himself. Jane Doe claims a completely different teacher left with her that night under the guise of looking for decorations for the event. In a supply closet, that teacher halted her. The dress was stained when she returned to the dance floor, her hair disheveled. She felt certain other students noticed, but nobody said anything, though. It seems like Amy Griffin certainly did notice that day. At this very dance, Amy Griffin writes in the book that she herself was raped. I was in Mr. Mason's classroom. Amy Griffin writes, "It was early evening and still light outside." The frilly dress was pulled up over my head and I was bent over a desk while he was raising me from behind. I could feel the weight of the dress over my head, blotting out the light. >> Do claims in the lawsuit that the t-shirt is written as the character Mr. Mason in Griffin's memoir, someone Do claims many and Amarillo can identify. Do claims Griffin falsely attribute a different perpetrator. >> Jane Doe returned the dress to Amy Griffin at a church youth group gathering at Amy's house. She apologized profusely for the stain. If Amy noticed the stain and could tell what it was, she probably put two and two together and could figure out the story from there. Though she never said anything to anyone, it seems until she wrote out the tell. To defend Amy, her attorney said Amy's family never hosted a church group at their home. He also said the classmate interviewed by the New York Times was not the person referred to as Claudia in the book. Well, that's a weird coincidence. Two women Amy Lent addressed to who were abused by teachers at her school. Meanwhile, Jane Doe had people approach her trying to buy the rights to her life story. What a weird coincidence. In March of 2026, exactly one year after the tell was published, a civil lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The plaintiff was identified as Jane Doe. The defendants, Amy Griffin, Sam Lansky, Penguin RandomHouse, Dial Press, and a hearing is coming up on July 22nd. On March 5th of 2026, the second New York Times story about Amy regarding the lawsuit publishes. Despite all the recent coverage on the accuracy surrounding the tell, the book remains an editor's pick for best biographies and memoirs on Amazon, Amy Griffin probably, unsurprisingly at this point attended the Bezos wedding. So, who knows if that had anything to do with her Amazon ranking. The lawsuit alleges seven causes of action. Invasion of privacy, publication of private facts, false light, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, unfair competition, and negligence. >> We did receive a statement from Griffin's attorney. The statement says just like the New York Times manufactured a false narrative about Amy Griffin and the tell it also engineered the premise for this absurd lawsuit. After two New York Times reporters instigated this whole situation by bringing the book to her attention, the plaintiff made her own choice to publicize her narrative to a global audience by acting as the principal source for and being photographed in a New York Times article. For its part, the Times took full advantage publicizing this inaccurate narrative despite receiving many red flag warnings. We look forward to exposing these meritless claims in court as well as the deeply flawed New York Times reporting that is at the center of it. Legal observers note that this isn't going to be a straightforward case. There's no single law against stealing another person's story of abuse. A lawyer who's handling a case like this one, one legal commentator noted, has to be really creative. This is the kind of case where as a lawyer, you have to be really creative. There is no such thing as, you know, a claim for you stole my actual story. This is not something where it's like, oh, this is a thing that happens all the time and when it happens, you sue for violation of this statute. As a civil case, there also needs to be something called a preponderance of evidence, which means that Jane Doe needs to prove for each of these claims that they're at least 50% true. With an invasion of privacy, there needs to be an intent to keep that information private, which Amy Griffin might argue isn't true if Jane Doe was talking to people who she thought she might sell her life rights to. So, it is critical to these claims that she had an expectation of privacy when she was talking to these investigators pretending to be talent agents. I could see Amy Griffin saying she intended to disclose it to the public, but she was trying to sell her life rights through those people. or the false light claim. Jane Doe has to prove that the defendants had reckless disregard for the truth or actual malice. >> So, she has to prove that Amy Griffin or Sam Lansky or Penguin Random House or all of the above knew that what they were printing wasn't true or at least didn't care enough to look at. The way that Griffin violated the law was not just taking her stuff and passing it off as someone else's. But the way the book reads is as if Claudia, the character she made up for her, knew that this is what Griffin was going to do and thought that it was fine. That people reading the book were like, "Oh, Claudia must have been cool with her telling this story." And that was a false impression. Unfair business practice claims are in the suit for a few reasons, but one major reason being that the book is a fraud on Jane Doe, but also on the public for being sold as non-fiction when it is in fact fiction. You should have some evidence that you got the right to do that. They allege that it was a fraud both on the plaintiff but also on the public. But essentially, the book is just a lie. You're not supposed to be able to do business and lie to your consumer base. A big part of the injury is Amy stealing Jane Doe's story, but also making it seem as if Jane Doe was okay with it by including her as a character in the first place. A big part of the injury for her is this was my story that I have the rights to. And not only did you take it, you wrote it up as if I knew and said it was cool when it wasn't. Amy sold the story to the public as a memoir, which most people understand as a recounting of life events. She made Jane Doe into the character as Claudia, a side character who often appears to be totally aware of Amy's story, consenting and having endured similar experiences. Jane Doe alleges that none of that is true. Jane Doe was not aware of the memoir taking place, that Amy was even aware of her abuse, and felt that Amy actually stole parts of her story and incorporated it into the memoir to create more of a compelling story. So, let's walk through what the complaint alleges. Jane Doe states she's identifiable as Claudia in the book. That to anyone in their shared community in Amarillo, the details in Amy's memoir make the character's real identity apparent. Jane Doe even says multiple people reached out to her after reading the tell. The complaint alleges two specific instances of abuse that Jane Doe experienced. One in the bathroom of their middle school and one at the school dance. The perpetrator, Jane Doe alleges, was a completely different teacher than the one Amy Griffin identifies in her memoir. During the time that they were school classmates and members of the same church youth group, plaintiff Jane Doe borrowed a dress from defendant Griffin in order to wear it to attend a Satie Hawkins dance sponsored by Austin Middle School in Amarillo, Texas. During this event, plaintiff Jane Doe was assaulted in a closet by one of the school teachers. She was seen by numerous attendees leaving the dance at the behest of this teacher and then seen by numerous attendees returning to the dance with her dress soiled in her hair tussled. Plaintiff Do was too scared to report this assault to authorities at the time. Soon after said school dance, just prior to one of their church youth group meetings, plaintiff do brought the dress she had borrowed from defendant Griffin and returned it to her. said dress was still stained with bodily fluids from the teacher who had as aid her during said church youth group meeting which both plaintiff do and defendant Griffin attended with a number of other individuals. Plaintiff Jane Doe asked for Jesus's forgiveness due to the essay by the teacher which had occurred at the Satie Hawkins dance. These two settings, the school bathroom and the school dance are the two central sites of the abuse Amy Griffin describes in the tell. The complaint alleges that Amy Griffin was aware or should have been aware of Jane Doe's abuse and incorporated the details of Jane Doe's experience into a narrative she then sold as her own memoir. And some of the details in the suit about Jane Doe's essay are incredibly disturbing. Plaintiff Jane Doe was once again essayed by the same school teacher, this time in the bathroom of Steven Austin Middle School. This was more violent. During the incident, the teacher put his boot on her back, stuffed a bandana in her mouth, which later caught on her braces, slammed her against the wall, and whipped her with a belt. Plaintiff, who was only 12 years old at the time and was living in a children's home, was too scared to report said SAS to authorities at the time. Plaintiff Jane Doe alleges that the details of these two SAS, which she was the victim of, were later converted by defendant Griffin for use in the memoir, The Tell. They were falsely claimed by defendant Griffin as her own recovered memories that she had only recently become aware of after going through MMA therapy. Plaintiff alleges that these essays were also falsely attributed by defendant Griffin to a different perpetrator who she refers to in her memoir under the pseudonym Mr. Mason and who was readily identifiable in the community where he had been a teacher at Austin Middle School at the time. But the lawsuit contains one more allegation that stops you cold when you read it. In April of 2022, 3 years after Amy co-founded G9 Ventures, 2 years after her sessions, one year before the book proposal circulated, Jane Doe was contacted by a talent agent. The agent told her that he'd heard she had an interesting life story. How? How did you hear that? But okay. And he was interested in acquiring the legal rights to her life story. The individual in question spoke with plaintiff Jane Doe for multiple hours per day, a few times a week over approximately a one-month period. He solicited detailed stories from plaintiff Jane Doe about her life, including her childhood in Texas, which she discussed with him with the understanding and belief that her information would remain private unless or until she entered into an agreement for her life story to be turned into a book or a movie. They had this whole setup going on. At this meeting, they would discuss further details of making a movie and her life story and that they would have a contract for her to review, detailing the compensation and conditions for use of her life story. This is quite the elaborate scheme. Jane Doe eventually becomes cautious and kind of skeptical of what's going on here and ends up consulting an attorney before taking the meeting. Her attorney advised her to verify the agents credentials and to obtain a copy of any proposed contract in advance. When she asks of these things from the talent agents, the agents became defensive. They ended the call abruptly and they completely disappeared, never contacting her again. After that, Jane Doe could find no verifiable information about who they were. They just disappeared. Now, the lawsuit does not name these individuals. It doesn't allege explicitly that they were directly connected to Amy Griffin or the production of the book, but the implication threaded through the complaint is clear. Someone at some point may have been attempting to secure the legal rights to a story that ended up appearing without those rights ever being granted in a best-selling memoir. At no point did Jane Doe know she was giving any information that would end up in a book, which contradicts what Amy wrote in her book. In the memoir, Claudia is portrayed as knowingly and voluntarily speaking with defendant Griffin's investigators. I wonder if those investigators were the talent agents. Plaintiff Jane Doe, however, never knowingly spoke to any investigators working on behalf of defendant Griffin. At no time was plaintiff Jane Doe ever informed that she was speaking with someone who was recording or transcribing her experiences to be used in defendants's memoir. Further, at no time did plaintiff knowingly consent to any recording or transcription for said use or purpose. After the suit was filed, Amy Griffin's lawyer, Thomas A. Claire said, "We look forward to exposing these meritless claims in court, as well as the deeply flawed New York Times reporting that is at the center of it." The tell is structured in part around Amy's relationship with the memory of Claudia. She watches Claudia at the dance. She wonders for decades what happened to that young girl. She eventually, late in the memoir, arranges a meeting with Claudia. In the book, Amy describes reaching out to Claudia and meeting her in Amarillo. She describes opening up to her, sharing her own abuse, and asking if anything had happened to Claudia. In the book's recollections, Claudia assures Amy that nothing had happened to her. The lawsuit alleges that the meeting did not happen in Amarillo. It happened in California, where Jane Doe lives. Amy met up with Jane Doe there. Crucially, the lawsuit alleges that at no point during the meeting did Amy Griffin mention her own abuse to Jane Doe or ask Jane Doe about what happened to her. This matters if true for a specific reason. One of the claims in the lawsuit, false light, requires Jane Doe to prove that the defendants had reckless disregard for the truth or acted with actual malice. The character of Claudia, as written, appears to have tactically endorsed Amy's telling of events. If Jane Doe's account of their meeting is accurate, that portrayal is at minimum a significant distortion. In L magazine in March of 2025, Amy spoke about the concept of consent in memoir writing, saying, "I can't even tell you how many times the word that I love using now, consent, has been used with the people in my life. I've had to go to my children. I've had to go to my husband and say, "How do you feel about these particular moments? How would it affect you if I tell this story publicly? In the quote, she did not mention Claudia. There is a genuinely difficult question at the center of this story and it deserves to be treated with care. Repressed memory is real. It's been documented. The research on trauma and memory is extensive. Going back to work by Bessel Vanderolulk, the author of the hugely popular The Body Keeps the Score, who if you remember from earlier in this video, also spoke at a maps conference in Denver. His landmark writing on traumatic memory describes how trauma is stored not in the narrative centers of the brain, but in the sensory and emotional ones. Trauma memory, Vanderolk's research suggests, can remain fragmented, inaccessible to conscious recall for years or decades, particularly when the trauma occurred in childhood and particularly when it was severe and prolonged. A survey of clinical psychologists, other professionals, and the general public found that on average, 58% of people believe in the existence of repressed memories. The study also talks about how the idea of repressed memories became especially popular in the psych scientific community in the 1990s and has persisted since. But the scientific community also debates the conditions under which memory surface and what can happen to memory under therapeutic suggestion or in this case under the influence of a powerful psychoactic drug administered by an unlicensed facilitator. Dr. Dr. Elizabeth Loftess, one of the country's foremost experts on human memory, has spent decades studying what she calls false memories, detailed, emotionally vivid recollections of events that did not happen, planted by well-meaning therapists, or by the suggestive environment of certain therapeutic frameworks. Her research does not disprove repressed memory, which is extremely important to note, but it establishes that the process of memory recovery can be fallible, and that even sincere, complete belief in recovered memory does not always confirm its accuracy, which may have been what Doblin meant originally in his quote to the New York Times when it almost seemed like he was fairly doubtful on the legitimacy of Amy's recovered memories. in the 1990s and even in maybe the late 80s, we began to see an altogether more extreme kind of memory problem. And they would end up with a therapist who said something like, "Well, you many people I've seen with your symptoms were sexually abused as a child." And there would begin these activities um that would lead these patients to start to think they remembered years of brutalization that they had allegedly banished into the unconscious until this this uh therapy made them aware of it. and your work essentially refuted that that it's not necessarily possible or maybe brought up to light that that this isn't >> well my work my work actually provided an alternative explanation where could these me reports be coming from if this didn't happen so my work showed that you could plant very rich detailed false memories in the minds of people Griffin underwent three DMA sessions with an unlike licensed facilitator who had been introduced to her by her husband or as we now know Rick Doblin. Both men have a substantial financial stake in the legitimacy and public acceptance of exactly this kind of therapy. None of this means Amy fabricated her experience. It's entirely possible she suffered real abuse, recovered real memories, and wrote truthfully about what she uncovered regarding what happened to her. The lawsuit and Jane Doe's own trauma story raises a different question. Not necessarily whether or not Amy was abused, but whose story she's telling. I in this video am not here to sit down and deny Amy's experiences or Jane Doe's. It could be both. As this story points out, trauma and memory is a complicated thing. But what is undeniable is the way Amy Griffin went about retrieving Jane Doe's story and the financial stake she and her husband have in relaying this story, which is a shady element to all of this. The complaint notes pointedly that the Griffin family's financial interest in MMA assisted therapy through Jon's investment in maps and related entities gives a compelling additional explanation for why this book at this moment might serve purposes beyond Amy's personal healing. a best-selling memoir by a wealthy connected woman published to enormous media fanfare in which assisted therapy is positioned as the tool that unlocked 30 years of repressed trauma. That is, among other things, extraordinarily good marketing for an industry that's just been rejected by the FDA. Amy's lawyers disputed the New York Times reporting. They've called the lawsuit meritless. A hearing is scheduled. The story is not over. For a moment, step back from the lawsuit and let's look at the shape of this story. A wealthy woman with extraordinary connections publishes a memoir about recovering repressed memories of childhood SA through a form of therapy her husband has financially supported and she is celebrated by the most powerful media figures in America. Miles away, a woman without those connections, a home aid making $21 an hour reads that book and recognizes in its pages her own story of abuse. The contrast is almost literary poetic. One of the panelists on a podcast, Commotion with Element Abdel Mahmood, spoke about this case and made the point plainly. Amy Griffin only had access to MDMA assisted therapy in the first place because of her wealth. The therapy is expensive, illegal in the US, and available primarily through informal underground networks accessible to those with the right connections. It's not available to the classmate from Amarillo. When commotion host Elellman asked a publishing industry professional why, given the questions around the book, it went to print. Anyway, the answer was one word, money. Fascinating enough, Penguin Random House is the same publisher that put out James Freys, A Million Little Pieces. the memoir that turned out to be riddled with fabrications that Oprah also selected for her book club and that Oprah publicly condemned on her show after the truth emerged. Random House offered refunds to every reader who purchased it under the assumption it was non-fiction. It was a major publicity scandal for Penguin Random House. You would think that they wouldn't want the same scandal ever again, that they would be more cautious. At the center of this entire story is a survivor. Not Amy, or at least not only Amy, whose abuse was very real, whose silence was real, whose 30 years of carrying it were real. An unidentified woman who, unlike the author of a best-selling memoir, never received a million dollars for her story. In fact, someone stole her story without her consent. She never had Oprah in her corner. She had to consult a lawyer before a meeting with a talent agent who she never could verify and disappeared after taking her story with them. The tell ends in Amy's retelling with a sense of catharsis of secrets finally giving air because Amy told them supposedly on her terms. The only way to heal now, Amy writes, was to speak out loud what had been done to me. to say it over and over again as loud as I could, looking directly into someone else's eyes. For so many years, these secrets, this truth had lived inside me. Now I needed it outside of me. Those are beautiful words. The question still unanswered, still working its way through a Los Angeles courtroom, is whether those words belong only to Amy Griffin. The civil case against Amy Griffin, Sam Lansky, Penguin Random House, and Dial Press is ongoing. The worst part of the counter suit that Amy Griffin filed towards the end of June is that Amy specifically names who Jane Doe is by name, essentially outing her when it seems she preferred to stay anonymous. Now, anyone who would look into this case knows who Jane Doe is and the horrific things that have happened to her. Also, Amy Griffin's counter sue will likely overwhelm Jane Doe with legal fees, which according to reporting, Jane Doe is not in a financial position to be able to afford. Is this Amy Griffin's way of further silencing Jane Doe after Jane Doe has alleged that Amy stole her assault story? There's a Substack article titled The Tell's Biggest Tells that goes more in depth into the legal proceedings currently taking place. On June 15th, Amy Griffin filed a lawsuit and a motion against Jane Doe outing her and her full name. It's a defamation lawsuit filed in Nevada and claims that Jane Doe is in fact the person lying, not Amy Griffin. Amy Griffin's lawyers also filed an anti-slap motion, which if anyone doesn't know what an anti-slap is, it basically allows defendants, in this case Amy Griffin, who's the defendant in the original lawsuit, to dismiss lawsuits used to punish or silence them for exercising free speech. But also on top of that, filing an anti-slap motion triggers an automatic stay of discovery, meaning that Jane Doe's lawyers won't be able to start subpoenaing documents, deposing Amy Griffin, or digging into things like Amy Griffin's original book proposal, or early manuscript drafts until the motion is resolved. Essentially dragging on the legal process, making it more expensive for Jane Doe, and preventing them from finding any evidence in discovery that would add to their case. One thing that the author of this Substack article mentions that I think is also relevant is throughout Amy Griffin's story, The Tell, she's obsessed with wanting to be believed. And there is a very real possibility that all of this did happen to her. And if that was the case, I can't imagine what this sort of scenario of so many people picking apart her story after the allegations of Jane Doe have come forward would feel like if she had endured that. and then was doubted by so many. As mentioned, The Tell remains listed as an editor's pick for best biographies and memoirs on Amazon. Amy Griffin has not given public interviews since cancelling her publicity engagements following the New York Times reporting. She's allegedly taken someone else's story of trauma and answered so many questions on it. But the second any reporting comes out that questions that story, she doesn't dare allow herself to be sit down in an interview. Jane Doe still remains a private person. Yet her story has been told for her, not on her terms and not in her words, taken from her by a woman who claimed to be a champion of consent and ended up doing the exact opposite, just like the powerful abusers who had come before her. If you or someone you know has been affected by abuse, support is available. In the United States, the National Assault Hotline can be reached at 1-800656-h hope. That's 1-8006566473. You can also reach the crisis text line by texting in all caps home to 741741. A comprehensive directory of state specific resources is available through the Department of Justice at justice.gov. Thank you for watching. A video that had some of the most twists and turns that I've ever covered here. If you have a story like that, don't forget to comment down below. I'm considering opening up my emails for tips and stories. Let me know if you think that's a good idea. Don't forget to subscribe, give this video a like, and I'll see you in the next video. Stay well until then. Bye.