Children of the Underground (2022): Season 1, Episode 1 - Episode #1.1 - full transcript
- We're living like criminals.
And I hadn't done
anything wrong.
- What he has done is a crime.
And if they're not gonna
protect her,
who is?
- Hi, this is Faye Yager with
Children of the Underground.
Children of the Underground
has become
a powerful force for good
against a horrible evil
in our nation.
Children of the Underground
is completely dedicated
to helping sexually abused kids
and suffering parents
hide from their abusers
through a network
of safe houses in every state.
If you could spend
just one week with me,
your heart would be stirred,
like mine, to take action
to provide refuge and safety
and the opportunity to
once again live a normal life.
We must put an end
to this monstrous problem.
Thank you
for your personal support.
- There's a real dark side
to this whole underground.
- Yeah, I feel like
every one of them
ought to be
in the federal penitentiary.
- Mrs. Yager may be viewed
by many as a martyr.
For my son, she has been
the ultimate nightmare.
- The FBI is working
very hard to stop them.
- You don't deny
you're assisting people
in breaking the law?
- No.
But there is a higher law.
I don't want another child
to turn out like mine.
- There's Faye,
good old Faye.
I don't think she's ever--
- That's how I
picture her still...
- Yeah.
Yeah, me too.
- With her big glasses.
- Mm-hmm.
- But this right here,
where it says "fleeing alone,"
right in here, and it's
this letter right here.
"Amanda poured out her feelings
"in an essay
for her English teacher:
"'I've lost something
that most people never lose.
"'Those are the lucky people.
"I lost my family,' she wrote.
"'I've always lived
with my mom.
"'She has supported me
in everything.
I love her and my siblings
more than you can imagine.'"
I am a mother of four.
That has been
my most rewarding...
job, if you want
to call it a job.
- Is that "Good Housekeeping"?
- Mm-hmm.
They wouldn't let us smile.
I just wanted to smile since
I was gonna be on the cover.
At one point, I caught her
reading all my journals
from when I was in college,
when I met her father.
She just looked at me.
She's like, "I was trying
to read through
"to see if there was anything
that could have let you know
how he was."
There was this part of her
always upset with me because...
I chose her father.
After I graduated
from high school in Oregon,
I wanted to go to school
in a sunny place
and so went to California.
There was a guy that I met.
We started dating,
and then I ended up pregnant.
I wanted the child.
Then it was get married.
Then I think Mandy
was 18 months
when I knew just--
it just wasn't gonna work.
And so I left.
And because I had been
in a divorced family,
I knew it was
very important for--
or it was for me to make sure
that he saw his daughter...
Until Mandy
came home from a weekend visit
and disclosed
some unbelievable, for me,
you know, horrible things
that it was just like,
I had no idea
even people would do this.
Mandy's two, three.
She came home from the visit,
and I put her in the bathtub
and was giving her a bath.
And she just kept saying,
"It hurts down here."
And I was like, you know,
"What?"
Pulled her out of the bathtub
and looked at her,
and there was an injury.
And I was like,
"What happened?"
And she said, "That's where
Daddy cut me with a knife."
I didn't--I--
I didn't know--
I really didn't know
what to do.
I went to the police station.
She talked to the Crimes
Against Children detectives,
and they interviewed her.
And they're telling me
a crime's been committed.
Then you get involved
with Child Protective Services.
She was interviewed by
a social worker who was like,
Oh, you know, this child
needs to be protected."
I'm assuming that they're just
gonna let her stay with me.
But even
with these allegations,
her father got visitation.
These are all
documented evidence and photos.
These are the notebooks
that I carried everywhere
that documented
all of her abuse,
psychological evaluations,
medical reports.
I mean, this is tons
and tons of documentation.
They would let her go
to visit him
with his mom
supervising the visits.
His mother didn't believe
anything was going on.
so she wasn't gonna supervise.
Every visit coming home,
there was something.
Finally got to the point where
we were exchanging her
at the police station.
And I would walk in
ahead of time.
It was like, "Okay, so which
one of you wants to be ready
"to take Mandy's disclosure
as soon as she comes in?
"Who's ready?
"Who wants to hear
about how her father
"raped her this weekend?
Anyone here?"
And then they would send
the female detective out.
But they never charged him.
Transcript,
every single one of these,
of all the court proceedings.
I fought in the family courts,
trying to protect Mandy
for two years.
And probably those two years,
I was in family court 25 times.
It's very frustrating
because this should be a crime.
This should be
in criminal court.
It shouldn't be
a familial matter.
- It's a real privilege
to introduce Faye Yager,
who formed
Children of the Underground
in Atlanta back in 1987.
And it's a great privilege
to have you here, Faye.
Thanks for coming back.
- Thank you.
I'm gonna start off tonight
by telling you
about what happens
in these kinds of cases,
how bad it gets.
- Faye helped children when
the system was failing them.
She was there for when
the family court failed.
And the family court failed
way too many times.
- The courts doesn't work.
It's not just fathers.
It's the court system
in general.
The chances of the molester
or the person that abused you
being prosecuted
is slim to none.
- Prosecutors hardly ever
bring charges against a father
who sexually abuses
a young child.
And then the rest of the system
is to protect children
who mistakenly believe
there was no crime.
The ethics of prosecutors
require them
to only file criminal charges
not just if they believe
the crime has been committed
but if they believe
there's a likelihood
of getting a conviction.
The problem is, it's almost
impossible to get a conviction.
That's the reason
why most of these cases
end up in family court.
- Ideally, family court
is designed to help people
divide their marital assets
and figure out a healthy way
to share time, quality time
with their children.
As a prosecutor and a judge,
sometimes you're dealing with,
you know, argument over who
gets the yellow refrigerator
or, "I'll agree
to give him that,
but I want his mom's
tamale recipe."
But then you have things
as important as
sexual abuse in children.
- Family court, it's good
when there just needs to be
a determination
about how much the alimony
is gonna be.
But it's just horrible
in cases of child sexual abuse.
- When the neighbor is accused
of molesting your child,
in criminal court,
there's resources provided
to make sure that the evidence
is properly gathered
and preserved.
And that person is told to stay
100 yards away from that child
and not even try
to look in their direction.
Family court is just
not designed for that.
Because we don't have
the resources
to quickly investigate
and assess the situation,
they'll write a report saying
"unsubstantiated"
or "inconclusive."
So the judge is like,
"I don't know what's true,
"but I'll order
supervised visits
"so in case it's not proven
to me,
"at least for the next year,
this bond can still exist."
- I believe
that the family court system
would have a better chance
of protecting children
from sexual abuse
if it simply flipped a coin.
That's how bad it is.
- We've been talking about
mothers who have to face
the fact that there's
a system out there
that will allow their children
to be molested
and then give
those children back
to the custody of the molester.
Joining us right now
is Faye Yager.
- The only time that kidnapping
comes into place
for Children
of the Underground,
where I'm involved,
is where a child
has been through the system
and the parents
have no other course.
They can't even see
their child.
And the only thing they can do
is kidnap that child--
- To get them away
from the abuse?
- To get them away.
You know, I don't ask parents
to just walk--
kidnap their kids out of these
houses and take them like that.
That's not what we do.
- Well, tell me
why you started this.
Tell us all why you began
this program.
- I got involved in this,
Montel, because 18 years ago,
I caught my ex-husband
molesting my three-year-old.
I was born and raised
in West Virginia,
brought up in a very,
very rural country background.
Needless to say,
in my young life,
I never knew anything
about child molesters.
Well, when I was 17,
I married my ex-husband.
I had never been out
on a date, really.
It was my first date.
And literally two weeks later,
I run off with this man
and married him.
Two years later,
I had Michelle, my daughter.
I got up early one morning,
and Michelle,
she had gotten up.
She had her little pajamas on,
and she was sitting in this
high chair in this kitchen.
He had an erection,
and he had his penis
laying on the high chair tray,
trying to get her to fondle it.
I was hysterical.
And he immediately claimed
that I didn't see what I saw
and that I was crazy,
that I was paranoid.
My ex-husband had me
put in a mental hospital,
took out psychiatric papers
to have me committed,
signed for me to have
ten shock treatments.
When I got out of the hospital,
I went to get Michelle,
and my husband handed me
these divorce papers.
22 years old and never been
through this before.
He had hired the best lawyer
in town,
the lawyer
that was well-connected.
I want to say to you, I had
never been in a lawyer's office
before that time.
I didn't even know, you know,
what it was about, really.
When I went into the lawyer's
office, he told me, he said,
"Now, don't you dare bring up
this child molestation."
Says, "You will lose,
sure enough, if you do."
I go into this courtroom.
And I went on in there
running my mouth anyway.
And I told the truth.
And the truth didn't work.
Truth is not what they wanted.
No one believed me.
I was treated as though
I was this hysterical woman
who would say anything
to get back at this man.
He was in a suit and tie.
He was a businessman.
He just didn't fit the part
of a child molester.
Michelle was court ordered to
live with this child molester.
- I wrote every single day,
every allegation, Mandy.
And--
- And reading through this,
it's just--
- Here's a list of...
- I'm dumbfounded.
- All the people
that she disclosed to.
She would keep asking for help.
How many times
do you have to ask?
How many times do you have to
say to someone that, you know,
this isn't right?
It just goes on and on,
on and on.
Mandy continued
to visit her dad.
I would lay there,
on the weekends
that I would have to send her
to visit her father,
watching movie after movie
after movie,
just trying to keep my mind off
knowing that I couldn't
protect my child.
I mean, it was
this most horrible feeling,
the most horrible feeling.
One day, Mandy was returned.
She was so red and so just,
you know, in tears.
And I remember hitting the door
and was like, "Uh-uh."
And I packed up.
We went up to Oregon
to live in the country
with my dad and stepmom.
That's where we took her
to get an exam.
That's a horrible feeling,
you know,
to be sitting there
waiting for a report,
hoping that there's evidence,
because then you
could finally say, "See?"
and not wanting evidence
because, of course,
you don't want that to have
happened to your daughter.
And there was medical evidence
that she had been raped.
I got an attorney
here in Oregon.
He was great, you know,
filed paperwork.
He sent, like,
all the medical evidence,
you know, everything
down to San Bernardino
and was like,
"Go arrest this guy.
You know, we got it."
I thought, like,
"It's gonna be okay."
For sure,
I'd be able to go home.
But they don't charge him
with a crime.
It was like, "Are you serious?
You're not gonna protect her?
"You know, what's it gonna take
for you to, you know,
arrest this guy?"
- April Curtis and her
four-year-old daughter, Amanda,
have come to Oregon
from California
for what Curtis feels
is the only way
to protect her daughter.
- There were
three local TV channels.
I knocked on every single one
of their doors
when we were in Oregon.
- Come on.
- They all filmed
what was going on.
- The only known way
of obtaining this infection
is with sexual contact.
- I fled, but I fled in order
to seek medical attention,
in order to protect my child.
And so now the emphasis is not
that she's been
sexually abused,
not the fact
that she has an infection,
the fact that I fled, you know?
So they're still offering
no protection.
And I just kept thinking
that if I just kept shouting
loud enough
that somebody was gonna help
or somebody was gonna
do something.
But nobody likes to sit around
and think about incest.
- Hello, I'm Conrad Bain.
Tonight on "Diff'rent Strokes,"
we're starting
a special two-part show
on a very sensitive
and important subject.
- Let me help you with that.
Uh-huh.
- Child abuse wasn't really
on the map;
child abuse in a family or in
family court, even less so.
- In 1979,
the first comprehensive survey
of the prevalence
of child sex abuse
in the U. S. is published.
Of the folks surveyed,
20% of the women
and about 9% of the men
reported some sort
of sexual violence
or sexual predation
in their youth.
- Over the past decade,
confirmed cases of sexual abuse
of children
have skyrocketed
more than 2,000%.
Most attribute
that dramatic rise
to increased public awareness.
- It becomes this moment
where it's starting
to be acknowledged.
People are starting
to pay attention to it.
- But what was shocking
about that study
was that 25% of the girls
in these white
middle-class families
were being sexually abused
by someone in their family.
- Folks are really struggling
with these findings.
"No one we would love and trust
would ever do this, right?"
- Let's talk for a minute
about strangers.
- And so we see this
"stranger danger" narrative
gain momentum in the 1980s,
which pops up in PSAs about,
"Say no, then go, then tell."
- What do you do?
- Say no, get away,
and tell someone.
- Because it's much more
comfortable to assume
that people that don't know
and love your kids
would do this to your children.
- As a society, I think we're
comfortable with the image of,
you know, drunk and unshaven
people with trench coats
going around
flashing strangers.
But we're really uncomfortable
with the reality
that doctors and lawyers
and judges and bankers
who are, you know,
normal and accomplished people,
go home and rape their children
at night.
- Welcome back.
We're talking
with parents on the run,
parents who think
their children
have been sexually abused
and go underground as fugitives
in order to protect them.
Faye Yager runs
the Atlanta-based spur
of the underground railroad.
- Faye needed publicity
to build a movement.
It helped her so that
other mothers knew who to call
to help them and to explain
how big the problem is.
- Dr. Amy Neustein
is a new face on our show.
- Faye came into my life
in 1987.
She said to me,
"I want to work with you."
She said,
"Let's work together."
And, of course, she knew,
in my case.
- Her daughter
was sexually abused, you say.
But you were unable
to go on the run with her.
What you did instead was deal
with mothers and fathers
who've lost children
through the courts.
- That's correct.
- Faye was an evangelist.
She was able to preach
about the necessity
for the underground.
And she repeated it
on many talk show appearances.
- Today we're gonna be
talking about something
that's very emotional
and very complicated.
- My guests today
all say that their children
have been sexually abused by
the men these women once loved.
- Beth, can we hear
the story of your child?
What happened?
- I went to pick my daughter up
at the day care center.
- The audience for talk shows
tended to be
disproportionately female
because they were shows
that took place in the daytime.
So they became places
where female experience
was audible and taken seriously
in a way that hadn't
been true before.
- If you discovered
that your husband
was sexually abusing
your child...
Talk shows in the '80s
were brand-new thing.
We were allowed
to bring up topics
that people had experienced
but had never talked about.
And one of them
was the child abuse topic.
- Nancy, I have
three small children too.
I guess
I just can't understand,
how could you stay
in a house like that
with your children?
I couldn't. That's why I left.
- The audience reaction
to things
that had not been discussed
was unbelievable gratitude
that you can't imagine.
- I just want to commend you
for having the courage to--
for all of you to come up
and speak about something
that I think has been going on
for years and years
and years and years.
- Talk shows showed people,
"You're not alone,
and there's help."
Our guests today
say they told the authorities,
but they say that they got
anything but help.
Now, let me tell you
what I mean by this.
This is April Curtis.
She lost custody
of her three-year-old
after she accused
her ex-husband of sexual abuse.
April, she was somebody
who had a vein of truth in her.
And you could see it.
You could just see it.
- The sheriff stated
that a crime had been committed
and that they were
taking her from me
because she's a ward
of California State.
So I fled the state.
- On the show,
April made an announcement
that shocked me
and shocked Sally.
- There is a federal warrant
out for my arrest
and for my daughter's arrest.
- Wait a minute.
What are you telling me?
- There's a federal warrant
out for my arrest
as I'm sitting here.
- You--there is a federal
warrant out for your arrest
as you're on a television
talk show?
- Yes.
- Do you know
what you're saying?
- Yes.
After I sent all the
medical evidence to the court,
what was returned
were the arrest warrants on me
and a pickup order on Mandy.
- Why would you go
on television--
- Because the people of America
have to know
what is happening
to these children.
- I took, like, that
split second where you think,
"Wanted by the authorities,"
and you're sitting
on the set next to me."
Do you understand that by law,
if the police ask me
where you are--
- Right.
- Yes, I know
where you came from...
- Okay.
- But I have to warn you
that if they ask me...
- No, I understand that.
- I have to tell them.
- Right.
- Or I will be--
- They've already been up
to the area where I've been.
Federal agents have
already been up there.
So it's not a problem.
- Well, what are you going to
do when you get off this show?
If I have to tell them,
are you gonna run?
- I'm on the run.
She's in hiding. I'm in hiding.
- So whatever I tell them
is your old address.
- That's right.
- And I'm thinking,
"If this woman is wanted,
I have to protect her."
- There was a couple
of male-advocate attorneys
in the audience.
Sally locked
the studio audience,
locked them in this room,
would not let anybody out
until she knew that I left.
- I'm very sensitive
to your case.
And I hope
you will feel all right
and trust me in knowing
that I do have to tell them.
But they will have
to get it out of me, and--
- My heart goes out to you.
I think perhaps
I would do what you did.
I think I'd grab the child
and run.
- This is the FBI.
This was serious.
- A California woman
and her four-year-old daughter
are hiding from the law.
- Yesterday a California
juvenile court judge
refused to withdraw
the arrest warrant
against 27-year-old
April Curtis.
- If apprehended,
Amanda would be placed
in the custody
of the father's parents.
- Flew back to Oregon.
Made it up to Washington
with some friends.
But, you know, people could
only help for a little bit.
Something was going
to have to change.
I couldn't, you know,
keep living like this.
It was apparent that we needed
to do something.
I was passed a phone number.
I call this phone number.
Turns out, this was Faye Yager.
- When the person
calls for help,
I immediately tell them how
and what to do
about their documents
and those kind of things.
We ask to see
the medical records.
We ask them to send any
verification that they have,
and we try to--
before we get involved,
we try to check it out
and check out
that what they're saying
is true
and it has happened.
- When a woman wanted to run,
Faye had asked me to render
kind of a legal assessment
of where the case was headed.
If I saw a case where
the animus toward the mother
was so strong from the judge--
misogyny,
hatred toward the mother--
the prognosis
was that this mother
was not going to prevail
in the family court.
But then it was Faye's decision
whether to take that person
into the underground or not.
But of course,
Faye being an evangelist,
her attitude was,
as many mothers
as possible have to run.
- And they proceed
on a trip to Atlanta.
And then basically,
I give them a course
in how to break the law
and get away with it.
- So we had to make it
to Georgia, where Faye was.
Basically, what she did was,
she was like,
"If you can make it
to the city,
you know,
then call this number."
We would show up to a town,
stay with a family,
sometimes
for two or three days.
And then it was
another phone call to Faye.
I had to, you know,
call from pay phones
so that nobody, you know,
could trace.
And then we would get
another place to go,
up, move to that one.
- We're going to a safe house,
what we call safe houses,
hideaway,
a place
where a family's hidden.
And the car behind us
is making sure
that nobody's following us.
- I would meet someone,
and they were like,
"Okay, follow me.
We got you a hotel room for,
you know,
three or four nights."
A lot of the people
were church people
who just really wanted to help.
Sometimes the people,
they had been abused,
or they had somebody else
in their family
that had been abused,
and so they wanted to help.
- There's families
throughout the United States
that are assisting
these families in hiding.
We have major contacts
in each state.
- So it's like a spy network
in that nobody--
not everybody knows everybody.
- That's what keeps
the network going.
That's what makes it
not breakable.
- You have to stand up
for what you believe sometimes.
This is wrong.
I know it's wrong.
I feel it inside it's wrong.
I couldn't be true to myself
if I didn't do something.
- We left with a certain amount
of cash to disappear.
You never used a credit card,
'cause even back then,
credit cards could be traced.
I was meeting people
on dark streets.
All of a sudden, people
would drive up and, like,
literally throw money
in the car
and groceries
and bags of groceries
and, you know, "Here you go.
"Here's your next phone number,
you know?
Go there."
- I assessed those
who would be likely to succeed
and those
that would be likely to fail.
I'd ask the woman,
"Are you able to use a gun?"
"Are you able
to climb out of a window?"
"Would you be able to live
like a criminal
when you're not a criminal?"
April was good material
for running.
She was gifted and bright.
She was also physically
very strong.
And she was not afraid
of anything.
- I'll never forget this time
where they were gonna meet us.
They were gonna flash
their lights at us,
you know, in the parking lot
so that we would know
that that was a person.
We showed up at the place,
and they were having a prom.
So there was all of these girls
walking around
in these beautiful dresses...
And these guys with all kinds
of cars, you know, flashing.
So I remember calling Faye
on the pay phone
and was like, "I don't know
who's flashing at me.
That person went back,
and they were gonna put
a flag on their car.
So now I was supposed
to look for the person
that had a flag on their car.
So found that one.
They did have a flag.
Then it was, "Okay, where does
Faye have next for me to go?"
I was always looking
over my shoulder.
There wasn't any calm.
The adrenals were always going
because I was
always in protective mode,
always in protective mode.
- Parental abductions
started to become a problem.
And somewhere along the line,
somebody started to talk
about Faye Yager.
Law enforcement began
to try to assess and evaluate
how organized
this underground was,
how many children are involved.
Was she harboring a fugitive?
And could she be arrested
and prosecuted for that?
- I spent 22 and 1/2 years
with the FBI.
Most of the time was here
in the Atlanta field office,
chasing fugitives
and parental kidnapping cases.
I got information
about Faye Yager
and some of the cases
that she was running.
Then we started
a more intensive investigation,
trying to figure out
who this woman was
and what was really involved.
- In 1989, the FBI
considered me to be dangerous.
They set out on this mission
to take me down.
- She's in a nice neighborhood.
She's in a cul-de-sac.
She's the last house down.
It's difficult to conduct
a true secret surveillance
on her.
Sometimes we'd just
go out there
and park in the neighborhood,
just to let her know that we
were still working the case.
- Probably wanted to see
if he recognized
kids he's looking for.
- If he thought he could
take them, he would.
- He didn't have
a warrant on his hands.
- We'd go out
and talk to her neighbors.
We'd go out
and talk to her friends.
We'd see that there
are two or three cars
in the neighborhood
from out of state,
run the license plate
on that car,
and see who it came to.
- The FBI must watch you
like a hawk.
- Yeah, they do. They were
watching me yesterday.
Had five of them on me.
- Five of them?
- Mm-hmm.
- So how do you--
you're a smart little cookie.
How do you--
- Well, I--
- How do you get away?
- You know how?
They catch me in the act.
- We'd see someone
come out of the house,
and we'd try to find
that person's identity.
- It used to be that the parent
who kidnapped the child
was the bad person.
Now they're telling you
that the parent
who abducts the child
is the good parent.
But the FBI was not trying
to prove
that the child was
or wasn't molested.
- We wanted
to find the children
and get them back to the parent
that the court had decided
was the parent
who should have the child.
- They're always looking
for one of these kids.
If they find them,
they're gonna
turn them back over
to a rapist.
- The mothers of the children
had some pretty horrible
stories.
But I didn't have any doubt.
I knew that the judge
was doing his ruling
in the best of--
to the best of his knowledge.
- You know, I tell
these mamas many times,
I say, you know, "Forget
about the child molester.
"Forget about him.
Forget he existed.
"Just think about the people
that carry him
and allow him to get away
with this kind of thing."
And it's these judges.
- When I first graduated
from law school,
all the trial judges
were old white men.
And they certainly
did not want to believe
that anything
like this happened.
They thought child sexual abuse
only occurred
in poor, ignorant homes
where people were probably
married to their relatives.
This wasn't something that
would happen in nice homes.
It wasn't something
that happened in good families.
- Judges have a lot of myths.
And I think one of them is,
angry women make up charges
to "win" in divorce.
- The men have the power.
I mean, I would walk
into courtrooms.
You know, the judge is male.
Every single attorney in there
was male.
I'm the only female
sitting there.
And then these men
who are accused,
these fathers who are accused,
they're standing there
in their suits,
and they look
like a normal person.
They don't look like
the stranger down the road.
And then you've got
the mom here in court
who's just desperate.
I mean, you were desperate
to protect your child.
And,
"Why aren't you listening?"
And then I became the
hysterical, emotional female.
- And there's nothing
to prepare you,
as a brand-new judge,
for the emotions
and the emotional impact
of your decisions.
And so some judges
have a tendency
to just block out
all those emotions
and reject any person who is
crying in the courtroom,
whose voice is shaking.
They use that as a way to say,
"See, that person's unstable.
They're not able to keep it
together under pressure."
So the other person,
the psychopath, for example,
who can lie to you and smile,
looks more presentable
and stable
than the one
who's fearful that their child
is about to be put
into the hands of an abuser.
- When you have your firstborn
taken out of your arms
and it's handed to someone
that you know is dangerous,
someone you know
is gonna hurt that child,
and then to have some judge
tell you,
"Well, that's just
the way it is,"
I'd choose being a fugitive
any day
than to watch
a little innocent child
have the sparkle taken
out of their eyes.
After my ex-husband ended up
with custody of Michelle,
Michelle and I leave
because my daddy says to me,
"Well, you know, Billie Faye,
possession's 9/10 of the law.
And he doesn't
have possession yet."
Says, "You know,
we'll just leave."
I left with him because
I knew what he was doing.
And in doing so, he took
a warrant out for my arrest
and hunted me down
with the FBI.
At the time that I leave
the state with Michelle,
she is sick.
And I've got a little girl
that's telling me
in the back seat,
"Mama,
I got the stuff in my panties,
and I didn't put it there,
and I don't want it there."
She gets sicker.
So I take her
to an emergency room.
And they all
become very alarmed.
She's four years old,
and she's got gonorrhea.
I was convinced
to return to the courts
because I had new evidence
that my child
had venereal disease.
But it wasn't enough proof.
I walked into the courtroom
with the medical reports
with the doctors.
They didn't want to hear it.
They were only interested
in the fact
that I was defying the law,
that I wouldn't obey
this judge's order,
that I would refuse
to turn my child over
to this man
for unsupervised visits.
A bailiff is called.
I don't even have a hearing.
And they lock my ass up.
They take me
straight to the jail.
After six weeks in jail,
they let me out.
And the next ten years
was two hours,
supervised,
a month visitation.
They gave my little girl
to this man,
and he continued to molest her.
- Michelle?
- Yeah.
- It's Mommy.
I miss you.
Do you miss Mommy?
- Mm-hmm.
- I'm gonna be seeing you
real soon.
- You can what, hon?
- Okay.
- I know, darling.
I heard Grandpa.
Mommy loves you, honey.
- Well, honey, let me--
- Peanut sat
on the railroad tracks
Waiting for his supper
I've been good today.
- When I took off
in the underground,
the further that I got away
from California,
the safer I felt.
If you're happy and you know
Clap your hands
- I remember counting 13 states
before we got to Faye.
Finally get to Georgia, and...
there was this big relief.
Turns out, she lives
in this beautiful mansion.
- Karen?
This is Faye in Atlanta.
- I just remember Faye
was a force--force on fire.
Phones just ringing--
another mom, another mom.
- You have to call back.
- She's got stacks
of documents, you know,
from all over, you know,
this case, that case.
Mandy loved
living in the mansion.
Everything was lifted,
you know, from her shoulders.
She was with people
who totally believed her,
who were totally
protecting her.
And she just--
she loved Ms. Faye.
- By this point,
I had married again.
I have five children.
- All I can think of was,
"You have all of this,
"and you're risking
your family, your home
for all of us moms and kids."
- We have arrested Faye Yager
in connection
with the abduction of
an eight-year-old white female.
Ms. Yager's been charged
with cruelty to children
and kidnapping.
- A woman
whose underground network
hides abused children
from the abusing parent.
Now she stands accused.
- I've never questioned
the motive of Ms. Yager.
I question the tactics.
- Faye's tactics
have earned her notoriety...
And hatred from fathers who say
they are falsely accused.
- If convicted on all charges,
the founder of the
Children's Underground Network
faces 60 years in prison.
- You've admittedly
broken the law.
Do you feel like a criminal?
- No, no.
Feel like a saint.
Don't feel like a criminal
at all, mm-mm.
And I hadn't done
anything wrong.
- What he has done is a crime.
And if they're not gonna
protect her,
who is?
- Hi, this is Faye Yager with
Children of the Underground.
Children of the Underground
has become
a powerful force for good
against a horrible evil
in our nation.
Children of the Underground
is completely dedicated
to helping sexually abused kids
and suffering parents
hide from their abusers
through a network
of safe houses in every state.
If you could spend
just one week with me,
your heart would be stirred,
like mine, to take action
to provide refuge and safety
and the opportunity to
once again live a normal life.
We must put an end
to this monstrous problem.
Thank you
for your personal support.
- There's a real dark side
to this whole underground.
- Yeah, I feel like
every one of them
ought to be
in the federal penitentiary.
- Mrs. Yager may be viewed
by many as a martyr.
For my son, she has been
the ultimate nightmare.
- The FBI is working
very hard to stop them.
- You don't deny
you're assisting people
in breaking the law?
- No.
But there is a higher law.
I don't want another child
to turn out like mine.
- There's Faye,
good old Faye.
I don't think she's ever--
- That's how I
picture her still...
- Yeah.
Yeah, me too.
- With her big glasses.
- Mm-hmm.
- But this right here,
where it says "fleeing alone,"
right in here, and it's
this letter right here.
"Amanda poured out her feelings
"in an essay
for her English teacher:
"'I've lost something
that most people never lose.
"'Those are the lucky people.
"I lost my family,' she wrote.
"'I've always lived
with my mom.
"'She has supported me
in everything.
I love her and my siblings
more than you can imagine.'"
I am a mother of four.
That has been
my most rewarding...
job, if you want
to call it a job.
- Is that "Good Housekeeping"?
- Mm-hmm.
They wouldn't let us smile.
I just wanted to smile since
I was gonna be on the cover.
At one point, I caught her
reading all my journals
from when I was in college,
when I met her father.
She just looked at me.
She's like, "I was trying
to read through
"to see if there was anything
that could have let you know
how he was."
There was this part of her
always upset with me because...
I chose her father.
After I graduated
from high school in Oregon,
I wanted to go to school
in a sunny place
and so went to California.
There was a guy that I met.
We started dating,
and then I ended up pregnant.
I wanted the child.
Then it was get married.
Then I think Mandy
was 18 months
when I knew just--
it just wasn't gonna work.
And so I left.
And because I had been
in a divorced family,
I knew it was
very important for--
or it was for me to make sure
that he saw his daughter...
Until Mandy
came home from a weekend visit
and disclosed
some unbelievable, for me,
you know, horrible things
that it was just like,
I had no idea
even people would do this.
Mandy's two, three.
She came home from the visit,
and I put her in the bathtub
and was giving her a bath.
And she just kept saying,
"It hurts down here."
And I was like, you know,
"What?"
Pulled her out of the bathtub
and looked at her,
and there was an injury.
And I was like,
"What happened?"
And she said, "That's where
Daddy cut me with a knife."
I didn't--I--
I didn't know--
I really didn't know
what to do.
I went to the police station.
She talked to the Crimes
Against Children detectives,
and they interviewed her.
And they're telling me
a crime's been committed.
Then you get involved
with Child Protective Services.
She was interviewed by
a social worker who was like,
Oh, you know, this child
needs to be protected."
I'm assuming that they're just
gonna let her stay with me.
But even
with these allegations,
her father got visitation.
These are all
documented evidence and photos.
These are the notebooks
that I carried everywhere
that documented
all of her abuse,
psychological evaluations,
medical reports.
I mean, this is tons
and tons of documentation.
They would let her go
to visit him
with his mom
supervising the visits.
His mother didn't believe
anything was going on.
so she wasn't gonna supervise.
Every visit coming home,
there was something.
Finally got to the point where
we were exchanging her
at the police station.
And I would walk in
ahead of time.
It was like, "Okay, so which
one of you wants to be ready
"to take Mandy's disclosure
as soon as she comes in?
"Who's ready?
"Who wants to hear
about how her father
"raped her this weekend?
Anyone here?"
And then they would send
the female detective out.
But they never charged him.
Transcript,
every single one of these,
of all the court proceedings.
I fought in the family courts,
trying to protect Mandy
for two years.
And probably those two years,
I was in family court 25 times.
It's very frustrating
because this should be a crime.
This should be
in criminal court.
It shouldn't be
a familial matter.
- It's a real privilege
to introduce Faye Yager,
who formed
Children of the Underground
in Atlanta back in 1987.
And it's a great privilege
to have you here, Faye.
Thanks for coming back.
- Thank you.
I'm gonna start off tonight
by telling you
about what happens
in these kinds of cases,
how bad it gets.
- Faye helped children when
the system was failing them.
She was there for when
the family court failed.
And the family court failed
way too many times.
- The courts doesn't work.
It's not just fathers.
It's the court system
in general.
The chances of the molester
or the person that abused you
being prosecuted
is slim to none.
- Prosecutors hardly ever
bring charges against a father
who sexually abuses
a young child.
And then the rest of the system
is to protect children
who mistakenly believe
there was no crime.
The ethics of prosecutors
require them
to only file criminal charges
not just if they believe
the crime has been committed
but if they believe
there's a likelihood
of getting a conviction.
The problem is, it's almost
impossible to get a conviction.
That's the reason
why most of these cases
end up in family court.
- Ideally, family court
is designed to help people
divide their marital assets
and figure out a healthy way
to share time, quality time
with their children.
As a prosecutor and a judge,
sometimes you're dealing with,
you know, argument over who
gets the yellow refrigerator
or, "I'll agree
to give him that,
but I want his mom's
tamale recipe."
But then you have things
as important as
sexual abuse in children.
- Family court, it's good
when there just needs to be
a determination
about how much the alimony
is gonna be.
But it's just horrible
in cases of child sexual abuse.
- When the neighbor is accused
of molesting your child,
in criminal court,
there's resources provided
to make sure that the evidence
is properly gathered
and preserved.
And that person is told to stay
100 yards away from that child
and not even try
to look in their direction.
Family court is just
not designed for that.
Because we don't have
the resources
to quickly investigate
and assess the situation,
they'll write a report saying
"unsubstantiated"
or "inconclusive."
So the judge is like,
"I don't know what's true,
"but I'll order
supervised visits
"so in case it's not proven
to me,
"at least for the next year,
this bond can still exist."
- I believe
that the family court system
would have a better chance
of protecting children
from sexual abuse
if it simply flipped a coin.
That's how bad it is.
- We've been talking about
mothers who have to face
the fact that there's
a system out there
that will allow their children
to be molested
and then give
those children back
to the custody of the molester.
Joining us right now
is Faye Yager.
- The only time that kidnapping
comes into place
for Children
of the Underground,
where I'm involved,
is where a child
has been through the system
and the parents
have no other course.
They can't even see
their child.
And the only thing they can do
is kidnap that child--
- To get them away
from the abuse?
- To get them away.
You know, I don't ask parents
to just walk--
kidnap their kids out of these
houses and take them like that.
That's not what we do.
- Well, tell me
why you started this.
Tell us all why you began
this program.
- I got involved in this,
Montel, because 18 years ago,
I caught my ex-husband
molesting my three-year-old.
I was born and raised
in West Virginia,
brought up in a very,
very rural country background.
Needless to say,
in my young life,
I never knew anything
about child molesters.
Well, when I was 17,
I married my ex-husband.
I had never been out
on a date, really.
It was my first date.
And literally two weeks later,
I run off with this man
and married him.
Two years later,
I had Michelle, my daughter.
I got up early one morning,
and Michelle,
she had gotten up.
She had her little pajamas on,
and she was sitting in this
high chair in this kitchen.
He had an erection,
and he had his penis
laying on the high chair tray,
trying to get her to fondle it.
I was hysterical.
And he immediately claimed
that I didn't see what I saw
and that I was crazy,
that I was paranoid.
My ex-husband had me
put in a mental hospital,
took out psychiatric papers
to have me committed,
signed for me to have
ten shock treatments.
When I got out of the hospital,
I went to get Michelle,
and my husband handed me
these divorce papers.
22 years old and never been
through this before.
He had hired the best lawyer
in town,
the lawyer
that was well-connected.
I want to say to you, I had
never been in a lawyer's office
before that time.
I didn't even know, you know,
what it was about, really.
When I went into the lawyer's
office, he told me, he said,
"Now, don't you dare bring up
this child molestation."
Says, "You will lose,
sure enough, if you do."
I go into this courtroom.
And I went on in there
running my mouth anyway.
And I told the truth.
And the truth didn't work.
Truth is not what they wanted.
No one believed me.
I was treated as though
I was this hysterical woman
who would say anything
to get back at this man.
He was in a suit and tie.
He was a businessman.
He just didn't fit the part
of a child molester.
Michelle was court ordered to
live with this child molester.
- I wrote every single day,
every allegation, Mandy.
And--
- And reading through this,
it's just--
- Here's a list of...
- I'm dumbfounded.
- All the people
that she disclosed to.
She would keep asking for help.
How many times
do you have to ask?
How many times do you have to
say to someone that, you know,
this isn't right?
It just goes on and on,
on and on.
Mandy continued
to visit her dad.
I would lay there,
on the weekends
that I would have to send her
to visit her father,
watching movie after movie
after movie,
just trying to keep my mind off
knowing that I couldn't
protect my child.
I mean, it was
this most horrible feeling,
the most horrible feeling.
One day, Mandy was returned.
She was so red and so just,
you know, in tears.
And I remember hitting the door
and was like, "Uh-uh."
And I packed up.
We went up to Oregon
to live in the country
with my dad and stepmom.
That's where we took her
to get an exam.
That's a horrible feeling,
you know,
to be sitting there
waiting for a report,
hoping that there's evidence,
because then you
could finally say, "See?"
and not wanting evidence
because, of course,
you don't want that to have
happened to your daughter.
And there was medical evidence
that she had been raped.
I got an attorney
here in Oregon.
He was great, you know,
filed paperwork.
He sent, like,
all the medical evidence,
you know, everything
down to San Bernardino
and was like,
"Go arrest this guy.
You know, we got it."
I thought, like,
"It's gonna be okay."
For sure,
I'd be able to go home.
But they don't charge him
with a crime.
It was like, "Are you serious?
You're not gonna protect her?
"You know, what's it gonna take
for you to, you know,
arrest this guy?"
- April Curtis and her
four-year-old daughter, Amanda,
have come to Oregon
from California
for what Curtis feels
is the only way
to protect her daughter.
- There were
three local TV channels.
I knocked on every single one
of their doors
when we were in Oregon.
- Come on.
- They all filmed
what was going on.
- The only known way
of obtaining this infection
is with sexual contact.
- I fled, but I fled in order
to seek medical attention,
in order to protect my child.
And so now the emphasis is not
that she's been
sexually abused,
not the fact
that she has an infection,
the fact that I fled, you know?
So they're still offering
no protection.
And I just kept thinking
that if I just kept shouting
loud enough
that somebody was gonna help
or somebody was gonna
do something.
But nobody likes to sit around
and think about incest.
- Hello, I'm Conrad Bain.
Tonight on "Diff'rent Strokes,"
we're starting
a special two-part show
on a very sensitive
and important subject.
- Let me help you with that.
Uh-huh.
- Child abuse wasn't really
on the map;
child abuse in a family or in
family court, even less so.
- In 1979,
the first comprehensive survey
of the prevalence
of child sex abuse
in the U. S. is published.
Of the folks surveyed,
20% of the women
and about 9% of the men
reported some sort
of sexual violence
or sexual predation
in their youth.
- Over the past decade,
confirmed cases of sexual abuse
of children
have skyrocketed
more than 2,000%.
Most attribute
that dramatic rise
to increased public awareness.
- It becomes this moment
where it's starting
to be acknowledged.
People are starting
to pay attention to it.
- But what was shocking
about that study
was that 25% of the girls
in these white
middle-class families
were being sexually abused
by someone in their family.
- Folks are really struggling
with these findings.
"No one we would love and trust
would ever do this, right?"
- Let's talk for a minute
about strangers.
- And so we see this
"stranger danger" narrative
gain momentum in the 1980s,
which pops up in PSAs about,
"Say no, then go, then tell."
- What do you do?
- Say no, get away,
and tell someone.
- Because it's much more
comfortable to assume
that people that don't know
and love your kids
would do this to your children.
- As a society, I think we're
comfortable with the image of,
you know, drunk and unshaven
people with trench coats
going around
flashing strangers.
But we're really uncomfortable
with the reality
that doctors and lawyers
and judges and bankers
who are, you know,
normal and accomplished people,
go home and rape their children
at night.
- Welcome back.
We're talking
with parents on the run,
parents who think
their children
have been sexually abused
and go underground as fugitives
in order to protect them.
Faye Yager runs
the Atlanta-based spur
of the underground railroad.
- Faye needed publicity
to build a movement.
It helped her so that
other mothers knew who to call
to help them and to explain
how big the problem is.
- Dr. Amy Neustein
is a new face on our show.
- Faye came into my life
in 1987.
She said to me,
"I want to work with you."
She said,
"Let's work together."
And, of course, she knew,
in my case.
- Her daughter
was sexually abused, you say.
But you were unable
to go on the run with her.
What you did instead was deal
with mothers and fathers
who've lost children
through the courts.
- That's correct.
- Faye was an evangelist.
She was able to preach
about the necessity
for the underground.
And she repeated it
on many talk show appearances.
- Today we're gonna be
talking about something
that's very emotional
and very complicated.
- My guests today
all say that their children
have been sexually abused by
the men these women once loved.
- Beth, can we hear
the story of your child?
What happened?
- I went to pick my daughter up
at the day care center.
- The audience for talk shows
tended to be
disproportionately female
because they were shows
that took place in the daytime.
So they became places
where female experience
was audible and taken seriously
in a way that hadn't
been true before.
- If you discovered
that your husband
was sexually abusing
your child...
Talk shows in the '80s
were brand-new thing.
We were allowed
to bring up topics
that people had experienced
but had never talked about.
And one of them
was the child abuse topic.
- Nancy, I have
three small children too.
I guess
I just can't understand,
how could you stay
in a house like that
with your children?
I couldn't. That's why I left.
- The audience reaction
to things
that had not been discussed
was unbelievable gratitude
that you can't imagine.
- I just want to commend you
for having the courage to--
for all of you to come up
and speak about something
that I think has been going on
for years and years
and years and years.
- Talk shows showed people,
"You're not alone,
and there's help."
Our guests today
say they told the authorities,
but they say that they got
anything but help.
Now, let me tell you
what I mean by this.
This is April Curtis.
She lost custody
of her three-year-old
after she accused
her ex-husband of sexual abuse.
April, she was somebody
who had a vein of truth in her.
And you could see it.
You could just see it.
- The sheriff stated
that a crime had been committed
and that they were
taking her from me
because she's a ward
of California State.
So I fled the state.
- On the show,
April made an announcement
that shocked me
and shocked Sally.
- There is a federal warrant
out for my arrest
and for my daughter's arrest.
- Wait a minute.
What are you telling me?
- There's a federal warrant
out for my arrest
as I'm sitting here.
- You--there is a federal
warrant out for your arrest
as you're on a television
talk show?
- Yes.
- Do you know
what you're saying?
- Yes.
After I sent all the
medical evidence to the court,
what was returned
were the arrest warrants on me
and a pickup order on Mandy.
- Why would you go
on television--
- Because the people of America
have to know
what is happening
to these children.
- I took, like, that
split second where you think,
"Wanted by the authorities,"
and you're sitting
on the set next to me."
Do you understand that by law,
if the police ask me
where you are--
- Right.
- Yes, I know
where you came from...
- Okay.
- But I have to warn you
that if they ask me...
- No, I understand that.
- I have to tell them.
- Right.
- Or I will be--
- They've already been up
to the area where I've been.
Federal agents have
already been up there.
So it's not a problem.
- Well, what are you going to
do when you get off this show?
If I have to tell them,
are you gonna run?
- I'm on the run.
She's in hiding. I'm in hiding.
- So whatever I tell them
is your old address.
- That's right.
- And I'm thinking,
"If this woman is wanted,
I have to protect her."
- There was a couple
of male-advocate attorneys
in the audience.
Sally locked
the studio audience,
locked them in this room,
would not let anybody out
until she knew that I left.
- I'm very sensitive
to your case.
And I hope
you will feel all right
and trust me in knowing
that I do have to tell them.
But they will have
to get it out of me, and--
- My heart goes out to you.
I think perhaps
I would do what you did.
I think I'd grab the child
and run.
- This is the FBI.
This was serious.
- A California woman
and her four-year-old daughter
are hiding from the law.
- Yesterday a California
juvenile court judge
refused to withdraw
the arrest warrant
against 27-year-old
April Curtis.
- If apprehended,
Amanda would be placed
in the custody
of the father's parents.
- Flew back to Oregon.
Made it up to Washington
with some friends.
But, you know, people could
only help for a little bit.
Something was going
to have to change.
I couldn't, you know,
keep living like this.
It was apparent that we needed
to do something.
I was passed a phone number.
I call this phone number.
Turns out, this was Faye Yager.
- When the person
calls for help,
I immediately tell them how
and what to do
about their documents
and those kind of things.
We ask to see
the medical records.
We ask them to send any
verification that they have,
and we try to--
before we get involved,
we try to check it out
and check out
that what they're saying
is true
and it has happened.
- When a woman wanted to run,
Faye had asked me to render
kind of a legal assessment
of where the case was headed.
If I saw a case where
the animus toward the mother
was so strong from the judge--
misogyny,
hatred toward the mother--
the prognosis
was that this mother
was not going to prevail
in the family court.
But then it was Faye's decision
whether to take that person
into the underground or not.
But of course,
Faye being an evangelist,
her attitude was,
as many mothers
as possible have to run.
- And they proceed
on a trip to Atlanta.
And then basically,
I give them a course
in how to break the law
and get away with it.
- So we had to make it
to Georgia, where Faye was.
Basically, what she did was,
she was like,
"If you can make it
to the city,
you know,
then call this number."
We would show up to a town,
stay with a family,
sometimes
for two or three days.
And then it was
another phone call to Faye.
I had to, you know,
call from pay phones
so that nobody, you know,
could trace.
And then we would get
another place to go,
up, move to that one.
- We're going to a safe house,
what we call safe houses,
hideaway,
a place
where a family's hidden.
And the car behind us
is making sure
that nobody's following us.
- I would meet someone,
and they were like,
"Okay, follow me.
We got you a hotel room for,
you know,
three or four nights."
A lot of the people
were church people
who just really wanted to help.
Sometimes the people,
they had been abused,
or they had somebody else
in their family
that had been abused,
and so they wanted to help.
- There's families
throughout the United States
that are assisting
these families in hiding.
We have major contacts
in each state.
- So it's like a spy network
in that nobody--
not everybody knows everybody.
- That's what keeps
the network going.
That's what makes it
not breakable.
- You have to stand up
for what you believe sometimes.
This is wrong.
I know it's wrong.
I feel it inside it's wrong.
I couldn't be true to myself
if I didn't do something.
- We left with a certain amount
of cash to disappear.
You never used a credit card,
'cause even back then,
credit cards could be traced.
I was meeting people
on dark streets.
All of a sudden, people
would drive up and, like,
literally throw money
in the car
and groceries
and bags of groceries
and, you know, "Here you go.
"Here's your next phone number,
you know?
Go there."
- I assessed those
who would be likely to succeed
and those
that would be likely to fail.
I'd ask the woman,
"Are you able to use a gun?"
"Are you able
to climb out of a window?"
"Would you be able to live
like a criminal
when you're not a criminal?"
April was good material
for running.
She was gifted and bright.
She was also physically
very strong.
And she was not afraid
of anything.
- I'll never forget this time
where they were gonna meet us.
They were gonna flash
their lights at us,
you know, in the parking lot
so that we would know
that that was a person.
We showed up at the place,
and they were having a prom.
So there was all of these girls
walking around
in these beautiful dresses...
And these guys with all kinds
of cars, you know, flashing.
So I remember calling Faye
on the pay phone
and was like, "I don't know
who's flashing at me.
That person went back,
and they were gonna put
a flag on their car.
So now I was supposed
to look for the person
that had a flag on their car.
So found that one.
They did have a flag.
Then it was, "Okay, where does
Faye have next for me to go?"
I was always looking
over my shoulder.
There wasn't any calm.
The adrenals were always going
because I was
always in protective mode,
always in protective mode.
- Parental abductions
started to become a problem.
And somewhere along the line,
somebody started to talk
about Faye Yager.
Law enforcement began
to try to assess and evaluate
how organized
this underground was,
how many children are involved.
Was she harboring a fugitive?
And could she be arrested
and prosecuted for that?
- I spent 22 and 1/2 years
with the FBI.
Most of the time was here
in the Atlanta field office,
chasing fugitives
and parental kidnapping cases.
I got information
about Faye Yager
and some of the cases
that she was running.
Then we started
a more intensive investigation,
trying to figure out
who this woman was
and what was really involved.
- In 1989, the FBI
considered me to be dangerous.
They set out on this mission
to take me down.
- She's in a nice neighborhood.
She's in a cul-de-sac.
She's the last house down.
It's difficult to conduct
a true secret surveillance
on her.
Sometimes we'd just
go out there
and park in the neighborhood,
just to let her know that we
were still working the case.
- Probably wanted to see
if he recognized
kids he's looking for.
- If he thought he could
take them, he would.
- He didn't have
a warrant on his hands.
- We'd go out
and talk to her neighbors.
We'd go out
and talk to her friends.
We'd see that there
are two or three cars
in the neighborhood
from out of state,
run the license plate
on that car,
and see who it came to.
- The FBI must watch you
like a hawk.
- Yeah, they do. They were
watching me yesterday.
Had five of them on me.
- Five of them?
- Mm-hmm.
- So how do you--
you're a smart little cookie.
How do you--
- Well, I--
- How do you get away?
- You know how?
They catch me in the act.
- We'd see someone
come out of the house,
and we'd try to find
that person's identity.
- It used to be that the parent
who kidnapped the child
was the bad person.
Now they're telling you
that the parent
who abducts the child
is the good parent.
But the FBI was not trying
to prove
that the child was
or wasn't molested.
- We wanted
to find the children
and get them back to the parent
that the court had decided
was the parent
who should have the child.
- They're always looking
for one of these kids.
If they find them,
they're gonna
turn them back over
to a rapist.
- The mothers of the children
had some pretty horrible
stories.
But I didn't have any doubt.
I knew that the judge
was doing his ruling
in the best of--
to the best of his knowledge.
- You know, I tell
these mamas many times,
I say, you know, "Forget
about the child molester.
"Forget about him.
Forget he existed.
"Just think about the people
that carry him
and allow him to get away
with this kind of thing."
And it's these judges.
- When I first graduated
from law school,
all the trial judges
were old white men.
And they certainly
did not want to believe
that anything
like this happened.
They thought child sexual abuse
only occurred
in poor, ignorant homes
where people were probably
married to their relatives.
This wasn't something that
would happen in nice homes.
It wasn't something
that happened in good families.
- Judges have a lot of myths.
And I think one of them is,
angry women make up charges
to "win" in divorce.
- The men have the power.
I mean, I would walk
into courtrooms.
You know, the judge is male.
Every single attorney in there
was male.
I'm the only female
sitting there.
And then these men
who are accused,
these fathers who are accused,
they're standing there
in their suits,
and they look
like a normal person.
They don't look like
the stranger down the road.
And then you've got
the mom here in court
who's just desperate.
I mean, you were desperate
to protect your child.
And,
"Why aren't you listening?"
And then I became the
hysterical, emotional female.
- And there's nothing
to prepare you,
as a brand-new judge,
for the emotions
and the emotional impact
of your decisions.
And so some judges
have a tendency
to just block out
all those emotions
and reject any person who is
crying in the courtroom,
whose voice is shaking.
They use that as a way to say,
"See, that person's unstable.
They're not able to keep it
together under pressure."
So the other person,
the psychopath, for example,
who can lie to you and smile,
looks more presentable
and stable
than the one
who's fearful that their child
is about to be put
into the hands of an abuser.
- When you have your firstborn
taken out of your arms
and it's handed to someone
that you know is dangerous,
someone you know
is gonna hurt that child,
and then to have some judge
tell you,
"Well, that's just
the way it is,"
I'd choose being a fugitive
any day
than to watch
a little innocent child
have the sparkle taken
out of their eyes.
After my ex-husband ended up
with custody of Michelle,
Michelle and I leave
because my daddy says to me,
"Well, you know, Billie Faye,
possession's 9/10 of the law.
And he doesn't
have possession yet."
Says, "You know,
we'll just leave."
I left with him because
I knew what he was doing.
And in doing so, he took
a warrant out for my arrest
and hunted me down
with the FBI.
At the time that I leave
the state with Michelle,
she is sick.
And I've got a little girl
that's telling me
in the back seat,
"Mama,
I got the stuff in my panties,
and I didn't put it there,
and I don't want it there."
She gets sicker.
So I take her
to an emergency room.
And they all
become very alarmed.
She's four years old,
and she's got gonorrhea.
I was convinced
to return to the courts
because I had new evidence
that my child
had venereal disease.
But it wasn't enough proof.
I walked into the courtroom
with the medical reports
with the doctors.
They didn't want to hear it.
They were only interested
in the fact
that I was defying the law,
that I wouldn't obey
this judge's order,
that I would refuse
to turn my child over
to this man
for unsupervised visits.
A bailiff is called.
I don't even have a hearing.
And they lock my ass up.
They take me
straight to the jail.
After six weeks in jail,
they let me out.
And the next ten years
was two hours,
supervised,
a month visitation.
They gave my little girl
to this man,
and he continued to molest her.
- Michelle?
- Yeah.
- It's Mommy.
I miss you.
Do you miss Mommy?
- Mm-hmm.
- I'm gonna be seeing you
real soon.
- You can what, hon?
- Okay.
- I know, darling.
I heard Grandpa.
Mommy loves you, honey.
- Well, honey, let me--
- Peanut sat
on the railroad tracks
Waiting for his supper
I've been good today.
- When I took off
in the underground,
the further that I got away
from California,
the safer I felt.
If you're happy and you know
Clap your hands
- I remember counting 13 states
before we got to Faye.
Finally get to Georgia, and...
there was this big relief.
Turns out, she lives
in this beautiful mansion.
- Karen?
This is Faye in Atlanta.
- I just remember Faye
was a force--force on fire.
Phones just ringing--
another mom, another mom.
- You have to call back.
- She's got stacks
of documents, you know,
from all over, you know,
this case, that case.
Mandy loved
living in the mansion.
Everything was lifted,
you know, from her shoulders.
She was with people
who totally believed her,
who were totally
protecting her.
And she just--
she loved Ms. Faye.
- By this point,
I had married again.
I have five children.
- All I can think of was,
"You have all of this,
"and you're risking
your family, your home
for all of us moms and kids."
- We have arrested Faye Yager
in connection
with the abduction of
an eight-year-old white female.
Ms. Yager's been charged
with cruelty to children
and kidnapping.
- A woman
whose underground network
hides abused children
from the abusing parent.
Now she stands accused.
- I've never questioned
the motive of Ms. Yager.
I question the tactics.
- Faye's tactics
have earned her notoriety...
And hatred from fathers who say
they are falsely accused.
- If convicted on all charges,
the founder of the
Children's Underground Network
faces 60 years in prison.
- You've admittedly
broken the law.
Do you feel like a criminal?
- No, no.
Feel like a saint.
Don't feel like a criminal
at all, mm-mm.