Trigger warning. This podcast contains descriptions of various abusive situations. Listener discretion is advised.

You are listening to the Preacher Boys podcast, a podcast shedding light on decades of mental, physical, and sexual abuse within the independent fundamental Baptist movement.

The testimony shared on this podcast are told from the personal experience and perspective of the survivors.

Not all legal outcomes are known or final.

Any suspect is presumed innocent until proven guilty in the court of law.

Now, here's your host, Eric Squarsinski.

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Preacher Boys podcast. We are back for another episode.

This one is a really exciting one. I'm sitting down with my good friend, Ashley Easter,

from Courage 365, a nonprofit that helps survivors of abuse. And it's also a nonprofit that I am honored to be a

board member of. And we're going to have a really great conversation about building healthy community.

But first, I want to just cover a couple quick things that have been popping up surrounding

the podcast and the show and just do a little bit of housekeeping here. First, I want to address

the elephant in the room, or I should see the elephant and donkey in the room, because I know

there's been some people who are not thrilled about the fact that there's been some episodes

that are focused on the subject of politics. And look, I 100% understand that. And I understand why political

discourse is not something everyone wants to experience. But I wanted to create those episodes

because I think they're really helpful to people who are trying to navigate the intersection

between, you know, political discourse that can get

really awful wherever you're having it, but particularly in the United States, for most of the

listeners, and religious trauma, because I think those two things have a lot of links. There's a lot of

politicized teaching within religious

environments like the IFB. And so my goal is not to convert people to any specific political party,

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