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Skeptical Mystics: Forensic Healing

Skeptical Mystics: Forensic Healing

By: Matt & Kristin Long
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We are a team of Trauma Professionals with a background in the Law, Investigations, Child Development, Education, Language & Music built to help a person safely navigate reality: What it is to be Human. We combine Evidence & Experience to find Authenticity & Artistry Kristin is a Forensic Investigator, Teacher & Human Development Specialist Matt is a Trial Attorney, Criminal Law Scholar & Advocate for Justice Hil is a Criminal Investigator, Veteran, Retired FBI Agent & Cactus Expert Carli is an Educator, Interviewer, Investigator & Forensics Expert PIETY & NERVOUS SYSTEM WARNING - SOMETIMES WE USE RUDE WORDS! Topics include Drugs, Sex, Death & Violence and also Abuse, Neglect, Abandonment & Betrayal. We explore and explain all human experiences, especially those that impact the mind of a child. We use raw and vivid imagery and choose words that explore what is real - forensically© 2026 Matt & Kristin Long Philosophy Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Trial Attorneys Talk - Child & Intimacy Crimes

    Trial Attorneys Talk - Child & Intimacy Crimes
    Apr 22 2026
    Two dads and criminal defense attorneys talk about the realities of Child & Intimacy Crimes, the recent CNN "grape" academy article and provide tips for parents to help their kids tell if they're being hurt or abused.Matt Long: Hey, everybody. This is Matt Long with Skeptical Mystics. And on this episode, I sit down with another criminal defense attorney. We both specialize in child and intimacy crimes, and we're both dads. We talk about the realities of those crimes and the recent CNN article about the rape academy. We also provide just a little bit of advice and tips for parents to help keep their children safe and protected and to empower them to tell if they ever find themselves in a situation where they're being hurt. Knowledge is power, especially as it relates to our kids. Aaron Reed: Sup Aaron? How you doing? Matt Long: I'm good. We have a Aaron Reed: weird job. We do. I would agree with that. Matt Long: I mean, you see people at their worst, at their weirdest. Yeah. And that includes, I'm gonna say civilians, regular people, but police. Yeah. Prosecutors, judges. You see, especially in some of the cases that we handle, it's an interesting peek into humanity. Aaron Reed: It is. There's a lot of different dynamics and different cases and different people, different personalities, and it all kind of intersects, and you have to manage all that. It's very demanding, but rewarding Matt Long: job. I Aaron Reed: wouldn't do anything else, to be honest with you. Matt Long: But I brought you in because I've been in the child and intimacy crimes Aaron Reed: Yep. Matt Long: World for, man, twenty some twenty some years now. And it's a different area, and you're another another attorney who works in that area. Aaron Reed: It's not an area of the law that's for everybody. Matt Long: Right. Aaron Reed: It really isn't. And to do it at the level that I think we do it at, that you do it at, that the people that we know do it at, it takes a lot. Yeah. It does. Matt Long: And give us your firm name. Aaron Reed: So I work Katz and Reed. We're based in the Biltmore area, kinda not far from your office here, probably four or five miles from your office here on 16th Street, just off the 51, and me and Duane Katz have been partners now for four years. Matt Long: Uh-huh. Aaron Reed: And then he hired me back as an employee back in 2018. Matt Long: So, Aaron Reed: yeah, I've known him for a while Matt Long: now. Yeah, and Long and Simmons, been doing this for ten years in private practice, but before that I was a prosecutor and worked in sex crimes, child crimes, computer crimes. There was a transition and the idea of, always ask the question, right? Yeah. Well, how do you do what you do? And so I wanna pose that question to you. Do you get that question a lot? How is it that you represent the worst of the worst? Aaron Reed: Yeah, how does it impact? Various forms that question is something that I think every defense attorney's had at some point, but to me I always tell people the same thing, that my job is to police the police. My job is to try to find the truth in a given situation, whatever that might be. And my job is to help a person accused of a crime navigate the system. And that's what our country has allowed to happen. And if you're charged with a crime, if another person's charged with a crime, would you wanna navigate that by yourself? Would you wanna do that alone facing a government that has endless resources? Would you wanna do that or would you want help? And that's how I always like to answer that question because people, they like to ask it sometimes in a condescending way. You're kind of a scummy guy for representing scumbags, but at the end of the day everybody's a human. Everybody deserves their rights, they deserve to have someone there to help navigate those rights, and that's what I do. Mhmm. Period. Matt Long: You know, was talking to someone the other day, they asked me about, oh, so you're on the other side now. I said, guess that's one way to look at it, but I don't really view that because there's just evidence. Aaron Reed: Right. Matt Long: There's not really the state's evidence or defense evidence, there's just evidence. Aaron Reed: Something that happened. Matt Long: And you're doing the same thing, making the same analysis. As a defense attorney, you can't just sling bullshit. Yeah. And if you sling, if you try to sling bullshit, if you try to just Aaron Reed: lie Yeah, or I don't. Matt Long: You lose credibility and that's not gonna help anyone. So you gotta make the right arguments. Aaron Reed: You gotta make the right arguments. You have to be knowledgeable enough to find them, right? To make But I like that, what you said. Prosecutors, defense attorneys, we go against each other. Whatever the adversarial nature of it is, but the goal for everybody, regardless of who you are, is to figure out what happened. And if you can't do that as a defense attorney, or if you don't have the ...
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    35 mins
  • Law, Order, Chaos & Death Justification (The People v. The Government)

    Law, Order, Chaos & Death Justification (The People v. The Government)
    Jan 28 2026

    A Trial Attorney, A Retired FBI Agent, A Former Police Officer & A Death Investigator discuss the "Laws" of officer involved shootings and use of force involving Federal Agents given Arizona's "Stand Your Ground" laws in light of the recent statement made by the Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. Topics include the Law of Procedure, The Constitution, Self-Defense Laws in Arizona, Second Amendment Issues, The Supremacy Clause and Judicial Oversight.

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    53 mins
  • Myths & Reality of CSA (Part 1)

    Myths & Reality of CSA (Part 1)
    Nov 23 2025
    Trigger Warning: Talking Honestly Through Child Sex CrimeWe we identify as the Wayfarers and we introduce you now as another one of the Wayfarers and it and it comes from an idea of.Well, the reason why we picked it is is is the idea of being a lifelong learner and that you're never landing on really on anything but constantly in search for.Growth, progress and those types of things. And it stems from also this theologian from the the group that we're affiliated with he identified as a wayfarer's theology.Which is to never be fixed, to constantly be open to to new things and new, you know, new changes and and and openness. And he identified that in conjunction with being a Church of dissidents.And I really liked that because that's definitely been our journey of being dissidents and being heretics in virtually every group that we've been a part of, including my, my, my last.Faith community, as it were, as a prosecutor, and I really did find prosecution being a little cult as I as I got out of it. So that's.So, So what we what we said as our tagline is, is that we are interested in fruits, not faith and ideas over beliefs, and that we talk through the issues rather than talking around the issues.And I thought that's a really particularly good framing for when it comes to sex, death, drugs and violence.Carli Moncher 3:14Thanks.Oh.Kristin Long 3:23And so our topic today will jump in with sex, sex, consent and child sexual abuse. And So what better, what better person to come and talk about these topics than what we call, Hillary, a.What is an SM? Subject matter expert. SM. SM. Yeah, SM. SM. SM. Oh, that would be with an I. That was with the I started going down. I did start saying SMI cause I was.Carli Moncher 3:50I thought you meant seriously, mentally ill. I was like, wow, that's different.Kristin Long 3:59He's called me, Carly. He's called me a lot of things before, but not that.Carli Moncher 4:04Yeah, I've been called worse, so.Kristin Long 4:06But Carly is our is our subject matter expert on topics that are so avoided and misunderstood, and that is child sexual abuse.And so let's dig in. I thought I'd start with a couple things. First, what and anyone can jump in as as well, but but Makara, the first one's for you is if you started point to a couple of just the.So one of the prevailing myths and misunderstandings about child sexual abuse. What would be just one?Carli Moncher 4:50I think the first one that comes to mind is that any victim of CSA or child sexual abuse is going to run Intel right away.And that we know over and over and over again is just not the case.Kristin Long 5:09Yeah, the one that I thought about is that.People don't appreciate just how common and how prevalent and how many people they know have that experience and will never tell, have never tell, told and may never told. So we're here now.Talking about telling, talking. So approximately how many kids have you talked to about these types of subjects?Carli Moncher 5:49Um.Somewhere in the in the thousands. I don't know the exact number anymore.Kristin Long 5:56You haven't kept kept track of that, I take it.Carli Moncher 5:59Not anymore. There was a time in place.Kristin Long 6:01Yeah. And then the other so, so.The concept or the the idea of telling, talking, you know, in our family we have, we have a mantra, a rule that is everyone in the home gets to think their thoughts, feel their feelings.And talk about the thoughts that they think and the feelings that they feel. And that was something that I I learned in part from you and other people about how important it is to make that a a principle and to to make sure that kids at a very early age.Carli Moncher 6:29Mm.Kristin Long 6:43Are free to do that. And you know, people know my some people here know my daughter. She's never been real shy. And yet there's been times when I've shut them down, shut her down and and she'll remind me, hey.I thought we get to think our thoughts and talk about our thoughts and that's right, we we get to do that. So now before we get into some of the other things, the other thing I wanted to talk about for a second is.This idea for the.Maybe if it's what you all think about the idea that I've heard. So I want to run a want to run it by you about the idea that.Acute and severe childhood trauma, and especially things like childhood sexual abuse, is a numinous or a spiritual experience.I just use a word I know that can be loaded for some people, so I'd love to get just anyone's impression about the use of that word and the concept of child sexual abuse as a spiritual experience.Carli Moncher 8:03I would say that specific term ruffles my feathers a little bit. Um.I would use the terminology maybe spiritual trauma or spiritual damage, spiritual inflection.Kristin Long 8:19Mhm.And I've heard and I've heard spiritual injury and even spiritual emergency.Carli Moncher 8:22Virtual experience.Mhm.Mhm.Kristin Long 8...
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    1 hr and 11 mins
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