Narcissistic Abuse Survivor Support Blog

Woman sentenced to 50 years in prison for killing the man who had groomed her since she was 14, raped her, and financially coerced her into multiple cosmetic surgeries.

50-year-old Hal Sasko invited 17-year-old Sarah Brooke Gonzales-McLinn to move in with him after she graduated high school. Three years earlier, Sarah worked for Sasko at the pizza shop he owned. When she left that job, Sasko continued to contact her. Sarah confided in him about her complicated relationship with her parents, her neighbor molesting her as a child, and her experience being raped by a man that burned her with his cigarette.

“Sasko promised to take care of her.”

Sasko charged Sarah rent and provided her with “unlimited access to marijuana and alcohol” while increasingly demanding more money for gas, her phone, and other bills. 

When Sasko shared that he was attracted to Sarah, she “shut him down.” When she discussed moving out, Sasko threatened to sue her and told her he could wreck her credit so that she could never get an apartment or buy a car. Eventually, Sasko started demanding sex alongside rent.

After this, Sasko bragged to his friends about having a “young” but “unattractive” girlfriend and started pushing Sarah to have cosmetic surgery.

He paid for her to get a nose job, then added the $6,000 cost to the bill she would have to repay before she could stop having sex with him. He told her that men don’t like flat-chested women. She needed a curvier body. He wanted her to have breast augmentation surgery, but the doctor said she was too young. He arranged for her to have buttocks implants instead. She objected but felt she had no choice. He added the $10,000 cost to her bill. She estimated that he raped her two to three times per week for 10 months.

On Janary 14, 2014, Sasko texted Sarah to apologize for trying to rape her earlier that week. But at 5:15 pm, he sent a text asking her to put beer in the refrigerator. Sarah said she knew if Sasko was drinking, he would try to rape her again. When he lost consciousness that night, Sarah reportedly made the decision to slit his throat.

Lawrence police questioned her after she was found 11 days later in Everglades National Park. Detective Jamie Lawson wanted to know why she used Sasko’s blood to write “FREEDOM” on the wall. “What were you trying to express when you did that?” Lawson asked. “That’s how I felt,” she replied. Later, [Sarah] told Hutchinson that killing Sasko felt like standing in the sun for the first time.

During her 2015 trial, prosecutor Charles Branson argued that it would be “inappropriate” for the jury to hear about Sasko’s abuse because it might cause them to “feel sympathy” for her. The jury never learned that Sasko was a rapist or of his constant use of pornography that featured children, bestiality, and videos of men raping women who appeared to be sleeping.

On September 4, 2015, a judge sentenced Sarah to a minimum of 50 years in prison. In May 2021, Sarah’s defense attorney successfully argued for reducing her prison sentence to a minimum of 25 years, after which she would be legally allowed to seek parole.

In a column for the Kansas Reflector, Sarah’s prosecutor and defense attorney co-wrote an article claiming, “battered woman syndrome defense wouldn’t be a Get Out of Jail Free card.”

Prison staff continue to taunt and objectify Sarah.

[Sarah] said her unwanted buttocks implants are a constant reminder of the physical and emotional pain Sasko inflicted on her. Shortly after she arrived at prison, she asked to have them removed. “They were all just curious,” [Sarah] said. “I remember one nurse went and called another nurse in and they both touched me.” The state denied her the medical procedure. “Yeah, it would be ideal if all of the nurses would, you know, follow HIPAA and keep your medical stuff private, but they don’t,” [Sarah] said. “And they told a lot of people — a lot of officers, a lot of inmates. That was just very traumatic.”

Sasko was attempting to groom two 16-year-old girls before Sarah stepped in. Her reported actions likely saved these girls years of similar torture.

"Confidential police reports revealed Sasko was grooming 16-year-old twin girls before his death. Their mother was furious at the attention and gifts he provided them, including cash, gas, clothes, subwoofers for their car, and an unsolicited envelope of marijuana. When the mother blocked his number on their phones, he bought them new phones. If they ever wanted to run away, he told the girls, they could move in with him" (x).

Send funds to to Sarah Gonzales-McLinn's commissary account through accesscorrections.com/send-money:

Unfortunately, that experience isn't always available. If you're in a country at war, or an undocumented migrant in the current US, for example, feeling genuinely safe is not going to be on the table and the cause of that unsafety is beyond your control.

In such situations, you can trick your nervous system a bit to give it some of those experiences anyway.

For experiences of safety: try to cover your basic physical needs if possible (food, drink, warmth, rest, caring for physical injuries) and try to build routine, rhythm and familiarity into your life if possible. That could be making tea every morning, or praying at set times, or playing your favorite song every evening before bed. Whatever fits your situation: routines are gonna help your nervous system feel stable and less constantly unsafe.

For experiences of control and capableness: try to regularly do little things that affirm your sense of accomplishment. Fixing your bike, doing a crossword puzzle, learning to play a new song on your guitar, putting on make-up in a way that makes you feel stunning, finish a level of a video game. Again: whatever is available to you. Little moments of 'fuck yeah i did this' help your nervous system feel like you are capable of things and less constantly powerless.

The pathological environment of childhood abuse forces the development of extraordinary capacities, both creative and destructive. It fosters the development of abnormal states of consciousness in which the ordinary relations of body and mind, reality and imagination, knowledge and memory, no longer hold. These altered states of consciousness permit the elaboration of a prodigious array of symptoms, both somatic and psychological. And these symptoms simultaneously conceal and reveal their origins; they speak in disguised language of secrets too terrible for words.

Chronic childhood abuse takes place in a familial climate of pervasive terror, in which ordinary caretaking relationships have been profoundly disrupted. Survivors describe a characteristic pattern of totalitarian control, enforced by means of violence and death threats, capricious enforcement of petty rules, intermittent rewards, and destruction of all competing relationships through isolation, secrecy, and betrayal. Even more than adults, children who develop in this climate of domination develop pathological attachments to those who abuse and neglect them, attachments that they will strive to maintain even at the sacrifice of their own welfare, their own reality, or their lives."

Meanwhile, kinder, more peaceful, and healthier relationships are quite a dramatic adjustment, and ironically feel less predictable because of all the threats that are absent and never materialize. It feels suspicious or too good to be true, which in turn ratchets up hypervigilance and hyper-arousal. Instead of knowing what BS is coming because it always does, there's the nebulous sense that the other shoe is just waiting to drop. Safety and respect can feel the most unsafe for a while, because as far as the traumatized nervous system is concerned, those things don't exist, or if they do in any form, there must be a million unseen strings attached.

“We seek the familiar because we know we can survive it.”

too bad it's too often code for "accept without question," "allow your boundaries to be crossed," "make yourself uncomfortable/unsafe for others' benefit."

i’m not a psychologist but i got my degree from the school of hard knocks ok and that is really the common denominator

Being wary of people who've hurt and scarred you doesn't make them "the bigger person"

I’ve personally found that adding the “would that be fucked or what?” part in myself really helps put the more disturbing thoughts we sometimes get into perspective. Helps me say “yeah thar sure would be fucked up” and move on with my day.