Victim of the Lords

De: Briar Lee Mitchell EdD, Alexander Bardey MD

Narrado por: Duke Holm

In 1970s, Bakersfield, California, a group of wealthy and influential men operated behind a wall of silence. They called themselves the Lords of Bakersfield. For an eleven-year-old boy named Robert Mistriel, they were untouchable and unavoidable.

Sent from a boys’ home to perform odd jobs, Robert was drawn into years of systematic sexual abuse. Survival became transactional: obedience in exchange for food, shelter, money, and protection. Resistance was punished. As the abuse escalated and the system meant to protect him repeatedly failed, Robert’s sense of justice collapsed.

At seventeen, facing a demand that crossed an unthinkable line, Robert helped plan the murder of one of his abusers. He turned himself in shortly afterward and was sentenced to life in prison, where he spent the next thirty-eight years.

Co-authored by Briar Lee Mitchell and forensic psychiatrist Dr. Alexander Bardey, Victim of the Lords blends Robert’s firsthand account with clinical insight to examine how prolonged childhood abuse, corruption, and coercion can distort morality itself. This is not a story that asks for absolution but one that forces a reckoning with what happens when justice never arrives, and survival comes at a devastating cost.

©2025 Briar Lee Mitchell EdD, Alexander Bardey MD (P)2026 Briar Lee Mitchell EdD, Alexander Bardey MD