Stephanie Mast
speaker
221 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Stephanie Mast’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Can't you see the beach is filled with stars? Starfish, you can't possibly make a difference. And the boy bends down, picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean. And he says, well, it made a difference for that one. And so she, they called her starfish because she was the unique one.
that they could help in this war and all of the terrible things that they were seeing come through the doors. She was the one with the unique set of circumstances that they could actually help this one. And so, I mean, we've had dozens of medical staff come after they found out that she got out safely. Tell us stories.
I mean, I've recorded some of the phone calls just because I want her to hear it one day of how loved she was by hundreds of people, not just us. I mean, hundreds of people. One man, he was crying on the phone. He's like, I can't believe she made it out. And he's like, I used to hold her at night because I guess the female nurses were stressed by her crying so much because of her injuries.
And early on, she was crying. She cried a lot. And so he said, I never took care of babies, never changed a diaper in my life. And I was like, I'll hold her. And so he would hold her because he had the night shift and he would hold her and watch movies or do his college classes and just hold her in his arms the whole time.
And so he's like, and like Joshua mentioned, there's so many people who's like, I've always wondered what happened to that baby and like her in particular. And so like Joshua said, It's, you know, all of a sudden we're getting the attention, but it was across the board. Everyone that heard about her, they were motivated to do whatever they could to help give her a better future and a safe outcome.
And she's loved by hundreds of people.
To the point where we bought a crib and we were ready to go. And I was considering dropping out of my final semester to be ready to take on a child with what we were assuming was special needs. That she'd have needing ongoing medical care.
And the colonel at the board testified that it was, and that's what we've come up against, is that it was almost like we were just these long rangers acting outside of. That's the narrative. Yeah, that's the narrative that has been put out there. But the reality is, is he said that it was duty policy until it wasn't. And all of a sudden there was a stark, there was a very distinct shift.
And all of a sudden it was shut down. And he said in the meeting with the general that basically decided that she was going to be turned over, that it was the most unprofessional dress down, if you want to say that.
Well, at the board, she testified. She was one of the first people to testify, and I was one of the—I guess one of the last. And what was surprising in her testimony is she referred to our daughter as—
an Afghan issue or I think at one point she even said problem and it was the attitude was it was like this is a distraction and I thought she was maybe mad at us for what we did to advocate for her but really it was across the duty footprint like the medical footprint she And some other bad actors found it disturbing that people were becoming emotionally attached or they actually cared about her.
And so enough to get baby supplies and do everything that they did to basically love on this little child while she was in their care. And so she saw it as a distraction and something to be done away with. And so when it was my turn to testify, that was for the first time, because I've always wondered, why couldn't people see where we were coming from?
To me, it was just a natural choice to advocate for an innocent child. But it was at the board that I saw that it was a fundamental difference in philosophy, or if you want to say worldview, is that we believed that innocent lives should be protected and advocated for if you can. And they were coming from the perspective that it was an inconvenience or a distraction just to do away with it.
It was another issue. And that was the clash. That was the conflict, was there was one side of the camp that was saying, hey, this child deserves our protection. And then the other side is saying, no, this child doesn't really—it's meaningless. It doesn't have anything that affects us, so just do away with it. And what I testified, they asked if perhaps—
You know, our motives were ethnocentric, or why were we doing what we're doing? And I said, well, I said, as Americans, we believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we believe that every human being deserves that. And so we were operating in every, all of our actions up till this very day has been to advance that for her.
And if there's people that out there that disagree with that, then I can agree to disagree because I know what we did and we can go to bed at night with a clear conscience before God and man because we did what was right. And the certificate and everything, it was not just us. It was us. Many people.
And so the question is, if this was a good— To who?
But the question is, if it was okay, that was when I heard this colonel that testified at the Board of Inquiry, when I heard how he described her turnover, if they were doing the right thing and they had found family and they knew that she was going to have a safe outcome or she was going to be okay—
Why would they bring down armed guards and basically tell everybody, stand down, you're not going to do anything. This is what's going to happen. Why would they be concerned about a resistance among service members if what they were doing was on the up and up and right?
And in reality, they threatened them, told them to stand down and told them this is what's going to happen and then had grief counselors on the back end. And like we said, we've had so many people come out of the woodwork saying, I was so devastated.
Showing 61–80 of 221 · page 4 of 12
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