The wife of a Baptist minister who committed suicide after his name was revealed as appearing on the Ashley Madison adultery website has said the second year without him is harder than the first.
Christi Gibson, wife of John Gibson, said that despite the trauma that she and their two children have suffered – including having to move home three times – she still believes in the possibility of hope and growth.
Speaking to Laurie Segal of CNN's Mostly Human series, more than a year after Gibson killed himself when his name was shown to be among those revealed by the Ashley Madison hack, Christi said: 'It wasn't the hack that destroyed the lives that we had, it was the presence of things like Ashley Madison...The ability to lead a totally double life. That's what took our life down -- the secrecy. The hack is what blew it all apart.'
Her husband was found dead just days after the hack in late summer of 2015. In his suicide note, her husband confessed how sorry he was and mentioned struggles with mental health. At the time, she said she believed his actions were not beyond forgiveness.
John Gibson had been a teacher at Leavell College, part of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He was among millions who were exposed when the site's database was leaked.
In her latest interview his wife said: 'The shock has worn off, the need to take care of all the details of losing a loved one, and [becoming] the primary breadwinner of your household, having to deal with all that.'
She misses her husband most in the mornings, she added. He would go for a run and then make coffee. 'We would sit and talk through our day, talk through our life. When I would talk about stresses of the day, he would really just listen.'
Their son Trey also said there was far more to him than his activities on Ashley Madison.
'If there's one thing that we've learned in all this, it's that the decision to be on Ashley Madison was not the entirety of my father's life. I think if the hackers saw themselves as doing justice, I would say it is a very incomplete form of justice.'
