S4: E10 — Courage

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Hi, everyone.

We wanted to let you know that this is our final episode of Season 4 and Caroline Brega's story.

But don't worry, there's a lot more betrayal coming your way.

We will be returning on Thursday, August 7th with a brand new season of Betrayal Weekly.

Be sure to subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode.

And there's more betrayal news.

If betrayal is your must-listen, you should subscribe to Beyond Betrayal, our new Substack community.

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Upgraded members can even jump into live chats with us.

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Okay,

now onto the show.

There was a woman whose husband was eventually arrested for sexually abusing children in a school.

And the police found all these stacks stacks of child pornography sitting around his living room in plain sight.

And they interviewed his wife, and she said she did not see them.

She could have her eyes on them and not see them.

I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, Season 4, Episode 10.

Courage.

In our last episode, we closed the book on Caroline's story.

But before we end our season, we wanted to dive deeper into one aspect of Caroline's healing journey.

Within a day of Joel's disclosure, I was seeking therapeutic intervention for myself and my kids.

And I am grateful for that therapist.

She definitely was there for crisis intervention.

That being said, though, there was never this term betrayal trauma.

I never heard the term in our duration of therapy.

I'm not faulting her, but I hadn't had anyone actually walk me through the emotions and that how I was feeling was actually a normal part of being betrayed.

The reason why I wrote to the podcast was because listening to season one, Driving with My Daughter, was life-changing.

Caroline was on a road trip with Nicole when they came across our first season of Betrayal.

This was the first time either of them heard a professional speaking about betrayal trauma.

And I must have played that episode a dozen times.

It was just a description that was so empowering and so relatable.

And I just wanted to continue to have that connection, even if it was through a podcast.

The shame, the guilt.

Caroline thought she was alone in these feelings.

She had no idea that there were others out there suffering from the same form of trauma.

The people who've shared their stories in prior seasons and on the Betrayal Weekly podcast felt the same way.

The person I had loved and been in a relationship with disappeared and with him went three years of my life into a black hole.

I was like, what's wrong with me?

I was just heart sick, gut sick, heart sick.

My whole body responded and all I could think of was, who are you?

How could you do this?

All these people experience betrayal trauma.

It's the thread that binds all the stories we tell.

And we got the opportunity to speak to the person who coined the term betrayal trauma in the first place.

She's a retired research psychologist who pioneered the field of betrayal trauma.

So to close out our season, we wanted to share parts of our conversation with you.

My name is Jennifer Freid.

I was a university professor at the University of Oregon most of my career, where I taught psychology and did a lot of research, specifically developing betrayal trauma theory, the concept of betrayal blindness, all the way through to institutional courage.

After going to graduate school for cognitive psychology, Dr.

Freid made her way to the University of Oregon.

Some years into my time at the University of Oregon, I really changed, pivoted the kind of research I was doing to the psychology of trauma.

Dr.

Freid started compiling research on a specific form of trauma, the kind you experience when someone close to you breaks your trust.

At the time, in the early 1990s, there was still within academic psychology a disbelief in the prevalence of trauma, particularly interpersonal, particularly sexual trauma, as well as its significance or importance.

And I remember very well in around, oh, maybe 1991-ish, I gave a talk in my own department about my new research and ideas, and people were just like looking at me like I had gone nuts.

Still, she kept going.

She knew there was something here.

Eventually, this pattern developed into a theory, a theory of betrayal trauma.

A betrayal trauma is when somebody that you depend on and trust

does something that harms you.

It's that combination of harm with the nature of the relationship you have with the person,

the victim-perpetrator relationships.

Betrayal trauma theory accounts for how we process traumas differently when they're perpetrated by someone close to us.

And there was always one aspect of processing betrayal that intrigued Dr.

Freud.

How people can block out experiences like childhood abuse abuse or sexual assault, or how they can forget moments when they caught a partner in a lie.

Betrayal trauma theory was always about understanding how and why people could forget seemingly extremely important

experiences and events in their life.

Very important traumas.

This is something we've seen over and over again on our show.

We've received emails from people of all ages, professions, and and backgrounds who say they didn't see what was right in front of them.

Here's the thing, not seeing when someone close to you is betraying you, it isn't just denial.

It's a very real psychological experience.

One that Dr.

Freid has spent her career researching.

She gave us an example she uses in one of her books.

There was a woman whose husband was eventually arrested for sexually abusing children in a school.

And the police raided his house and found all these stacks of child pornography sitting around his living room in plain sight.

And they interviewed his wife and she said she did not see them.

She would look at the coffee table and she would not see them.

She could have her eyes on them and not see them.

When I read Dr.

Freid's book, Blind to Betrayal, I was struck by another story.

A story of a woman who decided to visit her husband at his go-to bar.

She was waiting there to surprise him.

And when her husband showed up, another woman approached him and kissed him.

He explained it away, and the wife forgot about the kiss for years.

At first, these two examples seem unbelievable.

How can people fail to see what's right in front of them?

Or forget experiences entirely?

How does that happen, and why does that happen?

And the answer that I provided that I came to call betrayal blindness was that it's a survival mechanism.

Dr.

Freid explained that our brains block out information that could threaten vital relationships.

We are programmed to fall in love with people we take care of.

And people we take care of are also programmed to fall in love love with us.

We have a really strong attachment system and it's a good, it's a beautiful thing.

It makes life worth living is this love that we feel.

I mean, it keeps us alive.

Think of a child relying on a parent.

The child depends on that parent for love, food, and shelter.

And the child trusts the parent to continue to care for them.

But here's the problem.

What happens if you've got an abusive parent?

What happens if the parent is the betrayer?

If you withdraw or confront, you risk not getting your survival needs met at all, or you may get more abuse.

It's not safe.

The solution out of that is what I came to call betrayal blindness.

The attachment system matters more.

It's great to detect betrayal, but attachment matters more if it's keeping you alive.

Our brains are constantly making choices about what information matters most.

Humans are amazing in how they filter information.

We do it all the time.

We sort information out as it's coming into the eyes and the ears and the nose.

That filtering happens subconsciously.

We don't notice it.

but we've all experienced it.

Like when you're in a crowded room.

Even though there's 20 people talking at the same time, you're not going to hear other parts of the conversation, but suddenly your name pops out at you.

Or, you know, if there's a really juicy topic they're talking about, some good gossip over in the corner, you might suddenly be aware of that conversation.

All that time, your brain has been filtering out the information coming in and kind of deciding which parts of it to be aware of.

Because we can't be aware of everything at once.

It can be unsettling to think about, but our brains are always selecting what we perceive and how we interpret that information.

And when terrible things happen, our brains work to preserve important relationships.

We can subconsciously delete information, or sometimes even when we know the information, when we saw and experienced something firsthand, our brain can create an entirely new story.

It's not just that we can block out information and not see things right in front of us or not remember things that happen.

There are other ways we can twist reality.

So for some people, the way they engage in betrayal blindness, they see the events happening.

They remember it, but they twist around who's responsible.

So they blame themselves, not the person who's harming them.

Like Dr.

Freid explained, this is a survival mechanism.

That's why she first conceptualized betrayal blindness using the parent-child relationship, because it's an essential relationship for that child's survival.

But adults experience betrayal blindness too.

For many people, their intimate marriage or partnership relationships have these same dynamics.

where one party feels very dependent on the other.

They may be financially dependent, they may be emotionally dependent, they may have been betrayed themselves in childhood, whatever it is.

Adults can also have terrible betrayal blindness, and sometimes that is also serving a major survival benefit.

If you are dependent on your partner and your partner's betraying you, and you confront or withdraw,

you risk potentially losing access to resources you need.

It's serving an enormous survival benefit for many many people in many situations, but it does come at a cost.

If you don't see it, it's hard to stop it.

It's hard to get help.

It's hard to get justice if you don't see it.

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Dr.

Jennifer Freid is the leading expert on betrayal trauma, but she also has researched the psychology of people that commit betrayals.

She has identified common tactics that perpetrators use to keep victims quiet.

She calls this collection of tactics, DARVO.

DARVO is an acronym that stands for deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.

And it's a tactic that perpetrators can use when they're being held accountable for a misbehavior.

We asked Dr.

Freid to break down the elements of DARVO.

The denial typically is aggressive, a little over the top, very angry denial.

The attack is often an attack on credibility.

It often takes the form of saying, you know, you are drunk or you're mentally unhealthy or there's something wrong with your memory.

And the RVO is the most insidious part.

This is reversing victim and offender.

And this is when the true victim gets put into the offender role by daring to, you know, make this accusation.

Even just hearing this description, we thought of Caroline's story, like the time she heard about Joel having an affair with their tenant.

Joel denied the accusation, and he even went with Caroline to confront her.

This psychopath has got me on the road to a divorce.

My kids want me out of the house.

Instead of taking accountability, he made himself the victim.

Then there was the moment Caroline confronted Joel about lying, about where he was in the middle of the night.

He said he was at an accident scene, but his location on Life360 told a different story.

Caroline described Joel exhibiting the first element of Darvo, denial.

Oh my God, that had to be a wrong cell phone tower pinging and I was not even close to there.

Then the second element, Joel attacked her.

Why would you say that?

Don't you think I want to be home?

And finally, the third element.

Joel reversed the victim and offender.

He made her feel as though she had done something wrong.

I start feeling guilty for asking him something that I factually see, and then I start doubting myself and almost believing,

could a cell phone tower ping wrong on Life 360?

Is that even possible?

We found that one of the consequences of being Darvoed when somebody does that to you is blaming yourself.

When people blame themselves, they're much more likely to go silent.

And so if the perpetrator's goal is to get the victim to be silent, Darvo has that effect too.

This strategy worked on Caroline.

It kept her doubting herself instead of doubting Joel.

And Darvo is not just a tactic used interpersonally.

It's commonly used in trials.

It's often a technique used by defense attorneys in, say, a sexual abuse case, where the defense attorney will very consciously deny on behalf of their client the event happened and attack the credibility of the victim and then reverse victim and offender by painting the true victim as the offender in the situation.

This also made us think of Joel and how he shifted the blame onto his home life during his internal affairs interviews.

We played Dr.

Freud this tape from when he was investigated for sexually harassing reporters.

Sorry.

Things work good at home.

And

I think I fell into the trap of,

you know, being excited about the attention.

What he does in the clip is really puts himself into the victim role, you know, that crying and the way he's painting himself.

You know, he's a person who we might want to feel sorry for.

He sort of put himself in the position of the one being wronged.

In this next clip, Joel goes even farther.

When internal affairs demanded accountability for having sex in his police car, he put the responsibility of his rehabilitation on the police department.

In his interview as part of the IA investigation, he said the following.

We pay a lot of lip service about our employees as our family and all that, but I'd like to maybe somehow believe in that and recognize that

I've had issues and I've had issues for a long, long time

and

every day is a struggle and I want help.

There might be a truth to all that in the sense that, you know, he has issues and it's been a traumatic job, but it's a way to deflect responsibility regarding his own behavior in a police car with this woman.

Dr.

Freyd can't speak to Joel's specific psychological profile, but she says in her research, she's learned a lot about the kinds of people who use Darvo.

People that use Darvo are quite a bit more likely to also engage in sexually harassing behaviors.

Once again, Joel appeared to align with the profile Dr.

Frey developed.

You may recall from an earlier episode, his behavior had grown so disruptive that he was eventually banned from the family doctor's office.

Caroline learned the truth when she went to get tested for STDs.

And so she does a full exam and she leaves the room.

And when she came back in, she just had this horrible, kind of fearful look on her face.

And I just was sobbing.

And I said, you can tell I have something, can't you?

You can already tell I have something.

And she shook her head and she said no.

And she said she was debating on telling me that Joel had essentially been blacklisted from seeing her because he had come in for different appointments before and had been inappropriate with his commentary and very sexualized with his commentary toward her.

And I was mortified.

Dr.

Fried offered more details about people who use Darvo.

They are more likely to hold beliefs that blame women for being victims, and they are more likely to have certain personality characteristics, three in particular that are often called the dark triad, narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

People with dark triad characteristics can be cunning, self-interested, and manipulative.

They often lack empathy and are willing to exploit others to achieve their goals.

It doesn't mean if somebody uses Darvo, they are for sure any of those things.

It's just much more likely.

Dr.

Freid's research does offer one encouraging insight.

We find if we educate people about Darvo,

it reduces the power of Darvo.

If people know that this is a pattern, they're not swayed by it.

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But here's one mystery you don't need in your life.

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A system that works to prevent that break-in, that violation of your space, from ever happening in the first place.

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We've been talking to betrayal trauma researcher Dr.

Jennifer Freyde.

Her groundbreaking work has transformed how we understand and support victims of betrayal.

One reason we wanted to speak with her for this season is her focus on a concept she's termed institutional betrayal.

Institutional betrayal in its broadest sense is when the perpetrator of a betrayal is just something larger than one person.

So families are little tiny institutions.

It can be a family.

It can be, you know, the workplace.

It can be the church or the school or the government.

It's the larger entity that is betraying somebody who is dependent on that institution, cares for it, very often loves the institution.

So the dynamics of betrayal trauma all apply to institutional betrayal.

After Joel was exposed, no one in the department came to Caroline's aid.

She felt shut out and alone.

Dr.

Freid's research confirms this added layer of betrayal can be devastating.

People are very vulnerable to being hurt by institutions they trusted and depend on,

fail to protect them, fail to respond well when they've been harmed in that institution.

It's a whole new level of harm.

I sometimes think of it like the second concussion, where, you know, it's bad to be hit in the head once, but then you go and you hit the head again.

That's, you know, way worse.

Dr.

Freid explains, the way we depend on institutions is a lot like the way we depend on people in our lives.

Almost everyone has some institution they love.

Most people love their family.

Most people love their church if they have one or their school.

They have emotional attachments and The institutions can't actually love you back, but it doesn't stop people from loving the institutions.

And that's not a bad thing that we love institutions, just a very human thing.

But it does make us vulnerable to the harm of betrayal.

Dr.

Freid found this idea of institutional betrayal deeply troubling.

But it also felt like an exciting issue to tackle, one Dr.

Freid and her students could have a real impact on.

It's actually easier to think about fixing an institution than fixing all the interpersonal violence in the United States.

And we developed steps one can take to make institutions less betraying?

These steps and the idea that institutions can prevent further betrayal make up Dr.

Freud's theory of institutional courage.

One of the main steps is transparency.

Betrayal really loves secrecy and really doesn't survive transparency very well at all.

In families where you've got institutional betrayal occurring, there's almost always secrets.

There are things things that aren't known, can't be talked about.

And most therapists of healthy family systems will tell you that secrets are bad for families and the more that can be shared openly and transparently, the better.

The more transparency, the less likely these betraying things will occur.

This made us think of Caroline too.

She made the choice to be very transparent with her children about what Joel had done.

We asked Dr.

Freid for her opinion on this.

It's interesting because if you were talking about eight and nine year olds, this would be a tougher issue.

With children, you know, you have to be sensitive to their developmental stage and not overwhelm them with information they may not really have a way to understand.

By the time you're 16, that's no longer really an issue.

16, 17, and certainly 19, 20 year olds are fully capable of understanding these sorts of issues and are only going to benefit from honesty and only going to suffer from secrets.

She also brought up that this isn't just a question of knowing or not knowing.

Transparency in this case is key to ensuring the cycle of betrayal ends with Joel.

Secrecy is corrosive.

Secrecy allows dysfunctional, harmful patterns to repeat over and over again.

One way to think about this this is in terms of what's the probability that a teenager who grows up in a family like this goes on to repeat this dynamic as an adult versus the probability they go on to have a healthy relationship when they develop their own family.

The more things are hidden, unspoken, secret, the more likely they are to just repeat it.

One of the best ways to kind of inoculate people from repeating dysfunctional family dynamics is to really shine a light on them and be fully honest about what was messed up, giving people that conscious awareness so they can choose not to repeat that.

We played Dr.

Frey a clip of Caroline's sons speaking about this issue.

I wanted to know everything.

The truth hurt, but it was powerful and it was needed.

That was the only only way to move forward.

One of the things that struck me in that clip is how much courage this young man has as well.

It's not like he wants to learn that his father's done harmful things.

It takes courage to learn that, but it does make it possible for him to support the other family members.

in a really meaningful way and for him to go and develop his own life without repeating this harmful pattern.

The need for transparency also applies to larger institutions.

Dr.

Freyd pointed to the issue of sexual assault in the military.

What people who've experienced that very often say is that when they went to the authorities in the military to report what had happened,

What happened after that from the authorities in the military was even worse than the sexual assault in the first place.

When victims aren't taken seriously or investigations are dropped or covered up, it adds to the pain.

We've compared groups of military sexual trauma survivors who went on to have an institutional betrayal experience versus ones who didn't.

Everybody had bad effects from the sexual trauma.

But the ones who went on to have institutional betrayal on top of that were doing much worse.

In fact, we're even more likely to attempt suicide.

That's how bad it is.

So we know from now dozens of studies that institutional betrayal harms people over and above the interpersonal betrayals they've experienced.

The institution can counteract this by taking accountability for their wrongs, for being complicit, or even directly aiding in betrayal.

If they have the courage to really look at what's happened, then they they can move forward in a healthier way.

This examination is especially needed when the perpetrator walks away.

One of the things that can really help healing is having a community that validates the reality.

Even if the betrayer never fully discloses or fully takes account, a community around them can.

Caroline may never get that validation from the CSPD, but Dr.

Freyd says Caroline is doing what she can to take healing into her own hands.

There's a wonderful quote that I won't get exactly right from trauma theorist Judith Herman.

The antidote to despair is activism.

And activism can take many paths, but it sounds like in Caroline's case, her telling her story is activism because she's being courageous, she's sharing her vulnerability, her personal pain, all with the hope that it will

help other people.

Thank you to Dr.

Jennifer Freyd.

If you want to learn more about betrayal trauma, we highly recommend her book, Blind to Betrayal.

You can also check out the Center for Institutional Courage, a nonprofit founded by Dr.

Freid.

It's dedicated to understanding institutional betrayal and the steps needed to prevent and counteract it through institutional courage.

We've linked the book and the nonprofit in the show notes.

This is the final episode of season four, Caroline's Story.

If this story resonated with you or if you have a betrayal experience of your own to share, you can write to us at betrayalpod at gmail.com.

We'll be back with new weekly stories starting August 7th.

Thank you for listening to Betrayal Season 4.

If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team, email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com.

That's betrayalpod at gmail.com.

Also, please be sure to follow us at Glass Podcasts on Instagram for all betrayal content, news, and updates.

One way to support the series is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts.

Please rate and review Betrayal.

Five-star reviews help us know you appreciate what we do.

Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison.

Betrayal is hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Written and produced by Carrie Hartman and Caitlin Golden.

Story editing and producing by Monique Laborde.

Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Our associate producer is Kristen Malkuri.

Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinchek.

Audio editing and mixing by Matt Dalvecchio.

Editing by Tanner Robbins.

And special thanks to Caroline and her family.

Betrayal's theme is composed by Oliver Baines.

Music library provided by My Music.

And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This Labor Day, say goodbye to spills, stains, and overpriced furniture with washable sofas.com, featuring Annabay, the only machine washable sofa inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly pricing.

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Okay, True Crime fans, this is not a drill.

This October 10th through 15th, I'll be sailing with Virgin Voyages on the first ever True Crime Podcast cruise.

We'll be bringing betrayal to life in person with a live taping at sea with some very special guests.

And I'd love for you to be there.

It's five nights of connection, true crime, and community, all on a luxurious adult-only ship.

This show means so much to me, and getting to share it with you in real time means even more.

It's also a chance to grow our betrayal community together in one unforgettable place.

Book your spot now and come sleuth at sea with me at virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

Our partner, Eli Lilly and Company, just announced duets for type 2 diabetes, a campaign celebrating real patient stories of support because managing type 2 diabetes doesn't have to be a solo act.

Share your story at mountjaro.com/slash duets.

Mountjaro terzepatide is an injectable prescription medicine that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar, glucose in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Mount Jaro is not for use in children.

Don't take Mount Jaro if you're allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or vision changes.

Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems.

Taking Maljaro with a sulfinyl norrhea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.

Tell your doctor if you're nursing pregnant plan to be or taking birth control pills and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.

Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.

Once weekly, Mount Jaro is available by prescription only in 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 milligram per 0.5 milliliter injection.

Call 1-800-LILLIRX-800-545-5979 or visit Mountjaro.lilly.com for the Mountjaro indication and safety summary with warnings.

Talk to your doctor for more information about Mount Jaro.

Mountjaro and its delivery device base are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates.

You know what every betrayal story has in common?

There are always signs that something isn't right.

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This is an iHeart podcast.