Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend? | Betrayal Weekly S1

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One of the last things I said to her was, when you go into that courtroom, You have to pick a side to sit on.

You can sit with your daughter, or you can sit with your husband.

And I hope that you're able to make the right choice.

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is a special bonus episode of Betrayal.

A few months ago, we got an email from a listener that stood out to our team.

We're going to call this listener Elizabeth.

She had watched season two of Betrayal on Hulu, which tells the story of a stepdaughter that was violated by her stepfather.

Elizabeth wrote to us because the same thing was playing out in her own life, or rather, in her best friend's life.

Elizabeth and her friend, we'll call her Sarah, have been close for 13 years.

They used to live in the same apartment building.

Their daughters were around the same age.

Sarah was raising her daughter with her new husband, who became her stepdad, the only father her daughter knew.

Elizabeth and Sarah's families became close.

They planned joint family vacations and shared holidays.

Elizabeth felt like an aunt to Sarah's daughter, who is now 19.

A few months ago, Sarah texted Elizabeth saying she needed to talk.

It was an emergency.

She basically just started sobbing and told me everything.

She had been in the car with her daughter that day and she had said something about her husband breaking a pattern of abuse because he was abused, sexually abused as a child.

And she was so glad he was breaking the pattern of abuse.

And that was when her daughter decided she couldn't take it anymore and she had to tell her.

Sarah's daughter shared that her stepfather had sexually abused her.

It started in 2016 for her, so she was 11 years old.

After Sarah found out, she confronted her husband.

And he admitted to everything.

Yes, I did this.

Yes, I did that.

She had already packed a bag for him and told him that he needed to go and stay with his mother, which was in a house about half hour from them, and that he had a week's worth of clothes and she would talk to him later.

So he didn't argue.

He left immediately.

And then the daughter wanted to go and report it to the police sarah went with her daughter to report the crime and a few months later her husband was charged with multiple counts of child abuse he got out on bond and is awaiting his court date but that's just the beginning of our episode because sarah struggled to let her husband go

she would ask me you know what do i do And I basically told her, well, you kind of have to pretend in your mind like he's dead.

You need to grieve it like a loss because the person you knew and the relationship you had and the future that you were planning is gone.

We talked about that a lot.

How do I do that?

And I said, I can't tell you how to do that.

I don't know how to do that.

That's something you're going to have to figure out, but that's what I think that you should do at this point.

That message wasn't getting through to Sarah.

My friend was and is very attached to him and very much in love with him.

When Sarah first found out, she cut off communication with her husband.

She ignored his texts begging for forgiveness.

But when he texted about everyday things like chores and bills, she would engage.

That progressed into longer phone conversations and visits.

Then they started going to therapy together.

Within a few weeks of the police report, Sarah's husband was back at home sleeping in their bed.

The night it happened, Sarah's daughter left the house.

She went to stay with her grandparents.

You may be wondering, what about child protective services?

Well, Sarah's daughter is 19 now, an adult.

So legally, her stepdad was allowed back in the same house.

In the absence of a protective order, there was nothing law enforcement could do.

There's limited interventions for adults in this situation.

For Elizabeth, Her friend's decision was unimaginable.

It was so unlike Sarah, and it just seemed wrong.

I texted Sarah and I said, listen, if this is the route that you're going to go down,

I can't be a part of this.

I can't understand how you could do this.

And if you want to explain it to me, I'm willing to listen, but

I can't support this.

And she said,

I don't need to explain my feelings to anybody.

I am doing what I'm doing, and it's not my responsibility to make sure that you understand.

I just want everybody to let me do what I want to do.

And I said, Well, I respect your decision to have a choice, but I don't respect your choice, and I'm not going to be a part of this any longer.

And she said, That's all I'm asking for is a little bit of respect, not understanding, but I will live with my choices for the rest of my life.

And those are my choices.

This is when Elizabeth wrote to us.

She felt helpless watching her best friend let this man back into her life.

She worried that saying too much might blow up the friendship and further isolate Sarah from the people who love her.

But more than anything, she wanted to get through to Sarah because Elizabeth felt as though her friend was choosing her own attachments and needs over her daughter.

And Elizabeth felt like that was the wrong choice.

Our team has heard countless stories like this to the point where we couldn't ignore this topic, where loved ones watch from afar as someone lets an abuser back into their life.

It's an incredibly painful thing to watch.

People can draw boundaries that end relationships.

It's something we can all relate to on some level.

That's why we wanted to have this conversation.

We saw Elizabeth's question as a way into a larger discussion about the role of loved ones in these cases.

What can we say when someone isn't ready to end their relationship with an abuser?

Elizabeth asked for advice from Ashley Trujillo, the subject of season two of Betrayal.

Ashley has been through something similar to Sarah.

Her husband Jason was arrested for possession of child sexual abuse material.

Among the material in his stash were images of Avea, images he'd taken in secret.

However, he had not been hands-on.

And while Jason awaited sentencing, Ashley tried to salvage the relationship.

She went straight into wifey mode, as she calls it.

It wasn't until she saw the full discovery file against Jason that she finally decided to leave him.

But those few months Ashley stayed with him have had lasting impacts on her relationship with her daughter.

So we invited Ashley Trujillo to talk with Elizabeth, and she agreed.

We also brought in Jessica Baum, a licensed clinical therapist, to help guide the conversation.

Jess worked closely with Ashley during season two of Betrayal.

You'll hear more from Jess as the conversation unfolds.

But let's start with Elizabeth and Ashley.

I'm so glad to talk to you specifically because actually you were the one I wanted to talk to when I first emailed in to the podcast.

It was, does Ashley have any advice for you know, the friends and the family when you first went back to Jason, when you first did that?

And I'm certain everybody around you was like why why are you doing that and for me even now with sarah do i yell these things occurred or should i have just shut up should i have just said what she wanted which was i'm here to support you no matter what even when i didn't agree

what would you have wanted in hindsight yeah somebody should have shook me smacked me dunked my head in water i don't know whatever it was to wake me up but i don't know if any of that would have worked because at the end of the day it had nothing to do with how everybody else was feeling or what they thought I should do or what they thought was the right thing to do.

Because in my mind, I was doing the right thing.

So if they had said something, I don't remember.

But to answer your question, I don't know if saying anything

in that moment is more for her or for you.

And that's hard because you have to be true to you and be true to like how how your friendship has always been with her.

I think for anyone that is listening and is in that situation, there's a lot of factors that you have to consider.

And my family considered that they were afraid I was going to be suicidal because my whole life blew up and I already suffered from depression.

So I think they were very aware of that and they didn't want to be the reason why I decided like, okay.

Today's the day because everyone thinks I'm disgusting and gross.

All these feelings I already felt inside myself.

So I think that that's a factor you have to consider.

I don't know if that even answers it, but it does.

Yeah, you don't know if you would have heard it, no matter what anybody had said.

And that's, I think that's how I felt with Sarah.

I've always had a very open, honest relationship with her because that's just how I am personally.

I don't tend to keep things in.

If I want to say something, I say it.

So it was really hard.

The way I described everything was just walking on eggshells.

When we left her house that weekend that we were there right after it happened, we went to her sister and brother-in-law's house.

And I remember just sitting at the table and just crying because it felt like a release just to talk to people normally, just to say what I wanted to say, because you have to, you have to be very careful, especially we don't have to be, but I felt like I needed to be very careful.

Oh, my whole family said that.

They've all said that, like word for word.

We were on eggshells with you.

We didn't know if what we were saying was right or if it was wrong.

yeah another thing that i really want to highlight with the whole situation is aveya

or sarah's daughter

even though i spent a couple months in denial

that was two months and we are three years out and my relationship with avea

is still healing from my betrayal to Aveya.

You know, I have been her safe spot her whole life.

I'm the constant thing that she's ever known.

And for me to,

I don't want to even say discount like what he did to her, because in my brain, I had no idea I was even doing that.

I didn't know.

I thought whatever I was doing was for the greater good of my family.

And being able to like take those World's College glasses off, I was able to kind of see it from a bird's eye view and see.

what I had done to Abea.

And, you know, speaking to my family about it, and we've spoke a lot about it during that time, because they're like, when we heard that you were seeing Jason or you were going back into wife mode, we thought, what the hell is she doing?

Like, what the hell is she doing?

And so when they told me that, I'm like, why didn't you do something or say something to me?

And

kind of the collective idea around it, because it wasn't just, you know, one person, it was my whole family, you know, and I think they already knew that whatever was going on, they didn't want to lose me, too.

And so they just loved me.

And

I talked to Anna, my sister.

I talked to her the other day when we were kind of preparing for this.

And I was like,

you know what?

What do you think?

Like, what would you have done?

And she told me, had I stayed with him or continued to rationalize what he did, she doesn't think she would have been able to have a relationship with me

just because of her own like moral compass she was like i i love you and i continue to love you but i couldn't i couldn't witness that

so

yeah my relationship with vaya and sarah's relationship with her daughter should be like to me at least the pinnacle of all of this

and i think that's what makes it hard for everyone that's watching sarah go through this is to see her not connect those two together because Abea is

completely different person

than she was before this.

It's changed her fundamentally and I know that two months had a lot to do with it.

Sarah and I talked about your story, Ashley, because your season was the one that she had told me about and that I had watched at the beginning of January.

And, you know, she said, this is just like that Hulu episode.

And I said, yeah, it's exactly like that.

Yeah.

And doing the podcast or doing Hulu for me, it was super important for me to say what I did, to say that I took him back, to say that I had rationalized all of those things because I knew that I was not the only one.

If you've heard season two, you'll know that eventually the glass shattered for Ashley.

She finally saw Jason for who he was and the danger he possessed.

Ashley's been repairing her relationship with her daughter ever since.

She can understand Sarah's pain and why Elizabeth is desperate for Sarah to have that glass shatter moment.

Second thing I wanted to say is how wonderful of a friend you are.

It's really hard to hear because it doesn't feel like being a wonderful friend.

I'm just sorry.

I'm sorry that you had to witness this.

I'm sorry that,

man, I don't, it's just a really terrible thing when I see that from like my family and our friends, you know, what a terrible thing to have to witness.

You know, because there are some people in mine and Jason's lives that couldn't.

I don't fault them for that.

I mean, I'm sad for that relationship to be gone, but I understand why they could not continue to be a part of mine and the kids' lives.

So it's a choice for you to be where you're at.

I can't lie and say it's not a choice, especially right now that I'm really struggling with.

I understand that, you know, my reaction to her when she was saying, I don't need to explain myself to you.

You know, I just need you to respect me.

I understand that it's not about me.

It's never been about me.

Her world is blown up right now, and she has no space in it for one more person's problems and how they're feeling about the situation, which is absolutely true.

And to me, you know, when he did what he did to her daughter, that can't be overcome.

This is where Jessica Baum jumped in to offer her expertise.

Elizabeth, I think you can't fathom how she could choose this man over his daughter, which has a lot to do.

also with what that brings up inside of you, which clearly you have a very strong and appropriate response to that level of betrayal she might be doing to her daughter by choosing this love over her daughter.

And so that's one piece.

But a really big piece of this is about attachment and how our brains work.

And our brains actually have us live in denial and remember the good times.

when these kinds of things come up to protect us.

We are wired to stay in connection.

So Sarah is wired to stay in connection with this guy.

And it wasn't that black and white white for Ashley either.

I mean, there were many, many good years where Jason showed up and he was a wonderful person and he was a good father.

And there's all these layers to this where your brain wants to focus and even romanticize and needs to in order to survive.

And that's how we're wired.

We're not wired to look at the bad stuff and just leave.

Every domestic.

violent case, every person in any kind of situation would flip a script and just walk out if it was that easy.

And attachment is just so so layered.

So Sarah was in her own way in a form of denial.

I also feel like with Sarah, she's involved in the therapeutic process with this man.

I don't know how much Sarah was

involved in understanding his trauma.

And I'm, I'm saying that that might not be a good thing.

She might have over-identified with his wounded parts.

and under-identified with how he wounded her daughter.

So there was an an over identification, maybe even a self-sacrifice on her end for this little boy in him who got abused and wanting to help that little boy that she wasn't able to see how this adult man was hurting her kid.

I don't know if that helps, but this is how our brain works and this is how trauma works.

And, you know, Ashley and I, We were in the grief process for a really long time together.

It's not like this easy process.

I mean, 13-year marriage, I mean, Ashley and I spent more time thinking about how wonderful Jason was.

And that's where her brain wanted to go for a while.

And that was important for Ashley to get to the other side and integrate the full version of Jason, not the good and the bad, but all of the behaviors and make sense of them all.

Then I think you had a really appropriate response as a friend.

And you're clearly trying to put some of the pieces together.

And I'm just trying to help clarify how challenging it is to be in Sarah's position.

Not that I'm okay with her choices, but her choices make sense.

Really, when you understand attachment, they can start to make sense.

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We're having a conversation with a listener named Elizabeth.

Her best friend is stuck in a state of denial, trying to repair with a husband who sexually abused her daughter.

Watching her friend Sarah make this decision is excruciating because for her, it's bigger than their friendship.

It's about Sarah's 19-year-old daughter.

Elizabeth watched Sarah's daughter grow up and helped care for her.

They're like family.

Here's Elizabeth.

Even when Sarah and I weren't talking, I stayed in contact with her daughter because it was really important for her to know, you know, if I do not speak to your mother again, ever, which we didn't say that to her, I would tell her, your mom and I are having a hard time right now.

But no matter what, that doesn't affect you and me, like our relationship.

You have your circle.

You have this support, no matter what.

And her daughter really kind of broke my heart and explained to me that

all of these reactions that we're all having don't necessarily mean anything to her because this happened so long ago that this is not new for her.

She's like, you guys are having big reactions because this is brand new information for you.

This is not brand new for me.

So she said that all she had wanted was for somebody to believe her, to be able to say it and for somebody to believe her, which of course, everybody did instantly.

And she's finally in therapy and everything, which her mother helped her get.

And all she would tell me was, I don't understand what's going on.

I don't understand.

But she never seemed to be mad.

To me, she never said, I feel like she's choosing him.

I feel abandoned.

I feel left out.

They are so very, very close, which was one of the questions that I wanted to come in with today, which is,

if I do not continue a relationship with her mother, and to be really honest, at this point, I don't know if I can.

I don't know yet.

But if I don't, how would I explain to her daughter?

Just because you're close with your mom doesn't mean you need to follow what she's doing.

Doesn't mean it's okay.

And how do I continue to support her and say those things without her daughter pushing me away just because we're disagreeing with her mother, who she's so loyal to?

I keep going back to the theme of like connection is a biological imperative.

So her daughter.

is preserving the connection with her mom as best she can.

And, you know, it's heartbreaking for us on the outside to see see the daughter kind of sacrifice because the natural response to this type of abuse is rage.

That is a healthy response.

And if she's really doing some trauma work and working therapeutically, the hope is that the therapist will help her access what it feels like when someone perpetrates your boundaries like that.

But again, we don't want to push her there in a therapeutic setting.

They might help her see this and make the healthiest choices for her, but it might be too scary for her to set set big boundaries with her mom right now.

And I think the best thing you can do for her daughter is be a listener, hold space for her, but don't try to fix her or advise her.

If she is in therapy, they can help her set the boundaries.

You just need to hold the space and work through with you, Elizabeth, what's coming up in you.

And you might want to work.

through that with somebody else.

Like, I want to tell this daughter this and I want to tell her to this and I'm having having all this anger and all of that is about you and i'm not it totally valid but it's for you to work through in your own kind of space around all of that because that's how you can kind of keep the boundaries a little bit better for you that does help a lot because that was a big question i had you know what what do we say you can hold space if she's asking that's another thing but with enough therapy she will get there on her own time, I believe.

In her own way, in her own safety, she will say, wait a minute, let me look at where my rage is, or she might access those things, but you can't make her get there faster if she's not ready, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah.

And that makes perfect sense.

And I remember one of the last things I said to Sarah.

was, when you go into that courtroom, you have to pick a side to sit on.

You can sit with your daughter or you can sit with your husband.

And I hope that you're able to make the right choice.

And I didn't tell her what I felt the right choice was, but I told her, you can choose whatever you want, but there are consequences to your choices.

And this is a consequence because there was no way to continue forward with him in her life still in that way, in my opinion.

I didn't do it as a punishment.

This is not a, it's him or me situation.

It was never that.

So Jess,

was drawing that boundary at that time the right thing to do?

Yeah, I mean, I have a couple of things to say about that, but boundaries, you said so brilliantly, boundaries aren't about punishing another person or controlling another person.

They're about protecting ourselves, right?

And so the boundary that you set was for your own emotional health, you know, to protect yourself from what you were seeing that was causing a lot of distress inside of you.

So when I set a boundary, I try to say, hey, I'm doing this for me.

This is why I'm doing it.

But I mean, attachment runs deep.

And there are times you want to say, like, why don't you just leave?

And it's not that simple.

It's not that easy.

When you describe their love, it sounds like Sarah has a very early attachment bond.

She will override.

what we all think she should do to stay in relationship to not face the fear of losing her person.

She's surviving and staying in an attachment that gives the illusion of being safer or more security, then leaving and facing the deep well of aloneness or emptiness, her system knows that she might have to face without him.

Honestly, that was that was me.

Like what Sarah did was me.

We did Bible study together after this.

Like, I still am dealing with some of that shit.

So I'm like,

but

there was something going, there was inside of me, I couldn't, I couldn't rationalize it.

I could not believe that Jason was my husband and he was a sex offender.

I couldn't.

They're two different people.

I look back at it now and I'm like, something was wrong inside of my brain.

It wasn't connecting everything correctly.

It is the weirdest phenomenon.

Often it's not about the other person's behavior.

It's not about this guy's behavior.

It's about what part of myself do I need to face if I actually leave this relationship that's terrifying me.

Her brain is going to work really hard to minimize things to keep connection with him.

And everybody on the outside is going to look at this and it's very black and white.

But when you're on the inside and you're living it, it's not that black away.

And it wasn't that black and white for Ashley either.

I mean, I had to meet Ashley and I had to say, of course you love him.

Of course you miss him.

Of course, tell me about the good years.

It wouldn't have worked if I just went in black and white with you, Ashley.

It just wouldn't have worked.

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My husband comes back outside, and he's shaking, and he just looks like he's seen a ghost and he's just in shock.

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This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Melgar.

Liz's mom had just been found shut in a closet, her hands and feet tied up, shouting for help.

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For more than a decade, Liz has been trying to figure out what happened.

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Listen to Hands Tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Our listener Elizabeth has been taking this all in.

And through the conversation, she realized that it's not just about what she should say to her her friend.

It's about her own experience of watching Sarah make this choice.

For Elizabeth, that might be a decision she can't overlook.

I was so looking forward to talking to both of you today, but I love hearing that from a therapist's point of view, from a licensed therapist's point of view, because I never thought about that.

You know, like I said, I went with my husband literally saying the same things over and over, begging him, pretend I'm not an adult and tell me exactly step by step, what do I do?

That's all I want right now is for somebody to tell me exactly what to do.

Pretend I'm a child, give me the next steps, because I don't know anymore.

But I kind of landed on it with, I guess, now it is about me at this point, and whether

is that moral issue that I have a problem with, even though I understand that it is a moral issue that I have within myself.

Do I now continue continue the friendship when I feel like the foundation of who we are as people, to me, her foundation has shifted.

And who I thought she was is not who she was.

And

when the dust settles, is who she is changed for me?

And the answer is yes.

So what do I do with that now?

Right.

I think that you have to do what's safe for you, you know, and safe for your mental health.

And

I'll leave you with this.

There is not a day that goes by that I don't feel

like I did the wrong thing.

And I will live with that for the rest of my life.

I'm not saying Sarah will, because

I don't know her.

And I don't know if she's going to go back with them or what that's going to look like, but there's not a day that goes by that I don't, I don't try to make up for that failure in every way,

every way I can, especially around, you know, Avea.

But I feel for you.

And I think whatever you do moving forward doesn't discount the friendship that you had with her and how you looked at her and how much you love her, how much you love her daughter and her family.

It doesn't discount any of that.

And I know that whatever you do going forward is going to be best for you and your family.

And you have to do that.

I appreciate that.

And, you know, it's interesting to me that you don't remember if anybody has said anything in the moment.

And I wonder if Sarah will get there, you know, in a couple of years, if she'll forget everything that was said.

And I'm okay.

It's fine if she does.

But I just hope that she felt loved and supported through it all the way that you did.

You know, I think that you telling your story just in this podcast period is incredibly brave and amazing and so helpful to people, obviously to complete strangers, you know, somewhere that you don't even know in the world, because it's a ripple, you know, apart from the core people who this immediately affects, it affects everybody around you as well.

It affects you.

It affects your daily life.

And her sister and brother-in-law, in law and I and my husband,

kind of formed our support group so that we could say the things we wanted to say without hurting Sarah, which I would highly recommend to any friend or family member in this situation, get your own support group with other people who are trying to navigate exactly like you.

And I love that we were able to do this today because if I had questions, other people have questions.

Conversations like this can be triggering.

They incite judgment and anger.

We felt it as we produced this episode.

But like Elizabeth said, she's not the only one.

We just hope this episode finds the people who need to hear it.

I want to give a special thanks to Jessica Baum, Ashley Trujillo, and our anonymous listener, Elizabeth.

If you're interested in learning more about attachments, we recommend Jessica Baum's book, Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love.

If you would like to reach out to the betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com.

That's betrayal, p-od at gmail.com.

We're grateful for your support.

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

And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.

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A big thank you to all of our listeners.

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.

Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Written and produced by Monique Laborde.

Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Associate producers are Kristen Mel Curie and Caitlin Golden.

Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck.

Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.

Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins.

Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines.

Music library provided by MIBE Music.

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

This is an iHeart podcast.