BONUS EP 1: Behind the Scenes Q&A

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Speaker 1 Hey guys, it's Andrea Gunig and this is our first bonus episode after finishing our season of weekly stories.

Speaker 1 This year, our team has been working hard behind the scenes to put every weekly episode together.

Speaker 1 And the we I'm referencing is my amazing production team, our producer Monique Laborde, our associate producer Caitlin Golden, and our audio engineers Matt Delvecchio and Tanner Robbins.

Speaker 1 For this special bonus episode, I'm joined by my producer to answer some of your listener questions. Hey, Mo.

Speaker 22 Hi, Dre.

Speaker 22 So fun to come out from behind the scenes. Oh, my God.
I am glad to be here, and I am excited to dive into some listener questions that we have been receiving all season on Betrayal Weekly.

Speaker 1 I love it. I'm so excited to jump in.
I actually want to start with a question for you.

Speaker 22 Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 1 You know, this has been an evolving journey just from the format and how we're approaching our interviews. So I just wanted to ask, What has it been like?

Speaker 22 Yeah, you know, I've been a podcast producer for eight years and I've worked on all kinds of shows.

Speaker 22 I've produced chat shows, pop culture, news, narrative, but this show has been a complete standout in my work experience.

Speaker 22 I mean, from the day that I came onto this team, y'all have built this framework of doing something really unconventional and trying to, I think, develop a trauma-informed storytelling model.

Speaker 22 This collaborative kind of storytelling that we're doing where we're working with these survivors. We're giving them a lot of autonomy in the storytelling process.

Speaker 22 So getting to join that and getting to connect with the people that tell their stories, these people who've been through something really traumatic and are wanting to share their experiences has been incredibly rewarding for me.

Speaker 22 I think it's an uncommon experience in the audio industry to see a show. work so closely with the storytellers and to collaborate with them in the way that we do.

Speaker 22 I want to ask you about what it has been like for you to work on the weekly series because you worked on three seasons.

Speaker 22 You were really enmeshed in those stories.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 22 And then this is a totally new format for you. So I want to talk a little bit about what your experience has been like in hosting the weekly series.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So it's completely different workflow.
For seasons one through three. So Jen's story, Ashley's story, Stacey and Tyler's story.

Speaker 1 I'm in these individuals' homes. I'm in their towns.
I'm with them. Like I just came back from a few weeks ago from Colorado Springs preparing for season four.

Speaker 1 And I was with her and her kids and her family and her best friends over the course of two weeks. And you just create this bond and this connection and you really understand these individuals' lives.

Speaker 1 And I don't get that opportunity on the weekly series. We don't have the opportunity of like eight to 10 episodes for us to really take our time.

Speaker 1 We are really really boiling down hours and hours of interview into a linear timeline. And we want to get it right.

Speaker 1 This is one or two episodes where we have to like really do it in a concise and thoughtful way.

Speaker 1 And it's just been a really interesting experience, like making sure that we honor everything that's important to the individual.

Speaker 22 Another thing that has been so special about betrayal and working on betrayal is the community that's developing.

Speaker 22 I mean, from the people who write into us into our Gmail to the people who share their stories on the podcast, they're like a part of making this with us.

Speaker 22 And as you know, some of our storytellers choose to receive listener mail and connect with people directly who want to share their story and connect with them, you know, over the phone.

Speaker 22 So it feels like there is a real community around this show.

Speaker 1 And we're actively seeing it.

Speaker 1 Like we're seeing individuals who have participated that are getting together in real time that live across the country from one another that really only know one other person that may have experienced a betrayal like them like it that is so special and cool and we've only been able to really experience that because of the weekly series which is diverse stories in a short amount of time you know yeah yeah absolutely okay let's get on to some listener questions i want to start with like a rapid fire round of questions we've gotten a lot of okay so first off The question is, why do you mostly feature stories from women?

Speaker 22 Why are there so few men on Betrayal Weekly?

Speaker 1 This is one we talk about a lot.

Speaker 22 It is.

Speaker 1 We want to represent individuals who experience betrayal, like all different walks of life, right? Because it's not specific to any gender, race, religion.

Speaker 1 I don't think that men are being deceived or betrayed less.

Speaker 1 I just think that there's a stigma around that vulnerability and like sharing. that may relate more to how men process that trauma and are willing to share that trauma.

Speaker 1 You know, we find a lot of the stories from our own listeners, like our audience who write in. And our primary demographic is women.
And so a lot of that's coming from the people and our community.

Speaker 1 So there's a little bit of that going on. I'm interested to hear what hypothesis you have.

Speaker 22 You know, what's interesting is that sometimes we get women writing in being like, I know a man who was betrayed, but it's not the man writing into us.

Speaker 22 Men do write into us, and we have featured a few stories from men on the weekly series.

Speaker 22 And some of those we had to go looking for, like Ramon Sosa, we had to intentionally find him because we didn't want to create a lineup of exclusively women.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 22 But at the same time, there is something going on that's bigger than just our podcast and the selection for our podcast, which is, I think that maybe there's more shame.

Speaker 22 Men have more shame about saying, I was deceived. That might not be as common or as practiced for men.

Speaker 1 This is just like my armchair perspective.

Speaker 1 But shame is a huge deal when it comes to betrayal. Like, how did I not know? How did I not see it coming? I should have known better.
I should have this. I should have that.
And I didn't.

Speaker 1 And I put myself into harm's way. And there's a lot of shame and the reckoning that comes with that.
And so I think you're dead on.

Speaker 1 Not everyone comes forward. And

Speaker 1 we'll always have a safe space for men to share their story here.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 22 Our next question is, do we vet people?

Speaker 22 Or similar question, how do we fact check these stories? Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 We go through such a rigorous legal process because there's a lot of legal vetting in terms of pulling legal support, what's in the public domain, divorce paperwork, personal records.

Speaker 1 It gets filtered through our attorney a few times. But before we get to that, you have initial conversations at the very beginning.

Speaker 1 Do you want to talk about that?

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 22 So when we get a story that comes in through the inbox and we reach out to the person to talk for what we call a pre-interview, which is just, you know, not recorded, hearing a little bit about their story, one of the first things we ask is for documentation.

Speaker 22 And it's not that we don't believe them. In fact, a trauma-informed approach to this work is that we're approaching everyone with belief.

Speaker 22 However, we do put all these stories through a rigorous legal process in order for them to air.

Speaker 22 We ask our guests for documentation like divorce records, criminal records, and throughout the process, we're checking those things against the story that they're telling us.

Speaker 22 Another part of the vetting process, which is just as big that we talk about internally, is, is this person ready to tell this story at this time? Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's huge.

Speaker 22 And generally, we like to work with people who are a few years out out from their betrayal experience. So they've had a little bit more time to process it.

Speaker 22 And so when I'm first reaching out to someone who's written us an email and they want to share their story, you know, in that initial call, we ask them about their support system, if they've told this story to other people.

Speaker 22 And I don't mean in a formal sense, like writing a book, but I mean like, do people in your life, your kids, your friends, do they know this has happened to you?

Speaker 22 Which is not necessarily, you you know, mutually exclusive of telling your story on this show, but I think it's a sign that this person is comfortable in this story and having the story associated with who they are.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Also, when we're working on an episode, we are running initial like broadstroke background information to the extent that we can, just to make sure that we can kind of corroborate certain things in people's story, just like time and place, just make sure things are matching.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 22 We have a pretty conservative in-house legal team that wants to bet everything and make sure that anything that's a potentially defamatory claim has documentation behind it.

Speaker 22 And so that is a burden on us to make sure we get that documentation in order to run the episodes. Yep.

Speaker 22 And something else that this brings up is we hear from a lot of people who want to write books or want to tell their story publicly and they don't have the documentation.

Speaker 22 Or let's say they were so mad they burned it all, something like that. They threw it away.

Speaker 22 You know, if someone's listening right now, and if you're in a situation where you're feeling taken advantage of or you're feeling like something's going really wrong, definitely from where I am right now, producing these stories and getting them legally vetted, I can say it's super important to keep those receipts and keep those pieces of paper, those emails, those interactions, those financial statements, that kind of stuff can allow you to be able to legally tell your story in the future.

Speaker 22 It can't be overstated how important it is.

Speaker 1 Or as Heather Gay once said, receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots, everything.

Speaker 22 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe this is a good opportunity to talk more about our production process.

Speaker 22 Yeah. I mean, a lot of times in working with people who've experienced any kind of trauma, there is a way, a trauma-informed way you're supposed to approach what they've experienced.

Speaker 22 The sort of three principles are, I believe you. It's not your fault.
what happened and you're not alone in this feeling.

Speaker 22 So anytime we're interacting with the storytellers, we're basically trying to take those three principles and adapt them into a media framework.

Speaker 22 So a setting like an interview or in the finished product of the podcast.

Speaker 22 That's all because we want to give the storytellers who are the lifeblood of this show autonomy and respect throughout the whole process.

Speaker 22 A little bit about what this looks like in practice is that in the pre-interview, we explain what the process is going to look like.

Speaker 22 We talk to them about the options of keeping it anonymous or using their name, which is every storyteller's choice. Of course, if you use your name, your burden of documentation to provide is higher.

Speaker 22 When we're on the pre-interview, I encourage everyone to talk with their family and friends as they're deciding if they want to tell this story.

Speaker 22 And we let them know in that first call that we're going to request documentation as part of the legal review.

Speaker 22 And then once they consider all of that, if they want to participate and we think that their story is the right fit for the show, then we move on with an interview.

Speaker 22 I tell everyone basically, you're in control of what you say, starting from here. If I ever ask you anything that you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer it.

Speaker 22 In fact, what I want most is for them to close their laptop that day, feeling like they are proud of how they represented themselves and not feeling like they disclose anything that they're going to stay awake at night worrying about.

Speaker 22 Sometimes we do the interview in two sittings, especially if someone is feeling really emotional. We might break and come back another day.

Speaker 22 In terms of if someone's ready to tell their story, I don't think of crying as something that is a bad sign. I'm a crier.
I cry almost every day.

Speaker 1 I am too. So it's fine.

Speaker 22 You are?

Speaker 1 I cried earlier today.

Speaker 22 Great. So it doesn't mean that the person isn't ready to tell their story.
I really trust them when they tell me. I want to do this.

Speaker 22 And of course, most of our stories come from people who wrote into us, and we are never pushing anyone into telling a story. We are not in the business of convincing people to tell these stories.

Speaker 22 After I do the interviews, then Dre, you come in and we work together with our associate producer, Caitlin Golden, to shape the stories.

Speaker 22 So do you want to take it from here and talk a little bit about what happens once we start shaping the stories?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So you do the hours long interviews and then you have a really good understanding from meeting with the storytellers and having the pre-interview of like what's important to them to share and the journey that you want to go on.

Speaker 1 And so you present me and our associate producer Caitlin, like a ton of material for us to work with. And we talk about each bite that you've taken out of the interview and how do we introduce it?

Speaker 1 Like how do we write into it? How do we write out of it? And we put it in a linear fashion and then we just write around it.

Speaker 22 And then once we have the finished product, this is something I really love about Betrayal Weekly that many, many shows do not do. We send the episode to the guest before it's released.
Yeah.

Speaker 22 And we want them to do a fact-checking pass, but we also want them to do a red flag pass.

Speaker 22 If something came out in the interview that would really make them feel extremely uncomfortable, would make a material impact in their daily life if it were to go out and they don't want it to run.

Speaker 22 We respect people's feedback on that and we work with them to change it before it goes out. Like I'm thinking of the example of Stephanie.

Speaker 22 episode one, right, who was the storyteller in our first two episodes.

Speaker 22 She had read out loud some of the captions her husband or ex-husband wrote online under photos of her. And when she heard it back out loud in her own voice, she said, I don't want that out there.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 22 And so we revised it so that you read it. in your narration and she was okay with that.
It wasn't that she didn't, she didn't want it to be known.

Speaker 22 It's that hearing her own voice say it was so uncomfortable for her. And that was a small fix that was easy for us to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you never can really anticipate how certain things occur to the storyteller when they hear it back.

Speaker 1 We're operating from a place of these are individuals that have gone through a traumatic event and their foundation of trust and reality have been

Speaker 1 either distorted or destroyed and they're rebuilding. And so it's really important for us to operate in a safe place of trust and transparency And sharing that is a huge part of it.

Speaker 22 Yeah. And this is something that I don't see in other podcasts.
I've never worked on a show that has allowed the storyteller to hear the episode before it goes out.

Speaker 22 I think there's this idea that if you do that, then the person's not going to like it. They're going to have a bunch of changes.

Speaker 22 And I have to say, in the 32 episodes we made, that maybe only happened once or twice. And then we worked through it.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 22 And so it actually was more rewarding than it was difficult because at the end of the day, I can know the day that it goes out that the person whose story this is is happy with the story.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 22 It's actually pretty easy to give people a chance to review the content and just at the very least to familiarize themselves with it before it goes out and other people start reaching out to them on strangers on the internet hear it because it sounds so different.

Speaker 22 when it's the episodes all produced than what the raw interview sounded like.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 22 Let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, I have a few more of our most commonly asked listener questions.

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Speaker 2 It starts like any other night.

Speaker 4 The glass of red, the cozy blanket, then the drop.

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Speaker 22 All right, we're back. And I have a few more of the most commonly asked questions we get.
And then a little later on, we are going to get to questions about specific episodes. Okay.
All right, Dre.

Speaker 22 Another frequently asked question we have is: how do you decide which episodes are two parts and which are only one part?

Speaker 1 This is such a good question. For the two-parters, a lot of them are like, oh, wow, this has a lot of twists and turns.

Speaker 1 There's a lot going on that we don't feel like we could pack in an under 50 minutes. So let's just approach it like two parts and it gives us more freedom.

Speaker 22 Yeah. A lot of times it's dictated by how much good tape we have.

Speaker 22 Like with Hannah, a lot of good tape.

Speaker 1 And it's hard to pare that down. Then let's talk about Hannah.
Sure, yeah.

Speaker 1 Because sometimes I think it's just as much as like the twists and the turns of the story of like, you know, understanding someone's background, how they met the person that ultimately betrayed them, the betrayal, and then its ending and its aftermath.

Speaker 1 Sometimes there's like these incredible, beautiful scenes. Like she talks about being on the train from DC to Philly.
And I particularly love the fact that this guy was getting off in Philadelphia.

Speaker 1 And she was like crying and she was hysterical. And this person was like, I'm sure there's somebody that loves you and cares about you.
Like, and she goes, people are just the best.

Speaker 1 And it was this moment of like,

Speaker 1 you know, sometimes if we're cutting a lot of stuff, you're missing moments where you get to just sit with the human experience. I just love that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And sometimes we just don't want to sacrifice it. And that's why.

Speaker 22 And I think that's a big part of what our audience likes about this show is that we're not just focusing on.

Speaker 22 the true crime and then this happened and that happened and the body buried in the basement and the,

Speaker 22 you know, but I think a big part of the betrayal listenership,

Speaker 22 they're here because they're getting something out of these real people's stories.

Speaker 22 All right.

Speaker 22 The last question that we have gotten a lot of, in fact, probably the most common question we get in our inbox, in our reviews, do you know what it's going to be?

Speaker 1 Ads?

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 22 Why are there so many ads on your podcast?

Speaker 1 I don't know what to say, guys.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is how we fund the show.

Speaker 1 And there's like a formula that we have with iHeart in terms of like ad markers of when, you know, if your episode's X amount of time long, like 40 minutes long, there's ad breaks and

Speaker 1 they sell the ad space. And we're forever grateful because it keeps us in business.
So that's why we have ads. It funds the show.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 22 the show is free.

Speaker 22 That's the trade-off with ads the show is free but if you love the show and you don't want to hear ads you can subscribe to iHeart True Crime Plus sorry I have to do a plug good job Ma you're doing my job for me thank you I love podcasts I listen constantly to podcasts and like with iHeart True Crime Plus you also get dozens of other great true crime shows it's $3.99 a month and so if you want an ad-free experience That's not just betrayal, it's a ton of shows.

Speaker 1 You know, if that means something to you to help support creators, support producers,

Speaker 1 that's the way to go.

Speaker 22 Yeah. If you're already a subscriber, thank you.
It really makes a difference.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 So much gratitude for that.

Speaker 22 Okay. I want to move on to questions about specific episodes.
Okay.

Speaker 22 And I'm going to do a little recap of each episode because I know it's been a few months since listeners have heard some of these stories. So our first question is about the Torah episode.

Speaker 22 Torah was episode number eight. She was a history professor.
She met a student named Aaron in her class, an adult student. He was a veteran.

Speaker 22 He told her that he had had his foot blown off in an explosion while he was serving in Afghanistan and that he wore a prosthetic.

Speaker 22 But his death began the process of her learning that the amputation was a lie, that he actually had both of his feet.

Speaker 22 So a listener wrote into us and said, how could anyone live with a person and have a sexual relationship with them for three years and never see their foot?

Speaker 1 I have a lot of opinions on this. Great.
I mean, I don't judge Tora, but it's fair to just understand like the mechanics of it.

Speaker 1 But one of the things that Tora shared in her episode is she had very specific boundaries around her intimacy and her physical intimacy.

Speaker 1 And she also shared that

Speaker 1 he

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 really embarrassed by this part of his body. He always wore a sock and he covered it up.

Speaker 1 And I think just, you know, we talk about this a lot, like perpetrators, they'll find the right person, the people that are understanding and trusting.

Speaker 1 You know, it works because she honored his boundaries physically.

Speaker 1 You know, when you trust someone, when you're coming from a place of believing someone, it starts there. And he was embarrassed by it and he wanted to cover it up.

Speaker 1 And she's already coming from a place of respecting intimate intimate boundaries and physical boundaries because she has her own. I can see it.
It didn't seem crazy to me. It didn't.
Yeah.

Speaker 22 I mean, there are the practical elements. Like he not only wore a sock, but he also wore a hard plastic brace underneath the sock.
So when he walked, it sounded like a prosthetic.

Speaker 22 And I mean, he always used a different shower that he said was easier for him to get into.

Speaker 22 So there are logistics of how he actually pulled off the deception.

Speaker 22 But then there's, I think, a deeper level too, that's more important to understand than the logistics of how he covered this up, is that he said it was an injury from a traumatic experience, an explosion that like killed one of his friends in the war, which didn't happen.

Speaker 22 And there is a larger pattern about how these people who are manipulating others often work.

Speaker 22 There's this research psychologist, Dr. Jennifer Fried, who we talk a lot about.
And her work is foundational to understanding betrayal trauma. She coined the term betrayal trauma.

Speaker 22 She also coined this acronym, DARVO, D-A-R-V-O, which is a manipulation technique. And it stands for deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.
It's super powerful and effective.

Speaker 22 We see this tactic all the time in the world.

Speaker 22 But in a case like Torah,

Speaker 22 Aaron was claiming that he had this very sympathetic and very traumatic victim narrative of how how he lost his foot.

Speaker 22 And so oftentimes people who are doing Darvo are basically flipping the script of who the victim is. And their victim narrative is compelling and it is powerful and emotional.
Right.

Speaker 22 And it's the kind of thing that no sympathetic, reasonable person would say, I don't believe you, that you had an injury in the war. Like you don't want to push someone on that.

Speaker 22 And the victim narratives can be so effective. I mean, we saw it also with Tammy McCrary in that episode where her husband was a fake doctor.
He had said that he had two children.

Speaker 22 And the reason that Tammy could never talk to his parents is that his children and his parents all died in a car accident.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 22 That's not the kind of story you are going to force someone you love to go into details about. You know, it's a very effective manipulation tool.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 22 Okay. Our next question about a specific episode is about Donielle's story.
Donielle, just as a reminder for listeners, she was married to a man named Chad.

Speaker 22 They had a big family. Chad was a financial advisor.

Speaker 22 She did all the homeschooling and all the labor in the house and he did basically the money making. But over time, he's behaving strangely.
Weird things are happening.

Speaker 22 And one night when she wakes up in the middle of the night, he's not there and the car is gone. But, you know, when she tries to press him on it, he just gets mad at her.

Speaker 22 Then years pass and nothing big happens. You know, things are a little weird, and he's pulling away from her and sleeping oftentimes in his office in the basement.

Speaker 22 And then one night she wakes up to the FBI and the state police having raided her house because it turns out Chad has

Speaker 22 kidnapped two of their family friends, an elderly couple that they actually went to church with, and he had put them in a dungeon that he had built. He's not actually a financial advisor.

Speaker 22 He was planning on having them go into a bank and wire him a check for multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. And thankfully the FBI was called in very quickly.

Speaker 22 And then they found the couple alive.

Speaker 22 So a listener wrote to us and said, Chad leaves his home regularly at night, even on vacation. But why? To go where? To do what?

Speaker 22 Is there no other info on this disturbing habit other than that it happened?

Speaker 1 I wish we had these answers. I mean, Danielle's a mom of six that's homeschooling and managing all of those children every day

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 is just focused on keeping the family afloat and is like just trying to keep her head above water.

Speaker 1 I don't think she even knows the extent of what he was doing.

Speaker 1 I genuinely, I don't, I don't get the sense that she knows the full extent.

Speaker 22 No, she she doesn't. Like, she doesn't know where he actually was that night.
And even if she were to ask him after the fact, you know, call him in jail, which she does not communicate with him.

Speaker 22 But like, even if she were to ask him, I don't think she believes she would get an honest answer.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 22 But, you know, I think this question of how did someone not know comes up a lot in our inbox and in our reviews. And we often hear about these scenarios where something happens.

Speaker 22 Like I wake up in the night and my partner's not here and it's off, but they don't know how off it really is.

Speaker 22 And it's important to remember that in these episodes, we're hearing the whole story told at once. We're hearing all the red flags strung together in a row.
It's true.

Speaker 22 But of course, this was happening, you know, there were years.

Speaker 22 Years, exactly. Years that were totally fine and they took family vacations and nothing went wrong.

Speaker 1 I mean, before we even started producing season one, my producer for the narrative limited run series, Carrie Hartman and I, were reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell.

Speaker 1 And we went to go see him speak at the University of Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 And we were both really interested in this whole concept of default or truth, which is a concept that you're more likely to believe someone is telling you the truth

Speaker 1 than assuming that they're lying to you.

Speaker 1 And then, especially when it comes to strangers, people are generally bad at detecting when someone's lying to you.

Speaker 1 And I think sometimes we we often worry about how did you not know, then the reality of this person did a bad thing. There are bad people, people like Danielle's husband that are doing bad things.

Speaker 1 And I think your assumption is my husband isn't capable of kidnapping two elderly people from our church and putting them in a dungeon. Like

Speaker 1 we're not necessarily wired to do that line of thinking. Right.

Speaker 1 Even if your husband is out late, it's like maybe worst case scenario, he's blowing off steam in the car and driving around. And you're not going to

Speaker 1 my husband's kidnapping somebody. Like, let's really talk about the reality here.

Speaker 1 It's just not just more often than not, you're rationalizing and you're bringing in your historical information of the person that you think they are based on a lifetime of experience and just evidence.

Speaker 1 And then you're making assumptions. And so

Speaker 1 it was important for us when we did this show, especially when we started Jen's season,

Speaker 1 to really explore this because

Speaker 1 these stories are born out of the scenarios where people didn't see it. People didn't see red flags.

Speaker 22 Yeah, I think default to truth is really important. And I think people want to believe that they are good at detecting liars because it makes you feel safe.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 22 Makes you feel safe. That feeling of I would have known.

Speaker 22 is a self-soothing feeling of it couldn't happen to me because I can tell and I can tell when I hear this story but we're producing this story and if you're living it it's a different experience right scary it's really scary yeah

Speaker 22 all right moving on to another question we got about a specific episode and it's the episode with Dr. Carrie Carrie McVoy

Speaker 22 she is a clinical psychologist her husband of 25 years Brad dies of cancer and she's devastated. She's experiencing this grief, trying to find a way to move move on.

Speaker 22 She decides she wants to throw herself back into dating. She meets a guy online who we in the episode call Caesar, and

Speaker 22 he is a Mexican-American dual citizen. He brings her into this world essentially of like Mexican real estate development.

Speaker 22 And she puts a lot of Brad's life insurance money into developing a real estate company with Caesar. They get married.
All of these things happen. There are so many deceptions.

Speaker 22 You have to go listen to both the parts to really get the full picture.

Speaker 22 But we got quite a lot of comments on this episode that there was one specific thing listeners were seeing that we did not say explicitly, but they wanted to point out.

Speaker 22 And I think you know what I am referring to.

Speaker 1 I know exactly what you're talking about. During Dr.
Carrie McAvoy's episode, There's a part in her story where she's getting really sick. She's she's really ill.

Speaker 1 And the listeners heard it, picked up on it, and noted something very specific. I don't even know if I can mention it here, just for legal reasons.

Speaker 22 Right. So let me just play the section from the episode that we're referring to.

Speaker 1 And then she began noticing other symptoms.

Speaker 6 I have really severe diarrhea, a real strange diarrhea that I'd never seen before.

Speaker 24 It's water. It's clear water.

Speaker 23 It frightens me because I've never seen this before.

Speaker 23 And I had white lines like you hit your fingernails with a hammer. I was searching for what causes white lines across all the fingernails.
They're called mice lines.

Speaker 1 And it only got worse.

Speaker 23 My toenails were falling off and my urine was now dark like tea and frothing.

Speaker 1 And like we said earlier in the episode, we go through a rigorous legal process and All we could report on was what she was experiencing, what her symptoms were, but we couldn't necessarily name what the audience is basically flirting with because we didn't have any evidence to show.

Speaker 1 We didn't have medical records. Like to say that that happened is defamatory.
And there are certain things like that, like we just cannot do. I mean, he was never arrested.

Speaker 1 And so for Dr. Carrie McAvoy's episode.
You know, she thought that something was happening to her. Our audience thought that, but

Speaker 1 we couldn't specifically name it for legal reasons.

Speaker 22 Yeah, exactly. That comes up in many of our episodes, almost a half of them.
We have a situation where there's something we want to include, but for legal reasons, we can't.

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Speaker 22 Okay, Dre, I have one more question that is about a specific episode. And this one...
is something that we heard from quite a few listeners. And I think there's a few things we need to say.

Speaker 22 So this comes from the Chelsea episode.

Speaker 1 The Chelsea episode, that was one of our most intense ones, really intense.

Speaker 22 She had been dating a guy named James.

Speaker 1 And James was having issues with who she was talking to, even

Speaker 1 at work. And so it was seeming like the walls were kind of closing in, like he was really controlling every aspect of her communication with people.

Speaker 1 And there was this moment where things really escalated. She took his phone.
She saw things in a hidden folder, very similar to Ashley from season two.

Speaker 1 And she saw what she would assume is illegal material on the phone that she felt like was CSAM, child sexual abuse material. She found a photo.

Speaker 1 I don't really want to go into too much detail, but it was disturbing to her and she couldn't get the picture out of her head. And she felt like there was something familiar to this photo.

Speaker 1 And she like woke up in in the middle of the night and was like, I know who these children are. James had friends who had children and it could be their daughters.

Speaker 22 Yeah. She did a Facebook deep dive.
She was never 100% sure, but she was feeling like it probably was. And that's ultimately what led her to go to the police and report it.
So let me share.

Speaker 22 One of the questions that we got after the Chelsea episode.

Speaker 22 This is from a listener who said, in episode 16 about Chelsea, she mentions discovering that she thought she knew who the girl in the picture was was the girl found and taken out of the home

Speaker 22 so this is just one that's representative of i want to say 10 questions we got to the same effect which is what happened to this little girl is she safe is she okay i wish we had the answer to that and i wish that it was yes she's safe There's so much we don't know about the photo, first and foremost.

Speaker 1 Yeah. This could be a photo he found on social media and cropped, cropped, you know, because they were wearing bathing suits.
So we don't really know.

Speaker 1 What we do know and what we discuss with Chelsea is that when she ultimately went to law enforcement, she reported the photo and let them know this is who I think could be the family who has children.

Speaker 1 And she left it in their hands. And that was something that we didn't include in the show, which looking back on it, we should have.

Speaker 22 You're definitely right that we should have included that information, that she did tell the police who she thought the child was.

Speaker 22 I mean, the day the episode came out, we were starting to get these questions in from listeners and we frantically went back to the script and we realized immediately like, oh my God, this one piece of tape didn't make the cut.

Speaker 22 And that would have clarified so much.

Speaker 22 And we had been so focused on Chelsea's experience and Chelsea's story that when we ended up recounting that moment when she finally goes to the police, here's the piece of tape that we did include in the episode.

Speaker 24 I met with the detective and we had a three-hour recorded interview. I showed him everything, told him the same story that I'm telling you now.

Speaker 25 He was so validating.

Speaker 25 And he said, he told me, he's like,

Speaker 24 this isn't contraband, but it is absolutely wrong. And you were doing absolutely the right thing by reporting it.

Speaker 24 But I want to manage your expectations.

Speaker 24 There are things I can try to do, but this by itself isn't enough.

Speaker 24 And I was like, I know.

Speaker 24 That's why it's taken me so long to get here.

Speaker 22 But then there was this one critical piece of information and tape that we should have put in the episode. It's in that same scene where she's reporting to the police officer, finally reporting James.

Speaker 22 And this is the piece of tape we should have included in this episode.

Speaker 25 But I told him, I'm like, this is who I think this child is.

Speaker 22 And he took all that down.

Speaker 25 And he said he would look into it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that would have been, that would have helped a lot of people

Speaker 1 when hearing the episode. Definitely.
Lesson learned column. Lesson learned column.

Speaker 22 And I know a lot of people who wrote in about this episode are just concerned and they want something more to be done. They want to make sure the girl is okay.

Speaker 22 And so did Chelsea. You know, and some idea of her like going directly to James or going directly to those friends' house, like that is not a safe option.
That is physically not a safe option for her.

Speaker 1 And I know that, you know, Chelsea was fearful of retaliation from James. He threatened her with legal action.

Speaker 22 He also threatened that he would release nude photos of her that she had consensually sent him and that he said he had deleted, but he had had kept. He threatened to send those to her colleagues.

Speaker 22 So she was feeling pretty scared of this person.

Speaker 1 Right. And so I think she felt safest letting law enforcement do what they needed to do.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 she did the right thing by reporting it.

Speaker 22 She did everything she could have while also keeping herself safe.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 22 All right. Those are all of the questions I have.

Speaker 1 Oh, great. It's always so good to see and hear feedback from the listeners, no matter what it looks like.
Good, bad, the ugly. Like we really do want to know.

Speaker 1 You know, especially if there are like gaps in a story where people were asking, we either have an answer or you just taught us something that we didn't think about. So we really appreciate it.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 22 We love engaging with listeners. We love it when people send in questions and they send in commentary.
One of my favorite emails we got this year was someone who wrote in with feedback.

Speaker 22 And then I'm just going to read from, I think, one of the most salient points. Quote, one pain point for me when listening is when you focus on survivors who, quote, found love again.

Speaker 22 Donielle's story is case in point. Then she goes on to say, it frustrates me when others tell me I'll find love again or I should date again.
I want to heal and build my self-esteem.

Speaker 22 And I want to hear more stories about people who come back from this and build a business or go find an incredible and satisfying hobby, start traveling, or anything other than jump into another relationship and hope for the best with a new person.

Speaker 22 I hope you'll keep this in mind when making future episodes.

Speaker 1 I've thought about that feedback from that listener

Speaker 1 every episode since. Me too.

Speaker 1 And we can't necessarily editorialize people's life path or where they are when we meet them. Yeah.
But what I really thought was fascinating is being careful about the language.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 22 And I think she was writing into us to bring our attention to language like, you know, so-and-so found love again. And it's like, well, what do you call that first relationship love?

Speaker 1 Using the right language is really important. So I'm very grateful for that person to write in.
Yeah.

Speaker 22 All this to say in bringing up this email we got is that, you know, we're real people making this show and we are grappling with these big questions every day.

Speaker 22 And we love hearing from listeners who have, you know, thoughtful and constructive commentary about the way we present these stories. I think it makes the show better.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 22 So we're finished with these weekly episodes for the next few months. We are going to be back in August with new weekly episodes.

Speaker 22 What is coming up next on the feed? Do you want to talk about it, Dre?

Speaker 1 I can't believe we've wrapped the weekly series. I think it's been really successful, and I absolutely love the show.

Speaker 1 We air

Speaker 1 season four of Betrayal, the limited run, on May 22nd.

Speaker 1 It's about a woman and her family out of Colorado Springs.

Speaker 1 You know, we're going to hear that story over eight to ten weeks. And then shortly after that, we'll go back into the weekly series where it's a different story every week or every other week.

Speaker 1 But in between, so from now through May 22nd, we have a ton of really exciting bonus material that we've been working on. You've been working really hard on Mo.

Speaker 1 We have a great bonus episode with a woman named Dr. Kate Truitt, and she explains the neuroscience of storytelling and how storytelling can be healing after experiencing trauma.

Speaker 1 We have listener essays that people have submitted based on our prompt, which is resilience in the face of devastating betrayal. And we have

Speaker 1 a woman named Andrea Dunlop. Her story.
It's kind of like a regular weekly episode, but a little bit shorter to kind of satiate our listeners.

Speaker 1 So I'm really excited to see what people think of the content that'll be coming out in the next few weeks.

Speaker 22 Well, Dre, I'm going to scurry back behind the curtain.

Speaker 1 I'm so glad everyone got to meet you, though. You're the nuts and bolts of this.
And so it's really great for the listeners to hear the people that make the show work. And you do great work, Mo.

Speaker 1 So thank you.

Speaker 22 Thanks, Dre. I feel honored to get to work with a team that is this thoughtful and

Speaker 22 mission-driven and talented and also to get to work with individuals who are trusting us with some of the worst experiences of their life and trusting us to tell those with respect and care it's it's really an honor

Speaker 22 all right bye bye

Speaker 1 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 betrayalpod at gmail.com.
We're grateful for your support.

Speaker 1 One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.
Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinchek.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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