Dan & Sage | Betrayal Weekly

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There was a safety deposit box in Malaysia that her and I had the key to that was a secret and I wasn't allowed to tell anyone that it existed.

And we'd like go put gold bars in this like safety deposit box that has the big vaulted door.

It was like the slow burn to like that wasn't weird to me.

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

Usually, each episode of Betrayal Weekly follows one person's story, but today's episode is told by two members of the same family, a father and daughter.

The betrayal wasn't something that happened in a moment. It happened over a long time and I didn't even recognize it was happening.
That's Dan Kimball.

He's a mild-mannered Midwestern man in his late 60s. He and his daughter Sage had their world shattered by the person they both trusted most.
Here's Sage.

In my normal life, I don't talk about this to my friends or my people, except for some very close friends, because like, how do you even start to tell this story?

When we first reached out to them about telling their story on betrayal to be honest when i got that message from you i thought it was a scam but the title of our show caught his attention betrayal the word betrayal was the thing that kind of struck my mind our team spent months talking with dan and sage they went back and forth about if they wanted to use their real names in this episode After taking time to think, they came back with a clear answer.

If we're telling the truth, what do we have to be afraid of?

We're going to start this story from Sage's perspective. She grew up in picturesque Santa Barbara, California in the 90s.
At the time, it felt more like a hippie town. You could do outdoorsy stuff.

I have very fond memories there of like finding banana slugs and being outside.

Her parents were both eccentric. Citizen of the world types.
They originally met because of their mutual love of the visionary architect and and designer, Buckminster Fuller.

They met at Buckminster Fuller's birthday party, and then they were friends years before they ever were in a relationship.

Her dad, Dan, spent most of his life doing sustainable design, working on cutting-edge computer technology. He's the one who nurtured her childhood curiosity.

My dad would be curious about what I was interested in, then he'd get excited about it.

I was really obsessed with like space for a little bit and he like built a planetarium with me and like let me go on the street and like sell tickets for people to like look into my planetarium show.

Dan was a constant and gentle presence for Sage.

And her mom, Thara?

She was affectionate. She would hug me.
She would kiss me. She would play with me like outdoorsy things she loved doing with me.
As a kid, Sage always wanted to be close to her mom.

i felt like she was the thing that made me safe i couldn't exist without her like i believed that i wouldn't exist without her

farah was a sufi muslim she came to the religion as a teenager when her dad was working as a diplomat in iran that's where farah fell in love with islam it became a part of her identity and she raised her daughter sage in the faith we all called ourselves sufis which is a sect of Islam.

We'd have these like Sufi gatherings at our house with like dancing. There would be like 40 people coming over and like I'd just get to like hang out.
Those Sufi parties were a lot of fun.

For Sage, growing up as a white Muslim girl in Santa Barbara was a unique experience. Friends would ask me like, are you embarrassed to walk around with your mom because she wore this?

It's a hijab, but it's also like a cape thing.

People would ask me if my mom was a nun her mom started wearing long white robes that looked like a nun's habit dan sewed them for her by hand

sage wasn't embarrassed about her mom she wanted to be like her because her mom really lived out her values she was a peace activist we'd go to a lot of anti-war or peace rallies when i was growing up

I remember feeling really cool that we were out there doing something about the world.

In the 90s, Farah organized a movement to send medicine and supplies to civilians in Iraq. Sage remembers watching her mom's work with pride.
I was about five or so.

My mom was going on a humanitarian aid trip where a group of people were going to be breaking the sanctions to deliver medicine and things to the people in Iraq.

That was a super cool thing that my mom did. Like, that's so brave and so cool.
Dan was deeply involved in this movement, too. It was a family effort.

The Kimballs were instrumental in raising millions of dollars for medicine to be sent to children in Iraq.

As much as Sage loved her mom and wanted to be just like her, Varah could be stern. I remember from a very young age knowing that what mom says goes.

Like if you did something wrong, you knew immediately to like get it together. And it almost like her eyes changed.
Whenever Sage did something wrong, Farah taught her how to make amends.

My tactic from an early age was writing her a note or a letter. I'm going to see if I can find it actually.

Oh, here it is. I found it.
There's a part here that says,

Thank you for teaching me what Islam is. I don't know where I would be today if not for you, even though it may not seem like it now because I didn't live up to my duties or help you out.

I truly love you. You are the most important person in the world to me.

Farah was often upset with Sage's dad, Dan. Sage didn't know why, but she wanted to help.
Once I was like

8, 9, 10, I learned that I should try and fix it. So I would go and talk to him, and then I would go and relay information, and I would go tell him, here's what you should do.

I know how to fix these problems. Sage was confused by her parents' relationship.
I never saw them be affectionate with each other. I don't think I ever saw them kiss or like hug.

They said they really loved each other, but I'd see like my friend's parents, and they'd be like, arm around each other or like holding hands.

Barra put pressure on Dan to bring in more money for the family. That became a source of a lot of their fights.
At a certain point, my mom started saying that, well, it's the man's job to provide.

Like, I shouldn't have to provide anything because it was his job to make sure that there was food on the table.

Their family was growing. When Sage was eight years old, her parents had two more kids, twin boys.

I was pumped because I was like, great, even better. Now I get two friends, not just one.

Money was a stressor. Dan had one unsuccessful tech startup of his own, but he always landed on his feet.
At the time, he worked for an early microcomputing company doing user interface design.

Plus, they were in the middle of building their dream home in Santa Barbara. Farah and Dan had been designing it together.
It would be a sustainable home that incorporated Islamic architecture.

There was a house that we were trying to build in Santa Barbara that got cut because it had a dome, and people said that the dome was, we're trying to build a mosque.

It was 2005, a time when Islamophobia was rampant in the U.S. Siege encountered it at school.

I do remember that being like a Muslims are terrorists, like that being said, and me fighting with people about that.

Farah and Dan learned that it was one of their neighbors who made Islamophobic comments about the design of their house. It made them want to live in a place where they weren't outsiders.

I was in ninth grade at the time, and I remember coming home, and there were like boxes packed.

Farah wanted to move the family to a Muslim-majority country. Dan quit his job and planned to work remotely on tech startups in Asia.

A few months later, they went to visit a family friend in Bali, Indonesia. And then we didn't leave.

Bali's actually majority Hindu, but Farah felt comfortable there, and they found the perfect property.

It was a big piece of land and there's a river down below and you look across at like rice fields and you could see on a clear day like Mount Agung, which is the big volcano in Bali in the distance.

Like it was incredible, beautiful, beautiful. But at the time, it was just a piece of land.
There was nothing on it.

The family packed up their whole lives, put most of it in storage and relocated to Bali. They got to work building an estate, complete with an organic garden and a set of traditional Javanese villas.

They're called joglos and they're these really cool Indonesian structures that are like no nails. The family came together with neighbors and friends to help with the construction.

They also started a main house where the family would live. It was a huge undertaking and though she was 14 Sage knew her parents were taking a big risk.

Buying that property was like everything we had. So like you're putting all your eggs in that basket.

To afford this piece of land and the construction costs, Dan and Farah had used all of their resources.

They sold their property in Santa Barbara and put their savings, including all the money Dan had inherited from his parents, into the Bali property.

Once it was completed, it would be an oasis, a tropical paradise for their family. One they could monetize.
Farah had the idea to start a raw foods business at the house in Bali.

They would host tourists and chefs who were leaders in the raw food movement. It's a diet of mostly fruits, nuts, and vegetables.
Health and wellness was another big thing that she was into.

She got really into like raw food and actually made a cookbook with like delicious raw food recipes, but like there were always extremes in that.

That year, Farah took Sage on a solo trip to visit a community run by women. There's an Indonesian tribe that's still a matriarchal society, which was actually really sick.

Like it was a very cool, beautiful, peaceful society.

Sage was about 15.

After that trip to visit the matriarchal society, Farah brought her daughter along more often, including for business matters and important errands.

I've started going to banks with her to do banking things.

Around that same time, Farah began bringing the kids on trips with her, where she was buying gold bars.

A gold bar, I remember at the time it being like $10,000 and us going and getting like six gold bars or something like that.

This was also the time she was getting into Alex Jones and like money and corruption. Alex Jones is an American media host.

He's built a large following through commentary on politics, culture, and government institutions. He's best known for promoting conspiracy theories and fear-mongering about economic collapse.

I think that was where the influence to get the gold came from because it was like, this is where you keep your money safe.

Some of those trips are seared into Sage's memory, like when they went to Singapore.

We would go to Singapore to buy gold because it was a good place to buy gold.

And then she would have me and my brothers put like you have those, like, you know, those like travel bags that go like under your clothes

she made it seem like it was a normal thing she started talking to sage more and more about finances and farah told her these trips the gold the banking it was their secret there was a safety deposit box in malaysia that her and i had the key to that was a secret and i wasn't allowed to tell anyone that it existed and like there's like armed guards outside of this like safety deposit area and we'd like go put gold bars in this safety deposit box that has the big vaulted door and like a guard at the door.

It was wild, but like again, it was like the slow burn to like that wasn't weird to me. Sage knew she wasn't allowed to question her mom.
I was so intertwined with what she wanted.

I don't think I was even always told what I was doing, I just did whatever she asked me to do.

Sage trusted in her mom's connection to God.

That was so central to how she parented me: was here's God, and then we are all serving God.

The understanding was that she's like a step below God.

God is speaking to her.

It was like, if you're going against her, you're going against God.

Eventually, Bara let her daughter in on her plan. She wanted to create a matriarchal financial structure within their own family.

She's a feminist and she wants a matriarchal society and the women should be in charge of the finances. That was the first time I heard that, like, we are going to do this matriarchal thing.

As part of this structure, Varah wanted Sage to be the signatory on their family trust instead of her dad or one of her brothers.

When I became the signatory on that trust document, it was because we were treating this like the women have power over the finances. Like it's going to be so progressive.
Sage was on board.

She signed the documents her mom asked her to. The understanding was like, if you're a feminist or if you care about women, you will also support this.

Varah explained to Sage that this had to be done because she said their dad wasn't good with money. Farah told the kids kids that Dan's job in tech startups wasn't good enough.

He'd go get investment in a company that he was working on. And then she would say that investment isn't income.
That's stealing money from people for these businesses.

And so she would say to us that like, your dad is just swindling these people out of their money because he won't get a job.

And if he cared about you, he would get a job. But it wasn't just Dan's job that that was the problem.
She started telling the kids their dad didn't love them anymore.

She would say to us that, like, your dad doesn't care. He doesn't care about you.
He's a deadbeat. He doesn't care about his kids.

I know you love him, but if he cared about you, he would be doing something to protect you. Dan was often traveling for work away from the house, but whenever he was home.

I remember later on in my teenage years, my dad was sleeping in literally this like outdoor shack.

But it was because I begged her not to kick him out fully.

Varah explained to the kids that she was scared of Dan. She would ask me to be a witness if he was talking to her because she wanted a witness when he was abusive to her.

Like, if I cared about her, I'd be there to protect her in that.

By the time Sage left for college, she believed she had to protect the family from her dad. And a big part of that meant keeping the family money out of his hands.

The understanding was like: in order for us to have anything, we have to make sure he doesn't have access to these things because he's just going to squander it. And my dad didn't know any of this.

All of this, from the trips to the bank to the stories she told the kids.

I was completely oblivious. And I think it was orchestrated that way.

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Once the Kimballs moved to Bali, Farah began acting differently. She isolated her oldest daughter, Sage, and told her stories about how her father didn't love her.
It got in Sage's head.

Her mom started taking her to the bank and asking her to sign documents. Now, we're going to hear Dan's perspective, starting from when they moved to Bali.

It's something that was difficult for him to revisit. Dan met Farah when they were teenagers.
They were friends for 15 years before they became a couple.

They shared the same core value, wanting to make the world a better place. And I appreciated that about her.
Definitely very much a global thinker. And she's a very charismatic person.

I mean, a really beautiful soul in many ways. By the time they got to Bali, they'd been married for almost 20 years.
Dan didn't share the same religious zeal as Farah did, but he respected her values.

So when she said she wanted to move to Indonesia, the decision had already been made for me, really. She wanted to be in a Muslim culture.
And, you know, I've never wanted to really complain.

I was always wanting to just go along with what we were trying to do. Dan had been the breadwinner for most of their marriage.

Working in tech startups meant that sometimes he had a high-paying job and sometimes he was in between gigs. But through it all, he made sure the family was okay financially.

In fact, Dan had been the one managing the couple's money since the beginning. I took over responsibility for all the finances.
I just, I made the books every month and just did it and paid the bills.

I kind of knew the QuickBooks and putting it all together and working with the tax people and just getting it all organized. I don't think that she had ever really had a desire to handle money stuff.

Over the course of their marriage, Dan watched his wife become more and more religious.

She'd chosen her own name, Bara. Religion became her whole life.
By the time they got to Bali, there was kind of a delusional nature to her describing herself.

She was so close to God that she could understand things that were beyond my understanding.

But Dan saw the value in living abroad. Once he toured the property in Bali, he was sold on Farah's dream.
To make that happen financially, we moved all of our assets to Indonesia.

We started a company in Indonesia. So money would go to this company.
We have to have one Indonesian director. So a good Indonesian friend was the director.
My wife and I were the other directors.

And we owned it 50-50. The Indonesian director didn't own any.
And most of the assets then to buy the property were bought through this company. We paid a huge down payment to buy the property.

It was a big financial risk. And it brought Dan and Farah closer.
They both believed in what they were building together in Bali, even if it meant pulling all of their available resources.

Oftentimes, people think, oh, you must have been so wealthy to do all that stuff. No, we weren't.
We just were brave enough to go and do it, right? I mean,

it was risky in the sense that we spent a lot of money to buy that property, and we just didn't mind living with that kind of risk.

At the beginning of their move, the family had to stay in a hotel for a couple weeks. There, Dan noticed Farah was taken by the new lifestyle they could afford abroad.

We lived for quite a long time in this fancy hotel, and I didn't know why we were staying there because it was costing us too much money.

And I was kind of complaining about it, but she was very pushy around money. Like, you know, no, we're going to do this.
We're going to spend the money that it takes to do this.

And of course, it's both, it's all our money. That hotel stay was temporary.
Dan was busy orchestrating and designing the construction project. He was there for nearly every step of the process.

And we built it up into this beautiful little mini resort, which was all based on raw food, which was a wonderful kind of niche for us because anyone, anywhere in the world that was interested in raw food would come to our place.

It was the only place in Bali that you could get raw food at the time.

And so we trained people in how to make raw food. In fact, some of the people that went to these New York raw food restaurants were trained by us.
Farah loved living in Bali. They both did.

I just fell in love with Bali. Once most of the construction was done, Dan started traveling around Asia, consulting for a series of tech startups.

Sage was finishing high school. The twin boys were in elementary school.
And Farah seemed to be pulling away from Dan. Every time he came home from a business trip, Farah became increasingly distant.

After a year or two, it got to the point that We didn't have a relationship anymore. I mean, we never slept together.
We never I was in separate quarters from her, but I just went along with it.

Dan was under pressure to keep bringing in a steady income, and he was scrambling to make that happen.

He figured it was normal for he and his wife to go through stressful years where they drifted apart.

The only thing that bothered him was when Farah started taking the kids on trips and telling Dan she didn't want him there.

There was a lot of exclusion, like, okay, Sage and I are going to go to Indonesia now and buy some more teak to try to find the teak for the house and you're going to stay here, right?

It was just like telling me what I had to do and how I'm going to do it.

This had been their dynamic for almost their whole marriage. Farah called the shots, and Dan was happy to go along with her choices.
But after they moved abroad, her choices began to exclude Dan.

There were many vacations that they went on that I didn't go on because I was pushed out of it. One of those trips?

My wife wanted to visit this community in Malaysia that is a Muslim society where the women are in control of everything. So it was of interest to her.

A few months after that trip, Farah started taking an interest in managing their finances herself. She told Dan she wanted her own private bank account, and he didn't see any issue with that.

After about five years at the raw food resort in Indonesia, they were approached by a land developer. He wanted to buy their land at a premium.

Sage was about to go off to college, and the twins were 10. The family was ready for a new chapter, so they made the sale.
We sold the property in Indonesia for $3 million.

Dan and Farah put that money into a new family trust that they established in Malaysia. That's where they would be moving next.

They'd had something similar in Indonesia, but not with nearly this amount of money in it. So the formation of this trust in Malaysia was a big deal.
This notion of a trust was very important to us.

We both understood what it was, but the word trust, I don't think had the same meaning to her that it had to me.

For Dan, the family trust was about ensuring safety for their kids' futures. It was for his and Farah's future, too.
Like always, ownership of the trust would be divided evenly.

The company we created in Indonesia was 50-50 held.

The company that was created in Malaysia was held by the trust, which we were co-creators of.

We were named in the trust as co-grantors. We moved all the assets to Malaysia.
When they sold the property in Bali, they'd actually just sold the land, not the houses they'd built.

Those were theirs if they could find a way to move them. The big house had been a special project of Dan's.

So then we decided, well, hey, let's bring the house from Indonesia to Malaysia because we didn't want to start from scratch.

Their plan was to deconstruct the house in Bali, piece by piece, so they could rebuild it somewhere else. We asked everybody from the village to come and help us knock down these houses.

And within three days, they tore it down, packed it all up.

So a few months later, we had two giant shipping containers come to us in Malaysia with our house. They found a piece of land in Malaysia where they could reconstruct their dream home.

And now, they could afford to take their time. They hired an architect who saw their vision.
The project became Dan and Farah's focus.

We have a lovely time designing and building and working with the architects and like we're working on something other than us. It wasn't about us, it was about this thing we were doing together.

When the house was completed, it was breathtaking. Picture a jungle oasis with floor-to-ceiling windows and towering hand-carved doors.
tropical plants and natural light flooding every room.

And because it was the same structure they originally built in Bali, it wasn't just beautiful. It was meaningful.
The house was a symbol of what their family could accomplish together.

We rebuilt our property, this gorgeous place, into this extraordinary house. Once they got settled in Malaysia, Dan got back to work.

During this time, I opened a kind of a consulting company and I had some contracts with technology development work.

One of his main contracts was in a city a few hours away. But this time when he would come home from work trips, he experienced a new level of isolation.

It was as if the whole family was giving him the silent treatment. When he asked Farah what was going on, she said she didn't know what he was talking about.

So Dan responded by throwing himself into work and building up his own social network.

With lots of my friends and people that I've built relationships with, like this architect and our next-door neighbor, I became good friends with them, but she never wanted to even go over there.

Dan was making enough for the family to live comfortably, and he liked his work.

Around this time, Dan was offered a salaried job. It paid a lot, but it was a role he didn't want.
When he brought it up to Farah, she showed a renewed interest in Dan.

My wife was pushing to try to get me to take this job. When I told her I'd turned it down, I was like, she blew up.
She was upset by this.

This is when Dan first heard about her desire for the women in the family to control the finances. You heard Sage talk about that earlier in the episode.

Sage had been in on this for years, but she was told not to talk about it with her dad. So Dan was just learning about it in Malaysia.
Of course,

it's all our money, but she's the one who's kind of now starting to control it. If it was important to Farah to control the finances, he was okay with that.

It gave him peace of mind knowing that the trust was still held 50-50, with a friend of theirs serving as director.

But after Farah took over management of the family's daily spending, the marriage deteriorated even further. And it was like very tumultuous times.

She argued with me and demanded that I move into the maid's quarters. Dan didn't even know what he'd done to make his wife so upset.
But now he was always walking on eggshells.

And I thought we were still in love.

This is where I realized that love wasn't the same thing.

Love was transactional for her.

Now that the house was nearly completed, Dan felt like he wasn't useful anymore. There was no need for me anymore.
I felt like I was, yeah, I was like a discard.

Around that time, Dan was on a business trip when he was robbed. Two guys on a motorcycle went and grabbed my bag and drove off with my computer and my passport and everything else.

He had to call Farah and beg for her help. This issue of me needing to get enough money to buy a computer that had been stolen.

And like, what kind of position had I got myself into to be so subservient to funds that were ours

to thinking that I had to beg for it? For Dan, this was an emotional breaking point.

I realized, hey, there's something seriously wrong here. There was something that cracked.
Dan managed to get himself back home, but when he arrived at the house,

I go there, try my key. It doesn't work.
And I realize, oh, she's changed the key. The doors had been locked and I wasn't

welcome anymore.

With no other place to stay and no access to their money, Dan started sleeping in a friend's car.

During that time, I basically ran out of funds.

We had plenty because it's joint funds, and she just wouldn't send any money. And I felt suppressed from even asking, you know,

I was literally living out of a friend's car.

I don't think she thinks of it that way, but I was homeless. It pushed me into homelessness.

Dan still believed that if he could just sit down and talk with his wife, they could figure out a path forward. It would probably mean divorce and separating their assets.

He just wanted to look her in the eye and make the decision together.

A few days later. I remember going to the house once, trying to see her and just talk with her about this in just a very calm way, just like, what's going on?

What did we do about this?

He knew Farah went on a bike ride every morning, so he waited for her by the front gate of their house. She was riding a bicycle toward me, and I was there ready to greet her.

She looked straight ahead and acted as if I was a tree.

Just drove past me without even glancing my direction.

That moment when Farah passed him on the bicycle was one of the last times times Dan would ever see his wife.

Because the next time he met with their accountants, he learned something that would alter the rest of his life.

I went there and we were going over the documents and they said, well, the shares were transferred into your wife's name. I said, what? The shares were channeled.

Those are the trust shares that were transferred into my wife's name. Is it

on this date and this something? And they were just dealing matter-of-factly, right? They showed me the documentation that said that this is the transfer.

And I said, well, what about the directorship? And he says, yeah, well, she was made director, too.

And

I was just dumbfounded at that meeting. Dan had been completely locked out of their family trust.

She only needed the approval of the trustee.

So somehow, she talked to the trustee. The trustee was a friend of theirs who lived locally.
I think she started to work on him and said, okay, I'm transferring all this stuff over into my name.

I'm going to be the director now. And he went and did it.
He just signed the papers. Thinking, I mean, that's what his claim was.

Oh, well, you know, she's your wife, you know, she's all been approved by her and you. Dan had not approved for his half of the trust shares to be transferred into his wife's name.

That gave her sole access to their entire life savings. But he hadn't signed any documents.
He had no knowledge of this transfer. Dan immediately called their friend who'd been the trustee.

I just remember being outraged that he would do this. And how did this happen? We can't move on like this.
Change it back. It has to be corrected.
And I was absolutely adamant about it.

But this isn't the kind of thing you can just request to change back. There was a lot of red tape.
I worked for months, literally most of the rest of 2017.

I talked to multiple attorneys about how do we do this because it's already been signed over. I talked to the trust attorney.
He finally said to me, listen, you're going to have to get an attorney to,

I can't do anything because she's not going to agree to it. And the trustee can't do it on his own.
And, you know, it's all kinds of crap.

Dan's life was on pause as he tried to educate himself about international trust laws and marriage laws. My entire life savings are tied up in this.
And I'm literally penniless.

If he wanted recourse, he would would have to go through the Malaysian court system.

I'm going to have to file suit, and I'm going to have to file suit against my wife and the company that's in the trust.

Even my daughter has to be on the suit because she was the signatory to the trust.

It was just mind-bendingly painful.

Did you know Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 10? Upgrade to Windows 11 with an LG Gram laptop. Voted PC Mag's Reader's Choice Top Laptop Brand for 2025.

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10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.

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This is when mindset comes in. Someone will be eliminated.
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You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500.

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Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com/slash disclosures.

For the final act of this story, we're going to hear from both Dan and Sage.

Because what happened next didn't just unfold around them, it happened between them.

Can I add on to that, Dad? Yeah, yeah.

We wanted to bring them together to tell the end of the story from their joint perspective.

Sage, your experience was very different than my own because it comes from, you know, me being a husband rather than being a daughter. A totally different, but yet the same thing happens.

Sage had been hearing horrible stories about her dad. They'd been kept away from each other for so long, but they weren't living in the same reality.

I was alienated from my dad for years because she told me he wasn't trustworthy. When Dan was locked out of the house, Sage was in college.
She was barely speaking to her father at the time.

She only heard her mother's version of the story. When she changed the locks, she then was posing it at the time as like he's trying to break in and being like, I'm terrified.

And I remember being angry at my dad, like, leave leave her alone because she's making it seem like

he's trying to like hurt her or something. And I never thought he was capable of hurting her.

After the truss was transferred out of his name, Dan reached out to Sage to tell her what was going on. That's when he began putting the pieces together about why Sage was so distant.

I didn't realize that I had been spoken ill of for many years and so that the impressions that I got from my early discussions with Sage were that wow you you don't know me Sage was 23 and living in New York City when her dad called her he said hey I want you to know I

am filing a lawsuit against your mom but because you were on that document I also have to sue you But it's like, I'm going to cover your lawyer fees.

We're going to just get your statement and then you'll be recused.

He was talking to me about how this was all going to work before doing it.

But when Sage talked to her mom, she heard a completely different story. It escalated to like, why would you want to have a relationship with my abuser?

Like you're an abuser too, if you want to have a relationship with my abuser, even if that person is your father. Her mom's story was confusing to her.

Sage had mediated her parents' fights before, but she had never seen anything physical. In fact, Sage's personal personal experience of her dad was that he was a quiet and gentle guy.

From the time I was born, he was gentle. And

he listens. In all of the fights, the times when my mom would be crazy, he wouldn't even raise his voice.
I think I've heard him yell twice in my life. I've never seen him hurt an animal.

I've never seen him hurt anything. When he first came to her in crisis, Sage was deeply conflicted about who to believe.
I was like, I don't believe you. Show me the proof.

And seeing the proof of like,

here's this money that was given to me. Here's this.
Here's what we bought. A huge part of that was his inheritance that even got us the house in Bali.

And I was starting to believe in him. But Sage still didn't want to be in the middle of this.
She tried to completely remove herself from the situation. I got like a notarized letter that was just

this should be solved between my parents. I should have never been on this document.

This notarized letter didn't change anything. She was legally implicated in this.
My dad was like, I don't want you to be in the middle of it either. And you are in the middle of it.

And I would start listening to him more. I was trained that he was so

awful that like you're just lying to me.

But I was like, I want to know what his side is. So I listened and like we had a conversation where he like told me all the things like that were going on.

Then Varah came to Sage with a new document, one that would close the trust entirely and make it much harder for her dad to ever access his life savings.

If she signed this piece of paper, she would be taking a side. There would be no going back.

Sage didn't want to be responsible for the millions of dollars in shared assets her parents were fighting over. And she was posed it as, I just need your signature on this thing.

I just need your one signature. And I told her, no, I'm not going to sign it because I don't want to be in the middle of this.
But saying no to her mother was the red button.

It felt like me choosing not to sign it was me choosing to not have a relationship with her. I could just sign it.

And then this would be over and I wouldn't have to deal with this excruciating pain, but I didn't. And that was like the first time that she truly stopped speaking to me.

And then came the call from her dad. He called me and was like,

Did you sign the document? And I said, No, I didn't. I promise you, I didn't sign the document.

And he was like, You didn't sign it? Are you 100% sure? And I'm like, I, this was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I'm 100% sure I didn't sign the document.

And he was like, Your signature is on the document.

I just told my dad again and again, I didn't do it. Like, and he believed believed me.

Then how did her signature get on the document? Sage felt like her own boundaries had been violated.

And then I started therapy. And that also really, really

was

the thing that helped me process and understand and start to gain clarity. It was through therapy that I started to set boundaries with her.

And then that, then it's over.

Going to therapy helped Sage understand that her dynamic with her mom was not normal. Like how her mom would react whenever Sage wasn't doing what she wanted.

She would pretend she had a knife and she'd be like, this is what you're doing to me, like stabbing her. Like it was awful.

When Sage moved to New York, she began forming her own identity, separate from her mom.

She started making new friends and forming new ideas about the world. Instead of being happy for her, Farah began ignoring Sage's calls and distancing herself emotionally from Sage.

Meanwhile, Dan's case moved forward. A hearing was set in Malaysia, and Sage made a decision she never thought she would.

Ultimately, I decided to be involved in the court case.

I think it was also for myself, because I think there was something about that that was healing to get to finally say this happened to me in a public way.

Sage submitted a notarized affidavit affidavit to the Malaysian court declaring that she did not sign for the revocation of the trust, nor did she have any knowledge of the transfer of the trust assets or knowledge of Farah becoming director.

When the hearing date came, she and her dad went together to Malaysia and Sage took the stand, giving an emotional testimony about the ways she felt manipulated by her mother.

Sage didn't expect the way her mom's lawyers responded to her testimony. During her testimony, they showed a picture of us happily, you know, in a family gathering with us together.

We're all smiling in the picture. And they say, this looks like you're being abused, or is this like a picture showing that you are abused?

And of course, you look at the picture and say, no, I mean, I look happy, you know. But the reality is, is that what is in a picture, doesn't show what's really behind the scenes.

Being told literally to my face would someone who's being abused look like this on a holiday vacation would someone who's being abused be smiling like this your mom has done this this and this humanitarian for the world like you're just lying

that contradiction between her humanitarian work and her family's lived experience with her was also something dan and sage had to come to terms with themselves It's not always just a black and white someone is good or evil, that you can have parts of you that are good and it doesn't take away from the fact that you can do something terrible when dan looks back on all the humanitarian work farah has done he sees a pattern in retrospect it looks like she was doing a lot of these right things for the wrong reasons

the right things were like medicines to a rock you know doing all these wonderful things but

It wasn't for the reasons I thought. It was for the reasons that it got got her attention.
It got her notoriety. That's what she loved.

After the hearing, they waited for the ruling. And when the decision came, they were shocked.

They dismissed the case. I mean, how could that be? But I didn't know why.

I didn't know why it had been dismissed. There was not a judgment.
There was only a dismissal. Why, Tracy, that's strange.
This never happens. Even Dan's attorney was confused.

He'd been confident in their case. An outright dismissal wasn't even on the radar.
But the court was saying, Dan didn't even have a leg to stand on. I just immediately said, that's wrong.

We can't have this.

Dan's dad had been a judge. As a kid, he'd sit in his dad's courtroom and bang the gavel.

He was raised to value justice and fairness. And when his case in Malaysia was dismissed, he felt justice had been denied.

The core part of that shock to me was that they had completely ignored Sage's testimony. It basically said in there, she's not believable.
And this was like, hit me to the core.

It's like, how could that be? You know, this is not something that you ignore.

I don't know. Sage, how did that make you feel?

That felt so degrading.

I spoke the truth

to then not be believed

hurts even more

Dan wanted to appeal the dismissal but to move forward he would have to pay fifty thousand dollars they didn't have that money so Sage had an idea to start a GoFundMe sharing their story and trying to fundraise for the appeal fees

I had to promote this GoFundMe thing to my professional community, I'm sure I lost some respect because people just didn't, maybe just didn't believe it. It was embarrassing for Dan.

Sage helped write the fundraiser page, telling the story of what happened to their family trust. Friends and colleagues of Dan submitted testimonies about him.

But after they put up the page, Barris sent a letter threatening to sue Dan for defamation.

This letter was trying to silence me and trying to literally prevent me from raising money to protect myself.

I think initially when she sent the letter, my response was put it in my name. Then she has to sue me and that looks worse.

And then I think we didn't even end up doing that because it's like, we're telling the truth. You actually don't get to keep silencing the story.

Stop. We're allowed to have our voices.

In the end, they didn't raise the money they needed for the appeal. I lost the appeal not on grounds, but on procedural.
And I was like, he didn't pay the money, he lost the suit.

There are safeguards in place in California, where Dan filed for divorce. California imposes a temporary restraining order over financial assets while a divorce is pending.

Those laws don't apply in Malaysia. Dan worries that even if he can get access to the trust again, the money may not be there anymore.
And the same goes for his cherished home in Malaysia.

Not only did she put it up for sale in January against those owners, I found out since that there's a crypto site that sells real estate promoting the property.

Today, Dan's case is trapped in a thicket of international law. It's been seven years since he discovered he was removed from the family trust.

It's meant Dan spent most of his 60s locked out of his life savings.

His late dad had left a safety deposit box with a few thousand dollars worth of coins and stocks that Dan was able to access.

It was only because of that money that I was able to depart Malaysia. He moved back to the U.S.
and found a cheap apartment to rent.

And just kind of scraped by until I could apply for Social Security and then I lived basically on $1,000 a month and I have been ever since.

For those first few years back in the U.S., Dan was in a dark place. He felt like he'd failed his children.
He spent a lot of time reconnecting with his daughter and grieving with her.

These days, Sage is no longer religious. While the decision to step away from religion has been healthy and right for her, she knows that Islam as a religion was never the problem.

It was a way that Farah used religion as a tool of control, to elevate herself, to demand obedience, and to justify her behavior. The harm Farah caused was specific to her, not to Islam.

Going to therapy has helped Sage understand those patterns in her mom's behavior. She's even brought her dad to some of her therapy sessions for them to process together.

One of the things that I think was extremely positive about this was that suddenly Sage and I could have a relationship that was based on truth.

We'd basically said everything to each other about how we felt about each other and understanding ourselves. I mean, there were things revealed that Sage didn't know about me and me about her.

I heard that Sage had a crisis in Bali that I was oblivious to.

I was oblivious to partly because of the hiding and the keeping things from me, but I'm sad now because I wasn't there to recognize that and to see it. And, you know, I'm...

Yeah, I'm sorry that I wasn't there.

There was kind of a breaking of the silence and allowing us to, to, you know, I could be a parent again.

Getting to process that was really healing because that anger can then turn into forgiveness and the relationship that we have now. He's not just my dad, but we're also really good friends.

Their relationship today is incredibly strong. They live 15 minutes away from each other.
They have breakfast together once a week and walk Sage's dog on the beach.

I think part of the healing too is like just getting to have a relationship that's not about any of what we went through and having just fun and like kind of a fresh start.

He will design woodworking tables for me and we'll go build it at the woodworking studio. So we're making a dining table, dad.
I sent you the ones I like and you have to make the cad dries.

You promised. I know, I know.
We have to figure that out. And you're so good at building and crafting and creating.

Anger and resentment just aren't aren't in their nature.

Even though they experienced a life-changing betrayal and a loss that they might never see resolved, Dan wants to spend the rest of his life focused on what he does have now, which is a relationship with his kids.

Justice is like a huge word for you that like you want justice and you want, and like, what does that look like?

And I think the reality of where we are now is it might not look like what we wanted it to look like in our heads. Yeah, it may not be just.
I mean, justice doesn't have to exist.

It sometimes doesn't.

Well, but I think, but I think it's more that it, it, like, the justice that we have is that we have this relationship, which is more valuable than any of the money or any of the things.

And she doesn't get to have that.

In many ways, I still love my mom and I still have worry and concern for her. And I think,

damn it, I think that like

she's very lonely. Like that's sad, you know?

She's pushed everyone away so much that she's alone. And like what an awful, like underneath all of the personality stuff that goes on is someone who's deeply alone and probably,

I don't know, like it's just, I think.

We're pretty cool, Dad. And like

getting to have this relationship is actually more valuable than any of the money or any of the things.

And maybe that is justice.

Now that I have my family back, literally my daughter and my two kids, that is the thing that feels just and feels right and feels like something that's been denied and is now restored.

We end every weekly episode with the same question.

Why do you want to share your story? This is about transformation, right? How can I be better as a result of the impact of this? I could just swallow in it like I did for a long time.

But if we want a better world, we should build a better world and design a better world.

So I'd like to go from an understanding of this betrayal to building a blueprint for

a better world. As for why Sage is telling the story with her dad, all of this is not to make her the devil, you know, like like it's that's not what the goal of this is for any of us.

It's more to be able to like share our experiences and be 100% truthful.

I'm aware that she's not going to like it. She has vilified him to so many communities, but I think getting to see him tell his story matters.
And getting to have him get some sort of justice matters.

And I think part of of that is being heard and believed. I'm sorry he had to go through what he's going through because he didn't deserve it.

I hope that on the other side of this is healing for him, too,

because he deserves that.

On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly,

they had a recording that showed the hillside just calm, quiet, settled.

then right after that, it was the recording of the same exact spot, the same exact house burning to the ground.

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.

Or follow us on Instagram at betrayalpod. You can also connect with me on Instagram at it's Andrea Gunning.

To access our newsletter, view additional content, and connect with the betrayal community, join our substack at betrayal.substack.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.
Five-star reviews go a long way. 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.

This episode was written and produced by Olivia Hewitt and Monique Laborde, with additional production from Ben Fetterman.

Casting support from Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinchek.

Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Additional audio editing by Tanner Robbins.
Betrayal's 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.

Did you know Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 10? Upgrade to Windows 11 with an LG Gram laptop. Voted PC Mag's Reader's Choice Top Laptop brand for 2025.

Thin and ultra ultra-lightweight, the LG Gram keeps you productive anywhere. And Windows 11 gives you access to free security updates and ongoing feature upgrades.

Visit lgusa.com/slash iHeart for great seasonal savings on LG Gram laptops with Windows 11. PC Mag Reader's Choice used with permission.
All rights reserved.

10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.

You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000.
This is when mindset comes in. Someone will be eliminated.
Pressure is coming down.

Trainer Games on Prime Video, January 8th. Watch the trailer on TrainerGames.com.
Season 2 of Unrivaled Basketball is here and the talent is unreal.

Paige Beckers, Nafiza Collier, Kelsey Plum, Brianna Stewart, and more are back to redefine the game.

Unrivaled Basketball, season two sponsored by Samsung Galaxy, tips off January 5th on TNT, True TV, and HBO Max.

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously.

On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI.

It all starts with your prompt.

From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work.

It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks.

Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's.

Go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com/slash podcast.
Paid for by Public Investing.

Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc., member F-I-N-R-A-S-I-P-C. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor.
Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool.

Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com/slash disclosures.
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