EP 14 - Lorena

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart Podcast.

Speaker 4 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 6 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 11 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved, so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 12 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 13 That's pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 14 It starts like any other night. The glass of red, the cozy blanket, then the drop.
The stains so dark, so stubborn, it might as well have been a crime scene.

Speaker 16 But this isn't your average couch.

Speaker 14 This is Anna Bay. Fully washable, unspeakably comfortable, and ready for whatever your life, your kids, or your ex throws ahead of.
And here's the kicker.

Speaker 14 Starting at just $6.99, you can make sure your sofa isn't part of the problem. Fully washable, stain-resistant, and built to hide even the darkest offenses.

Speaker 14 Right now, get up to 60% off in Black Friday savings because no one should have to live with a stain that won't quit. Anna Bay, the only mystery you won't be losing sleep over.

Speaker 14 Shop washable sofas.com today. That's washable sofas.com.

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Speaker 22 As a little girl, you don't say, Oh my gosh, I can't wait to grow up and marry a guy who cheats on me and makes me feel

Speaker 21 like the only way I can leave is if I'm going to be homeless and in a ditch.

Speaker 20 I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

Speaker 20 Lorena is a Midwestern mom who's never met a stranger. When she meets someone, she wants to really connect.

Speaker 29 If you want to sit there and talk about the blue sky and the green grass, please go find somebody else because I don't have time for that.

Speaker 32 You want to tell me who you are and what you want to be?

Speaker 33 I'm all over that.

Speaker 20 She came to the interview with an extra large iced coffee in hand and the energy level to match.

Speaker 34 Caffeine, caffeine, lots of caffeine, the style make it.

Speaker 35 I have 11 children and I have four grandkids.

Speaker 37 I'm busy.

Speaker 20 11 children. She was 18 when she had her first and 40 when she had her last.
In that time, she didn't go two years without being pregnant. How did she get here with 11 kids?

Speaker 20 Well, she belonged to a conservative Baptist church. In her community, big families were the norm and she loved motherhood.
But today, she sees that she was a frog in boiling water.

Speaker 20 She didn't realize the temperature was being turned up until it was too late.

Speaker 20 Lorena was raised by a single mother, and their family moved nearly every year. She always envied her friends who had the stability she didn't seem to have.

Speaker 39 I really, really wanted the nuclear family.

Speaker 35 I really wanted, oh look, it's the mom, and it's the dad, and it's some kids.

Speaker 20 Her mom worked in a hospital and would bring Lorena along with her sometimes to sit in the waiting room. While she was there, she fantasized about a career in medicine, working with premature babies.

Speaker 27 I wanted to be a doctor.

Speaker 41 I actually wanted to be a neonatologist.

Speaker 20 But as she got older and became a teenager, she and her mom started butting heads. She felt like her mom didn't have time for her.
So Lorena started to do exactly what she wanted.

Speaker 20 When she was 16, she ran away from home. She says it wasn't as dramatic as it sounds.
She just went to a friend's house. When her mom found her, she'd been smoking weed.

Speaker 20 And her mom did something drastic. My mother figured out that she could put me in drug treatment centers.

Speaker 43 It was almost like a little mini prison.

Speaker 20 She went to three. The first wouldn't keep her because they found out that she wasn't struggling with any drug addiction.
The second was a psychiatric hospital.

Speaker 20 They assessed her and kept her there for a few weeks before they determined that she didn't need to be hospitalized.

Speaker 31 And so she found another place.

Speaker 20 And the third place she found,

Speaker 27 they put everyone there on 800 milligrams of lithium twice a day, whether you needed it or not.

Speaker 20 As soon as she turned 18, she got out of there and moved out of the state with her boyfriend. Within a few months, she found out that she was pregnant.

Speaker 27 From the very moment I took that pregnancy test and saw that positive line, I was so excited.

Speaker 29 I just was so incredibly amazed that I could be a mom.

Speaker 20 But she experienced deception early on in that relationship.

Speaker 22 I was 20.

Speaker 27 He told me he was 25.

Speaker 43 I find out that he lied to me.

Speaker 41 He's 35.

Speaker 28 I found his his driver's license.

Speaker 20 35?

Speaker 27 That's a lot of age difference.

Speaker 52 You're not on equal grounds.

Speaker 35 There's not equal footing.

Speaker 20 So she did what she'd always done growing up, figure life out by herself. She left him, took the baby, and moved back to her home state, which we're not naming here to protect her privacy.

Speaker 20 And back home, she got herself into college. While she was in school, she had another baby.
She was excited to have a second, but she didn't want a long-term relationship with the father.

Speaker 53 I'm in college.

Speaker 43 I'm mostly making A's, a couple of B's there, except whenever I had my second child.

Speaker 21 I was in a class that I really shouldn't have been in, and I made a C.

Speaker 20 Now that she had two young children that she was raising alone, going to medical school seemed unrealistic. So she changed her plans and decided to get her business degree.

Speaker 20 She began studying to become an accountant.

Speaker 49 I'm in a business class

Speaker 30 and I see this guy across the room.

Speaker 52 And I'm like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 20 He was strikingly handsome, well-dressed, and the smartest one in the class.

Speaker 48 He asks me if I want to study.

Speaker 5 And I'm like,

Speaker 27 he is setting the standard.

Speaker 34 on all the tests.

Speaker 21 And he's wanting to study with me.

Speaker 55 And I'm like, yeah i love that

Speaker 42 and so we make plans and when he comes over we don't study

Speaker 20 we're going to call him peter so she and peter stayed up all night talking anyway we're talking and he's just listening to me

Speaker 28 He left somewhere between 4 and 6 a.m.

Speaker 49 He kissed me and then he left.

Speaker 20 The next day, he called her.

Speaker 57 He called me right after he got off of work.

Speaker 21 Hey, I was just wanting to come by and see you.

Speaker 21 Wow.

Speaker 20 He made her feel important. They started planning play dates with her two young kids and movie nights at her apartment.

Speaker 22 And I loved the way he made me feel.

Speaker 21 He made me feel seen and heard.

Speaker 22 He made me

Speaker 20 feel like

Speaker 27 I was the smart one.

Speaker 37 And I don't think that I had felt like some man had ever been that interested in me before.

Speaker 20 Things were moving quickly. After just a few dates, they became inseparable.

Speaker 28 With most of my past relationships, they were like easing into relationships.

Speaker 43 You know, you talk a little bit, but with him, we never stopped seeing one another.

Speaker 20 She was into him, but Lorena had two small children to protect. She didn't want them to get attached to Peter.

Speaker 20 So, three months into their relationship, she said she couldn't continue unless he was serious.

Speaker 59 And at that point in time, he told me he loved me and he wanted to pursue the relationship with the possibility of marriage, which I was like, what?

Speaker 59 A few months after that, Lorena went to the doctor for a routine physical.

Speaker 59 I get a phone call

Speaker 59 and they tell me I'm pregnant.

Speaker 59 So Peter came over that night and I told him

Speaker 30 and I was so scared. I remember we were standing in the kitchen

Speaker 59 and

Speaker 59 he picked me up, put me on the counter.

Speaker 59 and looked in my eyes and said, please,

Speaker 59 please, will you marry me? I don't want our child to not have a father. And

Speaker 59 I was like,

Speaker 59 yeah, yes, I will.

Speaker 20 Peter adopted her two younger children. And now, as a mom of three and a wife, Getting her college degree became even more difficult.

Speaker 27 I had basically taken that semester off.

Speaker 48 In the fall, I think I took one class and passed it.

Speaker 27 And then in the spring, he said, well, how about you just stay home with the kids?

Speaker 26 And I'm like, wow, that's really thoughtful.

Speaker 30 So I decided, yeah, let's try that.

Speaker 22 I'm so happy to be at home with my kids because I haven't ever had this opportunity to just be a full-time mom.

Speaker 20 All of a sudden, she had the nuclear family she'd always wanted. and Peter promised he would be their provider.
While she paused her education, he excelled in his.

Speaker 43 His professor had told him, you're very smart.

Speaker 61 If you ever decide to go back and get your master's degree, don't sell yourself short.

Speaker 57 Go to an Ivy League school.

Speaker 55 You can get in.

Speaker 20 So Peter started applying to MBA programs. And it turned out his professor was right.

Speaker 20 He was accepted into one of the top three business schools in the country, and the family moved to the Northeast for his education.

Speaker 20 Alone in a new city with her kids, Peter encouraged the family to start going to church.

Speaker 36 His mother was very religious.

Speaker 24 She was Pentecostal, and he wanted me to go to church.

Speaker 56 So I went.

Speaker 24 And you know what?

Speaker 58 I found God.

Speaker 39 I found Jesus right there.

Speaker 20 She hadn't grown up religious, but the church became a home away from home. When Peter graduated from his MBA, Lorena was there at his graduation with their family and now five children.

Speaker 20 He even graduated with a high-paying job offer. To make it even better, the job was close to their home state.

Speaker 27 And this is like the biggest energy company.

Speaker 36 It's huge.

Speaker 61 And he's got a good job there.

Speaker 20 Back in the heartland with her five kids and her Ivy League husband, Lorena had a dream life. She and Peter started looking for a new church.

Speaker 27 That's when they found this really cool organization, IBLP,

Speaker 27 Bill Gothard's Institute in Basic Life Principles.

Speaker 59 Oh, come here and learn about our program, and it will inspire you and grow you as a parent.

Speaker 25 Give you kind of an idea of how to live a better life,

Speaker 59 how to be a better mother, how to be a better father, a better husband, a better wife.

Speaker 20 They gave the family workbooks for homeschooling their kids and guides to parenting. They provided free meals and child care.
It all came with a conservative, fundamentalist ideology.

Speaker 58 I bought into that.

Speaker 59 Peter bought into that.

Speaker 59 We bought into that.

Speaker 20 If you've heard of the Duggar family and their reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting, you've probably heard of IBLP.

Speaker 20 The church and the Duggars were featured in the documentary Shiny Happy People that came out in 2023. The Duggars religion promotes having as many children as physically possible.

Speaker 20 And Peter certainly believed in that. At first, IBLP was a culture shock for Lorena, especially what they expected women to wear.

Speaker 27 Like the Duggars, like like what they have the women they are wearing.

Speaker 28 Every single one was in what they call a jumper or a long dress that looked like it came out of the 1800s.

Speaker 20 But Peter thought it was a good example for their daughters. He liked the modesty.

Speaker 51 He's like, well, I really like for you guys to be dressed like this.

Speaker 43 It's more modest.

Speaker 30 And we're setting a standard here in our house.

Speaker 23 And it did not take long before I conformed and wore what everyone else wore.

Speaker 20 The church had strong beliefs about gender roles in the household.

Speaker 46 Women cannot be over men.

Speaker 23 Men are the umbrella of protection.

Speaker 27 The women were there to make the food and to keep the kids quiet.

Speaker 20 And the most important principle?

Speaker 22 Allow God to dictate the amount of children you have.

Speaker 20 So she and Peter had another

Speaker 5 and another.

Speaker 27 Sex was every day

Speaker 27 and sometimes it would be twice a day unless he was traveling clearly or we had just had a baby and then it was we'd wait two weeks.

Speaker 20 All the while, Lorena was doing the child care on her own.

Speaker 28 Peter would never change diapers.

Speaker 27 I think With number three, he might have changed 10 diapers, but then after that, with babies four through 11, I would say that he probably changed each one of them maybe twice.

Speaker 27 And there may have been a couple that he never changed at all.

Speaker 20 She understood that their religion had conservative beliefs about gender roles. But deep down, she hoped that he would do more, especially when it came to the kids.

Speaker 58 I thought that

Speaker 22 The church was going to help him to be a better husband and a better father.

Speaker 27 Instead, it helped him hide things better.

Speaker 20 One night, as Lorena and Peter were going to bed, he was kind of dozing, and I was stroking his head.

Speaker 21 And I was like, Peter, I love you so much.

Speaker 29 And he said,

Speaker 44 I love you too, Crystal.

Speaker 27 I was like, What?

Speaker 34 What did you just call me?

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Speaker 6 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 11 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 12 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 13 That's pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 14 It starts like any other night. The glass of red, the cozy blanket, then the drop.
The stains so dark, so stubborn, it might as well have been a crime scene.

Speaker 16 But this isn't your average couch.

Speaker 14 This is Anna Bay, fully washable, unspeakably comfortable, and ready for whatever your life, your kids, or your ex throws ahead. And here's the kicker.

Speaker 14 Starting at just $6.99, you can make sure your sofa isn't part of the problem. Fully washable, stain-resistant, and built to hide even the darkest offenses.

Speaker 14 Right now, get up to 60% off in Black Friday savings because no one should have to live with a stain that won't quit. Anna Bay, the only mystery you won't be losing sleep over.

Speaker 14 Shop washable sofas.com today. That's washable sofas.com.

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Speaker 62 Instead of foamy fillers and dyes, it gives your teeth back the minerals they're made of, restoring enamel naturally. Best part, it's safe even if the little ones swallow it.

Speaker 62 No harsh chemicals, no scary warning labels, just clean ingredients that whiten and strengthen with science. Ready to switch? Visit primallifeorganics.com and use code DIRTYMOUTH for 15% off.

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Speaker 20 Lorena quickly fell into a religious community that promised to help her with childcare, marriage, and parenting. And the church wanted families to have as many children as possible.

Speaker 20 By now, Lorena had seven children with her husband Peter. One night, she was taken aback when her husband called her by the wrong name, Crystal.

Speaker 34 I was like, what did you just call me?

Speaker 36 Who's Crystal?

Speaker 57 And he shot out of bed, shot up.

Speaker 41 He's like, I didn't say that.

Speaker 54 I don't know who Crystal is. I don't know what Crystal.
I don't even know what Crystal. What are you talking about?

Speaker 20 He blamed the mistake on sleep deprivation. And it made sense.
After all, he was constantly working.

Speaker 27 His schedule was 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Speaker 61 So what's that, 14 hours a day?

Speaker 27 That's Monday through Friday.

Speaker 43 And then Saturday and Sunday, he'd get called in frequently.

Speaker 28 We'd get out of church and he'd be like, oh, the office called.

Speaker 55 I got to go.

Speaker 20 Even though he was working nonstop and made a great salary, their money got tighter and tighter every year.

Speaker 27 Christmas came and I remember asking him, can I please just spend $7 on each kit, just $7 a piece?

Speaker 24 And he was like, we don't have any money at all

Speaker 24 And I'm like, where did all the money go?

Speaker 20 Lorena assumed it was the financial strain of being a family of nine.

Speaker 27 So I made everyone homemade gifts that year. Everybody got one gift.

Speaker 20 Despite money being tight, she relied on Peter to be the financial expert in the family. After all, he had an MBA from a top three business school.

Speaker 20 He printed out spreadsheets with their budgets and gave Lorena a weekly allowance for her and the kids.

Speaker 27 I keep telling myself it's going to get better, it's going to get better, because it sure as heck couldn't have gotten worse, right?

Speaker 20 She was wrong about that.

Speaker 20 At one point, Lorena tried to investigate what was going on financially. She checked on the bank accounts, wanting to understand their expenses and find opportunities to save.

Speaker 20 But Peter drew a firm boundary.

Speaker 51 And he said, If you look at this bank account again, I will cut you off and you will not be able to see any finances.

Speaker 20 After her eighth baby, she had serious health complications. While they were in the hospital, the doctor pulled them both aside.

Speaker 28 The doctor says, listen, I know you have eight kids and I know that you kind of have your beliefs on that and whatever, but in the best interest of your health, you need to put off having any more kids.

Speaker 30 Peter looked at him and said, we're not going to do that.

Speaker 32 We believe in letting the Lord give us as many kids as we want.

Speaker 40 That's what we're going to do.

Speaker 27 After my eighth child was born, I was in an immense amount of pain.

Speaker 60 I could not even hold my baby, let alone feed him.

Speaker 53 While I'm healing from all of this, I'm not healthy.

Speaker 39 And I get pregnant

Speaker 33 with

Speaker 24 baby number nine.

Speaker 20 As their family continued to grow, so did their financial problems.

Speaker 27 So at this point in time, he had a bankruptcy on his record and he owed back taxes to the state we lived in.

Speaker 50 I know that he makes a good six-figure salary, but I'm getting an eighth, maybe not even that much, a tenth of it to feed and clothe the kids.

Speaker 20 Lorena couldn't understand it. Peter explained that it was the expenses of the kids and the family that were bankrupting them.

Speaker 20 In an attempt to salvage their finances, they decided to downsize to a smaller house.

Speaker 15 And Peter found a new job.

Speaker 29 And

Speaker 23 at some point in time, they started requiring him to travel.

Speaker 27 So here are the kids and I in this dumpy house that he's never put much into. It was very old, falling apart, dilapidated.

Speaker 60 Two bedroom, one bath for 11 people.

Speaker 27 It does have running water, but

Speaker 33 the

Speaker 49 septic system is a

Speaker 15 barrel.

Speaker 20 Lorena rose to the challenge.

Speaker 43 I can squeeze blood from a turnip, okay?

Speaker 23 I can show you how.

Speaker 34 My oldest son at one point in time came to me and said, Mom, that makes a good six-figure salary.

Speaker 39 Why are you living the way you're living?

Speaker 27 And I was like, we spend it all.

Speaker 20 They relied on the church as much as they could. One summer in 2015, they took the whole family to an IBLP conference.

Speaker 26 And the speakers that year were the Duckers.

Speaker 37 This was

Speaker 28 right after...

Speaker 30 Their oldest son had gotten in trouble with Ashley Madison.

Speaker 20 Ashley Madison is an online dating platform specifically for married people. Their slogan is: Life is short, have an affair.
And back in 2015, their user database had just been hacked.

Speaker 20 All their users' emails were now public and available online for anyone to see.

Speaker 27 Mrs.

Speaker 28 Duggar was talking about how you could go on to

Speaker 57 some website and look up people's email addresses.

Speaker 52 And

Speaker 33 something

Speaker 30 just clicked in me.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 27 right then and there, we're in the middle of this conference and I was like, oh, I need to go feed the baby.

Speaker 21 I go outside and I'm looking on my phone and I look up one of his email addresses and it shows that he has an Ashley Madison account.

Speaker 58 And I

Speaker 23 nearly threw up.

Speaker 47 I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 20 She decided to confront him that night.

Speaker 27 I said, this is what I found.

Speaker 31 And he was like, that's not me.

Speaker 25 That email must have been hacked. Oh, look, I'm going to delete this whole email.
I'll just get rid of the email completely so that you believe me.

Speaker 58 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 21 And so it was enough to go, okay, well, maybe he did.

Speaker 63 Because at this point in time, I believed him because I really had no other options.

Speaker 27 I had no other place to go. My mantra is setting in.

Speaker 27 It's going to get better. It's going to get better.

Speaker 20 She had nine kids. Lorena was independent, but raising a family in a household of this size,

Speaker 20 going in alone was far too scary to think about. But the truth was, she had been alone for a while.

Speaker 38 He

Speaker 63 was

Speaker 28 gone, having to travel for quote-unquote work

Speaker 27 at least one week out of the month.

Speaker 43 Sometimes it would be two.

Speaker 41 So I was becoming more and more accustomed to him not being there.

Speaker 46 September 21st, 2021, Peter was on another trip.

Speaker 37 because that's what he did.

Speaker 63 I had decided to take my kids to our state fair.

Speaker 55 On the way out to the car,

Speaker 27 I passed by this box.

Speaker 20 It was just a shoebox of old papers that had been floating around Peter's car for the past few months. She assumed it was just some of Peter's work documents.

Speaker 21 Nobody looked in it because it's work stuff.

Speaker 43 Why would you?

Speaker 40 I mean, I'm not, I'm not interested in this work stuff.

Speaker 41 Okay, so nobody looked in it.

Speaker 34 I must have walked past that box 20 times.

Speaker 20 But on this day, she was curious.

Speaker 11 I'm going to look through it.

Speaker 56 I'm just going to look through it.

Speaker 48 I'm looking through, and I'm seeing all these folders, and I see one envelope full of birthday cards.

Speaker 33 And so I'm going through, and I see this one, and on the outside of it, it's labeled Poppy.

Speaker 50 Like P-A-P-I.

Speaker 52 And I'm like, okay.

Speaker 29 I open up the envelope, and in it is a card, and it it says,

Speaker 38 Dear Poppy Dom,

Speaker 32 I hope you like the travel book I made you.

Speaker 38 I have enjoyed our travels together and I hope to have many more with you.

Speaker 33 Love Princess Buttercup.

Speaker 53 At this point, my blood had ran cold.

Speaker 40 My hands are trembling and I am shocked.

Speaker 27 I don't know what this is. I don't know what it means.

Speaker 35 I don't know if it's a joke.

Speaker 57 I don't know if it's real.

Speaker 52 I don't know.

Speaker 4 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 6 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 11 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved, so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 12 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 13 That's pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 14 It starts like any other night. The glass of red, the cozy blanket, then the drop.
The stain so dark, so stubborn, it might as well have been a crime scene.

Speaker 16 But this isn't your average couch.

Speaker 14 This is Anna Bay. Fully washable, unspeakably comfortable, and ready for whatever your life, your kids, or your ex throws ahead of.
And here's the kicker.

Speaker 14 Starting at just $6.99, you can make sure your sofa isn't part of the problem. Fully washable, stain-resistant, and built to hide even the darkest offenses.

Speaker 14 Right now, get up to 60% off in Black Friday savings because no one should have to live with a stain that won't quit. Anna Bay, the only mystery you won't be losing sleep over.

Speaker 14 Shop washable sofas.com today. That's washable sofas.com.

Speaker 62 We all have dirty mouth moments, but this one makes your dentist proud. I'm talking about dirty mouth toothpowder from Primal Life Organics.

Speaker 62 Instead of foamy fillers and dyes, it gives your teeth back the minerals they're made of, restoring enamel naturally. Best part, it's safe even if the little ones swallow it.

Speaker 62 No harsh chemicals, no scary warning labels, just clean ingredients that whiten and strengthen with science. Ready to switch? Visit primalifeorganics.com and use code DirtyMouth for 15% off.

Speaker 62 That's primalifeorganics.com.

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Speaker 1 Visita tu los macercano en East Arcas Avenue in Saunevale.

Speaker 20 While her husband was on a work trip, Lorena found a shoebox of his old work papers, or at least that's what she thought it was, until she opened it.

Speaker 39 And I'm looking through, and I can't believe I'm finding these weird things.

Speaker 20 At first, she didn't know what she was seeing.

Speaker 15 This is really weird.

Speaker 57 It's just a paper.

Speaker 44 Target population, progress chart, and then self-assessment scores, calendar.

Speaker 49 That's what it says

Speaker 6 right here.

Speaker 45 What age regression, only one DOM, question mark.

Speaker 28 And then there's a Venmo routing number.

Speaker 20 She kept reading, and this is what she came across next.

Speaker 34 I came across this one sheet,

Speaker 44 and it said rewards.

Speaker 61 I was like, oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 50 Manny Petty

Speaker 15 from Daddy?

Speaker 49 A point system?

Speaker 59 Remote playtime.

Speaker 63 Desserts, dress up, trips, books, watching movie, snacks.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 63 it said

Speaker 27 little

Speaker 27 just back rub.

Speaker 27 And then on another page, make a schedule, 14 points, workout, 10 points.

Speaker 23 Nutrition, 14 points.

Speaker 20 It was like a report card or a list of activities to do with a kid. But then there was another column.

Speaker 34 There was a little part that said punish things that

Speaker 28 I'd never really heard of.

Speaker 26 Edging without release.

Speaker 38 And I'm like, yard work, huh?

Speaker 31 Little did I know.

Speaker 35 Timeout corner.

Speaker 20 It was a reward system of some kind, and it appeared sexual in nature. But that wasn't all.

Speaker 20 There were credit card statements from cards she didn't know about and receipts for strange purchases.

Speaker 30 Like, oh my word, what is this?

Speaker 27 Adult baby bottles, adult bibs, adult onesies.

Speaker 27 Like, these are receipts for these things that Peter had purchased.

Speaker 24 There were things of him paying Baby Bear.

Speaker 27 That was the name of one particular

Speaker 44 person he was paying.

Speaker 30 It was somewhere around $20,000, $30,000 he had spent on all of this.

Speaker 20 He'd spent $30,000 on sex toys and kink? And who was Baby Bear? Something was very wrong. She and Peter's sex life had always been tame.

Speaker 36 It was all just very vanilla.

Speaker 28 I remember one time me trying to bring up, oh, maybe we should try handcuffs.

Speaker 27 How would you feel if I handcuffed you to the bed? And he freaked out on me.

Speaker 57 Oh my gosh, we can't do that.

Speaker 28 What if one of us dies during it?

Speaker 20 Princess Buttercup and Baby Bear were clearly indications of another side of Peter, one that she never knew existed. The Peter she knew was devoted to a conservative fundamentalist church.

Speaker 20 But this man clearly wasn't who he claimed to be. Lorena was afraid to confront him on her own, so she called her eldest son, who was 24.
He said he would be there in a few days.

Speaker 20 And he gave her some advice.

Speaker 27 And until then, you're going to have to hold down the fork.

Speaker 56 You're going to have to pretend like everything is fine.

Speaker 53 You're going to have to play the part of everything is fine.

Speaker 30 When he calls tonight, act like it's no big deal.

Speaker 41 When he comes home,

Speaker 48 treat it like it's any other night.

Speaker 20 Peter came home two days before her son made it there. So Lorena did pretend.
Finally, her son arrived and they got to work.

Speaker 32 My son is very technologically advanced and we were able to go through the computers at home and find things that I never could have found on my own.

Speaker 20 And what they found there painted a full picture of Peter's deception.

Speaker 31 We found the real Ashley Madison account that he had.

Speaker 41 We found pictures of so many women in various states of undress.

Speaker 41 We found pictures of women with property of Dom written in Sharpie,

Speaker 32 property of Peter on one woman.

Speaker 20 These pictures had timestamps dating back to 2017, four years prior. So, how much money had he actually spent on affairs? And why had he spent so much on adult diapers, onesies, and baby bottles?

Speaker 20 Today, this is her understanding of what her husband was doing with these women.

Speaker 38 He

Speaker 27 wanted to be the dom daddy and he wanted a little girl to play along with him.

Speaker 20 As far as she knows, all the women were adults. They were just sometimes pretending to be children or babies as part of a kink.

Speaker 20 Lorena pulled up his social media accounts where she found the messages he'd written to these women. Even messages where he referenced Lorena.

Speaker 37 The other thing that I found on there that he said was

Speaker 60 every night that I'm with you or with her, I will call my wife

Speaker 31 and I will talk to her for as little time as possible.

Speaker 31 That hurt.

Speaker 20 Before she confronted Peter, Lorena made an appointment with a lawyer to talk divorce.

Speaker 22 She had told me the state that we live in is an O fault state and there's not much that we can do unless you have a picture of him having sex.

Speaker 36 Basically, she said, you've got to have a picture of his genitalia going into someone else's genitalia.

Speaker 28 Well, I found about 200 pictures and I think three or four videos.

Speaker 20 Her eldest son was helping her collect this information for the divorce attorneys. They pulled documents together at night, sitting in their parked car in the garage while Peter slept in the house.

Speaker 20 And that's when they found proof of even more financial deception.

Speaker 28 He was working at several different universities as an adjunct professor.

Speaker 37 So he's making money there and he's hiding it, we found

Speaker 27 this man.

Speaker 57 has been spending clearly hand over fist, tons of money.

Speaker 28 And my children were like almost at poverty level.

Speaker 41 We had no money.

Speaker 27 He was hemorrhaging money on this lifestyle.

Speaker 20 After they gathered all the information they could find, there was one last thing they needed to do.

Speaker 30 My son says, mom, I know we have guns in the house.

Speaker 20 He took them and brought them to a friend's place. And once the guns were gone, he made sure his mom and siblings were out of the house.
And then he confronted his dad.

Speaker 27 My oldest son went inside to our bedroom

Speaker 27 and said to Peter, Hey, dad,

Speaker 59 mom knows everything

Speaker 27 and she wants you to leave.

Speaker 31 And Peter sat up slowly,

Speaker 27 yawned and stretched big and said,

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 37 And my son said, please leave.

Speaker 34 And he said, okay.

Speaker 41 And he left.

Speaker 20 After that, Lorena only talked to Peter one more time on the phone to let him know that she was filing for divorce.

Speaker 49 I don't remember all the nonsense he tried to say, but what he did tell me was, what you are doing is far worse than anything I ever did.

Speaker 59 What I did, what I was doing, was divorcing him.

Speaker 61 I just laughed.

Speaker 27 I was like, okay, and we're done.

Speaker 61 And I have not had a conversation with him since.

Speaker 20 That was in 2021. From then on, her son took over all communication with Peter.
That allowed Lorena to focus on her emotional and financial recovery.

Speaker 20 She also had to explain to her 11 kids why their father had left. Her youngest child was five.

Speaker 27 Those early days were just such a blur.

Speaker 27 I do remember telling the children that we were divorcing because of Peter making some very bad decisions.

Speaker 28 I think the words I consistently used were poor choices.

Speaker 20 But when friends and adult family asked, she told them the truth, how she really felt about her husband.

Speaker 27 Peter was a hole.

Speaker 20 She couldn't believe how strange it all was. He was spending tens of thousands of dollars on sexual fetishes, fetishes that included things like baby play.

Speaker 20 But all the while, he was never interested in childcare.

Speaker 57 One thing that kept coming back to me was how weird he was about changing diapers.

Speaker 27 And here he is, he spent, you know, thousands of dollars on diapers.

Speaker 59 After he left, and I had filed for divorce, I was still trying to go to church, taking the kids and all that.

Speaker 20 But after what Peter did,

Speaker 20 church wasn't the same.

Speaker 63 There's this cognitive dissonance.

Speaker 60 I'm now going,

Speaker 36 what else have I been told that's not right?

Speaker 36 This whole patriarchy thing.

Speaker 21 How is any of this at all biblical?

Speaker 52 What's real and what's not real?

Speaker 29 I still

Speaker 50 have a difficult time going to church.

Speaker 20 She stopped going to church and is taking time to reevaluate her spirituality and values. She started going to therapy where she began understanding that what she experienced was spiritual abuse.

Speaker 36 I'm not going to say all churches because I believe that there are some really awesome churches out there.

Speaker 37 I've been to some, okay?

Speaker 28 But the ones that are perpetuating patriarchal abuse are the ones that are saying,

Speaker 37 wives submit to your husbands.

Speaker 28 That allows for men to treat women however they desire with no repercussion.

Speaker 20 She says she was spiritually abused by the church, but also by Peter. Today, she doesn't know if he ever believed any of the fundamentalist ideology or if he just used it as a way to control her.

Speaker 54 I look back and I can see Peter used that to keep me under control, to keep me where he wanted me and to keep me behaving in the way he wanted.

Speaker 57 And three years ago, I couldn't have told you that.

Speaker 43 This is three years of heavy-duty therapy.

Speaker 20 And then there was his devotion to having as many kids as God would allow. Was that also just a weapon of control?

Speaker 27 Looking back, I see why he did that.

Speaker 33 It kept me busy.

Speaker 21 His goal was to always keep me busy and to keep me from looking at what he was doing.

Speaker 27 Because if I wasn't busy with the kids, then my focus was on him.

Speaker 20 After all, Peter was smart. Unlike a lot of deception stories, he really did get that fancy MBA from an Ivy League school.

Speaker 20 And after that, he parked his wife in a fundamentalist church and began an insidious process.

Speaker 33 Somewhere along the way, he

Speaker 30 had started chipping away at my identity of who I was and what I could become.

Speaker 31 And I believed him.

Speaker 20 It hurts to look back and think about the life she had before Peter.

Speaker 45 When I met Peter, I was a strong, independent woman.

Speaker 21 I was only 22, but I had two children and I was taking care of them like a boss.

Speaker 60 I had

Speaker 48 plans.

Speaker 56 I had goals.

Speaker 20 Still, she adores each of her children, and she says, they're the reason she's made it through. She's rebuilding her life and finally finishing her degree.

Speaker 20 It's important for her to explain that not only can betrayal happen to anyone, but so can indoctrination. People do ask, how

Speaker 25 does a capable, intelligent

Speaker 43 person go from, hey, I'm a single mom and I'm killing it.

Speaker 54 I'm full-time mom. I'm full-time student.
I'm full-time employee.

Speaker 39 How does someone go from that to, I'm not allowed to look at the financial statements of the house?

Speaker 39 You're comfortable in the beginning, hey, you know, you're not really that great at keeping track of things.

Speaker 54 You might forget. You've got so much on your plate.

Speaker 21 Let me just do all the finances.

Speaker 26 I'll take care of it.

Speaker 27 All the way to

Speaker 27 If you look at this bank account again, I will cut you off and you will not be able to see any finances.

Speaker 55 You're a boiled frog.

Speaker 20 We end all of our episodes with the same question. Why do you want to tell your story?

Speaker 20 And Lorena

Speaker 20 came prepared to answer this one.

Speaker 38 The reason I wanted to tell my story is so that Others who are out there in a similar situation might have their eyes opened and go, wow, if she can do it with 11 kids, seven still at home, and with all the odds stacked against her, so can I.

Speaker 30 If my story can just help one person

Speaker 20 to see a little clearer, to feel a little bit of comfort,

Speaker 55 to think that their life is not over.

Speaker 44 You're not too old to get out.

Speaker 57 It is never too late to start over

Speaker 60 and find who you are.

Speaker 60 That's my hope.

Speaker 20 On the next episode of Betrayal.

Speaker 20 Who is this person?

Speaker 67 Have I been with an axe murderer?

Speaker 20 A serial rapist?

Speaker 67 I've got to find out this person's real name.

Speaker 20 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 20 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 20 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 20 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 20 Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinchek. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.
Additional editing support from Nico Aruka and Tanner Robbins.

Speaker 20 Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MIBE Music.
And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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