EP 2 – Stephanie, Part 2

Hey, all you women's hoops fans and folks who just don't know yet that they're women's hoops fans.

We've got a big week over at Good Game with Sarah Spain as we near the end of one of the most exciting women's college basketball seasons ever.

The most parody we've seen in years with games coming down to the wire and everyone wondering which team will be crowned national champions this weekend in Tampa.

Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Camila Ramon.
And I'm Melissa Ortiz. And our podcast, Hasta Abajo, is where sports, music, and fitness collide.
And we cover it all. De arriba hasta abajo.
This season, we sit down with history makers like the Sucar family, who became the first Peruvians to win a Grammy. It was a very special moment for us.
It's been 15 years for me in this career. Finally, things are starting to shift into a different level.
Listen to Hasta Bajo on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
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Fairfield Subaru, where love meets the road. At 5 a.m., my two sons were on the phone to me and said, get out, get out.

We are afraid he is going to kill you. This is a huge secret.

He is not going to want anyone to know you are in danger.

Don't take anything. Just get out.
I'm Andrea Gunning

and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything. This is part two of Stephanie's story.
If you haven't heard part one, you should go back and listen to that first.

Stephanie had been living a suburban dream life with her husband of 22 years. We're calling him Greg, but that's not his real name.
The couple successfully raised six children. They built a business together and were looking forward to their next chapter, retirement.
But everything changed the day she found photos of her own nude body on his computer. Disgusting, violating photos.
Photos that made her suspect her husband had been secretly drugging her for years. In a flat, unapologetic tone, he told her how he used the photos.
He explained he puts the picture up in a chat room, and 25 people at a time can be in the chat room, but people come and go as they come in and out. These other men are then explaining what they would do to me, how they would rape me.
Remember the caption that was under the photo of Stephanie? Well, that was one of many. And they were written by other men in the chat room with Greg.
He confessed to all of it. He actually encouraged the strangers on the internet to make violent comments about Stephanie in order to fulfill his own fantasies.
This is a man that whenever we would go somewhere in public, he would pull me in close and whisper in my ear, you're the most beautiful woman here. He was just sweet and kind and gentle and a sick pervert.
When she found that very first nude picture of her on her husband's phone back in 2016, he got on his knees and wept. He begged for her forgiveness.
And back then, she forgave him.

She believed him when he said it was just a few pictures, just that one time. When I first found the pictures, it was August 2016, and it was September when I forgave him.
When I found the Flickr account in 2021, it says right across the top of it, he has been a member since September of 2016. All these years where she thought they were rebuilding trust, he was living a double life.
so it was Sunday the 11th when I found out Monday morning

I rebuilding trust, he was living a double life. So it was Sunday the 11th when I found out.

Monday morning, I've barricaded myself into the spare bedroom. And he knocks on the door and he's

like, what time are you coming into work? And I said, I'm not coming into work today and I'm

probably not ever coming again. He just wanted to go on like

everything was fine. Partway through that day, he contacts me and he says he's gotten a hold of this Christian counselor that he knows.
And I knew a little bit about this guy. Greg and his first wife had done marriage counseling with this same guy.

So... And I knew a little bit about this guy.
Greg and his first wife had done marriage counseling with this same guy. So he tells me they've gotten a hold of this Christian counselor and that this guy is willing to drop everything and come over to our house and counsel with us that night.
Would I agree to that? Stephanie knew her beliefs didn't align with this particular counselor's, but she was lost. Her marriage, her life, it was all unraveling.
Perhaps meeting with the counselor would provide direction. So she reluctantly agreed.
This guy came over and explained to me that it was really my duty as a wife to not only forgive him, but to help him overcome his problem. At one point, he looked at him and said, you had these same issues with your first wife, and you never addressed them,

and that's why you're here 25 years later.

Greg wouldn't explain what happened with his first wife,

but Stephanie had heard enough to know that she wasn't the first.

Greg had done something like this in his last marriage, and then he did it again with her.

I had not a clue. Not a clue.
I knew I couldn't stay. This is not someone who's fixable.
This behavior has in some way been going on for 30 years. The revelation that Greg had done this in his first marriage showed Stephanie the depths of his deception.
It made me feel like he had been conning me from day one. That the love that was so real for me was always just a game for him.
So she turned to her sons.

I found out on the 11th,

and on the 13th,

I emailed my children and told them,

all of them, as a group,

what he had done.

At 5 o'clock the next morning, my two sons were on the phone to me and said,

get out. Get out.
We are afraid he is going to kill you. This is a huge secret.
He is not going

to want anyone to know you are in danger. Get out.
Don't take anything. Just get out.
Right now, Mom. I had three friends that I had been texting with since I found out, and they also wanted me out and felt that I was in danger of being killed.
It definitely could have been possible. And then nobody would know.
You know, once you've crossed the line to the point where you're drugging someone, the line seems pretty gray. So when I left, I left with a duffel bag with a few clothing items my cat and his laptop and i ran for my life her sons picked her up that day and she never went back home she ended up living with her kids for the next few months as she reeled from the

trauma. I couldn't think.
I couldn't function. I mean, the kids had to like sit me down at the

table and force me to eat. And I just laid in bed and cried.
On that day, I didn't just lose my husband. I lost my job.
I lost my home. I lost my community.
I lost trust. I lost safety.
I really had to start over from square one. That process of starting over felt insurmountable.
Stephanie was a shell of herself. She had been violated by her own husband.
Could there be recourse? Legal recourse? All the research that I've done says getting a conviction against a husband for something he's done to a wife, probably not going to happen. And then there was this.
We are in a really tiny town, and Greg has lived there since he was two years old. There's not a soul in that town that does not know him.
He is connected to every single person there. In the town where Stephanie and her husband lived, there was not a paid police commissioner, but instead a volunteer police commission made up of three people who are responsible for the hiring, firing, disciplining, and the promotion of every officer on the police force.
Her husband had been on the commission for years. Every single officer on the force owed their job to Greg.
So Stephanie was fearful of going to the police. I knew I wasn't ready to go to the police at that point, that I was just in too much terror and shock.
And not to mention... Up until 2019, it was legal in my state to rape your wife.
Understandably, Stephanie didn't trust the courts to be able to bring her

justice. She talked off the record with the chief of police and the county attorney.
They were hesitant. They told her getting a conviction would be unlikely.
Even if Stephanie wanted to pursue criminal charges, she was in a financial bind. This was financially devastating.
We lived on a lovely six-figure income and had our house paid for. So I have to weigh out if I prosecute him.
He's probably going to do little to no jail time. He's going to lose his license.
And then I lose my support. And I'm not in a position to support myself.
At 54 years old, I had to completely start over. I will never be financially able to own a home again.
That was another grieving process in and of itself. And it was also another betrayal, a financial one.
Stephanie had spent years working hard to turn Greg's business around, making it profitable. And now, she was left without a job.

Just like that, her vision of the future vanished. So many unknowns.
But what Stephanie did know is that she needed her husband to be able to financially support her through the crisis he had caused. So for that reason, she decided to move forward with a divorce, but not with criminal charges.
Instead, she decided to do an investigation of her own. When she left Greg, she took his laptop with her, and she brought it straight to a computer forensic specialist.
I told the investigator, I know you're not going to find the photos on here. The photos were on the Flickr account.
So that's not what you're going to find. But I want to know where he was, what he was doing, all of that.
And the main thing I'm looking for is any evidence that he drugged me because I didn't agree to take those pictures. And he went to work.

When I got the report back, they called me to kind of go over it with me. And they said,

we found it. There's about two years worth of every single click he made on that computer.
And the computer forensic specialist found evidence that he had searched for state rape drugs. When she started putting the pieces together, Stephanie remembered Cancun.
All those difficult mornings where she felt like she was waking up at the bottom of a lake. Waking up shouldn't feel like that.
Waking up doesn't normally feel like it's a struggle to

get to the light like it's a struggle to try to wake up and greg had even been there explaining

that she'd probably just had too much wine that she sat in the sun for too long worst of all

she suspected that those long romantic dinners left her vulnerable throughout the course of

I'm sorry. son for too long.
Worst of all, she suspected that those long romantic dinners left her vulnerable.

Throughout the course of this two and a half hour dinner, I would need to get up and go to the ladies room, giving him an opportunity to be there with my drink and put something in it.

So nothing really original. I mean, I think that's how most guys do it.
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I'm Camila Ramon, Peloton's first Spanish-speaking cycling and tread instructor. I'm an athlete, entrepreneur, and almost most importantly, a perreo enthusiast.
And I'm Liz Ortiz, former pro soccer player and Olympian, and like Kami,

a perreo enthusiast. Come on, who is it? Our podcast, Hasta Abajo, is where sports, music, and fitness collide, and we cover it all.
De arriba hasta abajo. Sit down with real game changers in the sports world, like Miami Dolphins CMO Priscilla Shumate, who is redefining what it means to be a Latina leader.
It all changed when I had this guy come to me.

He said to me, you know, you're not Latina. First of all, what does that mean? My mouth is wide open.
Yeah. History makers like the Sucar family who became the first Peruvians to win a Grammy.
It was a very special moment for us. It's been 15 years for me in this career.
Finally, things are starting to shift into a different level.

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

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

Well, I just found out that my dad lived a secret life as a hitman for the Chicago mafia for all

these years. It doesn't make any sense.
He was a firefighter paramedic. How the hell can he be a

hitman? I need answers. So I am currently on a plane back to Chicago to interview everybody,

anybody that knows anything about this. I'm in shock.
This is absolutely insane. I just don't understand.
I need to figure this out. The shocking new true crime series, Crook County, from Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts, is available now.
Binge the entire series for... Stephanie is finding out that the man she built a life with drugged her to take nude photos of her, all while she's coming to terms with the reality that he might never face any legal consequences for these crimes.
All of this was taking a heavy toll on her. You know, when you go to the doctor for your physical and they give you this little quiz about your mental health and depression and things like

that. I had a sworn statement from my doctor of many years saying that year after year, my score was zero.
I was like, I got no stress, nothing. I couldn't be happier.
after this happened, 45 is the most you can score. I was 43.
Super high risk. She started walking through the world differently, emotionally and physically.
I have changed my appearance. I had longish hair and I wore very feminine clothing.
In the days following finding out, I cut off all my hair and I continue to wear my hair short.

And I wear very plain, baggy, nondescript clothing. She found a therapist, and she started seeing them twice a week.
But especially in the beginning, it wasn't enough. She was desperate for more support.
when I first left him, within the first few weeks, I reached out to a mental health suicide hotline. She relied on all the resources available.
One day, about a year after she found the photos, it all became too much for her to handle.

And as a forewarning, we're about to discuss suicide.

On that particular day, we had divorce mediation.

We had had a previous mediation where we divided out our assets.

Our 25 years of marriage was put on a balance sheet and you each get half. This was actually now the third mediation and it was on Zoom.
And I was very frustrated with my attorney. I kept saying to her, I need him to support me.
I can't even function. I can't get a job.
I can't go out in public. I can't function.
He has to support me. He did this.
And she just kept telling me things like, you know, what he did to you just doesn't matter in divorce law. Well, it does because I can't work.
So we had this mediation, and the mediator was just very dismissive with me. By the time that we had done our four hours of mediation, I sobbed for a while and realized, I'm done.
There's no out of this situation. There's no future.
There's no hope. He wins.
I'm done. I had been prescribed Ativan for panic attacks because if I tried to go out in public, I would have a panic attack.
So I took a handful of Ativan and washed it down with a bottle of wine. And I broke the wine glass, shattered it, and then used the glass shards to cut my wrist open.
Thankfully, she survived. Her sons found her and brought her to the hospital where she recovered.
Again, she leaned on them for help. After the suicide attempt, I got out of the hospital.
I had to go back and stay with my kids again for a while. And my attorney just keeps saying, you don't have any rights here.
What he did doesn't matter. Her sons were fed up.
They're like, let's find a new attorney. I got a fantastic guy who worked his ass off for me.
The new attorney was like, oh, hell yeah, it matters. He damaged your mental health.
Of course that matters. And we'll make the judge see it.
Finally, two years after Stephanie found the photos, her divorce trial began. I don't know anyone else who had a situation so contentious that they had to go to trial for their divorce.
We had a two-day trial. Him being held accountable for what he did, did more for my mental health than all the therapy and support groups.
And I mean, all of those things have been great. And I'm not, I don't want to discount those in any way.
But having him held accountable gave me back my power. She rose to the occasion.
Stephanie wanted to be there to testify herself. I did the bulk of the testifying as to not only what he did to me, but also to our finances because he would not provide any financial information and just kept saying that his computer crashed.
Didn't have any records. Can't provide anything.
the judge didn't buy it. The judge said there's a legal thing called a negative inference.
If you fail to provide what they are asking for or you choose not to answer the question, you take the fifth, which he also did on his testimony. He took the about what he did to me.
It was all considered a negative inference because then the judge says, clearly you're keeping this information because it will look bad for you. There was some vindication, and that came from hearing expert witnesses confirm what she already knew.
The computer forensic specialist, his testimony was incredibly damning. He testified that there is 100% absolute certainty the person who posted these pictures on the internet is my husband.
He couldn't, you know, back out of it and say, well, I didn't do that. She's just making this up.
After the trial ended, the judge took 90 days to give his ruling. Waiting for that ruling was the longest summer of Stephanie's life.
The judge's ruling says he finds that it is a fact that Greg drugged me, took pictures of me without my knowledge or consent, posted them on the internet, shared them with other people. And as a result of that, I was traumatized by those events.
And because of the trauma and the distress and the difficulty of me being in public, it's not possible for me to work in a full-time way. And as such, he has to pay me X amount per month, which is a pittance compared to the amount that we lived on.
However, it's more than double what he was ever willing to pay me in mediation. Stephanie felt victorious, even just hearing the judge confirm that, yes, this really happened.
It is a fact that this happened to her. Originally, Stephanie thought she had deleted all the photos.
But through her investigation, Stephanie found multiple accounts, even more photos of her, photos that were still live. Even though their case was settled, a divorce trial has limits.
The judge couldn't order Greg to take down the photos. Asking him to do that would prove on the record that he owned the account and would incriminate him.
The photos are still there. One remaining photo that I know of is a picture of me in a bathtub.
He printed out the picture at some point and masturbated on it and then took a picture of that and reposted it. The link is live.
I can go look at him right now. Even if Greg took down the photos that are still live on his accounts,

it wouldn't completely erase them.

They're still out there because he gave them to other people.

And he posted them on other sites.

They're eternal.

They're forever. Ranked number one in innovation, 10 consecutive years, Arizona State University isn't just ahead of the curve.
It's creating new paths to success. Learn from notable clinical and research faculty.
Online, that's a degree better. Explore programs at asuonline.asu.edu.
I'm Camila Ramon, Peloton's first Spanish-speaking cycling and tread instructor. I'm an athlete, entrepreneur, and almost most importantly, a perreo enthusiast.
And I'm Liz Ortiz, former pro soccer player and Olympian, and like call me, a perreo enthusiast. Come on, who is it? Our podcast, Hasta Abajo, is where sports, music, and fitness collide.

And we cover it all.

De arriba hasta abajo.

Sit down with real game changers in the sports world,

like Miami Dolphins CMO Priscilla Shoemate,

who is redefining what it means to be a Latina leader.

It all changed when I had this guy come to me.

He said to me, you know, you're not Latina enough. First of all, what does that mean? My mouth is wide open.
Yeah. History makers like the Sucar family who became the first Peruvians to win a Grammy.
It was a very special moment for us. It's been 15 years for me in this career.
Finally, things are starting to shift into a different level. Listen to Hasta Bajo on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Well, I just found out that my dad lived a secret life as a hitman for the Chicago Mafia for all these years.
It doesn't make any sense. He was a firefighter paramedic.
How the hell can he be a hitman? I need answers. So I am currently on a plane back to Chicago to interview everybody.
Anybody that knows anything about this. I'm in shock.
This is absolutely insane. Stop with don't understand.
I need to figure this out. The shocking new true crime series, Crook County, from Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts is available now.
binge the entire series for free on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever Since the divorce, there haven't been any charges brought against Greg.

But he's had to face very real consequences with his family.

My four boys have no relationship with him at all anymore. At one point, he sent letters to each one of them asking for forgiveness.
Three of the four boys threw the letters away immediately, and one replied basically saying, there is no forgiveness for you. You're a monster.
Don't ever contact me again. The news about what Greg did to Stephanie spread like wildfire in their small community.
When a well-known, prominent couple in the community, all of a sudden the wife disappears. And now this is the second wife of his that's disappeared.
Everybody knows. It's had a big impact on his reputation.
On the stand, he testified that since I left, his business has been hemorrhaging. People call every day and ask for their files to be sent to another doctor.
I wonder why. And that divorce decree from the judge, the one where he finds Greg drug Stephanie, took nude photos of her, posted them on the internet, and caused her great emotional harm? That decree has been passed around the whole town.
Divorce decrees are public information. Anyone can download a copy.
So I heard a rumor that someone did just that and then mailed out the copies to Greg's few remaining friends. To be honest, I was surprised that he didn't move somewhere else.
But Stephanie has a theory about why he stays. In his twisted mind, he's such a big fish in that tiny little pond that he can't imagine going anywhere else.
They wouldn't know what a big deal he is. Part of Stephanie's healing process was trying to understand the why.
Why did this happen to her? And why do people like her ex-husband do what they do? Are you familiar with Dr. Omar Minwala? Have you heard of him? Dr.
Minwala is a clinical sexologist and licensed psychologist. He's the founder of the Institute for Sexual Health.
His work focuses on infidelity, compulsive sexual behavior, and sex addiction. Stephanie's been reading his work, and it's helping her make sense of what happened.
With guys that do this kind of stuff, you know, people say, oh, what happened to you when you were a child? You must have had trauma that made you do this. He had an ideal childhood, and many of my friends in the betrayal community would say the same thing about their cheating, lying spouses.
So Dr. Manwawa's premise is that this is an act of entitlement.
These men do this because they believe that they deserve to have whatever they want in life, including sexually. He calls this Secret Life Online a secret sexual basement.
these men build this secret sexual basement underneath their family and their marriage and their home. And part of the high for them is the secret.
That they're getting by with it. She's found community with other people who've experienced traumatic deception.
But in most of the betrayal stories she's heard, there's physical cheating. As far as Stephanie knows, Greg was never cheating with another woman.
He did all of this, blew up our life, our kids' lives, our friends' lives, our community. He did all of that to jack off into his own hand.
Stephanie is trying to re-enter a new world, a world where people are not who they appear to be, a world where anyone she meets could have been one of those anonymous users in a chat room with her husband. You know, every guy that looks at me, I think you see those pictures.
Slowly but surely, she's putting her life back together. It's a never-ending task, figuring out how to rebuild a sense of safety after a betrayal of this magnitude.
I'm doing okay. I move around in the world a little bit better.
I am happy more often than not. I rarely cry.
I mean, for almost two years there, it was just, man, I needed stock in the tissue company because it was just endless. I had no idea it was physically possible to cry that much.
But I can finally see that I'm okay. I'm proud of myself that I lived through this.
I still have plenty of challenging moments and not good days. And I work hard to find joy in my life.
And when I find it, I try to really lean in and enjoy it. Stephanie is focusing on the new things that bring her joy, like her rescue dog.
Being able to take my dog with me when I go places really gives me a feeling of safety. And she loves watching true crime documentaries.
And to me now, a rom-com is a horror movie. I couldn't watch that if you paid me.
Stephanie found work as a nanny. It's a job she loves, and it allows her to stay out of the public.
The nanny job comes with a benefits package that is giggles, hugs, and some pretty terrific drawings for my fridge. She even has an appointment to get her first tattoo, a sunflower.
You know how a sunflower has that round part in the center, and then it has all those petals that go around it, and they're individual, but they're like on top of each other, like a network. That is just like all of my people, my kids, all my friends, my extended family, my attorney, my therapist, and all the beautiful betrayed wives that I've connected with on this journey they're

like those petals they encircle me with their support and their kindness and

their love and the tattoo is gonna be a reminder of how grateful I am for all of

them of how grateful I am for all of them. I'm always curious about what compels people to reach out, to come on our podcast and talk about the traumatic betrayals they've experienced.
So at the end of each story, I want every guest to share their why. Here's Stephanie's.
From the very moment that I found the pictures, I knew that I was not willing to keep it a secret. Secrets perpetuate abuse.
I think it's important to get these abusive things out in the open and to talk about them so that other people who are going through it don't feel as isolated and alone as I did when it happened to me. Every day when I do yoga, I have a mantra that I will stand in my truth.
This is my truth.

Since the trial, though, that changed.

Having that legal document that says he did that.

Now, when I do yoga, I say, I am standing in the truth.

Like it or not, I'm going to put it out there. On the next episode of Betrayal, a woman's happy marriage takes a terrifying turn when she finds out her husband is a hitman for the cartel.
Our bedroom door gets bust down. Police are pointing guns at both me and him, telling us, put our hands up.
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.
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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 was executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison, hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Laborde, also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Associate producers are Kristen Malkuri and Grace Bollinger. Our I Heart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck.
Special thanks to Stephanie. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Dalvecchio.

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