Bonus: Questions Answered

Speaker 1 True Story Media.

Speaker 1 Hello. I am here today with my incredible producer, Tina Knoll.

Speaker 1 She is my complete

Speaker 1 creative collaborator on this show, and my friend, and my ride or die, who goes into the field with me when we are doing reporting.

Speaker 1 And so we wanted to get together today in anticipation of season two, which is officially coming at you in your ears on June 15th. We are so excited to share that with you.

Speaker 1 So today we wanted to talk about some of the feedback that we've gotten from this show and mostly get into some of the really interesting sort of questions and criticisms, but maybe just issues that this brought up for people that I thought were worth really getting into.

Speaker 1 Hello, I have exciting news. I am officially taking this show on the road next year.
I'm going to be doing a series of Nobody Should Believe Me live shows next March.

Speaker 1 I will be in Los Angeles on March 7th at the Regent Theater. I'll be in my hometown, Seattle, at the Triple Door on March 18th.
Then I'm headed to New York City for a show at Sony Hall on March 25th.

Speaker 1 And I'll be wrapping up in Chicago on March 26th at the Den. Tickets for all shows are on sale now.
You can find a link in the show notes or or on our website.

Speaker 1 We're going to have special guests, meet and greets, and more at these shows. We're going to have a great time.
So go get your tickets now. Hope to see you out there.

Speaker 2 Well, this topic and the podcast itself brings up a lot of questions. And I think the beauty of podcasting is this continued dialogue that we get to have.

Speaker 2 And this is a topic that people don't know a lot about and are learning and have very strong

Speaker 2 feelings about. This was a hard show to listen to in many ways.
So I think continuing the conversation, continuing the dialogue around some of the curiosities is important.

Speaker 1 That's what makes it very different about books. People, if someone hasn't complained about one of my books, I'm sorry.
That has gone to the printer. It is out in the world.

Speaker 2 We have the grace of this fluid medium that we can have a continued dialogue.

Speaker 2 And we'll do that in season two. We'll continue these conversations.

Speaker 1 Tina kind of helped me go through the comments and vet.

Speaker 2 I read them all in detail and go on rabbit holes.

Speaker 2 And also it is reflective of our creative work together and the production and all of that. So I like to understand what people think.

Speaker 1 So what is your, does it upset you when you read bad reviews?

Speaker 2 My first response used to be defensive, but I'm no longer. I'm deep into creative work, you know, and doing shows like this.
So now I just take it with a grain of salt.

Speaker 2 And sometimes I'm like, oh, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 But I think what was really interesting and why I thought this would be helpful for listeners and helpful for us to do is that this is such a huge topic and there was no way we were going to address,

Speaker 1 hence why we're doing another season, but there was no way we were going to address everything.

Speaker 1 And I wanted to just know how this was landing with people, given that this is something that most people don't know very much about.

Speaker 1 So I thought some of these points would be really salient to address. And this is not meant to be, by the way, like a rebuttal to any criticism.
I think you probably agree with me.

Speaker 1 Like as a creative person, that is sort of the deal, right? Like you put your work out into the world, people can say whatever they want about it.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I don't think most of those conversations need need to involve me, but I think that some of these, you know, I think some of these would were just interesting to respond to.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and so that is all to say too. If you are listening to us, if you have feedback for us, we are very, very open to hearing it and we love hearing from listeners.

Speaker 1 And that has been actually one of my favorite parts of having this show out in the world.

Speaker 2 So let's get to it. All right, so we'll start with the dads episode.

Speaker 2 If you remember, we highlighted stories of fathers that stepped in and really fought for their children and in some cases, won, in some cases, didn't.

Speaker 2 And we got some feedback about the fact that we highlighted a lot of the dads that did come to the rescue. And that is not always the case.
So people were like, okay, great.

Speaker 2 There were three dads you highlighted that did the right thing. However.

Speaker 1 Right. So the reason I wanted to respond to this one was because this is right on.
I think

Speaker 1 probably it makes sense to folks listening that the dads that would want to be interviewed by by this podcast are the ones who

Speaker 1 were presented with evidence and did the right thing and were protective, right? Because

Speaker 1 not to say that I wouldn't be interested to hear from dads in another situation, but you know, I guess it's worth sort of saying how we put this podcast together.

Speaker 1 You know, when we were first making this show, when we first had the concept for this show, we really did not know who I knew that Mike Weber, Detective Mike Weber would talk to us.

Speaker 1 I knew that that these other experts that we interviewed would talk to us, but in terms of people with personal stories, I did not know who would be willing to talk to us and who would not.

Speaker 1 So this first group of people really came from a lot of personal referrals. You know, I did, I reached out to

Speaker 1 Hope's family online, and that's how I got in touch with them. And so that one was, you know, more reaching out cold.

Speaker 1 But with George Honeycutt, Doug Welch, and Ryan Crawford, you know, those are all people that knew Mike.

Speaker 1 You know, when I've asked Mike about how these cases sort of break down in in in a sort of bigger sample size he said it's about half and half that the dads either sort of see what's going on and try and protect the kids or that the dads will stand by their partner regardless of what evidence they're presented with well and the dads get snowed just like many people around these perpetrators get snowed right so they may not believe it.

Speaker 2 But the other thing about the dads episode that I think is important to recognize is that it's also demonstrating the possibility that someone can interrupt this type of abuse, step in, and make a difference.

Speaker 2 There are plenty of stories where fathers didn't step in, right? But that's not the story.

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Speaker 2 That we needed to tell in the context of this podcast, it's very important to demonstrate this reality. Dads can step in, and when they do, their children can get saved.

Speaker 2 And they have to fight the good fight. Unfortunately, for Doug Welch, as we know, he's still fighting.
Right.

Speaker 2 But what we do know and what I learned from you and the experts that we talked to is that that interruption alone can stop the abuse.

Speaker 2 Even if the dad doesn't win and doesn't get the kids, any type of disruption isn't significant. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I mean, if I think we should be clear that from what we know about this pattern, if an offender's children are returned to her, the abuse is likely to continue.

Speaker 1 Every case that we've heard about, that's the case. But that doesn't mean that the intervention isn't worthwhile because it can keep it from escalating.
It can sort of change course.

Speaker 1 You might see it move into these other areas that are more sort of confined to things like educational abuse that are, you know, bad still, but not as likely to be deadly.

Speaker 1 And so when you see sort of where some of these cases appeared to be headed and how much danger these kids were in, you know, anything that can sort of change the course of that and keep the child alive is very worthwhile.

Speaker 1 And I think that goes for Des and that goes for everyone else.

Speaker 1 You know, when people are thinking about if they have suspicions about someone in their life, if they feel like they're seeing this pattern of deception and are really concerned about a child, like that is why it is worthwhile to report, even if ultimately the system isn't very well equipped to handle it.

Speaker 1 It still matters and it still can change the course of events.

Speaker 2 So our next bit of feedback on the same topic is the accusation that this is a men's rights podcast. And this is actually an intriguing question because,

Speaker 2 obviously, it's not a men's rights podcast, but there is an intersection here that you have pointed out.

Speaker 1 Of course, I don't agree that this is a men's rights podcast. Everyone making this show is

Speaker 1 an avowed feminist. But that said, there is a crossover between Munchausen by proxy accusations and the sort of men's rights.

Speaker 1 And so, if we're defining men's rights, this is sort of this movement that started off, to my knowledge, started off with some salient points about how dads are treated unfairly by family and juvenile courts, which I think is true and is expressed by what we saw folks like, you know, George Honeycutt and Ryan Crawford and Doug Welch obviously went through and how hard they had to fight even when they had this really strong evidence.

Speaker 1 So I think that that started off with that salient point and then kind of went this very reactionary route of like feminists are ruining everything and it became an anti-feminist movement and that that was sort of at the heart.

Speaker 1 But why I wanted to address this is because when, and we are going to talk a lot more about the sort of concept of and specter of false accusations about Munchausen by proxy.

Speaker 1 And one of the ways that does come up, in fact, is

Speaker 1 in the context of custody battles, where a father, you know, and B. Yorker talked to us about this, where a father will just throw out,

Speaker 1 well, you take our kid to the doctor too much, you have Munchausen by proxy. And that dad is the only person making that accusation.
And it's like not corroborated by any event, you know, evidence.

Speaker 1 It's not, the doctors are not saying it. There isn't this history.

Speaker 1 That is sort of where that crossover between the idea of like the men's rights and some of that ideology can cross over with dads in the midst of court battles and that this can be used as a sort of weapon the way that, you know, the way that a mom might falsely accuse a father of abuse, right?

Speaker 1 Like this is a thing that happens in custody battles and it's something that we have to recognize.

Speaker 2 Okay, let's let's move on.

Speaker 2 So we did an episode about survivors and it featured twin girls who went through the foster care system and ended up with a perpetrator and were consequently victims of medical child abuse.

Speaker 1 You know, the interesting thing about Elizabeth and Erica's story is it is one of these sort of quote more subtle cases, right?

Speaker 1 Where you're not seeing necessarily the really dramatic surgeries and that kind of thing that we talk about in some of these other cases.

Speaker 1 You know, it was more in the psychiatric realm and that their parent was saying that they had fetal alcohol syndrome

Speaker 1 and was sort of taking them to all these unnecessary appointments. We heard from a listener that had

Speaker 1 it seemed to me sort of recognized her own story that there were some patterns there where she had adopted a child who did have FAS and was sort of feeling sensitive about the idea that this would be abuse.

Speaker 1 FAS can be very hard to diagnose. And so what I wanted to say about that is the thing that makes it abuse is intentional deception.

Speaker 1 It is not just the presence of something that is difficult to diagnose. It is not a parent legitimately trying to get to the bottom of things.
And offenders we know

Speaker 1 choose things purposefully that are difficult to get to the bottom of because it gives them a perfect setup to say, you know, it's not something that can be disproven by a simple blood test or an x-ray.

Speaker 1 So they do sort of purposefully choose these things that can present in different ways, that there's not a 100% test for, that they can mess with test results. So that is the difference.

Speaker 1 And we always want to point that out, right? Because we do talk about these patterns.

Speaker 1 And I'm very sensitive to the fact of not wanting to put a lens on parents who have children with FAS or parents who have children who are born premature or who have feeding tubes or who legitimately have stick fibrosis or any of these other patterns that we talk about because that is not the way that relationship works.

Speaker 1 And offenders can choose anything. I mean, they wouldn't bring their kid in and say they had a broken bone, right? Because that would be very easy to disprove.

Speaker 1 It's going to always be a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of

Speaker 1 any of those groups of children that have those things where you're going to find offenders. It's the behavior of the parent.
It's not what appears to be wrong with the child.

Speaker 2 So this is probably one of the most common things that we,

Speaker 2 pieces of feedback that we got about season one.

Speaker 2 And it's tricky. This is in relation to your sister.
Many people were left wondering and wanting to know exactly what your sister did, why you skirted around it, did we skirt around it.

Speaker 2 So let's clear that one up right away.

Speaker 1 You know, what I tried to stick to in the first season was talking about this stuff where I was there.

Speaker 1 And I had a personal experience with it. I have gotten legal pushback from my sister every time I've tried to talk about any of these things in public forum.

Speaker 1 The things that I talked about in the first season, those are things that happened in my life. I feel entitled to talk about them.

Speaker 1 With the second case, I knew bits and pieces, but we had been estranged for almost a decade by the time that case happened. And so there wasn't as much to say about it.

Speaker 1 Things have

Speaker 1 shifted drastically for me. I did a public records request and I found out a lot about the second case and we are going to be getting

Speaker 1 into

Speaker 1 that. And so it has taken me a long time to figure out how to talk about this in a way that is responsible, that feels ethical to me, and also that is legal, quite frankly.

Speaker 1 It has been tremendously complicated. And so if it seems like I have been hesitating, or it's because I have.
Doug Welch went through this same experience.

Speaker 1 We originally recorded it anonymously, and that's because because Mary Welch also was not convicted of a crime and so it has all those same complexities.

Speaker 1 And then once he listened to it, he said, I really wish I just said our name. And I said, fine, come back and say her name.

Speaker 1 If you feel that you have those concerns about a child and you feel that the system has let you down, then you feel that making that public will put more eyes on that child and possibly offer them some sort of protection.

Speaker 1 The experts that we've talked to have all said that is that last resort.

Speaker 1 And so for those of you that have heard me sort of trying to figure it out in real time, it's because that's what, that's what was happening.

Speaker 1 And there's just to say there's much more to come on all that.

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Speaker 2 That's the thing about this topic too. Even as we're working through season two and season three,

Speaker 2 going into any detail about the way children are treated is painful.

Speaker 1 We don't want to shy away from how serious it is.

Speaker 1 And I think we try really hard to toe that line in this show where we're not spending a lot of time on the gory details, but we're also not making any sort of bones about what really happened because I think it's important to say, because I think it's important for people to take it seriously, which by and large, I don't think that this issue is taken seriously enough.

Speaker 1 I think with regards specifically to my sister, I don't like revisiting that situation. It is painful, it is hard, it brings up all kinds of things.

Speaker 1 Inevitably, whenever I'm talking about it, writing about it, thinking about it, it has an emotional toll.

Speaker 2 All right, let's talk about Hopi Barra, the main subject of season one, and ultimately the

Speaker 2 finale of season one, where we sat down with Hope in a

Speaker 2 diner in rural Idaho and that was really intense. Some people wonder if that was the right call to put to give Hopi Barra a microphone.
What do you think about that?

Speaker 1 That was something I thought about a lot while we were in the process of trying to

Speaker 1 interview her.

Speaker 1 I think that it is ethically complicated to give someone space to talk when you know that they're going to lie.

Speaker 2 In my naivete, I no longer have this, but for something in my brain, I was thinking, you know,

Speaker 2 she's did terrible, terrible, terrible things. We know now that her children

Speaker 2 have survived and they are thriving and they're going to be okay despite what happened to them. And she spent 10 years in prison.
So there's something in my head.

Speaker 2 This is so strange now to hear myself say it because I thought, well, maybe she got help.

Speaker 2 Maybe she's better. Maybe she's living a life now that she

Speaker 2 has regret and is living out her days in this rural town with feelings of sadness about her behavior and regret.

Speaker 2 I really walked into that diner believing that that's the person that we are going to meet. And when she came in crying immediately and then pretending to be deaf,

Speaker 2 it was such a like scrambled eggs in my brain to try to make sense of that moment. Like, wait a minute, she's crying.
Does she feel remorse? Wait a minute, she's still lying.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, trying to record it and hold the space for you and her and trying to get myself out of it was just a really weird moment in time.

Speaker 1 Some of the feedback we got was

Speaker 1 we shouldn't. be feeling empathy for this person.
We shouldn't be giving this person this grace. And some of the feedback we got, they said, I'm really glad that they talked to her.

Speaker 1 We on this show do not shy away from the complexities here. And what you're describing is the experience of everyone who's gone through this personally and/or professionally.

Speaker 1 You know, we talk in season two to be Yorker, and this is someone with decades and decades of experience who has a great legal and psychiatric mind and knows all these patterns and know all these cases.

Speaker 1 And she said, still, every single time she actually sits down with a perpetrator, she's in her words, schnookered. You know, like she's like, she believes them, right?

Speaker 1 You're having to override all of your instincts because what you see, because you are functioning in such a way that you are a person with empathy and

Speaker 1 they are not when we're talking about perpetrators who have done these severe things which hope you are as one she is a person who bled her daughter who poisoned her daughter who put her daughter's life at significant risk what it has taken me a long time to land on is just to really think through that And I am a mom now.

Speaker 1 I have little kids. When you really picture it, how premeditated it is, how ongoing it is, how deliberate it is, and knowing what we know that these are not people who are suffering from delusions.

Speaker 1 They understand right and wrong and they understand what they're doing.

Speaker 1 I have really come to believe that you are not capable of empathy if you can do that to your child. And that's just a hard line.
Now, do I think that

Speaker 1 that person's not a human being? No,

Speaker 1 I don't. It's a very complicated question what to do with someone who is capable of doing that to a vulnerable child.

Speaker 1 And I think that it is really worth recognizing how dangerous someone is if they have absolutely no capacity to feel empathy.

Speaker 1 Because if you just think about that, if you really sit with it, you have to recognize that like that part of you would have to be turned off.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah. And Detective Mike Weber told us not to be in a room alone with her.
She was a gentle person when we met her and sat down with her, you know.

Speaker 1 And B. Yorker, again, this is a colleague of of mine that we're going to talk to in season two.

Speaker 1 She has said she feels that we are so bad as a culture at recognizing female violence versus male violence. And what we are taught to fear is male violence, right? Someone seem angry or aggressive.

Speaker 1 We're not taught to fear this kind of violence. And that almost makes it scarier.
The reason people refuse to believe

Speaker 1 that these perpetrators have done what they've done, even when they're confronted with extremely hard evidence.

Speaker 1 And that's not just people who love and care care about that perpetrator who, you know, who are in their family or married to them or what have you.

Speaker 1 It goes the same for judges, doctors, lawyers, everyone who interacts with these. You see this resistance come up that makes no

Speaker 1 logical sense. You're saying, like, you are being confronted with video evidence or this like incredibly compelling medical records.

Speaker 1 The reason people still resist it is because they think it's just a deeper thing.

Speaker 1 We just do not want to believe that someone who seems like a nice, warm mom next door could be capable of the absolute worst thing you could possibly imagine. And

Speaker 1 that resistance that you are feeling to that is real. It's taken me all these years to get here.

Speaker 1 So for those of you that found that sort of distasteful that we talked to her, I appreciate where you're coming from. It was really important for me.

Speaker 1 I do think it's worth letting someone speak for themselves.

Speaker 1 We have always made it an open offer that if my sister, her husband, Mary Welch, any of the people we've talked about on this podcast wish to speak for themselves, I think it's a good way to talk about kind of the question of whether perpetrators are treatable because we got some

Speaker 1 feedback. I found some of this feedback to be spot on.

Speaker 1 I hope we made the point, and perhaps we make it even more strongly in season two, that while there is a recognized disorder that goes along with this behavior, and that is factitious disorder imposed on another.

Speaker 1 That is in what you know, the psychiatrist manual, the DSM. It's not a question of mental illness, in that that is something that makes someone not culpable for the crime.

Speaker 1 And I know we did say that, but I think that we had some strong reactions to, in particular, my conversation with Mary Sanders. She is a colleague that I adore and respect.
And

Speaker 1 I think that it is

Speaker 1 really

Speaker 1 admirable to

Speaker 1 look for any of those instances

Speaker 1 where a person possibly could be rehabilitated. I think that's an admirable pursuit.

Speaker 1 As to whether or not I personally believe that someone can be rehabilitated once they are as far down the line as someone like Ahop Yabara or really any of the other offenders we've talked about in this show, I don't.

Speaker 1 really feel

Speaker 1 that that seems possible because the the idea of someone who has lied about every other thing in their life sort of changing course and being fully accountable suddenly just doesn't seem plausible to me.

Speaker 1 At that same time, I totally admire my colleagues that think it is possible and want them to keep doing what they're doing.

Speaker 1 You know, there is much spirited debate about a lot of these things in the community of folks that are on this committee. And I think that's certainly one of the

Speaker 1 sort of touchier questions.

Speaker 1 I think that the most important thing is that those efforts to address the mental health of a perpetrator should never, never, never come at the expense of the safety of a child, ever, ever.

Speaker 1 It is primarily a crime. It is a crime with a victim that needs to be protected.

Speaker 1 I tend to think that if you have crossed this line with a child, that you should not be around children for the rest of your life, just the same way that if you have sexually assaulted a child, you should not be around children for the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 I think that there are sort of things that we need to agree on as a culture that, like, if you are capable of doing that to a child, you don't get to be around children anymore.

Speaker 1 And that's, I mean, we, and we have that. I mean, we have that understanding with sex offenders, right?

Speaker 1 And that's why Mike is always making that comparison is to sort of get through to people to take it as seriously because, you know, that's why we have sex offender registries, right?

Speaker 1 And you can't go near a school. We've decided as a culture, like if you are someone who has crossed that line, we are saying you need to not be around children anymore.
And that's really important.

Speaker 2 So before we get into the last question about what we're covering in season two, do you want to address all the many complaints about your voice?

Speaker 1 i shouldn't say all the many because i think there are about three but um but yes to those of you who are concerned about um about my vocal cords uh don't worry they they are fine they are healthy this is how my voice sounds this is how my voice has always sounded so thank you so much for your concern and may you have the day you deserve carry on so tina what was your favorite piece of feedback that we got on season one

Speaker 2 i think a few things one the the many people that eyes were opened to this reality. That was really impactful.

Speaker 2 You set out to create an awareness campaign around this topic. It certainly was an exploration of your experience in this.

Speaker 2 And I think that it hit the audience in a way that was very important to hear that we've made a difference

Speaker 2 and that we handled a topic that was really hard in a responsible way by bringing experts in and by helping people really get their brains around it and not glorifying.

Speaker 1 That's meaningful. I have to say for those of you who are family members

Speaker 1 and or survivors,

Speaker 1 hearing from you,

Speaker 1 it made me cry every time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 just want to send you all some love and say that I was thinking of you when I was making this show and I'm glad it found its way to you. And if you reached out, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 If you didn't and you never do,

Speaker 1 I still thank you and send you the best. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Tina, what are you most excited about for season two?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it's so good.

Speaker 2 Every time I send you a cut, I'm like, it's so good. Why do you hear this? Even though we made it together and we have an incredible editor, Travis Clark, who we're really grateful for.

Speaker 2 The child you will meet and get to know in season two is pretty remarkable. I think that's amazing.
There's some inspiration in here. There's some hope, not hopy barra.

Speaker 2 There's some like true hope in the story. I think the whole season is going to be really an important one for folks to hear and understand all the nuances of this horrific crime and also

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 really incredible people that have come out to save children. It will be wherever you get your podcast beginning June 15th.
And you are releasing some things exclusively to your Patreon.

Speaker 1 Yes, so this season we are doing all episodes early and ad-free on both Patreon and Apple Plus.

Speaker 1 And also we are releasing the first three episodes all at once on June 15th on those platforms, as well as lots of incredible bonus content.

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