Can They Be Saved? (S1E7)

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Speaker 1 Our final episode, episode eight, which is my conversation with Hopiobara, is going to be coming to you next week one day early.

Speaker 1 We decided to release this episode on Wednesday so that you can all listen to it on your way to wherever you're going for Thanksgiving. Nobody Should Believe Me is a production of Large Media.

Speaker 1 That's L-A-R-J Media. Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show we discuss child abuse and this content may be difficult for some listeners.

Speaker 1 If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to munchhausensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.

Speaker 1 People believe their eyes.

Speaker 1 That's something that actually is so central to this whole issue and to people that experience this is that we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something.

Speaker 1 I'm Andrea Dunlop and this is Nobody Should Believe Me.

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Hey, it's Andrea.

Speaker 1 It's come to my attention that some of you have been served programmatic ads for ICE on my show.

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I am the daughter of an immigrant. I stand with immigrants.

Speaker 1 Immigrants make this country great.

Speaker 1 At the beginning of this process of doing this podcast, I think I'd convinced myself that I had put the personal stake that I have in this issue behind me in a way that I've now discovered maybe I have not.

Speaker 1 Despite my best efforts to completely detach from my sister, there is still a small part of me that can't help but hope that at some point in the future, there might be some sort of reconciliation.

Speaker 1 As I was going back and forth with hope, as I was talking to her family and sort of reliving all of these emotions that I had kind of tucked away for a long time, I almost feel a little foolish that I would have any hope for a reconciliation because because of everything that I know.

Speaker 1 That person is still,

Speaker 1 she's still my sister, but I also sort of don't feel that way. That person sort of is still physically out there, but then in a very meaningful way is not.

Speaker 1 So much of what you believed that person to be and who you believed that person to be is shown to be an illusion because of the lies that they have told you.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I have needed to no longer be naive.

Speaker 1 I thought I had the answer of whether or not people who do have fictitious disorder imposed on another to whether or not they could be treated. And that seemed impossible.

Speaker 1 And then the deeper I got into this, it seems more possible. I really wanted to go deep on this topic in particular with Dr.
Mark Feldman and Dr. Mary Sanders.

Speaker 1 When people ask you, is Munchausen by proxy a mental illness? How do you answer that question?

Speaker 4 I tell them Munchausen by proxy is not not a mental illness in itself. It's a form of maltreatment, usually of children.

Speaker 4 But I also am quick to point out that the American Psychiatric Association says that it's always associated with a mental illness they call factitious disorder imposed on another.

Speaker 4 But I don't want to lose sight at any time of the fact that it's a form of maltreatment because we have a responsibility as healthcare professionals to make reports to child protective services and the police when we see it play out.

Speaker 4 We wouldn't do that if it were just a mental illness, but we must do that when it involves the exploitation of children.

Speaker 1 When it comes to the underlying psychiatric disorder, so factious disorder imposed on another, with what perpetrators get out of it, why someone would do this.

Speaker 4 That's a critical point. In Munchausen phenomena, the person is after emotional gratification,

Speaker 4 attention, sympathy, care, support that they feel unable to get in any other way.

Speaker 4 Sometimes they're a bit desperate in their personal lives, and certainly harming a child, whether it's yours or somebody else's, is an act of desperation.

Speaker 1 And when it comes down to a possible cause for

Speaker 4 We don't know tons about the causes because the perpetrators tend not to make themselves available for study. The denial is really pervasive and persistent in these cases.

Speaker 4 And the perpetrators will, in most cases, never admit to what they've done. And if that happens, you have no basis.
for exploring the behavior with them.

Speaker 4 That said, it does seem as if many of these perpetrators have a history of making themselves sick. That is, they have a history of factitious disorder post-on-self or Munchausen syndrome.

Speaker 4 Those are fairly synonymous. They also seem to have personality disorders that are very severe.
That is, they have long-term, maladaptive, unhealthy ways of trying to get their needs met.

Speaker 1 We've heard a lot of common themes as we've been talking to people about these stories in terms of the behavior patterns. One of them you mentioned, which is the factious disorder imposed on self.

Speaker 1 So just a long history of inexplicable medical ailments. The other things that have come up a lot are various kinds of fraud, financial and otherwise, and then infidelity.

Speaker 1 Would the personality disorder element of

Speaker 1 this, would that kind of account for some of those other behaviors that don't seem necessarily related to factious disorders, but are sort of patterns we've really been recognizing.

Speaker 4 A common underpinning is deceptiveness and impulsivity and poor judgment. And that kind of person

Speaker 4 is likely to engage in all the kinds of behaviors we're talking about now, whether it's infidelity, lying about aspects of their lives that may not even involve illness in any way.

Speaker 4 When it's severe, we call it pseudologia fantastica, which is a Latin term for pathological lying where the person mixes some truth with fiction, which makes for the best lie in a sense.

Speaker 4 When we see that, we know that we've got an extraordinarily difficult uphill battle to fight to get them to acknowledge that anything they've said is false.

Speaker 1 Another pattern that we've seen and that I've seen just in reading about many different cases is that many of these babies who end up becoming victims of medical child abuse are born premature and in some cases severely premature.

Speaker 1 And so any baby who's born premature is going to have some issues in the very beginning.

Speaker 1 You did actually hear from a couple of perpetrators and talk to a couple of perpetrators for your most recent book.

Speaker 1 And there was a woman that you spoke to for your book who talked about exactly how she created the scenario of having a premature birth. And that has just something that has really stuck with me.

Speaker 4 You're right that a common factor among some perpetrators, in fact many, is that there have been obstetrical complications that led perhaps to a failure of bonding early on.

Speaker 4 And so sometimes people have said there's no way this could be munches and by proxy because the mother has five children and it's only the fourth child or the fifth child that anything has happened with.

Speaker 4 And I look at their backgrounds and find that that fourth or fifth child may well have been one of the examples in which bonding didn't really occur successfully.

Speaker 4 Or the child is perceived as imperfect in some way.

Speaker 4 And whether it's conscious or unconscious, that child gets victimized by a mother who is dissatisfied at some level with the way things have turned out with that particular child.

Speaker 4 In other cases, it's every child in the family.

Speaker 1 I want to be really clear here that though we're talking about one

Speaker 1 piece of this behavior, one spot in the timeline of these cases, we are not by any means indicating that people who have complications with their pregnancies or who have premature babies are in some way more at risk for becoming perpetrators.

Speaker 1 They're absolutely not.

Speaker 1 This is a case of we see a high percentage of Munchausen by proxy perpetrators who do this thing, not that there's a higher percentage of people who have this in their lives become these perpetrators.

Speaker 1 This is yet another scenario that perpetrators who are already midstream with this behavior will exploit.

Speaker 1 that set of circumstances for their own gain, not that people who have that set of circumstances legitimately then go on to do this.

Speaker 1 So I wanted to be really clear about that causal relationship that we're speculating about here.

Speaker 1 The reality about munchasm by proxy is that these behaviors are very deep-seated, and they, in fact, function much like an addiction.

Speaker 4 There is a compulsive or addictive quality to gaining attention, even if it's under false pretenses. And that certainly does involve false pretenses, exaggerations, and falsification in these cases.

Speaker 4 That's why I think we've been seeing an explosion of what I've called Munchausen by Internet or Munchausen by Proxy by Internet, where a person may sicken their child in real life, but regardless goes online and milks social media for all it's worth by posting pictures of the child with tubes coming out of every orifice.

Speaker 4 We call it medical porn because that's basically what it is, These disturbing photos that are intended to do nothing other than alert friends, family, strangers that this mom needs all the support she can get.

Speaker 1 As to the question of whether or not perpetrators are treatable, I really wanted to talk to Dr.

Speaker 1 Mary Sanders because she is one of the foremost experts in the world on that particular part of this subject.

Speaker 3 I'm a clinical associate professor at Stanford University Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry.

Speaker 3 I'm also co-chair of a national committee through APSAC, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, and the committee is a multidisciplinary committee that looks at the assessment and treatment of Munchausen by proxy.

Speaker 1 Are these perpetrators treatable?

Speaker 3 Treatment with perpetrators of Munchausen by proxy abuse is very difficult. The important aspect is acknowledgement.
And when individuals

Speaker 3 tend to have what's called an external locus of control, they tend to blame others, not take responsibility, get their needs met indirectly using deception, it's very difficult for them to admit and acknowledge that they've engaged in these behaviors, not only to others, but to themselves.

Speaker 3 Certainly they may face all sorts of reprisals from friends, family, and legally as well. And so there's a lot of reasons not to acknowledge the abusive behaviors.

Speaker 3 With that said, some have been able to do so. And it takes a lot of courage for them to be able to do that.
When they have, they have then been able to work successfully in treatment.

Speaker 3 We have had successful cases. We have had cases that were able to reunify with ongoing support.

Speaker 1 Are there other things that make this kind of treatment particularly difficult?

Speaker 3 Yes, a lot of the parents have engaged in their own factitious behaviors and post-on-self.

Speaker 3 And I have had some parents that it was very difficult for them to admit that to themselves and to their family. The families were, needless to say, quite surprised and upset and felt betrayed.

Speaker 3 Also, personality disorders, a lot of parents are diagnosed with personality disorders that are difficult to treat.

Speaker 3 And especially if the abuse has been severe and life-threatening, for example, non-accidental poisoning or smothering, these are much more difficult situations in which to work at treatment and reunification.

Speaker 1 Is that usually the goal of family court, which is where a lot of these cases end up rather than in criminal court, you know, is to reunify the family. That's usually seen as a successful outcome.

Speaker 1 So I wonder how we should think about whether or not reunification

Speaker 1 should ever be the goal in these cases. And if so, under what conditions?

Speaker 3 Reunification is a mandate, as you mentioned, of like child protective services. And

Speaker 3 we do want to try to do that if possible, obviously, if it's safe for the child. It is quite a process.
The first step is going to be acknowledgement from the perpetrator that the abuse has occurred.

Speaker 3 If the spouse is going to reunify, the spouse has to also accept that these behaviors have occurred and

Speaker 3 recognize that they're going to be an integral part in providing protection and support ongoing. And then the children, too.
Basically, we want to be able to have the children informed as well.

Speaker 3 Then we're at the stage of being able to have a parent inform the child of the abusive behaviors that he or she engaged in and be able to set up a extremely important safety situation, usually in which the non-abusing spouse is the one that takes a child to the doctor.

Speaker 3 The doctors are informed. We usually request that there be two pediatricians that are informed and they're the gateway to any treatment that the child needs.

Speaker 3 So there's basically a lot of checks and balances to maintain safety within the family. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of dedication for these families to work toward reunification.

Speaker 3 It has been successfully done. It is very rare, though.

Speaker 1 If we could hear from you about the minds of these perpetrators, what that experience is like for them, how much they understand about what they're doing, whether or not they ever get convinced of their own deceptions.

Speaker 3 There's a defense mechanism called compartmentalization.

Speaker 3 One parent told me they were able to take the knowledge they had were doing this to their child, actively harming their child, and sort of put it in a little mental drawer and kind of close it.

Speaker 3 They knew it was happening, but they could just not pay attention to that information. Like you lose your keys and you know, oh, there they are.

Speaker 3 You know, so every once in a while they would be reminded that they were engaging in these behaviors.

Speaker 3 But they would also be using rationalization and other defense with the idea being that this is helping my child.

Speaker 3 They're getting these opportunities to meet celebrities or, you know, Make a Wish Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, rationalizing that somehow this was actually in their child's best interest.

Speaker 3 And I have had parents that did, they said they almost came to believe the illness.

Speaker 3 And especially, you know, when they were able to convince doctors and then the doctor said, oh yes, your child has this, they were able to kind of suspend reality and come to believe it to some extent themselves.

Speaker 3 It's not a delusional system, but being able to almost convince themselves, even though they know it's not true.

Speaker 1 There is this easy conception when people are looking at these cases to look at these perpetrators as monsters.

Speaker 1 I really appreciate and think it's extraordinary that people like you can find enough empathy as a way in to helping these women and helping these families.

Speaker 1 And it's moving for me to think that it's not just completely hopeless.

Speaker 3 I've had people tell me that. How can you do this work with these monsters? I've had that word used quite a bit, actually.
I think it comes from seeing, experiencing.

Speaker 3 and acknowledging that we are not defined by our behaviors. We are multi-storied.
Certainly, we can all engage in behaviors that don't fit for us.

Speaker 3 We can engage in behaviors that can be altered, you know, with support and help. Especially the parents that I've worked with that were successful, these were very disempowered women.

Speaker 3 We go back in time and look at their growing up. especially around how do you get attention? How did you get your needs met?

Speaker 3 And sometimes in doing that, what we've been able to do is discover almost this story in which they realize they had used deception in their childhood to get attention.

Speaker 3 And they may have even seen the child that pretends to be sick to stay home from school. A number of us have done that, but they may have seen this and been a part of that themselves.

Speaker 3 And basically that sometimes helped them. be able to acknowledge, wow, this is really, I've done this.
I've engaged in these behaviors in my life.

Speaker 3 And now I've taken it to this step where I've, you know, presented myself as being ill when I'm not, presented my child as being ill when my child is not.

Speaker 3 And so sometimes that's where we can get to the acknowledgement if it's not right away.

Speaker 1 I really like that you made that connection between the childhood experience of I'm sick and I want to stay home from school and you get taken care of. And I think it was a pretty universal.

Speaker 1 human experience to enjoy being nurtured and taken care of and having a little minute away from life.

Speaker 1 So I think it's really helpful to bring those comparisons back down to earth a little bit, because the more that we can understand

Speaker 1 how this is an extreme of that feeling that we can relate with, it's helpful to everyone to understand that this is on a continuum rather than

Speaker 1 a good mother does this and a monstrous mother does that.

Speaker 3 It's not an all or none, exactly.

Speaker 1 And there is a pretty big spectrum of these behaviors.

Speaker 3 There certainly is a spectrum. With that said, we're also very cognizant that all of this is harmful to children and we do want to keep that in mind.

Speaker 3 And I think it's especially important because the best way to get these families help is to report the abuse.

Speaker 3 situations in which children may be over-medicalized, brought to the doctor when they may not have a need, that leads to inappropriate treatments that can be harmful, evaluations that can be invasive, all the way to, yes, smothering or use of substances, poisoning that can certainly put a child at risk for death.

Speaker 1 You know, it gets to this question, whether we should be looking at Munchausen by proxy perpetrators as criminals to be prosecuted or sick women who need help.

Speaker 3 My experience is that both can happen simultaneously, which is difficult.

Speaker 3 Here you have an individual who either has to plead guilty or not guilty, which means if they're pleading guilty, then they're open to entering into treatment because they're acknowledging.

Speaker 3 If they're pleading not guilty, then the treatment really can't proceed.

Speaker 1 What do you think can be done to better protect children from this kind of abuse?

Speaker 3 I mentioned APSAC before, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. The audiences,

Speaker 3 pediatricians, psychology, psychiatry, social work, judges, attorneys, all of us said are involved in these cases. So the best way to protect is to recognize and report.

Speaker 1 I first met Detective Mike Weber at a child abuse conference where he was giving a training about investigating cases of medical child abuse or Bunch House and by proxy.

Speaker 1 I was so impressed with the depth of his knowledge and how he seems to grasp all of the complexities of this issue.

Speaker 1 So I really wanted to talk to him about all of the various barriers there are, both cultural and structural, to us making movement on this issue.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I have been doing this for now over 10 years. And I think what makes me stay doing this is the fact that no one else will.
I just know the consequences of not doing anything.

Speaker 2 I'd love to have four trained detectives willing to take this on. Trust me, I have the work for them, but currently that's not out there.

Speaker 1 We've said many times over the course of this podcast that this is an underreported crime.

Speaker 1 By that, we do not mean that it is all mothers, a majority of mothers, or even some significant percentage of mothers that would ever, ever do this. But it does happen.

Speaker 1 And right now, we're hardly ever catching or prosecuting it.

Speaker 2 We're fighting the societal perception of motherhood. That is the task before us in these cases.
And I often have said, even before I started doing this, denial is the strongest human emotion.

Speaker 2 This is hard to wrap your head around. It's hard for police officers, veteran police officers, veteran detectives to wrap their head around.
So, for regular people to think that their picture of

Speaker 2 motherhood is going to be disturbed in such a really disturbing manner, it's very hard for them to accept that.

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 1 if someone becomes, as an adult, so toxic and destructive, there are times when you just don't love them anymore.

Speaker 1 And I mean, I think that's something like we talked to Paul Putcher about and that is profound.

Speaker 1 And then I've watched, you know, various members of my own family go through where it's just like, no, there are actually things that people can do where you're just like,

Speaker 1 that bond gets severed. And that's, it's enough to do it.
I've seen what parents who unconditionally love perpetrators in these situations will do and they become enablers.

Speaker 1 Like you said, said, it's like they're dismantling their idea of motherhood.

Speaker 1 A lot of people really want to hold on to that idea that motherhood is this sacred thing, and it will turn flawed human woman into some kind of angel on earth that would never do anything bad.

Speaker 2 When I was an investigator with a local DA's office, and we would have trials on other forms of child abuse, not this form, but other forms.

Speaker 2 The sentences for mothers were for mothers who committed other forms of abuse were far less than for males. It's just the perception that society has.

Speaker 1 Partly because

Speaker 1 you have this act, this behavior of medical child abuse, and then right intertwined with it, you have this disorder of factitious disorder imposed on another.

Speaker 1 And that's where like the motive comes in. It's not that we should be saying this is mental illness, these people are not criminally culpable.

Speaker 1 But if you can't get people to understand factitious disorder imposed on another, they're not going to see the abuse. Right.

Speaker 2 It's the same thing that that we suffered through with pedophilia. Pedophilia has been in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness, since 1952.

Speaker 2 So you have that same combination with sexual, aggravated sexual assault of a child and pedophilia. You have those overlapping diagnosis.

Speaker 2 But what we've come to understand is: okay, well, they may be a pedophile, but guess what?

Speaker 1 They're still a criminal.

Speaker 2 And that is the problem that especially family courts are having having in these cases, especially when they see a attractive, especially well-to-do mother who they identify with.

Speaker 2 I'm talking about family court judges. They're maybe in the same social class as they are, and they just don't believe that a mother could do this.

Speaker 1 I'd imagine this is really difficult work being a detective on child abuse cases. I mean, do you find yourself getting emotionally invested?

Speaker 2 In most of my cases,

Speaker 2 there's been a positive outcome because we haven't got a positive outcome in every case. And the ones that stick with me are the ones where we didn't.

Speaker 2 Those ones really stick with me and really haunt me for lack of a better word.

Speaker 2 You don't get emotionally involved as a detective, but you see the emotional toll they take on others and that's impactful to you.

Speaker 2 As long as I can get the child safe, it's not even necessarily about a conviction of the parent.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, in these cases, that's usually the only way you get a child safe is with a criminal conviction.

Speaker 2 During the investigation, I have to strictly look at the evidence that I have and see if that fits a crime.

Speaker 2 There's been times where I know that this form of abuse is happening, but it doesn't meet our state law. I can't file a criminal case.

Speaker 2 I turn my findings over to CPS and hope that they do the right thing.

Speaker 1 You know you're not dealing with someone who's like operating by the same playbook that most of the people you're ever going to talk to in your life are. Right.

Speaker 2 But I do think it's important to also point out, now she knew what she was doing when she was doing it and she knew it was wrong.

Speaker 2 So it is important to point out that's the definition of criminal sanity. You, I, Dr.
Feldman, pretty much everyone on the committee agrees they are subject to the criminal justice system.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, you know, it doesn't mean they're not a human being.

Speaker 1 Dr. Feldman has said it's an attempt to get their emotional needs met.

Speaker 1 Does that have any bearing for you on like how you would look at these offenders if you're seeing it less as a like, like almost to me, that's almost something deeper, right?

Speaker 1 That it almost hints at like, this is a much more profound compulsion than I'm just trying to get people to pay attention to me. I don't know.

Speaker 1 There's such a negative connotation with attention seeking.

Speaker 2 I mean, from a legal perspective, from a detective perspective, that would just go to motive. It's going to just be a very nuanced motive.

Speaker 2 And whether it's attention or love, it's still basically the same motive. You're doing it for something that's intrinsic, which is kind of hard for juries to understand.
You're not doing it for money.

Speaker 2 You're not just a horrible person beating your kid. And we can argue about attention or love.
You know, attention isn't always

Speaker 2 public attention. It can also be private attention from a loved one.
So to me, those words, as a detective, obviously not a psychologist, Those words are pretty interchangeable as far as motive goes.

Speaker 1 We're seeing the perpetrators as human beings that do need help, but also should not be in the house with their children and maybe should be behind bars for a while.

Speaker 2 If you humanize them

Speaker 2 and you know, like we know with pedophiles now, they can be of any social class, they can be of any social standing, they can be anywhere.

Speaker 2 If we could somehow get society to understand that about these abusers, we'd have a lot of success.

Speaker 2 Hopefully we would start catching them sooner, which is better for the abuser and better for the abused. If you catch someone someone sooner on a mental illness path, then treatment should be easier.

Speaker 2 If you catch this behavior earlier, it's going to be easier to get a confession, right?

Speaker 2 Because what they're confessing to is not nearly as harmful as what they would have done had they continued down that path.

Speaker 2 In a perfect world, you would have systems set up that would catch this early,

Speaker 2 and that would obviously benefit both the abused and the abuser.

Speaker 1 I find it moving that someone who's in Mike Weber's position can still see the humanity in the perpetrators and understands that for them it's better if they can be stopped earlier, if they can not get so far down the road where they've done these things that Hope has that she now has to live with and that everyone in her family and in her orbit has to live with.

Speaker 1 I feel like that's really the spirit that we need on the criminal justice side of stop it early, catch it early before it gets to that point of no return.

Speaker 2 There's no way I could ever predict any of these offenders' behaviors because they are so wild sometimes. No one, even me as a seasoned police detective, would never.

Speaker 2 I mean, I would never imagine that Hope would put pathogens into her kid. But when the path led me there, I looked at it and I investigated it and I confronted her on it and she confessed to it.

Speaker 2 Just be open-minded. Approach these cases.
Don't be afraid to work.

Speaker 2 And for supervisors out there, CPS supervisors, supervisors, police supervisors, if you have a detective or an investigator that has one of these on their caseload, number one, CPS, this isn't going to be done in your magical three-month time limit.

Speaker 2 That's freaking impossible. Don't try to shoehorn it into that box.
Give your investigator time to work her case.

Speaker 1 Mike Weber is still working an incredibly intense caseload for the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department. And that's not all he's doing.

Speaker 1 These days, he is doing trainings all over the country to educate various interdisciplinary groups of professionals about how they can better identify and deal with Munchausen by proxy cases.

Speaker 1 He is also a member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's Munchausen by Proxy Committee, along with myself, Dr. Mark Feldman, and Dr.
Mary Sanders.

Speaker 2 In the next five to 10 years, I hope we see what we've already started to see societally and culturally. This has gotten its moment in culture.

Speaker 2 You know, I kind of keep track of cases around the country and we're starting to see more and more of these cases.

Speaker 2 What I hope is that the committee's effort and my efforts have some little influence on these cases and getting this information out to detectives so they know what to do on these cases and they know what this is when they see it.

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Speaker 1 Well, the holidays are barreling towards us at the end of this, the longest year in human history. And I just want to be fancy and cozy at the same time.

Speaker 1 And my favorite brand Quince makes this possible. Of course, Quince's cashmere sweaters are a perennial hit, and I also love their washable silk tops, skirts, and dresses.
Yes, silk that is washable.

Speaker 1 It is so easy to care for and it it looks super luxe and polished. I am currently eyeing the silk slip dress and the silk jersey mini wrap for holiday parties.

Speaker 1 And if you're the kind of responsible person who does holiday shopping early, look no further. Quince has beautifully curated gift guides with accessories, sweaters, bedding, jewelry, you name it.

Speaker 1 They also have adorable kids' holiday pajamas. Quince is truly a one-stop shop for all the lovely things.

Speaker 1 And as always, Quince works directly with ethical top-tier factories, so you can skip the middlemen and pay 50% less than similar brands.

Speaker 1 So step into the holiday season with layers made to feel good, look polished, and last from Quince. Perfect for gifting or keeping for yourself.

Speaker 1 Go to quince.com/slash believe for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.
That's q-u-in-ce-e.com/slash believe to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

Speaker 1 Quince.com/slash/believe. And remember, the chopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show.

Speaker 1 As As much as this podcast has been a way for me to exercise some of my demons and to follow my curiosity about this topic, the thing I hope for the most is that people will hear this

Speaker 1 and it will give them a deeper understanding of something that is a complex issue, but one that I believe is present in our communities in a real way.

Speaker 1 And that people who've been through it in particular, whether they're survivors, whether they're family members, whether they're perpetrators who are looking for help will hear this and understand that there are people trying to help.

Speaker 1 Meeting the members of this committee has really given me a lot of hope.

Speaker 1 Not necessarily hope for whatever is going to happen in my own family, but just hope that there are people that are willing to take this complicated issue on.

Speaker 1 The only way to make kids safer from this abuse is to look at it. And it's hard to look at and it's hard to hear about.
Because ultimately, it is about children.

Speaker 1 It's about kids who are powerless, voiceless. And it's also about the people who used to be those kids.

Speaker 1 If I can make any crack in that awareness that this is a real

Speaker 1 then this will all have been worth it.

Speaker 1 On the season finale of Nobody Should Believe Me, I will sit down with Hope Yebarra, who spent 10 years in prison for medical child abuse.

Speaker 1 If you've been listening to this podcast and some of the details sound very familiar to you from your own life or someone that you know, please visit us at munchhausensupport.com.

Speaker 1 We have resources there from some of the top experts in the country and we can connect you with professionals who can help.

Speaker 1 Nobody should believe me is a production of large media. Our lead producer is Tina Knoll.
The show was edited by Lisa Gray with help from Wendy Nardy. Jeff Gall is our sound engineer.

Speaker 1 Additional scoring and music by Johnny Nicholson and Joel Schupak. Also, special thanks to Maria Palaeologis, Joelle Knoll, and Katie Klein for project coordination.

Speaker 1 I'm your host and executive producer, Andrea Dunlop.

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