S04 Ep10: No One is Coming to Save Us

True Story Media

Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show we discuss child abuse, and this content may be difficult for some listeners.

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

Like many of us, I have extremely complicated feelings about the criminal justice system.

I'm intrigued by and interested in alternatives from restorative justice to the abolitionist movement.

But in the world as it is, the world that we do have, I think it's crucial to pursue criminal investigations of people like Joe's mom, Donna, and of my sister.

There was never a criminal investigation into Donna for her abuse of Joe, and there should have been.

There was one into my sister.

a two-year-long police investigation, in fact, that was ultimately referred to the prosecutor's office.

However, However, by that time, as often happens in these cases, family court had already returned her children, so no charges were ever filed.

And that meant that my sister, like Donna, like most perpetrators, never suffered any consequences for her actions.

Megan wasn't even ever truly separated from her kids for any length of time because her children were placed with her in-laws during the investigation, and they let her be with them unsupervised pretty much all day, every day, despite the court's orders.

So, this is just all to say that I'm not here to defend the systems we do have.

Why would I when they failed my family so completely?

So I'm all in for conversations about change, about restorative justice, about community building, about looking for solutions outside of the extraordinarily fraught child welfare and criminal justice systems.

But the loudest calls right now on this issue are not about these kinds of solutions.

They're about, quote, medical kidnapping.

They're about devoting massive media attention in films like Take Care of Maya and My Kicks and Box Do No Harm series to painting perpetrators of child abuse as victims of an unjust system and instilling fear in parents of legitimately sick children.

There is a staggering statistic that friend of the show Be Worker shared with me from her recent mandated reporter training in California.

In confirmed cases of child abuse, not suspected, confirmed, 7% of children were removed from the home.

Now there's nuance here, of course, and if a parent is taking appropriate steps and accountability, there are times where removal is not the right solution.

And I don't take splitting up families lightly.

I recognize also how awful some of the alternatives are.

But 93% is a lot of kids going back into abusive homes.

So, given that we know that the vast majority of abusers will not have their children removed, let alone face any other consequences, what do we do about them?

By the time an adult Munchausen by proxy survivor discovers their own horrible history, the question of child welfare is moot.

And sadly, considering that there's often barely any will for law enforcement to get involved when there are vulnerable children living in the home, the idea of them devoting resources to an investigation long after the fact is hard to imagine.

So, when the evidence is found, when the pieces are put together, what do you do?

What does justice look like for someone like Donna?

People believe their eyes.

That's something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something.

If we didn't, you could never make it through your day.

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

If you just can't get enough of me in your ears, first of all, thank you.

I have a job because of you.

And secondly, did you know that I have a new audiobook out this year?

The Mother Next Door, which I co-authored with Detective Mike Weber, is available in all formats wherever books are sold.

It's a deep dive into three of Mike's most impactful munches and biproxy cases, and I think you'll love it.

Here's a sample.

When Susan logged in, what she discovered shocked her to the marrow of her bones.

Though the recent insurance records contained pages and pages of information about Sophia, there was nothing about Hope.

Susan dug deeper and looked back through years of records.

There wasn't a single entry about Hope's cancer treatment.

For eight years, the Putcher family had lived with a devastating fear that their beloved daughter and sister was battling terminal cancer.

For months, they'd been preparing for her death.

But in that moment, a new horror was dawning.

For nearly a decade, Hope had been lying.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

If you'd like to support the show, the best way to do that is to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or on Patreon, where you can get all episodes early and ad-free, along with extended cuts and deleted scenes from this season, as well as two exclusive bonus episodes every month.

If monetary support is not an option, rating and reviewing the show wherever you listen helps a great deal.

And if there's someone you feel needs to hear this show, please do share it.

Word of mouth is so important for independent podcasts.

For more, you can now find us on YouTube, where we have all of our episodes as well as bonus video content.

What if death is the only way out?

That's the thought that stuck in my head when I heard the news about Donna, who was found dead alone in her apartment while we were making this season.

I knew that as long as Donna lived, she would be looking for a way back into Joe's life.

And it seemed inevitable that Joe would continue to have to devote energy and time to maintaining the hard-won boundaries they'd set with their mom.

So in that sense, I admit, Donna's death came as a bit of a relief.

However, even if there was freedom on the other side, for Joe, it was still a long way off.

First, they'd have to survive the aftermath of Donna's death.

So I'd been in Minnesota for a couple weeks helping with organizing the funeral, trying to go through my mom's stuff and do all of that, take care of anything I needed to in Hutch.

And then I went home and moved to a new apartment for a week.

I have zero memory of that, but it happened.

I unpacked everything.

So my roommate, Spencer, says that I was just moving non-stop.

And then I went to Utah for a few days.

And I think I was like convinced that just being in the mountains would be really like soothing and healing.

And

there were moments, or I'd say, like glimmers of peace, but for the most part, I like could not even get out of bed really.

So, it was a very expensive depression trip, it felt like, but I did get to see some people that I care a lot about, so that was nice at least.

And then, a few days after

I got back home, I actually went to a residential treatment center, which is currently still where I am, probably for a couple of weeks.

Donna's death and the trip to Hutchinson, during which Joe had to not only witness, but clean up after the scene of their mother's demise, plan a funeral, and face family members, some of whom both enabled and doubted Joe's abuse, had been an immersion in the most intense trigger stew one could imagine.

And as therapist Carly Osler explained, in abuse situations, trauma is not a single discrete event, but something that builds over time.

How I like to talk about complex PTSD in terms of trauma.

I like to talk about it as like

stubbing your toe is blunt force trauma.

It is really small blunt force trauma.

But if you stub your toe in the same spot again and again for a month, your body is going to automatically adjust and evolve to to try not to stub your toe again, like trying to avoid that pain.

And also, if you're stubbing your toe in the same spot every day,

again and again and again, you might also develop a larger trauma to your toe.

It might start gushing blood at some point as it weakens the skin barrier.

And so, I like to think of complex trauma as

a lot of the little traumas, the systemic traumas, that interweave into

more complex expression of pain, of what gets stuck.

Trauma is generally defined as something that's too much, too fast, too soon.

And when it all kind of builds up and builds up, we develop more complex reactions.

Joe's PTSD is deep and multilayered.

And after Donna's death, as the waves of grief crashed over them, even the most basic daily tasks began to feel impossible.

I was really proud of them for taking the step of going into treatment and for knowing that that's what they needed, even if it felt in the moment like taking a huge step backwards.

I spent 10 years in and out of treatment centers before truly thought I would never have to do that again in my life.

But I think

pretty quickly, within obviously a month of my mom passing, I realized like I'm gonna need extra help.

I think that

I

struggled a lot with feeling like if I went to a residential center, then that meant that I was taking steps backwards and everyone was going to be really disappointed in me.

And that would mean that I had relapsed or done something bad, and I was just trying to be sick and get attention.

And then it was like really

shocking to me because every single person that I even said like I kind of think I might need to do this thing every person was like yes yes you do and was very not even just like you need help but like you deserve support

and I think that was wild.

I don't think that I've ever really experienced that.

I think in the past, if I've ever needed to step up to a higher level of care or something, I think there are always people that would be like, oh, you're just back at it again.

So I feel like this was the first time it felt very like unanimous, which I think part of that's because I think people can understand grief differently than they can mental health struggles in general.

In listening to Joe talk about Donna, so much of it feels like this hellish loop, these escalations of abuse, the cycles of denial and gaslighting, and the never-ending chaos.

But in those lowest moments, it was truly possible to see what had changed about this situation.

Joe had changed.

Joe had worked hard to build a life under immeasurably difficult circumstances.

They now had close friendships with people who understood them and could support them.

Donna had done everything in her power to isolate Joe from the moment they were born.

Donna, like many Munchausen biproxy abusers, had positioned herself to be not only omniscient about Joe's illnesses, the only one who understood her child's medical complexities, the one who knew better than all the doctors, but also she was omnipresent in the other parts of Joe's life, presenting herself at school as the involved mother and even taking the job of cheer coach, leaving Joe with no safe spaces where they could get some relief.

And the devastating thing about this abuse is the way that the sense of isolation can linger long after a perpetrator has the power to literally control who their child is allowed to see and interact with.

This abuse can just demolish a person's ability to trust and connect with others, which is all compounded by the fact that people often don't understand what this abuse even is, and still others deny its existence outright.

But Joe had done the hard work to heal and repair, and they'd built a community around themselves.

There will always be pieces of her with me,

but

they don't have to have any control over me.

I don't have to self-destruct.

I can like fully live now.

And I think like the most, one of the most recent art pieces I did was like

something about what it would look like to take the next step forward or some i don't know if that's what it was but i drew me and then

my two of my friends like by my side.

And then underneath me, I had all these like affirmations, like I'm safe now.

All these like really nicely worded things.

And then like around my head and around me

was like all these like, you have to die.

I'm the only one that can take care of you.

I'll love you if you like come to me.

Like I need you to save me.

All these different, all the voices and all the things or whatever.

But within that, what I found really interesting was I didn't draw my mom.

The words were there, but that's all it was.

It was just words, just thoughts,

no real danger.

And my friends were standing like by my side, and I was still grounded in truth and grounded in like reality and all of those things.

And I think

I'm slowly getting to that place where

I'm able to actually comprehend more that the danger is gone.

September is here, and you know what that means.

Sowetaweather is coming.

If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that I love Quince.

And if you know me in real life, you also know that I I love Quince because even when I'm off the clock, I talk about this brand.

Quince has an amazing array of products from jewelry to footwear to bedding, but they are known for their sweaters.

Sweaters is where they shine.

I get so many compliments on my Quince cashmere sweaters.

I was wearing one once while I was actively buying a Quince gift card for my daughter's teacher.

And the checkout person said, I've been wanting to try this brand.

I heard about them on a podcast.

And I was like, I'm wearing Quince.

I have a podcast.

You got to try Quince.

This is, by the way, a 100% true and fact-checked story.

Quince is known for their famous cashmere.

They also have cotton and merino wool sweaters, cardigans, and dresses, all for a fraction of the price you'd pay for this quality anywhere else.

And don't even get me started on their beautiful coats.

They've got wool coats, dusters, capes, puffers, trenches, leather bombers, and embarrassment of riches.

Keep it classy and cozy this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince.

Go to quince.com/slash believe for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's q-u-in-ce-e.com/slash slash believe to get free shipping and 365 day returns.

Quince.com slash believe.

And remember that shopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show.

In these turbulent economic times, the last thing any of us need to worry about is unexpected fees and other nonsense from our banks, which is why I love QIIME.

QIIME understands that every dollar counts.

That's why when you set up direct deposit through QIIME, you get access to fee-free returns like free overdraft coverage, getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit, and more.

Something I love about QIIME is their 24-7 customer service.

Having a banking issue is extremely stressful, especially when you run a business.

And I want to talk to a person right now when I have one.

I also travel a lot for work these days, and with QIIME, I have access to 47,000 fee-free ATMs nationwide.

47,000?

That's so many.

QIIME is banking done right.

Open a checking account with no monthly fees and no maintenance fees today.

Work on your financial goals through QIIME today.

Open an account at chime.com slash nobody.

That's chime.com slash nobody.

And remember that shopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show.

Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank.

Banking services and debit cards by the Bank Corporation or Stride Bank NA members of FDIC.

Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply.

Timing depends on submission payment file.

Fees apply at out of network ATMs, bank ranking, and number of ATMs according to U.S.

and World Report 2023.

Chime checking account required.

Something my fellow parents will be familiar with is the concept of an extinction burst.

So often, when you try to halt some undesirable behavior in your child by no longer rewarding it, the behavior will get dramatically worse right before it gets better.

An example would be bedtime with my five-year-old.

If I've been on the road or it's just been an especially stressful time, I'll sometimes let my daughter sleep in our bed with us.

which usually results in a cascade of other pushed boundaries like nighttime snacks, extra bedtime stories, and her just being up way too late.

Then, when I try to get her back on schedule so that mornings are not a zombie death march, she rages and inevitably there will be at least a night or two of operatic protest before she gets back on track.

She's not getting what she wants, so she tries harder and harder until eventually she relents.

In the weeks after Donna's death, the pieces of her that lived inside Joe raged like they never had before, and the community surrounding Joe couldn't protect them entirely from the threat that lived inside their own mind.

Watching this all go down after Donna died, I felt like despite her earthly hold on Joe being at an end, the psychic hold she had on them was experiencing a massive extinction burst.

Until she died, I did not realize how much of my daily life still surrounded around her.

Even with being no contact, even with building my life, even with doing all these things,

I still every day would do little things or worry about if she was sick or if she was okay or if she was dead or have like all these different little triggers if I heard a siren or think she was dead you know like we talked about I did not realize how much space she still took up in my life with that all I think the other really big thing is that I realized how much brainwashing that there's been from my mom and i don't

it's not like i have like memories like oh yeah mom did this or like anything like that, but I've always had this like voice in my head that will sometimes just get like very, very loud and like be very punitive and like say like that you have to hurt yourself, you have to die, like say like really

intense loud things.

And this has been my whole life and I didn't really know where any of it came from and it's still like, I don't fully know where any of it comes from, but it used to happen not very often.

And then once my mom passed, it was like multiple times a day and would be like really intense and I'd get really confused and really lost and started to just realize that voice

is my mom's voice.

Within that, I think that I realized, like, it's like I've always been really scared of it.

It always just felt like something other than me, but I've never really understood it.

And like I said, I don't know like

how it got there or where it comes from but me and my therapist here have talked about how it feels almost like my mom implanted a little device in my head that I don't know when it gets switched on but sometimes it just gets switched on and once it's like on

I have no access to like any of my normal thoughts or anything like I don't know how to switch it off and so it's just like

I don't know how to like get through that so that's why I've obviously had to like be here through all of that because it just has been so much louder and then I'll have moments where I'm like oh I have a life and things like that but then it'll like get switched on and instantly it's like my mom was the heart and I'm just an arm

Some of the scars Joe has from their mom's abuse are physical, like the vocal cord dysfunction they have from when their mom induced vomiting as a baby, or the difficulties with their immune system that resulted from being constantly made sick as a child.

But the psychic wounds are so deep that Joe often has difficulty distinguishing between Donna's voice and their own.

I don't have this in the same way because of course, Megan wasn't my parent, but as my own therapist has helped me understand over the years, because she was my older sibling, she did have a big influence on my squishy little kid brain.

And while I've mostly had great relationships with other women and have some of the best friends anyone could ever ask for, my sister baggage has led me into a number of extremely toxic friendships with other women in my adult life.

These dynamics, unfortunately, are usually only visible once the whole thing blows up.

After one recent bust up, I sighed to my therapist that I felt like I should really be over this by now.

For God's sake, I'm in my 40s.

She gently told me that it was just something I'm always going to have to watch out for.

It just went too deep.

It's never going away completely.

Also not going away for either Joe or me are the after effects of gaslighting.

And I mean this in the clinical sense where someone makes you doubt yourself and question your own judgment by systematically distorting your reality.

Once you realize you were literally living inside a lie, it's really hard to trust yourself.

So this is why it's so important to do everything you can to get a hold of the truth.

So despite the fact that it was a bit unsettling for me personally that Donna died during the making of this season, it turned out to be something of a blessing for Joe because it meant that they were that much further along in their journey into the truth.

I spoke to my colleague, Dr.

Kathy Ayub, a nurse practitioner and associate professor of psychology at Harvard, who's been studying Munchausen by proxy, both perpetrators and survivors, for decades.

And she explained why knowing your story is a key piece of healing.

One of the things, at least, that I've heard from survivors is

the first thing is they need to understand what happened to them.

So oftentimes survivors take a journey.

They go back and they talk to the doctor that saw them.

I think of Mary Burke, who was one of the first survivors who came forward.

And she tells a beautiful story about how she went back to the doctor who treated her and said, you know, I want to see my medical records.

I need to tell you, doctor, what happened to me.

You know, my mother actually pulled a hammer out of her bedside table at the same time every day and pounded on my joints.

And that's why they were the way they were.

So

in whatever way, that's certainly not the only way, but there are a number of ways.

Some people, like Julie Gregory, write a beautiful book.

Some people really decide they need to tell their stories in other ways and they need to work with other adults who are victimized.

I think there are probably many, many ways of doing this, but one is connecting and understanding what really happened, because that really breaks through

the whole traumatic consequence of building around building relationships and around

really being able to set your life on a pattern where you really affirm your own identity.

This is what happened to me.

This is what occurred to me.

And here's how I'm going to work through it and beyond it.

So, at least we believe fairly strongly that this needed to happen, and that if children are out of an abusive situation, that this is something that they really might want to be offered the opportunity to do in adolescence.

You know, one of the things that I've really advocated for is if victims want to see their own records, I'll say, I'd be glad to sit down and go through them with you.

Let's figure out what they say.

Some people may not want to do that.

And then the second step is really understanding who is safe and who isn't safe.

And it's very, very hard.

Their mothers are often very persistent about seeing them, connecting with them, being with them.

And that is a lot of energy.

And again, they have to decide what they want to do, how much contact they want to have.

The truth about someone like Donna or my sister Megan is horrific and hard to accept.

And this is why so many people aren't willing to, no matter what evidence they're presented with.

But until you do, you will never be free of the lie.

And if you're an adult in this situation, as long as you're in the lie, you're an enabler of it.

And at some point, you cross over and become an accomplice.

For survivors, the lie consumes their entire life story, and it robs them of the chance to be the master of their own fate.

Joe had already done a lot of work to disentangle themselves from their mom's version of the story.

And now, with Donna gone for good, I'm hopeful that this will give Joe even more agency to write their own.

Donna won't get a chance to edit her legacy now, and depending on your belief system, maybe you think she's answering to a higher judge.

Courts of the afterlife notwithstanding, I don't think Donna's untimely end is what anyone would want.

I asked Joe what justice here on earth might have looked like for their mom.

I think that in a better situation, I would have never even ended up really being around my mom.

I think that my sister would have been taken out and put in a safe home when she was a child.

And then ideally, I would have joined her wherever she was because the systems are so flawed.

And I think it would have just been like people showing more unconditional love and support and listening and just validating what I was going through.

You know, we've talked about how there are a lot of people that are the reasons that I'm sitting here and alive and well today

and we've also talked about how alone I still felt and how alone I still at the end of the day was.

So I think that

it would have been like letting me in a little bit more on like what they knew, which is complicated and like that's a hard situation too, right?

Because if someone had told me like your mom's dangerous when i was five or something obviously that wouldn't have gone well for anyone because i needed my mom to be safe because i needed a safe caretaker and she was the only option but i think that there are like age appropriate ways to still like show up and be there and i think that's where i lean into more of that like community care sort of aspect of things like you talked about with like growing up in a small town like that's what you sometimes picture, or things like that.

And I think could have totally been the situation outside of different stigma or things.

So, I think within that, with my mom, I think all I've ever wanted,

all I ever wanted was for her to get help and to have support from people that could safely give that.

Donna's actions were indefensible, but she was still a human being and I have no doubt she was suffering as I think anyone who perpetrates this kind of harm on others is suffering.

I would like very much to live in a world where we could both keep children safe and help people like Donna.

I wish it didn't have to be a choice.

But if it is, we should always, always prioritize the safety of kids.

That should be non-negotiable.

One of the things I discussed with Kathy Ayyub was how perpetrators do differ from each other and how they often fall in different subgroups.

And Kathy shared some insights into the group of perpetrators that I believe Joe's mom, Donna, fell into.

I think the biggest one are the mothers who really don't do a lot with their children unless they're on stage.

Because the bond between the child and the parent is really not there from the parent's perspective.

And those are the individuals who have recreated themselves, as as my colleague Kirb Schreier says, they are imposturing as nurturing parents.

And that takes up their whole time, their whole being.

And those are the folks who

I think are very, very difficult.

I mean, that's where you're really not, you're not going to get admissions.

And treatment isn't effective without some kind of an admission.

Professor Ayub also illuminated how complicated it is to find a solution in these cases that will truly keep kids safe.

In terms of thinking about, so how can the child be safe?

How can they be cared for?

And how can they have some permanent placement?

And

we also did some follow-up around placements and what we found, which was, some of it was very sad.

Anyway, but in their current positions, we found that

there were really two groups of fathers, really two family consolations.

There was the two-parent family,

and in those situations, almost always the father was enabling the perpetrator.

And there oftentimes were additional maternal family members in particular that were also supporting mom.

In some cases, there were other maternal family members who were really, really trying to get into the system, grandparents, you know, aunts and uncles, and they couldn't kind of break

this couple because dad really supported mom.

There's another fairly significant group of fathers that are estranged from their partners, either were never married or oftentimes were quickly married and divorced.

and they're fighting for their children.

And those situations show up most often in family court.

And I think there are a couple of us who have probably done more work in family court than a lot of other folks.

And it's almost the hardest to manage those cases in family court because in family court, when you come in for a divorce, the assumption is that both parents are fit.

And so it's often very hard to really demonstrate that

this is going on.

As we covered earlier this season, Joe's dad's situation was complicated to say the least.

Reza wasn't in a position to fight for them, and Dale, Joe's stepfather, didn't really step up and try beyond housing Joe for a brief, tumultuous time when they were removed from Donna because of her alcohol abuse.

And despite the boundaries Joe worked so hard to set, their mom was difficult to escape.

Munchhausen by proxy abusers have an outsized influence on their children because of the cult-like dynamic they have with them and the ways in which they isolate and gaslight their victims.

So even after her death, Donna's ghost was going to be hard to let go of.

Do you remember the first thing you ever got paid to do as a kid?

Your first job?

Mine was weeding for my neighbors, for which I got paid $5 and a package of Oreos.

I was thrilled.

Now I weed my garden to relax, so times change.

With my daughter heading into first grade and growing up so fast that if I keep talking about this, I'm going to cry, we want to make sure that she's learning life skills in addition to what she's learning at school.

And we've been loving using Acorns Early with her.

Acorns Early is the smart debit card and money app that grows kids' money skills as they grow up.

You can use the in-app chores tracker to help them make the connection that money does not just come from mom, dad, and the tooth fairy.

And then kids can spend what they've earned with their very own customizable debit card, which is some real big kid business, if you ask my daughter.

And with Acorns Early spending limits and real-time spend notifications, parents always stay in control.

Ready to teach your kids the smart way to earn, save, and spend?

Get your first month on us when you head to acornsearly.com backslash nobody or download the Acorns Early app.

That's one month free when you sign up at acornsearly.com backslash nobody.

Acorns Early card is issued by Community Federal Savings Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to license by MasterCard International.

Free trial for new subscribers only, subscription fee starting from $5 per month unless canceled.

Terms apply at acorns.com backslash early terms.

This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform designed to help you build your career.

Whether you're brand new or looking for ways to grow your business, Squarespace has everything you need to find customers, get paid, and streamline your workflow.

I love it when brands that I already use and like sponsor the show, and I've been using Squarespace for years.

As both my team and my husband can attest to, while I have many other gifts, being tech savvy isn't one of them.

And usually, asking me to do something like create or update a website would make me want to jump out a window.

But Squarespace is so intuitive and they offer an array of beautiful design templates and AI tools that help you create the website you want.

They also have an incredible suite of new tools and features that I didn't even know about, but am very excited to try.

They've got everything from monetization and invoicing to analytics, email campaigns, and built-in appointment scheduling.

If you have a small business in a creative industry like I do, packaging this all together is a dream, especially if you are also a person who perpetually has about 27 tabs open.

Squarespace brings together so many elegant, easy-to-use tools, I just cannot recommend it enough.

So if you want to up your game and support Nobody Should Believe Me, you can head to squarespace.com backslash nobody for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, use offer code nobody to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

There's this figure in Greek mythology, Cassandra, that I feel like typifies an entire era of my life.

Basically, the time between the first investigation into my sister 13 years ago and, well, the release of this podcast.

Cassandra was a princess of Troy, and according to myth, she was so beguiling that the god Apollo granted her the power to see the future.

But, like the ancient Greek incel that he was, when Cassandra rejected him, Apollo piled on a curse.

She would always speak the truth, but nobody would ever believe her.

And that's how I felt for years until I made this show and started hearing from more and more people who did see what I saw.

And hearing this doesn't change what happened, but it's hard to overstate how much it means to be believed when you've been through something like this.

As we spoke to so many of the key figures from Joe's past, it became clear that they too were no longer subject to Cassandra's curse because people did see, they did know the truth, they worried about them and they tried their best to help.

People like Joe's childhood best friend, Brie.

I remember like trying to do, like, plotting of how like they could get me out of the house.

And we knew that your mom was terrible, and we knew she was not a fit mother.

Brie was a kid at the time.

She couldn't take Joe out of their abusive home, but she could be there to make some happy memories in it with them, to bear witness to what they experienced, and to reinforce the truth as Joe was looking in the rear view.

Likewise, Joe's teacher, Mrs.

Becker, she was also there.

She saw and she did everything she could to help.

It's like a very frustrating process, the reporting and like being worried about somebody.

Because typically I'm not probably exaggerating, but I maybe make

10 reports a year and none.

in the last three years have been investigated.

Yeah, it is hard.

I have obviously like

some really great memories here.

Obviously there's some people that including you that have like really meant so much in my upbringing and are literally reasons why I'm sitting here right now today.

One thing that Joe and other Munchausen by proxy survivors don't get much of is normalcy.

Just the chance to be a kid rather than a pawn in their parents nightmarish game.

And because of friends like Kristen, Joe got to have some of those memories in their own life to hold on to.

We just had the best times times together.

We would hang out for not even that like we'd hang out for, I don't know, a couple hours and watch TV and just have the best time, like just chilling, doing literally nothing.

Eating rice crispies.

Yes, like eating, chilling, like just hanging out.

But you just always brought so much light with you.

And it's surprising because you were going through so much that

I didn't, I wasn't really fully aware of and you've only ever brought light light to my life.

And one of the brightest spots in this journey was Joe's reconnection with their sister Crystal, who despite being in an impossible position, did everything they could for Joe.

But like I was a child raising a child that wasn't mine.

And

I thought that I was doing the best I could with with the tools I had, which wasn't much.

Like you said, you were parentified and like all of that and like you were a kid.

Like you should have never ever had to do all the things that you did for me.

And I hate, like, I hate that you had to do all of that.

And obviously, I'm like forever grateful.

So many people are rooting for Joe.

People like B.

Yorker, one of the country's most well-respected experts in Mudchausen by proxy, who is supporting Joe in their work.

For me personally, I am so delighted to have an academic mentee.

My hope for Joe is that they will continue to blossom and find joy on the journey.

And even one of Joe's most challenging relationships with their father Reza is starting to show signs of life.

I just want to have a contact with Jo and try to make her life better for her as much as I can.

Joe has often felt deeply alone, but these conversations have helped them them realize that they weren't and that they aren't now.

I also have just built such a lovely community and family for myself.

And so I think that that obviously like the people that are surrounding me now are people that

genuinely care unconditionally.

So I think that that also

made a difference.

Munchausen by proxy abuse, mishandled and misunderstood as it is, can feel like an intractable problem.

In the current climate, with so many people working actively to deny the very existence of this abuse, it can be hard to have hope.

The systems we need to change aren't going to change in time to help the kids who are suffering now.

Sometimes I'm haunted by this feeling that I had when the first case and then the second case against my sister were dropped.

This sense of, oh, no one is coming to help.

We're alone in this.

No one is going to stop her.

Just like no one stopped Donna.

And we should keep trying to change these systems.

We should keep holding the people who put vulnerable children back in harm's way accountable.

But there are people who need our help right now.

And making this season has really driven home for me how much child abuse is a community problem.

This is a shameful thing that thrives in the darkness, that flourishes behind closed doors.

The systems failed Joe, and and their community kept and keeps them alive.

So that's the takeaway.

Whether you have kids of your own or not, children are the responsibility of us all.

If you know something is wrong, you owe it to that child to do what you can to intervene.

Be the safe person.

Be their Jen Becker.

Be like Joe's pediatrician Dr.

Leo Wilson.

Be the person who believes their life is worth saving.

The events of the past several years have left many of us feeling disconnected from our neighbors, from family, from our communities.

And this is the thing we need to push back against the most.

Because it's true, no one is coming to save us.

We have to save each other.

The only way out is together.

Nobody Should Believe Me is written, hosted, and produced by me, Andrea Dunlop.

Our senior producer and editor is Mariah Gossett.

Greta Stromquist is our associate producer.

Engineering by Robin Edgar, and administrative support from Nola Carmouche.

Music provided by Johnny Nicholson and Joel Schupach, with additional music and sounds from SoundSnap.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

For quality window treatments, trust Rebart's Blind Shades and Shutters.

Specializing in Hunter Douglas custom blinds and smart shades, Rebarts combines style, comfort, and automation to enhance any space.

The blinds and shades solution for your home is just a free consultation away.

Visit rebarts.com to schedule your free in-home consultation today.

Mention Spotify for 25% off.

That's 25% off mentioning Spotify at Rebarts.

Tires matter.

They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road.

Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack.

Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy.

Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, and convenient installation options.

Go to TireRack.com to see tire test results, tire ratings, and consumer reviews.

And be sure to check out all the special offers.

TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.

Trying to lose weight?

It's time to try hers.

At forhers.com/slash for you, you can access affordable doctor-trusted weight loss treatments tailored just for you.

These include oral medication kits or compounded GLP-1 injections.

Through hers, pricing for oral medication kits start at just $69 a month for a 10-month plan when paid in full upfront.

No hidden fees, no membership fees.

You shouldn't have to go out of your way to feel like yourself.

HERS brings expert care straight to you with 100% online access to personalized treatment plans that put your goals first.

Reach your weight loss goals with help through HERS.

Get started at forhears.com/slash for you to access affordable doctor-trusted weight loss plans.

That's forhers.com/slash for you.

F-O-R-H-E-R-S.com/slash for you.

Paid for by HIMS and HERS Health.

Weight loss by HERS is not available everywhere.

Compounded products are not FDA approved or verified for safety, effectiveness, or quality.

Prescription required.

Restrictions at forhears.com.

Apply.