Revisiting Season One: There's Hope (Season One Finale)

Speaker 1 True Story Media.

Speaker 1 Hello, it's Andrea Dunlop, and today

Speaker 1 we are revisiting the season finale of our very first season of Nobody Should Believe Me.

Speaker 1 This episode is still one of my favorites that we have ever made, and was just

Speaker 1 such

Speaker 1 an apex to this whole journey. And I didn't think I would get to have this conversation.
So I sort of am still in disbelief looking back that things came together in the way they did.

Speaker 1 So I will be sharing some thoughts about this episode and what came of this conversation after. So do stay tuned for that.

Speaker 1 And in the meantime, As always, if you want more, there's a lot of exclusive bonus content on Patreon or you can subscribe on Apple, same feed.

Speaker 1 On the main feed, we are going to be bringing you some new episodes in the lead up to season four, which will be coming out in a few weeks.

Speaker 1 But in the meantime, we are going to be checking in with the Kowalski case, which is still unfolding.

Speaker 1 We are going to be looking at what's going on in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, and we are also going to be talking about some of those other cases that were covered in the Daphne Chen article that was featured in the Netflix film, Take Care of Maya.

Speaker 1 So, stay stay tuned for all of that. I'm so excited to bring you season four.

Speaker 1 And as always, you can get those episodes and all episodes of the show early and ad-free on Patreon and by subscribing on Apple. So in the meantime, enjoy the season finale.
I will see you soon.

Speaker 1 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 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 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.
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.

Speaker 1 Now, podcasters don't get a lot of control over which individual ads play and for whom on our shows, but please know that we are trying everything we can to get rid of these by tightening our our filters.

Speaker 1 And if you do continue to hear them, please do let us know. In the meantime, I want it to be known that I do not support ICE.
I am the daughter of an immigrant. I stand with immigrants.

Speaker 1 Immigrants make this country great.

Speaker 1 Many of you know that I was an author before I was a podcaster, and those worlds collide with my new audiobook, The Mother Next Door, Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy.

Speaker 1 which I co-authored with Detective Mike Weber and which I narrate. If you want to dive into these three fascinating cases, you can listen wherever you get your audiobooks.
Here's a sample.

Speaker 1 You busy? Alana said, leaning against the doorway of Mike's office. We got another Munchausen by proxy case.
This one is ours. You interested? Of course, Mike told her, somewhat taken aback.

Speaker 1 Wasn't this abuse vanishingly rare?

Speaker 1 Alana deposited the voluminous CPS report about Hope Yobara on his desk. Mike had worked dozens of child abuse cases by this point in his life.
He'd seen children subjected to unimaginable horror.

Speaker 1 He thought he had seen the absolute worst of humanity already, but nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to discover about hope.

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.

Speaker 1 I want to preface this episode by reiterating that my sister has never been charged with a crime.

Speaker 1 The two investigations into her for medical child abuse have left me with a fear that has persisted every day of my life for the last decade.

Speaker 1 Hopiabara is really the embodiment of this fear, and talking to her was a profound experience for me.

Speaker 1 And much of what you're going to hear in this episode is my genuine emotional reaction in the moment. and I really wanted to preserve it as such.

Speaker 1 I've never been able to have a conversation with my sister about why she did things like shave her head in high school or apparently fake an entire pregnancy and miscarriage.

Speaker 1 Hope is a person who we know has done those things.

Speaker 1 And she is maybe the only person that I will ever talk to in my life who could give me some insight into why.

Speaker 3 All right, here we go.

Speaker 2 We are on the road.

Speaker 2 Finally. Finally.

Speaker 1 I had been text messaging with Hope now for months, and as the meeting time approached, I got more and more nervous.

Speaker 3 What do you want to get out of this personally?

Speaker 1 For me, the thing that I could never do and that I do not foresee having an opportunity to do in my life is to sit down with my sister and say,

Speaker 1 I can help you. But that's true, that I could help her.

Speaker 1 Like, I think there's this part of me that, like, one of the things I've really wrestled with in this podcast that I didn't really even realize I was holding on to

Speaker 1 is this hope that I'll do this and that she'll hear it and say, I'm exhausted.

Speaker 2 I want to come home.

Speaker 1 Help me come home.

Speaker 1 You know, if hope could get to a healthier place,

Speaker 1 that would be a good thing.

Speaker 1 If that could play out in some sense that like

Speaker 1 Robin could have a better relationship with her, if Paul could have some kind of peace with that situation late in his life, and if they could have some kind of healing.

Speaker 1 Again, this is not like the thing where like, okay, okay, they're all gonna be having Sunday dinner every day.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like, I don't think that's like a realistic outcome for families that have this kind of thing happen.

Speaker 1 If her kids could get some answers, it could be better than it is now. And

Speaker 1 I think that if there's a chance for me to

Speaker 1 leave this family situation a little better than I found it,

Speaker 1 then I think that would really help me too. That's like a personal motivation.

Speaker 1 I want to look at her and and say like,

Speaker 1 I guess I want to look at her and say like, I'm sorry that you were in so much pain that you felt like you had to do these destructive things. Like I'm sorry you found yourself in that place.

Speaker 1 That must have been really awful.

Speaker 1 That doesn't excuse anything that she did, but that's true. I do feel that way.
I

Speaker 1 started off 10 years ago.

Speaker 1 with my sister wanting to help her and that was because I still loved her and you know this question of like the mental illness thing is really tricky because where I think we associate mental illness with like someone not being in their right mind, they're doing a specific thing to get a specific outcome, and they're doing it knowingly.

Speaker 1 And that's a really hard thing to empathize with. But I think it's really important that we keep in mind that they're doing it because they're in a lot of pain.

Speaker 1 And if we could address that pain before they get so destructive, that would be ideal.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 1 here we go. Hope had suggested that we meet at a burger joint in the tiny Idaho town where she now lives.

Speaker 1 My producer, Tina Knoll, who'd been with me on this entire journey, and I walked through the door of this little burger joint that had this retro 50s decor and was playing like 50s jukebox music.

Speaker 1 And we sat down in a booth and glued our eyes to the door. I sent Hope a text message letting her know that we were there, and she said she would be there in a few minutes.

Speaker 1 And even with that text message, I just still had no idea whether or not she was going to show, and furthermore, whether or not she was going to want to record the conversation or whether this conversation was going to be productive on any level.

Speaker 2 Hi, Hope. Nice to meet you.

Speaker 1 Nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 Do you want to go to the next one?

Speaker 1 Watching Hope walk through the door, she felt strangely familiar right away. We had been text messaging back and forth for months, and there was a little bit of intimacy that had developed.

Speaker 1 We asked Hope almost immediately if she would be willing to let us record the conversation, and she agreed.

Speaker 2 I hope Allison Pusher and I give you permission to use whatever's on this recording for whatever means you need to use it.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Miss.

Speaker 1 It was really focused on trying to have this be a conversation between two women. So we started off just with small talk.

Speaker 2 This is my favorite place to go.

Speaker 1 It's a good spot. So what else is there to do here in

Speaker 2 County? All we do is when we go out to eat, this is out to eat.

Speaker 1 This is the big J night spot.

Speaker 2 Well, and we don't hardly ever do it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we don't go out. We don't do much.
We sit at home and now the the baby got the dog now we've got the our baby take care of the baby boy you promote you

Speaker 1 even though hope seemed warm and friendly and on one level forthcoming From the get-go, she was keeping up the facade that she is deaf. This is something that she's done for many years now.

Speaker 1 She did it in all of her prison interviews, and she did it with her parents when they would come to visit her, despite the fact that we know she is not deaf.

Speaker 1 I made a very deliberate choice not to challenge her on this assertion or really anything that she was going to say during the course of this conversation, because I knew that that would lead to defensiveness.

Speaker 1 And I wasn't looking to hope to get facts. I was looking to her to get insights and to have what I hoped would be a human moment between the two of us.

Speaker 1 You've been written about a lot, and I wanted to keep this

Speaker 1 podcast from being a thing about you, not with you. And so now that we have you are with us,

Speaker 1 you're about to start a new job at Walmart. What makes you happy now? What brings you joy?

Speaker 2 Right now being with him. That's what makes me happy.

Speaker 1 Hope is referring here to her boyfriend who joined her for the interview.

Speaker 2 He's very affectionate, very much a caregiver like me, so we take care of each other.

Speaker 2 Not a day goes by that he doesn't tell me something sweet

Speaker 2 or special.

Speaker 1 What do you want people to know about Hope?

Speaker 2 That I'm an individual. I have feelings

Speaker 2 and that

Speaker 2 I love my family, especially my children, more than anything on this planet.

Speaker 2 Regardless of what I've done and the choices that I've made, what I I would say to all of them is that I am so sorry for everything that I put them through.

Speaker 2 I was selfish.

Speaker 2 I love my family, especially my children, more than anything on this planet. It was not fair and not right that I put them through what I put them through.

Speaker 2 She was low with my baby girl and I have so much regret for hurting her.

Speaker 2 And in the process, hurting the other two as well.

Speaker 2 I was selfish and I will carry that guilt for the rest of my life for hurting all of them.

Speaker 2 My biggest hope is that

Speaker 2 my kids one day see that I didn't do it to hurt them. I didn't do it because I don't love them.

Speaker 2 I did it because I didn't know better.

Speaker 2 I thought that's

Speaker 2 what I needed to do.

Speaker 1 What have your revelations about that been? Because I think that that might really help people understand

Speaker 1 better

Speaker 1 how things get to that point.

Speaker 2 There's other ways to feel loved.

Speaker 2 I didn't feel loved.

Speaker 2 I had a wonderful husband.

Speaker 2 I had three wonderful kids.

Speaker 2 I didn't see another way to feel loved.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's just something that's internal, something that I had to figure out. I had to see the bigger picture

Speaker 2 that I've loved regardless of what people say.

Speaker 2 How people respond.

Speaker 1 You said nobody wants to feel like an outcast.

Speaker 1 And that struck me so hard because especially the deeper I've gotten into this and talked to your dad and talked to your brother and sister, like that's not how anyone else in Hope's life would have described her.

Speaker 1 You know, just that you were really fun and really smart and like life of the party. And so surprised.

Speaker 2 That's not the way I felt.

Speaker 2 Most of the time I felt like the loner.

Speaker 2 I enjoyed being with people. I'm a people person.

Speaker 2 But I don't feel like the center of anything. Now I'm okay with that.

Speaker 2 And so because

Speaker 2 you know, I was going through adolescence and all that, and because I was not popular, there was a lot that that I felt like I was missing out on.

Speaker 2 When I got towards the end of high school I knew what I always knew I wanted to be a veterinarian. Of course

Speaker 2 those plans kind of got interrupted. And that's okay because I have three wonderful children and let me tell you what I would take those kids over a career any minute.

Speaker 1 You also had a career. Like you're almost describing it like you sort of underachieved, but I mean you didn't.

Speaker 1 You got your degree and you had good, well-paying jobs and you were working and you were like involved in the community and you had your kids and you were, I mean, you were doing a lot.

Speaker 1 One thing that I've wondered in looking back through my sister's pattern of like when these behaviors started to emerge, when they got really bad, it seems like

Speaker 1 that sort of stress level getting really high,

Speaker 1 that it was almost as though she was doing some of those behaviors to like get some kind of relief. Is that something that resonates with you at all?

Speaker 2 That's an interesting thought. I got Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
I was like, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday hours.

Speaker 2 He's like, oh man, I'm with you. I don't think so.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 what do you think you were seeking?

Speaker 2 I just wanted to feel loved, and I didn't, and I don't know why. I had a wonderful family.

Speaker 2 I had a wonderful husband.

Speaker 2 Wonderful children. I don't know why I didn't feel loved.

Speaker 2 I just wanted to feel loved. That was all.
And I did what I did.

Speaker 2 I'm guessing

Speaker 2 because it made me feel loved.

Speaker 1 It's not that I want to make you relive the details, but I just, again, I'm really just looking for insight.

Speaker 1 You know, in terms of the cancer, do you have any sense of what kicked off that situation or like where

Speaker 1 you know that played into what you were needing at the time.

Speaker 1 Because I think that maybe one of the keys to helping families is to be able to catch

Speaker 1 things earlier. You know, after what happened with my sister happened, I thought back on like my parents and I sat together and thought, oh, this thing, oh God, this thing.

Speaker 1 And we sort of saw this whole like chain of events going back to when she was at least a teenager. And for my parents, I think even far beyond.
And

Speaker 1 I could see then in retrospect things escalating.

Speaker 2 Is there a moment when we could have

Speaker 1 said,

Speaker 1 you're clearly going through something.

Speaker 1 You're clearly doing some destructive things to get it, to get what you need, to get your emotional needs met? Like, I think that's a better way to say it, right? Than getting attention, right?

Speaker 1 Like you said, acceptance, love, those things. Like, I wish that I could have seen those behaviors

Speaker 1 as sort of these cries for help that they were, and it's clear that those were cries for help now, in terms of like

Speaker 1 my sister is not getting her emotional needs met. She does not feel loved, she does not feel accepted, she feels alone, all of those things that you've described to me today.

Speaker 1 I wish that I could have seen those

Speaker 1 seemingly bizarre behaviors as, oh, this is a symptom of what she's feeling on the inside, and then like gotten to her, helped her, helped her address

Speaker 1 what she was feeling before she ever hurt anyone else. Was there a moment some of these feelings really started to manifest for you? And like, what could someone have done?

Speaker 2 Meeting with counselors and seeing what the source of the behaviors was

Speaker 2 or could have been.

Speaker 2 Now, at the back side, I can see

Speaker 2 the truth.

Speaker 2 And what do you think that truth says?

Speaker 2 That I am loved.

Speaker 2 Regardless of what my life looks like, how I feel, I am loved.

Speaker 2 I couldn't have picked a better father for my children.

Speaker 2 And he's done it all alone because of my stupid decisions. He's had to do it all alone.

Speaker 2 And I know that sounds hard work.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I wish

Speaker 2 one thing I could change would be go back and change what I did.

Speaker 2 So they would have never broken apart to begin with.

Speaker 1 When you think about your younger self

Speaker 1 before

Speaker 1 the very beginning of these behaviors and like before it escalated to the you know stuff with the cancer and all of that, like what would you say to your younger self?

Speaker 2 Look at the bigger picture.

Speaker 2 Stop looking within the look

Speaker 2 throughout.

Speaker 1 Do you get now the sense that your internal reality like did not match the external reality?

Speaker 2 Very much so. The way I feel,

Speaker 2 a lot of the time it's not true.

Speaker 2 It's false perception.

Speaker 2 My big focus and part of my changing now, I want to make sure that I don't ruin another relationship.

Speaker 2 The guilt that I have not only with the kids, but I hurt Famin and his family as well.

Speaker 2 And it was not fair.

Speaker 2 If I could have changed anything,

Speaker 2 aside from not hurting the kids, I wouldn't have hurt

Speaker 2 the man who was standing by my side through everything.

Speaker 2 But I did.

Speaker 2 And he did what he needed to do, walked away.

Speaker 2 I'm going to make sure that I don't make that mistake again.

Speaker 3 Your family had some very sweet things to say about you. Do you want to hear one?

Speaker 3 I can play for you some sound.

Speaker 3 And they got some really sweet things to say.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 2 No prize.

Speaker 1 You have really good memories of you.

Speaker 2 I'll turn it up real loud.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Just repeat what she said.

Speaker 2 We'll hear.

Speaker 1 We'll listen to it and then we can kind of talk you through it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So Hope was the oldest of the four of us, so she was kind of when mom was gone or dad was gone, she was kind of the adult in the house, which was always kind of interesting because she was

Speaker 2 a bit of a wild one sometimes. But we were really, really close, especially as I got into high school.

Speaker 2 And that's really where my relationship with Hope had grown a lot because she was the first person in my family that had gone to college. She did really well.

Speaker 2 She was doing well in her life and was kind of an inspiration for me. So when she had her oldest kid, she was still in college.
And so I spent a lot of time.

Speaker 2 We got to go out and see her and kind of see what that life was like. And so it was kind of inspiring to me.
Like she was someone I wanted to kind of be like.

Speaker 3 So Nick is saying that he was very inspired by you.

Speaker 3 That he looked up to you and he was very inspired by you.

Speaker 3 And you taught him something that he still remembers today.

Speaker 1 And he just so looked up to you and you were the first person in your family to go to college.

Speaker 3 He wanted to be like you

Speaker 3 and be as successful as you were.

Speaker 1 How does that feel to hear that?

Speaker 2 See, my Nick

Speaker 2 always did so so good.

Speaker 2 It's strange that he did good because he looked up to me.

Speaker 2 It seemed like he always just did good on his own.

Speaker 1 You were his example.

Speaker 2 If someone else, another mom,

Speaker 1 finds herself

Speaker 1 where you were in this sort of situation where

Speaker 1 she feels like the only way that she can feel loved and accepted is to have be in the position of having a a sick child. I've got an answer.

Speaker 2 Look outside the box. Don't look internal because you are loved.

Speaker 2 Regardless. May not feel that way, but you are.

Speaker 2 Because you don't want to wait until you get to the other side of a bad decision to be able to see it. Don't wait till it's too late.

Speaker 2 Because that's what I did.

Speaker 1 If you could go back and like grab your hand,

Speaker 1 you know, right in the middle of that, what would you say to help? Like, what would you tell Help to do?

Speaker 2 I would have told my mother. If she couldn't help, she would have found the right help.

Speaker 2 I wish I could go back and tell my sister that.

Speaker 1 And that's the thing, I guess, what breaks my heart is like, my sister could have, she could have said that to us.

Speaker 1 My God, we loved her. We would have done anything for her.
She could have come to us. And like, there's part of me that's like, that's all I ever wanted was her to just say, like, please help me.

Speaker 1 Part of me with this podcast almost hopes that, like, I'll put this out there and she'll say, I'm tired of doing this. I want to come home.
I don't think that'll happen, but like... It's a wish.

Speaker 1 It's a wish. It's a wish.

Speaker 2 And the hardest thing about talking about it is having to admit that you've done wrong,

Speaker 2 to accept that you've messed up.

Speaker 2 And that's the hardest thing about talking about it.

Speaker 2 You have to face the facts. Eight years into my imprisonment, I still hadn't faced the facts.

Speaker 2 It wasn't until I'd given up on myself and my family that I was forced, that I was kind of forced to face the facts. And that's what keeps me from doing it again.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of days where I feel like it's not worth living anymore. Then I remember, you gotta be strong for those kids.

Speaker 2 Whether they know it or not, it doesn't matter. I've got to be strong enough for those kids.

Speaker 2 And I believe one day I'll want that relationship with mommy again.

Speaker 2 And I keep being strong every day until that day comes. Because I'm still their mama regardless.

Speaker 2 And nothing can take that away.

Speaker 2 If it's 10 years away. It's just about.

Speaker 1 How do you think you

Speaker 1 prepare yourself for those eventual conversations? I mean,

Speaker 2 I've got to be honest. Whatever they ask, I've got to be honest.

Speaker 1 And do you think that you'll be able to kind of have a relationship with them like on their terms?

Speaker 1 It'll have to be.

Speaker 2 It'll have to be. That's not an option.

Speaker 2 It's going to have to be on their terms. That's going to have to be that way with my entire family.

Speaker 2 I lost my terms.

Speaker 1 With my own sister, as I said, there was like a lot of things that led up to that break.

Speaker 1 And one of the most frustrating things was that she wouldn't ever

Speaker 2 fess up.

Speaker 1 Even if you can't undo it or make it better,

Speaker 1 just to have someone say,

Speaker 1 you're not crazy, I did that thing, is a relief. And if you don't get that accounting, if you don't get that person looking you in the eye and saying, I did that thing,

Speaker 1 here's, you know, where I can try and explain why I did it, and I'm sorry, it reaches a point where you just think, like, if I can't

Speaker 1 have any honest accounting, I can't just keep acting like things are okay.

Speaker 2 One of our projects in prison was to write a forgiveness letter to somebody that we've hurt.

Speaker 2 The letter I wrote was to my mother.

Speaker 2 I sent that, but I don't know if she ever got it. And I hope she did

Speaker 2 because I fused up and asked her to please forgive me for hurting her because I know she's the one that I hurt the most.

Speaker 2 But I sent that very close to the time that she passed away. So I don't know that she got it.

Speaker 1 What do you hope for

Speaker 2 going forward? I want restoration about it.

Speaker 1 Because of the effect that this has had on my personal life, that's helped me a lot to understand

Speaker 1 what sort of goes on in these cases and what genuine like healing and restoration can look like.

Speaker 1 And it can happen.

Speaker 1 And it takes a lot,

Speaker 1 a lot of work.

Speaker 1 You know, it means taking, you know, a full accountability and sort of working through these steps probably wouldn't look like what you might have hoped when you were younger, that your relationship with your family, you know, there's no way that these events are not going to take a toll.

Speaker 1 But, you know, if you

Speaker 1 wanted to put in that work,

Speaker 1 I'm happy to help connect you to some folks that can help you do that. And And to me, that is a really necessary part of like

Speaker 1 you being,

Speaker 1 you know, healthy enough to have that relationship with your kids that you want. That's going to be good for them.

Speaker 1 You know, you've said to me over and over again that you don't want to hurt your family anymore.

Speaker 1 You worried about doing an interview because you didn't want to, you know, compound the damage and that kind of thing. And I think that like, There is a way for you to do that.

Speaker 1 I think that's been a new revelation for me that that is even possible. You know, you were in prison for 10 years.
You've lost your whole family.

Speaker 1 Like, you, I have no, there's no question of you having suffered consequences.

Speaker 1 So, I also just wanted to come here today to tell you that, like, if that is something that you are interested in, if that is something that you are willing to do, then it can be done.

Speaker 1 It will be a difficult process and it will take a lot of work on your part.

Speaker 2 I don't skirt or walk away from hard work. And if it means that my family can come back back together I'll do whatever I can do to make it happen

Speaker 2 because the family that

Speaker 2 I know

Speaker 2 I don't have right now

Speaker 2 if the time comes for us I want my family to be there

Speaker 2 my entire family is phenomenal one thing I could change would be go back and change what I did so they would have never broken apart to begin with I mean mean, is there anything else that you want to say to them?

Speaker 2 Just that I love them.

Speaker 2 I know I didn't show it.

Speaker 2 My actions showed how much I didn't love them, but that's not why I did it. It wasn't because of them, it wasn't their fault.

Speaker 2 And then, my biggest regret of all my decisions is that my family is not together like it used to be.

Speaker 2 How much my parents lost because of me

Speaker 2 Not right.

Speaker 1 My empathy for Hope is real, and I don't think that it's helpful for anybody to put her at the remove of making her into a monster. She is the person who did those things.

Speaker 1 Lied to her family for a decade about having cancer, told her children that she was going to die, poisoned her coworker, took blood out of her daughter, who put pathogens into her daughter and put her daughter at substantial risk of death, put her family in a situation where they lost their livelihoods and their relationships with their community.

Speaker 1 We don't have a reason to believe that she's truly changed because true change for someone like this is rare and very hard work.

Speaker 1 Even though hope said so many of the right things in the moment, and in the moment, I tried to take those things at face value so that I could continue sitting with this woman and having that conversation.

Speaker 1 I didn't want to let my own grief or anger take a hold of me. And it was really important to me to see this conversation through to the end.

Speaker 1 The moment that it was over, I felt tremendous relief and I felt the veil

Speaker 1 of hope's influence lift.

Speaker 1 My producer Tina and I met up with two friends after this extremely intense conversation. As we walked those several blocks, I sort of felt reality rushing back towards me.

Speaker 1 All those waterworks were like an attempt to

Speaker 1 get me under the spell of, like, I'm a victim, and

Speaker 1 I feel empathy for her, but it's a knowing empathy. It's interesting to be able to hold both those things.
She does remind me so much of my sister.

Speaker 3 You got to see this person, you know, and she did say, like, that I'm an individual with feeling.

Speaker 1 I'm a person here.

Speaker 3 And I thought that was really important because what happens in cases like this when they get media attention or it's a black and white it's a myopic character the character is the their crime their punishment

Speaker 3 and then they're gone so life began in their crime ends when they're either punished for it or they die or they disappear yeah

Speaker 1 it's satisfying to have had the conversation

Speaker 1 I don't think that I think there was like a couple of moments where I felt like the real person came to the surface.

Speaker 1 One of the really interesting things that like comes up that like becomes this very like high level philosophical question that I don't even know how to begin unpacking is like, are people who do this

Speaker 1 capable of love?

Speaker 1 Like the idea of doing any of the things, the most minor of the things that Hope or my sister has done. I can't even,

Speaker 1 I don't think she did those things because she specifically wanted to hurt them. I think she felt a disconnect disconnect from them and objectified them and used them to get her emotional needs met.

Speaker 1 And I don't think that she was never loving towards them.

Speaker 1 I think she might have been. And actually, from Robin's description, she was.
And I think that she can learn to have more empathy.

Speaker 1 I do think that's something, but it's crossed my mind that hope having this contact with me is something she could try to leverage to get what she wants. I do think she wants back in the family fold.

Speaker 1 I do think she wants all those people to love her, and I could be a means to that.

Speaker 1 And that's why I was kind of trying to make it clear to her today: this is not, I'm not talking about, oh, they just need to forgive you. Like, they don't.

Speaker 1 I don't know if they want any of those things. Like, I listen, I have had to have this conversation with my parents.
If you are on your deathbed, do you want me to call her? That's their choice.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to be all, you should reconcile at this point. No, because she's going to come in there and manipulate them.

Speaker 1 What I realized during the process of this is that, as I was telling, I said to hope.

Speaker 1 I was like, I think there is a very irrational part of me that has hoped that if I do all this, if I put all this out there, that somehow I'll put this out in the worlds.

Speaker 1 She's going to pick up the phone and say,

Speaker 1 I'm tired.

Speaker 1 living like this,

Speaker 1 tired of hurting people.

Speaker 2 I want help. I want to come home.

Speaker 1 What I also realized

Speaker 1 is that

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 have a death

Speaker 1 that I have never grieved properly.

Speaker 1 And what I really need to do is say goodbye.

Speaker 1 I need to say goodbye and just let her be gone.

Speaker 1 Because I think that that's the thing that we all struggle with.

Speaker 1 Those of us in the blast zone.

Speaker 1 Like, how do you reconcile the fact that this person that you loved and have many good memories of in some cases not in all cases turned into this other person who did these monstrous things that you just can't even wrap your head around

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I think like

Speaker 1 I have to say goodbye and to stop regarding the person out there with her name and face as my sister it's not my sister anymore

Speaker 1 and I think that's where this ends.

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Speaker 1 Almost all of this episode, actually all of this episode was recorded in the field.

Speaker 1 And it's really incredible to have this record of processing this really hard thing in real time.

Speaker 1 And that's just really a gift that really my producer Tina, who was with me.

Speaker 1 in Idaho recording this and kept the tape rolling when we were on our way there when we had just gotten out of that meeting with hope and all of this just sort of came out and

Speaker 1 i do think that making this first season of the show really helped me to move to a new place with my relationship with these events in my life and

Speaker 1 you know the truth is that

Speaker 1 something ended, a chapter of it ended. It's not over because it's never over.

Speaker 1 And that's something that those of us who, regardless of what your relationship to is, whether you're a sibling of a survivor, whether you're a sibling of a perpetrator, whether you're a parent of a perpetrator or a parent of a survivor, a survivor yourself, whatever your sort of relationship to it is, we know.

Speaker 1 that it doesn't really end. It's just not the kind of thing that you sort of, quote, get over.
And I think that's true of a lot of big family traumas.

Speaker 1 And this in particular, because often there is such an unsatisfying conclusion to the way that these play out. And especially when you feel, as I do, the children in the situation are still in danger.

Speaker 1 It isn't over. And it is something that will continue to come up and will continue to evolve.
And I don't know what the future holds.

Speaker 1 I don't know, you know, as I said, I think this was the end of my hoping that

Speaker 1 anything that I could do

Speaker 1 would affect how my sister is going to proceed in her life. We are not going to come to a resolution.
I feel pretty comfortable saying that at this point.

Speaker 1 And with regards to her children, you know, they still live with her and her husband. And

Speaker 1 whether they will grow up and want to talk to me, want to contact me. Part of the reason I made this show was so that they could find me and know that they could contact me me if they wanted to.

Speaker 1 Whether they will is an open question. You know, this situation will not end with this show, with any season of this show, but it was a really

Speaker 1 important.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you feel this way. I hate using the word journey.
It just brings to help every bad self-help cliche, but I don't know what else to call it.

Speaker 1 It really was sort of an epic journey making this show. And it was so hard to get this interview with Hope.

Speaker 1 We had months of back and forth where she agreed to an interview, pulled out of the interview. I think she invented at some point a lawyer that was prohibiting her from doing the interview.

Speaker 1 I don't think that person necessarily exists. I'll never know, like many things about Hope.
But yeah, there was a lot of back and forth.

Speaker 1 And when I was talking to her, as you heard, I did make that offer of, listen, like, if you're serious about wanting to progress and get help and all of that, like I have some of the best resources a person could possibly have and all these professionals that I know.

Speaker 1 And I would have helped her. She had my phone number.
She still has it, but I did never hear from her again. So I don't know how to interpret that.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that sort of what she said was completely insincere about wanting to get help or if that just felt too overwhelming. I don't know because I didn't hear from her.

Speaker 1 I think what goes on in her mind, just like what goes on in the mind of any other perpetrator that has been so deceptive and so manipulative and has such a history of that, will always be a little bit of a mystery.

Speaker 1 I think there's really perpetrators are sort of the black box of this whole situation.

Speaker 1 And I think it was very interesting talking to Hope in that in the moment, she's saying these things that make you feel like she's being accountable, right?

Speaker 1 She's not denying that she did these things, but she's also still being dishonest.

Speaker 1 You know, she had the entire ruse the whole time of being deaf and she was using sign language when she first walked in.

Speaker 1 And, you know, there's that strange moment where Tina plays the audio for her of her brother Nick talking about her and her boyfriend that came in with her, Hope's boyfriend at the time, saying, oh, no, she can't hear, she's deaf.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we all sort of knew that wasn't true. And so they played the audio anyway.
It was very bizarre.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like she wasn't saying she didn't do it, but nor was she really being accountable for her actions.

Speaker 1 And there was that moment where she said it started for her when the baby was born premature. But of course, the cancer hoax had already been going at that point.
So that it was obviously a lie.

Speaker 1 So I think it's just like, it was very interesting to hear people's reactions to this conversation with Hope. Some people felt like I was too easy on her.
And I get that.

Speaker 1 I think it's a, you know, it's a difficult line when you're talking to someone who really has done the kind of things that Hope's done.

Speaker 1 But I also knew that it wasn't going to make any sense to press her for details because there was no reason to believe that she would be honest about them. She had done previous interviews.

Speaker 1 It's not like she's had some miraculous turnaround where she's decided to sort of come clean about everything. So I didn't think that that was going to happen.

Speaker 1 I was not surprised when she came in pretending to be deaf. I just wanted some insight.
And there was sort of a couple of moments where I was like, okay, that's real.

Speaker 1 You know, when she was talking about sort of her experience of it. And I think when she was talking about wishing she'd told her mother, Susan, that felt like a really emotional moment to me.

Speaker 1 And I think she genuinely is probably sad. It's a sad situation.
It's a sad outcome.

Speaker 1 It was a very, very strange day.

Speaker 1 Probably the strangest day of my life. But it was also a really good day.
And I felt better since that day.

Speaker 1 I think that's probably the closest that I'm ever going to come to having closure about the situation. And I'm really grateful for it.
And I'm grateful to you for joining me. on this strange odyssey.

Speaker 1 So thank you for listening. Thank you for revisiting season one with me.
And

Speaker 1 we will be back next week with brand new content and very soon with season four.

Speaker 1 And I will see you then.

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 If you are curious about this show and the topic of Munchausen by proxy, follow me on Instagram at Andrea Dunlop.

Speaker 1 Our lead producer is Tina Knoll. The show was edited by Lisa Gray with help from Wendy Nardy.
Jeff Gall is our sound engineer. Additional scoring and music by Johnny Nicholson and Joel Schupak.

Speaker 1 Also, special thanks to Maria Palaeologus, Joelle Knoll, and Katie Klein for project coordination. I'm your host and executive producer, Andrea Dunlop.

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