Revisiting Season One: Nobody Would Believe Me: Dads Part 1

True Story Media.

Hello, it's Andrea Dunlop, and welcome to the fourth episode of our first season of Nobody Should Believe Me.

Stay tuned after this episode finishes, or fast forward if you have already listened to this episode, because we have an awesome update today with George Honeycutt, who is one of the dads who's featured in this episode, and you will not want to miss that.

And in the meantime, if you want even more brand new stuff, you can check us out on Patreon or subscribe on Apple.

This month, I'm going to be doing a deep dive on the Justina Pelletier case with our very special contributor, Dr.

Becks from Florida.

And I know that's one that a lot of you have asked about.

So check that out there.

I will definitely cover it on the mean feed as well at some point.

So without further ado, here is today's episode.

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 munchhausensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.

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So if you're looking for resources or ways to help, we wanted to let you know about a wonderful organization that we're partnering with this month.

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Immigrants make this country great.

The detective said missing kids usually come home.

What happens when they don't?

Based on a true story, police looking for John Gacy.

We discovered bodies by the looks of the younger man.

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Do you know how many there are?

Up to you to find out.

People believe their eyes.

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.

If you questioned everything that everyone told you, you couldn't make it through your day.

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

Even though the crime is very intimate between the parent and child, the blast zone that these

acts leave in the family, in the community at large, is so huge.

huge.

You sort of have these rings of who's affected and how much.

And on the outside, it might be, you know, a person who donated $20 to a GoFundMe and then found out it was all a lie and that they were enabling abuse.

And then as you go further and further into the circle, you get to people who are closer and closer to the victims and to the perpetrator.

In many of the cases I looked into, at the very middle of the blast zone is the dad who also loves those kids and presumably may have loved the perpetrator as well.

I really think and feel especially strongly after talking to Detective Mike Weber about these other cases and the patterns that develop in the way these investigations go that the dads are so key.

If you can get the dad on board, if you can get him to see what's happening, you have such a better chance of protecting those kids.

My brother-in-law, who has not been investigated for child abuse, was one of the first people that we talked to when we heard about the investigation into my sister.

We didn't have control over how that information got rolled out.

One of the big missteps in the first investigation that did involve my family was that CPS revealed to my sister and her husband.

who had initially reported concerns to the doctor.

My mother's name was was all over the paperwork.

We wanted to get her help.

We wanted to intervene, but we did not want to destroy their family.

That was not our goal.

We were very desperate to explain that to my brother-in-law because, you know, we found out he called us when CPS had come to get my nephew and we didn't know any of that was going to happen.

So it completely caught us by surprise.

We had not confided.

in him that we had these concerns because we were not sure what his reaction would be.

He was not open, once we did try to have these conversations with him, to hearing about some of these past incidents, such as the fake pregnancy that I told you about, that had stoked our fears.

And there becomes just this immediate taking of sides when there is a suspicion of Munchausen by proxy in the mix.

You know, we knew him pretty well before this investigation started, but not really well enough to guess how he was going to react under these circumstances.

And he ended up siding with his wife.

In the interest of full transparency, I wanted to tell you that my brother-in-law listened to the first episodes of this podcast and reached out via social media to my production team large to let them know that he took issue with my version of events.

They issued an invitation to him to come on and go on the record saying whatever it was that he wanted to say, and he declined that offer.

I should say that that invitation is an open one.

Anytime anyone wants to come on, we're willing to listen.

And in fact, we have some questions of our own.

He also is claiming publicly, you may have seen this if you follow on social media, to have documentation proving that some of the things I've said are not true.

And I welcome him to share that anytime.

I want to reiterate that everything that I have said about my family's situation is both true and verifiable, and I have nothing to hide.

So once we were aware of the investigation, my parents and I tried to explain to my brother-in-law and his family some of these incidents in her past that were causing this concern, some of which I've talked about on this podcast.

And that did not go well.

She really turned that around on us and said we were bringing up old things from the past and really turned us into the enemy pretty fast, quite frankly.

The last time that I saw my sister, my mother and I were sitting in a meeting room in the courthouse with a social worker and a very large group of my sister's supporters, including my brother-in-law and his parents.

They were really just making us out to be the worst people in the world because we had these concerns and we were really trying to explain to them that we just wanted what was best for everyone.

But that dynamic just devolved really fast.

Ultimately, this first investigation into my sister amounted to nothing other than splitting my family up, and the state did not file dependency against my sister.

When Detective Mike Weber told me about George Honeycutt, I knew I wanted to meet him.

I am born and raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a small town outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Nobody knows it, so we go by.

We just say Tuscaloosa because I'm not even on the map.

When I graduated high school, I joined the the Marine Corps, went through boot camp at Paris Island, and then went on to Pensacola, Florida for training, and then to Cherry Point, North Carolina.

While I was in Cherry Point, I had gone home for Christmas vacation, and I met Elizabeth.

And

it was a pretty quick turnaround on the relationship there.

We met around Christmas and we were married in February.

I graduated

all of my the last school of my training March 23rd of 2007.

And

we just had fun.

We hung out.

We were friends.

You know, she was my best friend.

We just clicked.

Talking was easy.

Hanging out was easy.

I was very open about my dedication to my job.

You know, I was a Marine and that's something that

That was going to be at the top of the list every time.

I felt like she understood that, you know,

if

when somebody needed to go somewhere, I wasn't going to shy away from it because that was my duty.

That was my job.

And I needed her to understand that.

And she did.

She was always okay with that.

You know, she knew that when she married me, that I was going to be gone.

That's a sacrifice that families make.

Absolutely.

To protect our country, right?

Absolutely.

George met Elizabeth when he was still really young.

George had just finished training at Cherry Point, the Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina, and met Elizabeth when he was home on a visit.

George's patriotism is impossible to ignore.

He has the bearing of a Marine, and he has a giant tattoo on his forearm that has an American flag and an eagle and that says, God bless America.

You can really feel talking to him how important his

role as a Marine was to him.

From there, we hopped in a U-Haul u-haul and uh drove out to san diego we moved out to san diego california and didn't know any single soul out there all we had was each other you know two o'clock in the morning we didn't have anything to do we got in the car and got lost in downtown san diego had the best three-hour trip trying to get 15 minutes down the road you know because we had no clue where we were and did not have a GPS.

We just hung out.

We had a good time together as george told me about his early marriage with elizabeth my ears perked when he mentioned that she'd had a couple of miscarriages these play a pretty strong role in these stories she got pregnant again pretty quick after we got there and had another miscarriage and then um

she got pregnant with trip our our oldest

His name's actually George Allen III, but we call him Trip.

Soon after that, George is called up for duty and deployed to Iraq.

And his wife, Elizabeth, is home with their kids.

And just as everyone described hope and how I knew people looked at my sister, George told me that Elizabeth was just a stellar mom, and she was doing her duty as a military spouse, you know, keeping the home and the family intact while George was away.

At some point, she started calling George a lot.

One week, I got a phone call.

I got an emergency Red Cross message that my son had quit breathing and he was in the hospital.

So they put me on the first thing smoking back to San Diego.

And

when I got home, Trip was fine.

He was breathing fine.

And, you know, I got home, took a shower, packed a bag, and we got back on a plane and flew to Alabama to be with my family.

So I was brought home from my deployment early.

And that really, looking back, that was really the first sign, you know, all of a sudden the attention's not on Lyssa anymore.

Sometime after, George and Elizabeth, or Lyssa, as he calls her here, had their second child, Cooper.

And just like Tripp had been, Cooper was born premature.

What was the first

thing that you

noticed in the moment?

When was the first sort of inkling that you had that something was off?

I never had it.

I had complete faith in that woman raising our children while I was gone.

My schedule didn't allow me to go to doctor's appointments.

It didn't allow me to really spend any kind of real quality time with the kids very often.

You know, you're talking 16, 18 hour days.

When I was in San Diego, I was either on deployment or I was doing workups for deployment.

So we were out training, you know, up in Camp Pendledon or somewhere else.

you know, we're always gone.

It never crossed my mind.

For a perpetrator like this, someone who is deployed and away from the family for long periods of time and otherwise engaged is the perfect spouse.

Here's Mark Feldman again, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama, and a man I've gotten to know very well over the past couple of years.

He is one of the world's foremost experts on munchasum by proxy.

To a very large extent, medical child abuse is a crime of opportunity.

And in every society I'm aware of, mothers tend to be the primary caregivers of children.

So they have an access and credibility with doctors and others that fathers may not have.

The father may not be involved at all with any of the medical visits.

Again, I think the issue of it's being a crime of opportunity helps explain why 96 to 97% of all perpetrators are in fact a female, specifically the victim's mother.

With Cooper's health deteriorating, George wanted to move back stateside and be closer to his family.

He transferred to a Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth and worked there at a complex with these huge four separate military commands.

It was a really busy place.

There were more than 10,000 people coming and going at any one time.

So even though he was much closer to his family, his hours were still long and the work was really demanding.

So given that, Elizabeth was still in charge of the boy's health for most of the time.

He'd had a feeding tube place while we were in San Diego.

He had had

a couple of,

they put the scope down his throat.

They think they'd done that twice.

And Cooper's health really, really started deteriorating once we got here.

In my situation or my children's situation, Elizabeth had the doctors wrapped around her finger.

She'd show up to the hospital with the kid that

couldn't stay awake.

He was half the weight he should have been, couldn't hold his head up, had this helmet on.

She created

the symptoms.

They weren't symptoms.

They were side effects of a drug.

Unless the doctor sees that medication being administered and the mother doesn't tell him, it's a symptom, not a side effect.

So the doctor's going to try to treat the symptom.

Doctors can be fooled.

They're human.

They're just as human as you and me or anybody else out there, you know, and we all make mistakes.

I don't blame the doctors.

The doctor was trying to make my kid healthy, and I appreciate that.

If

we are going to see any change happen,

people have to understand that

it is a conscious action taken by the mother every time they do it.

And it's a selfish,

cruel thing to do.

I mean, Cooper was tortured.

George will never forget the day that everything changed.

This was a Saturday.

I come home.

I think I got up like two o'clock that morning and went to work.

And I get home about 4.30 that afternoon.

It's hot.

It's the middle of the summer.

It's just scorching hot.

And I'm exhausted because I've been on a flight line all day.

No shade, just in the heat, in these airplanes, you know, baking.

And I just want to sit on the couch in the AC for a little bit in a pair of gym shorts and relax.

Well, she decides we need to go take family pictures at the park.

And she tells me,

You need to go get ready so we can go take these pictures.

I'm like, I really don't want to take pictures today.

I just want to relax.

I'm exhausted.

I'm tired.

She's like, well, you need to to get up and go get dressed.

We don't know how much longer we're going to have with Cooper.

You need to go get dressed.

So she was using it to get what she wanted out of me, too.

And she would kill Trip me.

What did I do?

I got my little happy ass up, went, took a shower, got dressed, and we went and took pictures.

That Monday, he got a call from his mother while he was at work.

And she told him something really shocking, that she had found a medication that was meant for his other son, Tripp, buried in a cup of yogurt that Elizabeth had been intending to feed Cooper.

This phone call sent George reeling.

And as he often did when he felt overwhelmed, he went for a run to try and process what his mother had just told him.

When I got home, she was starting dinner and she was

acting kind of strange.

And I went into the boy's room.

She kept Tripp's medicine in the top drawer of a dresser.

And I went in his room and I opened that drawer up and the medicine was still sitting there.

So I grabbed it and I went out.

I was like, hey, Alyssa,

Tripp's medicine is still here.

How is he going to take it?

He's in Alabama with our parents.

She was like, oh, I gave them some.

That's just some extra we had.

So I just, you know, we didn't need to send all of it.

Okay.

Just the way that she responded to me, I could tell she was instantly nervous you could hear the shaking in her voice i couldn't shake the the feeling that that now was the time by the time i determined that i needed to confront her right now i was half a mile from the house so i sprinted back home i walked in the door

he just panting out of breath i was like hey let me ask you something and then i just asked her i was like have you been given Cooper Tripps medicine?

She said, no.

Okay.

And I picked him up.

I said, so if I take him to the hospital right now and have him drug tested, is he going to test positive for anything that's not supposed to be in his system?

She just kind of looked at me.

She said, yes.

She said, but it was only one time.

It was only one time.

I was just so stressed out and you weren't here and I didn't know what to do.

I didn't say another word.

I grabbed Cooper.

I grabbed his bag.

We went into the bedroom.

I closed and locked the door.

I went into the bathroom, closed and locked the door and went into the closet and closed the door.

And I called 911.

What did you say to the 911 operator?

My wife's been poisoning my children, trying to kill them.

What I want to point out here is that this is not how these stories usually go.

The father does not usually have this clear of a grip on the situation.

George was incredibly direct in his assessment of the situation and in the action he took immediately once he realized that Elizabeth could be a danger to his children.

She's She's going to be trying to come get these kids here pretty soon.

And

I need some help not letting that happen.

George understood that his wife was a threat to their children, but that is not what the police saw when they arrived.

They saw an attractive young mother who was under duress.

George went into extensive detail about what happened next and the many ways in which he ran up against a brick wall with both CPS and the police as he tried to address the situation with Elizabeth.

The case was eventually referred to a detective in the Crimes Against Children unit, but George understood immediately that he was not taking it seriously.

I scheduled a meeting with him and his supervisor.

I presented a PowerPoint presentation and

about an hour-long worth of evidence, pictures, emails, messages, text messages, phone calls, medical records.

Pretty much presented the entire case to them.

Everything they needed, the prosecutor.

They, you know, they were like, well, we're going to, we're going to talk with some people and we're going to see what to do with this.

That's when Mike Weber showed up.

That's when progress started being made.

Mike is actually how I learned what it really was, what medical child abuse really was.

There comes a moment in every case, and the Honeycut case is quite different for the fact that family court, again, was ignoring the fact that she was criminally charged and she was about to get unsupervised visitation.

It came to a point where I had to make a decision, do I have enough evidence?

And at the time, thankfully, I did.

You know, an arrest warrant is based on probable cause.

Do I have probable cause to believe that she's committed a crime?

Will a judge read my arrest warrant affidavit and agree with me that there's probable cause that she's committed a crime?

Thankfully, in that case, gave them my affidavit and they agreed that I had probable cause, so did the judge.

And we were able to get that arrest warrant.

And I think she got arrested showing up to get the kids.

Was she trying to get custody of the kids?

It was to the point where I was standing in the driveway with the kids and she was there with her mother to get them.

Mike calls and says, hey, don't give them to her.

Like I'm literally buckling them in the car seats.

And Mike's like, don't give them to her.

We've got the conditions set it strikes me that this fell into place really fast it it is a it's a hard leap to go from

this is someone i love

and

they're doing this really monstrous thing i still love her she gave me two of the most precious children on the face of this earth That was hard for me to wrap my head around.

I mean, at the time, I was still a kid.

I was 24, maybe.

You know, I still had a lot of that immature emotion, you know, instant anger kind of thing, you know,

when I didn't understand something.

And this was something I did not understand.

This dramatic turn was the beginning of a really long journey for George, who would spend the next five years and somewhere around $80,000 trying to get custody of his two boys.

Elizabeth would eventually plead guilty to two counts of injury to a child in two separate states.

The case was finalized in January of 2015.

Do you have any contact with her?

I sat and talked with her at a bookshop in March of 2020.

That was the first time I had spoken to her since,

well, since the day I confronted her.

What was that conversation like?

I just asked her how she was doing, you know,

how she was doing mentally.

After she had pled guilty, she'd gotten in some trouble with drugs.

And she actually ended up going to jail for a little bit while she was waiting on a bed at a rehab facility.

They forced her into, because she was on probation, they made her go to a women's facility and wait for a bed at that rehab center.

And then we talked about the boys.

I

talked to her openly about them, you know,

how Trip has her attitude.

General questions.

Nothing, it wasn't anything like in-depth or

nothing crazy.

And then I told her that I forgave her,

that I still loved her,

but I would never trust her again.

As much as I want my kids to have a mother,

she took that from them.

I don't think I took it from them.

She robbed them of a mother.

She robbed them of

what we'll call a normal life.

Cooper's just now getting comfortable going swimming without a shirt on from the scars on his stomach.

There were times where I wasn't a good dad just because I was pissed off at the world, you know, and that wasn't fair to them either.

That's my fault.

There was a situation I was put in and I didn't have the mental capacity to understand it or handle it at the time.

What do you think needs to change to better protect children from this?

People have to face a very ugly truth

that

a mother's love doesn't always come natural.

And that there are

evil people out there that care more about how the world sees them than they do about their children.

Elizabeth chose herself over our kids, she chose

a pat on the back

over healthy children.

And until the world is ready to

allow themselves to see

that

this evil

hides itself in a mother,

nothing's going to change.

People don't like feeling uncomfortable.

And a mother trying to kill their kids makes people uncomfortable.

And until people are willing to submerge themselves in that uncomfortable feeling for long enough to get a grasp on what this is and help us figure out how to stop it, it's going to keep happening.

More and more and more.

And there's going to be a lot of tiny little caskets going in the ground.

It's one thing to look at these stories in the rear view, but it's impossible to overstate how confusing it is to be involved with one of these perpetrators in the moment.

Between misdirection

and lies and what might be some underlying medical conditions, it can take those who are close to the perpetrator years to sort out what was real and what wasn't.

And this was true for Fabian Ybara as well.

I didn't think Hope was lying about the little one.

I thought she was misdiagnosed.

Because there's a lot of times where I did not not do treatments and she was better off.

So I never thought she was lying.

I just thought I was misdiagnosed until I read later.

CF is not very hard to get misdiagnosed.

It's either you have it or you don't.

We both have to carry the gene.

There's no way.

So I didn't know that then.

She was definitely the researcher and

she had books.

I mean, we had lots of books on this.

She even wrote notes and stuff like that.

And to this day, I think I still have her notebook details on medications and what she did when she went to the doctor and she knew terminology.

I mean,

somehow she learned how to say those words and she knew what they were.

And just in case the kids ever ask, can I see that?

I do have them just for that, because I know they have questions.

People need to understand that with this type of abuse, it's deliberate and the woman is not delusional.

She's not overly anxious.

She's She's not, there's other reasons that people can over-medicalize their children, but this is very separate.

This is intentional.

This is knowing they know right from wrong.

That's really important.

And something like a detailed notebook of diagnoses and terms for things speaks to that.

It can be tempting to look at these cases and wonder, where was the dad in all this?

What was he doing?

But the reality is that it's really common for the mother in the family to be the person who's mostly taking their kid to the doctor.

I'm a mom and I'm also a freelancer who works for herself.

And so I'm usually the one who takes our daughter to the pediatrician when she needs to go.

And for various reasons, this is true for most of the moms I know.

Here again is Detective Mike Weber.

I think societally, we...

Mothers in our society kind of take that role upon themselves.

And

men in our society are more than willing to allow them to to in many cases.

Number one, you don't want to believe that you've married someone who could do this.

You don't want to think that your judgment is this bad.

I think that's human nature to feel that way.

And these offenders also isolate the father.

In many instances, they don't allow the father to be part of the medical care.

It can be in a divorce situation very harsh, but when they are still together, it's very manipulative.

No, you go ahead.

I'm going to take her.

I don't need your help.

You're busy.

You're tired.

I've got this.

Very much along those lines of manipulating to where the offender is the one taking care of the child's health needs.

And surely once this is discovered, surely a caring parent is going to feel guilt over that.

And they're going to try to, and I think this is important for investigators to realize, they're going to try to make themselves seem to have been more involved than they actually were.

So, you know, especially investigatively, you need to ask questions of the father, very probing questions about were you involved?

How were you involved in makeup?

Where did that surgery happen?

Questions of that.

You just don't take dad's word for granted in these cases.

Someone had said something to me.

He goes, Why don't you ever go to a doctor's office with her?

I mean, she's your child.

He goes, he goes, I did.

I did go.

I went a few times.

I actually, I went more than a few times, but I was in the waiting room with the other kid.

When I hear people goes, why did you do anything?

Because I was.

I was being a parent to the other ones.

Even if you had been sitting into that, in that room, if Hope had told a lie six months previous that had made its way into the doctor's note, you might well have heard that doctor repeat that lie.

I mean, I think the way that these things make their way into the sort of bloodstream of the whole thing

there might not that might not have done any good for you to be sitting there listening in yeah my therapist said he goes you weren't fooled i mean you were but so was the doctor right so were the doctors so was everyone yes he goes so when you say why didn't i know he goes even the medical professional take your child bought into it so he goes yeah you hadn't you had no clue and like you said the doctors just read off notes I always think of it as like as a as a game, like a computer game.

You fall into into the reality of the game after everything happened i didn't know who to blame i was angry at everybody and i did get blamed by some of my friends people don't understand after all the aftermath i still had to raise three kids and they don't understand that part but i still had a job to do you know when everybody started saying what she has

And I knew the word munch houses.

I did not know the word by proxy.

Her mom first told me she has munch houses.

I go, and I was like, are you sure?

He goes, yes.

I think when I was going through this and before I ever really met other professionals who were working on it or, you know, other people who'd been involved with it, I thought, boy, I have the weirdest story in the world.

Nothing like this has ever happened to anyone else.

I feel like I'm the only, I feel like we're the only family.

And then I'm like, oh no, they all sound like this.

It's a playbook.

If I wasn't involved in the story, I would definitely feel sorry for her.

I don't think she's ever apologized.

With my child, she was like,

i don't know i had nothing to do with it and she was more afraid of losing

no she was more afraid of

she got found out than anything it was just frustrating that she never acknowledged anything

she was never sorry for what she did she never showed any remorse uh i don't think she was ever

sorry for what she did

it's not the little one who got the brunt of it it's the two older ones.

It wasn't easy to open up to me.

Like, hey, so where's mom?

Or where's mom doing?

And Chris, they knew.

And I just wasn't, so I wasn't ready.

And sometimes I had to go to therapy to figure this out, how to approach them.

And now they can ask me anything,

but they can ask questions.

I don't think they want to.

I think they're a time in their life where they're okay.

They don't need a disruption.

I'm sure it bothers them.

But I think when they're ready to talk to their mom, I think, I think they'll be ready when they want to be ready.

Right now it's not the time, but I'm supportive.

If they ask me questions, I will answer them.

I still have a couple letters from her

apologizing for putting me through this.

I don't know if it was me raising the kids by myself or everything else.

I still have that letter just in case, just in case.

The kids ever ask, what did you do?

What was your part of it?

I think it's important to remember that families can still heal even when the wounds have been really deep.

I really wanted to talk to Fabian about how he talks to his kids now who are the older two are now of age and the youngest is in her last year of high school.

It's still not a close chapter in this saga.

So it's still going on.

I did bring people in and I did bring people in that I thought they can help them.

My mom and sister are great.

Someone, I think my sister told me, goes, get as many people to love them as possible.

But

that's not a bad thing.

Because

one player is out of the game, but the other ones are still in there.

So that's what I did.

I'm a very trusting person by nature, but it's hard when I know a lie.

I was like, oh my gosh, what else are they lying about?

It's not hard to form relationships.

with other people, but I just don't want to sometimes.

Or sometimes I just don't want to talk to anybody.

People have asked me because, what would you do differently?

Because I don't know.

I don't know.

They're so cunning and

they cover their tracks well.

And if you're looking for it specifically, then yeah, maybe.

But

I mean, there's just a layer of lies, and you may catch one or two, but that's just uncovering the whole root system of lies.

It's a horrible disease, and it is a disease.

They're sick.

This innocent ones have no clue.

You trust somebody with all your heart and

they betray that trust.

I pray for her, but dang,

she screwed up a lot of people.

I did say this before, and even though I do forgive her, I cannot forget.

The other two children, I can't see their scars.

I'm sure there's tons of emotional scars there.

The other one, I can see her physical scars.

Thank God she's a very strong, independent woman.

At the end of the day, I think I did okay with them.

I think they're going to be okay.

And then what I would tell everybody else

that's going through this is

just love them.

I just, that's the best thing I can say.

Just love them.

Because of the nature of these crimes, there can be an intense us versus them dynamic that develops within families.

And it was incredibly heartening to me to hear how positively Fabian spoke of the Butcher family and how positively the Butcher family spoke about Fabian, even after everything they've been through.

I know how tempting it is to put the blame on someone and they have clearly risen above that and put the kids first.

And that's the best thing that anybody can do in one of these situations.

I left these conversations feeling really hopeful for these kids, despite the fact that I know that they've been through an incredible trauma.

I also know, you know, in talking to Fabian about the conversations that he has with them and the conversations that he anticipates having with them, there's going to be a trail for them to find.

My sincere hope that it's been helpful for Fabian and the butchers to talk to me.

I know it's been helpful for me to talk to them.

I'm unbelievably grateful of how generous all of these people were with their time and with their stories.

I also hope that this might provide provide some context for Hope's kids and also, obviously, for any other survivors that are looking to understand their life.

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It's so good to see you, George.

How are you doing?

I'm doing pretty good.

So we are just revisiting the episode that you were in in the first season, which we recorded almost three years ago now when I was visiting Fort Worth.

That is crazy to believe.

Isn't that something?

So I wonder, was that the first time that you'd really spoken publicly about it?

I know that you have testified before the legislature in Texas, but was that the first time that you'd spoken to a media outlet about your story?

Yeah, that was the first time, more or less, that my story was given a bullhorn to be heard through.

We didn't know that it was going to be a bullhorn at the time.

We didn't know what size horn.

It did.

Hey, I'm happy about it.

Yeah, me too.

We certainly didn't know as many people were going to listen to it as it did.

And I know that, I know that your story was one that really resonated with me when I first heard it.

I mean, I really remember after talking to you.

you know, being in the lobby with my producer, Tina, who was also there during that interview and just thinking, oh, we really have something.

Like these stories are really incredible.

And, you know, what was it like for you?

Did you listen back to the episode when it first aired?

I did.

And I cried like a baby because I've, I've told the story a thousand times and that still gets me choked up from time to time.

But hearing it versus telling it is two different things.

And I didn't think it would be as hard to listen to it as it was.

What was that like?

Like what was different about listening to yourself tell it than the experience of sort of reliving it when you're talking about it?

Because instead of concentrating on what I'm saying, I had time for the first time to really kind of relive the situations that we'd spoke about without having the distraction of the storytelling while I was doing it.

That's crazy to say, but I had more of an emotional connection listening to the story than I did actually telling it.

because, you know, like I said, I was able to actually feel those emotions again.

And there was times I was pissed off.

You know,

I wanted to walk away from it.

And my wife was there with me listening to it.

And it was really the first time she had heard the whole story as well.

So there was a lot of emotions going on that night.

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about because this was the first time that I had talked about any of these things that had happened in my own life was the first season also.

And it was a very surreal experience to listen back to it.

And

I found that exactly what you're describing when you're in it.

And I think especially because these stories are so shocking.

And in most cases, the person that you're talking to is having a very big reaction to the story that you're telling them.

When you're trying to tell someone, you get in that space of trying to deal with their reaction and trying to like manage their reaction, for lack of a better word.

Or yeah, and like you said, you're trying to explain something that's really complicated that people are not bringing any context to.

Like it's a stressful experience oftentimes.

And yeah, like listening back, it definitely gave me more perspective.

And I think, sort of, maybe more empathy for myself going through that.

Like, did you find that for yourself as well that you kind of thought back and were like, oh, wow, Past George really went through something?

Yeah, it was the thought that kept coming into my mind was, I can't believe that I handled all of that when I was 24 and no one was dead.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

Because I was, I mean, no, I wasn't even 24.

I was, see, it was 2011, June 2011.

So I was, I was 23.

Wow.

Baby, George.

Baby, George.

My son, Trip, is 16 next month.

So

my gosh.

That's

really, I, I mean, I'm in a time warp just listening to it.

And it's funny because I think even like, as you tell me that, I mean, I knew when this happened, but I forgot that you were so young when this was going on.

And you had such an uncommon clarity about the threat of the situation in a way that like i still really haven't talked to anybody else who sort of got it as quickly as you did and then the fact that you were 23 is just so shocking so you mentioned that you listened to this with your wife and you were not married the last time that we talked so please tell us please give us the update there who is this wife that you speak of

so my wife her name is ashley She and I went to school together.

We were kind of often on high school sweethearts.

I proposed to her the day I met her when I was 12 years old, and she told me no.

That was wise.

That's too young.

That's too young.

Yeah.

Well,

I say, look who won.

I played the long game.

Or maybe it was sort of a not right now, just like, wait a

decade and a half or so.

Yeah, it took me 22 years, but hey, I got the job done, you know.

And then

Monday was the one-year anniversary of her becoming the legal guardian of Tripp and Cooper.

Oh, that's so wonderful.

So she legally adopted them a year ago.

That's really wonderful to hear.

I'm happy for all of you.

So you have moved also in this time period because when I first moved you, you were in Fort Worth and you are no longer in Fort Worth.

No, we have moved back to my hometown of Brookwood, Alabama.

We bought a small farm and I work for a company as a senior project manager.

That's fantastic, George.

Such good news all around.

I am curious to hear, so it sounds like maybe you had told Ashley some of the broad strokes of what had happened, but you said this was kind of the first time that she'd heard it in that much detail.

What was that experience like?

Because this is sort of your, as you said, kind of your hometown childhood sweetheart.

And then, you know, you had a lot of life happen between when you knew her then and getting, getting back to know her.

And so what was it like disclosing essentially all of that that had happened?

Well, it basically boiled down to, listen, I've got one hell of a story to tell you, and you're probably not going to believe half of it.

Because that's how this goes.

I mean, if we're honest about it, people don't want to believe it.

And I don't don't blame them.

I didn't want to think that this was out there, you know, and I still don't.

But it's there.

I promise you.

I've lived it.

My son lives it.

After we had our last interview, Cooper has been really interested in being a part of it.

And I think he's just about ready to do that, you know, and he has one hell of a story to tell.

And people need to hear it.

Maybe it'll bring some reality to the whole situation.

Yeah, absolutely.

So what was Ashley's reaction to all of this when you told her?

Just heartbreak, heartbreak, and sorrow.

She has two boys of her own that are her oldest, Lucas, is the same age as Cooper, two months apart.

She's been the primary caregiver for her two boys for their entire lives.

So, it's kind of seeing the reverse side of the card that you didn't know existed.

And so, there was a bit of shock and heartbreak, I would say, is the best way to describe that.

I'm sure, I'm sure.

And then you said you both listened to the episode together.

Was that, did that help sort of deepen her understanding to be able to like hear it in that way?

Yes.

So we would pause it, right?

We had it sitting in front of us and she had control of the pause button and the story would go and she'd pause it.

All right, explain this to me.

And then she, and I'd explain it, and then she'd hit play.

And then a few minutes later, she'd pause it again.

Okay, but you said earlier that, yeah, yeah, she did say that.

Yeah, that's exactly what she says she was doing, but that's not what she was thinking of.

Right.

So it was, it was a great tool to have in front of me to tell this story because I only had to step in to make some highlighted reviews.

Yeah, I, that's, that's so interesting because I will tell you that that's one of the ways that I really hoped it would function.

Like, specifically for those of us who participated and were telling our stories, but also for just anybody who's been through this.

And I do hear from a lot of people that if they are trying to tell someone that they're a survivor of this abuse or they're trying to tell, you know, they're in your situation where they're a dad, that they can just send people the podcast and it will be like an introduction to it.

And people can listen on their own time and sort of process on their own time.

And it doesn't put, because I had found that burden of trying to explain it to people from sort of square one, like, here's something you've never heard of.

You're going to find it really shocking.

You're going to find it really upsetting.

It's like you kind of can work some of those layers and then like come back with whatever questions you have after listening to the show.

And so I'm, I'm really, I'm really happy to hear that, that it was that kind of tool for you.

And I'm also wondering, I think like it's such an interesting question to me, how you sort of handle.

talking to the kids about it, right?

In the second season, we had Alyssa Weyburn on, who I think is probably about the same age as Tripp because she is 16.

Cooper.

Cooper, sorry.

Yeah.

So she's 16.

And we talked to her.

And yeah, I would love to talk to either of your boys anytime they want to talk.

I agree with you.

I think that those perspectives are really important to have out there.

Did they listen to the episode?

Cooper did.

I think Trip did.

I'm not 100% sure.

I let Cooper listen to it alone first.

He asked to hear it by himself.

And I thought that was a fair ask.

So we did that.

And he was very emotional.

It wasn't anything he didn't already know.

So he wasn't learning new information.

He was just hearing it in a different tone, more or less.

Yeah.

And how do you, you know, since it's been several years in the boys' lives since this was, since we first talked about it, I mean, how is your, how have your conversations with them around, you know, not just the story of abuse, but sort of like how they relate to.

Elizabeth, their biological mother.

And as you said now, Ashley is their adopted mother, which is really beautiful.

I mean, what's that transition been like for them?

And kind of what sort of questions do they have around all that?

They had more questions about Ashley when she and I first got together than they've ever had about Elizabeth.

I mean, they were babies when I found out what she was doing and we got a divorce.

So there wasn't really a conscious relationship between them and Elizabeth.

And so there wasn't really a whole lot of information requested.

I get, I ask, answer every question, honestly, and to the best of my ability.

And there's been a few times where I've referred them to Cece, their grandmother, to ask ask that question to her because she's probably going to know more than me.

And Cece, is that Elizabeth's mother?

Yes.

Okay.

And so it sounds like you're still in touch with Cece and she's still in the boys' lives.

Yes.

That was part of the agreement for Elizabeth to relinquish her parental rights.

I agreed for grandmother to get a few visits a year and contact on the phone, you know, which is fair.

I mean, Celeste is her name and she had no wrongdoing in this other than supporting her daughter, which I, to an extent, I understand.

And so I didn't want to rob her of her grandchildren.

You know, that's not fair to her.

Yeah.

And also, I think, you know, as complicated as families are, as long as the people are healthy enough to be around your kids, it's just better to have more people that love them around, right?

Absolutely.

It takes a village, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yes.

Big one.

So do you have any contact with Elizabeth at all?

No, I met with her right not long before you and I sat down the first time.

And I may have spoken with her one or two more times after that, but that's pretty much it.

It wasn't for me.

And I didn't feel like I was really gaining any new information to pass along.

So I didn't bother anymore.

Yeah, it's like there's always going to be questions, right?

Like, I don't even know that anyone who does this could necessarily provide satisfying answers to any of the things that you would want to know about why they did it, about how they could have done it.

It's, it's not, it's not something that I think you're ever going to 100%

understand or even partially understand.

You just sort of have to accept that it's a pretty big aberration in human behavior and it just sort of is what it is.

You have to recognize it and act accordingly.

That's the important thing, which you did.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

So you have also been active in our support groups.

And if it's okay to ask about, obviously without disclosing any of the details that is something that we've been doing and you've participated in those.

And so you've been able to connect with some other dads who've been through this experience.

What has that been like for you?

It's been very rewarding to hear back from the powers that be that, hey, you talking to him really turned it around for him, you know?

And I really feel like y'all's conversation has put him on the right track.

And getting feedback like that is very rewarding.

And that's what I would want.

out of this scenario, right?

Is to help these dads that are struggling to understand that or to know know that they're doing the right thing, you know, because I mean, I struggled with that when I was making the decision

of what I was going to do about my situation and the boy's situation.

I struggled with the fact that, well, that's their mother.

That's my wife.

There's no way she can really be doing this stuff intentionally to hurt these kids.

There's no way.

It's just not possible.

And to have to come to that realization, it wasn't as difficult for me, but that's just because I'm, I'm a very cut and dry kind of person, you know?

And so if things are pointing a certain direction, it really doesn't take a whole lot of justification.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know that people who haven't been through it quite understand

how bad that feels to

have to come to terms with the fact that someone that you really love is capable of that.

It doesn't feel good.

And there are going to be a lot of people around you that don't believe you, don't take it seriously, tell you you're being horrible, you know, all manner of things, which of course is like the dad, you know, the dads we go through, I think, especially, right?

Because I think sometimes people really jump to this conclusion of like, this is a bitter custody thing and this is a, you know, bitter X thing, kind of put it in that context.

And that's really painful when this idea that you are seeing a very real and present threat and that people are not taking it seriously.

One of the blessings that I had was before this information came to light for me through my family, Lissa and I had a great relationship.

You know, we were happily married, raising our boys.

There were no issues.

There was no separation until I found out what happened.

Once I found out what she was doing, it was immediate cutoff because at that point, you have to choose your children or your wife.

And I love my children, but I was always raised up that, you know, your wife comes first or your husband comes first, and then you provide for your children.

And there are very few instances where that will not be the case.

Unfortunately for Lyssa, she struck on one of those instances.

Yeah, that I can see what you're saying there, that like you guys didn't have all this other discord.

There wasn't other stuff going on that you could sort of be like, oh, he's only doing it because of this.

It's like, oh, he really is recognizing this threat.

And I wonder, like, do you,

because I sort of honestly am like off and on in this, although in the last year, because there have been a couple of big cases in the news, I've been following it really closely.

But how much do you follow, like, you know, the gypsy Rose Blanchard getting out of prison and sort of the Mayakowalski case and kind of some of these big conversations that are happening in the media?

Like, do you tune into that at all?

Or do you kind of just like

wall it off?

I more or less wall it off.

I've lived it.

I don't need to watch it, you know, and other people's cases are their cases.

They're not,

I'm not one of those type people that wants to get in someone's business like that.

I'd rather raise my boys and live my life happily and blissfully ignorant

outside issues.

That sounds very nice.

I am unfortunately one of those people that likes to get in other people's business because I'm a podcaster,

but with the best intentions I like to think of.

But yeah, I just, the reason I ask is because I think one of the, these two big cases that have been in the news and just the kind of broad strokes, you know, you have a situation where There are many questions in the Mike Walsky case about how much the dad might have been a collaborator in the abuse that was happening.

And then in the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case, you have a case where the dad was really completely pushed out and he was very young when Gypsy was born.

And I'm kind of familiar with that one more so.

Yeah.

And it's brought for me kind of watching these two cases and watching how people react to it and also being a parent and just thinking about, you know, I think some of what's so interesting about these cases and makes them so complicated is it brings up so much about like the role of a mom, the role of a dad, our thoughts about what a a mom should be, our thoughts about what a dad should be, you know, like all of those things play out in this very dramatic fashion in these cases.

And I just think it's like,

I certainly like, there's part of me where with the Rod Blanchard story where he just hadn't seen her in a long time, he sort of got cut out knowing how manipulative perpetrators are, I can sort of see how that happened.

And then there's also part of me where I just think, man, you really should have gotten in there and stood up for your kid and you should have known what was going on.

And I, to be fair, I think that's how he sees it also.

Like, I think he feels a lot of regret, but like, it's just very interesting, like all of the things that it brings up and like, what is a dad's duty to their kids?

And I think like, we don't necessarily expect dads to be protective in the same way that we expect moms to be protective, which that's part of like what informs the conversation around this.

And I think like, if you have a mom that's accusing a father of abuse, then you immediately are sort of like, well, she's doing that because she wants to protect her kids.

And I don't think we necessarily,

we see sort of dads fighting for their kids in a different light than moms fighting for their kids.

And sometimes it's like, oh, wow, like, look at that great dad that wants to be in his kids' lives.

Like, sometimes it's, it's a, you know, I don't know, there's a lot.

There's sort of a lot here, but I just, I, I think it, you know, I think you know what I'm getting at.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a real old school way of thinking on that that the father is the provider and the mother is the caretaker, right?

That's how I was raised.

You know, my mom was there for every event.

You know, if I was sick, she stayed home with me.

She would take me to the doctor, give me the school and bag, get my, you know, she took care of all of that.

Now, my dad, on the weekends, we would hang out, you know, but during the week, my dad's working.

My dad's earning a living.

He's making a life for all of us.

And that's the way a lot of people were raised, right?

Now, there's nothing wrong with that.

I don't speak negatively about any of that.

But in today's society, that's just not how it is anymore.

That's not how families work, right?

My wife has a full-time job.

She's a business owner, right?

And I work an hour away from home.

But there are times where she's too busy that she can't take the kids to the doctor.

So I take the kids to the doctor.

And I'm the one that coaches the Little League baseball team.

And I show up to football practice, you know, and pick them up and go to the games and try to make every event, whether it's band concert or football practice or baseball games or track and field anyway we have four of them we're all over the place right I was like yeah that's that's I was thinking you guys have four boys four teenage boys that's a lot of that's a lot of that's a lot of sports that's a lot of sports going on right there yeah a lot of activities

I cannot wait for trip to get his driver's license but the world today is different than it was when we were growing up as far as this mentality of the mother is the caregiver because that's not necessarily true it's more of a you know 50 50 kind of thing or 100 100 however you want to look at it, not to shed any negative light on it.

It's everybody's giving to the kids, right?

We want our kids to be as successful as possible.

You know, you want to see your kids as a general rule of thumb that I've always thought of.

I want to see my kids be 50 to 100% more successful in life than I was.

And how are they going to do that if we're still reverting back to the way that our parents raised us, right?

So

I think that's the big thing that people can't seem to get past is because they know that's been drilled into their head so much.

Yeah, I think that the existence of that cultural expectation really actually gives us a huge blind spot for this abuse, right?

Because I think that I've thought a lot about why it's such a high percentage of female perpetrators.

And I think it's because it's the only area that we really give women like full control, right?

It's like that's sort of the unquestioned, like, who's the unquestioned person in charge of kids?

And so, like, I think abusers will abuse power.

I think that has so much to do with it.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And, and I think, obviously, you were in a very specific situation because you were in the military.

So, that really put you in a position where you weren't necessarily able to be present the way that you are now.

And it sounds like you're really enjoying being around for all that stuff.

I mean, that's all the good stuff of being a parent, and it sure goes by fast.

So, I'm glad you're being able to do that.

So, tell me, how's Cooper doing?

Just tell me what's he like?

What's he into these days?

Like, just tell me about him he's uh big into track and field now we started track practice on his birthday february 5th he's huge he's four or five inches taller than i am now we're gonna need some pictures i think

all right i'll send you one later on this evening he's massive he's i always knew they were gonna be taller than me but this is offensive

His personality is starting to develop.

You know, he just turned 14, so he's really kind of coming into his own now.

And while he had his own ways and quirks about him, now it's becoming more prominent now.

And I'm very proud of him.

You're getting some of those, some of that foreshadowing of his like true adult self now at 14.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Straight A student, you know, I mean, he's super smart in the books, but common sense, he can't walk in two gum at the same time.

Well, that's 14-year-olds for you.

Yeah.

I remember that.

In his defense, his 37-year-old dad's not much better.

Oh, I don't know, George.

I think you're doing great.

You know, I feel like obviously a lot has changed in your life since we did this interview, right?

You had a move, a job change, a marriage, you know, your boys have an adopted mom.

So many good things.

I'm just, I'm so happy to hear all of these updates.

You know, I've found that over time.

And especially with like sort of, yeah, telling the story and being a little bit more out and meeting other people who've been through it, which has such been very helpful helpful for me as well.

And connecting with you.

And, you know, we've stayed in touch since we did the interview.

I've stayed in touch with most people who've been on the show.

It's a bond, you know, it's a real shared experience.

And for me, my relationship with it has changed over time and just sort of continues to evolve, right?

As I get to new stages of my life, as I get to new stages of being a parent in particular, right?

I think having an a story like this in your family obviously affects your parenting.

For me, I find that it really is present in different stages of parenting as well.

And And I wonder just like, how have you found that your relationship with this and how you feel about it has sort of evolved over the last few years?

Man, it's been a tornado of emotion.

It's just wide open.

You know, when all of this first happened, I was pissed off at the world.

There was nothing anybody could say or do that would calm me down.

And then now it's more of a, I feel bad for her and I feel guilty.

for the kids.

And I wish I had been able to provide a situation for them where they wouldn't have had to go through that.

I wish I had been able to see it so I could have stopped it, you know.

Not that I think I'm this big, bad man that can figure everything out instantly, you know, because that's not the truth.

I just, I hate that the situation exists and it's not fair to them.

And I think that while it may not be visible now, I think it initially set them and me, it set all three of us back emotionally.

Decades, you know, it was a rough situation, you know, I had basically had to learn how to be a dad overnight.

I was rarely involved with the kids' day-to-day activities because of my job and what I was doing.

And then overnight, I was the only one that was involved in their day-to-day activities.

And that was a, there was a steep learning curve because I didn't know which way was up.

So I had to get through that.

And the boys paid for that.

And then emotionally, I wasn't, there were times where, and there still are times where I'm just not able to deal with situations.

I have trust issues and they do too you know it took it took a long time i mean ashley and i were married in october of 2021 and the boys are honestly just now coming around to really having the trust level in her that is just unquestionable.

I mean, they definitely trust her and love her now.

They come in like, I get my feelings hurt a little bit every now and then.

You know, the boys will come in and they'll be like, good night, Ashley.

I love you.

And I'm in the bathroom.

I'm like, am I, what am I chopped liver?

remember me, dad?

You know, the guy that's been with you since day one.

Oh, that's really,

oh, yeah.

Good night, Dad.

Oh, you too.

Put your ass to bed.

There's some balance to be struck, I've found, with like,

it's not something, I mean, especially obviously with your boys, it happened to them, even in sort of my adjacent position with my sister, you know, it's not something you get over.

It's not something that like you just ever will be be sort of like, oh, that no longer affects me.

But I think your relationship to it changes.

And I think like,

I love your story because it does have a good outcome.

And I think it shows,

you know, for dads who are listening to this, who are in it, and we both know dads who've not had this outcome.

You know, and you had to fight really, really hard to get the authorities to take this seriously and to be able to be in the position that you're in now.

And you do deserve a lot of credit for that.

And even for dads that fight really hard, they don't necessarily get a good outcome.

We both know how, you know, the deck is not stacked in favor of people trying to hold people accountable for this abuse in a just sort of general way, whoever, whether that be law enforcement or family members or what have you.

This particular deck of cards is not stacked at all.

It's just scattered across.

It's just chaos.

Yeah.

It's just

52 card pickup.

Yeah.

No, that's, that's, that's true.

That's a good description.

It's good visual.

It's not easy to get these taken seriously it's not easy to get to a good place where you have a good outcome and where you have kids that got to have a childhood because yes you know it wasn't ideal and there were setbacks but they still are

healthy and thriving and are getting all those opportunities to build their identity to build their relationship that would have you know what we now know from having talked to some of the other survivors like all of that would have been taken away from them if they had been left in that situation And, you know, if they had physically survived it, there would have been a lot of emotional and psychological damage that just is takes a lifetime to undo.

And so they are in a good situation.

And I think it's, it's a good thing to remind other dads and other people in the situation, other family members that are fighting for those kids, like this is worth fighting for.

Like getting to a good outcome is worth fighting for.

One of the things that I kept reminding myself of while I was initially going through this, I'd say for the first two or three years of it, one of Cooper's doctors told me had I not acted on the information I had, he believed that Cooper would have been dead within one to three months based on the medication he was being given, his age, and how the issues he was having.

He doesn't believe he would have survived another three months.

So that was something I reminded myself of daily, you know, and when you're in the middle of it, when all three of us have the flu on a Friday and I've got to go to work, you know, like that's what gets me there, you know.

Had I not done that, we'd be at a funeral home right now.

That was the, one of my drivers for a while.

Yeah.

Sometimes it can be hard because these cases can sound so complicated and so, you know, there's so many details and they're so confusing.

But it's like, I do think people really, really need to understand that the stakes are life and death of a child.

Absolutely, they are.

And that's one of the things that blows my mind that there's, I know you don't understand the stuff, not you, but people in general.

and that's one of the things that that we faced when we were testifying in front of the house sub judiciary committee just the the unwillingness to listen not based off of viable information but based off of nothing more than pure opinion some of the feedback we got was that you know there's no way that an uncollege educated mother would be able to pull this off in front of a medical doctor without their having any responsibility in it.

And to that, I say bullshit because that the biggest thing about these offenders is that every single one of them has found a way to be clever and manipulative on all levels.

And if you're going to sit there and tell me that no matter what your college education level is or any education level for that matter, if you can sit there and tell me that you've never been fooled and you've never had one pulled over on you, then I'm going to point to you a liar because that's not true.

We're all fallible, right?

We all make mistakes.

And doctors get to glimpse at your children when they come into their offices.

So they're basing the majority of their opinion is being based off of information the primary caregiver who is bringing them to the doctor every day is giving them.

And who is that?

The mother, the offender.

Right, right.

And I think, yeah, I mean, in almost all cases, and I think when people make that argument, I always wonder if they they have ever, in fact, taken a child to the doctor because, or gone to the doctor, because I think it's like, it's easy for people to forget, right?

That like, it's not a doctor performing like a whole bunch of like diagnostic, scientific, rigorous, it's like.

What do you do when you take your child to a pediatrician appointment?

They ask you, how's the child eating?

How are they sleeping?

If they're underweight, they talked about feeding.

If they're struggling with this, they talk about this.

If they observe symptoms, they're not going to assume, for instance, that you've drugged your child.

Like it's not, you know, and also

it is 2024.

Information about symptoms, medical, it is at the touch of a button.

I don't, you don't have to go to college to go on WebMD.

And like, I think that that, you know, that sort of conception of offenders in this arena as being masterminds is a stereotype that is not correct.

I mean, insofar as there are enough people that know about it for it to be a stereotype.

But I, I, I mean, I, that was even something that I came in with.

You know, my,

my sister's incredibly smart and could fool probably just about anybody but it doesn't take that right i mean the brittany phillips case same thing we covered you know she was not especially smart she was a bully and the information is so accessible the healthcare system is so fragmented it's really not difficult to pull off like doctors are not trained to question parental reports about their child in the 10 minutes they're seeing them for a visit.

And it's just, absolutely, yeah, people just completely misunderstand that and i think to some degree willfully you know yeah in cooper's case he was diagnosed as failure to thrive they placed a feeding tube and did a fund application to stop acid reflux well he legitimately had the reflux but it wasn't near as bad as she was making it out to be right she was giving him clonidine as a medication but she wasn't telling the doctors that she was giving him clonidine She was giving him the clonidine and then presenting him to the doctors with the the side effects of the clonidine as the symptoms.

And the doctors are seeing the symptoms.

They're not going to drug test a four, five, six month old.

Why would they?

He can't even hold his head up yet.

You know, and honestly, and this is where I was with it.

Who wants to think that their mother or this mother is doing that?

No.

No doctor's going to think to do that.

It's worth saying, especially in Elizabeth's case, like she's a pretty white, normal seeming mom.

It's not the, you know, there are probably situations where a baby would get drug tested, but this is not it.

You know, this is not the one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, I really hope that as we just continue this project and the more stories, I mean, because I think the thing, I'm sure it strikes you too, meeting other dads, like these stories are so similar.

Like the feeding tubes, the fund applications, fund application is not

a word that I ever thought would just like roll off my tongue, but I've written it and said it so many times because it's come up in so many of these cases because acid reflux is such a common thing they have such strong parallels and my hope is that like as people hear more than one and sort of have more than just gypsy rose blanchard as a you know story to think about that they will begin to like that will break through some of that resistance and disbelief Yeah, there is definitely a cadence to these cases, no matter where they're happening at in the country.

It's, I've spoken with dads from California to Texas, Rhode Island, all over.

Some referred to me, and some I just run into when I'm traveling for work or something, you know.

Wow, just like that, it sort of comes up.

How does that come up if you've met someone when I was single?

You know, you meet someone and be like, oh, yeah, what do you do for a little?

Well,

I feel like I'm a full-time parent because I take care of my kids.

Well, where's mom?

Well,

and that opens the door for that.

So it's come up.

It's not every day that it comes up, obviously, but it's, it has definitely happened.

And just out in the wild, you've met other dads that have had that, or they know someone, or they have a buddy whose kids were done that way.

Right.

And actually, that same thing has happened to me because, yes, when people ask me what I do for a living, it comes up a little more directly because they say,

I host a podcast about this.

And like being out in the world, and I think, you know, one of the big takeaways from that we got to pretty fast in the first season of this show

is that this is nowhere near as rare as people believe it.

And that speaks to that, right?

If it was vanishingly rare, if it was just the one in a million, you know, if Gypsy Rose Blanchard, you know, and these other four stories that have been in the news were the only cases, you would not just meet people randomly that knew someone that had been through a case or were a survivor, you know, like I met a survivor at a book club thing one time.

I mean, it's like, you would not be having those experiences out in the world, just even anecdotally, if it was that rare, right?

Absolutely.

You know, I've had direct contact with at least three different people from out in the wild that had suspicions on someone and they were never able to prove it.

Yeah.

And that's the big thing is having the evidence to back up what your suspicion is.

That's why mine wasn't prosecuted, just because there wasn't enough evidence.

Right.

And even if there is, nobody's going to believe it.

Right.

It can be a real range of outcomes.

Well, before we let you go, what do you want people, you know, if this episode is their first introduction to this topic or if they're just following along with us for the first time, like, what do you want to say to people?

And what do you want people to know about this abuse?

I would have to say it's the same as last time.

When something like this is presented to you, please keep an open mind.

Don't jump to any conclusions based off of a stereotype or, well, I knew her.

It doesn't matter that you knew her.

I knew my wife.

You know, I loved my wife.

I never in a million years would have thought she was doing what she had done, but she did.

She admitted to it.

She told our children what she did.

She pled guilty and very vocally and very descriptively told them exactly what happened.

Yeah, well, thank you again so much, George.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you for coming back.

Thank you for telling us your story.

Thank you for all of the work you've done supporting other dads.

I know know from the behind the scenes, that has helped a lot of folks.

And I know that being able to hear from you on the show has helped a lot more people.

I heard from a lot of folks about your interview.

And I'm just so happy to hear that you and the boys and Ashley are doing well.

And I'm just sending big hugs to all of you.

And I hope we get to see each other in real life again someday soon.

So thank you so much, George.

Awesome.

Thank you very much for having me.

And thank you all for listening.

Okay, thanks.

Next time, we are going to talk to two more dads whose stories went very differently.

I want to give you an update on where I was in trying to get an interview with Hope Yobara.

After I initially reached out to her, she said she'd consider it and then ultimately let me know that she didn't not want to do an interview.

But the longer I spent with this material and the deeper I got into the podcast, the more I obsessed I became with talking to her.

It felt like this conversation was going to close some kind of loop for me that I needed to be closed.

And furthermore, I felt more and more uncomfortable about spending so much time talking about a person's life without ever getting their voice in there.

And I really felt like this whole project could have more of an impact if we heard from hope in her own words.

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.

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

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.

Also, special thanks to Maria Palaeologis, Joelle Knoll, and Katie Klein for project coordination.

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

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