There's Hope (S1E8 - Season 1 Finale)

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Nobody Should Believe Me is a production of Large Media.

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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.

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

I have a job because of you.

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

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

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

Here's a sample.

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

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

Susan dug deeper and looked back through years of records.

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

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

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

But in that moment, a new horror was dawning.

For nearly a decade, Hope had been lying.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

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

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

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

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix September 10th.

Hi, I'm Andrea Dunlop.

Welcome to Nobody Should Believe Me.

This is our final episode of season one.

If you are just joining us, please go back and start at the first episode.

Everything is now available for you to binge.

I have really been enjoying connecting with you on Patreon this season.

We have some awesome content over there.

I've been doing a postscript episode every week after the episode airs, just following up on what was in that episode and how it's landing in the world.

We are featuring extended cuts of some of the interviews that we've done, including with experts.

And for today's episode, we have a really exciting extended cut, which is my entire conversation with Hopiabara.

It was a really fascinating one.

And

because of the sensitive nature of that conversation, I am only going to be sharing that on the Patreon.

So you can find that at patreon.com slash nobody should believe me, or we will also link to it in our show notes.

And just to give you a heads up as for what's going to come on the Patreon once this season has wrapped, I'm going to be doing some in-between season content.

I'm going to be covering some Munch Hausen by proxy cases that have been in the news recently.

I'm going to be following up with some of our experts and some of the other folks that were on season one.

And I'm going to be giving you behind the scenes content into the making of season two.

And while you're here, let me just tell you, season two is going to be amazing.

I am already so excited to share this next story with you guys.

We have done a lot of the interviews already and we are putting it together.

It is a second

gripping,

horrifying, but ultimately, I think, extremely hopeful story.

Again, out of Texas.

So while it is going to be a whole new case and a whole new group of people, you are going to be seeing some familiar faces or rather hearing some familiar voices.

And I'm just really excited to get even deeper into looking at some of these systemic issues, to hear some more first-person accounts.

And we're also really going to dive more deeply into what life looks like for survivors.

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.

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

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

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.

Hope Yabara is really the embodiment of this fear, and talking to her was a profound experience for me 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 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 hope is a person who we know has done those things

and she is maybe the only person that i will ever talk to in my life who could give me some insight into why.

All right, here we go.

We are on the road.

Finally.

Finally.

I had been text messaging with Hope now for months.

And as the meeting time approached, I got more and more nervous.

What do you want to get out of this personally?

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,

I can help you.

But that's true, that I could help her.

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

is this hope hope that I'll do this and that she'll hear it and say,

I'm exhausted.

I want to come home.

Help me come home.

You know, if hope could get to a healthier place, that would be a good thing.

If that could play out in some sense that like

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.

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

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

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

And

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

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

then I think that would really help me too.

That's like a personal motivation.

I want to look at her and say, like,

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.

That must have been really awful.

That doesn't excuse anything that she did, but that's true.

I do feel that way.

I

started off 10 years ago 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 it's 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 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 and if we could address that pain before they get so destructive that would be ideal

okay here we go hope it suggested that we meet at a burger joint in the tiny idaho town where she now lives 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.

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.

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.

Hi, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

Do you want to go?

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.

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

Yeah, I'm Hope Allison Puscher and I give you permission to use whatever's on this recording for whatever means you need to use it.

Thank you miss.

It was really focused on trying to have this be a conversation between two women.

So we started off just with small talk.

This is my favorite place either.

It's a good spot.

So what else is there to do here in

town?

All we do is when we go out to eat, this is out to eat.

This is the big J night spot.

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

Yeah, we don't go out.

We don't do much.

We sit at home and now that we've got the dog, now we've got our baby.

Take care of the baby.

More information.

That would be safe.

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.

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.

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 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.

You've been written about a lot,

and I wanted to keep this

podcast from being a thing about you, not with you.

And so now that we have you are with us,

you're about to start a new job at Walmart.

What makes you happy now?

What brings you joy now?

Right now, being with him.

That's what makes me happy.

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

He's very affectionate, very much a caregiver like me.

So we take care of each other.

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

or special.

What do you want people to know about Hope?

That I'm an individual.

I have feelings.

And that

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

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

I was selfish.

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.

She was willing to my baby girl, and I have so much regret for hurting her.

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

I was selfish.

And I will carry that guilt for the rest of my life for hurting all of them.

My biggest hope is that

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.

I did it because I didn't know better.

I thought that's

what I needed to do.

What have your revelations about that been?

Because I think that that might really help people understand

better

how things get to that point.

There's other ways to feel loved.

I didn't feel loved.

I had a wonderful husband.

I had three wonderful kids.

I didn't see another way to feel loved.

I mean that's just something that's eternal, something that I had to figure out.

I had to see the bigger picture

that I've loved regardless of what people say or

how people respond.

You said nobody wants to feel like an outcast.

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.

You know, just that you were really fun and really smart and like life of the party.

And

that's not the way I felt.

Most of the time, I felt like the loner.

I enjoyed being with people.

I'm a people person,

but I don't feel like like the center of anything.

Now I'm okay with that.

And so because,

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

When I got towards the end of high school, I knew what I always knew I wanted to be a veterinarian.

Of course,

those plans kind of got interrupted.

And that's okay,

because I have three wonderful children.

And let me tell you what, I'm going to take those kids over a career any minute.

You also had a career.

Like, you're almost describing it like you sort of underachieved, but I mean you didn't.

You got your degree and you had good, well-paying jobs.

I mean 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.

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 that sort of stress

level getting really high

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?

That's an interesting thought.

I got Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

If I have Sunday Monday Tuesday,

I'm not going to be able to do it.

I don't think so.

So

what do you think you were seeking?

I just wanted to feel up, and I did, and I don't know why.

I had a wonderful family.

I had a wonderful husband.

Wonderful children.

So I don't know why I didn't feel loved.

I just wanted to feel loved.

That was all.

And I did what I did.

I'm guessing because it made me feel loved.

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

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

you know that played into what you were needing at the time?

No.

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

things earlier.

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

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

I could see then in retrospect things escalating.

Is there a moment when we could have

said,

you're clearly going through something.

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?

Like you said, acceptance, love, those things.

Like, I wish that I could have seen seen those behaviors

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,

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.

I wish that I could have seen those

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

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

meeting with counselors and seeing what the source of the behaviors was

or could have been.

Now, at the back side, I can see

the truth.

What do you think that truth is?

That I am loved.

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

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

And he's done it all alone because of my stupid decisions.

He's had to do it all alone.

And I know that sounds hard work.

I wish

One thing I could change would be go back and change what I did

So they would have never broken apart to begin with.

When you think about your younger self

before

the very beginning of these behaviors and like before it escalated to the

stuff with the cancer and all of that, what would you say to your younger self?

Look at the bigger picture.

Stop looking within.

Look

throughout.

Do you get now the sense that your internal reality did not match that?

External reality?

Very much so.

The way I feel,

a lot of the time it's not true.

It's false perception.

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

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

And it was not fair.

If I could have changed anything,

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

the man who was standing by my side through everything.

But I did.

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

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

Your family had some very sweet things to say about you.

Do you want to hear one?

Well, I I can play for you some sound.

And Nick had some really sweet things to say.

Really?

Mm-hmm.

Takes a much surprise.

They have really good memories of you.

I'll turn it up really loud.

They can just repeat what she said.

We'll hear.

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

Yeah.

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 a bit a of a wild one sometimes.

But we were really, really close, especially as I got into high school.

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.

She was doing well in her life, and it 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, 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.

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

That he looked up to you.

And he was very inspired by you.

And you taught him something that he still remembers today.

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

He wanted to be like you

and be as successful as you were.

So

it was like

And then how does that feel to hear that?

It seemed like Nick, he always did so good.

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

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

You were his example.

If someone else, if another mom, finds herself

where you were.

in this sort of situation where

she feels like the only way that she can feel loved and accepted is to have be in the position of having a sick child.

I've got an answer.

Look outside the box.

Don't look internal because you are loved.

Regardless.

May not feel that way, but you are.

That you don't want to wait till you get to the other side of a bad decision to be able to see it.

Don't wait till it's too late.

Because that's what I did.

If you could go back and like grab your hand,

you know, right in the middle of that, what would you say to Hope?

Like, what would you tell Hope to do?

Like, I would have told my mother.

If she couldn't help, she would have found the right help.

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

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

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.

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.

It's a wish.

It's a wish.

And the hardest thing about talking about it is having to admit that you've done wrong, to accept that you've messed up.

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

You have to face the facts.

Eight years into my imprisonment, I still hadn't faced the facts.

It wasn't until I'd given up on myself and my family that I was

kind of forced to face the facts.

And that's what keeps me from doing it again.

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.

Whether they know it or not, it doesn't matter.

I've got to be strong enough for those kids.

And I believe one day, they'll want that relationship with mama again.

And I keep being strong every day until that day comes.

Because I'm still their mama regardless.

And nothing can take that away.

Even if it's 10 years away.

How do you think you

prepare yourself for

those eventual conversations?

I mean.

I've got to be honest.

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

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

It'll have to be.

It'll have to be.

That's not an option.

That's not an option.

It's going to have to be on their terms.

That's going to be

that way with my entire family.

I lost my terms.

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

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

fess up.

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

just to have someone say,

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,

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

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

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

The letter I wrote was to my mother.

I sent that, but I don't know if she ever got it.

And I hope she did.

Because I fuss up and asked her to please forgive me for hurting her.

Because I know she's the one that I hurt the most.

But I sent that very close to the time that she passed away.

So I don't know that she got it.

What do you hope for

going forward?

I want restoration about family.

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

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

And it can happen.

And it takes a lot,

a lot of work.

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.

But, you know, if you

wanted to put in that work,

I'm happy to help connect you to some folks that can help you do that.

And to me, that is a really necessary part of like

you being,

you know, healthy enough to have that relationship with your kids that you want.

That's going to be good for them.

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

You were 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.

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.

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

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.

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

I don't skirt or walk away from hard work.

And if it means that my family can come back together, I'll do whatever I can do to make it happen.

Because the family that

I know,

I don't have right now.

If the time comes for us, I want my family to be there.

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 is there anything else that you want to say to them?

Just that I love them.

I know I didn't show it.

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.

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

How much my parents lost because of me.

It's not fair.

Not right.

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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.

Lied to her family for a decade about having cancer, told her children that 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.

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.

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.

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.

The moment that it was over, I felt tremendous relief and I felt the veil of hope's influence lift.

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.

All those waterworks were like an attempt to

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

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.

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

I'm a person here.

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 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

it's satisfying to have had the conversation 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.

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 capable of love?

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...

I don't think she did those things because she specifically wanted to hurt them.

I think she felt a disconnect from them and objectified them and used them to get her emotional needs met.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Like, they don't.

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.

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.

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

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 world.

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

I'm tired of living like this.

Tired of hurting people.

I want help.

I want to come home.

What I also realized

is that

I

have a death

that I have never grieved properly.

And what I really need to do is say goodbye.

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

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

Those of us in the blast zone.

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?

And

I think, like,

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.

And I think that's where this ends.

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.

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

Nobody Should Believe Me is a production of Large Media.

Our lead producer is Tina Knoll.

The show was edited by Lisa Gray with help from Wendy Nardy.

Jeff Gall is our sound engineer.

Additional scoring and music by Johnny Nicholson and Joel Schupak.

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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