Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Andre here, I have some exciting news to share.
Speaker 1: ABC has turned Betrayal Weekly into an eight episode anthology,
Speaker 1: which means each episode features one of your favorite Betrayal
Speaker 1: Weekly stories. You'll get to see the people involved, hear
Speaker 1: from people who have never spoken before, and actually see
Speaker 1: where the story took place. We are so proud and
Speaker 1: excited to share it with you all. It's called Betrayal,
Speaker 1: Secrets and Lies, and it premieres this Sunday, March twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: at ten pm Eastern Standard time, nine pm Central.
Speaker 2: Please check it out.
Speaker 3: I'm here today with Stephanie Young and Clayton Eckard. You
Speaker 3: are the host and you are the storyteller of our
Speaker 3: Glass podcast and ihearts new podcast, Love Trapped. We're in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 3: This is really exciting for people who don't know. Love
Speaker 3: Trapped is about your story, Clayton and your relationship with
Speaker 3: Laura Owen, which started as a business transaction and then
Speaker 3: turned into a paternity scandal and then.
Speaker 2: A three year pursuit for justice.
Speaker 3: Yes, you guys have done an incredible job and I'm
Speaker 3: just glad to talk a little bit about your show
Speaker 3: and why it's right for the Betrayal audience.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having us for
Speaker 2: the Betrayal audience.
Speaker 3: Can you tell them a little bit about who you
Speaker 3: are and what you do for the show.
Speaker 4: My name is Stephanie and I am the producer, writer,
Speaker 4: and host of Love Trapped. I've been working on this
Speaker 4: since June of last year, so we're coming up on
Speaker 4: almost ten months and I think I've needed that entire
Speaker 4: time to do all of the research for this project.
Speaker 5: And I am Clayton and I am the liver of
Speaker 5: this whole experience.
Speaker 2: It's a life.
Speaker 5: But I've been really grateful that I have a platform
Speaker 5: to help not only me, but the their victims with receiving justice.
Speaker 3: Give me a little bit of a top line about
Speaker 3: what's been going on for you in your life over
Speaker 3: the last few years and why you need justice.
Speaker 5: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 5: It's been three years of my life that I am
Speaker 5: not able to let go of until there's resolution, and
Speaker 5: currently it's just slowly chugging along, and she's still out
Speaker 5: there and about and has looked for her next victim.
Speaker 5: And for me, it's a matter of being able to
Speaker 5: stop all of this and make sure that she doesn't
Speaker 5: have the ability to continue to perform these antics that
Speaker 5: she's done for ten plus years. This goes far beyond me.
Speaker 2: So a little bit about love trapped.
Speaker 3: It's the story of your post Bachelor life, your experience
Speaker 3: on the show. You are still a bachelor yourself, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: Your experience on the Bachelor.
Speaker 3: And so we meet you on this podcast after like
Speaker 3: in the aftermath of that, and through your move to Arizona,
Speaker 3: you end up meeting a woman named Laura Owens, and
Speaker 3: through that meeting, that chance encounter, all this craziness and
Speaker 3: complicated stuff comes out of that meeting. When I first
Speaker 3: heard about your story, it feels like a brief romantic
Speaker 3: experience with a person doesn't work out. There's a moment
Speaker 3: of rejection that Laura can't face, and there is fallout
Speaker 3: from that And what was that? Like, how would you
Speaker 3: define that fallout?
Speaker 5: One of the darkest energies that I've ever experienced. It
Speaker 5: was so uncomfortable that I had instant chill and before
Speaker 5: she sent me the messages saying she was pregnant, I
Speaker 5: had the exact thought in my head that I don't
Speaker 5: know what that just was, but whatever it was, it's
Speaker 5: far from over. And lo and behold eleven days later.
Speaker 5: From that point, you know, she sends the initial messages
Speaker 5: that she's pregnant. But it was a very, very uncomfortable presence.
Speaker 5: It's just it was as if the lights went off
Speaker 5: and she was no longer there. It's like nothing I've
Speaker 5: ever experienced.
Speaker 3: Right, So it became really clear that she wanted a
Speaker 3: romantic relationship with you. She wanted to have a dating
Speaker 3: relationship with you, long term relationship with you, and when
Speaker 3: that didn't work out, she was telling you that she
Speaker 3: was pregnant.
Speaker 2: And there was this she wanted to be connected with
Speaker 2: you in some way.
Speaker 3: It was trying to leverage this idea of you being
Speaker 3: potentially the father to stay in connection with you, and
Speaker 3: was doing whatever she could to stay in connection and
Speaker 3: keep you on the hook. One of the things that
Speaker 3: I think a lot of our betrayal listeners will relate
Speaker 3: to is that moment of when the mask comes off.
Speaker 2: We talk about it a lot.
Speaker 3: Actually, there is a moment in time when a lot
Speaker 3: of the storytellers I work with where they discover the
Speaker 3: day of discovery the husband that they've known for twenty
Speaker 3: five years then reveals their double life, and they physically change. Yeah,
Speaker 3: their voice changes, their face looks different. So I think
Speaker 3: a lot of our listeners and other stories can really
Speaker 3: relate to that moment of you saying no to Laura
Speaker 3: and then something shifts.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean I was just going back, as you're
Speaker 5: describing that, back into that moment, and I just chills
Speaker 5: again because her demeanor went from crying to stone cold,
Speaker 5: just expressionless, and there was this darkness where her eyes
Speaker 5: didn't go all fully black, but it felt as if
Speaker 5: they did. And it was just this instant I said,
Speaker 5: no means no, Laura, that there's nothing more here to explore.
Speaker 5: She wiped her last year and she said no, I understand,
Speaker 5: have a great day, and it was just this. It's
Speaker 5: like two separate entities, like I was talking to one
Speaker 5: version and then all of a sudden, there was a
Speaker 5: switch that flipped. I mean, it was that sudden. So
Speaker 5: it's interesting that you say that that's what other people
Speaker 5: have experienced, because yeah, I saw it face to face,
Speaker 5: and I've just never experienced something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, after that interaction in the car, what happened from there?
Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit about the harassment, and then
Speaker 3: everything you had to go through.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we were involved in a real estate transaction.
Speaker 5: She reached out to me originally to do real est date.
Speaker 5: You know, I made the mistake of mixing business with
Speaker 5: pleasure and it wasn't Yeah, lesson learned. I don't do
Speaker 5: that now, but I, you know, crossed that boundary. But
Speaker 5: then I had mentioned her that in the car the
Speaker 5: next day. I said that was unprofessional. You know, I
Speaker 5: can pass you off to another age, and she said, no,
Speaker 5: I want to work with you. I said, okay, let's
Speaker 5: keep professional from here on out. She said she agreed
Speaker 5: to it, but then she kept going back to trying
Speaker 5: to make it more than that. So over the course
Speaker 5: of the next few days, it was this, well, hey,
Speaker 5: I actually still want to explore this, And then it
Speaker 5: got to the point of if you're not willing to
Speaker 5: explore a relationship, I'll just go work with somebody else,
Speaker 5: to which I said called her bluff. I said, okay,
Speaker 5: then go do that, and then she said no, no,
Speaker 5: I really want to work with these It this back
Speaker 5: and forth, and it ultimately she just kept texting me,
Speaker 5: kept texting me, and then she started alluding to the
Speaker 5: fact that she was fertile and she knew that she
Speaker 5: was fertile during this period of her life, and she
Speaker 5: was concerned that night, even though we didn't have sexual intercourse,
Speaker 5: that when we were grinding, something could have fluid, could
Speaker 5: have you know, been transmitted. So she starts alluding to
Speaker 5: it before she said she was pregnant, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 5: I'm not doing this, and so I was like, hey,
Speaker 5: I'm going to block you like this. I don't want
Speaker 5: anything more to do with you, like, please stop texting me.
Speaker 5: You're harassing me because there's constant messages coming in. We're
Speaker 5: talking paragraphs long. So I ended up blocking her and
Speaker 5: then that was, you know, eleven days or probably a
Speaker 5: few days later after that. On day eleven from the
Speaker 5: time from when we originally hooked up, was when I
Speaker 5: got that email from her and she had sent over
Speaker 5: a positive pregnancy test and like a doctor's note. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so it really has been this journey of proven
Speaker 3: that she could have never been pregnant, that you are
Speaker 3: not the father.
Speaker 2: What has it been like covering this story, Stephanie.
Speaker 4: It's been mind blowing because every time you think that
Speaker 4: you've heard it all, there's something else that comes out,
Speaker 4: and you're just like, this can't possibly be real. And
Speaker 4: I think one of the most mind blowing things is
Speaker 4: the timeline of events. So in betrayal, you just mentioned
Speaker 4: like some of these people have been together for twenty
Speaker 4: five years, and it's that, you know, shock of being
Speaker 4: betrayed by somebody that you've known that long. With Clayton's case,
Speaker 4: he met her via LinkedIn message on May seventeenth, the
Speaker 4: hookup happened on May twentieth, and then by June first,
Speaker 4: she was pregnant. So this is like a speedy timeline
Speaker 4: compared to some of the betrayal stories, so that to
Speaker 4: me is shocking and covering that part of it, it's
Speaker 4: just like whoa, This is like a very quick timeline
Speaker 4: to go from zero to one hundred.
Speaker 2: And the unrelenting barrage of information because she then filed
Speaker 2: like you've become inbroiled in just a legal battle.
Speaker 5: She filed a parenting plan, which I couldn't believe and
Speaker 5: was in shock that I had to respond to it
Speaker 5: via the court system. Otherwise they would submit a default
Speaker 5: judgment and most times they would assume the majority of
Speaker 5: the time people found parenting plans are actually pregnant. So
Speaker 5: I was going to throw away the paperwork, and then
Speaker 5: I had someone on the on the illegal side of
Speaker 5: things that said, no, you can't do that. You need
Speaker 5: to respond, and I went into the court and he
Speaker 5: the judge, asked me why I was, you know, countering
Speaker 5: this you know, parenting plan, and I said, because there
Speaker 5: are no children. He said, you mean like they haven't
Speaker 5: been born yet. I said no, there's no child or children,
Speaker 5: like they don't exist. And he just looked at me.
Speaker 5: He's like, are you are you being serious? Are you
Speaker 5: messing with me? I said no, I'm telling you she's
Speaker 5: making all this up. And he was just perplexed and
Speaker 5: he goes, okay, well I'll push this up the court.
Speaker 5: So he like basically just like push it into another
Speaker 5: realm of the court. But it was yeah, I'm like,
Speaker 5: I felt ridiculous. The whole thing was ridiculous. I'm like,
Speaker 5: I don't know how to respond to this. She's making
Speaker 5: it up. How do I prove this? And that's you
Speaker 5: know where we end up going with it was Okay, well,
Speaker 5: let's get her to prove pregnancy, because I mean, that's
Speaker 5: how I get out of this, you know, because this
Speaker 5: is something that now she's going to hold over me
Speaker 5: and how far is she going to take this? And
Speaker 5: you know, as we've just recently uncovered and obviously through
Speaker 5: the timeline of this podcast, like she took a public
Speaker 5: so then it became a I need to prove to
Speaker 5: the public now, court of public opinion. I have to
Speaker 5: be able to prove that this is all lie. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I want to jump in and just say that from
Speaker 4: the time that she told Clayton she was pregnant to
Speaker 4: the time that she filed in the court in Arizona,
Speaker 4: it was only about eight weeks, so she was technically
Speaker 4: still in her first trimester. And as a woman, you
Speaker 4: know that most people don't tell people that they're even
Speaker 4: pregnant until after the first time twelth weeks, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: So I think that was another interesting part of this
Speaker 4: that from the time that she found out she was
Speaker 4: pregnant to the time that it was filed to establish
Speaker 4: paternity in the court, there's only eight weeks.
Speaker 5: Well, I think what's interesting too. For one, you can
Speaker 5: tell she has the time better than I do at
Speaker 5: this point. For me, I mean, I just it just
Speaker 5: feels like a blur of three years. You know, it's
Speaker 5: like the emotions are so strong, but I don't know
Speaker 5: exactly on what dates these things happen. It just felt
Speaker 5: like it always smushed together. But the other side of
Speaker 5: it too, You see the ignorance of a man to
Speaker 5: people go, oh, come on day eleven and she's pregnant.
Speaker 5: Why would you even take that up and believe that
Speaker 5: in the first place? But because I was googling, I mean,
Speaker 5: as a man, I had no idea. I'm like, I
Speaker 5: don't know how to fact check this or and I
Speaker 5: wasn't bringing it to my family originally. So this is
Speaker 5: just me living this experience and I'm just googling, and
Speaker 5: Google was like yeah, I mean, secondly, someone can miss
Speaker 5: their period and like show shows signs of pregnancy or
Speaker 5: be test positive as soon as like ten days. So
Speaker 5: I was like, well that we're on day eleven. It's
Speaker 5: just one of these things where at first I'm fighting
Speaker 5: this alone. Obviously I don't want this to get out
Speaker 5: to the public, but it's you know, there's like I
Speaker 5: also don't understand what I'm up against because I'm like,
Speaker 5: I don't know. I mean, I'm a guy. I don't
Speaker 5: know if this is possible, and so I'm just constantly googling,
Speaker 5: and I think she was too, though I think she
Speaker 5: was also you know, doing her homework.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We do often deal with stories of people who are
Speaker 3: intimate partners or relationships that have been built over a
Speaker 3: number of years. This is about two strangers meeting. How
Speaker 3: did that affect you emotionally? Having your life completely upended?
Speaker 3: Like do you think about if I just didn't respond
Speaker 3: to that LinkedIn message? Like where does your mind go?
Speaker 5: Yeah? You know, it depends when if you asked that
Speaker 5: question six months ago or even three months ago, and
Speaker 5: as opposed to now, I mean I've I've found the
Speaker 5: silver lining and all of this, but it certainly messed
Speaker 5: with me. I mean I lost a lot of trust
Speaker 5: and people. I mean I became very protective of my energy,
Speaker 5: which I needed to be more protective, but I almost
Speaker 5: like overcompensated. But it's it's something where I struggled to
Speaker 5: function on a daily basis because I really felt, I
Speaker 5: mean very quickly, I realized this individual is looking to
Speaker 5: destroy me emotionally and render me useless, I mean, take
Speaker 5: me out of my ability to be able to function
Speaker 5: and work my jobs. And you know, it just felt
Speaker 5: very suffocating and this person also had time on their hands.
Speaker 5: I mean she was working around the clock. I'd get
Speaker 5: emails just all throughout the day. And as people find out,
Speaker 5: she doesn't have a job, so she made this her
Speaker 5: full time job. And it was very suffocating. Yeah, it
Speaker 5: was just hard to go about my daily life when like,
Speaker 5: you have this happening in the background. And I mean
Speaker 5: a lot of us can relate to this if you
Speaker 5: have you know, someone that's you know, abusive, or somebody
Speaker 5: that has some news that they're like, I'm going to
Speaker 5: you know, share this news with like or they're threatening
Speaker 5: you in some capacity. It's it's basically the thing that's
Speaker 5: on your mind at all times.
Speaker 2: It's stress.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just constantly weighing on you. So no matter
Speaker 5: what else you're doing in life, in any moment of silence,
Speaker 5: you just go right back into that box. You know that.
Speaker 5: I so hard, like tried to compartmentalize. I just pushed
Speaker 5: everything in. I'm like, I have to go about my life,
Speaker 5: but this box exists. But any moment of silence, you know,
Speaker 5: where things slow down in life, you just go right
Speaker 5: back into the box. You're like, I can't help this
Speaker 5: because this is out of my control. Too. Yea, you
Speaker 5: know there's somebody on this other side that's plotting, and
Speaker 5: you don't know what their next move is going to be.
Speaker 3: Have you like envisioned what life would be like when
Speaker 3: you're done dealing with Laura owens Sport?
Speaker 2: Do you feel like it's always going to be there.
Speaker 5: I'll be able to let go of a lot of anger.
Speaker 5: There's there's a lot of anger that's rooted in this,
Speaker 5: not only just at her, but within myself. And I
Speaker 5: have to give myself grace. But I do see obviously
Speaker 5: that this was all brought on part and partly of
Speaker 5: my own doing because of the actions I took. But
Speaker 5: even leading up to it, I mean, I was utilizing
Speaker 5: marijuana at the time to cope with the stress from
Speaker 5: the reality television experience that I just recently realized. I
Speaker 5: still have not gotten over. I still harbor a lot
Speaker 5: of anger from that whole experience, And so there's parts
Speaker 5: of me that say, yeah, I mean, if you were
Speaker 5: able to have healed from these experiences, you wouldn't have
Speaker 5: found yourself back in this cycle. You wouldn't have subjected
Speaker 5: yourself to this kind of energy. But you did. Because
Speaker 5: you're not healed to the degree where you wouldn't place
Speaker 5: your energy in a person like her, and you know
Speaker 5: that's that's something that I do understand, is like, hey,
Speaker 5: you could have avoided this, but ultimately you were what
Speaker 5: you were when you first met her, which was a
Speaker 5: damaged individual. Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of the things that we do on Betrayal is
Speaker 3: every storyteller works with a mental health provider or a
Speaker 3: therapist life coach in each season to unpack a certain
Speaker 3: part of their story and a little bit of a
Speaker 3: preview for season five, as Soska is working with Jessica Baum.
Speaker 3: They do just specializes in amago therapy, which is really understanding,
Speaker 3: like it's in her child work. And you know, when
Speaker 3: I met Soskia, she really wanted to unpack her childhood
Speaker 3: and really figure out what is her relationship with her
Speaker 3: self worth and how she understands love and validation that
Speaker 3: ultimately led her to My Club and Good And we
Speaker 3: hear those conversations in her therapy sessions. But it is
Speaker 3: really like it is important because as much as we
Speaker 3: can't control lour Owens, we can't control Mike clepen Goood.
Speaker 3: All we can do is really a look internally at
Speaker 3: ourselves and say, it's not our fault, but how did
Speaker 3: I get here? And it's just a really fascinating conversation
Speaker 3: and it's worked to be done, and like to do
Speaker 3: that work and to have that perspective, you should be
Speaker 3: proud of yourself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I appreciate that. I also just understand that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, my environment has obviously influenced me. And I've
Speaker 5: also went back into my childhood and I've seen why
Speaker 5: I've become the way that I have and why I
Speaker 5: take certain actions and subject myself to certain people. Maybe
Speaker 5: there was a lack of something in my childhood that
Speaker 5: I'm you know, seeking and there's certain things that I've uncovered.
Speaker 5: But ultimately too, I think it's just as important in
Speaker 5: order to heal from that and overcome it, you have
Speaker 5: to accept accountability that while you were doing the best
Speaker 5: with what you could, you know you are still someone
Speaker 5: like you made decisions to put yourself in those in
Speaker 5: a position like that doesn't make it right, doesn't make
Speaker 5: it right that someone took advantage of me or anybody else.
Speaker 5: But there is the Okay, Hey, I want to better myself,
Speaker 5: so I need to understand that, Like I found my
Speaker 5: way here, but I can also take myself out of it.
Speaker 5: I mean, we're all doing our best right, so there's
Speaker 5: no victim blaming that should be had. It's more just, Hey,
Speaker 5: I am a human being, for the better and for
Speaker 5: the worse. I've made decisions in my life. My environment's
Speaker 5: impacted me. But I also want to be a better human.
Speaker 5: So how can I make sure that I don't find
Speaker 5: myself in this position again? You know what steps do
Speaker 5: I need to take to become stronger and more resilient
Speaker 5: and just have more self love because I believe that
Speaker 5: me with more self love again would have never interacted
Speaker 5: with somebody like her.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think something too that's so interesting from my perspective
Speaker 4: is the way that his emotions have shifted over You've
Speaker 4: seen it, oh yeah, over the last nine months. It's
Speaker 4: you know, there's times where he's really angry, there's times
Speaker 4: where he's said there's times where he's willing to forgive,
Speaker 4: and then there's times where he's like, no, I'm actually
Speaker 4: really mad. So to see this rollercoaster of emotion over
Speaker 4: the past nine to ten months has been interesting from
Speaker 4: my perspective.
Speaker 3: We talk about that a lot on Betrayal, about how
Speaker 3: progress is in a straight line, and like healing isn't linear,
Speaker 3: and sometimes you're just going around because you're meeting the
Speaker 3: experience a different phases of your own healing journey and
Speaker 3: your own like you're reading, you're engaging in certain books
Speaker 3: and podcasters and like material to better yourself, and so
Speaker 3: it makes you look at your experience in a different way.
Speaker 3: You know, you were talking about what are you reading
Speaker 3: right now?
Speaker 6: Yeah, the artist's probably not the best of that show,
Speaker 6: but but like you're constantly you're trying to but you're
Speaker 6: working through your experience, and so it's going to bring
Speaker 6: up complicated feelings about different choices and the different fallout.
Speaker 3: The last thing I want to say about the betrayal,
Speaker 3: but I think the audience is really going to relate to,
Speaker 3: is your journey with the justice system, because this is
Speaker 3: something that we cover a lot. You know, I deal
Speaker 3: with storytellers that you know, despite fear, despite being in
Speaker 3: a really dangerous situation, they couldn't get a protection from abuse.
Speaker 3: They really had to fight tooth and nail to get
Speaker 3: any acknowledgment from the court system. And so what is
Speaker 3: complicated about your story as someone who's actually being able
Speaker 3: to navigate the criminal justice system pretty seamlessly in ways
Speaker 3: that our storytellers actually struggle to, which is going to
Speaker 3: be really hard for some of our listeners to listen to.
Speaker 3: But it's fascinating. What is it like to be in
Speaker 3: a courtroom like in the scene that you were just
Speaker 3: telling me about. It's a serious place, serious people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but what are we even talking about here? There's not
Speaker 3: even a real pregnancy. It's absurd.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that duality is mind beat.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I had a little level of confidence early on,
Speaker 5: probably because watching so much law and order growing up.
Speaker 5: So I, as people found out, early on, I had
Speaker 5: so much confidence that I self represented, which I didn't
Speaker 5: do for too long, but I showed up with my
Speaker 5: glasses and my tucked in shirt and my briefcase and yeah,
Speaker 5: but I ultimately thought, hey, look like this is a
Speaker 5: ridiculous claim, and I'm the one that's telling the truth.
Speaker 5: I mean, all I have to do is just speak
Speaker 5: my truth. So I did have a level of confidence,
Speaker 5: which again I would also say based on like I
Speaker 5: played you know, d you want Division one football, I
Speaker 5: was on the batchlock, I was in high stress environments,
Speaker 5: so to me, I had a level of comfort and
Speaker 5: confidence going into the courtroom and truth on my side.
Speaker 5: That being said, I realized very quickly that I could
Speaker 5: not keep up with the jargon, you know, the court
Speaker 5: jargon that I was like, oh wait, I'm over here
Speaker 5: raising hand. I'm like, I don't even know if I
Speaker 5: can I speak? Can I not? It was a surreal experience,
Speaker 5: and obviously I really I was like, look, I have
Speaker 5: to take this seriously because I could get caught up
Speaker 5: in a technicality even though I'm telling the truth, I
Speaker 5: could get caught up on some technicality where she could
Speaker 5: end up then you know, winning, right.
Speaker 2: And it's a really.
Speaker 3: Hard lesson to learn, especially about our justice system. That's
Speaker 3: sometimes the last thing that matters is actually the truth.
Speaker 5: Right. They have again, like there's technicalities here and there,
Speaker 5: and you start seeing these arguments be brought up, like
Speaker 5: by her counsel, where I'm like, that's ridiculous, but they're
Speaker 5: just trying to stick on one little exception and it's like,
Speaker 5: but that could blow the whole thing up. I like,
Speaker 5: you have to if you have one little hole in
Speaker 5: the argument, they can just blow that up and then
Speaker 5: say then just say the rest of it is no
Speaker 5: longer usable, And that is what really I realized. I'm like,
Speaker 5: this is actually very like you have to be so
Speaker 5: specific and you you really can't have any flaws and
Speaker 5: your arguments, and so I'm obviously I have legal representation
Speaker 5: and now, and that's helped out a lot. And I
Speaker 5: got that, you know, because of the privilege that I've
Speaker 5: had of being on reality television and being a celebrity
Speaker 5: to some degree. Most people don't have that luxury. If
Speaker 5: I wasn't a celebrity, I wouldn't have had the support.
Speaker 5: And obviously the previous victims they did not have that support.
Speaker 5: I think that is something that rightfully has agitated some people.
Speaker 5: They go, this is you know, lucky for you, I mean,
Speaker 5: because I wish I could have had support, and I'm
Speaker 5: very blessed for that, but it is unfortunate that if
Speaker 5: you have some level of status, you have a better
Speaker 5: chance of navigating the court system. I think there are
Speaker 5: a lot of victims out there that are afraid because
Speaker 5: they don't have the financial resources, they don't have the
Speaker 5: legal representation, and it can be a very scary thing
Speaker 5: when you go in front of a judge and you know,
Speaker 5: you don't know what words to say, and all sudden
Speaker 5: you're up against someone's legal counsel that has money, and
Speaker 5: they just start hammering you with these technicalities. And yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean again, I've watched the previous victims get run
Speaker 5: out of court because she had more money, more resources.
Speaker 3: Has she bankrupted any of them like you could have easily?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well she's I mean she's cost them thousands of
Speaker 5: thousand of dollars. We're talking sixty eighty thousand dollars. That's
Speaker 5: just money that's gone poof. And so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 5: maybe not bankrupted them, but has financially harmed them. I
Speaker 5: mean that's money that could have been, you know, put
Speaker 5: anywhere else.
Speaker 4: They both have children, so I was gonna say, like
Speaker 4: a college, And that was That's a conversation that I
Speaker 4: had with one of the other victims was do I
Speaker 4: want to fight this or do I want to use
Speaker 4: this money for my kids futures? And that was a
Speaker 4: really hard conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do you guys want the Betrayal audience to
Speaker 3: know about your show?
Speaker 4: I would like the Betrayal audience to know that the
Speaker 4: story is got the similar elements of the Betrayal show.
Speaker 4: It's got the manipulation, the fraud, the deception, all of
Speaker 4: those things. But as I've been working on this project,
Speaker 4: I think the best part has been meeting and connecting
Speaker 4: with all of the people who have lived it. I
Speaker 4: think Clayton and I have talked for probably over thirty
Speaker 4: hours on tape. I've really gotten to know Clayton, I've
Speaker 4: really gotten to know some of the other victims, and
Speaker 4: hearing their stories and seeing what they've been through has
Speaker 4: been really eye opening. And also, you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of times you think it's just one victim, and you
Speaker 4: know it affected Clayton's life, but it's the collateral damage
Speaker 4: of everyone that's involved and the wave of destruction that
Speaker 4: goes along with it that is really the most impactful
Speaker 4: part to me, because you can see how one woman's
Speaker 4: choices really affect so many people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the piggyback off that I would say I
Speaker 5: think with this story really highlights is the power of community,
Speaker 5: and I hope it inspires those that listen to find
Speaker 5: their own communities and understand that nothing should be fought alone.
Speaker 5: You know, individuals that go through something similar a lot
Speaker 5: of times they carry a lot of shame. And I
Speaker 5: was certainly in that same position, and I remember when
Speaker 5: it first went public, I was like, this is going
Speaker 5: to ruin me, and actually it going public was the
Speaker 5: greatest thing that ever happened because there was an army
Speaker 5: of people that were willing to rally around me. But
Speaker 5: I didn't necessarily even need an army. It would have
Speaker 5: just you know, having two or three people in my corner,
Speaker 5: I mean, makes all the difference. So I think we
Speaker 5: all are fighting our own battles, and a lot of times,
Speaker 5: you know, people that are listening to these true crime series,
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people they're able to sympathize.
Speaker 5: They've went through they know someone who's went through something similar,
Speaker 5: they've experienced it. This story, I really think it just
Speaker 5: highlights the power of that community in that anyone that's
Speaker 5: going through something similar knows of someone going through something similar.
Speaker 5: Keep in mind how powerful your support can be for
Speaker 5: somebody and help them get through a dark time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, thank you so much for being here today
Speaker 3: and sharing a little bit about your story.
Speaker 2: Where can people get your podcasts?
Speaker 4: The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, anywhere you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 4: and a five star rating goes a long way. So
Speaker 4: new episodes every Thursday