Speaker 1: This whole experience really made me doubt my abilities as
Speaker 1: a parent and my self as a person. Basically every
Speaker 1: aspect of my identity that I had spent so long
Speaker 1: trying to find it like, shook everything.
Speaker 2: I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
Speaker 2: the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
Speaker 2: change everything. This is the story of an entire community,
Speaker 2: one group of parents who experienced a shocking deception and
Speaker 2: overcame it together. We'll hear more from the larger community later,
Speaker 2: but for the majority of this episode, we're going to
Speaker 2: tell it through one person's perspective. We'll call our Sarah.
Speaker 2: Sarah is living her best life as an organic farmer
Speaker 2: in Vermont. She exudes cool, She's covered in tattoos and rocks,
Speaker 2: a shaved head.
Speaker 1: And never have to have a bad hair toy. I
Speaker 1: just don't ever have hair.
Speaker 2: She grew up in the Northeast as the oldest child
Speaker 2: in her family. When she was little, her parents struggled
Speaker 2: to make ends meet, and her father that old addiction.
Speaker 2: Sarah remembers a time when her parents were skeptical about
Speaker 2: organized religion, even the Christian undertones, and cartoons like veggietails
Speaker 2: made her parents uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I remember a conversation where my parents were like going
Speaker 1: back and forth and they were like, well, it's just vegetables.
Speaker 1: It seems fine, even though there's the religious stuff. My
Speaker 1: parents were pretty anti religion, but.
Speaker 2: When Sarah was around ten, her parents' religious beliefs began
Speaker 2: to shift.
Speaker 1: My dad kind of got warmed up to it when
Speaker 1: he was in Alcoholics Anonymous, and then less a year
Speaker 1: later we were completely embroiled in a cult.
Speaker 2: It started when her mom was recruited to join a
Speaker 2: local church.
Speaker 1: They were really nice to us, They were really supportive
Speaker 1: of my mom. She made friends, and she struggles a
Speaker 1: lot to make friends, and so she felt very at
Speaker 1: home there. And my dad kind of hit it off
Speaker 1: with a couple of the other dads and it seemed
Speaker 1: like a really good community. Before we knew it, we
Speaker 1: were involved in Quiverful.
Speaker 2: Quiverful is a fundamentalist Christian movement focused on having and
Speaker 2: raising as many children as possible. Her parents seemed happy
Speaker 2: in their new church, and they became more involved in
Speaker 2: Sarah's life than ever.
Speaker 1: I just turned at eleven at this time, so this
Speaker 1: was an improvement. It seemed like when people said, like,
Speaker 1: this is the right path, it seemed believable to me.
Speaker 2: This church became her new normal.
Speaker 1: Services were a little bit intense, as like crying and
Speaker 1: speaking in tongues and stuff like that, but I was like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: sometimes they had a pot luck.
Speaker 2: After four and eleven year old, the pot luck desserts
Speaker 2: like jello were enticing.
Speaker 1: Then I started kind of moving beyond the jello and
Speaker 1: we all got baptized, and then there was like purity stuff,
Speaker 1: a lot of purity stuff. So I pledged my virginity
Speaker 1: to the church and my dad, and it was almost
Speaker 1: like a wedding. These pretty white dresses and go up
Speaker 1: to an altar, and it literally looks like a mass wedding,
Speaker 1: but it's like little girls all marrying their dad. But
Speaker 1: I was like eleven, so I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I get to dress fancy and have a little present
Speaker 1: and more jello. So yeay.
Speaker 2: The standards around purity were very high.
Speaker 1: It was normal for people in our community to save
Speaker 1: their first kiss for marriage.
Speaker 2: Sarah's naturally curious, and that was tough to navigate in
Speaker 2: this community.
Speaker 1: Between me not having been raised in this environment and
Speaker 1: having like a rebellious spirit is what I always got told,
Speaker 1: just mostly just because I asked a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: It really put a bad light on our family.
Speaker 2: Eventually she fell in line.
Speaker 1: It's definitely been like kind of hammered in there to
Speaker 1: trust authority completely, like there's a reason they're in this position.
Speaker 1: I was totally like I believed it fully.
Speaker 2: Her little sister, who was nine, struggled and was deemed
Speaker 2: a bad kid by church standards.
Speaker 1: She got kind of stuck with the bad kids. Everyone
Speaker 1: said that they were always pulling shenanigans and they were
Speaker 1: too loud, which they were just normal kids looking back,
Speaker 1: or just like nine year olds.
Speaker 2: Some families in their church had as many as twenty children.
Speaker 2: For the church, big families served a higher purpose.
Speaker 1: You are basically trying to birth an army for the
Speaker 1: end times, which you're told could come at any time.
Speaker 1: So it already feels too late because it takes, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of years for kids to be
Speaker 1: able to grow up. So they're like, you got to
Speaker 1: have babies now.
Speaker 2: Even though they already had six kids. Sarah's mom felt
Speaker 2: pressure to grow their family, but she was struggling to
Speaker 2: have more.
Speaker 1: She was getting lamed for her issues with not being
Speaker 1: able to have like a ton of kids. It seemed
Speaker 1: like her fault for having a rebellious and like worldly family.
Speaker 2: The church believed that God blessed you with as many
Speaker 2: kids as you could handle, so if a family was
Speaker 2: struggling to have more children, it was because their existing
Speaker 2: kids were disobedient. In order to get closer to God,
Speaker 2: Sarah's mom tried to contry her kids, and she did
Speaker 2: it by following the church.
Speaker 1: Teaching you start corporal punishment at birth. If they bite
Speaker 1: you while they're nursing, you pull their hair. If they
Speaker 1: don't have hair, you use the switch.
Speaker 2: Sarah was only twelve when her mom asked her to
Speaker 2: use a switch on her newborn sister.
Speaker 1: I'm also a kid, and no matter how much I'm
Speaker 1: doctrination there was I just could not bring myself to
Speaker 1: do that. It felt like some Stanford prison experiment kind
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 2: This was a defining moment for Sarah.
Speaker 1: At that point, I started questioning, is it because I'm
Speaker 1: not faithful enough, is it because I shouldn't be a mother?
Speaker 1: Or is this just wrong? And that was the first
Speaker 1: time I had considered it might be wrong.
Speaker 2: She started questioning the church, specifically how they parented. I
Speaker 2: had the strictly enforced gender roles.
Speaker 1: One of the weird things about quiver Fill is like
Speaker 1: boys will be boys until they're forty five, but girls
Speaker 1: are future mothers in training from day one.
Speaker 2: When Sarah was fourteen, she started going to public school.
Speaker 2: This was actually a form of punishment, but there she
Speaker 2: met a new friend who opened her eyes to another
Speaker 2: way of living, and her friend's mom was worried about
Speaker 2: Sarah's home life.
Speaker 1: They were so concerned and rightfully so she basically told
Speaker 1: me to come and live with them, and she would
Speaker 1: lie to my mom about where I was if she asked,
Speaker 1: My home was not that invested. To be honest, you
Speaker 1: didn't really come looking.
Speaker 3: Soon Sarah stopped coming home altogether, and so I ended
Speaker 3: up moving in with this family, and they really did
Speaker 3: everything in their power to help me out.
Speaker 1: So I do refer to her as my foster mom,
Speaker 1: even though I was never officially in the foster care system.
Speaker 2: She adored her new foster family, especially her foster mom.
Speaker 1: She wanted me to have like good role models and
Speaker 1: got me involved in the community in a Jewish community.
Speaker 1: She was never pushy about anything, and there were really
Speaker 1: good role models. Jewish people don't proselytize, which I found
Speaker 1: very strange. I was like, are they trying to convert me?
Speaker 1: And she's like, they don't want you to convert, that's
Speaker 1: not a thing. They just want to give you some food.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh cool.
Speaker 2: Through her foster family, she was welcomed into the Jewish faith.
Speaker 2: They nurtured her natural curiosity.
Speaker 1: That was what was most appealing to me. I had
Speaker 1: a million questions and they were excited to answer the
Speaker 1: questions with more questions. There was never like a shut up,
Speaker 1: don't ask that. It was like, so, this is three
Speaker 1: different opinions that most people have. My opinion, what do
Speaker 1: you think?
Speaker 2: Sarah was smart and inquisitive about the world, but she'd
Speaker 2: fallen behind in school.
Speaker 1: My parents had taken me out of school in fourth grade,
Speaker 1: and so from fourth grade to the end of sophomore year,
Speaker 1: I had no education.
Speaker 2: On her eighteenth birthday, Sarah dropped out. After that, she
Speaker 2: decided to leave her foster family's home too.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to burden this family, so I left
Speaker 1: them as well. I hadn't been taught how to like
Speaker 1: live with normal people. It was just like time for
Speaker 1: me to go. But they were instrumental in my running
Speaker 1: away from the cult. And so I left and I
Speaker 1: went to the nearest city and I was homeless for
Speaker 1: a year. At first I was on the street, and
Speaker 1: then I was in a shelter For the first few months.
Speaker 1: It was really rough. And then I got a job
Speaker 1: at tattoo Studio and I became a body fiercer there
Speaker 1: through an apprenticeship. It was like my passion. It was
Speaker 1: so much fun.
Speaker 2: She didn't leave everything from her old life behind. She
Speaker 2: still wanted faith in her life. Somehow, being exposed to
Speaker 2: Judaism in her foster family inspired Sarah to officially convert.
Speaker 1: It gave me a sense of community and a sense
Speaker 1: of stability that I think I was missing. And like,
Speaker 1: this very kind group of people who want to support
Speaker 1: you and you don't owe them anything for that. That's
Speaker 1: really nice for me. It's comforting, like I don't like
Speaker 1: go to bed wondering if I'm going to wake up
Speaker 1: still part of my only community.
Speaker 2: She also decided to start dating. That's when she met Paul.
Speaker 2: She was swiping on Tinder and his profile made her laugh.
Speaker 1: He had like mostly pictures of frogs, but they were
Speaker 1: like from Google with like the wild work. I was like,
Speaker 1: that's really strange, and so I was curious and started
Speaker 1: talking to him, and he was like hilarious.
Speaker 2: For their first date, he brought her a surprise.
Speaker 1: He brought me a Stuart Little two poster as a gift.
Speaker 1: I was like, what a weird guy.
Speaker 2: They dated casually for about six months, going on dates
Speaker 2: when they both had time and money to spare.
Speaker 1: That was until the day of COVID lockdown in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I found out I was pregnant.
Speaker 2: As soon as she saw the pregnancy test, she knew
Speaker 2: she would keep the baby.
Speaker 1: I have terrible PCs, so I did not think I
Speaker 1: was able to get pregnant, which is part of why
Speaker 1: I wanted to keep the pregnancy so bad.
Speaker 2: She was prepared to go it alone with or without Paul.
Speaker 2: After she took a few minutes to process the news,
Speaker 2: she called him.
Speaker 1: Both of us were just kind of crying and just
Speaker 1: like trying to figure out what to say to the
Speaker 1: other person. And so I told him like, I want
Speaker 1: to be a mom, like really bad. And I was like,
Speaker 1: you don't have to have anything to do with this,
Speaker 1: But he really wanted to be like a present and
Speaker 1: good dad.
Speaker 2: After that day, Sarah moved in with him. On some level,
Speaker 2: she felt prepared for parenthood. After all, she'd been taking
Speaker 2: care of young children her whole life.
Speaker 1: I felt very comfortable with my ability to keep babies alive.
Speaker 1: It's like, I've done this a million times. I know
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: But the environment she'd grown up in wasn't emotionally healthy
Speaker 2: or nurturing, and she knew one thing for certain, she
Speaker 2: wasn't going to raise her baby the way she was raised.
Speaker 2: She would have to find another way. She would need resources.
Speaker 1: Being an emotionally present and caring parent who's breezing a person.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, I have no idea
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, Like I need help now.
Speaker 2: Sarah's pregnancy was a fresh start for her, a chance
Speaker 2: to mold a new life and a safe, supportive family.
Speaker 2: It started with her and Paul.
Speaker 1: I had like dated a couple people before, but I
Speaker 1: had not had a partner.
Speaker 2: She would learn the meaning of true partnership during pregnancy.
Speaker 1: I did have a super high risk pregnancy, and I
Speaker 1: had to be on bed rest from like week twelve.
Speaker 1: It was awful. It was terrible. I had to quit
Speaker 1: my job. He had to support me and take care
Speaker 1: of me, like physically put me in the shower and
Speaker 1: help me shower, and like he was amazing. He bought
Speaker 1: me a kindle, loaded it up with like every book,
Speaker 1: and he would like put my socks on me so
Speaker 1: my feet didn't get cold, so I didn't have to
Speaker 1: like kick the blanket around to try to get back
Speaker 1: over me. And he would do his work in the
Speaker 1: bedroom whenever possible, so that I just had like a
Speaker 1: person nearby. He just took amazing.
Speaker 2: Care of me, and she learned by his example.
Speaker 1: So has that really turned things for me? I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: a successful relationship between friends, between partners, between parents and
Speaker 1: children is like a huge mutual effort to make the
Speaker 1: other person feel cared for.
Speaker 2: She reached out to her friends who had young kids,
Speaker 2: and she started by calling two friends whose parenting styles
Speaker 2: she admired.
Speaker 1: They had both suggested that I join some gentle parenting
Speaker 1: groups on Facebook.
Speaker 2: Being bedridden for her entire pregnancy meant she had a
Speaker 2: lot of time on her hands. She brows group after
Speaker 2: group until she found one that really resonated and it
Speaker 2: was a huge community.
Speaker 1: I think at the height, there was like a couple
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, and everybody in there, it seemed, was like
Speaker 1: focused on the same goal that I was, where like
Speaker 1: raising a functional, confident, compassionate person. And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this seems like a really good place for me to be.
Speaker 2: She started spending hours every day in the group, reading
Speaker 2: every post and asking questions of her own.
Speaker 1: I was trying to absorb every single molecule of gentle
Speaker 1: kind parenting advice that I could fit in my brain.
Speaker 1: In the course of nine months.
Speaker 2: Sarah made real friends through the group, and she noticed
Speaker 2: a pattern.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone in the group was trying to break some
Speaker 1: kind of cycle of like abuse or neglect, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people were like, my childhood was hellish, and
Speaker 1: I'm never letting that happen. So it just seemed like
Speaker 1: a really supportive community for people who were trying to
Speaker 1: do better for their kids.
Speaker 2: For Sarah, this was more than just a Facebook group.
Speaker 2: It was personal. She was a strange from her family,
Speaker 2: so this group became a real community, supporting her through
Speaker 2: pregnancy and celebrating with her.
Speaker 1: With groups based around cycle breaking, some people don't have
Speaker 1: a family to celebrate with them and so we would
Speaker 1: be that family. A person you don't even know would
Speaker 1: be like, oh my gosh, after four years of trying,
Speaker 1: we're finally pregnant and we got our first soldier sound
Speaker 1: and it's twins, and we would all be like, oh
Speaker 1: my god. Genuinely, I was so excited for these people.
Speaker 2: There was a hierarchy in the group. Four admins approved
Speaker 2: every post and enforced the community guidelines.
Speaker 1: So the admins in the group, they were like moderating,
Speaker 1: approving posts, but they were also kind of like leaders
Speaker 1: in the group, because you know, people come there with
Speaker 1: crisis level stuff, so if you're really struggling with something,
Speaker 1: they're the first people to see the post because they
Speaker 1: approve it and they really go out of their way
Speaker 1: to make sure that people are safe.
Speaker 2: Sarah had a lot in common with one of the admins,
Speaker 2: so we'll call Becky.
Speaker 1: She had posted a lot about being a Jewish parent.
Speaker 2: Becky was a huge presence in the group.
Speaker 1: She was like an admin and a super frequent poster.
Speaker 1: People were very invested in her life. People knew her
Speaker 1: kid by first name and like people had her birth
Speaker 1: announcements on their fridge.
Speaker 2: Becky was a successful attorney would overcome a great deal
Speaker 2: of adversity.
Speaker 1: She had just a really difficult upbringing and the odds
Speaker 1: were completely stacked against her. She was a teen mom.
Speaker 1: She had her first baby so young. She had also
Speaker 1: suffered child loss, which was unimaginable to me. Just like
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know how much I loved my son
Speaker 1: before I had even met him. I think that's every
Speaker 1: parent's worst fear.
Speaker 2: Becky's toddler had passed away unexpectedly. She was a resource
Speaker 2: and a guiding light for other parents in the group
Speaker 2: who experienced the same tragedy. Becky managed this grace while
Speaker 2: raising six other kids, but the tragedy didn't end there.
Speaker 2: Her oldest child had recently been the victim of an
Speaker 2: anti gay hate crime.
Speaker 1: The sympathy and like hurt that I felt for her
Speaker 1: knowing that her kid had been through this awful.
Speaker 2: Becky posted all the details of the hate in the group.
Speaker 1: There were hundreds of comments being like, we love you, Becky.
Speaker 1: People were just so genuinely caring for her. She was
Speaker 1: receiving gifts, some of them monetary. She was getting constant
Speaker 1: affection and attention from everyone.
Speaker 2: But despite all this hardship, Becky was thriving in her
Speaker 2: career and putting her all into raising her six children.
Speaker 2: She was a super mom.
Speaker 1: Like she's amazing, you know. She had her kid in
Speaker 1: these cultural emergence schools, and she was taking these incredible trips,
Speaker 1: like they went to Scotland, and like she had these beautiful, enriching,
Speaker 1: individualized lives that she had built for these kids. And
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, I need to get my acts
Speaker 1: together if I want to be able to a parent
Speaker 1: like this. And so I think I kind of idolized
Speaker 1: her a little bit.
Speaker 2: Becky posted videos of herself giving updates on her family's life.
Speaker 1: In all the videos, she was alone. There were no kids, sounds,
Speaker 1: or never her husband. It was just her. I assumed
Speaker 1: that it was like her five minutes alone. She wanted
Speaker 1: to connect with other parents.
Speaker 2: Becky's husband and their oldest kids were all on Facebook too.
Speaker 1: Her whole family was for the most part on Facebook.
Speaker 2: Becky and her husband were always flirting with each other
Speaker 2: in the group.
Speaker 1: It was a lot. It seemed like it was in
Speaker 1: good fun, but it was uncomfortable to see publicly.
Speaker 2: When Sarah joined the group, she was finishing the process
Speaker 2: of converting to Judaism. She looked at Becky as a
Speaker 2: resource and inspiration for raising kids in the Jewish faith.
Speaker 2: But when Sarah tried to connect over this, Becky wasn't interested.
Speaker 1: I was like, why are we not friends? And she
Speaker 1: didn't even want to acknowledge it, which was very odd
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just that they were both Jewish. They were
Speaker 2: interested in the same things.
Speaker 1: I'm passionate about heritage language, like that's my thing, and
Speaker 1: she's a Jewish person who's passionate about heritage language. And
Speaker 1: she would not speak to me about it.
Speaker 2: But Becky would post videos of herself showcasing her language
Speaker 2: learning skills.
Speaker 1: She was speaking Ladino, which is like Judaeo Spanish. It's
Speaker 1: sort of adjacent to Yiddish, which is one of my languages.
Speaker 1: And it really drove home to me and a lot
Speaker 1: of other people how smart she was.
Speaker 2: Sarah learned that Becky was also a convert. It's not
Speaker 2: that common, so she really wanted to bond over that
Speaker 2: shared experience.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask questions about that, and I was like,
Speaker 1: really looking for that advice from her, and unfortunately she
Speaker 1: just would not.
Speaker 2: And there was another reason she felt connected to Becky.
Speaker 2: They both had difficult upbringings. When Becky posted about her childhood,
Speaker 2: Sarah chimed in. She understood because she'd been through some
Speaker 2: of the same things.
Speaker 1: I jokingly sometimes referred to myself as a rescue. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I was literally living on the street and
Speaker 1: then living in a studio when I met my husband,
Speaker 1: and I had probably like twenty bucks, So I was like,
Speaker 1: that happens. That's crazy. We both had our like Cinderella moment,
Speaker 1: and she just like did not the kinship thing wasn't neutral,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, I'm being weird.
Speaker 2: Sarah began to worry that maybe she'd said something to
Speaker 2: offend Becky, and I was.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, did I like say something? So I was
Speaker 1: really concerned.
Speaker 2: That I had really hurt her, So she tried to
Speaker 2: connect with other people in the group.
Speaker 1: I started seeking out other Jewish parents in that group,
Speaker 1: and everyone was like, you got to talk to Becky,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, okay, I'll try.
Speaker 2: Sarah would ask Becky about things like breastfeeding and keeping kosher.
Speaker 1: Every time I asked her a question, I would get
Speaker 1: an answer, but it didn't line up with anything that
Speaker 1: I had ever heard before. But I guess she would know,
Speaker 1: and so I started to sort of get back to
Speaker 1: that place where I was like, am I qualified for this?
Speaker 2: The interactions with Becky always left her feeling worse than before.
Speaker 2: She wasn't even a parent yet, but she started to
Speaker 2: doubt her ability to raise her son in the Jewish faith.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything. I was like, maybe I am
Speaker 1: further behind with conversion than I thought it was.
Speaker 2: In the Winner of twenty twenty, Sarah's son was born.
Speaker 2: She had unexpected complications and the birth didn't go as planned.
Speaker 1: Be very traumatic birth. It was really really bad. He
Speaker 1: was almost completely fine, but I needed a lot of help.
Speaker 1: At the very end of the birth, while my son
Speaker 1: was being put in my arms, I had a psychotic
Speaker 1: break and I ended up going into postpartum psychosis, and
Speaker 1: I had no idea what that was about.
Speaker 2: Two percent of women develop postpartum psychosis after they give birth.
Speaker 2: It can start with obsessive thoughts about the baby's well
Speaker 2: being and concerns that something is wrong, but it spirals
Speaker 2: into hallucinations and delusions. It's a condition that can be
Speaker 2: really dangerous for both the mother and the baby.
Speaker 1: I was hallucinating very vividly but I had no idea
Speaker 1: that I was hallucinating, and so I was experiencing really
Speaker 1: intense paranoia. You know, a lot of people have intrusive thoughts, scary,
Speaker 1: violent ones, and once those thoughts start sounding like a
Speaker 1: good idea, you need to talk to someone. I was
Speaker 1: having those thoughts stored myself because I thought that if
Speaker 1: I didn't get myself out of the picture, something would
Speaker 1: happen to my baby.
Speaker 2: She was scared and she didn't know what was going on,
Speaker 2: so she reached out to a doctor.
Speaker 1: When I sought advice from medical professionals, I was actually
Speaker 1: told it was normal, but I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: effectively communicate how serious it was, and so I was
Speaker 1: at home in full psychosis with a new.
Speaker 2: This lasted for two months until she hit a breaking point.
Speaker 1: I had like a full breakdown episode, and I was
Speaker 1: admitted to a hospital. I stayed there for a little
Speaker 1: over a week. I think time really wasn't I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure about that. It was really hard to be
Speaker 1: away from my baby, you know, but I did feel
Speaker 1: that he was safer and I fell safer as well.
Speaker 2: After she left the hospital, she was stable, but the
Speaker 2: experience was traumatic, so there was still some fear there.
Speaker 1: I was really afraid to hold my son or be
Speaker 1: alone with him for a long time. I loved him,
Speaker 1: but I didn't trust myself to be a good parent.
Speaker 1: I didn't even trust myself to be like a babysitter.
Speaker 1: I just was so afraid that I would do something
Speaker 1: terribly wrong.
Speaker 2: So she turned to her support system, the parenting group.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I got out, I went to
Speaker 1: the group because it's like, I don't know who else
Speaker 1: that I could possibly ask about this, And I started asking, like,
Speaker 1: has anyone had this happened before? And the person who
Speaker 1: kept popping up was Becky and she had postpartum depression before,
Speaker 1: and anxiety and OCD. She knew what she was talking about.
Speaker 1: She had been through like a similar situation, not psychosist
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, but really really rough mental health stuff
Speaker 1: following the birth of a baby. And I was so
Speaker 1: grateful to have that resource.
Speaker 2: This was some of Becky's advice.
Speaker 1: Just like go to therapy, just drink water, just wait.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, okay, she would know, not me.
Speaker 2: Sarah didn't just need advice, she needed someone who'd been
Speaker 2: through this and made it out on the other side.
Speaker 2: To tell her that she was going to be okay,
Speaker 2: that it wasn't her fault, and that she wasn't a
Speaker 2: bad mom. But Becky did the opposite.
Speaker 1: She was definitely implying that I wasn't cut out for this.
Speaker 1: You know, this just isn't for some people. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: not for you.
Speaker 2: Not being cut out for parenting was Sarah's worst fear
Speaker 2: at the time. She was isolated by COVID and her
Speaker 2: postpartum recovery. So Becky's words cut deep.
Speaker 1: I mean, just validation would have gone a long way,
Speaker 1: but she really went out of her way to make
Speaker 1: it seem like anyone who was struggling was just so
Speaker 1: beneath her and that she was just like super mom.
Speaker 1: And so I was really questioning everything, and not in
Speaker 1: a good way.
Speaker 2: This was one of the darkest times in Sarah's life.
Speaker 2: She was suicidal with a newborn. To keep herself grounded,
Speaker 2: Sarah focused on the positives she did have.
Speaker 1: At this point, we are about two months away from
Speaker 1: being officially Jewish. I am going to the mikvah and
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. It's like a huge deal.
Speaker 2: Mikvah is a spiritual ceremony and it could be used
Speaker 2: to officially anoint someone in the Jewish faith. So Sarah's
Speaker 2: first mikvah was like a baptism.
Speaker 1: I got dumped and it was amazing. It was so great,
Speaker 1: and I passed my little exam and I got my
Speaker 1: certificate for me and for my son as the best.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't even describe like how like symbolic
Speaker 1: and amazing. It fell after my weird, quiver full baptism
Speaker 1: experience to go to a mikva of my own volition.
Speaker 2: During the postpartum recovery, her faith was everything. She started
Speaker 2: teaching her son Yiddish and leaning into her identity as
Speaker 2: a Jewish parent.
Speaker 1: It took me like two or three years to be
Speaker 1: what I would consider back to myself. But my light
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel is that I'm the
Speaker 1: Jewish parent in my son's life, and I have to
Speaker 1: stick around and I have to keep him in touch
Speaker 1: with his culture.
Speaker 2: Slowly, Sarah and her husband learned a parent in a
Speaker 2: way that felt right to them. The Facebook group was
Speaker 2: instrumental in helping them get there. As their son got older,
Speaker 2: Sarah began to have more questions about raising a child
Speaker 2: in an inner faith marriage.
Speaker 1: My husband is not religious at all, but we technically
Speaker 1: are an interfaith family because he's not Jewish and I am.
Speaker 1: And it's really hard to find supportive interfaith parenting spaces.
Speaker 1: And Becky was a Jewish parent and an interfaith family,
Speaker 1: and so I was like, hey, I really needed to help.
Speaker 1: And she was receptive and gave a lot of that
Speaker 1: was maybe more critical than I was expecting. Every time
Speaker 1: I asked her a question, I would get an answer,
Speaker 1: but it didn't line up with anything that I had
Speaker 1: ever heard before. But I guess she would know, and
Speaker 1: so I started to sort of get back to that
Speaker 1: place where I was like, am I qualified for this.
Speaker 2: At the time, Becky had made a post about how
Speaker 2: she keeps a kosher kitchen.
Speaker 1: She was very much positioning herself as an authority, and
Speaker 1: she made this big deal out of keeping kosher.
Speaker 2: Sarah was considering keeping kosher for the first time herself,
Speaker 2: so in the comment section, she asked a follow up
Speaker 2: question about setting up a kosher kitchen.
Speaker 1: I just had a question about separate sides of the
Speaker 1: kitchen because I haven't done it.
Speaker 2: But strangely, Becky deleted her comment from the post.
Speaker 1: It was weird. My comment got deleted very quickly when
Speaker 1: I asked the question, and so I don't even think
Speaker 1: I saw what her reply was.
Speaker 2: So finally she turned to her rabbi.
Speaker 1: I contacted him in tears, just like crisis mode, like
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm supposed to be doing this. I
Speaker 1: can't be a parent like this, like you made a
Speaker 1: mistake by letting me be Jewish, Like I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. And he was the first person to ask,
Speaker 1: who is this person? Do you see them a lot?
Speaker 1: Can you stop seeing them? I was like, they're just
Speaker 1: a person on Facebook, and he's like, why are you
Speaker 1: listening to them? Like what what is their role? What
Speaker 1: is their authority here? And I was like, dude, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Actually I don't call my rabbi dude, but
Speaker 1: you know, I was like, yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I had been interacting with her for almost three years,
Speaker 1: and I never realized how badly it had been affecting
Speaker 1: me until he said that.
Speaker 2: Pretty soon Sarah would get an answer to that question,
Speaker 2: one she wasn't expecting.
Speaker 1: So I was at home and then I got added
Speaker 1: to this group chat that had like two hundred messages,
Speaker 1: and it's called therapy sash and it had the name
Speaker 1: of the parenting group. I was like late to be added,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what is happening? And then one
Speaker 1: of my friends from the group was like, I'll catch
Speaker 1: you up. Thank god, you know, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and she tells me we just found out Becky the
Speaker 1: admin and the parenting group. I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: know her. Go on. She was like, she is not real.
Speaker 2: After three years of interacting with Becky, an admin in
Speaker 2: Sarah's parenting group, the truth was revealed. Becky wasn't who
Speaker 2: she said she was.
Speaker 1: She was like, she is a catfish. She's been stealing
Speaker 1: people's pictures of their children, pretending that they're her kids
Speaker 1: and giving them these crazy backstories. Immediately, my brain went
Speaker 1: to the child that had a hate crime committed against them.
Speaker 1: What possesses the person to see a picture of a
Speaker 1: child they don't know and invent a hate crime against them.
Speaker 1: This cannot be.
Speaker 2: The community was reeling. Sarah went to the Facebook page
Speaker 2: and Becky was gone.
Speaker 1: And then I saw the announcement from one of the admins,
Speaker 1: just like, how heart broken and shaken she was.
Speaker 2: Two hundred of the most active group members were all
Speaker 2: in a text called therapy session, comparing their notes, trying
Speaker 2: to understand what was happening.
Speaker 1: How could she not be real? I had seen her
Speaker 1: talking to her husband, like I'd seen videos of her,
Speaker 1: and things just kept coming out over and over like
Speaker 1: all day, and for that whole day, I just completely
Speaker 1: abandoned my work and just stayed in the group chat.
Speaker 2: Becky had posted videos of herself, her real self with
Speaker 2: her real name, but nearly everything else about her was
Speaker 2: a lie. She didn't have six kids, she didn't have any,
Speaker 2: She had never been a parent at all.
Speaker 1: We found out that none of her children are real.
Speaker 1: Her children were pictures of someone else's children that she
Speaker 1: had been taking from an account that she was following.
Speaker 1: Her son that was talking to children of other people
Speaker 1: in the group on kids Messenger was her and she
Speaker 1: had given him this really traumatic backstory, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: real at all. And then she had her husband that
Speaker 1: was her as well.
Speaker 2: There was no husband. Becky just made a fake account
Speaker 2: where she posed as her husband and filled out his
Speaker 2: profile using stolen pictures from the Internet.
Speaker 1: She had taken pictures from I believe an actor from Thailand.
Speaker 1: Her entire family was her.
Speaker 2: Some people were friends with Becky in real life, and
Speaker 2: they were blindsided too.
Speaker 1: People had met her in person while she was pregnant,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't pregnant, and it was like she fooled
Speaker 1: these moms of multiple kids. Nobody could have seen this coming.
Speaker 2: Becky lied about the death of her two year old
Speaker 2: daughter to a group of parents, some of whom had
Speaker 2: actually lost kids of their own.
Speaker 1: The thing that like sticks with me was the amount
Speaker 1: of other parents in the group who had lost their
Speaker 1: children like toddlers and even older or younger, who were
Speaker 1: consoling her and sharing their similar struggles like what, who?
Speaker 1: Who could do this?
Speaker 2: It was the extent of her lies that kept people
Speaker 2: from questioning her.
Speaker 1: If you say something like did you even have the
Speaker 1: death of a child and you're wrong, you are the
Speaker 1: worst for doubting this person, and no one who's an
Speaker 1: actual normal person would want to do that. Then there's
Speaker 1: also the practical side of it, where she can just
Speaker 1: delete your comment, she can just kick you out of
Speaker 1: the group. She was an admin, so she could get
Speaker 1: rid of you.
Speaker 2: The admins, the people most intimately involved in running the group,
Speaker 2: were the ones who discovered Becky's fraud, and they needed answers.
Speaker 1: When she was confronted by the admins that she was
Speaker 1: close with, she said that she can't stop. I don't
Speaker 1: understand why, but I do believe that she can't stop.
Speaker 2: After Becky's accounts were deleted, the parenting group banded together
Speaker 2: to find out more about the real Becky.
Speaker 1: When we started finding out more about her and we
Speaker 1: spoke to someone in her life who knew more about
Speaker 1: her as a real person on her background, they revealed
Speaker 1: to us that she had been doing this since high school,
Speaker 1: making up people and making up herself.
Speaker 2: There was one thing she didn't lie about. She was
Speaker 2: actually a lawyer, and the kind of lawyer who protected
Speaker 2: vulnerable people.
Speaker 1: I think that's the only thing she has ever told
Speaker 1: the truth about other than her cat's name.
Speaker 2: One of the admins gathered evidence and reported Becky's actions
Speaker 2: to the bar association in her home state, but as
Speaker 2: far as the group knows, nothing has ever come with
Speaker 2: that report.
Speaker 1: It seems like it was a joke to a lot
Speaker 1: of people, because I think that there is this attitude
Speaker 1: where if something happens online, mainly online, it's not real.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: It was very real to a lot of us.
Speaker 2: It was very real for Sarah, especially when she found
Speaker 2: out she.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Jewish at all.
Speaker 2: For three years, Sarah was repeatedly dismissed and belittled by Becky,
Speaker 2: told that she didn't know what she was talking about
Speaker 2: when it came to her faith. And worst of all,
Speaker 2: when Sarah was going through a mental health crisis, Becky
Speaker 2: was there saying she'd been through something similar and telling
Speaker 2: Sarah that maybe she wasn't cut out to be a parent.
Speaker 1: For me, it was transparently life or death at one
Speaker 1: point with stories like this, if I hear them from
Speaker 1: other people, you know, like on like that Catah show,
Speaker 1: I'm like, at what point would this person call it?
Speaker 1: At what point would this person be like okay? And
Speaker 1: for her, it was not a new mom considering ending things,
Speaker 1: So I don't know what it could vastly be, because anyone
Speaker 1: in their right mind would have stopped. She knew what
Speaker 1: I was going through, everyone did, and she just did
Speaker 1: that regardless.
Speaker 2: It was an insidious kind of interaction that undermined Sarah's
Speaker 2: trust in herself. Becky was like a personification of Sarah's
Speaker 2: worst fears.
Speaker 1: That insecurity was there and it's not like her doing that,
Speaker 1: It was there. A lot of it was just that
Speaker 1: I felt that way, but she really honed in on it.
Speaker 1: She could have really sense that stuff. And it's taken
Speaker 1: until like a couple of days ago to realize how
Speaker 1: awful and how deep it went and how much it
Speaker 1: affected me. This whole experience just really made me doubt
Speaker 1: my abilities as a parent and my self as a person,
Speaker 1: and just like basically every aspect of my identity that
Speaker 1: I had spent so long trying to find it like
Speaker 1: shook everything.
Speaker 2: But then she started seeing it all differently.
Speaker 1: I saw that she had lied about something that made
Speaker 1: me feel like an impostor, and she was the impostor
Speaker 1: the whole time. I had actually done it, Like I
Speaker 1: had overcome a lot of the same things that she
Speaker 1: had lied about.
Speaker 2: She's not just talking about parenting, She's talking about persevering
Speaker 2: after a tough childhood and homelessness, finding identity and a
Speaker 2: new religion, and surviving a postpartum mental health crisis.
Speaker 1: It went from me being angry about that and feeling
Speaker 1: like I had like myself down to me feeling like
Speaker 1: I am really proud of myself. I did this thing
Speaker 1: that is so hard that she had to lie about it.
Speaker 1: I did it for real.
Speaker 2: One question Sarah still has is that, out of all
Speaker 2: the groups to catfish, why did Becky choose this one.
Speaker 1: I really can't understand her reason for finding a group
Speaker 1: that was parents trying to break cycles of abuse and
Speaker 1: take advantage of them and make them doubt themselves, people
Speaker 1: who are in this incredibly vulnerable spot of trying to
Speaker 1: be better for their children and trying to be better
Speaker 1: for themselves. If I were evil, I would leave that
Speaker 1: one alone, you know. I just that seems like a line.
Speaker 2: Becky's deception changed the group, but for Sarah, it brought
Speaker 2: her closer to the other real parents out there who
Speaker 2: really wanted to connect and support each other.
Speaker 1: A lot of people did actually just disappear, just quit Facebook,
Speaker 1: quit online stuff. I'd not blame them at all. But
Speaker 1: the thing that I found so kind of heartwarming, like
Speaker 1: it almost feels like a Hallmark movie, is this pack
Speaker 1: of moms that in hindsight saw somebody messing with other
Speaker 1: moms and their kids and were like, absolutely not. And
Speaker 1: we were there for each other, and we've gotten really close.
Speaker 1: A lot of us have the way that we were
Speaker 1: able to show up for each other. That kind of
Speaker 1: undid a lot of the distrust that was immediately planted
Speaker 1: by this, like that was the initial function of the group.
Speaker 2: We first heard about this story through someone else, another mom,
Speaker 2: who wrote into our email Betrayal pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: On betrayal, we share stories about how one person couldn't
Speaker 2: see the deception right in front of them, but in
Speaker 2: this case, it was a group of thousands of people,
Speaker 2: a whole community. So we asked members to send in
Speaker 2: voice notes about how Becky impacted them. This is what
Speaker 2: they said. I got to know her family.
Speaker 4: She presented herself as this perfect parent.
Speaker 2: She posted prolifically.
Speaker 5: And also judging other people's parenting like she was just
Speaker 5: this kind of professional.
Speaker 6: She would center herself in these conversations as almost an
Speaker 6: authority figure.
Speaker 4: She always made it seem like it was this effortless,
Speaker 4: seamless thing, and she just has it all together.
Speaker 5: I saw my spouse self conscious. It's really aggravating that
Speaker 5: anybody is comparing themselves to somebody who is, like measurably impossible.
Speaker 4: I truly felt like I wasn't good enough, I was
Speaker 4: not a good enough parent.
Speaker 2: When the community found out that Becky was a fraud,
Speaker 2: that deception felt personal.
Speaker 7: Becky was talking to children pretending to be children.
Speaker 2: Her father's not dead. He's living still and is a physician.
Speaker 7: I've seen several friends of mine severely impacted by this
Speaker 7: and how they just can't trust anybody.
Speaker 4: So many of us are really trying our best and
Speaker 4: our great parents. We just aret out the perfect parent
Speaker 4: because the perfect parent does not exist.
Speaker 2: Sarah doesn't like the framing of looking on the bright
Speaker 2: side or the silver lining, but she did learn something
Speaker 2: from all of this. Here's Sarah again.
Speaker 1: This was one of the situations in my life that
Speaker 1: pushed me to begin questioning who put you in charge?
Speaker 1: That's this simple question, but it has been incredibly difficult
Speaker 1: for me to ask because I was taught under no
Speaker 1: circumstances should you ever ask that? And now I do.
Speaker 2: Today Sarah has big news.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm almost eight months pregnant. We are having a little.
Speaker 2: Girl, and this time around, she's feeling more confident in herself.
Speaker 1: I don't feel the sense of dread that I thought
Speaker 1: I would because I've put a lot of effort into
Speaker 1: building a super strong community online and in real life with
Speaker 1: people that I know and people that I trust. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to start out with the confidence in my
Speaker 1: role as the Jewish mom. I'm feeling really confident and
Speaker 1: excited in my abilities, in Paul's abilities, and in my
Speaker 1: son's abilities to be a big brother. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are challenges always, and I have no idea what they're
Speaker 1: going to be yet, but I think that we can
Speaker 1: handle it.
Speaker 2: We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question,
Speaker 2: why did you want to tell your story?
Speaker 1: The reason that I want to talk about it is
Speaker 1: because I do think that she can't stop. I do
Speaker 1: think that she's doing it again, and I think that
Speaker 1: there are people other people in the world who do
Speaker 1: stuff like this, of course, and so I want to
Speaker 1: be there for another person to just say, like, you're
Speaker 1: not crazy.
Speaker 2: On the next episode of Betrayal, Kee.
Speaker 1: You eventually told me the whole story, and I said,
Speaker 1: why Met?
Speaker 7: He said, as my uncle would say, why not you.
Speaker 2: If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
Speaker 2: team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email
Speaker 2: us at betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
Speaker 2: at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One
Speaker 2: way to.
Speaker 6: Show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple
Speaker 6: Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal five
Speaker 6: star reviews, Go a long way, a big thank you
Speaker 6: to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of
Speaker 6: Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership
Speaker 6: with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy
Speaker 6: Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
Speaker 6: written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Speaker 6: Associate producers are Kristin Melcuriy and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart
Speaker 6: team is Ali Perry and Jessica Kriinchech. Audio editing and
Speaker 6: mixing by Matt Delvecchio, Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins.
Speaker 6: Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines.
Speaker 2: Music library provided by Mob Music and For more podcasts
Speaker 2: from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 2: you get your podcasts.