Speaker 1: As a little girl. You don't say, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to grow up and marry a guy
Speaker 1: who cheats on me and makes me feel like the
Speaker 1: only way I can leave is if I'm going to
Speaker 1: be homeless in a ditch.
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. Lorena is a Midwestern mom who's never met
Speaker 2: a stranger. When she meets someone, she wants to really connect.
Speaker 1: If you want to sit there and talk about the
Speaker 1: blue sky and the green grass, please go find somebody else,
Speaker 1: because I don't have time for that. You want to
Speaker 1: tell me who you are and what you want to
Speaker 1: be all over that.
Speaker 2: She came to the interview with an extra large iced
Speaker 2: coffee in hand and the energy level to match.
Speaker 1: Caffeine. Caffeine, let's a caffeine? Does stall make it? I
Speaker 1: have eleven children and I have four grandkids. I'm busy
Speaker 1: eleven children.
Speaker 2: She was eighteen when she had her first and forty
Speaker 2: when she had her last. In that time, she didn't
Speaker 2: go two years without being pregnant. How did she get
Speaker 2: here with eleven kids? While she belonged to a conservative
Speaker 2: Baptist church. In her community, big families were the norm,
Speaker 2: and she loved motherhood. But today she sees that she
Speaker 2: was a frog in boiling water. She didn't realize the
Speaker 2: temperature was being turned up until it was too late.
Speaker 2: Lorena was raised by a single mother, and their family
Speaker 2: moved nearly every year. She always envied her friends who
Speaker 2: had this stability she didn't seem to have.
Speaker 1: I really really wanted the nuclear family. I really wanted. Well, look,
Speaker 1: it's the mom, and it's the dad, and it's some kids.
Speaker 2: Her mom worked in a hospital and would bring Lorena
Speaker 2: along with her sometimes to sit in the waiting room.
Speaker 2: While she was there. She fantasized about a career in medicine,
Speaker 2: working with premature babies.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a doctor. I actually wanted to
Speaker 1: be a neonatologist.
Speaker 2: But as she got older and became a teenager, she
Speaker 2: and her mom started butting heads. She felt like her
Speaker 2: mom didn't have time for her, so Lorena started to
Speaker 2: do exactly what she wanted. When she was sixteen, she
Speaker 2: ran away from home. She says it wasn't as dramatic
Speaker 2: as it sounds. She just went to a friend's house.
Speaker 2: When her mom found her, she'd been smoking weed, and
Speaker 2: her mom did something drastic.
Speaker 1: My mother figured out that she could put me in
Speaker 1: direct treatment centers. It was almost like a little mini prison.
Speaker 2: She went to three. The first wooding keeper because they
Speaker 2: found out that she wasn't struggling with any drug addiction.
Speaker 2: The second was a psychiatric hospital. They assessed her and
Speaker 2: kept her there for a few weeks before they determined
Speaker 2: that she didn't need.
Speaker 1: To be hospitalized, and so she found another place. And
Speaker 1: the third place she found they put everyone there on
Speaker 1: eight hundred milligrams of lithium twice a day, whether you
Speaker 1: needed it or not.
Speaker 2: As soon as she turned eighteen, she got out of
Speaker 2: there and moved out of the state with her boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Within a few months, she found out that she was pregnant.
Speaker 1: From the very moment I took that pregnancy test and
Speaker 1: saw that positive line, I was so excited. I just
Speaker 1: was so incredibly amazed that I could be a mall.
Speaker 2: But she experienced deception early on in that relationship. I
Speaker 2: was twenty He told me he was twenty five. I
Speaker 2: find out that he lied to me, he's thirty five.
Speaker 2: I found his driver's license thirty five.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of age difference. You're not on equal grounds.
Speaker 1: There's not equal footing.
Speaker 2: So she did what she'd always done growing up, figured
Speaker 2: life out by herself. She left him, took the baby,
Speaker 2: and moved back to her home state, which we're not
Speaker 2: naming here to protect her privacy. And back home, she
Speaker 2: got herself into college. While she was in school, she
Speaker 2: had another baby. She was excited to have a second,
Speaker 2: but she didn't want a long term relationship with the father.
Speaker 1: I'm in college. I'm mostly making a's couple of bees
Speaker 1: there except twenty four I had my second child. I
Speaker 1: was in a glass that I really shouldn't have been in,
Speaker 1: and I made a.
Speaker 2: C Now that she had two young children that she
Speaker 2: was raising alone, going to medical school seemed unreal life stick,
Speaker 2: so she changed her plans and decided to get her
Speaker 2: business degree. She began studying to become an accountant.
Speaker 1: I'm in a business class and I see the sky
Speaker 1: across the room and I'm like, oh my gosh, he
Speaker 1: was strikingly handsome, well dressed, and the smartest one in
Speaker 1: the class. He asks me if I want to study,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, he is setting the standard on all
Speaker 1: the tests and he's wanting to study with me, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I love that. And so we make
Speaker 1: plans and when he comes over, we don't study.
Speaker 2: We're going to call him Peter. So she and Peter
Speaker 2: stayed up all night talking.
Speaker 1: Anyway, we're talking and and he's just listening to me.
Speaker 1: He left somewhere between four and six am.
Speaker 3: He kissed me, and then he left the next day,
Speaker 3: he called her. He called me right after he got
Speaker 3: out for four. Hey, I was just wanting to come
Speaker 3: by and see you.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: He made her feel important. They started planning playdates with
Speaker 2: her two young kids and movie nights at her apartment.
Speaker 1: And I loved the way he made me feel. He
Speaker 1: made me feel seen and heard. He made me feel
Speaker 1: like I was the smart one. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that I had felt like some man had ever been
Speaker 1: that interested in me before.
Speaker 2: Things were moving quickly. After just a few dates, they
Speaker 2: became inseparable.
Speaker 1: With most of my past relationships, they were like easing
Speaker 1: into relationships, you know, you talk a little bit. But
Speaker 1: with him, we never stopped seeing one another.
Speaker 2: She was into him, but Lorena had two small children
Speaker 2: to protect. She didn't want them to get attached to Peter.
Speaker 2: So three months into their relationship, she said she couldn't
Speaker 2: continue unless he was serious.
Speaker 1: And at that point in time, he told me he
Speaker 1: loved me and he wanted to pursue the relationship with
Speaker 1: the possibility of marriage, which I was like what.
Speaker 2: A few months after that, Lorena went to the doctor
Speaker 2: for a routine physical.
Speaker 1: I get a phone call and they tell me I'm pregnant.
Speaker 1: So Peter came over that night and I told him,
Speaker 1: and I was so scared. I remember we were standing
Speaker 1: in the kitchen and he picked me up, put me
Speaker 1: on the counter, and looked in my eyes and said, please, please,
Speaker 1: will you marry me. I don't want our child to
Speaker 1: not have a father. And I was like, yeah, yes
Speaker 1: I will.
Speaker 2: Peter adopted her two younger children, and now, as a
Speaker 2: mom of three and a wife, getting her college degree
Speaker 2: became even more difficult.
Speaker 1: I had basically taken that semester off in the fall.
Speaker 1: I think I took one class and passed it, and
Speaker 1: then in the spring he said, well, how about you
Speaker 1: just stay home with the kids. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: that's really thoughtful. So I decided, hey, let's try that.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to be at home with my kids
Speaker 1: because I have a ever had this opportunity to just
Speaker 1: be a full time long All of.
Speaker 2: A sudden, she had the nuclear family she'd always wanted,
Speaker 2: and Peter promised he would be their provider while she
Speaker 2: paused her education. He excelled in his.
Speaker 1: His professor had told him, you're very smart. If you
Speaker 1: ever decided to go back and get your master's degree,
Speaker 1: don't sell yourself short. Go to an Ivy League school
Speaker 1: you can get in.
Speaker 2: So Peter started applying to MBA programs, and it turned
Speaker 2: out his professor was right. He was accepted into one
Speaker 2: of the top three business schools in the country, and
Speaker 2: the family moved to the Northeast for his education. Alone
Speaker 2: in a new city with her kids, Peter encouraged the
Speaker 2: family to start going to church.
Speaker 1: His mother was very religious. She was Pentecostal, and he
Speaker 1: wanted me to go to church. So I went, and
Speaker 1: you know what I found God, I Jesus right there.
Speaker 2: She hadn't grown up religious, but the church became a
Speaker 2: home away from home. When Peter graduated from his MBA,
Speaker 2: Lorena was there at his graduation with their family and
Speaker 2: now five children. He even graduated with a high paying
Speaker 2: job offer to make it even better. The job was
Speaker 2: close to their home state, and.
Speaker 1: This is like the biggest energy company. It's huge, and
Speaker 1: he's got a good job there.
Speaker 2: Back in the Heartland with her five kids and her
Speaker 2: ivy league husband, Lorena had a dream life. She and
Speaker 2: Peter started looking for a new church. That's when they found.
Speaker 1: This really cool organization IBLP, Bill Gothard's Institute in Basic
Speaker 1: Life Principles. Oh, come here and learn about our program,
Speaker 1: and it will inspire you and grow you as a parent,
Speaker 1: give you kind of an idea of how to live.
Speaker 4: A better life, how to be a better mother, how
Speaker 4: to be a better father, a better husband, a better wife.
Speaker 2: They gave the family workbooks for homeschooling their kids and
Speaker 2: guides to parenting. They provided free meals and childcare. It
Speaker 2: all came with a conservative, fundamentalist ideology.
Speaker 1: I bought into that. Peter bought into that. We bought
Speaker 1: into that.
Speaker 2: If you've heard of the Dougger family and their reality
Speaker 2: TV show Nineteen Kids Encounting, you've probably heard of IBLP.
Speaker 2: The church and the Douggers were featured in the documentary
Speaker 2: Shiny Happy People that came out in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: The Dougger's religion promotes having as many children as physically possible,
Speaker 2: and Peter certainly believed in that. At first, IBLP was
Speaker 2: a culture shock for Lorena, especially what they expected women
Speaker 2: to wear.
Speaker 1: Like the Duggers like what they have. The women they
Speaker 1: are wearing, every single one was in what they call
Speaker 1: a jumper or a long dress that looked like it
Speaker 1: came out of the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: But Peter thought it was a good example for their daughters.
Speaker 2: He liked the modesty.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, I really like for you guys to
Speaker 1: be dressed like this. It's more modest, and we're setting
Speaker 1: a standard here in our house. And it did not
Speaker 1: take long before I conformed and wore what everyone else wore.
Speaker 2: The church had strong beliefs about gender roles in the household.
Speaker 1: Women cannot be over men. Men are the umbrella of protection.
Speaker 1: The women were there to make the food and to
Speaker 1: keep the kids quiet.
Speaker 2: And the most important principle, allow God to dictate the
Speaker 2: amount of children you have. So she and Peter had
Speaker 2: another and another.
Speaker 1: Sex was every day, and sometimes it would be twice
Speaker 1: a day unless he was traveling clearly, or we had
Speaker 1: just had a baby, and then it was We'd wait
Speaker 1: two weeks.
Speaker 2: All the while Lorena was doing the childcare on her own.
Speaker 2: Peter would never change diapers. I think with number three
Speaker 2: he might have changed ten diapers, But then after that,
Speaker 2: with babies four through eleven, I would say that he
Speaker 2: probably changed each one of them, maybe twice, and there
Speaker 2: may have been a couple that he never changed at all.
Speaker 2: She understood that their religion had conservative beliefs about gender roles,
Speaker 2: but deep down she hoped that he would do more,
Speaker 2: especially when it came to the kids.
Speaker 1: I thought that the church was going to help him
Speaker 1: to be a better husband and a better father. Instead,
Speaker 1: it helped him hide things better.
Speaker 2: One night, as Lorena and Peter were going to.
Speaker 1: Bed, he was kind of dozing and I was striking
Speaker 1: his head and I was like, Peter, I love you
Speaker 1: so much, and he said I love you too, Crystal.
Speaker 1: I was like, what what did you just call me?
Speaker 2: Lorena quickly fell into a religious community that promised to
Speaker 2: help her with childcare, marriage, and parenting, and the church
Speaker 2: wanted families to have as many children as possible. By now,
Speaker 2: Lorena had seven children with her husband and Peter. One night,
Speaker 2: she was taken aback when her husband called her by
Speaker 2: the wrong name Crystal.
Speaker 1: I was like, what did you just call me?
Speaker 2: Who's Crystal?
Speaker 1: And he shot out of it, shot up. He's like,
Speaker 1: I didn't say that. I don't know who Crystal. I
Speaker 1: don't know what Christal, I don't even know what Crystal.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about?
Speaker 2: He blamed the mistake on sleep deprivation, and it made sense.
Speaker 2: After all, he was constantly working.
Speaker 1: His schedule was six am to eight pm, So what's
Speaker 1: that fourteen hours a day. That's Monday through Friday and
Speaker 1: then Saturday and Sunday. He'd get called in frequently. We'd
Speaker 1: get out of church and he'd be like, oh, the
Speaker 1: office called, I gotta go.
Speaker 2: Even though he was working NonStop and made a great salary,
Speaker 2: their money got tighter and tighter every year.
Speaker 1: Christmas came and I remember asking him, can I please
Speaker 1: just spend seven dollars on each kid? Seven dollars a piece?
Speaker 1: And he was like, we don't have any money at
Speaker 1: all left. I'm like, where did all the money go?
Speaker 2: Lorena assumed it was the financial strain of being a
Speaker 2: family of nine.
Speaker 1: So I made everyone homemade gifts that year. I never
Speaker 1: putt he got one gift.
Speaker 2: Despite money being tight, she relied on Peter to be
Speaker 2: the financial expert in the family. After all, he had
Speaker 2: an MBA from a top three business school. He printed
Speaker 2: out spreadsheets with their budgets and gave Lorena a weekly
Speaker 2: allowance for her and the kids.
Speaker 1: I keep telling myself, it's going to get better. It's
Speaker 1: going to get better, because as sure as heck couldn't
Speaker 1: have gotten worse.
Speaker 2: Right, she was wrong about that. At one point, Lorena
Speaker 2: tried to investigate what was going on financially. She checked
Speaker 2: on the bank accounts, wanting to understand their expenses and
Speaker 2: find opportunities to save. But Peter drew a firm boundary.
Speaker 1: And he said, if you look at this bank account again,
Speaker 1: I will cut you off and you will not be
Speaker 1: able to see any finances.
Speaker 2: After her eighth baby, she had serious health complications. While
Speaker 2: they were in the hospital, the doctor pulled them both aside.
Speaker 1: The doctor says, listen, I know you have eight kids,
Speaker 1: and I know that you kind of have your beliefs
Speaker 1: on that and whatever, but in the best interest of
Speaker 1: your health, you need to put off having any more kids.
Speaker 1: Peter looked at him and said we're not going to
Speaker 1: do that. We believe in letting the Lord give us
Speaker 1: as many kids as we want. That's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: After my eighth child was born, I was in an
Speaker 1: immense amount of pain. I could not even hold my baby,
Speaker 1: let alone feed him. While I'm healing from all of this,
Speaker 1: I'm not healthy, and I get pregnant with baby number nine.
Speaker 2: As their family continued to grow, so did their financial problems.
Speaker 1: So at this point in time, he had a bankruptcy
Speaker 1: on his record, and he owed back Texas to the
Speaker 1: state we lived in. I know that he makes a
Speaker 1: good six figure salary, but I'm getting an eighth maybe
Speaker 1: not even that much, a tenth of it to feed
Speaker 1: and clothe the kids.
Speaker 2: Lorena couldn't understand it. Peter explained that it was the
Speaker 2: expenses of the kids and the family that were bankrupting them.
Speaker 2: In an attempt to salvage their finances, they decided to
Speaker 2: downsize to a smaller house, and Peter found a new job.
Speaker 1: And at some point in time they started requiring him
Speaker 1: to travel. So here are the kids and I in
Speaker 1: this dumpy house that he's never put much into. It
Speaker 1: was a very old falling apart dilapidated, two bedroom, one
Speaker 1: bath for eleven people. It does have running water, but
Speaker 1: the septic system is a barrel.
Speaker 2: Lorena rose to the challenge.
Speaker 1: I can squeeze blood from a turnip. Okay, I can
Speaker 1: show you how. My oldest son, at one point in
Speaker 1: time came to me and said, Mom, that makes a
Speaker 1: good six figure salary.
Speaker 2: Why are you.
Speaker 1: Living the way you're living? And I was like, we
Speaker 1: spend it all.
Speaker 2: They relied on the church as much as they could.
Speaker 2: One summer in twenty fifteen, they took the whole family
Speaker 2: to an IBLP conference.
Speaker 1: And the speakers that year were the Duggars. This was
Speaker 1: ry after their oldest son had gotten in trouble with
Speaker 1: Ashley Madison.
Speaker 2: Ashley Madison is an online dating platform specifically for married people.
Speaker 2: Their slogan is life is Short, Have an Affair, And
Speaker 2: back in twenty fifteen, their user database had just been hacked.
Speaker 2: All their users' emails were now public and available online
Speaker 2: for anyone to see.
Speaker 1: Missus Dugger was talking about how you could go on
Speaker 1: to some website and look up people's email addresses, and
Speaker 1: something just clicked in me. So right then and there
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of this conference, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to go feed the baby. I go outside
Speaker 1: and I'm looking on my phone and I look up
Speaker 1: one of his email addresses and it shows that he
Speaker 1: has an Ashley Madison account, and I nearly threw up.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: She decided to confront him that night.
Speaker 1: I said, this is what I found, and he was like,
Speaker 1: that's not me. That email must have been hacked. Oh look,
Speaker 1: I'm going to delete this whole email. Just get rid
Speaker 1: of the email completely, so that you believe me. Blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, blah blah blah. And so it was enough
Speaker 1: to go Okay, Well maybe he did because at this
Speaker 1: point in time I believed him because I really had
Speaker 1: no other options. I had no other place to go.
Speaker 1: My mantra is setting it. It's going to get better,
Speaker 1: It's going to get better.
Speaker 2: She had nine kids. Lorena was independent, but raising a
Speaker 2: family in a household of this size going in alone
Speaker 2: was far too scary to think about. But the truth
Speaker 2: was she had been alone for a while.
Speaker 1: He was gone, having to travel for quote unquote work
Speaker 1: at least one week out of the month, sometimes it
Speaker 1: would be two. So I was becoming more and more
Speaker 1: accustomed to him not being there. September twenty first, twenty one,
Speaker 1: Peter was on another trip, because that's what he did.
Speaker 1: I had decided to take my kids to our state fair.
Speaker 1: On the way out to the car, I passed by
Speaker 1: this box.
Speaker 2: It was just a shoe box of old papers that
Speaker 2: had been floating around Peter's car for the past few months.
Speaker 2: She assumed it was just some of Peter's work documents.
Speaker 1: Nobody looked in it because it's work stuff. Why would you,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not interested in this work stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: so nobody looked in it. I must have walked past
Speaker 1: that box twenty times, but on this day, she was curious.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look through it. I'm just gonna look through it.
Speaker 1: I'm looking through and I'm seeing all these folders, and
Speaker 1: I see one envelope full of birthday cards, and so
Speaker 1: I'm going through and I see this one and on
Speaker 1: the outside of it it's labeled Poppy, like Pa p
Speaker 1: I I'm like, okay. I open up the envelope and
Speaker 1: in it is a card and it says, dear Poppy Dot,
Speaker 1: I hope you like the travel book I made you.
Speaker 1: I have enjoyed our travels together, and I hope to
Speaker 1: have many more with you, Love, Princess Buttercup. At this point,
Speaker 1: my blood head ran cold, my hands are trembling, and
Speaker 1: I am shocked. I don't know what this is. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it means. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a joke. I don't know if it's real. I don't know.
Speaker 2: While her husband was on a work trip, Lorena found
Speaker 2: a shoe box of his old work papers, or at
Speaker 2: least that's what she thought it was until she opened
Speaker 2: it and I'm looking through and I can't believe I'm
Speaker 2: finding these weird things. At first, she didn't know what
Speaker 2: she was seeing. This is really weird.
Speaker 1: It's just a paper target population progress chart and then
Speaker 1: self assessment scores calendar. That's what it says right here,
Speaker 1: what age regression? Only one domb question mark and then
Speaker 1: there's a VENMO routing number.
Speaker 2: She kept reading and this is what she came across. Next.
Speaker 1: I came across this one sheet and it said rewards.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that's interesting. Nanny Petty from Daddy,
Speaker 1: a point system, remote playtime, SERTs, dress up trips, books,
Speaker 1: watching movie, snacks and then it said little gets backward,
Speaker 1: and then on another page, make a schedule fourteen points,
Speaker 1: work out ten points, nutrition fourteen points.
Speaker 2: It was like a report card or a list of
Speaker 2: activities to do with a kid. But then there was
Speaker 2: another column.
Speaker 1: There was a little part that said punish things that
Speaker 1: I'd never really heard of, edging without release, and I'm
Speaker 1: like yardwork, huh, little did I know? Time out corner.
Speaker 2: It was a reward system of some kind and it
Speaker 2: appeared sexual in nature. But that wasn't all. There were
Speaker 2: credit card statements from cards she didn't know about, and
Speaker 2: receipts for strange purchases.
Speaker 1: Like, oh my word, what is this? Adult baby bottles,
Speaker 1: adult bibs, adult one sees like these are receipts for
Speaker 1: these things that Peter had purchased. There were things of
Speaker 1: him paying baby Bear. That was the name of one
Speaker 1: particular person he was paying. It was somewhere around twenty
Speaker 1: thousand and thirty thousand dollars I'd spent on all of this.
Speaker 2: He'd spent thirty thousand dollars on sex toys and kink
Speaker 2: and who was baby bear? Something was very wrong.
Speaker 1: She and Peter's sex life had always been tame, It
Speaker 1: was all just very vanilla. I remember one time we
Speaker 1: trying to bring up, Oh, maybe we should try handcuffs.
Speaker 1: How would you feel if I had handcuff shoot to
Speaker 1: the bed and he freaked out on me? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: we can't do that. What if one of us dies
Speaker 1: during it?
Speaker 2: Princess Buttercup and Baby Bear were clearly indications of another
Speaker 2: side of Peter, one that she never knew existed. The
Speaker 2: Peter she knew was devoted to a conservative fundamentalist church,
Speaker 2: but this man clearly wasn't who he claimed to be.
Speaker 2: Lorena was afraid to confront him on her own, so
Speaker 2: she called her eldest son, who was twenty four. He
Speaker 2: said he would be there in a few days, and
Speaker 2: he gave her some advice.
Speaker 1: And until then, you're gonna have to hold down the fort.
Speaker 1: You're going have to pretend like everything is fine. You're
Speaker 1: going to have to play the part of everything is
Speaker 1: fine when he calls tonight, Act like it's no big deal.
Speaker 1: When he comes home, Treat it like it's any other night.
Speaker 2: Peter came home two days before her son made it there,
Speaker 2: so Loreena did pretend. Finally, her son arrived and they
Speaker 2: got to work.
Speaker 1: My son is very technologically advanced, and we were able
Speaker 1: to go through the computers at home and find things
Speaker 1: that I never could have found on my own.
Speaker 2: And what they found there painted a full picture of
Speaker 2: Peter's deception.
Speaker 1: We found the real Ashley Madison account that he had.
Speaker 1: We found pictures of so many women in various states
Speaker 1: of undress. We found of women with property of Dom
Speaker 1: written in sharpie, property of Peter on one woman.
Speaker 2: These pictures had timestamps dating back to twenty seventeen, four
Speaker 2: years prior. So how much money had he actually spent
Speaker 2: on affairs and why had he spent so much on
Speaker 2: adult diapers, onesies and baby bottles today? This is her
Speaker 2: understanding of what her husband was doing with these women.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be the dom daddy, and he wanted
Speaker 1: a little girl to play along with him.
Speaker 2: As far as she knows, all the women were adults.
Speaker 2: They were just sometimes pretending to be children or babies
Speaker 2: as part of a kink. Lorena pulled up his social
Speaker 2: media accounts where she found the messages he'd written to
Speaker 2: these women, even messages where he referenced Lorena.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I found on there that he
Speaker 1: said was every night that I'm with you or with her,
Speaker 1: I will call my wife and I will talk to
Speaker 1: her for as little time as possible. That hurt.
Speaker 2: Before she confronted Peter, Lorena made an appointment with a
Speaker 2: lawyer to talk divorce.
Speaker 1: She had told me, the state that we live in
Speaker 1: is an ovault state, and there's not much that we
Speaker 1: can do unless you have a picture of him having sex. Basically,
Speaker 1: she said, you've got to have a picture of his
Speaker 1: genitalia going into someone else's genitalia. Well, I've found about
Speaker 1: two hundred of pictures and I think three or four videos.
Speaker 2: Her eldest son was helping her collect this information for
Speaker 2: the divorce attorneys. They pulled documents together at night, sitting
Speaker 2: in their parked car in the garage while Peter slept
Speaker 2: in the house, and that's when they found proof of
Speaker 2: even more financial deception.
Speaker 1: He was working at several different universities as an adjunct professor,
Speaker 1: so he's making money there and he's hiding it. We
Speaker 1: found this man has been spending clearly hand over fist
Speaker 1: tons of money and my children were like almost at
Speaker 1: poverty level. We had no money. He was hemorrhaging money
Speaker 1: on this lifestyle.
Speaker 2: After they gathered all the information they could find, there
Speaker 2: was one last thing they needed to do.
Speaker 1: My son says, Mom, I know we have guns in
Speaker 1: the house.
Speaker 2: He took them and brought them to a friend's place,
Speaker 2: and once the guns were gone, he made sure his
Speaker 2: mom and siblings were out of the house, and then
Speaker 2: he confronted his dad.
Speaker 1: My oldest son went inside to our bedroom and said
Speaker 1: to Peter, hey, dad, mom knows everything and she wants
Speaker 1: you to leave. And Peter sat up slowly, yawned and
Speaker 1: stretched big and said okay. And my son said please leave,
Speaker 1: and he said okay, and he left.
Speaker 2: After that, Loreno only talked to Peter one more time
Speaker 2: on the phone to let him know that she was
Speaker 2: filing for divorce.
Speaker 1: I don't remember all the nonsense he tried to say,
Speaker 1: but what he did tell me was what you are
Speaker 1: doing is far worse than anything I ever did. What
Speaker 1: I did, what I was doing was divorcing him. I
Speaker 1: just laughed. I was like it, okay, and we're done.
Speaker 1: And I have not had a conversation with him since.
Speaker 2: That was in twenty twenty one. From then on, her
Speaker 2: son took over all communication with Peter that allowed Lorena
Speaker 2: to focus on her emotional and financial recovery. She also
Speaker 2: had to explain to her eleving kids why their father
Speaker 2: had left. Her youngest child was five.
Speaker 1: Those early days are just such pipler. I do remember
Speaker 1: telling the children that we were divorcing because of Peter
Speaker 1: making some very bad decisions. I think the words I
Speaker 1: consistently used were poor choices.
Speaker 2: But when friends and adult family asked, she told them
Speaker 2: the truth how she really felt about her husband. Peter
Speaker 2: was a black hole. She couldn't believe how strange it
Speaker 2: all was. He was spending tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: on sexual fetishes, fetishes that included things like baby play,
Speaker 2: but all the while he was never interested in childcare.
Speaker 1: One thing that kept coming back to me was how
Speaker 1: weird he was about changing diapers. And here he is,
Speaker 1: He's spent, you know, thousands of dollars on diapers.
Speaker 2: After he left and I had.
Speaker 1: Filed for divorce, I was still trying to go to church,
Speaker 1: taking the kids and all that.
Speaker 2: But after what Peter did, church wasn't the same.
Speaker 1: There's this cognitive dissonance. I'm now going, what else have
Speaker 1: I been told?
Speaker 2: That's not right?
Speaker 1: This whole patriarchy thing. How is any of this at
Speaker 1: all biblical? What's real and what's not real? I still
Speaker 1: have a difficult time going to church.
Speaker 2: She stopped going to church and is taking time to
Speaker 2: reevaluate her spirituality and values. She started going to therapy,
Speaker 2: where she began understanding that what she experienced was spiritual abuse.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say all churches, because I believe
Speaker 1: that there are some really awesome churches out there. I've
Speaker 1: been to some, okay, But the ones that are perpetuating
Speaker 1: patriarchal abuse are the ones that are saying wives submit
Speaker 1: to your husbands. That allows for men to treat women
Speaker 1: however they desire, with no repercussion.
Speaker 2: She was spiritually abused by the church, but also by Peter. Today,
Speaker 2: she doesn't know if he ever believed any of the
Speaker 2: fundamentalist ideology or if he just used it as a
Speaker 2: way to control her.
Speaker 1: I look back and I can see Peter used that
Speaker 1: to keep me under control, to keep me where he
Speaker 1: wanted me, and to keep me behaving in the way
Speaker 1: he wanted. And three years ago, I couldn't have told
Speaker 1: you that. This is three years of heavy duty therapy.
Speaker 2: And then there was his devotion to having as many
Speaker 2: kids as God would allow? Was that also just a
Speaker 2: weapon of control?
Speaker 1: Looking back, I see why he did that. It kept
Speaker 1: me busy. His goal was to always keep me busy
Speaker 1: and to keep me from looking at what he was doing,
Speaker 1: because if I wasn't busy with the kids, then my
Speaker 1: focus was on him.
Speaker 2: After all, Peter was smart. Unlike a lot of deception story,
Speaker 2: he really did get that fancy NBA from an Ivy
Speaker 2: League school, and after that he parked his wife in
Speaker 2: a fundamentalist church and began an insidious process.
Speaker 1: Somewhere along the way, he had started shipping away at
Speaker 1: my identity of who I was and what I could become,
Speaker 1: and I believed him.
Speaker 2: It hurts to look back and think about the life
Speaker 2: she had before Peter.
Speaker 1: When I met Peter, I was a strong, independent woman.
Speaker 1: I was only twenty two, but I had two children
Speaker 1: and I was taking care of them like a boss.
Speaker 1: I had plans, I had goals.
Speaker 2: Still, she adores each of her children, and she says
Speaker 2: they're the reason she's made it through. She's rebuilding her
Speaker 2: life and finally finishing her degree. It's important for her
Speaker 2: to explain that not only can betrayal happen to anyone,
Speaker 2: but so can indoctrination.
Speaker 1: People do ask how does a capable, intelligent person go
Speaker 1: from Hey, I'm a single mom and I'm killing it.
Speaker 1: I'm full time mom, I'm full time student, I'm full
Speaker 1: time employee. How does someone go from that to I'm
Speaker 1: not allowed to look at the financial statements of the house.
Speaker 1: You're comfortable in the beginning, Hey, you know you're not
Speaker 1: really that great at keeping track of things. You might
Speaker 1: forget You've got so much on your plate. Let me
Speaker 1: just do all the finances. I'll take care of it
Speaker 1: all the way to if you look at this bank
Speaker 1: account again, I will cut you off and you will
Speaker 1: not be able to see any finances. You're a boiled frog.
Speaker 2: We end all of our episodes with the same question,
Speaker 2: why do you want to tell your story? And Lorena
Speaker 2: came prepared to answer this one.
Speaker 1: The reason I wanted to tell my story is so
Speaker 1: that others who are out there in a similar situation
Speaker 1: might have their eyes opened and go, Wow, If she
Speaker 1: can do it with eleven kids, seven still at home,
Speaker 1: and with all the odds stacked against her, so can I.
Speaker 1: If my story can just help one person to see
Speaker 1: a little clearer, to feel a little bit of comfort,
Speaker 1: to think that their life is not over. You're not
Speaker 1: too old to get out. It is never too late
Speaker 1: to start over and find who you are. That's my
Speaker 1: hope on.
Speaker 2: The next episode of Betrayal. Who is this person?
Speaker 1: Have I been with? An ex murderer, a serial rapist?
Speaker 2: I've got to find out this person's real name. If
Speaker 2: you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team
Speaker 2: or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email us
Speaker 2: at betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at
Speaker 2: gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way
Speaker 2: to show a support is by subscribing to our show
Speaker 2: on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.
Speaker 2: Five star reviews go a long way. Big thank you
Speaker 2: to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of
Speaker 2: Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership
Speaker 2: with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy
Speaker 2: Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
Speaker 2: written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Speaker 2: Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart
Speaker 2: team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krinchech. Audio editing and
Speaker 2: mixing by mattel Vecchio, Additional editing support from Nico Ruka
Speaker 2: and Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music
Speaker 2: library provided by my Music and For more podcasts from iHeart,
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts