EP 18 - Sara
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I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything. This is the story of an entire community, one group of parents who experienced a shocking deception and overcame it together. We'll hear more from the larger community later, but for the majority of this episode, we're going to tell it through one person's perspective. We'll call her Sarah. Sarah,

Sarah is living her best life as an organic farmer in Vermont. She exudes cool. She's covered in tattoos and rocks a shaved head. I never have to have a bad hair day. I just don't ever have hair. She grew up in the Northeast as the oldest child in her family. When she was little, her parents struggled to make ends meet, and her father battled addiction.

Sarah remembers a time when her parents were skeptical about organized religion. Even the Christian undertones in cartoons like VeggieTales made her parents uncomfortable. I remember a conversation where my parents were like going back and forth and they were like, well, it's just vegetables. It seems fine, even though there's the religious stuff. My parents were pretty anti-religion.

But when Sarah was around 10, her parents' religious beliefs began to shift. My dad kind of got warmed up to it when he was in Alcoholics Anonymous. And then less than a year later, we were completely embroiled in a cult. It started when her mom was recruited to join a local church. They were really nice to us. They were really supportive of my mom. She made friends and she struggles a lot to make friends.

And so she felt very at home there. And my dad kind of hit it off with a couple of the other dads. And it seemed like a really good community. Before we knew it, we were involved in Quiverful. Quiverful is a fundamentalist Christian movement focused on having and raising as many children as possible.

Her parents seemed happy in their new church, and they became more involved in Sarah's life than ever. I'd just turned 11 at this time. So this was an improvement. It seemed like when people said, like, this is the right path, it seemed believable to me. This church became her new normal. The services were a little bit intense. Lots of, like, crying and

speaking in tongues and stuff like that. But I was like, okay, well, sometimes I had a potluck after. For an 11-year-old, the potluck desserts, like Jell-O, were enticing. Then I started kind of moving beyond the Jell-O and we all got baptized. And then there was like purity stuff, a lot of purity stuff. So I pledged my virginity to the church and my dad. And it was almost like a wedding.

these pretty white dresses and go up to an altar and it literally looks like a mass wedding but it's like little girls all marrying their dad. But I was like 11 so I was like oh my god I get to dress fancy and have a little present and more jello so yay. The standards around purity were very high. It was normal for people in our community to save their first kiss for marriage.

Sarah's naturally curious. And that was tough to navigate in this community. Between me not having been raised in this environment and having like a rebellious spirit is what I always got told. Just mostly just because I asked a lot of questions. It really put a bad light on our family. Eventually, she fell in line. It's definitely been like kind of hammered in there to trust authority completely.

Like there's a reason they're in this position. I was totally 100% in. Like I believed it fully. Her little sister, who was nine, struggled and was deemed a bad kid by church standards. She got kind of stuck with the bad kids. Everyone said that they were always pulling shenanigans and they were too loud, which they were just normal kids looking back. They were just like nine-year-olds.

Some families in their church had as many as 20 children. For the church, big families served a higher purpose. You are basically trying to birth an army for the end times, which you're told could come at any time. So it already feels too late because it takes like, you know, a couple of years for kids to be able to grow up. So they're like, you got to have babies now. Even though they already had six kids, Sarah's mom felt pressure to grow their family.

But she was struggling to have more. She was getting blamed for her issues with not being able to have a ton of kids. It seemed like her fault for having a rebellious and worldly family. The church believed that God blessed you with as many kids as you could handle. So if a family was struggling to have more children, it was because their existing kids were disobedient.

In order to get closer to God, Sarah's mom tried to control her kids. And she did it by following the church teaching. You start corporal punishment at birth. If they bite you while they're nursing, you pull their hair. If they don't have hair, you use the switch. Sarah was only 12 when her mom asked her to use a switch on her newborn sister.

I'm also a kid. And no matter how much indoctrination there was, I just could not bring myself to do that. It felt like some Stanford prison experiment kind of thing. This was a defining moment for Sarah. At that point, I started questioning, is it because I'm not faithful enough? Is it because I shouldn't be a mother? Or is this just wrong? And that was the first time I had considered it might be wrong.

She started questioning the church, specifically how they parented and the strictly enforced gender roles. One of the weird things about Quiverful is like boys will be boys until they're 45. But girls are future mothers in training from day one.

When Sarah was 14, she started going to public school. This was actually a form of punishment. But there, she met a new friend who opened her eyes to another way of living. And her friend's mom was worried about Sarah's home life. They were so concerned, and rightfully so. She basically told me to come and live with them, and she would lie to my mom about where I was if she asked. My mom was not that invested, to be honest. She didn't really come look in.

Soon, Sarah stopped coming home altogether. And so I ended up moving in with this family and they really did everything in their power to help me out. And so I do refer to her as my foster mom, even though I was never officially in the foster care system. She adored her new foster family, especially her foster mom. She wanted me to have like good role models and got me involved in the community and a Jewish community.

She was never pushy about anything. And they were really good role models. Jewish people don't proselytize, which I found very strange. I was like, are they trying to convert me? And she's like, they don't want you to convert. That's not a thing. They just want to give you some food. And I was like, oh, cool. Through her foster family, she was welcomed into the Jewish faith. They nurtured her natural curiosity.

Sarah was smart and inquisitive about the world, but she'd fallen behind in school. And so from fourth grade to the end of sophomore year, I had no education.

On her 18th birthday, Sarah dropped out. After that, she decided to leave her foster family's home too. I didn't want to burden this family, so I left them as well. I hadn't been taught how to live with normal people. It was just time for me to go. But they were instrumental in my running away from the cults.

And so I left and I went to the nearest city and I was homeless for a year. At first I was on the street and then I was in a shelter. For the first few months, it was really rough. And then I got a job at a tattoo studio and I became a body piercer there through an apprenticeship. It was like my passion. It was so much fun.

She didn't leave everything from her old life behind. She still wanted faith in her life somehow. Being exposed to Judaism in her foster family inspired Sarah to officially convert. It gave me a sense of community and a sense of stability that I think I was missing. And like this very kind group of people who want to support you and you don't owe them anything for that.

That's really nice for me. It's comforting. Like, I don't, like, go to bed wondering if I'm going to wake up still part of my only community. She also decided to start dating. That's when she met Paul. She was swiping on Tinder, and his profile made her laugh. He had, like, mostly pictures of frogs, but they were, like, from Google with, like, the watermark. I was like, that's really strange. And so I was curious and started talking to him, and he was, like, hilarious.

For their first date, he brought her a surprise. He brought me a Stuart Little 2 poster as a gift. I was like, what a weird guy. They dated casually for about six months, going on dates when they both had time and money to spare. That was until... The day of COVID lockdown in 2020, I found out I was pregnant.

As soon as she saw the pregnancy test, she knew she would keep the baby. I have terrible PCOS, so I did not think I was able to get pregnant, which is part of why I wanted to keep the pregnancy so bad. She was prepared to go it alone with or without Paul. After she took a few minutes to process the news, she called him. Both of us were just kind of crying and just like trying to figure out like what to say.

to the other person. And so I told him, like, I want to be a mom, like, really bad. And I was like, you don't have to have anything to do with this. But he really wanted to be, like, a present and good dad. After that day, Sarah moved in with him. On some level, she felt prepared for parenthood. After all, she'd been taking care of young children her whole life. I felt very comfortable with my ability to keep babies alive.

Like, I've done this a million times. I know exactly what I'm doing. But the environment she'd grown up in wasn't emotionally healthy or nurturing. And she knew one thing for certain. She wasn't going to raise her baby the way she was raised. She would have to find another way. She would need resources. Being an emotionally present and caring parent who's raising a person, I was like, oh my God, I have no idea what I'm doing. Like, I need help now.

Black Friday is coming, and for the adults in your life who love the coolest toys, well, there's something for them this year too. Bartesian is the premier craft cocktail maker that automatically makes more than 60 seasonal and classic cocktails, each in under 30 seconds at the push of a button.

And right now, Bartesian is having a huge site-wide sale. You can get $100 off any Cocktail Maker or Cocktail Maker Bundle when you spend $400 or more. So, if the cocktail lover in your life has been good this year, or the right kind of bad, get them Bartisans.

At the push of a button, make bar-quality cosmopolitans, martinis, Manhattans, and more. All in just 30 seconds. All for a hundred off. Amazing toys aren't just for kids. Get a hundred off a cocktail maker when you spend 400 through Cyber Monday. Visit bartesian.com slash cocktail. That's B-A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N dot com slash cocktail.

For a gift that's always on time and lasts a lifetime, you can't do better than Masterclass. It's the only streaming platform where you can learn directly from over 200 world-class experts and changemakers. No wonder Wirecutter calls it an invaluable gift. It's perfect for anyone who loves to learn and grow. Give your loved ones the chance to learn anything they want from anywhere they are, whether on a smartphone, computer, smart TV, or just listening in audio mode.

Imagine the gift, learning how to use behavioral science to read people from FBI criminal profiler John Douglas or successfully negotiate any situation with FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss. Masterclass makes a great gift because it's more than lessons.

It's hands-on, meaningful life skills and insights. In fact, 88% of members say Masterclass has made a positive impact on their lives. There's no risk. Every new membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Give a gift that inspires, teaches, and lasts all year long with Masterclass. Masterclass always has great offers during the holidays, sometimes up to as much as 50% off.

Head over to masterclass.com slash betrayal for the current offer. That's up to 50% off at masterclass.com slash betrayal. Masterclass.com slash betrayal. Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this and why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened.

I'm journalist Sloane Glass, and I host the new podcast, American Homicide. Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story. On American Homicide, we'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana bayou,

and the frozen Alaska wilderness. And we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets. So join me, Sloan Glass, on the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sarah's pregnancy was a fresh start for her, a chance to mold a new life and a safe, supportive family. It started with her and Paul. I had dated a couple people before, but I had not had a partner. She would learn the meaning of true partnership during pregnancy. I did have a super high-risk pregnancy, and I had to be on bed rest from like week 12 on.

It was awful. It was terrible. I had to quit my job. He had to support me and take care of me, like physically put me in the shower and help me shower. And like he was amazing. He bought me a Kindle, loaded it up with like every book ever. And he would like put my socks on me so my feet didn't get cold. So I didn't have to like kick the blanket around to try to get it back over me.

And he would do his work in the bedroom whenever possible so that I just had like a person nearby. He just took amazing care of me. And she learned by his example. So that really turned things for me.

I was like, okay, a successful relationship between friends, between partners, between parents and children is like a huge mutual effort to make the other person feel cared for. She reached out to her friends who had young kids, and she started by calling two friends whose parenting styles she admired. They had both suggested that I join some gentle parenting groups on Facebook.

Being bedridden for her entire pregnancy meant she had a lot of time on her hands. She browsed group after group until she found one that really resonated. And it was a huge community. I think at the height, there was like a couple hundred thousand. And everybody in there, it seemed, was like focused on the same goal that I was, where like raising a functional, confident, compassionate person. And I was like, okay, this seems like a really good place for me to be.

She started spending hours every day in the group, reading every post and asking questions of her own. I was trying to absorb every single molecule of gentle, kind parenting advice that I could fit in my brain in the course of nine months. Sarah made real friends through the group, and she noticed a pattern.

Almost everyone in the group was trying to break some kind of cycle of abuse or neglect. And a lot of people were like, my childhood was hellish and I'm never letting that happen. So it just seemed like a really supportive community for people who were trying to do better for their kids.

For Sarah, this was more than just a Facebook group. It was personal. She was estranged from her family. So this group became a real community, supporting her through pregnancy and celebrating with her. With groups based around cycle breaking, some people don't have a family to celebrate with them. And so we would be...

That family, a person you don't even know, would be like, oh my gosh, after four years of trying, we're finally pregnant and we got our first ultrasound and it's twins. And we would all be like, oh my God. Genuinely, I was so excited for these people. There was a hierarchy in the group. Four admins approved every post and enforced the community guidelines. So the admins in the group, they were like moderating, approving posts.

But they were also kind of like leaders in the group. Because, you know, people come there with crisis level stuff. So if you're really struggling with something, they're the first people to see the post because they approve it. And they really go out of their way to make sure that people are safe. Sarah had a lot in common with one of the admins, who we'll call Becky. She had posted a lot about...

Being a Jewish parent. Becky was a huge presence in the group. She was like an admin and a super frequent poster. People were very invested in her life. People knew her kid by first name and like people had her birth announcements on their fridge. Becky was a successful attorney who'd overcome a great deal of adversity. She had just a really difficult upbringing. I mean, the odds were completely stacked against her. She was a teen mom.

She had her first baby so young. She had also suffered child loss, which was unimaginable to me. Just like thinking about, you know, how much I loved my son before I had even met him. I think that's every parent's worst fear. Becky's toddler had passed away unexpectedly. She was a resource and a guiding light for other parents in the group who experienced the same tragedy.

Becky managed this grief while raising six other kids. But the tragedy didn't end there. Her oldest child had recently been the victim of an anti-gay hate crime. The sympathy and, like, hurt that I felt for her, knowing that her kid had been through this, awful. Becky posted all the details of the hate crime in the group. There were hundreds of comments being like, we love you, Becky.

People were just so genuinely caring for her. She was receiving gifts, some of them monetary. She was getting constant affection and attention from everyone. But despite all this hardship, Becky was thriving in her career and putting her all into raising her six children. She was a supermom.

Like, she's amazing. You know, she had her kid in these cultural immersion schools and she was taking these incredible trips. Like they went to Scotland and like she had these beautiful, enriching, individualized lives that she had built for these kids. And I was like, wow, I need to get my act together if I want to be able to parent like this. And so I think I kind of idolized her a little bit.

Becky posted videos of herself giving updates on her family's life. In all the videos, she was alone. There were no kids' sounds or never her husband. It was just her. I assumed that it was like her five minutes alone. She wanted to connect with other parents. Becky's husband and their oldest kids were all on Facebook too. Her whole family was, for the most part, on Facebook.

Becky and her husband were always flirting with each other in the group. It was a lot. It seemed like it was in good fun, but it was uncomfortable to see publicly. When Sarah joined the group, she was finishing the process of converting to Judaism. She looked to Becky as a resource and inspiration for raising kids in the Jewish faith. But when Sarah tried to connect over this, Becky wasn't interested.

I was like, "Why are we not friends?" And she didn't even want to acknowledge it, which was very odd to me. It wasn't just that they were both Jewish. They were interested in the same things. I'm passionate about heritage language. Like, that's my thing. And she's a Jewish person who's passionate about heritage language, and she would not speak to me about it. But Becky would post videos of herself, showcasing her language learning skills.

She was speaking Ladino, which is like Judeo-Spanish. It's sort of adjacent to Yiddish, which is one of my languages. And it really drove home to me and a lot of other people how smart she was. Sarah learned that Becky was also a convert. It's not that common, so she really wanted to bond over that shared experience. I wanted to ask questions about that. And I was like really looking for that advice from her.

And unfortunately, she just would not. And there was another reason she felt connected to Becky. They both had difficult upbringings. When Becky posted about her childhood, Sarah chimed in. She understood because she'd been through some of the same things. I jokingly sometimes refer to myself as a rescue. It's like, you know, I was literally living on the street and then living in a studio. When I met my husband, I had probably like 20 bucks. So I was like,

That happens. That's crazy. We both had our Cinderella moment. And she just did not, the kinship thing wasn't mutual. And I was like, okay, I'm being weird. Sarah began to worry that maybe she'd said something to offend Becky. And I was like, oh, did I say something? So I was really concerned that I had really hurt her. So she tried to connect with other people in the group.

I started seeking out other Jewish parents in that group. And everyone was like, you got to talk to Becky. And I was like, oh, OK, I'll try. Sarah would ask Becky about things like breastfeeding and keeping kosher. Every time I asked her a question, I would get an answer. But it didn't line up with anything that I had ever heard before. But I guess she would know. And so I started to figure

Sort of get back to that place where I was like, am I qualified for this? The interactions with Becky always left her feeling worse than before. She wasn't even a parent yet, but she started to doubt her ability to raise her son in the Jewish faith. I don't know anything. I was like, maybe I am further behind with conversion than I thought I was. In the winter of 2020, Sarah's son was born. She had unexpected complications and the birth didn't go as planned.

I had a very traumatic birth. It was really, really bad. He was almost completely fine, but I needed a lot of help. At the very end of the birth, while my son was being put in my arms, I had a psychotic break and I ended up going into postpartum psychosis. And I had no idea what that was. About 2% of women develop postpartum psychosis after they give birth.

It can start with obsessive thoughts about the baby's well-being and concerns that something is wrong, but it spirals into hallucinations and delusions. It's a condition that can be really dangerous for both the mother and the baby. I was hallucinating very vividly, but I had no idea that I was hallucinating. And so I was experiencing really intense paranoia.

You know, a lot of people have like intrusive thoughts, scary, violent ones. And once those thoughts start sounding like a good idea, you need to talk to someone. I was having those thoughts toward myself because I thought that if I didn't get myself out of the picture, something would happen to my baby. She was scared and she didn't know what was going on.

So she reached out to a doctor. When I sought advice from medical professionals, I was actually told it was normal. But I didn't know how to effectively communicate how serious it was. And so I was at home in full psychosis with a newborn. This lasted for two months until she hit a breaking point. I had like a full breakdown episode and I was admitted to a hospital immediately.

I stayed there for a little over a week, I think. Time really wasn't, I'm not really sure about that. It was really hard to be away from my baby, you know? But I did feel that he was safer, and I felt safer as well. After she left the hospital, she was stable. But the experience was traumatic, so there was still some fear there. I was really afraid to hold my son or be alone with him for a long time.

So she turned to her support system.

the parenting group. And then as soon as I got out, I went to the group. So it's like, I don't know who else that I could possibly ask about this. And I started asking, like, has anyone had this happen before? And the person who kept popping up was Becky. And she had postpartum depression before and anxiety and OCD.

She knew what she was talking about. She had been through like a similar situation, not psychosis to my knowledge, but really, really rough mental health stuff following the birth of a baby. And I was so grateful to have that resource. This was some of Becky's advice. Just like go to therapy, just drink water, just wait. And I was like, oh, okay. She would know, not me.

Sarah didn't just need advice. She needed someone who'd been through this and made it out on the other side to tell her that she was going to be okay, that it wasn't her fault, and that she wasn't a bad mom. But Becky did the opposite. She was definitely implying that I wasn't cut out for this. You know, this just isn't for some people. Maybe it's not for you. Not being cut out for parenting was Sarah's worst fear.

At the time, she was isolated by COVID and her postpartum recovery. So Becky's words cut deep. I mean, just validation would have gone a long way. But she really went out of her way to make it seem like anyone who was struggling was just so beneath her and that she was just like super mom. And so I was really questioning everything and not in a good way.

This was one of the darkest times in Sarah's life. She was suicidal with a newborn. To keep herself grounded, Sarah focused on the positives she did have. At this point, we are about two months away from being officially Jewish. I'm going to the mikveh and I'm so excited.

It's like a huge deal. A mikvah is a spiritual ceremony, and it can be used to officially anoint someone in the Jewish faith. So Sarah's first mikvah was like a baptism. I got dumped, and it was amazing. It was so great. And I passed my little exam, and I got my certificate for me and for my son, and it was the best. You know, I can't even describe, like...

how symbolic and amazing it felt after my weird, quiverful baptism experience to go to a mikvah of my own volition. During the postpartum recovery, her faith was everything. She started teaching her son Yiddish and leaning into her identity as a Jewish parent. It took me like two or three years to be what I would consider back to myself. But my light at the end of the tunnel is that I'm the

Jewish parent in my son's life and I have to stick around and I have to keep him in touch with his culture. Slowly, Sarah and her husband learned to parent in a way that felt right to them. The Facebook group was instrumental in helping them get there. As their son got older, Sarah began to have more questions about raising a child in an interfaith marriage. My husband is not religious at all.

But we technically are an interfaith family because he's not Jewish and I am. And it's really hard to find supportive interfaith parenting spaces. And Becky was a Jewish parent in an interfaith family. And so I was like, hey, I really need your help.

And she was receptive to that and gave a lot of advice that was maybe more critical than I was expecting. Every time I asked her a question, I would get an answer, but it didn't line up with anything that I had ever heard before. But I guess she would know. And so I started to sort of get back to that place where I was like, am I qualified for this?

At the time, Becky had made a post about how she keeps a kosher kitchen. She was very much positioning herself as an authority. And she made this big deal out of keeping kosher. Sarah was considering keeping kosher for the first time herself. So in the comment section, she asked a follow-up question about setting up a kosher kitchen. I just had a question about separate sides of the kitchen because I haven't done it.

But strangely, Becky deleted her comment from the post. It was weird. My comment got deleted very quickly when I asked the question. And so I don't even think I saw what her reply was. So finally, she turned to her rabbi. I contacted him in tears, just like crisis mode. Like, I don't think I'm supposed to be doing this.

I can't be a parent like this. Like you made a mistake by letting me be Jewish. Like, I don't know what's going on. And he was the first person to ask, who is this person? Do you see them a lot? Can you stop seeing them? I was like, they're just a person on Facebook. And he's like, why are you listening to them? Like, what, what is their role? What is their authority here?

And I was like, dude, I don't know, actually. I don't call my rabbi dude, but, you know. I was like, yeah, that's a good question. I had been interacting with her for almost three years, and I never realized how badly it had been affecting me until he said that. Pretty soon, Sarah would get an answer to that question. One she wasn't expecting.

So I was at home and then I got added to this group chat that had like 200 messages and it's called Therapy Sesh and it had the name of the parenting group. I was like late to be added and I was like, what is happening? And then one of my friends from the group was like, I'll catch you up. Thank God, you know, thank you so much. And she tells me

We just found out Becky, the admin in the parenting group, was like, "Oh, I know her. Go on." She just was like, "She's not real." Black Friday is coming. And for the adults in your life who love the coolest toys, well, there's something for them this year, too. Bartesian is the premier craft cocktail maker that automatically makes more than 60 seasonal and classic cocktails, each in under 30 seconds at the push of a button.

And right now, Bartesian is having a huge site-wide sale. You can get $100 off any Cocktail Maker or Cocktail Maker Bundle when you spend $400 or more. So, if the cocktail lover in your life has been good this year, or the right kind of bad...

Get them Bartesian. At the push of a button, make bar-quality cosmopolitans, martinis, Manhattans, and more. All in just 30 seconds. All for a hundred off. Amazing toys aren't just for kids. Get a hundred off a cocktail maker when you spend 400 through Cyber Monday. Visit bartesian.com slash cocktail. That's B-A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N dot com slash cocktail.

For a gift that's always on time and lasts a lifetime, you can't do better than Masterclass. It's the only streaming platform where you can learn directly from over 200 world-class experts and changemakers. No wonder Wirecutter calls it an invaluable gift. It's perfect for anyone who loves to learn and grow. Give your loved ones the chance to learn anything they want from anywhere they are, whether on a smartphone, computer, smart TV, or just listening in audio mode.

Imagine the gift, learning how to use behavioral science to read people from FBI criminal profiler John Douglas or successfully negotiate any situation with FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss. Masterclass makes a great gift because it's more than lessons.

It's hands-on, meaningful life skills and insights. In fact, 88% of members say Masterclass has made a positive impact on their lives. There's no risk. Every new membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Give a gift that inspires, teaches, and lasts all year long with Masterclass. Masterclass always has great offers during the holidays, sometimes up to as much as 50% off.

Head over to masterclass.com slash betrayal for the current offer. That's up to 50% off at masterclass.com slash betrayal. Masterclass.com slash betrayal. Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this and why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened.

I'm journalist Sloane Glass, and I host the new podcast, American Homicide. Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story. On American Homicide, we'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana bayou,

and the frozen Alaska wilderness. And we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets. So join me, Sloan Glass, on the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪

After three years of interacting with Becky, an admin in Sarah's parenting group, the truth was revealed. Becky wasn't who she said she was. She was like, she is a catfish. She's been stealing people's pictures of their children, pretending that they're her kids and giving them these crazy backstories. Immediately, my brain went to the child that had a hate crime committed against them.

What possesses a person to see a picture of a child they don't know and invent a hate crime against them? This cannot be real. The community was reeling. Sarah went to the Facebook page and Becky was gone. And then I saw the announcement from one of the admins, just like how heartbroken and shaken she was.

200 of the most active group members were all in a text called Therapy Sesh, comparing their notes, trying to understand what was happening. How could she not be real? I had seen her talking to her husband. Like, I'd seen videos of her. And things just kept coming out over and over, like all day. And for that whole day, I just completely abandoned my work and just stayed in the group chat.

Becky had posted videos of herself, her real self, with her real name. But nearly everything else about her was a lie. She didn't have six kids. She didn't have any. She had never been a parent at all. We found out that none of her children are real. Her children were pictures of someone else's children that she had been taking from an account that she was following.

There was no husband. Becky just made a fake account where she posed as her husband.

and filled out his profile using stolen pictures from the internet. She had taken pictures from, I believe, an actor from Thailand. Her entire family was her. Some people were friends with Becky in real life, and they were blindsided too. People had met her in person while she was pregnant, but she wasn't pregnant. And it was like she fooled these moms of multiple kids.

Nobody could have seen this coming. Becky lied about the death of her two-year-old daughter to a group of parents, some of whom had actually lost kids of their own. The thing that like sticks with me was the amount of other parents in the group who had lost their children, like toddlers and even older or younger, who were consoling her and saying,

sharing their similar struggles. Like what? Who could do this? It was the extent of her lies that kept people from questioning her. If you say something like, did you even have the death of a child and you're wrong, you are the worst for doubting this person. And no one who is an actual normal person would want to do that.

Then there's also the practical side of it where she can just delete your comment. She can just kick you out of the group. She was an admin, so she could get rid of you. The admins, the people most intimately involved in running the group, were the ones who discovered Becky's fraud, and they needed answers. When she was confronted by the admins that she was close with, she said that she can't stop. I don't understand why, but I do believe that she can't stop.

After Becky's accounts were deleted, the parenting group banded together to find out more about the real Becky. When we started finding out more about her and we spoke to someone in her life who knew more about her as a real person and her background, they revealed to us that she had been doing this since high school, making up people and making up herself. There was one thing she didn't lie about.

She was actually a lawyer, and the kind of lawyer who protected vulnerable people. I think that's the only thing she has ever told the truth about, other than her cat's name. One of the admins gathered evidence and reported Becky's actions to the Bar Association in her home state. But as far as the group knows, nothing has ever come of that report. It seemed like it was a joke to a lot of people because I think that there is this attitude where if something happens online...

It was very real for Sarah, especially when she found out. For three years, Sarah was repeatedly dismissed and belittled by Becky, told that she didn't know what she was talking about when it came to her faith.

And worst of all, when Sarah was going through a mental health crisis, Becky was there, saying she'd been through something similar and telling Sarah that maybe she wasn't cut out to be a parent. For me, it was transparently life or death at one point. With stories like this, if I hear them from other people, you know, like on that catfish show, I'm like, at what point would this person call it? At what point would this person be like, okay,

And for her, it was not a new mom considering ending things. So I don't know what it could possibly be because anyone in their right mind would have stopped. She knew what I was going through. Everyone did. And she just did that regardless. It was an insidious kind of interaction that undermined Sarah's trust in herself.

Becky was like a personification of Sarah's worst fears. That insecurity was there. And it's not like her doing that it was there. A lot of it was just that I felt that way. But she really honed in on it. She could really sense that stuff. And it's taken until like a couple days ago to realize how awful and how deep it went.

And how much it affected me. This whole experience just really made me doubt my abilities as a parent and myself as a person. And just like basically every aspect of my identity that I had spent so long trying to find, it like shook everything. But then she started seeing it all differently. I saw that she had lied about something that made me feel like an imposter.

And she was the imposter the whole time. I had actually done it. Like, I had overcome a lot of the same things that she had lied about. She's not just talking about parenting. She's talking about persevering after a tough childhood and homelessness, finding identity in a new religion, and surviving a postpartum mental health crisis. It went from me being angry about that and feeling...

Like I had let myself down to me feeling like I am really proud of myself. I did this thing that is so hard that she had to lie about it. I did it for real. One question Sarah still has is that out of all the groups to catfish, why did Becky choose this one? I really can't understand her reason for finding a group that

Was parents trying to break cycles of abuse and take advantage of them and make them doubt themselves? People who are in this incredibly vulnerable spot of trying to be better for their children and trying to be better for themselves. If I were evil, I would leave that one alone. You know, I just that seems like a line. Yeah.

Becky's deception changed the group. But for Sarah, it brought her closer to the other real parents out there who really wanted to connect and support each other. A lot of people did actually just disappear, just quit Facebook, quit online stuff. I'd not blame them at all. But the thing that I found so kind of heartwarming, like it almost feels like a Hallmark movie, is this like pack of moms that in hindsight saw Sarah

somebody messing with other moms and their kids. And we're like, absolutely not. And we were there for each other. And we've gotten really close, a lot of us have, the way that we were able to show up for each other. That kind of undid a lot of the distrust that was immediately planted by this. Like that was the initial function of the group.

We first heard about this story through someone else, another mom, who wrote into our email, BetrayalPod at gmail.com. On Betrayal, we share stories about how one person couldn't see the deception right in front of them. But in this case, it was a group of thousands of people, a whole community. So we asked members to send in voice notes about how Becky impacted them. This is what they said.

I got to know her family. She presented herself as this perfect parent. She posted prolifically. And also judging other people's parenting like she was just this kind of

professional. She would center herself in these conversations as almost an authority figure. She always made it seem like it was this effortless, seamless thing and she just has it all together. I saw my spouse being self-conscious. It's really aggravating that anybody is comparing themselves to somebody who is like measurably impossible. I truly felt like I wasn't good enough. I was not a good enough parent.

When the community found out that Becky was a fraud, that deception felt personal. Becky was talking to children, pretending to be children. Her father's not dead. He's living still and is a physician. I've seen several friends of mine severely impacted by this and how they just can't trust anybody. So many of us are really trying our best and are great parents.

We just are not the perfect parent because the perfect parent does not exist. Sarah doesn't like the framing of looking on the bright side or the silver lining, but she did learn something from all of this. Here's Sarah again. This was one of the situations in my life that pushed me to begin questioning, like who put you in charge? That's a simple question, but it has been incredibly difficult for me to ask because I was

taught under no circumstances should you ever ask that. And now I do. Today, Sarah has big news. Well, I'm almost eight months pregnant. We are having a little girl. And this time around, she's feeling more confident in herself. I don't feel the sense of dread that I thought I would because I've put a lot of effort into building a super strong community online and in real life.

with people that I know and people that I trust. I'm really excited to start out with the confidence in my role as the Jewish mom. I'm feeling really confident and excited in my abilities, in Paul's abilities, and in my son's abilities to be a big brother. I mean, there are challenges always, and I have no idea what they're going to be yet, but I think that we can handle it.

We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question. Why did you want to tell your story? The reason that I want to talk about it is because I do think that she can't stop. I do think that she's doing it again. And I think that there are people, other people in the world who do stuff like this, of course. And so I want to be there for another person to just say like, you're not crazy. On the next episode of Betrayal. He eventually told me the whole story.

And I said, why me? He said, as my uncle would say, why not you? If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at BetrayalPod at gmail.com. That's BetrayalPod at gmail.com. We're grateful for your support.

One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Written and produced by Monique Laborde. Also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristen Malkuri and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing and mixing by Matt DelVecchio. Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by Mibe Music.

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