Betrayal Weekly - Beyond Wildest Imagination | EP 5 | Ashley's Story

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

Ashley and Andrea meet another Utah mom who was stunned when the FBI swarmed her home to arrest her husband.  Then, Andrea visits agents working behind the scenes to protect children from online sexual abuse at the risk of compromising their own mental health.  If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team email us at [e-mail]  To report a case of child sexual exploitation, call The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline at 1-800-THE-LOST  If you or someone you know is worried about their sexual thoughts and feelings towards children, find help at stopitnow.org  In the UK reach out to stopitnow.org.uk See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. It would not be...

Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones.

It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Topics featured in this episode may be disturbing to some listeners. Please take care while listening. It's a deep, dark secret. and fortunately, oftentimes we're able to find content and actually talk with the suspect and get an admission that, yeah, it was me. I'm Andrea Gunning. This is Betrayal Episode 5, Beyond Wildest Imagination. We ended up staying in Utah for more than a week. I'm not complaining. It's a beautiful place to wake up and start work every day.

Another woman from the Salt Lake City area had reached out to us and we wanted to meet her. Mandy had listened to Jennifer Facing's story in season one. She wrote, The same time Jennifer was going through her trauma, I was going through mine. He was my fairy tale, the love of my life, and I was blindsided to say the least.

I lost everything. Hearing Jen's story helped me not feel so alone and gave me more strength. I can't say enough. Thank you. So we invited Mandy to our Airbnb to meet Ashley. When you're in a small club that no one wants to belong to, it's comforting to meet someone else who's been through it.

Here's Mandy speaking with Ashley. What was it about listening to her story that, like, was it just the whole betrayal? Like, just the fact that you just knew nothing about the person that you were supposed to know everything about? Yeah, I think that's what drew me to it, was that it was like that betrayal, but what really got me and what made me even,

right in was Spencer sounded like my husband. Oh my gosh. In season one of betrayal, Jennifer Fasen told the story of a fairy tale marriage to her college sweetheart, Spencer Heron. He appeared to be a picture-perfect husband and caring high school teacher. When he was arrested, Jennifer was shocked to learn the reality was her husband had been sexually assaulting one of his students and conducting dozens of affairs during their marriage. His excuses and lack of accountability made Jennifer realize her husband

was a complete stranger. And so then I felt like I connected even more with Jen. What about you? The same. The exact same. The exact same. Really? Yeah.

Listening to Spencer talk, it's just, it's infuriating. And I felt the exact same way. I feel like, too, there's going to be some shitheads that believe him. Mm-hmm. Because he is so believable. And then I felt like that was, my husband for the last 14 years. The things that he would say

for the reasons that things were happening. Because there was things happening before that I didn't understand and explanations that he would get me, I would be like, okay, yeah. That makes sense. Totally makes sense that we're losing the house and you did this and you didn't talk to me about it.

Since Ashley and Mandy were both emboldened to share their own stories after Jen shared hers, we gave Jenna a call. I have you on speaker because you're with Ashley and Andy. And Mandy has a very similar story to Ashley. But they both, as you know, Ashley wrote into the show. And so did Mandy. That's how we found her.

Oh, wow. Thanks, you guys. Hi. It is so nice to talk to you. You guys, too. And I'm really, really sorry about what you have gone through. You're sweet, Jen. Yep.

We're sorry, too, girl. I'm sorry that you went through it. I'm grateful that you shared your story with us. Well, I was just, you know, looking for anybody who had been in some sort of situation that could relate. I mean, they're not all the same, but you do really feel alone out there and wonder, you know, does anyone else go through this? I'm so grateful for you sharing your hardship. Thank you. I wish I was there with you guys.

I wish so, too. We love you, Jen. As bad as it was, Ashley had a little time, a few hours to process what her husband had done. Mandy had none at all. I met Michael through a mutual friend I worked with. We started talking on Facebook one day, and that's how we started dating. And he was the absolute love of my life. He was the sweetest guy ever.

We started dating exclusively at the end of 2012. And then we got married in 2014. It was great. Our marriage was great. I loved it. Mandy had shared with me that Michael and his father were in business together, but had a falling out in 2015. It was an acrimonious split that left Michael feeling angry and underappreciated.

His dad took away the whole business, like went behind his back. It was a really low blow, and that really affected Mike that. When I got pregnant with Sophie, he was like, we'll be fine. I'll find another job. He was always into, like, programming and stuff like that. So he decided that he wanted to do 3D design stuff. He was down in that basement all the freaking time. Mike spent so much time alone in the basement that Mandy thought something nefarious was going on.

Maybe he was having an online affair. When he would leave, I would go and look at the computer and at the history. And there would be, like, a regular porn site. And I was like, whatever, I don't care about that. wasn't like excessive, you know. When their daughter Sophie was born, Michael reengaged with the family for a while. Then, checked out again. He just wasn't there.

He was just never there. Even my mom was like, something's going on with him. He's being so weird. And I'm like, I know, I don't know what it is. Every time I bring it up or try to talk to him, he gas lights me. I don't know what to do. Then all this other stuff was happening, like, when the cars got repossessed. And then he short-sold the house.

And then he couldn't afford to pay the payments of the short-sell. So we had to go move in with his mom. It was just like all boom, boom, boom. They lost everything in rapid succession. Mandy didn't have close family support. It was scary. She rode it out for a while and eventually Michael found a job at a cereal factory. Mandy made extra money working at a local paper company.

Michael's mother watched Sophie while they were at work. It was seeming like life was kind of getting a little bit more normal again. He seemed to be pulling himself out even more. He was actually going and doing things with us. So I was really hopeful. During that period of optimism, Mandy was confronted with a shocking dose of reality. I worked four to midnight. I had just gotten to work.

And my phone rang. I was like, well, I'm at work. I can't answer the phone, you know. So I ignored it. And then they called right back. And then they called right back again. And I called right back again. And I was like, okay, obviously this is an emergency, you know.

So I go and answer to my phone and this guy and he says that he's a detective and that they're at my mother-in-law's house. Coincidentally, one week before the detective repeatedly called Mandy at work, two police officers were canvassing her neighborhood. One day we were about ready to take Sophie to the park. And this random older Toyota Corolla car pulls up with these two people in it. They get out and, I mean, they parked like right in front of his mom's house. And they see us and they're like, hi, they're super friendly. And they're like, how are you guys? And we're like, do you live here?

And we're like, oh, yeah, we live here. And they're like, oh, well, we're just with the police department. And we're looking for this guy. and they show a picture of this, like, Hispanic guy. And, well, no, I haven't seen anybody. And he's like, so who all lives here? And we all introduce ourselves. And then he's like, your husband's here?

And I'm like, yeah, he's like, can you go get him? And I was like, sure. And so they introduced themselves and ask him the same question, show him the picture. And he's like, no, I haven't seen anything. And they're like, okay, thanks. Now, a detective said he needed to come and pick her up at work. I was like, oh, my God. And so I'm like, did I do something?

Like, I'm all, like, freaking out. Like, what? did I have like this unpaid ticket and they need to come to my house? Like I was, all these thoughts were, and they were like, just give us where you're at and we're going to come right now. I saw FBI on their vests and stuff and I was like, okay, this isn't anything that I could have done. Like, I know I haven't, you know what I mean? Like, that's crazy. He's like, Mandy, I'm not going to sugarcoat anything.

I'm just going to tell you we're serving the search warrant because your husband's been looking at downloading child porn on the dark web for the past two years. I just started screaming. I just dropped to my knees and started screaming. Nothing made sense. And yet, it suddenly all made sense. The long hours in the basement, his complete withdrawal from the family. It was hard to hear that. I was so embarrassed.

I was so ashamed. I was so frustrated. I felt so stupid. I mean, life was already not like it was. was before, but everything changed from there. I still struggle with it. I gave him all of me. I gave him everything. I never trusted another man like that. And then to do that, to do that, like, that is to me the worst thing you can do. Those are children. I can't even trust you with our child. Her house resembled a scene out of law and order.

Except it was her real life, and Olivia Benson wasn't making an appearance. As soon as we pulled down his street, the big huge RV. It's like bigger than an RV, just blocking the whole driveway. They're pulling out computers. The two police officers who were there the week prior, supposedly looking for a drug dealer. That guy was just a big guy. They just were coming there to make sure Michael was there. So they didn't have to send it.

all these people and him not be there. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed.

I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ego Wode. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers, Anchorman,

Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.

I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you. Which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. and he's like just give it a shot he goes but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore it's okay to quit if you saw it written down it would not be an inspiration it would not be on a calendar of you know the cat just hang in there yeah it would

not be right it wouldn't be that there's a lot of luck listen to thanks dad on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in someone, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.

I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Gregalespian and Michael Maranini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap.

Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until Justice. is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Former Utah U.S. attorney, John Huber. Mr. Gibbs, he was part of an international ring. This stretched from Korea through the United States and beyond, using Bitcoin and anonymizing efforts to hide what they were doing on the dark web. And through hard work, detective work, cyber sleuthing, they were able to. to find Mr. Gibbs and in effect a search warrant on his home in Utah and confirmed that he was part of this conspiracy. This website was one of the largest and most vile child sexual assault

websites in the world. Among those arrested was a U.S. Border Patrol agent, former Homeland Security agent, and assistant high school principal. They looked to everything, every nook and cranny of that house and I had to just stand there and watch him do it. The detective was asking me all sorts of questions too while I'm standing there. Was he downstairs a lot? Did he hide out a lot from you? Is there any other computers, any other devices? They took every device except my phone. They didn't even ask to see my phone or anything. They took everything else. Michael's arrest shattered Mandy. She simply could not bear it. Their small family that she loved so much. much went up in flames.

Mandy and her daughter continued to live with Michael's mother, but Mandy struggled. The first month, I couldn't even eat because I was just sick. I was sick that that man could have done those things. I just completely lost myself. I don't even want to make excuses. I'm so ashamed of the way that I handled it. I could have been stronger. She turned to an old dependency to ease the pain.

I was just so angry. I wanted to be angry for a really long time. And alcohol just fueled that anger. I feel like it was good to go through that because I don't want to carry that anger around anymore. It's exhausting. I went to treatment. I was in treatment for a whole year.

While Mandy sought help for substance abuse, Michael's case moved forward. Eventually, he was granted. release on unsecured bond, no bail. His release meant he would move back to his mother's house and that Mandy and her daughter needed to find somewhere else to live. A close friend, the father of Mandy's other daughter, offered them a place to stay,

and they've become much closer through this awful experience. I was on Sophie's birthday, actually, like one in the morning, and he was trying to get me to let him see Sophie, and I was like, absolutely not. Like, no. and all of a sudden Michael just walks in the back door. He's totally plastered and he's like, you need to talk to me right now, blah, blah, blah. So his roommate picks up the phone and calls the police.

He had shoved me too because I wouldn't talk to him. And so at that point, please come and they took him back to jail. He still got released again after that, but that was on house arrest. Michael tried to convince Mandy that the content he downloaded wasn't that bad. He never tells me the truth. It's always, it wasn't even that much.

I didn't even look at it. It wasn't even stuff that I looked at. What else? They weren't like little kid, little kids. It's like, you know, like younger girls. It was only a couple things in there. A lot of the other stuff was like adult stuff. You know, it was because I was taking so much Adderall

and that made me just like really compulsive and want to download all this stuff. Mr. Gibbs had 100 videos of some of the most deviant conduct that you could imagine and hopefully never have to imagine. Egregious, disgusting, violent videos of young girls who were bound and raped in front of the camera. And you have 100 videos and 30 images of that type of conduct. I tried for so long to understand and to reason. I have to tell you, when I sat at John Huber's office, I saw the description of the images that Mandy's husband was looking at.

They were in the sentencing memorandum. I got through too. I don't know if up until this point I was existing in ignorance, but that I just couldn't conceive this awful reality. We've been focusing so much on the families and their trauma, but now the violence was right in front of me. I couldn't help but cry. It really is as bad as John said.

Other revelations in the document offered insight into Michael's defense of his behavior. During his evaluation, he claimed that his abuse of Adderall had caused weird sexual behaviors and a weird impulse to hoard and collect. And this is a direct quote from the sentencing memorandum. Whatever drove the defendant's highly deviant acts, one thing is clear. The Adderall didn't make him do it. After all, the defendant stopped taking Adderall eight months before law enforcement appeared at his doorstep, seized his personal cell phone, and found many sickening videos

and images plainly kept by him. There were a few other details worth noting in the report. The evaluator requested treatment for meth addiction. The finding was that there was a paraphylic disorder. But it was not pedophilia, but fetishistic disorder. And the last and most disturbing, some of the victims in his video collection were the same age as his toddler daughter.

I didn't want to know the details of it. That would be a totally other nightmare that I don't want to live, you know? Michael's sentence was meaningful, 48 months in federal prison. Still, you could say he caught a break. The government wanted 60 months, and it could have gone as high. High as 84. When Mandy last heard from him, he was in a halfway house preparing to reenter society.

We've been talking a lot about justice and how perpetrators of CSAM were prosecuted in sentence. I wanted to take a step back and meet some of the people on the ground who chased down the leads generated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The people who go on those raids, a lot of them are part of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, or ICAC for short. There's at least one in every state. ICAC members include federal, state, and local law enforcement. Detective Rue from the Riverton Police Department, he's a part of ICAC. The task force investigates and develops responses to internet crimes against children.

These individuals are unsung heroes. Their purpose for existing is to keep kids safe, and as we learned, it's often at great personal cost. While in Utah, I wanted to visit with them. I'm Alan White. I'm the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Commander for the state of Utah. It's out of control. Just back at the commander's meeting, all task forces are receiving so many cybertip referrals

from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, processing 26 million cyber tips annually. In Utah, we're on track to see 4,000 of those tips. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a private nonprofit that, receives most of the tips about child sexual abuse material. Some tips come from individuals, but most come from social media companies. The center then contacts local law enforcement or the state's ICAC team who follow up on those tips. The case agents determine is that going to be a knock and talk or do we do a full search warrant,

take a tactical team up to the door and serve a search warrant. Some cases, it's more educational. It may indicate that it's more of a teenager and we'll try to focus. focus that interaction more on education. We were out doing a knock and talk a couple weeks ago, and it ended up being a six-year-old little girl with a YouTube account, and there was a legal content on it. Google had flagged the account and shut it down.

This six-year-old girl was taking images of herself and posting them online, and they were concerning enough to trip whatever algorithm is in place to flag C-SAM. Her parents had no idea what their daughter was doing. They have a phone, they have a camera, they have a video recorder, they have email. It's a small computer. And we're giving these smart devices to our children with unfettered access. And they can manipulate those devices a lot better than some of the adults. That case was an exception, but an opportunity to educate her parents.

Most of the tips ICAC receives are of people deliberately creating or downloading child sexual abuse imagery. Alan has 17 years in the field, and he's seeing the damage CCM offenders cause. I started this work back in 2006, and I've had different thoughts throughout the years, but as prevalent as it is, and the amount of manipulation these suspects due to their families, I've had suspects say in an interview, I wondered when you were going to show up. Their families and the ones they love the most, they're collateral victims. And it destroys these families. And we get to witness the beginning of that destruction when we make contact with these people.

This type of work takes a toll. We're watching the video to write a description, and that's the absolute worst part of the job. It's emotional. It's not easy. The day-to-day is tough. I'm thinking of images and videos in my mind that I've experienced, and it's beyond your wildest imagination. What motivates me, saving kids.

The children we rescue is enough motivation that I'm still in the game. I want to be on the team that continues to protect children. There have been days when Alan literally left, walked out and said, I'll be back tomorrow, but I can't do any more today. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same. same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever.

I went and had lunch with them one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent,

I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. and he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.

Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.

You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Gregal, Westby and Michael Marantini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Amaricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Utah State Attorney General Sean Reyes acknowledged how tough it gets for his officers. When I came in, we instituted mandatory therapy and support so they could access mental behavioral health specialists who specialize also in kind of battlefield trauma. when you're dealing with the kind of stuff that my agents have to see, especially in the dark web, that's like the seventh ring of Dante's hell. Like it's the worst of the worst of the worst. You actually have to prove how evil you are by posting or showing and demonstrating certain acts that are so heinous and despicable that I don't even try to think about them when I go home. The women and men that do this work, they're everyday superheroes. They really are.

Alan introduced us to some of them around the office. This is the ICAC team back here. Are you done with Alan? Is he already disappointed? We're starting with a tour. And then I'll disappoint them. So we're starting with the high point. We'll report back.

We have five full-time agents. One agent that's a forensic examiner. This is our Hawaiian Museum, if you want to take a peek in here. This is a Kolu. Hi. What's up? How are you? How are you? I met Acolu de los Santos.

His office was a little slice of Hawaiian heaven. Instead of a door, I walked through hanging beads into groovy music. Wow, look at your space. Come on in. Just take a gander. You have a warm fire right there. A fire burned on the wall. It was on a TV monitor, but still it gave the space great atmosphere. Just representing my culture and my family and stuff.

I'm from your 50th state, and it's pretty much it. That's not all of it. He is creating feng shui for his mind. I like it like this just because the stuff that we deal with just every day, we have to escape every once in a while. And I like to put up stuff that makes me feel comfortable. Ikolu is a big guy, six foot five, and he looks like a professional bodybuilder. But he only cares about one thing.

I have four kids, three grandkids. and my motivation just for being here is that I want to step in and be that guy to, you know, when the predator opens the door and they're expecting a 13-year-old girl, it's a 300-pound Polynesian guy that they're looking at. Even the biggest and the strongest among them concern Allen. He keeps tabs on everyone, making sure that they are coping. Mental wellness, that's my biggest fear. That's what keeps me up at night.

I get emotional talking about it. But yeah, throughout the day, throughout their work, we try to keep one foot in reality, regardless of what we're doing. This is Sete. He's one of the supervisors. I can't kill command it. Andrea?

Yeah. Good to meet you guys. Nice to meet you. Sorry, I'm not properly addressed you. He works out. I feel like everyone works out here. That's my form of therapy. It works for me.

I do it every morning before I come in. Every morning. SETI did the forensic work on Jason Linton's electronics. Yeah, we assisted with forensics running the phone and the computers. And yeah, that's what I did on that case. I remember that. Yeah, that was a bad guy. But he also goes out into the field.

He talked about what can happen when they gather a family together and inform them that someone in the house has been downloading illegal content. We can just about almost always figure out just by standing there. It's the person who doesn't want to make eye contact with you. They're sinking in the sofa slowly. Is it a mixture of mom, dad, or? Most often males. There's been three females that I can think of off top of my head.

It's rare that it's a female. Can you tell us your name for the record? Yeah, set a out lie. Comment spelling. I was like looking at it. This topic has a lot of darkness. It's shrouded in pain. But meeting the people at ICAC was like letting the light in.

They are people who really care about their community and are making it safer in whatever way they can. I've been keeping up with the status of Michael Gibbs' prison sentence. I was floored to find out that he was out early. So I was wondering how Mandy was navigating his re-entry and boundaries with her daughter. How are you? I am so good.

You sound good. Yeah, from like when I left, I'm doing a lot better. What's going on with your act? He is out and he's staying with his mom. He also has a new girlfriend who has three children. Wow. That's a lot, right?

That's a lot. Yeah. So the interactions we have are usually between, like, his mom, post-grandma, you know? Right. And it's weird and super uncomfortable. What's happening with custody? I have full custody of her.

He has no desire to have full custody of her. He doesn't want to be a full-time dad, nor does he think that I'm a bad mom. So he got to see Sophie, and now basically he's off my back. Michael asked Mandy for visitation. As soon as she had gotten out of prison and was in the halfway house,

he was making it sound like as soon as he was out of the halfway house, he was done. Like, I served my time. And for a mother, it's an agonizing situation. It's something that I battle with all of the time. Do I keep her from seeing him because of what he did? All these questions, like, what is right? And I wish that somebody could just tell me, Mandy, like, this is what you need to do, and this is what's right, and this is what's safe, and this is what's good.

but nobody tells me that. Like, there's nobody that's going to sit down and tell me that, I feel. So I just do what I think is right and what I feel like is safe or so and what's safe for me. It makes me angry that you guys don't have something to measure. Do you know what I mean? I know. I wish there was a manual.

I wish I could read and, like, make sense of, like, I don't know. I don't know. And the only way that I can treat it is, like, a child when he's around my child. child he needs to be supervised like a child. That's just that. And I feel safe when that's happening. I mean, I trust his family entirely, you know. I just don't trust him. And then that also makes me like start questioning other things. And if I think too much about it, then I'm like in full-blown panic attack. So I try to just be like, okay, there's so many adults there. We're fine. It's fine. She's safe. She's happy. I know she's safe. But he doesn't get to have sleepovers with her. And he

won't and he doesn't try. Had you seen any change in his behavior? He's doing great, obviously. He has a new girlfriend and a new life, and I get to meet her, which is awesome. I'm super excited to meet her and have conversations with her. Sounds like sarcasm. How does that actually make you feel? I'm horrified for her.

I've asked him point blank many times, like, does she know? Like, she has three girls. Does she know? And he says that she does. Isn't he on the sex offender list, no? Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know.

I don't know if she knows. It's not coming from a source of jealousy or anger or, like, upset. I'm not trying to harm or hinder him from having his life. But at the same time, I'm feeling this obligation of some sort and, like, how much of it is my place, right? Because he's charming as fuck. Are you just? taking it day by day? Oh, girl, that's like literally all I can ever do.

If you could say one thing to the Mandy that just found out this news at work, what would you say to her? I would just hug her for a really long time. I would just tell her that I was going to be okay. That no matter what, it was going to be okay. Because that's all she just needed to hug. Just, yeah. There's nothing you can do.

about any, you can't change any of it. And there's going to be so many hard days. So many. So many I didn't think that I was going to be able to get through. But I hear you all. Yeah. Just about when we wrapped up this episode, I heard from Mandy. She had an update about visitation with her daughter.

Last time we had talked, you had asked me if I had heard from the probation officer. And up to that point, I had not heard anything. So it was maybe a week after we had talked last. I got a message from Mike and he was like, hey, when Sophie was here last time, she had hung out with Mike's mom. They had went back to the house and Mike was there with her and Fran was there, which was, you know,

like as long as there's another adult, I felt fine with that. Fran is her daughter's grandmother and Mike's mother. Mandy wants her daughter to spend time with Fran and trusts her to supervise visits with Michael. But I guess his probation officer had showed up during that point to, like, do a check-in or just drop. So she called me and she's like, he can't even be around Sophia until his therapist approves it. So I was just super frustrated because I'm like, I'm trying to do everything right and, like, safe.

And I don't know if he knew and isn't telling me. I feel like he's not being honest. After I got off the phone with her, I called him right back, and I was like, you have to know this is part of your probation and stuff. You have to know these things. It's insane to me that he doesn't know that he can't be around children. Well, that's the thing. I was asking her, I was like, did he know this? Or is this something that you guys just decided?

And she was like, well, you know, there's just requirements. Like, she would not give me it. I'm like, yeah, I understand that. And she was like, yeah, that works up with his therapist. So for a point of clarity, the probation officer told you that Mike can't even be around your daughter, not even supervised as it? No, no, not yet. Not until he's reached this point with his therapist. And I'm not sure how often they meet. I know that that's part of his probation as well. But whenever she gets to the point where she feels that's copacetic.

So I have to talk to her. Like, I'd have to talk to them. I was just talking to the probation officer, and she said she would keep me informed. You can understand Mandy's frustration. She's trying to protect her daughter. And she can't trust her ex-husband. It feels like another betrayal. And let's face it, spouses aren't viewed as victims by the law.

But the weight of the world is on them to continue to protect their kids. I wanted to look into this for Mandy. What's the process to find out what your ex-husband, a convicted felon, can and can't do? So our team did some research and talked with the people who work on probation supervision in Utah. And it took some time. If you're not a lawyer or aren't familiar with the court system, it's overwhelming. And it's hard to know where you can access all of this information. Here's what we learned.

Anyone could obtain the parameters of an offender's release by requesting the sentencing document from the clerk of the court. The forms are online, but there is a charge for the copy. According to the U.S. court's probation and pretrial services District of Utah, the defendant Michael Gibbs is restricted from contact with individuals who are under 18 years of age without adult supervision, and the probation office approves a supervisor. The treatment provider, that is, whoever is providing mental health treatment, the therapy that Mandy referred to, must also approve the choice of a supervisor. At the time of me taping this podcast,

no one had been approved as a supervisor for Michael to have visitation with a minor child. On the next episode of Betrayal, I just bawled and broke down and told her and she said, if you don't report this, I'm going to report this. And I was like, oh, fuck, it's go time. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team, email us at Betrayalpod at gmail.

That's Betrayal P-O-D at gmail.com. To report a case of child sexual exploitation, call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Cyber Tip Line. At 1-800, The Lost. If you or someone you know is worried about their sexual thoughts and feelings towards children, reach out to stopitnow.org.org. In the United Kingdom, go to stopitnow.org.org. These organizations can help.

We're grateful for your support. And one way to show support is by subscribing. 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

and partnership with IHart Podcasts. The show was executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fasin. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Carrie Hartman, also produced by Ben Federman, Associate producer, Kristen Melkiri. Our IHart team is Ali

Perry and Jessica Kreinschek. Special thanks to our talent Ashley Lytton, Alan White, and the Utah IACAC task force, and special thanks to Mandy Hale and production assistant Tessa Shields. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Dalvecchio, portrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines, music library provided by Mide Music. And for more podcasts from IHeart, visit the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. They take matters into their own hands. I vowed.

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