Betrayal - Love Is No Defense | EP 8 | Saskia's Story

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

Advocates fight to change the law that protected Mike Levengood.    Content Warning for rape, sexual violation by an intimate partner, and nonconsensual intimate image distribution. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at [e-mail]. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Follow our newsletter and join the Betrayal community at betrayal.substack.com.  For resources on sexual violence, visit rainn.org/betrayal. You can also get free, confidential, 24/7 support through RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline. Text HOPE to 64673 or call 1-800-656-HOPE.  Every state has a domestic violence coalition, and many counties also have resources available. If you’re looking for help, go onto your county’s website to see what resources are available locally, or search the web for your state’s domestic violence coalition. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm Lori Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens. This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility

to the products we put out in the world. An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future. My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI. Listen to Mostly Human on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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 Marantini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is love trapped. Laura, Scott Steelewell. 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. You know Roll Doll. He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roll Doll, I'll tell you that story, and much, much more.

What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Listen to the secret world of Roll Doll, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than No Grip, a new podcast tackling the culture of motor racing's most coveted series. Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the under-explored pockets of F1,

including the story of the woman who last participated in a Formula One race weekend, the recent uptick in F1 romance novels, and plenty of mishap scandals and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to No Grip on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone, Andre here. I have some exciting news to share. ABC has turned Betrayal Weekly into an eight-episode anthology, which means each episode features one of your favorite Betrayal Weekly stories. You'll get to see the people involved, hear from people who have not.

never spoken before and actually see where the story took place. We are so proud and excited to share it with you all. It's called Betrayal Secrets and Lies, and you can watch it every Sunday at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 9 p.m. Central. Please check it out. Earlier this season, we went through Saskia's divorce trial. We talked about all the hurdles that Saskia had to overcome, all the insults she had to endure just to end her marriage. But I want to go back to that trial for a second, because there's one more moment you need to hear. It's the devil in the details.

What's on the screen here is Vendant's Exhibit 3. This is audio from the middle of the divorce trial, during Mike's cross-examination. Saskia's attorney began by quoting Mike's initial divorce filing. Paragraph 8 says all of these things. acts were consensual and in paragraph 10 that all of these allegations are false and the banatory cause a serious threat to your good reputation you recall making those statements yes the statements about this being a betrayal and that all acts were consensual those those were false statements correct those are not false statements well we know that not all the acts were

consensual right I maintain they were consensual. Absolutely. Remember, by this point, Mike had already pled guilty to rape in criminal court, but here he was in the divorce trial, stating that all of his sexual encounters with Saskia were consensual. Saskia's attorney couldn't understand it.

He pulled up the transcript from Mike's guilty plea. And in fact, you were asked in this guilty plea by Judge Cummings, if you are pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty. Do you remember being asked that question? Yes. And what was your response to that question? I played guilty. Because you were guilty, right?

That's, yes, yes. So I'm struggling with your previous testimony that all acts would be consensual, but you would be found guilty of rape. How is that? Well, I think, first of all, I think you would kind of bifurcate some of, or have separate parallel discussions with some of these different topics. There's one thing about the consensual use of pornography, the consensual acts of taking photographs and videos. Mr. Levin Good. The judge interrupted him.

So I would say... I'm going to cut you off. Okay. So you maintain that all acts, all... All acts between you and Ms. N. Wood were consensual. Your plea agreement was that you were pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty of rape. They can't both be true. So the question is, which one is true?

I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal Season 5. Episode 8. Love is No Defense The judge allowed Mike a 15-minute break to talk with his attorney. When the court reconvened, Saski's attorney asked him again. How could it be true that you pled guilty to rape of the defendant, but that all of the acts between you and the defendant were concerned? So I think this is an important point. So to try to explain better.

So based on discussion, with my attorneys and my interstate, they're explaining to me the statute of rape and the definition of rape, and specifically around the use of force. You'll remember that at the time, Maryland had a law on the books. It was legal to rape your wife if she was unconscious, unless force was used. My attorneys explained to me, there's no specific amount of force that is required. that force becomes a very subjective thing. State prosecutors could only charge Mike with rape

in the moments where they could argue he used force. But the examples of force that they identified weren't slam dunks. The state specifically says the force in these videos, as your honor will see, is force such as moving a leg while unconscious. By the time of his divorce trial, Mike had clearly learned a lot about the marriage, hurdle exemption to rape, and he was using it to distance himself from his own guilty plea. Mike told the divorce judge that the whole criminal case against him was based on a technicality.

Under the law, the only thing he did wrong was move his wife's leg. So I absolutely pled guilty to that act of moving her leg while she was unconscious, semi-conscious. I pled guilty to something that I did do, and that, I recognize is the plea of second-degree rape. And I did that and I admit to that. I think from out of the criminal setting, right, in kind of a common, if you will, place environment, I don't, I don't believe in my heart that I did that, that I raped her. Mike didn't believe in his heart that he raped Saskia. We're going to come back to him and let you in on what he's up to today in the next episode.

But before we get to that, we need to talk about why Mike argued this, that raping his sleeping wife wasn't rape. And the reality is, the law said it wasn't. The state was able to prosecute Mike. But they knew it was on a technicality. That's why prosecutors only try. charged him with three counts of rape and one count of attempted rape, despite there being so many videos. And it's a big part of why they agreed to give Mike an 18-month plea deal.

The law said what it said. It wasn't raping your wife if she was unconscious. So Mike, got off easy. It's a hundred percent a case that sticks with me because we weren't able to really accomplish full justice. That's Debbie Feinstein. She's chief of the special victims division at the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office in Maryland. She supervised the prosecutors on Mike's case. Back in 2018, when they were just beginning to build the case, Debbie knew. There were many, many, many more counts of rape that we could have charged him with. She watched those videos.

She saw what Mike did to Saskia. She could not consent. she could not be amenable to what was happening given the fact that she was physically helpless and mentally incapacitated. It's just those two things cannot be true at the same time. And yet, in the eyes of the law, both things were true.

Saskia was consenting, even though she was completely knocked out. According to the law in Maryland, she consented the day she signed her marriage certificate. The marital exemption to rape could be seen as a legal loophole. But that's not quite accurate, because laws like this have been around for hundreds of years.

They were built into the legal institution of marriage. It comes from the common law of England in the 1600s when women were chattel. They were possessions. So once you married, the husband could do whatever he wanted to the wife because she was like a table, your horse, your teapot. That's chattel, that's property.

That's Lori Ruth. I am the public policy director at the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence. It's a coalition that represents all the domestic violence service providers in the state. Lori has dedicated her career to helping survivors of intimate partner violence. For decades, she provided direct legal support, and today, she loved, She lobbies for bills in the state legislature. Lori first heard about Maryland's marital exemption around 2008. At the time, she was the legal director at a women's rights nonprofit.

A call came through to her office. The woman on the other line was in the car. She was driving on the Baltimore Bellway. And she said, my husband is drugging me and having sex with me and filming it. This woman, like Saskia, was incapacitated when her husband assaulted her. And I stood up from my desk. I said, you have to pull over.

Like, you can't be driving down the street telling me that story. And I said, that is not allowed. That is illegal. It's a crime. He can't do that. But then, Lori looked into it. Come to find out, they're married. Come to find out, here we are in 2019, 2020, 2020, 2021, 2021, 2022, 22,

2023, he probably was allowed to do that. According to the law, she hadn't been raped at all. Over the years, Lori never stopped thinking about that woman. You hear stories like that and you think, somebody needs to be focused on this for the betterment of our society and the citizens and the women and daughters and girls in the state of Maryland. But here's the thing. This law wasn't just affecting people in Maryland.

In 2018, when Mike committed these crimes, marital exemption laws existed all over the country. In red states like Ohio, Michigan, Nevada, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and also in blue states, like California, Rhode Island, and Minnesota. And all across the country, there have been people working to end these legal exemptions. people like Stefan Turkheimer. We want the law to respect individuals. We want the law to respect survivors' experience.

We want the law to create the rules for how we want society to behave. And that's not this. Stefan leads the public policy team at Rain, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network. It's the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization. Stefan's job is to look at laws around the country and see which laws need to be changed to protect. tech survivors.

I'm a lawyer, right? But sometimes when you read a law, you're like, this can't be correct. Let me go check. Let me see if this is actually being used. When he learned about marital exemption laws, that was his first reaction. Maybe these laws were relics of an older time, never actually enforced. But it turned out that that was not what was happening. Straight up, in Ohio, people that were being sexually assaulted by their husbands through drugs

or other means, we're calling the police, and the police were saying that's not a crime. That's what was happening. Stephens met women like Saskia all across the country, women who could never get full justice for the crimes committed against them. The thing about a law like this, the black letter rule, is that it's not just like what cases can't go forward. It's that every single survivor can see this and be like, the law doesn't recognize my experience.

They say that I'm to blame, that I'm not worthy of protection. The more cases like Saskia's he heard about, the more angry he became. The key is to take that outrage that you have and bring it to people that can change the law and let them be outraged with you. These are people whose minds can be changed. These are people that want to change laws. That's why they got the job. And yet, convincing these legislators is no simple task.

Sometimes it takes a lot of people and a lot of effort to do something that should be easy. In Saskia's case, the prosecutors told us they felt like their hands were tied. Debbie Feinstein wanted to file more charges against Mike. But because of the marital exemption to rape, she couldn't. This case spoke volumes because it was exactly why this law didn't make sense. In this case, he got a substantially reduced sentence of incarceration, really because the meat and potatoes, the heart of the case was taken out from under us because of the spousal defense to rape.

For Debbie, having to charge Mike on a technicality was a sign of a larger problem. Even though Mike took the plea, she couldn't let this case go. The ones where we can't get to the full right outcome, they live within us. But they also drive advocacy, which is what happened in this case. I'm Lori Siegel, and I'm mostly human. I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.

This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Alman. I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world. From power to parenthood. Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI. This is such a powerful and such a new thing. From addiction to acceleration. The world we live in is a competitive world. And I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.

We have a deep desire to. to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others. And it's a multiplayer game. What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility? Find out I'm mostly human. My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI. Listen to Mostly Human on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

favorite shows. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters

of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you.

I was a spy. Did you know Doll got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever?

And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why hasn't a woman formerly participated in a Formula One race weekend in over a decade? Think about how many skills they have to develop at such a young age? What can we learn from all of the new F1 romance novels suddenly popping up every year?

He still smelled of podium champagne and expensive friction. And how did a 2023 event called Wagageddon change the paddock forever? That day is just seared into my memory. I'm culture writer and F1 expert Lily Herman, and these are just a few of the questions I'm tackling on No Grip, a Formula One culture podcast that dives into the under-explored pockets of the sport. In each episode, a different guest and I will go deeper into the wacky mishap, scandals and sagas, both on the track and far away from it,

that have made F1 a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to No Grip on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 silence, correct? I doctored the test once.

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 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 Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice has served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the state of Maryland, people were working for years to overturn the marital rape exemption. But these kinds of laws, laws that have existed for hundreds of years, are difficult to overcome.

To rally people to make a change, it often takes a case of massive injustice. Saska's case was exactly that. It was a case with overwhelming evidence. Dozens of videos, which Mike streamed to thousands of people. But he was only sentenced to 18 months. It's the kind of story that could get lawmakers' attention. Here's prosecutor Debbie Feinstein again. It is singularly the most impactful, effective way to approach advocacy

and the legislature is to have a case where an individual, a human being was impacted, and this case spoke volumes. So in 2020, just after Mike went to jail, Debbie went to Annapolis. She worked with state lawmakers, legal advocates like Lori, and representatives from the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault to present a bill in the Maryland legislature, a bill that could overturn the marital exemption once and for all. We got a recording of that. legislative session. A representative from Saskia's County introduced the bill.

I'm delegate Charlotte Cutchfield from Montgomery County. And I am honored to be able to testify today on House Bill 590, also known as love is no defense to sexual crimes. Debbie testified at length. And even though Saskia wasn't there in person, her case was the highlighted case that we brought to Annapolis. Here's Debbie, testified before lawmakers. In Montgomery County, we had a case within the last couple of years, and in that case, a spouse raped his wife repeatedly, actually on camera, while she was mentally incapacitated.

And in that case, marriage was a complete defense to his rape of his wife. It's incredibly disturbing that we could not prosecute the individual for all of those counts of rape that he perpetrated on his wife. He ultimately ended up pleading. with a much reduced sentence that really barely scratched the surface of the horrific offenses that I will tell you because I watched those videos, the horrible nature of them that we were unable to prosecute. But even with the example of Saskia's story, the bill got a lot of pushback.

Debbie and her colleagues were trying to eliminate marriage as a defense to all sex crimes, first, second, third, and fourth degree. So on the scheme of things, you know, we have raised. and then we have fourth-degree sex offense, which is an unconsentitude touching, which could be a graze on the breast, a graze on the buttocks, or the genital area. Some legislators were concerned about what the bill would mean for those lower-tier offenses. What you're saying is under this bill, the husband would have to get consent. That I couldn't roll over at night and just put my hand on a bikini area.

I would have to say, excuse me, he's a little bit cold. He's just trying to spice it up a little bit. He rolls over. Now she can say, I'm going to process. That was so disturbing to hear that come out of legislators' mouths. Lori Ruth, the public policy director you heard earlier, felt the same. You stare at them and you think, what kind of marriage do you have that you actually think that's going to happen? But lawmakers, like all of us, buy into myths about rape accusers.

Some think that women are likely to bring false allegations and that they'll use those allegations to their advantage. The most common response we see is, how can we be sure that she's telling the truth? How can we know that she's not lying, often followed by, to get a leg up in a custody suit? That is a real barrier to getting bills passed. Representatives worried that this change would overwhelm the courts. The office of the public defender says we're going to be swarmed with defendants if this law passes.

Another advocate, Dorothy Lenig, spoke directly to those concerns. I actually find it kind of shocking that the public defender is going to argue that they would be swamped with cases. I find it shocking, kind of sad if they're saying that at this point, the only reason we're not protecting women who are accusing their husbands of sexually assaulting them is because of this law. But ultimately, these concerns were enough to kill the bill. To me, the fact that a bill like this could fail in 2020 doesn't make sense. The government wants people to get married. And yet, with this law, signing a marriage certificate, means limiting your rights.

As Debbie said to us, we're basically penalizing someone for being married. It defies logic. I asked Lori Ruth about this. I don't know that it has to do with logic. There is a deep, deeply seated misogyny at play. Logic, I don't think so. It's also not a partisan issue. I think the rest of the country views us as being, quote-unquote, very liberal.

But I think if you spend any time in Annapolis, you learn that it's not as simple as that. We have actually had legislators say this. Like, you women get one bill this year. Let's say we've got five that are about child support, domestic violence, something else. They'll say, you get one. Stefan from Rain has seen these attitudes in other states too. When you're presenting to an individual legislator on a bill, there are a few signs you can see about whether or not they're listening to and buying into what you're arguing. One of the main ones is whether or not they reference their granddaughter or their grandson.

If they talk about their granddaughter, they're thinking about the survivor. If they reference their grandson, they're thinking about the offender. You hear that these people made a mistake or whatever else, something shouldn't ruin their life, all this kind of other stuff, all things that are not backed up in stats or stories. but you still have to deal with them because these are people that can stop your bill. And they do stop bills all the time. Often before the bills can even get a full debate, the bills that do make it to the floor are put through the ringer.

This is especially true when it's only people like Stefan, Lori, or Debbie testifying when there are no survivors speaking on the bill's behalf. Here's Lori again. Sometimes the pushback to us is, well, I know you, professionals are talking, but where are the people that this really happens to? Why didn't you bring anybody with you? Isn't there somebody who could speak about this? And you want to say, do you not understand, it's not that easy to stand up and talk about the most awful things that have happened in your life to a big roomful of people? Asking survivors to testify

is no small thing. When the bill in Maryland was first introduced, Saska was in the middle of her divorce proceedings with Mike. I was a shell of a person. At that point, I couldn't have gone through the steps of describing what had happened. No other survivors like Saskia came forward either. And yet, all of the experts we talked to for this episode agreed.

So much of the time, It's survivor testimony that gets these bills over the line. Here's Stefan from Rain again. People don't really get motivated by stats, not really. They get motivated by people and stories and how they make them feel. The story can make the person hearing it feel that they're a part of it. And when that happens and then you get to the end of the story, the person receiving that story is left with something they can do.

In Maryland, when the bill failed, advocates were disappointed. But they weren't ready to give up just yet. And survivors wouldn't stay quiet for long. This law treats spouses as objects, not people. This is your law, and this is rape. I'm Lori Siegel, and I'm mostly human. I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future. This week, an interview with one of the most influential

figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world. From power to parenthood. Kids, teenagers, I think they won't need a lot of guardrails around AI. This is such a powerful and such a new thing. From addiction to acceleration. The world we live in is a competitive world.

And I don't think that's going to stop. Even if you did a lot of redistribution, you know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status. be useful to others. And it's a multiplayer game. What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility? Find out on Mostly Human. My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.

Listen to Mostly Human on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You know Roaldol, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey

through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it.

You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair

with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Why hasn't a woman formally participated in a Formula One race weekend in over a decade? Think about how many skills they have to develop at such a young age. What can we learn from all of the new F1 romance novels suddenly popping up every year? He still smelled of podium champagne and expensive friction. And how did a 2023 event called Wagageddon change the paddock forever? That day is just seared into my memory. I'm culture writer and F1 expert Lily Herman, and these are just a few of the questions I'm tackling on no grip. a Formula One culture podcast that dives into the under-explored pockets of the sport.

In each episode, a different guests and I will go deeper into the wacky mishap, scandals and sagas, both on the track and far away from it that have made F1 a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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-ins, 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. Greg Alespian 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 Maricopa 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. In 2020 in Maryland, the bill to end the marital exemption failed.

But Debbie Feinstein, the prosecutor in Montgomery County, couldn't forget about this law or about Saskia's case. It lit a huge fire under me, under my team, and we wanted to do whatever we could to change the law. So in 2021, she and other advocates brought the bill again. But again, it failed. The same legislators spoke up, determined to keep it from passing. Isn't the whole purpose of marital exceptions that we don't end up in court talking about who said what in the marital bedroom? When the bill was brought for a third year, the same objections resurfaced. It seemed like the marital exemption might be the law of the land forever.

But then came 2023. A lot was different about that year. New advocates brought new. stories of why the law needed to be repealed. Because of the spousal defense, I was unable to prosecute this man for raping an unconscious woman. More men testified on behalf of the bill. We must break the cycle of violence and close this vicious loop. But there was one person's testimony that stood out among the rest. It was a survivor's story. We're making the choice to omit her name for her privacy. My name is...

I'm a sexual assault survivor and a victim of this law. Less than a year ago, I was raped by my husband, and under the existing law, what he did was legal rape. I could not respond verbally or physically, completely incapacitated, and it constituted consent. Because I was married, I had photographic and video evidence of my assault. And instead of my proof being used to prosecute my rapist,

it proved his innocence because this chamber made my rape legal. This law treats spouses as objects, not people. We are forced to satisfy sexual desires when we are deprived of strength and power. this is your law and this is rape. You have an opportunity to correct this remnant of our past. And I'm charging each of you to do that. You've been entrusted with the power to protect your fellow citizens. And please, I implore you, make the right decision,

provide a path of healing and justice. for all future victims like me. Thank you. This was the first time that a survivor of marital rape came before the legislature in support of this bill. Lori Ruth, the public policy advocate in Maryland, remembers her testimony well. Those legislators had to look her in the eye

and hear an absolutely horrific story. Immediately, it was clear. The survivor's words were, broke through. I just want to say thank you. That's the most impactful testimony I've ever heard on this bill. I've heard this bill a lot too many times. And so I just want to say thank you for your willingness to step forward.

Hearing this exchange of a legislator thanking the survivor reminds me of something Stefan said earlier. The story can make the person hearing it feel that they're a part of it. And when that happens and then you get to the end of the story, the person receiving that story is left with something they can do. After four years in May of 2023, legislators voted to end Maryland's marital exemption. The bill passed the House and the Senate without a single no vote. Today, the law that allowed Mike Levin Good to get off easy

no longer exists in Maryland. In the last five years, similar reforms have also passed in other states. including Ohio, Minnesota, California, Mississippi, and Rhode Island. But Stefan says, the fight can't stop here. Are the laws progressing? Yes, the laws are progressing. Is the United States in a better state than it was five years ago? Yeah, it is.

Is it a better state than 20 years ago? Yeah. Is it in a better shape than a lot of other countries? It absolutely is. Is it where it needs to be? No. Five states continue to treat marital rape as a state, a lesser crime, Nevada, South Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, and Iowa. And still, in about half of the

states in the U.S., rape continues to be defined in reference to physical force. Most of us don't know about these laws, or even think about them, until they affect us or someone we love. When Saskia first heard that the bill in Maryland had passed and that the marital exemption in her state had been overturned. I was like, finally, it makes me feel relieved that I went through all of that, not in vain, that there's something good that came out of it. But look how much damage has already been done. Changing the law doesn't change what Saskia lived through, and it's unlikely to change what Mike thinks. Saskia not only endured abuse. She endured this law, a law that told Mike that what he did wasn't rape. In the end, he may always believe he's innocent. I don't believe in my heart

that I did that, that I wrote to her. On the next episode of Betrayal, we dive into where Mike is today. I couldn't imagine what it would be like for Saskia to first learn that her perpetrator is selling the experience that he He gained from what he did to her. I just can't imagine. If you want to learn more about the laws in your state, Rain has a database for that. Go to rain.org slash betrayal.

That's r-a-in-n-n.org slash betrayal. Click take action and select laws in your state from the drop-down menu. For resources on sexual violence, visit rain.org. That's r-a-in-n-n.org slash betrayal. You can also get free confidential 24-7 support through Rain's National Sexual Assault hotline. Just text Hope to 64673 or call 1-800-656-5-6-Hope. You are not alone. If you would like to reach out to the betrayal team or want to tell us your story, email us at BetrayalPod at gmail.com.

That is betrayal, P-O-D at gmail.com. Or follow us on Instagram at BetrayalPod. To access additional content and to connect with the betrayal community, join our substack at Betrayal.substack.com. We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. 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 Fasen. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning. Written and produced by Caitlin Golden. Our supervising producer is Carrie Hartman. Our story editor is Monique Laborde. Also produced by Ben Federman.

Associate producers are Olivia Hewitt and Leah Jablo. Production management by Kristen Melchuri. Additional support by Curry Richmond. Our IHard team is Ali Perry and Jessica Kreinsch. Audio editing by Tanner Robbins with additional editing and mixing by Matt Dalvecchio. Special thanks to Saskia, her friends, and family. And special thanks to Will Pearson and Carrie Lieberman. The trail's theme is composed by Oliver Baines, music library provided by Mib Music.

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