Nobody Should Believe Me - Bonus: Questions Answered

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

In this bonus episode my producer Tina Nole from Larj Media and I respond to some of the questions that came up about Season 1, break down a few myths about Munchausen Syndrom By Proxy (Medical Child Abuse) and we’ll preview what’s coming up June 15th when we release Season 2 of the show. To support the show, go to https://apple.co/nobodyshouldbelieveme  to listen on Apple Podcasts and just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of the show page to listen to exclusive bonus content and access all episodes early and ad-free or go to Patreon.com/NobodyShouldBelieveMe. *** Click here to view our sponsors. Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

True Story Media. Hello. I am here today with my incredible producer, Tina Noll. She is my complete creative collaborator on this show and my friend and my ride or die who goes into the field with me when we are doing reporting. And so we wanted to get together today in anticipation of season two, which is officially coming at you in your ears on June 15th. We are so excited to share that with you. Today we wanted to talk about some of the feedback that we've gotten from this show and mostly get into some of the really interesting sort of questions and criticisms, one thing it won't be is boring. And that's about the only prediction I'm going to make right now. But one piece of news that I am excited to share is that the wait for my new book, The Mother Next Door, is almost over. It is coming at you on February 4th from St. Martin's Press. So soon! I co-authored this book with friend and beloved contributor of

this show, Detective Mike Weber, about three of the most impactful cases of his career. Even if you are one of the OG-est of OG listeners to this show, I promise you are going to learn so many new and shocking details about the three cases we cover. We just go into so much more depth on these stories and you're also going to learn a ton about Mike's story. Now I know y'all love Detective Mike because he gets his very own fan mail here at Nobody Should Believe Me. And if you've ever wondered how did Mike become the detective when it came to Munchausen by proxy cases, you are going to learn all about his origin story in this book. And I know we've got many audiobook listeners out there, so I'm very excited to share with

you the audiobook is read by me, Andrea Dunlop, your humble narrator of this very show. I really loved getting to read this book, and I'm so excited to share this with you. If you are able to pre-order the book, doing so will really help us out. It will signal to our publisher that there is excitement about the book, and it will also give us a shot at that all-important bestseller list. And of course, if that's simply not in the budget right now, we get it. Books are not cheap. Library sales are also extremely important for books, so putting in a request at your local library is another way that you can help. So you can pre-order the book right now in all formats at the link in our show notes.

And if you are in Seattle or Fort Worth, Mike and I are doing live events the week of launch, which you can also find more information about at the link in our show notes. These events will be free to attend, but please do RSVP so that we can plan accordingly. See you out there. Well, this topic and the podcast itself brings up a lot of questions. And I think the beauty of podcasting is this continued dialogue that we get to have. And this is a topic that people don't know a lot about and are learning and have very strong feelings about. This was a hard show to listen to in many ways. So I think continuing the conversation, continuing the dialogue around some of the curiosities is important. That's what makes it very different about books. If someone hasn't complained about one of my books, I'm sorry. That has gone to the printer. It is out in the world. We have the grace of this fluid medium that we can have a continued dialogue, and we'll do that in season two. We'll continue these conversations. Tina kind of helped me go through the comments and vet. I read them all in detail and go on rabbit holes. And also it is reflective of our creative work together and the

production and all of that. So I like to understand what people think. So what is your, does it upset you when you read bad reviews? My first response used to be defensive, but I'm no longer. I'm deep into creative work, you know, and doing shows like this. So now I just take it with a grain of salt. And sometimes I'm like, oh, yeah, that's true. But I think what was really interesting and why I thought this would be helpful for listeners and helpful for us to do is that this is such a huge topic and there was no way we were going to address, hence why we're doing, you know, another season. But there was no way we were going to address, hence why we're doing, you know, another season, but there was no way we were going to address everything. And I wanted to just know how this was landing with people, given that this is something

that most people don't know very much about. So I thought some of these points would be really salient to address. And this is not meant to be, by the way, like a rebuttal to any criticism. Like, I think you probably agree with me, like, as a creative person, that is sort of the deal, right? Like you put your work out into the world, people can say whatever they want about it. I don't think most of those conversations need to involve me, but I think that some of these, you know, I think some of these would, were just interesting to respond to. Yeah. And so that is all to say too, if you are listening to us, if you have feedback for us, we are very, very open to hearing it. And we love hearing from listeners.

And that has been actually one of my favorite parts of having this show out in the world. So let's get to it. All right. So we'll start with the dads episode. If you remember, we highlighted stories of fathers that stepped in and really fought for their children and in some cases won, in some cases didn't. And we got some feedback about the fact that we highlighted a lot of the dads that did come to the rescue and that is not always the case. So people were like, okay, great.

There were three dads you highlighted that did the right thing. However. Right. So the reason I wanted to respond to this one was because this is right on. I think probably it makes sense to folks listening that the dads that would want to be interviewed by this podcast are the ones who were presented with evidence and did the right thing and were protective, right? Because not to say that I wouldn't be interested to hear from dads in another situation, but you know, I guess it's worth sort of saying how we put this podcast together. You know, when we were first making this show, when we first had the concept for this show, we really did not know who. I knew that Mike Weber, Detective Mike Weber would talk to us.

I knew that these other experts that we interviewed would talk to us. But in terms of people with personal stories, I did not know who would be willing to talk to us and who would not. So this first group of people really came from a lot of personal referrals. You know, I did—I reached out to Hope's family online, and that's how I got in touch with them. And so that one was, you know, more reaching out cold. But with George Honeycutt, Doug Welch, and Ryan Crawford, you know, those are all people that knew Mike. You know, when I've asked Mike about how these cases sort of break down in a sort of bigger sample size, he said it's about half and half, that the dads either sort of see

what's going on and try and protect the kids, or that the dads will stand by their partner regardless of what evidence they're presented with. Well, and the dads get snowed just like many people around these perpetrators get snowed, right? So they may not believe it. But the other thing about the dad's episode that I think is important to recognize is that it's also demonstrating the possibility that someone can interrupt this type of abuse, step in and make a difference. There are plenty of stories where fathers didn't step in, right? But that's not the story. Calling all sellers. Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving

customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. That we needed to tell in the context of this podcast. It's very important to demonstrate this reality. Dads can step in and when they do, their children can get saved. And they have to fight the good fight. Unfortunately for Doug Welch, as we know, he's still fighting. Right. But what we do know and what I learned from you and the experts that we talked to is that that interruption alone can stop the abuse. Even if the dad doesn't win, it doesn't get the kids, any type of disruption isn't significant.

Yeah. And I mean, if I think we should be clear that from what we know about this pattern, if the offender's children are returned to her, the abuse is likely to continue. Every case that we've heard about, that's the case. But that doesn't mean that the intervention isn't worthwhile because it can keep it from escalating. It can sort of change course. You might see it move into these other areas that are more sort of confined to things like educational abuse that are, you know, bad still, but not as likely to be deadly. And so when you see sort of where some of these cases appeared to be headed and how much danger these kids were in, you know, anything that can sort of change the course

of that and keep the child alive is very worthwhile. And I think that goes for dads and that goes for everyone else. You know, when people are thinking about if they have suspicions about someone in their life, if they feel like they're seeing, you know, this pattern of deception and are really concerned about a child, like that is why it is worthwhile to report. Even if ultimately the system isn't very well equipped to handle it, it still matters and it still can change the course of events. So our next bit of feedback on the same topic is the accusation that this is a men's rights podcast. And this is actually an intriguing question because obviously it's not a men's rights

podcast, but there is an intersection here that you have pointed out. Of course, I don't agree that this is a men's rights podcast. Everyone making this show is about feminists. But that said, there is a crossover between Munchausen by proxy accusations and the sort of men's rights. started off with some salient points about how dads are treated unfairly by family and juvenile courts, which I think is true and is expressed by what we saw folks like, you know, George Honeycutt and Ryan Crawford and Doug Welch obviously went through and how hard they had to fight even when they had this really strong evidence. So I think that that started off with that salient point and then kind of went this very reactionary route of, like, feminists are ruining everything and it became an anti-feminist movement and that that was sort of at the heart.

But why I wanted to address this is because when – and we are going to talk a lot more about this sort of concept of inspector of false accusations about Munchausen by proxy. the ways that does come up, in fact, is in the context of custody battles where a father, you know, and Bjorker talked to us about this, where a father will just throw out, well, you take our kid to the doctor too much. You have Munchausen by proxy. And that dad is the only person making that accusation. And it's like not corroborated by any evidence. It's not the doctors are not saying it. There isn't this history. That is sort of where that crossover between the idea of like the men's rights and some of that ideology can cross over with dads in the midst of court battles and that this can be used as a sort of weapon the way that a mom might falsely accuse a father of abuse, right? Like this is a thing that happens in custody battles and it's something that we have to recognize.

Okay, let's move on. So we did an episode about survivors and it featured twin girls who went through the foster care system and ended up with a perpetrator and were consequently victims of medical child abuse. You know, the interesting thing about Liz and Erica's story is it is one of these sort of, quote, more subtle cases, right, where you're not seeing necessarily the really dramatic surgeries and that kind of thing that we talk about in some of these other cases. You know, it was more in the psychiatric realm and that their parent was saying that they had fetal alcohol syndrome and was sort of taking them to all these unnecessary appointments. We heard from a listener that had, it seemed to me, sort of recognized her own story, that there were some patterns there where she had adopted a child who did have FAS

and was sort of feeling sensitive about the idea that this would be abuse. FAS can be we're sort of feeling sensitive about the idea that this would be abuse. FAS can be very hard to diagnose. And so what I wanted to say about that is the thing that makes it abuse is intentional deception. It is not just the presence of something that is difficult to diagnose. It is not a parent legitimately trying to get to the bottom of things. And offenders we know choose things purposefully that are difficult to get to the bottom of because it gives them a perfect setup to say, you know, it's not something that can be disproven by a simple blood test or an x-ray. So they do sort of purposefully choose these things that can present in different ways,

that there's not a 100% test for, that they can mess with test results. So that is the difference. And we always want to point that out because we do talk about these patterns. And I'm very sensitive to the fact of not wanting to put a lens on parents who have children with FAS or parents who have children who are born premature or who have feeding tubes or who legitimately have stick fibrosis or any of these other patterns that we talk about because that is not the way that relationship works. And offenders can choose anything. I mean, they wouldn't bring their kid in and say they had a broken bone, right?

Because that would be very easy to disprove. It's going to always be a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of any of those groups of children that have those things where you're going to find offenders. It's the behavior of the parent. It's not what appears to be wrong with the child. So this is probably one of the most common things that we – pieces of feedback that we got about season one. And it's tricky. This is in relation to your sister. Many people were left wondering and wanting to

know exactly what your sister did, why you skirted around it, did we skirt around it. So let's clear that one up right away. You know, what I tried to stick to in the first season was talking about the stuff where I was there. And I had a personal experience with it. I have gotten legal pushback from my sister every time I've tried to talk about any of these things in public forum. The things that I talked about in the first season, those are things that happened in my life. I feel entitled to talk about them. With the second case, I knew bits and pieces, but we had been estranged for almost a decade by the time that case happened. And so there wasn't as much to say about it. Things have shifted drastically for me.

I did a public records request, and I found out a lot about the second case, and we are going to be getting into that. And so it has taken me a long time to figure out how to talk about this in a way that is responsible, that feels ethical to me, and also that is legal, quite frankly. It has been tremendously complicated. And so if it seems like I have been hesitating or it's because I have. Doug Welch went through this same experience. We originally recorded it anonymously and that's because Mary Welch also was not convicted of a crime and so it has all those same complexities. And then once he listened to it, he said, I really wish I'd just said her name. And I said, fine, come back and say her name. If you feel that you have those concerns about a child and you feel that the system has let you down, then you feel that making that public will put more eyes on that child and

possibly offer them some sort of protection. The experts that we've talked to have all said that is that last resort. And so for those of you that have heard me sort of trying to figure it out in real time, it's because that's what was happening. And there's just, to say there's much more to come on all that. Like so worried about my sister. You're engaged. You cannot marry a murderer. I was sick, but I am healing.

Returning to W Network and Stack TV. The West Side Ripper is back. If you're not killing these people, then who is? That's what I want to know. Starring Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina. The only investigating I'm doing these days is who shit their pants. Killer messaged you yesterday? This is so dangerous. I got to get out of this.

Based on a true story. New season premieres tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific. Only on W. Stream on Stack TV. Playoff football is here with BetMGM. And as an official sportsbook partner of the NFL, BetMGM is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day with a variety of exciting features.

BetMGM offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older, Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance,

call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I want to tell you about a show I love, Truer Crime from Cilicia Stanton. My favorite true crime shows are the ones where I feel like the creator has a real stake in what they're talking about. And this is definitely the case with Cilicia, who got interested in covering crime because, like many of us in this genre, she experienced it. In each episode of the show, Cilicia brings a personal, deeply insightful lens to the crime that she covers, whether it's a famous case like the Manson murders or Jonestown, or a lesser-known case that needs to be heard, like the story of a modern lynching.

She covers these stories with a fresh and thoughtful lens, helping listeners understand not just the case itself, but why it matters to our understanding of the world. Her long-awaited second season is airing now, and the first season is ready to binge. So go check out Truer Crime with Cilicia Stanton wherever you get your podcasts. That's the thing about this topic, too. Even as we're working through season two and season three, going into any detail about the way children are treated is painful. We don't want to shy away from how serious it is. And I think we try really hard to toe that line in this show where we're not spending a lot of time on the gory details, but we're also not making any sort of bones about

what really happened. Because I think it's about what really happened because I think it's important to say because I think it's important for people to take it seriously, which by and large I don't think that this issue is taken seriously enough. I think with regard specifically to my sister, I don't like revisiting that situation. It is painful. It is hard. It brings up all kinds of things. Inevitably, whenever I'm talking about it, writing about it, thinking about it, it has an emotional toll. All right, let's talk about Hope Ibarra, the main subject of season one, and ultimately the finale of season one, where we sat down with Hope in a diner in rural Idaho, and that was really intense. Some people wonder if that was

the right call to put, to give Hope Ibarra a microphone. What do you think about that? That was something I thought about a lot while we were in the process of trying to interview her. I think that it is ethically complicated to give someone space to talk when you know that they're going to lie. In my naivete, I no longer have this, but for something in my brain, I was thinking, you know, she's did terrible, terrible, terrible things. We know now that her children have survived and they are thriving and they're going to be okay despite what happened to them. And she spent 10 years in prison. So there's something in my head.

This is so strange now to hear myself say it because I thought, well, maybe she got help. Maybe she's better. living a life now that she has regret and is living out her days in this rural town with feelings of sadness about her behavior and regret. I really walked into that diner believing that that's the person that we were going to meet. And when she came in crying immediately and then pretending to be deaf, it was such a like scrambled eggs in my brain to try to make sense of that moment. Like, wait a minute. She's crying.

Does she feel remorse? Wait a minute. She's still lying. Meanwhile, trying to record it and hold the space for you and her and trying to get myself out of it was just really a weird moment in time. Some of the feedback we got was we shouldn't be feeling empathy for this person. We shouldn't be giving this person this grace. And some of the feedback we got, they said, I'm really glad that they talked to her. We on this show do not shy away from the complexities here. And what you're describing is the experience of

everyone who's gone through this personally and or professionally. You know, we talk in season two to Bea Yorker. This is someone with decades and decades of experience who has a great legal and psychiatric mind and knows all these patterns and all these cases. And she said still every single time she actually sits down with a perpetrator. She's, in her words, schnookered. You know, she believes them, right? You're having to override all of your

instincts because what you see, because you are functioning in such a way that you are a person with empathy and they are not. When we're talking about perpetrators who have done these severe things, which Hope Urar is one. She is a person who bled her daughter, who poisoned her daughter, who put her daughter's life at significant risk. What it has taken me a long time to land on is just to really think through that. And I am a mom now. I have little kids. When you really picture it, how premeditated it is, how ongoing it is, how deliberate it is, and knowing what we know know that these are not people who are suffering from delusions. They understand right and wrong and they understand what they're doing.

I have really come to believe that you are not capable of empathy if you can do that to your child. And that's just a hard line. Now, do I think that that person's not a human being? No, I don't. It's a very complicated question what to do with someone who is capable of doing that to a vulnerable child. And I think that it is really worth recognizing how dangerous someone is if they have absolutely no capacity to feel empathy. Because if you just think about that, if you really sit with it, you have to recognize that like that part of you would have to be turned off. Well, yeah. And Detective Mike Weber told us not to be in a room alone with her.

She was a gentle person when we met her and sat down with her, you know. And Bea Yorker, again, this is a colleague of mine that we're going to talk to in season two, she has said she feels that we are so bad as a culture at recognizing female violence versus male violence. And what we are taught to fear is male violence, right? Someone seeing angry or aggressive. We're not taught to fear this kind of violence. And that almost makes it scarier. The reason people refuse to believe that these

perpetrators have done what they've done even when they're confronted with extremely hard evidence and that's not just people who love and care about that perpetrator who you know who are in their family or married to them or what have you it goes the same for judges doctors lawyers everyone who interacts with these you see this resistance come up that makes no logical sense. You're saying like you are being confronted with video evidence or this like incredibly compelling medical records. The reason people still resist it is because I think it's just a deeper thing. We just do not want to believe that someone who seems like a nice warm mom next door could be capable of the absolute worst thing you could possibly imagine. And that resistance that you were feeling to that is real. It's taken me all these years

to get here. So for those of you that found that sort of distasteful that we talked to her, I appreciate where you're coming from. It was really important for me. I do think it's worth letting someone speak for themselves. We have always made it an open offer that if my sister, her husband, Mary Welch, any of the people we've talked about on this podcast wish to speak for themselves, I think is a good segue to talk about kind of the question of whether perpetrators are treatable because we got some feedback. I found some this feedback feedback to be spot on i hope we made the point and perhaps we make it even more strongly in season two that well there is a recognized disorder that goes along with this behavior and that is factitious disorder imposed

on another that is in what you know the, the psychiatrist's manual, the DSM. It's not a question of mental illness in that that is something that makes someone not culpable for the crime. And I know we did say that, but I think that we had some strong reactions to, in particular, my conversation with Mary Sanders. She is a colleague that I adore and respect. And I think that it is really admirable to look for any of those instances where a person possibly could be rehabilitated. I think that's an admirable pursuit. As to whether or not I personally believe that someone can be rehabilitated once they are as far down the line as someone like Ahop Yabar

or really any of the other offenders we've talked about in this show, I don't really feel that that seems possible because the idea of someone who has lied about every other thing in their life sort of changing course and being fully accountable suddenly just doesn't seem plausible to me. At that same time, I totally admire my colleagues that think it is possible and want them to keep doing what they're doing. You know, there is much spirited debate about a lot of these things in the community of folks that are on this committee. And I think that's certainly one of the sort of touchier questions. I think that the most important thing is that those efforts to address the mental health of a perpetrator should never, never, never come at the expense of the safety of a child ever, ever.

It's primarily a crime. It is a crime with a victim that needs to be protected. I tend to think that if you have crossed this line with a child, that you should not be around children for the rest of your life. Just the same way that if you have sexually assaulted a child, you should not be around children for the rest of your life. I think that there are sort of things that we need to agree on as a culture that, like, if you are capable of doing that to a child, you don't get to be around children anymore.

Yeah. And that's, I mean, we have that. I mean, we have that understanding with sex offenders, right? And that's why Mike is always making that comparison is to sort of get through to people to take it as seriously. Because, you know, that's why we have sex offender registries, right? We can't go near a school. We've decided as a culture, like if you are someone who has crossed that line, we are saying you need to not be around children anymore.

And that's really important. So before we get into the last question about what we're covering in season two, do you want to address all the many complaints about your voice? I shouldn't say all the many because I think there are about three. But yes, to those of you who are concerned about my vocal cords, don't worry. They are fine. They're healthy. This is how my voice sounds.

This is how my voice has always sounded. So thank you so much for your concern, and may you have the day you deserve. Carry on. So, Tina, what was your favorite piece of feedback that we got on season one? I think a few things. One, the many people that eyes were opened to this reality, that was really impactful. You set out to create an awareness campaign around this topic. It certainly was an exploration of your experience in this. And I think that it hit the audience in

a way that was very important to hear that we made a difference in and that we handled a topic that was really hard in a responsible way by bringing experts in and by helping people really get their brains around it and not glorifying. That's meaningful. I have to say for those of you who are family members and or survivors, hearing from you made me cry every time. Yeah. And I just want to send you all some love

and say that I was thinking of you when I was making this show, and I'm glad it found its way to you. And if you reached out, thank you so much. If you didn't and you never do, I still thank you and send you the best. Yeah. Tina, what are you most excited about for season two? Well, it's so good. Every time I send you a cut, I'm like, it's so good.

Why do you hear this? Even though we made it together and we have an incredible editor, Travis Clark, who we're really grateful for. The child you will meet and get to know in season two is pretty remarkable. I think that's amazing. There's some inspiration in here. There's some hope, not hope Ibarra. There's some like true hope in this story.

I think the whole season is going to be really an important one for folks to hear and understand all the nuances of this horrific crime. And also the really incredible people that have come out to save children. It will be wherever you get your podcast beginning June 15th and you are releasing some things exclusively to your Patreon. Yes. So this season we are doing all episodes early and ad-free on both Patreon and Apple+. And also we are releasing the first three episodes all at once on June 15th on those platforms, as well as lots of incredible bonus content.