Nobody Should Believe Me - Kyle's Story

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

In the season seven finale, Andrea spoke with Kyle about his experience surviving Munchausen by proxy abuse. In this bonus episode, we're sharing an extended cut of that conversation, giving Kyle the space to tell his story in full. Despite losing years of his childhood to abuse, Kyle's journey is ultimately one of extraordinary resilience, survival, and reclaiming his own story. *** Try out Andrea’s Podcaster Coaching App: https://studio.com/apps/andrea/podcaster Order Andrea’s book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy: https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-mother-next-door-9781250284273/ View our sponsors: https://www.nobodyshouldbelieveme.com/sponsors/ Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show!   Subscribe on YouTube where we have bonus content: https://www.youtube.com/@NobodyShouldBelieveMePod Follow Andrea on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreadunlop/ Buy Andrea's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andrea-Dunlop/author/B005VFWJPI For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit: https://www.munchausensupport.com/ The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines: https://apsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Munchausen-by-Proxy-Clinical-and-Case-Management-Guidance-.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

True Story Media. Hello, it's Andrea, and today I am pleased to be sharing our unabridged conversation with Kyle, who we hear from in the finale of Season 7. I knew right away that I wanted to share the full conversation with you because this is truly an extraordinary story of resilience and of someone who is thriving in the face of unimaginable odds. So listen to this one with care. It's a tough story, but it's also really uplifting,

and I know that it will resonate with you. so many of you the way that it did with me. We are off to the races working on season eight behind the scenes and we will be here each week with you on case files in the meantime. As always, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or Patreon for head-free listening and two bonus episodes a month of our subscriber-exclusive show, nobody should believe me after hours. If you are following the never-ending legal mess that is Kowalski v. Johns Hopkins, you will definitely want to tune in as we have lots of updates on that story. If financial support is not an option, we totally get that.

Sharing the story wherever you talk to friends and rating and reviewing the show on Apple and Spotify are also great ways to support. And guess what? You support the show just by tuning in each week. So thanks for being here. We'll be right back with Kyle. Kyle, thank you so much for being with us and for agreeing to come on and tell your story. Could you just start by saying why you initially? reached out to me. Sure. So I had recently just moved and as part of that whole process, I've moved so many

times in the past several years. I try to like slim down whatever I'm keeping with me, but I always have this folder because I get, especially moving around so much, I get pretty sentimental and I have low moods at certain times, and there are certain reminders that I like to keep with me. It's just sort of review whenever I feel I need them. And I had had what I found several years back, the report from Dr. Smith, but they had always been important since I found them as just a sense of validation, that there was recognition that what I had gone through was real, and it was recognized by people outside of just myself. And although that obviously not the most pleasant memory, the validation is important,

and I keep them in a folder along with things like letters of recommendation I had gotten from my law school professors or other judges I've worked for. And so I sort of keep them as bookends. It's sort of surreal reading, because in both cases I'm reading about myself and the third person, but in very different contexts. And it's sort of a reminder whenever I'm feeling uncertain about what's going on or the direction I'm in how far I've gone or how far I've come. And I had originally emailed Dr. Smith when I first found her reports, which had been over seven years ago at this point. And it sort of occurred to me, like it might be a good idea to reach out and give her a further update. But considering it had been in the past seven years, I didn't, I figured she probably

would have retired or she might have. So I just did a cursory search to see if I could find like a LinkedIn with her current work email if there was one. And you can imagine if you search for Dr. Sally Smith what sort of results pop up. It took me a while to really process what exactly I was seeing because at first I just saw a YouTube link that was about her giving testimony. And I didn't even know if this was the right Sally Smith. Once I saw that it was in Pinellas County, I'm like, oh, it was, but the context didn't make it all clear what type of suit it was or who she was giving testimony for. So I had to dig a little deeper.

And then I found everything about taking care of Maya movie, which I have not watched beyond the teaser and different news reporting on it. And I think it was, I don't want to say it. I think it was like a Reddit thread or something that said about the documentary that mentioned this podcast. And I wasn't even sure I was going to be. to say, but I mean, the stories I had read mentioned that Dr. Smith had since retired, so I knew I could not reach out to her directly with the email I had reached out before. And I figured I wanted to say

something. And if there was any way to reach out to anyone that would still have her contact information, it would be this podcast. So I just sent that email sort of screenshoting my previous emails from several years ago as proof of who I was and just, again, sort of stream of consciousness. I wasn't sure what I thought the goal would be, but just to get it out there. Yeah. And for me, you know, this experience of getting this email was really extraordinary because I knew about you, just anecdotally, because Sally had mentioned that, because you had previously emailed with her when you found her report, and that had really stuck with her.

So I had this almost strange sense of deja vu, like, have I already talked to this person? or like, why is this sort of, why is what he's saying so familiar to me? And then I kind of realized that. And it also, Sally was extremely fresh on my mind, which is what I told you when we connected because I was in the process of digging back into four of her other cases that were featured and take care of Maya and, you know, have just been on this sort of whole, whole Odyssey with Sally Smith and that case and the film and the verdict just got overturned. the jury verdict of over $200 million was reversed.

And so it's all the sort of this sort of stuff happened, happened in pretty quick succession. And then you and I connected and I asked you if you would be willing to come on and share your story. And yeah, it was just a really beautiful thing to hear from you and, you know, your email. You know, one of the truths I hold dear about reporting on child abuse is that it's really important to talk to survivors. because they're the ones that we should be listening to the most. And so I'm just so grateful to you for being willing to tell your story to us. So where would you like to begin this story? So I was born in Cincinnati.

I lived for the first year of my life in northern Kentucky, which is where all of my father's side of the family is. My mother's side of the family is in Southern Ohio. So just, you know, right across. state lines, not too far. From when I was about one and a half, I guess, and I do not know the full story behind this because I've never been particularly interested in unhashing old drama. How I phrase it is my mother sort of absconded with me down to Florida and that my parents were still married at the time. And as I understand, they didn't officially get divorced until a few years later.

and no one on my father's side of the family knew where I was for the next two or three years. So, you know, my earliest memories, it was always I was living with my mother. I never could make sense of why when whatever went down between my parents, my mother's instinct was to go to Florida, when all of her family, her parents and her sisters were 50 miles north in southern Ohio. It just seems to be just getting away from everyone that could detect her. I'm not sure what her reasoning was. From what I can gather, becoming a mother just seemed to completely occupy her identity from that point on.

If she didn't have a purpose before then, which I'm not saying I know one way of the other that she did or didn't. If she didn't, from that point on she got all of her purpose, all of her sense of identity. from being a mother, and she desperately wanted to be the only one responsible for me. Because I did not start getting visitation from my father again until I was four, I think. That was when they had sort of tracked me down, and he would regularly drive down from Kentucky, and I'd have weekend visit with him. Very long drive. But I guess before my father started visiting, my grandmother on my father's side had driven.

driven down to Florida and her and my great-grandmother took me to Bush Gardens, which I had pictures of. I was about three, and I have no recollection of it whatsoever, but what I do remember is for years afterwards, including after I graduated college and was a full adult, my mother always just threw out this idea that my grandmother had brainwashed me that one visit when I was three years old, because she's like, I could tell there was a difference in you. They said something, they did something to turn you against me, and I could tell you just acted like a different person from then. They're always plotting against me to take you away from me. And she's gone through many stages of different levels of coherence and functioning throughout the time I knew her. And so

it seemed like a very serious thing from what I remember when I was very young, then she just sort of never brought up again. And then after I graduated college and made it finally clear to her that I would not be coming back home ever, basically. I didn't officially say that I would never be seeing her again, but I would not be moving back. And she had always sort of held on to that hope that I would be. She just completely had a meltdown. And she just threw that back in my face for the first time in like 15 years saying, I could always tell you were three years old. The way you looked at me was different. They brainwashed you against me. I don't know what she said or did, but she's been plotting against me your entire life. She wants to.

to be your real mother. Not me. She thinks she's your mother. And I would find random incoherent scribblings on these notes that she would always write. Just like I realized that Judy, my grandmother's name, was really behind what Kent, my father, had done the whole time. But some of my earliest memories were my mother saying, well, why don't you just go and live with your grandma? If you want her to be your mom so much, just go live with her. And it sticks out because it's the only time I ever remember my life, my mother apologizing for something she said to me because the next day, I remember being on her knees sobbing, basically saying I didn't mean it. I don't want you to go away. I want you to live with me. I was like three or four.

I'm like, okay. From that point on, she never apologized for anything. It changed, it shifted to, as I got a little older, we'll just go and live with your father. And then when I was in my teens, It became, you know, you're old enough now that if you ran away, no one would come looking for you. Which, as we'll get to, was always the most cruel irony of the whole thing because she would never let me be independence. And besides that, my earliest memories of my mother from when I was three or four, because of the apartment we were living in, we moved a lot. Aside from, you know, the reality that I just have to understand my mother was periodically going to have a mood where she screams and, tells me that I should go live with someone else that was giving her grief or just mocking me for crying, she would still have normal days. And I was still functioning as a normal child all throughout

those early years as best I can remember. There would be, you know, moments, bad moments when her temper would flare. But in between those moments, I remember life being pretty standard. Not that I have the frame of reference. Were you like in your younger years, were you in school? Were you sort of doing normal kid activities? Was there sort of a more normal period? I went to school normally all throughout up to the end of sixth grade. I did all the normal kid things up until that period. My father was routinely visiting me every other weekends. He eventually moved down to Florida as well so he could visit me more regularly. And what was your relationship with him like when you were younger? So I always really look forward to having, you know,

visits with my dad. Up until I was about 12, it was sort of that standard situation where my father would come and visit me on weekends, and I always looked forward to it. We always had a lot of fun. My father always had really bad anger issues. As I later learned after he passed away several years back, he had gone through like constantly substance abuse since he was probably about 15. From what little I know about his background, he was hospitalized for several months when he was 15, some issue with his leg, like deep vein thrombosis. I'm not sure of the details, but he was just prescribed tons of prescription painkillers from that point on. And going through his things, as far back as the 90s, it looked like he was seeing multiple psychiatrists and doctors

prescribing him multiples of the same prescription without knowing about the other. And he just had that going on for a long time. So that probably explains a good deal of why he always had a very erratic temper. He was never physically violence, although there was one particular, the last time I ever saw him when I was visiting him in Kansas City. I was sitting, and he did have me sitting in the room while I was on the phone with one of his work friends or his neighbors saying that I would know I would go to jail for beating him, but it would be worth it. But he never actually did any physical violence or anything like that. It was sort of like, I understood

that for the price of having two really fun days visiting him every other weekend, I would understand there would be a period of an hour or so each visit where he would just, his mood would change, and you'd just go on a rance, a tirade against any slight thing that I had done that had triggered his mood.

There would always be some unpredictable thing that would just, I'd understand that it would be for the next hour. I'd just sit there and he would just yell at me about, any given thing, but then his mood would change. He would apologize and we'd enjoy the rest of our visit. I just always understood that I'd just sit there and stay quiet. I was also used to it with my mother, so it didn't seem like a bad arrangement to me where I'd get to have two days of fun and change for one hour of just sitting being silent. And as I understood all throughout this time,

he was abusing multiple prescription painkillers. They're right before or right after my 13th birthday. as having an extra long visit with my father in Kansas City had just transferred to an office there. And I was with him for like two weeks or something. I should back up just a little because the year leading up to this, he did have increasingly erratic outbursts. It became more frequent.

And he started to say more intentionally cruel things. And he would increasingly start to say, you know, someday I'm going to go out, I'm going to meet another woman and have a new son, and I'm not going to need you anymore. He said that two or three times the year I was 11 or 12, and then when I was staying with him in Kansas City for the two weeks, that is when he officially said he disowned me, and it was the last time I ever saw him. We had a good two weeks. I don't remember what the trigger was, as I rarely did, but something triggered him, and it seemed

worse than normal. Again, not physically violent. He had this weird, he would take a can of lysol and spray it in my face for like 30 seconds. I don't know what that was about. And he wrote out a series of, like he took a notebook paper and wrote out a series of prompts. And it was,

like one of them was just explain why you understand that you're a bad son or write why you should understand why I'm upset with you or why you deserve me to be upset with you. And then he left and said, I want you to finish those by the time I get back.

And at that point, I just called my mother because I was scared what he was going to do and she called the police. And so the police came. And then the next thing I remember is at the police station talking to them and they were talking to my dad. And then my dad came in and he seemed all sunshine and rainbows. I'm like, okay, he's back to normal again because his mood always did change in all the visits. But as soon as we were back in the car driving home, I understood immediately that he had just been acting that way to get the police off trail or whatever.

And he said that drive home, I remember because all I could do was just stare out the window as he was yelling. It was, remember this date, which is funny because I don't remember the dates. But remember this date and he would say the dates, as of this date, you are no longer my son. I disown you, and I never want to see you again. And then he bought me a ticket. I don't think I was supposed to go back home that soon, but he bought me a plane ticket home, and that was the last I saw him.

Of course, that was not actually the end of him trying to get back in my life. Years later, I learned that he was in constant custody battles or trying to get visitation of me back. And I was aware of it at the time, to some extent, but I was just never interested. Were you seeing, because I know you had mentioned, like, your grandmother on that side and some other family members, were you still seeing her during that time? Or were there other family members around that were, like, involved?

So I have always, and I remain in contact with my grandmother or my father's side of the family. She's probably been consistently the most important person in my life. Throughout my whole life, she's never stopped calling me every week or so or sending me cars. So she was sort of like the one consistent lifeline. I can't fully explain what went down between her and my father yet because it ties back into other events. But at that time, they were still regularly talking. So there wasn't any issue then at the point. So I never saw my father in person get out to that point.

He was trying to get back in my life afterwards. And as I later learned, my mother was doing. doing everything to keep that secret, which at the time I was even consciously aware of it. And it wasn't until years later I fully understood what a gift it was to my mother that she never had to share custody or visitation rights with me because I think it was sort of her dream come true. All I can imagine is that she took me into Florida when I was a year and a half thinking or hoping that the other side of my family would never have anything to do with me.

and that it would just be her and me. And she had been always so bitter that my father and my grandmother had always stayed in contact and tried so much to separate us that when it finally happened on its own, she was just thrilled. So that is, as far as it goes with my father, direct contact with him, although he does factor in later in the story. When I was in eighth grade, it was when the school flagged me as having ADHD or possibly having ADHD, which despair of the expense, the suspense. Yes, I do have ADHD, but I was not sure of that for a long time. As far as I'm aware, I was officially diagnosed

with it in third grade, but later reports maybe indicate that maybe the school just flagged it as a possibility, and then my mother just went on saying that it was true without getting a diagnosis, but there's nothing nefarious about that, because I do definitely have ADHD. And my mother told me, well, you can't go back to the same school you did in third grade because they do not have a good program for kids with learning disabilities. So we're going to go to a different school in a different district. My mother then went online and started looking in, because she felt newly empowered as a parent of a kid with a learning disability. And so she would go online to different parent groups. And the only thing I can imagine is that she looked into autism and more severe

developmental or learning disabilities that would, the most appealing thing in the world for her, mean that she would have to be involved in my life well into adulthood, that I would always need her in my life, that I could not function independently. And again, this is just what I'm gathering. I don't know what the actual line of reasoning was, but all I can imagine is it started with that real diagnosis or the real flag from my school that I was struggling with ADHD potentially. So she went down this rabbit hole, and I remember she had never used the internet before this, but from fourth grade on, she was always online in these different groups. She started going to like conferences in Orlando. And I didn't think much of it all, because in my mind,

ADHD and autism thing all started at the same time and they all were just sort of bundled into this one thing. And I'm like, whatever. They started me on Adderall, which I didn't really think anything about it. But starting when I was in fifth grade, my mother told me one day that I now had to be on a special diet. that certain foods, they didn't work with my body right, and they would go into my brain, and they were digested in certain chemicals that would go into my brain, and they would impair my brain function, and that is why I was the way I was. The umbrella was just gluten-free, casing-free.

It was also a whole host of other things, certain food dyes, certain artificial sugars and sweeteners. Just basically all I would know is that my mother would tell me what I could eat. I didn't think about it that much. But since I was still visiting my father at this point in my life, I remember there's this weird interval where it was like, don't tell him you're on a diet. Whenever you're eating with him, try and order the things that you know you're allowed to eat.

If you have to eat something you're not allowed to hide the diet, go ahead. But just for the two days you're with him and as little as possible. And I can just remember like we'd be in a motel and I'd be calling my mother and be like, yeah, well, I had to eat these pizza-flavored pringles because he'd get suspicious if I didn't eat them. But of course, the real story was I was never following my diet when I was with my father. And I was also going through a whole bunch of different medications and new supplements that she'd read about online.

And, you know, she had the pill box out for me, and I would just take the pills. Sometimes I get new ones. Sometimes they'd change dosage. I didn't really ask. and that probably contributed to my appetite dropping, and I guess the appetite loss combined with a very restricted diet means that I was barely growing between the ages of like 9 to 12 to 13 potentially. I didn't notice. I mean, I had never been 9 to 13 before. I didn't know what my weight to height was supposed to be. I was always conscious that I was a skinny kid, but I didn't think much of it. something that stands out only in high sight is I remember when I was in sixth grade

like a social studies class and they had like a movie going and it was talking about like starving kids in Africa and my teacher was pointing to either a slide or a movie it's like well you can see how skinny their arms and legs were and then I just remember his eyes sort of like pausing when he looked at me and I'm looking down I was like I look pretty skinny too but I'm not starving, I don't think. And that's not tied to anything that happened later, because this was when I was 11, and anything that happened with Dr. Smith didn't happen for two years after that.

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They also have super cute shorts, shades, sandals, and totes, and you're getting the luxury without the markup, because as with everything from Quince, they work directly with safe ethical factories to bring you these beautiful items. You know I love Quince, and I love hearing from listeners who love Quince. So give me a shout and let me know if you've been shopping over there. Are you into their maxi dresses, their sleek jewelry, their Italian leather handbags? Tell me everything. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash believe for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's QI-N-C-E dot com slash believe for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash believe. And remember that chopping our sponsors helps support the show. From what I understand about my mother, she would just read online about these different medications that kid with autism are any number of developmental disabilities should be on based on what other parents said worked. So she wasn't a nurse until I want to say it was about eight or nine.

She put herself through nursing school while I was from the ages of like five to eight. I think. And it's always the juxtaposition of how focused and together my mother must have been in the early years of my life is just so stark between what I knew her as and my adolescence and early adulthood. Because, and it was always one of the factors that made speaking out against her or having any sort of negative thought against her so difficult because, because looking at, objectively, how hard she worked to put herself through nursing school while raising me. And she set up a prepaid college fund. And we were on food stamps and welfare. And she was working as like a custodian at a pizza hut while going to nursing school at night. I spent so many days with like 12 different babysitters because she was,

was either working or going to school. And what I know her as from my adolescence is someone that could never have been that together or organized. Her mental state slowly degraded to be less and less functional. She'd get more and more paranoid. She couldn't keep work relationships or a job. But I think just motherhood and the drive to be a good mother providing, just her source of identity fueled her, which I think, then just made the idea of being the mother to a disabled child who would always need her,

just became all the more appealing. Do you think it was about being a good mother? Do you think it was about being seen as a good mother? I think it was both. I mean, being seen, I know as the years went on, being seen was the primary component and whatever was driving her. But if I'm looking back to my very early childhood and like we're here in Florida away from all her family,

I don't remember her really having regular friends. To my knowledge, she's never had a real relationship after divorcing my father. There's no one to perform for, I think. I think just the idea of motherhood and being needed meant something to her, having, being the only one that took care of me. She could have easily taken me to her family back in Ohio.

They were like a couple hours drive away. Being the one solely responsible for raising a child meant so much to her. And objectively, the things that she did to support me, setting up a prepaid college fund, she took me to like swimming classes when I was like two or three. I was in all these activities. She was very big into throwing me very special birthday parties, inviting all of the kids from our apartment complex we're living in. And so she was objectively did a lot of good things as a mother in those early years.

It was just interspersed with, you know, when I was at home, something would trigger her anger. And she would just yell at me for giving her grief or mocking me for crying when I was upset because she was yelling at me. It was sort of a conflict or contrast there. but the performative aspect picked up definitely once I was first flagged for having a learning disability with ADHD. Then I think that was what opened her up to these communities of mothers who, you know, it's hard to paint with a general, you know, broad stroke just because these parents of kids with challenges and learning disabilities do need to be in community with each other. And so that itself is not nefarious. But I think she dug down enough to find the ones that are like, don't give your kids vaccines. Or all of these things are poison.

Here are things to say to doctors to make them prescribe your child, the medicines that we know that they need, even if the doctors will understand. I always remember she had printouts from other parents what they told the doctors. It's like, tell your doctors this. And her having gone to nursing school, she was very adept of the things you needed to say. And I just know this from herself, all of the different things that she would get prescribed for herself. You know, we had all the doctor shopping. We would go from one or another. And she would just not, she took me to random psychologists.

And I remember she just got upset with what they were saying. And so she would go to the ones who would be recommended in these conferences by these other mothers. So I know it sounds like you had at least the school had sort of flagged an ADHD possible diagnosis, which later ended up being confirmed. As to the autism, did you get a diagnosis of autism or is that part kind of unknown? And this sort of ties in to how Dr. Smith got involved in this whole story. But ever since this started happening, it was about nine. Because all this conversation with my mother and autism and all these treatments or special things I had to go to, all started around the same time the school flagged ADHD. And I remember school officials saying

ADHD. It wasn't an idea that spouted from my mother. Since this all came together, I just assumed they were all sort of packaged deal, which in a funny way, it kind of is now that they actually diagnosed those conditions have a lot of comorbidity. Not complete comorbidity, but there is an association. But those early years, it didn't bother me. The diet really bothered me. I hated, I was not allowed to go to different events because my mother would be like, oh, well, they're not going to have the right diet for you.

But then seventh grade, I was taking out of public schools. And this is here where my memory gets just sort of fuzzy, because all throughout the rest of my schooling, I was never in one setting more than. I want to say a year tops. At some periods, I was just being homeschooled, and I use that term very loosely. I would be homeschooled for a brief window, and then I would go to this very small private school where I guess you didn't need to go through the normal process of documentation to get disability accommodations.

And for, I think only for one year, I was put back into public school and high school. I forget if it was 10th or 11th grade, whenever it is, you take the PSATs. All I can remember is that I took the PSATs and then they pulled me aside because it was like you scored in the top one percentile and the reading and writing component. So we want to see if you want to discuss any like scholarship or AP credit opportunities. And I'm like, please no. I don't like school. Don't give me more work. But so whatever year it is you take the PSATs, I was in public school, but I was absolutely miserable because I did not know this was going to happen until my first day there.

I got there my first day and there was this weird older gentleman sitting in the same table with me and my first period. Every one of my teachers and like every school administrator always had to meet with my mother every week and sent her daily emails about every thing that happened in every class. And only years later did I find out how much my teachers were resisting this because she saved so many emails. There was one time we had, she wasn't a teacher. she worked in, I guess, the disability program. I don't know what her title would have been. But I was sent to the front office to meet with her. And then when she saw me, she just looked very confused.

She was like, are you, Kyle? Like, yeah, they told me I had to come here and meet you. I forget everything she talked about me with. He's like, well, so we just want to, like, get some groundwork for what help you need. So do you ever have trouble understanding, like, the kid, what other kids in your class are saying? Or do you not understand, like, the slang that they're using? And I'm like, I'm 16. I know what the kids are saying.

And she's like, well, let's talk about what issues you have, yada, yada. And then we are at this meeting where like the council of Trent, every single person responsible for my IEP was there. And I was sitting there. My mother was there. And she spoke up. He's like, you know, I was talking to Kyle. And he was saying, well, he doesn't really, he knows what the kids are saying.

He doesn't have trouble talking to other kids. So maybe we can like pull back a little and just focus on issues as they come up. the look in my mother's eyes that I don't know what was said or done but that woman was never on my IEP plan ever again. To summarize, that was my school experience and I'd never properly

understandably my grades, the one year I went to public high school were atrocious but then I went back to being homeschooled and I got all A's because I don't think I was doing anything. Then I was just, I was miserable the whole time. My frame of mind this whole time was I do not want to hear more about things that are wrong with me.

This was still when I was like there was a diagnosis of autism, but there must have been a mistake. Like if I, if some, I spent so many years, if some doctor could see me now, they would say that this wasn't real and I wouldn't have to go to all these special schools. I would not have to have a special helper following me around. I would not have to be on this or that. I almost forgot. So as to the diets, as we'll loop back to, but one day, when I was 14, my mother came home and I had been on the diets until I was nine or ten. And she's like, well, there are these special enzymes they just invented.

So take these every day and you can have whatever you want. And so I was very happy then. I no longer had the diet, but I was still unhappy being at the special schools having to take all. these medications, she would take me to like physical therapy sessions. And I remember they were like when I was away from her. They were like, well, you don't really seem to have any particular issues with like balance your strength or coordination, but your mother's paying us. So, you know, work will do these things with you twice a week. When I was 14, she took me to one speech therapist. And they gave me a standardized test. And they said,

said, well, you know, your son is testing at the adult level for speech competence and, you know, fluency. There doesn't seem to be any diagnosable speech impediment or condition. He doesn't really need any help. And she didn't say anything. And a couple weeks later, I went to another speech therapist. My mother was apparently unaware it was a standardized diagnostic test. It was not going to be a different result for a different speech therapist. And so they also said he's testing at the adult level. He doesn't need speech therapy. The drive home, she was just like, I just know there's something wrong with you.

They can't see it. And the most upright up there in humiliation with the special helper when I was 16 was the summer. I think it was the summer I was 15. She took me to this special thing at like a local community center for, It was basketball for kids with developmental disabilities. And this is one of those things that I always have such trouble processing. And I don't like the negative association I have with certain things like this. Because objectively, you know, community center hosting sporting events for kids with special needs is objectively a good thing.

It should be encouraged. It should be funded. but I can never look at it in a calm, balanced way because it was just, I just had to, like, shut down and go through the motions. And one time I got there early, and there was this other kid around my age that had just been playing, you know, when the court was open normally before they closed it off just for the special program. and we were talking about something. Just casually talking, I don't know, as they were setting up the special hoops. And then whoever's running the program called me over,

it's like, okay, Kyle, come, we're going to get going now. And then I had to walk over with all of the kids with Down syndrome or other developmental disorders. And I just remember the kid I haven't talking to, he just looked at me, he didn't say anything. He just had such a confused look on his face. And so, So for the six months I was at the school, I sort of had a semi-regular group of friends.

And this is at the period where I was still unsure what autism really was. Because at this point, I had not been through all like the special basketball or the special helper or needing speech therapy or not needing speech therapy, but still being told I needed it. I don't think all that had really started happening or had an effect on me if it had. but there was, you know, these group of kids I was hanging out with one day, they were sort of, it doesn't affect well on them. They were all 14. They were just making fun of this girl who, as far as I'm aware, had autism in a way that was more apparent.

And I forget what exactly they were saying about her, but I just sort of like, well, I don't think we should be making fun of her because I think she had the same thing I do. Like, they say she has autism. That's what I have, I think. And they sort of turned to me as like, maybe, but if you do, you're not like her. Like, don't worry about it. You're not like her. And I just, I didn't fully, like, cry or anything, but I definitely teared up a little. And it was a strong reaction that I did not see coming.

And then I had no way of explaining to them. I just, like, stunned silence for, What felt like several minutes might have just been a few seconds where I was just like, the words that you're not like her, I didn't know I needed to hear them. But, and again, in retrospect, hanging out with kids that were spending their spare time, mocking a girl with a disability, like a developmental disability, not, doesn't reflect well on any of us, but just those simple words that I wasn't like her. It stuck with me because even by that point, I had developed,

like a complex that I am still getting over today where I just did not want to hear about more things that were wrong with me. It just shows me mindset I was in. Yeah. And I mean, that all makes sense. And, you know, I see that story that you're telling with compassion for everyone involved because like, yeah, obviously not great to have teenagers making fun of someone with developmental disabilities. But, you know, for you, for you, it's like kids and especially think when you're when you're a teenager, just that idea of like you're different or there's something wrong with you, especially something wrong with you that would sort of like isolate you from your peers in some way. I think we've come a long way in terms of like normalizing those things so that kids

that are genuinely have those disabilities are not isolated and stigmatized. But I think there's even sort of another layer of wrongness when you know that that's not, when you're being told that you're struggling with something that you know you're not struggling with. And I think it's a wrongness that sort of anybody who's been through one of these situations, as I have, understands, right? Where it just like, it's that gaslighting, right? It's that thing that just like, you're feeling that dissonance with reality. And for you, it was like persistent kind of every day of your life. And that just is so, I mean, it sort of hard to describe to someone who hasn't been through it.

But it's a very deep, very wrong feeling. Yes, it is impossible to describe. and there's no frame of reference or even work. Now there is, you know, thanks to media attention, especially very specific cases, the concept of Munchausen by proxy or whatever title you want to give this condition slash form of abuse, there's a box for people to put it in.

I was completely unaware of it, but even if I had, it's, there's just no way to, describe this particular feeling because it's not what people consider abuse. It doesn't, there's no physical manifestation of it. There's just, and even though it is a form of psychological abuse, it's not in the way that people are conditions to understand. Frankly, there were lots of things my mother and my father were doing that were more straightforward, objective psychological abuse that no one was around to see.

but sort of just the cruelty part and the yeah that people might recognize that more easily but there there's just no category to put this in for me at the time of because like why would anyone say that your child had these issues or needed these this special help or couldn't function normally if there was at least a chance that actually no they they didn't they could function normally there's there's no understanding i couldn't tell anyone that that because one, I didn't, I had thought there had really been a diagnosis at this point. But even if there hadn't, if I say, well, I don't really have this, they're like, well, your mother says you do.

Like, if you didn't, your mother would be the first person to want to know that. You just don't like being special or disabled. You are, like, these are conversations I had have in my head because I couldn't really tell anyone. It would just play out in my head. What if I, how would I explain this to someone? If I did, what response would I get? Like, who could you tell?

Who could you tell in who? And would they believe you? It was an internal dialogue, and no matter how many different ways I played in my head, one, I'd had no evidence. But, and so we'd sort of tie this all into where we're going with Dr. Smith, because this has been a very, very long prelude. Your story has so much in common with so many other stories that I've heard. and as I told you, the autism, the fake autism diagnosis is extremely common,

and I expect that there were plenty of other perpetrators in that group that your mom was communicating with. And I mean, I don't remember the last time I saw a case, frankly, that didn't have a fake autism diagnosis. That's how common it is. And you've really articulated very beautifully, like sort of the way that this abuse manifests outside of the medical system itself, which I think is really, really important for people to understand because they can get very fixated on what procedure, what medical escalation, what treatment. And it really is. And that's sort of why we've started using that term munchausen by proxy abuse rather than medical child abuse is because it is so much more encompassing. And it is this like gaslighting and educational abuse and social isolation and all of those things that you're talking about. So it's really helpful.

I was taking some classes on and off at the local community college. Because I had that prepaid college plan, without telling my mother, I applied to a small regional university on the completely opposite side of the state. And when I was going to start going, she was upset. I never knew how she was going to react to certain news. So I was sort of diving into the deep end. And also, turns out I had very severe ADHD that I never wanted to focus on because I thought it was part of the bad thing that I never wanted to consider. So I was doing very poorly and I was just racked with anxiety the whole time, at least the first few semester I was there. Because it turns out that you cannot go from being isolated from all of your peers for that many years and then just immediately segue into a,

college freshman. And I was just all, I was, everything I learned that I was expected to be able to do as an adult. I panicked realizing that I couldn't do it or I didn't know how to do this independently. And it was in a weird twisted way, it made me homesick. And that I was just like, okay, if I stayed at home and it was taking classes at the community college, I'd know where everything was. I knew how the rules work, I'd be familiar with everything. Maybe I should just do that. And I didn't, but as I saw myself when I was planning, I was never going to visit home again. Everything was going to magically turn sunshine and roses and I'd have everything I ever wanted as soon as I got there. But then once I got so anxiety ridden and just struggling with academically and just functioning independently,

which I had never been taught how to do, like, okay, every potential break, I'm going to drive back home and I'm just going to spend that weekend home or that week home. And during this period, my mother got increasingly unstable until halfway through college is like, okay, I'm just no more going back home. I will just stay with friends. She was just getting more and more unstable and paranoid. The best example I can have is one visit, I came back. This one of the last times I visited her. I came back and she was so upset because she said, well, there's this, suddenly the strange noise. It just started a couple weeks ago. What is it? And I'm like, well, that's just the hum of the air conditioner. Like, that's the

AC going. You know, that's, as it always has. And then she just, she had been looking at the wall pointing to it. She swung her head around, looked at me. And it's like, how dare you? You were here when the maintenance man was here. That maintenance man came to listen to it. He told me that it was just the air conditioner and that I was being weird. You were here. You heard him saying that. You were just pretending not to be home. And now you're repeating that to upset me. I was just like, there's no way to respond to that. I don't know if it was a joke. Am I waiting for a laugh? I couldn't like, like, okay, I'm going to go in the other room now. Like, I don't know what this is.

And she would just started pounding on the walls. It's like, what is that noise? So I drove back. And then I hear, you know, she calls from her. She kept moving around in this period. She moved to this new apartment. She's like, well, I had to move from the old one because that noise, just no one could explain to me what the noise was coming from.

And I moved here and they had that noise too. She quit her job. And so I would take calls from her just because I knew if I didn't, she would take the college fund out of my name. And also I was doing very poorly academically. And I felt to all the world like a failure because it's like I thought I would go here and I'd thrive. I'm like getting C's and Bs.

Eventually I did graduate. It took me like all combined between the community college and the actual university. university. It took me seven years to get my bachelor's degree. Asterix aside, I did it. And to set up the main drive of how Dr. Sally comes into this, I finally graduated from college. And it was after this where my mother had hoped on held onto the idea that even though I had been away for several years now that once I graduated, I would be coming back home. And she just had a meltdown once I made clear that I would not be

moving back home, and that is when she, for the first time in years throughout that whole, like, know your grandmother, like, she brainwashed you when you were three years old, the way you looked at me after she took you to Bush Gardens, so it was never the same. A year later, she, as I told you, she had been moving several different places. She called me up and she said, well, they just discovered there's this huge mold infestation in the place I'm living now, and I was reading all these things online about how mold toxicosis, wrecks your health physically and mentally. So I'm moving away. I need to find a new home. And all of these things, all these boxes of stuff that I had of yours, they have mold spores on them now,

so I can't keep them. So I'm going to drop them off somewhere if you want to meet me, otherwise I'm tossing them. She gave me a bunch, like three, four different boxes. I loaded in my car. From that point on, I would just get random update. She's like, yeah, I, I, moved in with this aunt in Georgia, but it turns out they have mold. Or, yeah, I'm moving back to family in Ohio, but all these people have mold, and they won't believe me. When I was looking through her belongings, my belongings, I should say, I guess she got things mixed up when she was packing things into boxes because there was this, it was a giant

folder within folders, within a clear, classic binder sort of thing. I had no idea what it was. I was just flipping through it. And I saw that there was a series of folders just about me when I was in school. And I really, really, really didn't want to read that because this is when I was still in the mindset that there had been a diagnosis. It was mistaken. And I didn't want to read all these documentation saying, yeah, this kid is disabled. Yes, he has autism.

Yes, he can't. this or that. I thought, you know, this was the big binder of documentation that you always had. In the next day, I just like, okay, let's get it over with. I need to flip through these, see what these people at school were actually saying about me. And first things I noticed, like, okay, it's the email from the teacher that I mentioned. I'm like, wait, all of these teachers were saying that they didn't think I needed this extra help. And it was just my mother yelling at them and reporting them for violating IEP. program or whatever. Like, that's weird. And then I found the dependency petition. And a couple

pages in the middle were missing, but it was just like the front page, how they were bringing the petition in my name. And I'm like, when did this happen? It said it was when I was 13. Then I remembered someone had come to the door when I was home alone. And I have no idea what I talked to her about, but I remember afterwards my mother calling me from a gas station saying, just tell me what you told her, I won't be mad. But it was the dependency petition about, I guess, my weight loss or how I had not been gaining any weight from between the ages of like 9 to 13 or whatever, or maybe I gained a pound or something. And then from there, it was just reports, who all signed at the bottom by Dr. Sally Smith. And I was just reading from

top to bottom each one. And I can't really explain how I process this. For so many years, I had been thinking, all of this was a mistake. If a doctor could see me, I could prove. apparently from this a doctor had seen me, who I have no recollection specifically of seeing, because I went to so many doctors left and right, I must have just been told that this was another doctor deployment. And I have no idea how I was in my mother's custody the entire time. This was happening, especially as I later found out that my mother had been in content of court refusing to show up for many times. But it was just the letters, the reports from Sally Smith's saying, you know, first impressions, I was very concerned because Kyle did not seem to have any symptoms of any type of developmental disorder or autism.

And she would list through the change in my weight percentile from the years I was on the special diet. But just going through the record she had, apparently I went, I stayed basically the same weight for three years. So I went from what was the 75th percentile for my age when I was nine to like the bottom 15th or 10th percentile when I was 11. But then in a follow-up report, it mentioned how I had gained 20 pounds in between. And then the pieces sort of, you know, slipped into place because I remember when I was 13, from the year between 13 and 14, suddenly my mother would be taking me to checkers for lunch every day. And I couldn't just eat whatever I wanted. It was still oddly restricted.

I could get a big burger, but without the bun, none of the ketchup and mustard because of the dyes. And I could have a sprite because it didn't have the dyes. But you can have all of the fries you want. Grease is good. Have all the grease you need. Dr. Smith's report. was clearly flagging this 20-pound gain happened after child protective services was called. Common sense would say that if something changes once a parent is under investigation,

it could be just because they're under investigation. The whole situation definitely, there's nothing to laugh about, but the part that is worth laughing at is whenever she mentioned my mother in the reports was just a combination of, can we please get this woman evaluated as well? Because I know that is not my authority, but good Lord. But after reading these reports, I was just, and this was just a few months before that series,

the act showed up on Hulu. I read the reports, you know, it was suspected Munchausen by proxy. I had to look up what that was. And that there had been a word for the thing that was going on that I had just never heard before, that there had been someone when I was 13 that had seen me, that had flagged that at the very least I should be evaluated

to see if I actually had these conditions as opposed to just trusting it, all of the individual points where she said, none of these doctors evaluated, Kyle. The only notes they ever have is that the mother said he has these symptoms and they reported in my record that I had autism based on my mother's reports. She wrote four different, five different reports out of the time, and each one, it's like every new piece of evidence the mother is giving us is just a doctor saying the mother reported

that Kyle has autism. No matter how deep they dug and there was never a doctor that ever actually made a diagnosis or even suggested it. It was one time when I was nine, she told my pediatrician. She read things online in the groups about the things you need to say to have the doctor say this. But after I turned 18, she did, through a whole lot of illegal means, get me on disability payments. For several months after I had been getting disability payments, I was unaware that it was happening. This is before I went off to college.

And in her room, the drawer, a bunch of letters addressed to me. And it was forms from the hearing to get me disability benefits. And the letters were addressed to me, but I never got them. She hid them. Like a transcript saying, the hearing, Kyle could not appear. And his mother says, this is because he cannot be around other people without getting so nervous that he breaks out into hives. She brought a note from a doctor explaining that, yes, this would be too stressful for him. So she has to represent him at the hearing.

And suddenly there was drawers of her practicing my signature. And so she had, through a whole bunch of forgery and perjury, frankly, gotten me disability benefits based on false statements about conditions I did not have. my mother at this point had the states, had a professional, you know, legal professionals, doctors saying that this doesn't seem to be true, that these things are actually harming him, and my mother's response to that,

now that I know the timeline was, okay, you magically are able to eat whatever you want, as long as you take these enzymes, but she still persisted after that to take me to get to speech therapy, physical therapy, special classes for kids with development disabilities, basketball classes, a special helper at school, still forged my signature, falsified testimony to get government benefits sent to her accounts all on the idea that I was disabled, despite never actually having

gotten a diagnosis. And at that point, it was like, okay, you could have made excuses up until I was 13, which just she genuinely believed this. She fell into this rabbit hole about different severe developmental disabilities kids could have and the health they need. She thought herself competent to diagnose this and thought, you know, I love the idea of being a mother with a kid of special needs. But she was told by a pediatrician specializing in abuse that these are actually harmful, or at least the very least it seems to.

He should get a full psychological examination, which Dr. Smith said at the end of all of her reports, a full evaluation, which never happened. And from that point on, she knew that at the very least it was highly questionable whether I actually had this diagnosis. and there was a strong likelihood of potential that everything she was doing was harmful. But she just dug in. She stopped the diet because that is she was probably like a consent agreement where it's like we will drop this if you stop the diet. That is the only thing she changed. It makes so much sense because at that point on,

any time any teacher, anyone, casual comments that I might not be disabled, it would just trigger rage. Yeah, so she was able to sort of maintain this ruse. And obviously this report from Sally has been a lot to you, and the fact that she saw you has meant a lot to you. And what's happening right now is that doctors like Sally and other child abuse pediatricians are really being vilified for diagnosing abuse, for doing what Sally did in your case,

which is seeing what is happening to a child, seeing that it is wrong, seeing that is harmful, and pointing it out, and then advocating for that child. And it seems clear to me from reading the report that you shared from Sally that, you know, which this is not at all surprising knowing what I know about how these cases go through the courts and elsewhere, that like they got very focused on the sort of physical piece of the malnutrition, you know, element. And then probably that is the part that they insisted be remedied and didn't sort of see the abuse in a more holistic way, which it seems as though Sally did. And that was what she was advocating for. What do you have to say to people who are trying to remove the ability of doctors like Sally Smith to help kids and advocate for kids in the way that she did for you? Obviously, I am not able to speak to any broader issues beyond my own experiences,

but all I can say is that, for one, I was never removed from my mother's care, despite what was objective evidence of lying and contempt of court. But more importantly, I would have wanted nothing more than to be removed from my mother's custody. I would have wanted nothing more than to have gotten the full evaluation with the licensed psychiatrist specializing in child abuse. I would have wanted nothing more than to have that evaluation happen, to have whatever facts revealed be out there, and for me to have been put in a better life situation. I have made so many strides, and in looking back, it is kind of crazy how, even if slowly,

I went from moving away to going to college to just completely being overwhelmed with anxiety, completely unable to balance coursework with basic adulting or functioning independently. I went from that to barely graduating, or still, like, sheer will. I motivated myself to go to law school, where I did quite well, and to now being law clerk to a federal judge, especially coming from a state school, probably the hardest thing to achieve after graduation. I have made a lot of progress, and what's funny is when all through law school, I was just, once I was getting treatment of the actual learning issues I had, I was. the one most obsessed with taking as many courses as possible and wanting as much responsibility and activity to fill my calendars, the three years of law school for the best of my life. I made all those advancements, but I will always, even now and probably the rest of my

life, feel like there's a period of 10 years that I will never fully get back. I to this day feel like I'm 10 years behind where I should be, which in a way is an improvement because when I was first in undergrad, my biggest fear was that I would never move forward, that everyone else at my like peer age range would continue moving forward. I would just still be stuck in suspended childhood or adolescence. And I would just continue to get older while never moving forward. Now I have been settling moving forward year after year, but it's always 10 years behind where I think I would have been. But I will always miss those 10 years. I still struggle whenever I see like high school age boys or any like TV drama of college or high school age kids just hanging out after

school. It's it is a feeling of grief whenever I see anything focusing on boys or guys of that age. It's a grief that I thought would hold me back from achieving anything. Fortunately, I was wrong on that. But it will always be with me. And as someone who went through that, I have an instinctive reaction to ever reading that this child should never have been removed from their parents, even temporarily. And all I wanted for those 10 years was to be removed from my parents. The thing I was going through was so under the radar and so impossible to explain or describe and so insidious in a way. it was such a form of psychological abuse that I couldn't put into words so much so that, you know, from the ages of like 11 to 14, my mother would beat me.

Never severely, never any lasting bruises or anything like that. She would like whip me with the belt. She had a paddle that eventually she used often enough that it broke. I can just remember those years wishing that she had beaten me more severely. that there was a physical sign that someone could pick up on. And the idea that being with the parent is always the best, and this is where I can't speak on a broader policy basis, because of course there are some cases where there is just an issue that should be resolved

and the kid should be immediately placed back with their parents. But the assumption that being with the parent is always going to be the best solution and should always be the goal for every situation, no matter what signs you're seeing, it will always feel wrong to me. I will always grieve that I didn't get those years in a situation away from my parents. And as much as I did love my father

for the years we were visiting, he did several years later. This was a few months after I had found Dr. Sally's reports. I did find out that several months after that, my father had died of an overdose. Because once I saw all of his belongings and saw all of the different medications that he had been on probably since he was 15, it placed in a neat little, like, box explanation why he had the issues he had. And the way he slipped through the cracks and prescription, drug abuse, overprescription, doctor's not doing the job they should.

I don't regret not seeing him again. Even in the attempts he did to reach out to me, he never apologized for the things he said about saying that he disown me or that he did eventually have another son with another wife. And he did take my name out of any beneficiary from his annuity. And that is now an annuity that goes to his second son.

So I can understand what happened with him now, but in a weird way, he was in his own disturbed way, the only one, aside from Dr. Smith, sort of advocating for me. When I was visiting him that last time when he did disown me, I found out that he had taken me to doctors specifically to prove that I did not have autism or that this diet I was put on was unnecessary and was actually hurting me. And that is one of the doctors that Dr. Smith reached out to, a doctor from Kansas City, saying that this diet was harming me and I should be taken off immediately. In a weird way, even though he was trying to help, he made it worse because he got all the notices from the disability petition because both parents have to be involved. It is both the notice that you were being sued in the interest of a child. He reached out.

He came to every court hearing my mother never did. and knowing what I know about my father, he was probably so angry and vitriolic against child protective services that it seemed to them that he was the real threat and that if I was taken from my mother's custody, I would automatically go to him. He probably made my mother seem way more sympathetic. And it was just, it was a narrative I could never escape. She was, to my knowledge, there was never any actual domestic violence from the brief period they were married. I cannot attest to that. But knowing the issues that my father had, the narrative was she escaped a situation with someone with a drug addiction, put herself through school at night while

working as a custodian on food stamps, you know, pay for college fund to this kid who has so many issues that need so much help. And she's devoting everything she has to him. and wants to factor in my father's aggressiveness, there was just no combating that. And the reason why I'm pretty certain this isn't the case is because I do know, after my father died and I was looking through his court paperwork, after he divorced his second wife, my half-brother, there was a child protective services investigation against her. and all of the emails from my father to the Child Protective Services officer in that case, he was cussing her out, threatening her, saying, how dare you let this happen to my kid, I'm going to come and get you. Like if you don't fix this, if you're being so effing incompetent,

I cannot believe this state of Kentucky's Child Protective Services, I'm going to come after you. And if you're the state and you see that this is the other parent, I don't know what the situation it was from my half-brother who I've only seen once when he was four. But if my father was doing the same thing with my case, who is the state going to assume is the best option? A parent who can plausibly, although not if you actually look closely at it, if you see all the things that Dr. Smith saw. but plausibly, if you want to see that narrative, done everything she possibly could for this child and did all these things to help him with his struggles. And maybe some of them turned out to be unnecessary, but she made an honest mistake.

And the coolest thing to this day is that even though that there is awareness of Munchausen by proxy, I had this weird situation where I was having the, I had the external appearance of a parent that was devoted. And even if you look at the records now and see the harm was, it looks like overly devoted. But in private, everything was the more classic understanding of neglect. It was in private, it was her, like, Kyle, you're 17, if you were to run a woman. way, no one would come looking for you. Or how you're lucky that you have a pretty face because otherwise no one would ever want to be with you. And a child that is being neglected in that way has the benefit of the parent isn't paying attention to them. They can go. I was constantly being

told everything that a neglected child would be told that you're worthless. No one will come looking for you. No one will want to be with you. No one will care for you. You will never be able to function on your own, but never being given the opportunity to be on my own. Never give the opportunity to just walk away like anyone would want to do if that is what their parent is telling them. And there's no one situation where I was having like both the, if there are two boxes of recognizing child abuse, the neglects versus the exaggerated care. how I was having both and not getting sort of like the recognition from the outside world for either. It's been my entire life thinking that this is something that can never be recognized.

This is like the perfect crime. There's nothing, there's no word for this. There is no, I'm getting the worst of both worlds and that I am having the physical abuse and the emotional abuse and neglectful parents with the constant smothering of an overprotective parents. when I'm getting the benefits of neither, and no one will ever recognize this. I wish a doctor could see me to recognize this, but no one ever would. And just tie back to the fact that there was a doctor that saw when it was 13, that not only saw the harm that the unnecessary like diets and medical treatments could have in its own way, but that recognized the very likely psychological abuse

that was happening behind closed doors. I can only imagine she only ever had one face-to-face interaction with my mother. But Dr. Smith, everything she said in her report was not just true, but like remarkably true in a way that no one else that dealt with me seemed to grasp. Like the teachers and the school administrators that saw the way my mother was acting, there was an issue there, that two was difficult. or that she shouldn't be doing this or that, could never spot what's really being said and done behind closed doors. I could never speak about what was happening. Dr. Smith's report was accurate in

every way imaginable, not just the physical effects of the restrictive diet and the constant change of medifications that was stunting my growth and causing me to be dangerously underway. I mean, she recognized how suspicious it is to have a kid constantly changing schools to everything, but just living with my mother at that time, the worst period, just seemed to be manifesting everything that I was going through, and just things that might, just things that Dr. Smith got on to that I never thought anyone could ever could from what must have only been in one interaction. Kyle, thank you so much for telling us all of this. And it's such an extraordinary story.

And it really does speak to when you know what you're looking. looking at. Again, all of the elements of your story sound check, check, check to me. And when I met this group of professionals with Apsack, I was telling them the story that had happened in my family. And they were all going, oh, yep, yep, yep. And I was like, what is happening? Because I didn't think anybody else could sort of like put all this together, right? And I think that's why it's important to talk about, and I know that survivors who are hearing your story will feel very seen by what you've said. And I just want to say to you, it is truly extraordinary what you have accomplished, given what you are up against on all sides. You are obviously a very smart, unbelievably resilient

person. And you talk about all of this with such sort of clarity and compassion. And I just want to say that I'm really blown away by talking to you as I have been before. And also, you should never have had to be as resilient as you are. And I'm just so sorry that the adults that were tasked with caring for you made it such that you had to be so extraordinary to be able to make it here. Nobody Should Believe Me is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett. Administrative support from Nola Karmouche.