Nobody Should Believe Me - Revisiting Season One: Can They Be Saved?

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

After a look back at season 1 episode 7, Can They Be Saved?, Andrea reflects on how her thoughts regarding the psychopathology of Munchausen by Proxy has evolved over the years, as she has spoken to experts, survivors, and perpetrators of this abuse. * * * Andrea delves deep into her questions around the psychopathology of Munchausen by Proxy perpetrators. Floored by the similarities in the many cases she’s researched, she talks to two of the world's foremost experts on the disorder—Dr. Marc Feldman and Dr. Mary Sanders—about the characteristics, warning signs, and causes of the disorder that has upended the lives of so many people Andrea has spoken to throughout the course of the podcast. Why would a mother ever do this? What do they get from it? And most importantly, what could be done to stop them? Is it possible for someone who does these things to get treatment? * * * Follow Andrea on Instagram for behind-the-scenes photos: @andredunlop Buy Andrea's books here. To support the show, go to Patreon.com/NobodyShouldBelieveMe or subscribe on Apple Podcasts where you can get all episodes early and ad-free and access exclusive bonus content. For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit MunchausenSupport.com The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines can be downloaded here. To learn more about Dr. Marc Feldman, visit Munchausen.com * * * 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. at the end. And for today's episode and for our finale, which will be re-airing next week, it's going to be just me in the postscript, just me talking you through all of the big feelings and thoughts that I had listening to these two final episodes. This first season was such a journey, and we really figured out what the show was going to be. And yeah, I have a lot of thoughts to share about this episode in particular when I see you shortly from the future right after the end of this episode. So stay tuned for that. And in the meantime, as always, if you want more from us, you can subscribe to our Patreon or subscribe on Apple Podcasts and you get a minimum of two exclusive bonus episodes per month. You also get all episodes early and ad-free. So check us out

there if you want more content. This month, we are doing a deep dive on the Justina Pelletier case, which is one that I get asked about a lot. We're doing that with our good friend of the show, Dr. Becks. So that is what is in store for you over there, as well as a huge backlog of exclusive bonus content. In the meantime, here is today's episode, and I will see you soon. Well, friends, it's 2025. It's here. This year is going to be, well, 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. 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. Blake's so worried about my sister. Randy, you cannot marry a murderer. I was sick, but I am healed.

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. Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show we discuss child abuse and this content may be difficult for some listeners. If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to munchausensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help. People believe their eyes. That's something

that actually is so central to this whole issue and to people that experience this, is that we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something. I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this is Nobody Should Believe Me. At the beginning of this process of doing this podcast, I think I'd convinced myself that I had put the personal stake that I have in this issue behind me in a way that I've now discovered maybe I have not. Despite my best efforts to completely detach from my sister, there is still a small part of me that can't help but hope that at some point in the future, there might be some sort of reconciliation. As I was going back and forth with Hope, as I was talking to her family and sort of reliving all of these emotions that I had kind of tucked away for a long time. I almost feel a little foolish that I would have any hope for a reconciliation

because of everything that I know. That person is still, she's still my sister, but I also sort of don't feel that way. That person sort of is still physically out there, but then in a very meaningful way is not. So much of what you believed that person to be and who you believe that person to be is shown to be an illusion because of the lies that they have told you. And I have needed to no longer be naive. I thought I had the answer of whether or not people who do have fictitious disorder imposed on another to whether or not they could be treated.

And that seemed impossible. And then the deeper I got into this, it seems more possible. I really wanted to go deep on this topic in particular with Dr. Mark Feldman and Dr. Mary Sanders. When people ask you, is Munchausen by proxy a mental illness, how do you answer that question? I tell them Munchausen by proxy is not a mental illness in itself. It's a form of maltreatment, usually of children. But I also am quick to point out that the American Psychiatric Association says that it's always associated with a mental illness they call factitious disorder imposed on another. But I don't want to lose sight at any time of the fact that it's a form of maltreatment because we have a responsibility as healthcare professionals to make reports to Child Protective

Services and the police when we see it play out. We wouldn't do that if it were just a mental illness, but we must do that when it involves the exploitation of children. When it comes to the underlying psychiatric disorder, so factious disorder imposed on another, with what perpetrators get out of it? Why someone would do this? That's a critical point. In Munchausen phenomena, the person is after emotional gratification, attention, sympathy, care, support that they feel unable to get in any other way. Sometimes they're a bit desperate in their

personal lives and certainly harming a child, whether it's yours or somebody else's, is an act of desperation. And when it comes down to a possible cause for it? We don't know tons about the causes because the perpetrators tend not to make themselves available for study. The denial is really pervasive and persistent in these cases, and the perpetrators will, in most cases, never admit to what they've done. And if that happens, you have no basis for exploring the behavior with them. That said, it does seem as if many of these perpetrators have a history of making themselves sick. That is, they have a history of factitious disorder imposed on self or Munchausen syndrome.

Those are fairly synonymous. They also seem to have personality disorders that are very severe. That is, they have long-term maladaptive, unhealthy ways of trying to get their needs met. We've heard a lot of common themes as we've been talking to people about these stories in terms of the behavior patterns. One of them you mentioned, which is the factish disorder imposed on self. So just a long history of inexplicable medical ailments. The other things that have come up a lot are various kinds of fraud, financial and otherwise, and then infidelity.

Would the personality disorder element of this, would that kind of account for some of those other behaviors that don't seem necessarily related to factitious disorders, but are sort of patterns we've really been recognizing? A common underpinning is deceptiveness and impulsivity and poor judgment. And that kind of person is likely to engage in all the kinds of behaviors we're talking about now, whether it's infidelity, lying about aspects of their lives that may not even involve illness in any way. When it's severe, we call it pseudologia fantastica, which is a Latin term for pathological

lying, where the person mixes some truth with fiction, which makes for the best lie in a sense. When we see that, we know that we've got an extraordinarily difficult uphill battle to fight to get them to acknowledge that anything they've said is false. Another pattern that we've seen and that I've seen just in reading about many different cases is that many of these babies who end up becoming victims of medical child abuse are born premature and in some cases severely premature. And so any baby who's born premature is going to have some issues in the very beginning. You did actually hear from a couple of perpetrators and talk to a couple of perpetrators for your most recent book. And there was a woman that you spoke to for your book who talked about exactly how she created the scenario of having a premature

birth. And that has just something that has really stuck with me. You're right that a common factor among some perpetrators, in fact, many, is that there have been obstetrical complications that led perhaps to a failure of bonding early on. And so sometimes people have said, there's no way this could be munchism by proxy because the mother has five children and it's only the fourth

child or the fifth child that anything has happened with. And I look at their backgrounds and find that that fourth or fifth child may well have been one of the examples in which bonding didn't really occur successfully. Or the child is perceived as imperfect in some way, and whether it's conscious or unconscious, that child gets victimized by a mother who is dissatisfied at some level with the way things have turned out with that particular child. In other cases, it's every child in the family.

I want to be really clear here that though we're talking about one piece of this behavior, one spot in the timeline of these cases, we are not by any means indicating that people who have complications with their pregnancies or who have premature babies are in some way more at risk for becoming perpetrators. They're absolutely not. This is a case of we see a high percentage of Munchausen by proxy perpetrators who do this thing, not that there's a higher percentage of people who have this in their lives become these perpetrators. This is yet another scenario that perpetrators who are already midstream with this behavior will exploit that set of circumstances for their own gain, not that people who have that set of circumstances legitimately then go on to do this. So I wanted to be really clear about that causal relationship that we're speculating about here.

The reality about munchausen by proxy is that these behaviors are very deep-seated and they, in fact, function much like an addiction. There is a compulsive or addictive quality to gaining attention, even if it's under false pretenses. And that certainly does involve false pretenses, exaggerations and falsification in these cases. That's why I think we've been seeing an explosion of what I've called Munchausen by internet or Munchausen by proxy by internet,

where a person may sicken their child in real life, but regardless goes online and milk social media for all it's worth by posting pictures of the child with tubes coming out of every orifice. We call it medical porn because that's basically what it is. These disturbing photos that are intended to do nothing other than alert friends, family, strangers that this mom needs all the support she can get. As to the question of whether or not perpetrators are treatable, I really wanted to talk to Dr. Mary Sanders because she is one of the foremost experts in the world on that particular part of this subject. I'm a clinical associate professor at Stanford University Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry. I'm also co-chair of a national

committee through APSAC, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. And the committee is a multidisciplinary committee that looks at the assessment and treatment of Munchausen by proxy. Are these perpetrators treatable? Treatment with perpetrators of Munchausen by proxy abuse is very difficult. The important aspect is acknowledgement. And when individuals tend to have what's called an external locus of control, they tend to blame others, not take responsibility, get their needs met indirectly using deception. It's very difficult for them to admit and

acknowledge that they've engaged in these behaviors, not only to others, but to themselves. Certainly they may face all sorts of reprisals from friends, family, and legally as well. And so there's a lot of reasons not to acknowledge the abusive behaviors. With that said, some have been able to do so. And it takes a lot of courage for them to be able to do that. When they have, they have then been able to work successfully in treatment. We have had successful cases. We have had cases that we're able to reunify with ongoing support.

Are there other things that make this kind of treatment particularly difficult? Yes. A lot of the parents have engaged in their own factitious behaviors and post on self. And I have had some parents that it was very difficult for them to admit that to themselves and to their family. The families were, needless to say, quite surprised and upset and felt betrayed. Also, personality disorders. A lot of parents are diagnosed with personality disorders that are difficult to treat.

And especially if the abuse has been severe and life-threatening, for example, non-accidental poisoning or smothering, these are much more difficult situations in which to work at treatment and reunification. Is that usually the goal of family court, which is where a lot of these cases end up rather than in criminal court? You know, is to reunify the family. That's usually seen as a successful outcome. So I wonder how we should think about whether or not reunification should ever be the goal in these cases, and if so, under what conditions? Reunification is a mandate, as you mentioned, of like child protective services. And, you know, we do want to try to do that if possible, obviously, if it's safe for the child. It is quite a process. The first step is going to be acknowledgement from the perpetrator that the abuse has occurred. If the spouse is going to

reunify, the spouse has to also accept that these behaviors have occurred and recognize that they're going to be an integral part in providing protection and support ongoing. And then the children too. Basically, we want to be able to have the children informed as well. Then we're at the stage of being able to have a parent inform the child of the abusive behaviors that he or she engaged in and be able to set up a extremely important safety situation, usually in which the non-abusing spouse is the one that takes the child to the doctor. The doctors are informed. We usually request that there be two pediatricians that are informed and they're the gateway to any treatment that the child needs. So there's basically a lot of checks and balances

to maintain safety within the family. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of dedication for these families to work toward reunification. It has been successfully done. It is very rare though. If we could hear from you about the minds of these perpetrators, what that experience is like for them, how much they understand about what they're doing, whether or not they ever get convinced of their own deceptions. There's a defense mechanism called compartmentalization. One parent told me they were able to take the knowledge they were doing this to their child, actively harming their child, and sort of put it in a little mental drawer and kind of close it. They knew it was happening, but they could just not pay attention to that information. Like you lose your keys and

you know, there they are, you know. So every once in a while they would be reminded that they were engaging in these behaviors. But they would also be using rationalization and other defense, with the idea being that this is helping my child. They're getting these opportunities to meet celebrities or, you know, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, rationalizing that somehow this was actually in their child's best interest. And I have had parents that did, they said they almost came to believe the illness. And especially, you know, when they were able to convince doctors and then the doctor said, oh yes, your child has this. They were able to kind of suspend reality and come to believe it to some extent themselves. It's not a delusional system, but being able to

almost convince themselves, even though they know it's not true. There is this easy conception when people are looking at these cases to look at these perpetrators as monsters. I really appreciate and think it's extraordinary that people like you can find enough empathy as a way in to helping these women and helping these families. And it's moving for me to think that it's not just completely hopeless. I've had people tell me that, how can you do this work with these monsters? I've had that word used quite a bit, actually. I think it comes from seeing, experiencing, and acknowledging that we are not defined by our behaviors. We are multi-storied. Certainly, we can all engage in behaviors that don't fit for us.

We can engage in behaviors that can be altered with support and help, especially the parents that I've worked with that were successful. These were very disempowered women. We go back in time and look at their growing up, especially around how do you get attention? How did you get your needs met? And sometimes in doing that, what we've been able to do is discover almost this story in which they realized they had used deception in their childhood to get attention. And they may have even seen the child that pretends to be sick to stay home from school. A number of us have done that, but they may have seen this and been a part of that themselves. And basically that sometimes

helped them be able to acknowledge, wow, this is really, I've done this. I've engaged in these behaviors in my life. And now I've taken it to this step where I've presented myself as being ill when I'm not, presented my child as being ill when my child is not. And so sometimes that's where we can get to the acknowledgement if it's not right away. I really like that you made that connection between the childhood experience of I'm sick and I want to stay home from school and you get taken care of. And I think is a pretty universal human experience to enjoy being nurtured and taken care of and having a little minute away from life. So I think it's really helpful to bring those comparisons back down to earth a little bit. bit because the more that we can understand how this is an extreme of that feeling that we can

relate with, it's helpful to everyone to understand that this is on a continuum rather than a good mother does this and a monstrous mother does that. It's not an all or none, exactly. And there is a pretty big spectrum of these behaviors. There certainly is a spectrum. With that said, we're also very cognizant that all of this is harmful to children. And we do want to keep that in mind. And I think it's especially important because the best way to get these families help is to report the abuse. Situations in which children may be over-medicalized,

brought to the doctor when they may not have a need, that leads to inappropriate treatments that can be harmful, evaluations that can be invasive, all the way to, yes, smothering or use of substances, poisoning that can certainly put a child at risk for death. You know, it gets to this question, whether we should be looking at munchausen by proxy perpetrators as criminals to be prosecuted or sick women who need help. My experience is that both can happen simultaneously,

which is difficult. Here you have an individual who either has to plead guilty or not guilty, which means if they're pleading guilty, then they're open to entering into treatment because they're acknowledging. If they're pleading not guilty, then the treatment really can't proceed. What do you think can be done to better protect children from this kind of abuse? I mentioned APSAC before, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. The audiences, pediatricians, psychology, psychiatry, social work, judges, attorneys, all of us that are involved in these cases.

So the best way to protect is to recognize and report. I first met Detective Mike Weber at a child abuse conference where he was giving a training about investigating cases of medical child abuse or Munchausen by proxy. I was so impressed with the depth of his knowledge and how he seems to grasp all of the complexities of this issue. So I really wanted to talk to him about all of the various barriers there are, both cultural and structural, to us making movement on this issue. Yeah, I have been doing this for now over 10 years. And I think what makes me stay doing this is the fact that no one else will.

I just know the consequences of not doing anything. I'd love to have four trained detectives willing to take this on. Trust me, I have the work for them. But currently, that's not out there. We've said many times over the course of this podcast that this is an underreported crime. By that, we do not mean that it is all mothers, a majority of mothers, or even some significant percentage of mothers that would ever, ever do this. But it does happen. And right now, we're hardly ever catching or prosecuting it. We're fighting the societal perception of motherhood.

That is the task before us in these cases. And I often have said, even before I started doing this, denial is the strongest human emotion. This is hard to wrap your head around. It's hard for police officers, veteran police officers, veteran detectives to wrap their head around. So for regular people to think that their picture of motherhood is going to be disturbed in such a really disturbing manner, it's very hard for them to accept that. Because if someone becomes, as an adult, so toxic and destructive, there are times when you just don't love them anymore. And I mean, I think that's something like we talked to Paul Putscher about, and that is profound. And then

I've watched, you know, various members of my own family go through where it's just like, no, there are actually things that people can do where you're just like, that bond gets severed and it's enough to do it. I've seen what parents who unconditionally love perpetrators in these situations will do, and they become enablers. Like you said, it's like they're dismantling their idea of motherhood. A lot of people really want to hold on to that idea that motherhood is this sacred thing, and it will turn flawed human woman into some kind of angel on earth that would never do anything bad. When I was an investigator with a local DA's office, and we would have trials on other forms of child abuse, not this form, but other forms, the sentences for mothers who committed other forms of abuse were far less than for males. It's just the perception that society has. Partly because you have this act, this behavior of medical child abuse, and then right intertwined with it, you have this disorder, factitious disorder imposed on another, and that's where the motive comes in.

It's not that we should be saying, this is mental illness, these people are not criminally culpable. But if you can't get people to understand factitious disorder imposed on another, they're not going to see the abuse. Right. It's the same thing that we suffered through with pedophilia. Pedophilia has been in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness, since 1952. So you have that same combination with aggravated sexual assault of a child and pedophilia. You have those overlapping diagnoses. But what we've come to understand is, okay, well, they may be a pedophile, but guess what? They're still a criminal. And that is the problem that especially family courts are having

in these cases, especially when they see a attractive, especially well-to-do mother who they identify with. I'm talking about family court judges. They're maybe in the same social class as they are, and they just don't believe that a mother could do this. I'd imagine this is really difficult work being a detective on child abuse cases. I mean, do you find yourself getting emotionally invested? In most of my cases, there's been a positive outcome, because we haven't got a positive outcome in every case, and the ones that stick with me are the ones where we didn't. Those ones really stick with me and really haunt me, for lack of a better word.

You don't get emotionally involved as a detective, but you see the emotional toll they take on others, and that's impactful to you. As long as that can get the child safe, it's not even necessarily about a conviction of the parent. Unfortunately, in these cases, that's usually the only way you get a child safe is with a criminal conviction. During the investigation, I have to strictly look at the evidence that I have and see if that fits a crime. There's been times where I know that this form of abuse is happening, but it doesn't meet our state law. I can't file a criminal case.

I turn my findings over to CPS and hope that they do the right thing. You know you're not dealing with someone who's like operating by the same playbook that most of the people you're ever gonna talk to in your life are. Right. But I do think it's important to also point out

that she knew what she was doing when she was doing it, and she knew it was wrong. So it is important to point out that's the definition of criminal sanity. You, I, Dr. Feldman, and pretty much everyone on the committee agrees they are subject to the criminal justice system. But at the same time, you know, it doesn't mean they're not a human being. Dr. Feldman has said it's't mean they're not a human being. Dr. Feldman has said it's an attempt to get their emotional needs met. Does that have any bearing for you on like how you would look at these offenders if you're seeing it less as a like,

like almost to me, that's almost something deeper, right? That it almost hints at like, this is a much more profound compulsion than I'm just trying to get people to pay attention to me. I don't know, there's such a negative connotation with attention seeking. I mean, from a legal perspective, from a detective perspective, that would just go to motive. It's going to just be a very nuanced motive. And whether it's attention or love, it's still basically the same motive. You're doing it for something that's intrinsic, which is kind of hard for juries to understand. You're not doing it for money. You're not just a horrible person beating your kid.

And we can argue about attention or love. You know, attention isn't always public attention. It can also be private attention from a loved one. So to me, those words, as a detective, obviously not a psychologist, those words are pretty interchangeable as far as motive goes. We're seeing the perpetrators as human beings that do need help, but also should not be in the house with their children and maybe should be behind bars for a while. If you humanize them and you know, like we know with pedophiles now, they can be of any social class, they can be of any social standing, they can be anywhere. If we could somehow get society to understand that about these abusers, we'd have a lot of success. Hopefully, we would start catching them sooner, which is better for the abuser and better for the abused.

If you catch someone sooner on a mental illness path, then treatment should be easier. If you catch this behavior earlier, it's going to be easier to get a confession, right? Because what they're confessing to is not nearly as harmful as what they would have done had they continued down that path. In a perfect world, you would have systems set up that would catch this early, and that would obviously benefit both the abused and the abuser.

I find it moving that someone who's in Mike Weber's position can still see the humanity in the perpetrators and understands that for them, it's better if they can be stopped earlier, if they can not get so far down the road where they've done these things that hope has that she now has to live with and that everyone in her family and in her orbit has to live with. I feel like that's really the spirit that we need on the criminal justice side of stop it early, catch it early before it gets to that point of no return. There's no way I could ever predict any of these offenders' behaviors because they are so wild sometimes. Even me as a seasoned police detective would never, I mean, I would never imagine that Hope would put pathogens into her

kid. But when the path led me there, I looked at it and never imagine that Hope would put pathogens into her kid. But when the path led me there, I looked at it and I investigated it and I confronted her on it and she confessed to it. Just be open-minded. Approach these cases. Don't be afraid to work. And for supervisors out there, CPS supervisors, police supervisors, if you have a detective or an investigator that has one of these on their caseload, number one, CPS, this isn't going to be done in your magical three-month time limit. That's freaking impossible. Don't try to shoehorn it into that box. Give your investigator time to work her case. Mike Weber is still working an incredibly intense caseload for the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department, and that's not all he's doing. These days, he is doing trainings all over the country to educate various interdisciplinary groups of

professionals about how they can better identify and deal with Munchausen by proxy cases. He is also a member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's Munchausen by proxy committee, along with myself, Dr. Mark Feldman, and Dr. Mary Sanders. In the next five to 10 years, I hope we see what we've already started to see societally and culturally. This has gotten its moment in culture. You know, I kind of keep track of cases around the country, and we're starting to see more and more of these cases. What I hope is that the committee's effort and my efforts have some little influence on these cases and getting this information out to detectives so they know what to do on these cases and they know what this is when they see it. As much as this podcast has been a way for me to exercise some of my demons and to follow my curiosity about this topic, the thing I hope for the most is that people will hear this and it will give them a deeper understanding of something that is a complex issue,

but one that I believe is present in our communities in a real way. And that people who've been through it in particular, whether they're survivors, whether they're family members, whether they're perpetrators who are looking for help, will hear this and understand that there are people trying to help. Meeting the members of this committee has really given me a lot of hope. Not necessarily hope for whatever is going to happen in my own family, but just hope that there are people that are willing to take this complicated issue on. The only way to make kids safer from this abuse is to look at it. And it's hard to look at. And it's hard to hear about. Because ultimately, it is about children. It's about

kids who are powerless, voiceless. And it's also about the people who used to be those kids. If I can make any crack in that awareness that this is a real thing, then this will all have been worth it. The Scorebet app here with trusted stats and real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking. Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions.

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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.

If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know that I have very strong feelings about what is and is not responsible true crime content. Maybe you've heard me make some pointed comments about the producers of a certain film, or perhaps you've heard one of my dozen or so rants about a certain journalist whose name rhymes with Schmeichel Schmeichel and Bog. And if you've been with me for a while, you'll also know that getting Nobody Should Believe Me on the air was quite the roller coaster. Podcasting is just the wild west, y'all. And these experiences are what led me to launch my new network, True Story Media, where we are all about uplifting true crime creators doing the work and making thoughtful,

survivor-centric shows. And I could not be more thrilled to announce our very first creator partner, You Probably Think This Story's About You. The first season of this enthralling show from breakout creator Brittany Ard took podcasting by storm in 2024, zooming to the number one spot in the charts on Apple and Spotify as Brittany revealed the captivating story of a romantic deception that upended her life and traced the roots of her own complicated personal history that led her there. Brittany is back in 2025 with brand new episodes, this time helping others tell their own stories of betrayal, heartache, and resilience. If you love Nobody Should Believe Me, I think you

will also love You Probably Think This Story's About You for its themes of deception, complex family intrigue, and its raw, vulnerable storytelling. You can binge the full first season and listen to brand new episodes each week by following the show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find it at the link in our show notes. Wow, I got really emotional listening to those last couple of minutes of that recording because, you know, at the time that I was making this show, this was several years ago, it was all recorded before we released it. So I wasn't yet out really in the public sphere talking about this issue in the way that I am now. And I had no idea

what kind of audience the show would find, how it would resonate with people. And I really am so proud of everything the show has accomplished. And that certainly hasn't been me alone doing that. I really owe so much to the team that helped me make this show, to the people who really bravely shared these very vulnerable stories from their own lives and trusted me with that, and the experts who shared their incredible work and their perspectives, and just all the people who have really been supporters from the very beginning of the show to the listeners, to all of the people who've reached out to me about the show and shared the show. I mean, it really was such a collective effort to get this show out in the world and get it to the people that it could potentially help. And, you know, Munchausen Support, which is the nonprofit that I founded before the show came out, I worked with Dr. Mark Feldman, who I've become really close with, to get that started.

And the first job of that was just getting all of the amazing resources from the professionals of the committee online. And then since then, we have done some trainings. We've presented at some conferences. And the biggest thing that I'm the most proud of that was really helped along by my incredible colleague and mentor, Bea Yorker, is this support group model. Joe Hope, who's also been on the show a couple of times, also does a lot of work with Munchausen Support and helps a lot with those support groups in particular. And those have become really active. And I have just heard from so many people. I get messages every single week, almost every day practically at this point, from people who have some personal experience with this, where it happened in their family

or they're looking back at a person they used to know and having questions. And I also hear from a lot of survivors. And I started off this project never having met anyone else who'd been through it. And now I know a lot of people in a whole community has really developed around that. And that was really started with my colleagues on the APSAC committee. It's really incredible to think that, like, yeah, I really had no idea how it would all land. And I think it has accomplished that goal of reaching some people who really needed it. And I'm just really happy that that's happened. And one of the big things that we talk about in this episode of the show is this question that I get asked all the time, probably one of the most common questions.

And one of the most common points of confusion about this issue of, is this a mental illness? And we talk about that piece about the underlying psychopathology, but my thoughts on this have evolved really a lot since this episode aired and since I started really digging into this. And I think the mental illness question is interesting and it's worth exploring, but I think I have really leaned away from sister, it felt much more comforting to think that she was in some sense not in her right mind. And that is not quite how I understand it now because of my conversations in particular with Dr. Merk Feldman. And that's one of the first things I really asked him when we were just talking off air, when we were just getting to know each other. You know, was this question of, like, do they understand what they're doing? Are they in some sort of delusional or, like, fugue state where they just don't understand that they're doing these things and they forget that

they've done these things? And, you know, we talked to Dr. Mary Sanders in this episode about that really intense compartmentalization, which is really helpful to sort of understanding how someone could do these things. But I think it's really important for people to really look at what's happening and not sort of take this more comforting route of thinking like, oh, they don't understand what they're doing, or this is a sick woman. And I think that can feel like an emotional escape hatch when you're looking at something so horrible. But I think we really need to fully understand what perpetrators of this abuse are doing and what they are capable of, because that's the only way we will take it seriously enough and understand how dangerous

they really are to their children in particular, but not just to their children. I mean, I think we've seen in Hope Ybarra's case, you know, she poisoned a coworker. The things that these perpetrators do, it's such a profound disconnect. It's such a profound lack of empathy that it does make them very dangerous. And I think that's really important to take seriously. And I think, well, the mental illness piece and the treatment piece, you know, that we talked to Dr. Mary Sanders for those very small percentage of cases where treatment is a viable option, worth pursuing, worth talking about how to intervene sooner so that better outcomes can be had for everyone involved, including the perpetrator. But I think we're not at the point where that needs to be the priority. We're at the point where we need to take it seriously as abuse and really, really put it starkly in those terms.

And so I think my thinking has just really evolved on this. And one of the big questions of the show, you know, that I think we will continue to explore in further seasons, we're definitely going to really dig into this in season four, which features Jordan Hope. They have been a guest on our podcast several other times if you've listened to those seasons, but we'll be getting a lot more into their story. And I know they have such fascinating thoughts to share on the topic of what justice looks like in these cases. What do we do with perpetrators of this abuse as a society? And these are really complicated questions for me.

And I think depending on how you feel about, you know, the criminal justice system, the prison industrial complex, I mean, there's a lot of really complicated questions around this. And what would rehabilitation look like? Is that possible? I think these are some of the biggest questions of, you know, how to look at this abuse for me. And I think it's just something that remains an open question. And that my feelings continue to shift on this. And I'm not so necessarily interested in punishment, but I think in terms of like protecting the kids should always be the biggest goal and also protecting other people.

Because they're usually female and often appear physically very normal and very harmless, the way that Hope and my sister and many of the other cases I know of appear really not like what you would think of as a criminal. I think we tend to take less seriously how dangerous they really are. So more, too, to come on all of that. And I think this first season, which, you know, again, I've said before, I originally thought that maybe this would just be a limited series of eight episodes. And I think, you know, we sort of opened

all the big boxes in this first season. We really got to some of what are going to be our central themes and why this show is continued. And there's just so much more to dig into and so much worth exploring. So I will see you next time for the season finale of our first season of Nobody Should Believe Me. On the season finale of Nobody Should Believe Me, I will sit down with Hope Ybarra, who spent 10 years in prison for medical child abuse.

If you've been listening to this podcast and some of the details sound very familiar to you from your own life or someone that you know, please visit us at munchausensupport.com. We have resources there from some of the top experts in the country, and we can connect you with professionals who can help. Our lead producer is Tina Knoll. The show was edited by Lisa Gray with help from Wendy Nardi. Jeff Gall is our sound engineer. Additional scoring and music by Johnny Nicholson and Joel Shupak. Also special thanks to Maria Paliologos, Joelle Knoll, and Katie Klein for

project coordination. I'm your host and executive producer, Andrea Dunlop. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know that I have very strong feelings about what is and is not responsible true crime content. Maybe you've heard me make some pointed comments about the producers of a certain film, or perhaps you've heard one of my dozen or so rants about a certain journalist whose name rhymes with Schmeichel. And if you've been with me for a while, you'll also know that getting Nobody Should Believe Me on the air was quite the roller coaster. Podcasting is just the wild west, y'all. And these experiences are what led me to launch my new network, True Story Media, where we are all about uplifting true crime

creators, doing the work, and making thoughtful survivor-centric shows. And I could not be more thrilled to announce our very first creator partner, You Probably Think This Story's About You. The first season of this enthralling show from breakout creator Brittany Ard took podcasting by storm in 2024. Zooming to the number one spot in the charts on Apple and Spotify as Brittany revealed the captivating story of a romantic deception that upended her life and traced the roots of her own complicated personal history that led her there. Brittany is back in 2025 with brand new episodes, this time helping others tell their own stories of betrayal, heartache, and resilience.

If you love Nobody Should Believe Me, I think you will also love You Probably Think This Story's About You for its themes of deception, complex family intrigue, and its raw, vulnerable storytelling. You can binge the full first season and listen to brand new episodes each week by following the show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find it at the link in our show notes.