Nobody Should Believe Me - Rob Scheer on Foster Care, Family, and Breaking the Cycle

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Rob Scheer grew up in the foster care system, aging out and experiencing homelessness before eventually becoming a foster and adoptive parent himself. In his book, A Forever Family, and through his nonprofit, Comfort Cases, Rob has made it his mission to change the way we think about children in the welfare system. In this conversation, he reflects on his own experiences on both sides of it. Rob and Andrea also talk about the profound difference one caring adult can make in a child’s life, and why sometimes it only takes one person to help break a cycle. *** Just a note that today’s episode includes mention of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help please call 988 or visit 988lifeline.org *** https://comfortcases.org/ Read A Forever Family: https://shop.comfortcases.org/shop/signed-copy-of-a-forever-family-by-rob-scheer 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 we are sharing a conversation with Rob Shear. Rob is the founder and CEO of Comfort Cases, a nonprofit that provides backpacks filled with essential items to children entering foster care. This nonprofit was inspired by Rob's own experiences with foster care as a child and later as a parent. Rob and his husband Reese adopted five children from foster care and later founded comfort cases to help provide dignity and support to children entering the system. Since then, the organization

has distributed more than a quarter million cases to youth in foster care across the U.S. and U.S. and U.S. and U.K. Rob is the author of the memoir, A Forever Family, Fostering Change One Child at a Time, a TEDx speaker, and a national advocate for foster care reform. We are so grateful to Rob and all of the other guests we've spoken to recently who have shared their perspectives on these complex systems and how we can make them work better for the children that they're meant to serve. We are learning a lot in real time over here, and if you have ideas that you'd like to share, perspectives you think we're missing, or folks you think we should talk to,

please do hit us up at hello at nobody should believe me.com. We read every single one of your emails, and we love hearing from you. If you want to support the show, you can do that by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Patreon, where you will get two extra episodes a month, add for listening, and full seasons ready to binge on release. And as always, if monetary support's not an option, we get it. Rating and reviewing the show, as well as sharing it with friends, are also great ways to help us out,

as is just continuing to tune in each week. We are so happy that you're here. We'll be right back with my conversation with Rob Shear. Now see Spider-Man. We're faced with a threat. That can be anyone on the biggest screen possible. You got to come with me. I don't know if you're the real Spider-Man.

I promised that I would keep you safe. Fine. Spider-Man, brand-new day. Now playing. Well, hi, Rob. Could you just introduce yourself to our listeners? Tell us who you are and what you do. Yeah. My name is Rob Shear, and I have the greatest job in the world. I'm a dad. I'm a dad. You know, Andrea, most people when they're growing up, they think about things like being doctors, lawyers, social workers. I got a kid who, I remember when he thought he's going to be on the NBA. But for me, I grew up only wanted to be a dad. So when people ask me, what do I do? I think my number one goal is to make tomorrow,

better than it is today for our kids. You do some other things as well, though. Yeah. You are, you're an author. You are the founder of nonprofit. And we will get into all of that. We have been having these very far-reaching conversations on the show about child welfare and really just how to handle this problem of when children are not safe.

and cared for in their homes and how to make those decisions, what the best ways to deal with those issues are. And these are unbelievably complex problems societally very nuanced. And so we really appreciate talking to people who have lived it. And you have an especially helpful perspective because you've lived it. Your children have lived it. A lot of the people that you work with have lived it, and so I'm just so excited to talk to you. And I wonder if you could just start by telling us about your own history, which you wrote about so beautifully in your book, and how, you know, we always like to ask people who are survivors of abuse, which you are, what do you wish had happened? First of all, thank you so much again for this platform and giving so many people a voice

that so many times we don't feel that we have. But I also want people to understand is that so many times we're making decision based on kids that people are making it based on a file. People are making it based on what they heard and they're destroying families. First of all, let's all start with understanding that. But when it comes to abuse and removing a child for me, my story's different, Andrea. My story's different, but it's like some of my kids. I'm the youngest of 10 kids. You know, foster care was already in my vocabulary as a little boy because my brothers and sisters had already started falling to the wayside.

In society, we stick the F word in front of kids, and we automatically know where they're heading, and they're heading less than our other kids. And that's the way my brothers and sisters were going. That's the way they expected me to go. That's the way we expect one child every two minutes, 700 a day, to go, less than. What did I want? I wish somebody would have just, when they did rescue me, would have stayed with me and made sure that I aged out as an adult with a net. I aged out at 18, Andrea, and I was handed a trash bag as a senior in high school and became homeless. So you explained to me what system that we have in the United States that as of today in 2026, we still allow kids to aid out of a system that we supposedly protect them and take care of. them and let them become homeless. Don't give them any net. Don't give them any financial

stuff. Nothing. I don't think your listeners in society realize how bad it is for kids in the system. And if we could kind of go back even before that to where you are growing up in a house where there's abuse, where there's neglect, where you are really not with parents who are providing a safe and living home. And I think. one of the things I always come back to as a core value of for myself and of the show is that I believe that children deserve to be safe and loved in their homes. And I think that can look like a lot of different things as you, you know, have experienced. So for you, when you're in that situation, you're born to parents that for probably their own, you know, very complicated reasons. And I think like I always want to talk about these things just grounded in everyone's humanities, right?

and everyone's humanity. So, you know, for their own complicated reasons, your parents were not safe parents. And so can you talk us through a little bit about how you got to a better situation, which then ended up not being as permanent, but it did provide, you know, it sounds like some long-term support. So you had a situation where there was a neighbor. Talk us through that sort of transition. Of course. I write so vividly about it. And by the way, foster care, the definition of foster care is when children do not live with their family of origin. And back in the 80s and the 70s, it wasn't uncommon for a kid to come into the system and go to neighbors. And people got knocked on the doors to say, hey, can you take that neighbor kid? It wasn't uncommon, especially in the south where, you know, I lived in that rural area, considered rural area. But for me, as I said, my parents were not the parents that should have had 10 kids. But I want people to understand. My parents were not a product of their environment. They were not a product of all that crap that people wanted to lay on them. My parents were a product of choices. My mother chose to be married six times. My mother chose to bring 10 kids in this world. My mother chose

to neglect us, abuse us, allow men to come into the house and rape my sisters and rape me and my brothers. My mother allowed that from the choices that she made. So for me, I went to a neighbor. I went to a neighbor who treated me as I was less than. Clean their house, watched their kids. They never took a picture of it. me. They never let me have a birthday party. They never took me to camp to any of that. But guess what? They fed me and they put a roof on my head. And for all of your listeners, most of you would say, be grateful. Well, let me tell you something. I'm a kid. And I deserve to have the same thing my neighbors had, which was birthday parties and got to go to camp and had people dode over them in their graduation. Nobody clapped for me when I crossed that stage. Okay. So those are all the things

that the system had done for me to create this, they did nothing. They took me from one hell to another hell. And there were many nights when I was with those people that those strangers, I used to sit at nights, Andrea, and I would cry, and I would cry because I wanted to feel the cigarette of my father so bad. Because by the way, even though he put those cigarettes out on me and his 59, I still see those scars. At least he was there. Well, and you know, something that we talk about a lot, is that even when children are abused, they still love and are attached to their parents most of the time. And that is such a hard thing because I think what we always want to acknowledge, right? And you use the term, you know, sort of the destruction of families that I think, like, we always want to acknowledge.

Like, I definitely think there are circumstances where children need to be taken out of the home. Yes. I think that a child's right to be safe and loved supersedes any. rights that a parent should have, I do not think children are like the property of their parents, right? And yet, we also recognize that that's necessarily going to be traumatic as well. Our constant conversation is sort of like, how do we put the children really at the center of that conversation? And so you sort of had a little bit of a maybe not quite out of the frying pan into the fire, but like out of the frying pan into like an adjacent frying pan.

If you can look back, what would an ideal intervention have looked like? I'm sure this is something you've thought about a lot. What would child Rob have won it? For me, I'm going to tell you, there should have been no one ever allowed my parents to have any kids in their home. Simple as that. From the moment that CPS started looking into our family and seeing the incest that was going on in the family, it was a nightmare. And as a man now looking back, even those 12 years that I was in that, my brothers and sisters were in their 20s and had to experience it all that time.

For me, I just had to experience that hell for 12 years. But I want people to also understand is that if there is abuse in any situation, we did not stand and say, oh, let's think about it. I would tell you the one time I'll never forget this. I was think I was about 10 years old. I had marks on me as usual. And I'll never forget this neighbor saying, well, Robert Terry, what did you do? Yeah.

And I mean, this is in the 70s, right? So this is a very different moment in our understanding of abuse and neglect and what is and is not okay in terms of corporal punishment or discipline. Like I think something that I always want people to appreciate is like and that I have really sort of come to appreciate. I've looked back on these timelines of sort of the battered child syndrome being in the very late 60s and some of these reforms and CAPTA and these kind of mandatory reporting laws really only coming about in the 70s. And that like our conception of there are things that parents should not do to their children and their situations where we should intervene and get the kids out is very new. Very new. And you know, and I think it's sort of in some ways then it's sort of not maybe surprising that we don't have. have it all figured out yet, but I wonder, like, being so close and having so many touch points

with the system, do you think that we've made meaningful progress since then, as imperfect as it is? I'm sorry. This is so, wow. I have people ask me this all the time, and they want me to sit there and stand on the sideline and say, oh, look at all the much we've done. Well, I don't. I mean, I want your honest answer. Yeah, no, I get what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, I don't get the phone calls to do certain things because I'm not a yes person and I'm not a person that's going to sit here and blow smoke up your ass. We are failing every single day with our children in child welfare. Every single day, every single day that we continuing to allow kids to enter a system that is not supporting them, that we continue to muddy the water with abuse cases and neglect cases.

And by the way, there are two different things. Two different things. We are doing a disservice to these kids. And sorry to say it, we're doing more damage in leaving the kids in their homes from the records that we're seeing and the statistics that we're seeing. We got to do better, Andrea. So you pointed to a couple of things there. There's a lot of complexity in the data around these things, right? Because I remember first hearing, and you know, it was in these conversations with Dr. Jessica Price, who I think you may know as well. And so she's an abolitionist in Florida. Her book is brilliant. And she's, we had a great conversation because this was a sort of funny way of meeting when I was covering the Kowalski case, court TV, they put me on with Dr. Price as sort of a,

I think they meant us to be a point counterpoint. And I was like, oh, no, no, this is not, this is not someone that I disagree with. And so I invited her on the show. And, you know, when she first told me this, statistic of like 76% of removals are happening because of neglect. And so I think there is a, you know, and we've had abolitionists on the show. And again, I just, I love having these conversations because I think the more we can tease these out, the better will go forward in it. So this is an arena where the data can be notoriously difficult to parse. Because we've seen a lot of cases and we've talked to a lot of survivors, I'm sure you've seen this as well, but who are sent back and sent back and sent back. And a lot of parents who are,

it is abusive cases. And, you know, the cases we focus on the show, we have this somewhat narrow focus in this whole ecosystem, which is that we are talking about cases that involve the medical system. So these are either, you know, Munchausen by proxy cases, which we've talked about a lot, which almost no hope of getting accountability and separation in those cases. And then we've talked a lot about abuse of head trauma, right? So we're talking about parents whose abuse has put their children in the hospital and is life-threatening. And so many of those people have gotten their kids back and not been held criminally accountable. So, yeah, help me understand kind of these other stories that you're seeing. Again, you're still looking at a very large number of kids coming in the system because of abuse.

And I have two kids that came to me. One of them came to me with bleeding of the brain, shaking baby syndrome, and three broken ribs. By the way, he was considered a boomerang kid. A boomerang kid is when a mother abuses a kid. The social worker takes it. And she does all of her classes. She did freaking four months of parenting classes. They give the kid back.

What does she do? She ends up breaking three of the kid's ribs and then taking a razor blade and carving initials and the boyfriend's initials in the baby. We're seeing those cases all the time, Andrea, that we have to address. So yes, those cases are happening, but I am telling you that the majority of the time that we're having and wasting in child welfare, well, we could be working on those cases, which we need to and stop sending those kids back. We're focused on the wrong thing, which is those kids of neglect, which, by the way,

let's also look at some statistics. Those kids of neglect, you and I both know that half of those. kids are going to turn into abuse cases. Nobody wants to talk about that. So what I'm saying is that we've got to start focusing on where we need to truly correct the system, which is protecting the kids who are truly being abused within the system, protecting the kids who are coming in the system because of the hands of a parent, and then allowing those parents to get a slap on the wrist, give the kid back, and the kid gets abused again. It's a very difficult balance. And I think where I come down, which is so interesting in talking to people who are, especially like talking to people who are in the abolitionist

space where I do not consider myself a child welfare abolitionist, but I am sort of like I don't spend a lot of time defending the system that we have because it's also failed my family and failed so many other survivors that I know. And so it's like sort of, well, if it's not working for either thing, then it's time to revisit. But before we kind of get into that, one of the things that like I really wanting to ground this in human stories in addition to sort of looking at these big picture things. I always like to ask people, because you are very resilient, and I think a lot of people would consider you a successful person and you're able to go on and have a partner and a family and a life. And what do you think helped that? And what are the things that like, especially, you know, you write really movingly

in your book about a couple of either like older friends or family friends who became kind of parental figures. And I always like to talk about those things because we recognize that there are so many situations that are happening right now today where people are going to have children in their lives who don't have an ideal home life. And so many survivors have told me these stories about, like, that one teacher, that one person. And like, I think people kind of routinely underestimate what a difference that can make. One act of kindness that can truly change. I'm going to tell you a story, Andrea, that it's not in my book. And I don't know. know if you've been able to find it in all the social media, but in 2019, my life was amazing.

I have four incredible kids at that time. I have an amazing husband who, for 21 years, I abast in the love of my husband. But I didn't think I was missing anything until I walked into a high school. And a young boy walked up to me. And he had asked me if I could sign his book. And I said, of course, you know, what is your name? and he said his name was Alex. And I said, Alex, I want you to tell me something about yourself?

You know, because, Andrea, you and I know, we all have a story. And he said, I don't have anything. And I was like, Alex, we all have a story. And he's like, no. He's like, my story is like yours. He's like, I've been in foster care since I was five. I've been in 11 homes, six schools. I am 18 years old, and I'm getting ready to age out.

Adam would be homeless like you. Andrea, I looked at this young boy and I saw myself. I saw myself, I saw this green-eyed boy standing there with no hope. I saw this boy who everybody had given up on him. Nobody yet believed in him. And I don't know why this hit me. And I said to him, I handed him my business card and I said, Alex, it doesn't have to go this way. And he's like, no, Mr. Shear, I've fallen through the cracks of child welfare. I looked over the principal and she had a tear going down her eyes. She said, Mr. Shear, Alex has a 3.6 and we don't know what to do. I remember I looked at that principle and I said please have him call me.

I said, Alex, I got to go give another talk, but I want you to call me. We're going to figure this out. I went home that night. I told Reese and the kids about, guys, I met this kid. He's in foster care. He's 18 years old. He's just like, there's just a spark about this boy. And I remember my son Mackay was like, Dad, if he calls, invite him to our house for dinner.

And sure enough, he called me the next day. And I had invited him to our house for dinner. I picked him up on that Saturday. I brought him back. Reese and I decided to go out to dinner with the kids. And we were sitting in a Mexican restaurant. We eat at all the time in our little town that we live in. And my daughter and my sons were looking at him. And my one son, he was 10 years old. He looked at me. He said, Alex, you can order anything off the menus and my dads don't care. And he was like, I can order anything. And he's like, I'm getting the

shrimp fajitas. And if I don't eat them all, I never get in trouble. At that moment, my daughter looked at this young boy and she said, Alex, haven't you been to guappos? That young boy looked at my kids and said, I don't remember the last time somebody took me to a restaurant. Now, mind you, my kids came from foster care. They arrived in my home at under the age of four. They didn't know what it was like not to eat at a restaurant. But I will tell you, as a father, I did my job because I saw the empathy flow out of my kid's eyes as we ate there, went to Dave and Buster as we dropped this kid off at as foster parents' house. I get in the car and I'm just like, emotionally, I'm everywhere. And I am thinking about the young Robert who was aging out of the system and I know I'm getting

emotional because it's been six years, but this day has not changed how I feel about this young boy who entered my life that day. And I remember as I got in the car and it was quiet and the kid said, Daddy, we have to do something for Alex. And I was like, guys, I know I don't know what to do. and my kid said, we have to bring him home. And I was like, what? And I looked at Reese, and Reese was like, what's one more kid? My husband and I were the very first couple in the state of Maryland to petition the courts to have a kid from foster care live with us without a stipend. As I stood in that court from three months after meeting this young man, I remember the judge said to me, Mr. Shear, why would you do this? And I said to the judge, as I say to your viewers, every single child in this country

deserves to be loved unconditionally. They need to know that someone is there rooting them on every single step they make. And as I looked at my son, he was crying. And he looked at me and he said, Pops, you've changed my life. I looked at my son. I said, no, you've changed my life. And I only have one regret. And the judge said, Mr. Shear, what is your regret? I said, I didn't get to walk into kindergarten. But now I get to walk into kindergarten. But now I get to walk. with him for the rest of his life. Andrea, this young boy, a year after that, we were in COVID, and my son walked up to me, and he said, Pops, would you adopt me? And I said, why? I said, Alex, you're not going anywhere. He said, no, I want to have the same last name as my sister and my

brothers, and is you and Dadda. Andrea, if that doesn't tell you where I get my grit, why my why is, is because there are thousands of Alexes out there. And I want people to look at those Alex is like I look at my son and know that tomorrow, my tomorrow is so bright because he's my leader. I am a busy working mom with a four-year-old and a seven-year-old, neither of whom want to go to bed on time because it is summer and the sun is still up. So in short, am I well-rested? No, but you might never know it because my eye makeup from Thrive Cosmetics is doing the Lord's work. Thrive has two of my all-time favorite products for judging up my sleepy eye situation. I start with their brilliant eye-brightener sticks for my eye shadow. These waterproof eye shadow sticks come in 32 colors,

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That's Thrive Cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S dot com slash nobody. You can find all of that information in our show notes, and remember that shopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show. I just got back from doing some reporting in the field with my producer Mariah, and I noticed that she was supporting a very cute bag. And what do you know, it was the Italian leather, hand-woven convertible crossbody from Quince. This bag easily looks like it could cost $500, but it is, in fact, $96 from Quince. I have actually been eyeing this bag for a while online, and after seeing it in real life, I had to go get one for myself. Mara also told me she was sporting a pair of Quince's black 100% European linen pants.

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Now available in Canada, too. That's quince.com.com. slash believe for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash believe. You can find that information in our show notes. And remember, the shopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show. One of my questions for you, I think it's sort of become a common theme with a lot of people that we talk to who have situations of abuse in their background and that a lot of this like comes back up for them when they become parents, right?

When you become a parent inevitably and, you know, like I, I, I have. had a really lovely childhood. My situation is with my sibling, but it was her becoming a parent that brought all of that trauma. So I certainly like relived a lot when I was pregnant with my first child. It's sort of how I got into this arena. And so I wonder like for you, and I think it's so interesting when we talk about for foster parenting and foster to adopt and adoptive parenting, it's even a more intentional choice, right? When you're two men, you have to make a very intentional choice to become parents. Not going to happen accidentally. So, like, as you were facing that big change in your life, like, how did you, as a person who did not have, you know, a father that

was a good example, obviously, like, how did you figure out how to be the dad that you wanted to be? Like, what did that look like for you, you know, making that transition? Because you were also, like, we're both also older parents, right? I had my kids at 36 and 40. You were, yeah, so we were at same age, right? So it's like, you had a lot of life before then. I think there's no bigger life change than becoming a parent. So like, how did you prepare to take that on and like what were maybe some of the expected challenges and then maybe what were some like unexpected challenges? So I will tell you that I walked into this blind. I walked into this only wanting to be a parent. I walked into this wanting to be a dad to one kid. That was it. I had an amazing career in

the dot-com world. We were very financially stable. My husband had just gotten his master's as interior design, working at a top-rated firm. You got that dual-income, no-kids lifestyle, right? We had, oh my gosh, it was crazy. So we had bought a brownstone in D.C. We had gutted it. We had restored it. Reese being an interior designer, you couldn't even imagine. It was like a museum. Our first two kids arrived. They were two and four. And they arrived that first night. and I remember when they handed Mackay to Reese, and I wrote about this in my book, I was angry with Reese. I was pissed because he bonded immediately with Mackay. And he just had this like, it just flowed out of him how to be a parent and how to be a good dad and how to be nurturing.

And I was like stumbling. And I was like, what if I drop him? And what if he pisses me off and I get angry and yell at him like my foster father yelled at me or what if, you know, all of those things. And then I saw the trash bag. And I thought about that. And then the social worker and how she spoke to me, I thought about how they spoke to my. Let me tell you, I doubled my therapy up at that point. And I had been doing therapy, by the way, I've been doing therapy since I was in my 20s

because I couldn't be where I met today without therapy and dealing with all my trauma. But the problem is, is I had packed all that away thinking I had dealt with it. But when those kids arrived, it all changed. So, yeah, I have to say I give my husband the credit in the world for helping me be the man I am today. If you read my book, it's a love story to Reese. But I also think my father-in-law. And my father-in-law, you know, I'm passed away a couple years ago, but he was so gentle and so kind to me about knowing where I had come from and not having the foundation that Reese had had. And so he helped me with that. But now I'm going to say something. My kids are now older. And I've seen how we've built that foundation with our kids. You know, my daughter, she's 22 years old. And she just said to me, just the other day, her sister, her biological sister had come to visit. And let me tell you, our adoptions different than most people's adoptions, because I can tell you, my kids never look at me and say, why'd you keep me from my family?

Why'd you take, no, you know, my kids, no, my kids know about their journey because they also know at the end of the day it was about choices. And so I choose to have their family a part of our table. And so anyway, my daughter said to me the other day, she said, aren't you, glad that I broke the cycle. And I said, cycle, what cycle did you break? She says, I'm 22. No kids, educated. And she says, aren't you proud? I said, you know what, Amaya? I'm not proud. I said, let me tell you why I'm not proud. I said, because I didn't have to be. Because I knew you would do this because I know that you're proud of yourself. That is about what to be proud of. Yeah. No, that's beautiful. Can you tell us about Roger because I really loved that story in the book?

You know, I've never talked about Roger in any interview. And all the interviews I have done since this book came out, no one has asked me that question. Who, wow, I wanted a family. I wanted a mom and a dad. I wanted that so bad. I craved it even to this day. And when I met Roger, it was that person I needed. He was older than me. Black. guy lived in D.C., grumpy old man. I remember he was like, I don't need any more friends, especially some white dude. And I was like, what the hell? I'm going to make you like me. And I did. And I did so much, he became my pops. And I remember I bought him his very first car. He never owned a new car. And I remember I took him and I was like, pick out whatever you.

He's like, I can get whatever I want. It just gave me so much joy to see the joy in Roger. And as the years went by and I moved him in, and he lived. with me, took care of me. I felt like he took care of me. I had a partner and it was very abusive. And Roger used to say to me, you got to leave him. And he would say to me, when I die, you promised me you would leave him. And I wouldn't leave him because I didn't want to disrupt Roger's life. You know, Roger was, he had moved out of D.C. We'd moved him to the suburbs. He was living the best life he could ever live. And I didn't want his life to be changed. So I took the beatings and the abuse as my mother did, as my sisters did.

because I thought that that's what was supposed to be. I thought it was okay for men to hit me because I didn't deserve more than that. And let me tell you, I was in my early 30s, and I was still allowing a man to hit me. But Roger, he knew there was something more. So when Roger died, he died in my arms. I regret he didn't get to meet my kids.

I regret that he didn't get to meet Reese because he would have loved Reese. He would have said, this is what I waited for. because Reese has never raised his voice. He never raised his hand. He reuses taught me so much about a relationship. But yeah, Roger, he built the foundation for me to be this dad that I am. I loved reading that part of the book. And I think my father also had not ideal parents. And he talks to this day about some of these family friends that he saw a lot, right? Who just he felt like they actually saw him and like saw him for who he was and sort of saw that. and saw just their humanity and his humanity. And I think like there's so much that we talk about with these systems that feels so, you know, it can feel bleak, right, that these issues are so overwhelming and difficult to solve. And we're doing so many things that are unhelpful and the way it's being talked about it in so many spaces is unhelpful. But I think it's like, I talk to a lot of

people who are in some kind of situation where there's a child that is being medically abused who's in their life and they can't, they've reported and nothing's happened. And, and nothing's happened. they don't know what to do. And it's like just even being that person to sort of reinforce that that child is more than the story they're being told about themselves. I think with all abuse, there's this sort of element of there's, there's a message that you're not a human unto yourself, that you're not worthy. And I think with Munchausen by proxy, it comes out in this like, they're just their illness. They're just, they're a vehicle for their parent to get what they want. And I think that's, that's abuse kind of writ large. That that's also true. And so I think,

I just have this really strong belief that if we just start treating children like human beings more, that that's like a step in the right direction. First of all, we have to admit, our generation and the generations before us have gotten it wrong. They always say invest in a child, you invest in their future. That's bullshit. You invest in a child, you invest in my future. They're my leader of tomorrow. Okay.

But the problem that I'm seeing within society is that we have this ton of. vision so much with families, with kids just need one acting, caring adult. That's it. One adult to watch over them, to care about them, to protect them, to love them. And by the way, I've said this to many people. You don't have to know someone to love someone. And that's what a kid needs. That adult is going to make sure that that abuse isn't happening. You made a comment earlier, Andrea, and I want to go back to it about the one acts of kindness. You know, it's that adult, that acts of kindness. I had that throughout my life. You know, I think about it now. You don't think about when you're a kid. I didn't think about it. I'll never forget it. When I was writing the,

when we were, John and I were writing the book, he was asking the same questions you were asking about, come on, there had to be. And it was that teacher, Mrs. Bowley. I wrote about her in the book. The teacher who, when I was homeless, she always seemed to have extra food at lunchtime. And I remember I was a senior in high school. And when you were a senior in high school back in the 80s. I was that kid, didn't go in the smoking area, got good grades. I was able, my senior year, I only had to take two classes to graduate, English and history, I think it was. But because I was the homeless kid, I'll be damned if I was leaving school. So I took five elective classes, and they were all Mrs. Bowley's class. She allowed me to be in her class, all of the electives.

And so she would bring food, and she would always give me that look across the room that I needed. So now fast forward, 2018, my book comes out, my publicist comes to me, and they say, you're going on a book tour. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah. And they said, first stop, Manassas, Virginia. And I said, bull crap. And they said, you're going back to your hometown. I said, do you realize I have not been back to that town since I'm 18 years old?

I didn't know if I could take that. I ended up bringing my biological sister. I flew her in. My husband, our kids, we drive. My agent flies in from New York. I walk in and I pull up. First we pull up and there's a line. And I say, what is this?

And they were like, we're here to see you. I was like, what the hell? You know, I go in, I'm goosebumps. I sit down at this table and I'm signing away. And all of a sudden I hear. You know, Robert, I always knew you would amount to something. And I looked up, Andrea, and there was Mrs. Boldly. She was crying.

I get up behind the desk. I'm crying. We're hugging. I mean, this is a woman in her 70s now. By the way, I thought she was so much older than me. Well, you know, when you meet someone when you're a kid and they're an adult, you're just like, I'm a kid and that person's old. And that person could be like 25 or they could be like 47 or they could be 65. And you're just like, you have no concept of.

I was just like. I love to ask my kids how old they think people are. It's reliably hilarious. Yeah. Anyhow, she didn't have social media or anything. So somebody from the school ended up right. writing her a letter and telling her about me and that I wrote about her in my book. And so anyway, so she came to surprise me.

But what the thing is is that she did get me over that hump. And throughout my life, there's been people who have done those acts of kindness to help me get to where I'm at today. And it still happens. The other thing that I really wanted, I thought you have such an interesting perspective on is, you know, we've been sort of talking about these various sort of sides of the coin that some of these this rhetoric is coming from. And when we talk about this like real parents rights absolutism, right, that there's a group of people that what they're advocating for is even stronger

constitutional protections for parents to basically do whatever short of death to their children. And that there should be no place for state intervention, that there should be no place for doctors or teachers or anyone in the community to intervene. Right. And now this is obviously, it's an extreme, but there's a continuum. What I think is strong and a little bit more mainstream is this idea of like what a family is, right? Mom, dad, X number of biological children, that's a family, and then that's something that she'd be preserved at all costs and anything that we do to sort of have the state intervene in the family, right? And it's like not very long ago that women were seen as sort of part of this, right? You had these coverture laws where like one generation,

one and a half generations ago, approximately, you know, it's like, oh, you don't need to rights, you're married. You have your husband to make the decisions for you, right? I think, like, you have such a unique take on, like, having a non-traditional family. I love to get in this kind of expansive conversation. And we were, you know, one of the things we were talking about with our abolitionist guests was that it also wasn't very long ago in history that black people were not considered a family, right? They did not, they were not considered to have these same legal rights to be married, to have children, to have rights over their children, so that this has been a very narrow slice of people that sort of the rights to their children has been applied to. And so I wonder from your

perspective, like, how would you sort of push back on people that say, well, kids should be with their biological parents kind of no matter what? First of all, you say that it's only extreme cases, but you and I know that extreme cases turn into more and more and more if we do not keep an eye on them. Oh yeah, and that is what's happening. The extreme is consuming us all. Exactly. And And so once again, when children are our property, we've got to stop this. And we've got to make the policymakers, the lawmakers, that's the only way things happen. The policymakers, the lawmakers have to understand that children, even at a young age, have the wherewithal to know the right path that they need to go down.

So we've got to continue to stop this. And you just made a comment about medical and stuff. To me, that's not neglect. That's abuse. abuse when you do not take your kid to a doctor. We could get in this conversation about vaccine. I think that's abuse. I think it is absolute abuse when you can take a child and have a child be better tomorrow than it is today, but you're going to hold it from them because you have a feeling or you think? We have a history. We know what's right. And when we give people voices,

change makes it better. When we give people voices, the outcome is better. Children deserve the same outcome. Yeah, and I think you've come up through a unique time becoming a parent because I think it's, it might be easy for the youngs to forget. Not that we do not still deal with a lot of homophobia in this country, but like how much worse it was 20 years ago, 25 years ago, 30 years ago. 15 years ago, when Reese and I were adopting our kids and I had to hire somebody to testify that I wasn't going to turn my kids gay, then we had to hire somebody to testify that because

my kids were black and we were white, we weren't going to turn them white. Now, what did that look like? And actually, we've had somebody talking because one of our cases involved a transracial adoption that was not a good situation, unfortunately, in this case. But how did you guys navigate kind of that challenge? Because you talk about that a little in the book and sort of in keeping your kids in touch with their family members where it was safe and possible. And like, how do you kind of navigate that particular sort of unique challenge? We still have to navigate it, by the way. And my kids are now 17 through 25. But, you know, as I've said to Alex, my white son, he is my only white kid.

We parent him differently than my boys, my black boys. So so much of that is society-driven. But the thing that I want people to know, though, in recent I've experienced, this, there is a lot of hatred out there. There is a lot of it. But I'm going to have to say, and I've asked our kids this. And just recently, my 17-year-old son was being interviewed, and they asked him, have you ever dealt with any hatred because of your gay dads? My 17-year-old black son said, no one has ever said anything to me. That's a relief. Because by the way, Andrea, I've gotten emails. I've gotten the phone calls. I've gotten the comments in public. So I know it's still out there, but I have to say this younger generation, they're doing it differently than

we did it. I think that, like, that is such a mark of progress because I see that too with the younger, like, Gen Z and younger. It's like, which is so beautiful that they just like my, like my kids are little too, right? It's like, they would never think it was weird for like a boy to be with, they're just, it's just not even like, and not even in a way where they're like trying to be progressive, right? It's like, no, they just don't. They don't care. It does not. It does not. It does. It does. not compute for them. And I think it's like looking at, you know, because I'm 44, and it's like looking at how much different things were, you know, when I was a kid in the 80s, when I was a teenager in the 90s, like, what was sort of just like acceptable, like people just like calling

each other gay as a slur, like just, it's just not even on their radar. And I think that that's kind of like when you know the real progress is made, when they don't even know they're sort of we're supposed to be thinking about it. I'm going to tell you. So I've even heard the kids, I've heard one of my kids, which kind of shocked the living daylights out of me, one of my kids, somebody said to them something about partners or something, and they said, no, my dads are married. So they get it. They, you know, I have to let your viewers know that even though we had to hire those body study experts and stuff, our kids now, Reese and I looked at each other the other day

and we were like, what the hell did we do wrong? Not one of our kids like show tunes. Not one of them like the theater. So what you're telling me, Rob, is you did try to make them just like a little big egg. Didn't take, but it didn't take. You have to accept your straight kids, Rob. You just, you have to, like, you have to accept that they're straight. I remember when my daughter was chosen as the American girl this century and they were making a doll out for her.

Oh, my God. I mean, I had like, being a kid of the 80s, I'm like, I can't imagine a bigger honor. It's like, we're so American girl doll-pilled. I got to tell you the quick story then. And so I had been on TV or something. They had seen my daughter, heard something about it. And Mattel reaches out to CAA. I'm repped with them.

And they reached out and said, hey, we'd like to interview your daughter for the American Girl magazine. And so I was like, well, I got to tell you, my daughter doesn't have one of those dolls. We tried to get her to get one of those dolls in New York, and she didn't want one. So we've never pushed it. Mind you, my daughter is a girly girl. She just never was into dolls. Anyway, so they come out, they interview my daughter. they go back. I don't hear anything for months. All of a sudden, I get this FedEx, and I open it up,

and it's a copy of the American Girl magazine, and there's my daughter. And she had been chosen in the Christmas edition. And it talked about her in our nonprofit comfort cases, giving backpacks a set of trash bags. And she has a picture of me and her on this chair, and then her and her dadda and her brothers. And there's little arrows saying, Daddy, Dada, Mackay, Grace, and Trism. comes out and we're just in awe, you know, and all of a sudden the hate comes out. People are just attacking me. Mind you, I'm in the dot-com world. I had not experienced being in the media yet. I'd only been dabbling in a little bit of TV, and I mean, we're talking major hate. The million moms group comes after me, and they proceed to start boycotting Mattel. Well,

let me tell you something. That was a big plus for me because Whoopi Goldberg found out about it. And the next thing you know, I'm on the view. Oh, they stric and affected you. The view, Ellen, everybody's talking about the shears and this girl who has just been the heart of everything. Fast forward. My daughter turned 16. Mattel reaches out and says, we did a vote and your daughter has been chosen with Marissa Hargity. Hagerty, I always say her name wrong.

As the American. Oh, from Law and Order SVU? Is that okay. And Jerry Seinfeld's wife. The three of them had been chosen as a male. American people of the century. And so they were making three dolls after these three. My daughter had an adult. I go to my daughter and I'm like, Amaya, they're making an Amaya doll after you. And she's like, okay. And I was like, they want you to come to New York and cut the ribbon of the new American girl.

She's like, you did tell them. I still don't have one of those dolls. I said, Amaya, I know. I said, they're making a doll. She says, I'll only go if they write this charity a check. So I'll end up writing a $10,000 check to comfort cases. My daughter goes up. She cuts the rib, and they hand her this beautiful doll, the Amaya doll looks just like her. She comes home. It's in the bottom of her closet. So anyway, that's the story of kids trying to rope where they're going to be in life. Let me tell you, kids are resilient.

Kids are amazing. And that generation, God, they are so getting it right. They don't give a crap. It does give us hope. And by the way, let me tell you something else that I think there's hope with. I do believe that we're going to start seeing these statistics go down. because we're going to start seeing that we're not normalizing abuse. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive.

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Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. New episodes week over week. Watch the Hulu original series Furious, now streaming only on Hulu on Disney Plus, When we're talking about abuse of head trauma this last season, it really, I think it's so important to, again, just like sort of a step one that we're still in from, you know, the battered child syndrome medical paper onwards, right?

It's really just like dragging this into the light because what has struck me, you know, I've covered all these media stories where parents said they've been falsely accused of abuse. and then you look at the evidence in the case, and it just doesn't, it doesn't add up. And it's more likely that that, you know, they were either given a case plan or they, you know, or they just pled to a lesser charge or something, but not that they were falsely accused, not that a doctor just made it up just because. Right, right. And there was grounds. Right.

Right. And so what I think about sometimes with those parents that are in those situations, and there's a range, right? We looked at some perpetrators that had long histories of violence, that had long histories of violence, that had long histories of domestic abuse that were more, I think, what we sort of typically think of, like, that's a violent person and they were violent with their child. And then there were other stories, including, you know, we talked to a mom who is raising, who has a child who's a survivor of abusive head trauma as a baby. And her husband had never been violent and never done

anything that she would have thought he would be this person. And the reality of abusive head trauma, right, it happens with, most often with kids that are two months old and four months old. It's crying, it's stressed, it's lack of sleep, it's a bunch of compounding factors. and it might be someone who's violent and should never be around kids again, it might be someone who has a moment. And I think it is that kind of case-by-case thing, but none of it is helped by denying its existence. And I agree with you.

And the problem that I see with all of that is, yes, people do have those moments. I mean, I have a son who came to me because of one of those moments by you. She was 12. But, you know, that's a whole different other story. But the thing is, it's how we approach it. It's how we're dealing with it. And the thing is, is that if we continue to keep denying it, to me, that is where victims have a big issue from what I've experienced my talking with is that the denial, they just want a, they want the chapter

to close, but they can't close it when people don't accept it and admit that it happened. And I'll give you, my parents, the same situation. I remember I was on my fourth suicide attempt and because I wanted to end my life because I couldn't deal with all the abuse that I had dealt with because I couldn't deal with it. And for me, mine was about forgiving. You know, I just so angry, like, you know, my community had failed me. My parents had failed me. My foster parents had failed me. And I was so angry that it took me to forgive my parents. I didn't forgive them for them to rest easier in that ground or wherever the hell they were going. But I did that because I needed to figure a way to get the power back for me. And that for me

was forgiveness. And for me as a victim, it truly did release so much for me. And again, I didn't, I still made some bad decisions. I got with Billy and it was a hell and, you know, I don't know, Andrea, at 59, I'm still dealing with it. And I'm not going to sit here and say that I don't. And by the way, you said something, those moments that we have when you're somebody like me that has so much baggage that sometimes you, even an elevator doesn't have enough room for it. You still worry about those moments. My son, one of my middle sons 19, just recently, did something that didn't expect one of my kids to ever do. Broke the trust, broke the, and I remember, I just remember just hadn't been long ago that this all happened.

But my anger level got to such a level because I was so just. I could have seen where somebody could have been that moment. But at the same time, I checked myself. And I think that that's what we need to do as victims is realize that when we get to that level, you need to check yourself, give yourself grace, but then walk away. Because so many times as a young person, you didn't have the opportunity to walk away. So you had to be in that abuse. Now you get to make the choice.

And that choice, you've got to walk away. Rob, do you think that part of this is that we're just not honest enough about how difficult parenting is? Thank you. Thank you. you're the Andrea I'm telling you you and I were meant to talk because it is it's it's fucking difficult it is hard it's not rewarding like people all say it is there are moments that are very dark in times you constantly questioning yourself and then they make the mistake and then you beat yourself up because you're like how the hell do they make that mistake when i set them up for success

you have to realize they're humans and you have to also give them grace. So yeah, it's it's a double-edged sword, a double-edged sword. Yeah. And, you know, I think, like, yes, adults are in charge of their own emotions and their own coping mechanisms and they are responsible for their actions. And as I'm reading some of these stories about how abusive head trauma takes place or these other kind of physical abuse cases in particular, and sometimes it is as parent where you're just like, it's not that they're not accountable for what they did, but you just thought, man, if that parent just could have walked out of the room, if they felt like they could leave. If they felt like, you know, if that mom felt like she could hand it off to her

partner safely for a night. If she could go get a night's sleep, it's so different than Munchausen by proxy abuse in that way where you're just like, oh, there are things where this person, it's like they didn't have to go down that road and become that person. And it is such a, it's a tragedy for the abuser too, you know, to have become the person that does that to a baby, to become the person who does that as a child. And I think, it's a theory, but I think that's part of what's behind some of this. Like, then the person goes to the media and they sue the hospital and they have to do all of this because they're running away from what they did. And if we had, you know, you were sort of talking about like this community aspect. And I think

that's something that the abolitionists talk about a lot as well, right? Like, what if we had? I look at this last case that we covered on one of the last cases we covered on the show. And I was like, well, what if that mom had really high quality daycare that she could take her kids to for free? And she would not have had to leave them with this boyfriend. And the fact is, like, things like child care and medicine, they are ruinously expensive in this country. And I think, like, we're just, you know, and even the neglect aspect, right? It's like we were talking to a foster care pediatrician and she was talking about, you know, some of the, some of the situations she's seen kids coming out of, you know, where it's just like places where you would not. And that might be because their

parents need help. We should be looking for those opportunities where the parent could be helped by resources and then also drawing a line where that's not the problem. And it's so complicated, right? It is. It is complicated. But guess what? It's worth it. It's worth it for us to get it right for the kids. Nelson Mandela said it so clearly. Each and every one of us are judged in society by the way we treat our children. Think about that. Kids in foster care, they don't believe. to you. They don't belong to me. They belong to us. I think all kids belong to all of us. That's kind of a, you know, like I, I need to give you that. I have to give you that. You know, I'll take them all. I'll take them all. I mean, they don't all have to go live in your house, Rob. I would promise,

I wouldn't bring home any more kids. I just think again within society that we have got to get back to the root cause of what's deteriorating within the family. And I am all forward. Let's getting in there and let's foster the families. Yeah. Yeah. It's, again, like, it's, it's so complicated. And I think what you said about the sort of the Nelson Mandela quote and sort of this idea of like, I'm grateful that this has given me so much occasion to think about this and sort of think about my relationship to my children. So my kids are little. My daughter will be eight in the fall and my son just turned four. And so, you know, especially my daughter, right? It's her first, like, she's going into second grade. It's like she's just getting more and more out in the world, and it's so special to see.

And it's given me this appreciation for all of these other adults that are going to be in my kids' life and other people, and that she's going to have her own relationships that don't directly involve me. And I really think about, like, what I want for my kids. I mean, obviously, they're my children. And I had an academic who I talked to from Brazil who was fascinating, who sort of gave me this reframe of like, what if we thought about children as people that, we have a duty towards rather than rights over. And I just loved that reframe. And I kind of think, like, that also at a community level, right? Like, I think the kids in my daughter's school are also my,

you know, not to be like, oh, they're all my children, but like, they're also my responsibility and the teacher's responsibility and the neighbors' responsibility and the doctors who are seeing these children. It's like that there's a shared responsibility. Because I think that can only ever benefit kids. Now, obviously, as a parent, you have to decide, like, right, who are the right adults to have in your kids? It's not that there's no gatekeeping there, but it's like, my children are human beings. They've been human beings since the day they were born. They've been their own human beings since the day where they were born. And, like, they are members of a community, not just my household, you know? Yes. And by the way,

they're going to be inviting you to parts of their community. So I have one daughter, at four boys, and I've said this so many times, there has never been a greater gift than being a father to a girl. It is a feeling within my heart that I have never felt before. I tell people, men especially, if you ever have an opportunity to be a father to a girl, I'm telling you, there's no other feeling. And I've raised my daughter as a princess because she will be a queen one day. And I also remind- She's already an American girl's all of the century. She's on her way. She's on her way. And I remind people, women actually rule this world. Men just can't get out of the way to make sure it happens. I don't know about that, Rob, but we'll sure don't feel like that right now in 2026,

but I'll take your word for it. Maybe it's the long trajectory, the very, very long trajectory. I don't think so either. But, you know, again, I think that if we all realize what, you know, children are not property, that I feel that if we could change anything, we need to change the fact where we don't, there used to be, I was bringing this up, the elders used to say, you know, children are supposed to be seen and not heard. That generation, we grew up in that generation. This generation, bullshit. They want kids to be heard. They want kids to have a voice. And I think that we need to stand next to this generation, helping them mold this new future that they see. Because they're cleaning up a lot of shit we did. And so I,

I think that if we start supporting them, that's where we're going to see a difference. Well, this has been so great, Rob. So before, I want to give you a chance to talk about your work with comfort cases. But is there anything that I should have asked you that I did not ask you? I think you asked me everything. And I loved it. You asked me things that I'd even know I was going to share and I loved it. So I wear the shirt, be a good human.

I try to live. What I say is that, you know, it's so important that. that we are good humans to each other. That's how we make tomorrow brighter. And when it comes to comfort cases, I just wanted to teach my kids that your legacy is about what you give and not what you take.

And I wanted my kids to walk by my dash and say that my dash, for my dad, his dash didn't just shine. He did what he said he was going to do. And most people heard the story of the dash. We all have it, whether you're rich, poor, white, black, gay, straight, every person in this world are going to be receiving the same thing.

And that's a dash. The year you live, your dash, the year you die. That dash, I won't mind to be bright. I want it to shine so bright that my kids are like, my dad, he did it. He did it. So with comfort cases, I want kids to know that I see them, that a trash bag was designed for trash, not children's clothing. And that if we pick the low-hanging fruit from the tree, our tree grows taller.

And every child deserves to know that in society, they have a place at the table. And in my society, they have a voice. 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.