Nobody Should Believe Me - S07 E10: The Stakes

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

As we close our season, we hear from two people whose lives were forever altered by child abuse; and in doing so examine what’s really at stake when the media misrepresents child abuse cases and the work of child abuse doctors.   Featuring: Tara Haelle, Science Journalist *** 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 Please note that this show discusses child abuse, which may be difficult for some listeners. For resources about abusive head trauma, go to shakenbaby.org. I want a better future for children and for their families. And part of my dismay about the many media stories centering the medical kidnapping narrative is that I know enough to see exactly how this type of advocacy is moving us further away from just that. I will always be thorough in my reporting. I'll always do my very best to be fair, but I will never be neutral.

I'm here because I know the stakes and because I believe that stories can move us in a way that statistics and data, as valuable as those things are, will never do. We know the power of a story. When I talk about vaccines, I've talked for years, I've given lots of keynote talks on how you address vaccine hesitancy and how you counter it. And the way you counter it is stories. I'm a big believer in the anecdotal lead and the, you know, because that's what people understand. And it's stories resonate in an emotional way with us.

So if you want to actually convey something that happened and help it connect with them in that logos, pathos, ethos way of getting the pathos, you've got to tell a story. And in this case, I needed a story that matched the kinds of stories that you hear. where it's not true, right? It's the seemingly nice middle-class family. When Tara Haley was writing her piece on abusive head trauma, she knew she had the facts on her side, the scientific consensus, the peer-reviewed research, and the data. But she also knew that leading with that would be bringing a knife to a gunfight.

She knew she needed to talk to someone who'd been there. This is a mom who, she didn't even remote, it never would have occurred to her to question her husband. At no point in the beginning did she think, oh, you know, is that really what happened, honey? You know, like she did not question. She didn't have any reason to suspect that her husband had done anything. This father is not somebody who had like this long history of abuse either. You know, it's really easy, especially with a crying baby or when you're frustrated in the moment to just get, just to lose your temper, right?

The problem is that babies are so fragile that losing your temper can have catastrophic effect. So that's one way in which it is very different from the medical abuse is more calculated, right? There's a lot of manipulation and calculation going on there, whereas shaken baby cases, there can be a history of abuse, but there doesn't have to be. Sometimes there truly is a bad moment of losing your temper. This story, which Tara opens her piece with, struck me right away because it was identical in structure to so many stories I'd read about false allegations with one huge difference. you actually find out what happened to the baby.

These conversations around child abuse are not ideological debates happening in ivory towers, their stories with life or death consequences. We've heard from a lot of experts this season, and today we're talking to two people with a different kind of expertise, the kind that comes from living it. People believe their eyes.

That's something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something. If we didn't, you could never make it through your day. I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this is nobody should believe me. Insurance isn't one-size-fits-all, and shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives' name-your-price tool for years. With the name-your-price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with cover

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Instead of doing the work, it gave you homework. ServiceNow's AI specialists get work done from start to finish. Cases get resolved. Loops get closed. With Service Now, you can do the parts of your job you're best at and delegate the rest. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. The mother who spoke to Tara for her story also agreed to speak with us. We're using a pseudonym Nicole to protect her privacy.

So it was a little over five years ago now. I had a few of my girlfriends over for what we called like a Friendsgiving dinner. And I was upstairs. At the time, we had just under three-year-old daughter and a two-month-old daughter. And I was upstairs with my girlfriends having dinner. husband at the time. I'll just refer to him as my ex now because he is. But my ex had my two daughters downstairs in the basement and just like to watch them and put on the show so I could hang out with my girlfriends for an hour as all new moms need some free time. And so

we're just eating and he brings up my two-month-old daughter and we're all just passing her around because she's so cute. Everyone loves this year. She gets a little bit fussy, so I just ask him to take her back, and he goes back downstairs. Probably, like, less than 10 minutes later, he's upstairs, and he's like, hey, Nicole, come down here. And I go downstairs, and my youngest daughter had poop through her blanket, so she was, like, kind of swaddled, and she had, it was like a weird green color that was on the floor. And I was like, huh, I've never seen that color before. But okay, you know, just clean it up and change your diaper and good to go. And so we go back upstairs. He goes down to her room with her. I sit back down at the table with my friends. And he immediately

comes back down the hallway and now there's like a little bit more urgency in his voice and concern in his voice. So immediately, I'm in mom mode and I run down the hallway and my youngest daughter is on her changing table and she is having a seizure and she becomes pretty much, she looked like a ghost. She was completely pale and she wasn't moving after the seizure. And so I pick her up. I run down the hallway and I'm screaming to my friends. I said call 911. Call 911. She's not breathing. And so we finally get 911 on the phone, and I'm, it's cold at this time in November. In my dire situation of hoping that something can shock her back to life, I run her outside onto my porch because I think the cold will help in that moment. I don't know, my child's not breathing.

I don't really know what to do at this moment. And so I run back inside. 911 is on the call. I lay her down in our office and they're telling me how to do CPR. I've never done this on an infant. I didn't know how to do it and I should have known as a mom, but you don't think of these things ever happening. So anyway, the dispatcher is running me through this.

I'm doing it on my daughter. And I remember at one point, you know, I'd probably been doing it for a few minutes. and it felt like an eternity. But at one point, I remember stopping being like, she's dead. She's dead. And, yeah, that was probably the hardest thing ever. So anyways, I see the ambulance lights, like the fire trucks and everything, coming down our cul-de-sac.

So I pick her up and I run her outside to the first firefighter I can see, paramedic I can see. And I'm like, take her, take her, she's not breathing, he grabs her, brings her back inside, they're testing like her oxygen. She's literally at like 40% or below oxygen levels. And so they give her oxygen. They're like, we're going to take her straight to the hospital down the street. So I jump in the ambulance with her. At this point, I don't know where my ex is. I don't know where my other daughter is. I don't know where my friends are. I'm just jumping in the ambulance and I'm going to whatever hospital she's going to. So I'm with her. And we get to the hospital. I just let everyone do their thing. There's probably 20 people in the room just putting needles

in her head and just all these things going on with my sweet little two-month-old perfect baby. So she still looks super pale. I don't know what's going on, obviously. My ex arrived. I don't know, probably five, ten minutes later. And we're standing in the room. The doctors are like, what's going on? What happened? And I have no idea at this point. I said she was downstairs.

She had pooped through her diaper. And then the next time I saw her, she's having a seizure. And so, and he would, my ex was not saying anything either. And I'm, at this point,

I'm like, people process, trauma and really difficult situations in very different ways. But we were both, you know, officers in the military in our past. We should be pretty, you know, work well under some pressure. Obviously, this is the first time one of our children has been through something quite traumatic. So that's, it's a different beast, obviously. So I just thought maybe that's how he's handling this situation.

Nicole's daughter was discovered to have a large brain hemorrhage and had to be life flighted to a bigger children's hospital. They won't let us fly with her. We have to drive up. They're separate. It's probably like a 30-minute drive for us. So put her in the helicopter, and then I start sprinting to the truck. I'm like, hurry up, we need to get to this hospital, like, time now.

And my ex is just not like, there's not the same urgency level. I'm trying to get there before they do, which I know. we're not going to, but that's where my head's at. Anyways, we get in the truck, and we start driving to the hospital. And the whole time I'm thinking, I'm looking up at the sky and I'm trying to, like, see the helicopter. And I just don't know if my daughter is going to be alive or dead when I get to the hospital. And I'm just crying. I don't know how to process these emotions.

I don't know what to expect when we get there. And I'm saying all these things out loud. I'm like, what happened? How could this happen? And he's not really saying anything. The one thing he told me was he came upstairs to get a binkie from me and my friends, which he actually did. I remember him coming upstairs being like, hey, throw me the binky. And I threw it to him, and he went downstairs.

When he was walking back downstairs, he saw my, or he heard my youngest daughter cry, like a really weird cry. and he saw my oldest daughter, like, sitting awkwardly around her on the couch. So he's kind of explaining to me that he thinks that my almost three-year-old daughter was maybe jumping on the couch and hit her in the head when he came up to get the binkie. So this is the story that I'm being told, and I am firmly believing the story as the only thing that could happen. possibly caused this situation. And so we get to the hospital. I am sprinting to trauma, and we get there, we're met immediately by a social worker. And that's never happened to me before. I'm like, oh, maybe this is normal for children's hospitals, not sure. But we're just waiting

outside the room where she's getting evaluated. I'm like, is she alive? Is she dead? Can somebody tell me anything, and no one's really telling me anything. Nicole's daughter is transferred to the ICU, and they're surrounded by doctors and nurses. And it's clear that these medical professionals are not buying the story the parents came in with. They keep asking a baffled Nicole, what happened to this baby? And of course, I'm still the one talking, and my ex is not saying anything. I'm now telling them the story that he told me in the car right up to the hospital, because that the only explanation in my mind that could, obviously, like I said before, could cause the situation.

And just for, like, context as well, we had a great marriage, and he was a phenomenal father, very hands-on, very supportive. I thought we had, like, a really beautiful life. And we loved our two daughters so much. And so, The thought of him having anything to do with it never crossed my mind at all, even when they're interrogating us at all. I am defending myself. I'm defending my husband. And it became pretty clear that everyone on the other side of things thought maybe we had something to do with it. I didn't know anything about, you know, I guess, shaken baby or abusive head drama at the time.

Obviously, you get a little briefing when you leave the hospital with your newborn baby. Hey, you know, the crying period, the purple period of crying, things like that. Yeah, but you never think about what are the injuries associated with a baby being shaken, things like that. The next few days pass an excruciating tension as Nicole's tiny daughter clings to life. Finally, on the fourth day, they're able to examine her daughter's eyes, where they discover significant retinal hemorrhaging. The doctors continue to give Nicole only the briefest updates, as the picture grows more concerning for abusive injuries. The head ophthalmologists, basically, came by the room and was like, can I talk to you in the hallway? I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem.

So I go out there and he's like, just immediately just goes, what happened to this little baby? And I'm like, excuse me? I'm like, I told everyone what has happened. We had nothing to do with this. I just need you to take care of her. And it was just so like appalling that that was his, I don't know, interaction with me as the mom

and learning such horrible news. So he's like, well, good luck to you. As the long days in the pick you wear on, it's clear to Nicole that the doctors think she's lying, but she genuinely doesn't know how to answer the questions they're asking. We had the child abuse pediatricians and their team sit down with us and go over things in detail as well, like the stories that we were telling the doctors earlier. So obviously there's a lot of. on our plate and a lot on our minds. And I don't want to say anything that is going to make things

worse as far as like possible criminal proceedings that are happening in the background that I don't know about. Had you spoken to the police? So we're sort of talking about like this conversation at day four at that point had the police become involved. Had you spoken to the police? Yeah. So it was like basically DCFS right off the bat. And they came like the next day or that night. I'm not sure. It was pretty quick. And then it was a detective from like our local police department where we lived that had reached out and was just saying like, hey, I'm just going to be coordinating and communicating with DCFS. Just want you guys to know. I may have to interview both of you at some point, things like that.

So I was like, okay, no problem. Whatever you guys need, just let us know. Obviously nothing to hide here. Nicole's daughter was still in the pick you and now they were being investigated for abuse. and then everything changed in an instant. I get a call from my ex, and I'm like, oh, that's probably him just saying he's on his way back to the hospital. I'm not sure. So I answer it, and it's actually him, and he is crying, and he says my name, he says, Nicole, I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry. I shook her twice. And I truly felt, um, and if I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Like the best way to describe that moment was like my heart shattered into a million pieces on the floor in front of me. And I started hyperventilating and like shaking and just crying. I couldn't process what he just told me. And the nurses came in because it sounds like the detective maybe told the child abuse pediatrician that my. my ex had confessed.

And so it sounds like they maybe gave the nurses at the hospital warning that I was about to find out. And so they came in, they laid me down. They, I called my family. Obviously, everyone just lost it. Couldn't believe it. So they let my mom come up and be with me in the hospital for the last four days with her. and just a lot going on. And I can't really explain it,

but it's truly the most, like, horrific thing to happen to our family and to my sweet daughter. There are so many mirrors of these other parents' stories. The rush to the hospital, the frigid reception from doctors, the horror of being suspected of abuse. But these stories don't have a call like this. There's no moment of revelation, only the search for another different kind of doctor,

one who frequents courtrooms rather than exam rooms, to provide some other explanation for the injury. Male abusers are far more common in abusive head trauma and fracture cases, but almost all of the people doing the advocacy, speaking with the media and building community around false allegations, are women. Certainly, some of them know, or at least should know, that their male partners were responsible.

People like Viviana Graham and Ashley Finnegan. But how many others are like Nicole, women who would never suspect, who couldn't imagine their husband harming their child? How many find groups like fractured families and go down a rabbit hole of junk science in order to grasp desperately for a reason to believe that their beloved partner didn't hurt their baby? We all like to think that it could never be us. We think we'd know. We think we wouldn't be susceptible to conspiratorial thinking when faced with a horrific reality. but the truth is we cannot really know if we'd be willing to face the horrible truth until that horrible truth arrives at our door.

This moment of revelation changed Nicole's life forever, and she walked away from the situation with quite the opposite reaction to many of the other parents we've talked about this season. There's been a lot of actually good to come out of it in the sense that the child abuse pediatrician and her team handled it the best. They weren't blaming any of us. They weren't acting like. They were interrogating any of us.

They truly were just trying to like understand. And I felt like they handled it the best way. So I was very open and willing to communicate with her and like help her after we learned my ex confessed. And we learned it was him that actually shook her and caused these injuries. And so I've been a couple of times I've learned. lectured with her at our, at the university where that children's hospital is to new medical school students and things like that. So we could explain to them how they should be treating parents in cases of suspected child abuse and what the most important things are in those moments.

And that's to, one, provide status and update to the parent. Like, you don't know who did what. The most important thing is to take care of the child or the victim or the victim or the the injured person. So, like, their job is not, obviously everyone wants to know what happened. And everyone cares about a kid who comes in seriously injured, obviously. So I get that aspect, but there's definitely a better way to go about it. And so I think actually I've gotten a lot of really good feedback from that, and it has been pretty helpful. So I do appreciate that we can try to change how other parents are treated in these situations who had nothing to do with it. And I tried to explain to them as well. I think it's really important that the way that you treat the

family and the parents can absolutely either negatively or positively affect that child's future care after their discharge from the hospital. I could have never seen those eye surgeons ever again in my life and been fine. But because they are the best in the stay at what they do and in the nation, I was not going to allow my daughter to have care less than that. So I had no problem sucking it up and seeing them and all for follow-up appointments and like everything like that because she got the best care. Yes, they treated me horribly, but like other people probably aren't the same way.

and I wouldn't blame them for finding other doctors or whatever. Did the demeanor of the treating physicians change after that moment of revelation? Yes, yes, it did. Yeah, so those last, I'd say four days in the hospital were a lot better for me as a parent because I was getting more explanations of, like, what she was dealing with, what her diagnoses are, what the outcomes could be. They were just giving me more detail. And I felt like I was able to actually ask questions

without feeling like that could be used against me in a way, you know what I mean? So, yeah, it was huge. And it's really sad that I had to get to that point. I wish, you know. But again, I understand in cases of horrible abuse of a child, they're all very upset and concerned as well. It was heartbreaking to hear Nicole talk about the experiences she had in the hospital

when the doctors were treating her daughter. And while I agree with her that it might be very human of them to act that way, it doesn't make it helpful or compassionate. Interestingly, in all my conversations with caps, I find them to be some of the least judgmental people I've spoken to about abuse. Caps are made of tough stuff. They have to be. They develop a necessary tolerance to look at.

looking into the darkest corners of humanity. So it tracks that it would shake them up less than their colleagues. I asked Nicole if that reflected her experience with the cap in her case. I do. I do think she had a different, like, I don't know really how to word it, but maybe like a different perception of the situation just based on what she's dealt with. Like she's maybe seen situations where it looks like child abuse, but then they realize later it's not. It really is something so odd, so whatever. but she's also, you know, regularly testifying in trials of, you know, similar shaken baby situations.

So she's seen at all. She knows what defense is trying to do or say and, you know, one in a million chance of things this happening. And she doesn't put up with it. It's like, I, my job, her job is to rule out child abuse. So she is looking for every way or every diagnosis possible that is not shaken baby or a child abuse-related injury. So, yeah, I think it is very helpful that she specifically is in the child abuse field when looking at something like an injury like this when it first comes in. Do you think that it's better for parents who are in your situation, who are the not. non-offending parent who maybe does show up at the hospital, not having any idea what happened?

I mean, do you think it's better if there's a child abuse pediatrician on staff versus, you know, obviously there are many hospitals in the country that do not have a child abuse pediatrician on staff? Yeah, no, I think it is, in my specific experience, it was very useful just because of the difference in how we were treated and how I really felt like they were trying to, you know, rule. out everything that could have happened or what she was dealing with versus trauma saw these things or the first hospital before she was lifelighted saw a brain hemorrhage without blunt trauma so immediately you know abusive head trauma situation happened so you know i i don't know enough about medical terminology or diagnoses or things like that with like brain

hemorrhage is, but it does obviously make a lot more sense when you could put all the pieces together. So on day four, you're waiting for the eye exam because the retinal hemorrhaging, along with the brain hemorrhage and with the child abuse pediatrician, they know what to look for. You know, they see this all the time, every day. True story. I was presenting at a conference recently where I got to meet a bunch of lovely listeners, and one of them was so excited to let me know that she was wearing some very cute, very comfy linen pants from Quince. I really do love this brand. I wear it all the time. My team loves Quince. My listeners love Quince. Quince has expanded their offering so much and I love going on there to see what's new. I am currently awaiting my latest

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You're no longer young people. You're just people. And people are either productive or dead weight. It's my first day of work and I need to make a big, Impression. Were you just checking me out? No. It's too bad.

I see at least 15 ladies I need to talk to before my beta block wears off. My co-workers don't take me seriously. It's not a human. It's just a piece of meat. Someone bring a gurney. We all like to think we know what we would do in one of these moments. As I read through a count after account this season of a woman defending her husband in the face of mounting evidence that he put her baby in the hospital, I found myself thinking that if my husband did something like this,

he'd be lucky if the cops got to him first. And in the abstract, I feel this way, because it's easy and comforting to think that the choice would be clear, that it would just be black and white. But I've never been where Nicole has been. I've never had to face that precipice. I've never had my partner tear my world apart the way that Nicole's did. I'm curious, kind of so, you know, you have this moment of revelation with,

your ex. And then how did things play out from there in terms of criminal charges, custody, all that kind of thing? Yeah, that is one of the hardest parts of all of it as well. Because he was such a good dad, such a good husband, couldn't believe it. Obviously, he had a protective order. Couldn't be around my youngest daughter at all. So, had to move to a different location, went to jail that night that he confessed. His family went and got him out of jail. I was waiting around for his criminal proceedings to happen and to finish up with to kind of make my final decision on what I was going to do.

And I know that sounds crazy, but I think it's really difficult to be in that situation and know what to do, especially because we had to say. such a great family and you don't know if it's best for the kids if you keep the family together. And I'm like, well, I'll always be around the kids when he's with them if we stay together so I can keep them safe. So there's all these thoughts going through your mind and you don't actually know what the right decision is going to be. So his criminal proceedings happened. He pled down and it was a class A misdemeanor instead of a felony. and he got six days in jail because that's all the paid time off that he had.

Yeah, worked for a defense contractor and never lost his security clearance or his job. And how to do like, gosh, how many hours of community, 40 hours of community service. And that was pretty much it. So there was nothing put in place to protect. me or my kids. So, I mean, after, yeah, I did file for a divorce basically a week after his sentencing. And how long, what kind of time period was that? I imagine that took some time to play out. Maybe four months, four or five months. Nothing is put in place to, like, protect basically the victim or like the protective parent of the victim.

So he proceeded to fight me for joint custody of my children for like a year and a half because he thought that he had any shot in that. And I also had to fight with the state because DCFS closed the case as soon as like they did a video review of my home with me and saw like I was a protective parent and the kids were safe so they closed the case. So DCFS could not help me in the divorce with like... Did they make a determination about him, though? I mean, obviously, right? Or no? Because he wasn't living at our house, I think they were like, oh, we just need to see if the mom is okay.

So that was really unhelpful. I had to pay a lot of money out of my pocket for my divorce attorney, and we had to fight. And there was no move to terminate his. rights at all. No, there wasn't. Um, no, and that's another thing. I just didn't know if that was going to be the right thing for my children. Were you surprised that more didn't happen as a result of that in terms of consequences for him? I am, but also to a degree I'm not, because while I'm waiting for something that's happening for those, for those four or five months, um, I'm

I'm like speaking to the prosecutor. I'm like, I don't know what the future looks like for my family type things. I thought back to my conversations with Alan and Roxanna when I was listening to this story. Where is the line? When do we say someone can never be safe around children again? When do we give them a chance to earn that trust back, knowing that taking the parent out of that child's life is going to hurt the child too? How do we balance those things?

And this is the real gray area, not the ones the abuse denials talk about, where they intimate the doctors can never know what happened to a baby, but the one we all have to live in, where the questions are not so simple. For another family, redemption and reconciliation might have been possible. But once the court case was over, Nicole's story took another turn. And so this is a part that I hate to tell, but this just kind of shows you people are hiding like an evil side to themselves. It was right after his sentencing.

I went to his sentencing with him. Right after his sentencing, he just like gets up and walks out, doesn't even wait for me. We get to the truck, I get in. We're driving home. Okay, so mind you, the night that this happened, he had a couple drinks of alcohol. I don't know how many.

I just remember seeing him earlier that day when my dad was over watching football. I saw him have some drinks. when we're driving home from his sentencing, I'm like, you will not ever drink a drop of alcohol in our home with our children ever again. Whenever you're allowed back home, that's never happening out of the question. And he, like, lost it. Just got so upset. I'm like, oh, so haven't learned your lesson.

Okay. I'm not saying that was the cause of it, but let's just try to avoid things that maybe aren't the bad. Again, he's not allowed inside my home. Drops me out of the house and, like, excuse my language. He says, he turns and looks at me. This is literally an hour after his sentencing. Turns and looks at me and says, get the fuck out of my truck.

I want to fucking divorce. There's no conversation about it. And proceeds to kick me out of his truck. And I said, so you just used me to get out of a felony? He says, you're damn fucking right I did. get the fuck out. So, um,

yeah. Um, yeah, so that's who I was dealing with all along. Did not know. Um, obviously, knowing what I know now,

I would have let him wrought in prison and terminated his parental rights, um, knowing that there really was never any chance to save our family all along. Um, Was that something that he used basically in his legal defense of like, look, I still have this intact family and my wife is still standing by me. Yep. And he was letting me go to the prosecutor saying, like, I don't know what's happening with our family.

All these things. I don't. He's the provider for our family at this point. I was getting my grad degree, things like that. So he definitely, definitely used me in the worst way possible at. given what he has done to my child, my children, to me, and to what he put us through, and then to do that to me at the end of all of it, pretty awful, pretty evil.

And so, honestly, I'm just going to toot my own heart, and I'm really proud of myself for always putting my kids first and letting them still have a relationship with their dad, no matter, like, how horrible he was. in that whole situation. So, yeah, it's just tough, you know. What is clear from Nicole's story and where her path diverges from the others

is that she was always going to put her children first. How is your daughter doing? How was her recovery? Obviously, really rough right off the bat. She was a very healthy baby, very alert, very engaging. and then I remember leaving the hospital and she was kind of barely opening her eyes.

She wasn't really able to turn her neck. We already started physical therapy before we left the hospital. She just wasn't interacting. So I left the hospital with doctors telling me they don't know what's going to happen and me accepting

that I now had a special needs child and that I was now a single mom. So a lot of things to deal with in eight days there. But anyways, yeah, she had right heoplasia, so, you know, muscle weakness on the right side of her body. She has permanent brain damage on the back left part of her brain. So they're really worried about like gross motor skills and vision. She's got pill optic nerves in both of her eyes. We just don't know how that's going to affect her vision one day.

but right now she can see, so that's wonderful news. She's grown out of that hemoplegia. She can run and walk normally, and the doctors told me she never would. And she had about when she was like at one or so, she started to get pneumonia kind of frequently. And so I took her to her primary care pediatrician, it was wonderful.

And he was like, let's go get her swallowing tested. And then we found out she had a swallowing disorder because of the brain damage. So it was like her flap wasn't closing quickly enough. So she was aspirating. And so we did feeding therapy for a while, had to thicken all of her liquids for a couple years. And she grew out of that. So she's doing great.

She can eat everything. She's running and walking normally. She's been tested because she's going to go to kindergarten. year and she's been tested so she's going to go to regular kindergarten not special education program nothing wrong with it but it's very great that with her background she could go to a regular school um but yeah you would see her and you would think that she is at a completely normal five-year-old kid that has never gone through what she's gone through so she is a miracle and the doctors tell me that quite often um she had she was on anti-tubey.

seizure meds twice a day for about four years. She kind of regressed a little bit with the seizures here and there, but we weaned her off of the medicine. She hasn't had one since, like, in over a year. So she's doing great with that, too. Yeah, so just a couple of specialists to follow up with every year, which is the neurologist and the eye surgeons, and that's it. She's doing great. Groups like fractured families and the endless media coverage spreading misinformation about child abuse medicine and those who practice it seek to erase stories like Nicole's. Experts, such as Dr. Joseph Scheller, Dr. John Plunkett, and Dr. Michael Hollick, along with so many others, deny the very existence of a story like this. They argue on the stand, for a fee, that injuries like the ones Nicole's husband confess to inflicting on their daughter aren't possible. And the doctors on the front lines, the people the most well-trained to protect children who are harmed,

these people are trying to drive them out of existence, insisting that somehow we'd be safer without them. But we wouldn't be. If I ever found myself in a situation where abuse was suspected, I want an expert. I want a cap. Because if it's not abuse, they're the one most likely to rule it out. And if it is, then I want to know what happened to my child. There's been a lot of fear-mongering about this profession. and it's not that these doctors are perfect,

but they're the best at what they do, and we need them. Not long after I got that fateful email from John Stewart about Dr. Sally Smith, you know the one, dear, misguided, wannabe journalist. I got a really different type of email, also about Sally. Kyle, who will only be referring to by his first name, told me he'd reached out to Sally once years before, but he'd just been thinking about her again, and when he Googled her,

was dismayed to find the internet ablaze with stories trashing her. He asked if I was still in touch with her and wrote, quote, please let her know that Kyle from those emails is still doing fine and is still so grateful. He knows she is no villain. She was the only one who was trying to help him, the only one who could see through what was really happening. I asked Kyle if he'd be willing to share his story with us. And fortunately, he was up for it. She took me in the Florida when I was a year and a half thinking or hoping that the other side of my family would never have anything to do with me and that it would just be her and me. Kyle had a tumultuous childhood from the get-go, but eventually settled in Florida with his

mother, who, like so many other perpetrators, had sought to isolate him. And she had been always so bitter that my father and my grandmother had always stayed in contact and tried so much to separate us that when it finally happened on its own, she was just thrilled. As far as Kyle could recall, things started to take a turn when he was around eight years old, and the school he was attending flagged him for possible ADHD symptoms. Because this is in Florida, and Florida has always been really big on school choice. And my mother told me, well, you can't go back to the same school you did in third grade, because they do not have a good program for kids with learning disabilities. So we're going to go to a different school in a different district.

It was still a normal public school. It wasn't a special school or anything like that. But I guess they had special program for kids with learning disabilities, which it turns out, if I'm remembering correctly, it was just for 30 minutes a day I would go into this office with other kids and they would let us play video games because they didn't know what to do. Interestingly, Kyle was eventually formally diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. But not only did his mother never pursue an official diagnosis in his childhood. In a pattern common to MVP cases, she used the possibility of ADHD as a jumping off point to Esklee. My mother then went online and started looking in, because she felt newly empowered as a parent of a kid with a learning

disability, and so she would go online to different parent groups. And the only thing I can imagine is that she looked into autism and more severe developmental or learning disabilities that would, the most appealing thing in the world for her, mean that she would have to be involved in my life well into adulthood, that I would always need her in my life, that I could not function independently. I remember she had never used the internet before this, but from fourth grade on, she was always online on these different groups. As with so many cases we've talked about on this show, Kyle's mother's identity quickly became consumed with her allegedly special needs child. She started going to like conferences in Orlando,

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

and they would impair my brain function, and that is why I was the way I was. So I now, there was a whole list of things I couldn't eat. I don't even remember what the internal logic was of the things I couldn't or couldn't eat. The umbrella was just gluten-free, gluten-free, which was just no dairy and no any sort of grain that had gluten. But it was also a whole host of other things, certain food dyes, certain artificial sugars and sweeteners,

just basically all I would know is that my mother would tell me what I could eat. I didn't think about it that much, but since I was still visiting my father at this point in my life, I remember there's this weird interval where it was like, don't tell him you're on a diet. If you, if whenever you're eating with him, try and order the things that you know you're allowed to eat, if you have to eat something you're not allowed to to hide the diet, go ahead.

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

Sometimes they'd change dosage. I didn't really ask. And that probably contributed to my appetite dropping. And I guess the appetite loss combined with a very restricted diet means that I was barely growing between the ages of like 9 to 12 to 13, potentially. I didn't notice. I mean, I had never been 9 to 13 before. I didn't know what my weight to height was supposed to be.

I was always conscious that I was a skinny kid, but I didn't think much of it. And something that stands out only in hindsight is I remember when I was in sixth grade, like a social studies class. And we were talking, they had like a movie going and it was talking about like starving kids in Africa. And it would just be, and my teacher was pointing to either a slide or a movie.

It's like, well, you can see how skinny their arms and legs were. And then I just remember his eyes sort of like pausing when he looked at me. I'm looking down, I was like, well, I look pretty skinny too, but I'm not starving. I don't think. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive, the Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly, 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

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The world needs more Canada. Together, let's give it to them. Visit edc.ca to learn more. Preteen boys notoriously eat like locust, and for good reason, they're supposed to be growing. But Kyle's special diet was beginning to take a huge challenge. toll on his health. Kyle's mom was putting him on numerous medications that she'd read about online, and the situation was treacherous for another reason. Kyle's mom had something else in common with many other perpetrators. She put herself through nursing school while I was from the ages of like

five to eight, I think, and it's always the juxtaposition of how focused and together my mother must have been in the early years of my life is just so stark between what I knew her as and my adolescence and early adulthood. And what I know her as from my adolescence is someone that could never have been that together or organized. She just, her mental state slowly degraded to be less and less functional. She'd get more and more paranoid. She couldn't keep work relationships or a job. But I think just motherhood and the drive to be a good mother providing, just her source of identity fueled her, which I think then just made the idea of being the mother to a disabled child

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

I don't remember her really having regular friends. To my knowledge, she's never had a real relationship after divorcing my father. She wasn't really, there's no one to perform for, I think. I think just the idea of motherhood and being needed meant something to her, having, being the only one that took care of me. Like she could have easily, whatever happened between her and my father, she could have easily taken me to her family back in Ohio. They were like a couple hours drive away.

If she needed help or support, if she needed help taking care of her now child as a single mother, it was there, she didn't want that. For whatever reason, that wasn't appealing. She wanted being the one solely responsible for raising a child meant so much to her. In addition to the restrictive diet and unnecessary medications, Kyle was subject to intense educational, psychological, and emotional abuse.

His mother told him he would never be capable of living an independent life, that no one loved him. Somehow, through sheer will and extraordinary resilience, Kyle made it through school and eventually out of his mother's house. And in an eerie echo of other stories we've told on this show, Kyle only realized what had happened to him when he discovered a box of papers at his mother's house. There was a series of folders just about me when I was in school.

And I really, really, really didn't want to read that because this is when I was still in the mindset that there had been a diagnosis. It was mistaken. And I didn't want to read all these documentations saying, yeah, this kid is disabled. Yes, he has autism. Yes, he can't do this or that. I thought, you know, this was the big.

binder of documentation that you always had proving that I had this or was that or yadda yon. I didn't I did not want to but in the next day I just like okay let's get it over with I need to flip through these see what these people at school were actually saying about me and first things I noticed like okay it's the email from the teacher like wait all of these teachers were saying that they didn't think I needed this extra help and it was just my mother yelling at them and reporting them for violating IEP program or whatever. Like, that's weird. And then I found the first thing, after the note from the teachers, it was a dependency petition. And a couple pages in the middle were missing,

but it was just like the front page, how they were bringing the petition in my name. Like many other survivors, Kyle's memory of offense is not Crystal Corp. clear. And the intervention that happened when he was a teenager was news to him. I'm like, when did this happen? It said it was when I was 13. And I, then I remembered, I do remember, and this is the only part I do remember, someone had come to the door when I was home alone. And I have no idea what I talked to her about. But I remember afterwards my mother

calling me from a gas station saying, just tell me what you told her. I won't be. mad. And then from there it was just reports who all signed at the bottom by Dr. Sally Smith. And I was just reading from top to bottom each one. And I can't really explain how I process this or what was really going through my mind. But I just, my mind cannot stop racing. I have no recollection whatsoever of this being in connection with child protective services, or I had no knowledge that this had been going on despite obviously having spoken to a CPS officer. I don't know if she introduced herself that way when I was home alone. And I have no idea how I was in my mother's custody the entire time. This was happening, especially as I later found out that my mother had been a,

and contentive court refusing to show up for many times, but it was just the reports from Sally Smith's saying, you know, first impressions, I was very concerned because Kyle did not seem to have any symptoms of any type of developmental disorder or autism. And she would list through the change in my weight percentile from the years I was on the special diet, which I had, again, I had no frame of reference when I was nine or ten how much I should be growing or not growing. But just going through the record she had, apparently I went, I stayed basically the same weight for three years.

So I went from what was the 75th percentile for my age when I was nine to like the bottom 15th or 10th percentile when I was 11. and but then in a follow-up report, it mentioned how I had gained 20 pounds in between. And then the pieces sort of, you know, slipped into place because I remember when I was 13, from the year between 13 and 14, suddenly my mother would be taking me to checkers for lunch every day. I could get a big burger, but without the bun,

none of the ketchup and mustard because of the dyes, and I could have a sprite because it didn't have the dyes. But you can have all of the fries you want. Grease is good. Kyle was never removed from his mother's custody, but once eyes were on her, she relented on the food restrictions. Dr. Smith's report was clearly flagging

this 20-pound gain happened after child protective services was called. common sense would say that if something changes once a parent is under investigation, it could be just because they're under investigation. And what is, the whole situation definitely, there's nothing to laugh about, but the part that is worth laughing at is whenever she mentioned my mother in the reports was just a combination of, can we please get this woman evaluated as well? Because I know that is not my authority, but good Lord.

My mother has always been paranoid, especially after I went into college that I was talking about her to everyone. I spent my entire life trying to pretend she didn't exist. I would never mention my parents. But she would always feel like whenever she'd check in, when he's like, who all have you been talking to? I read the reports, you know, it was suspected bunchhous and by proxy, I had to look up what that was. And that there had been a word for the thing that was going on that I had just never heard before.

That there had been someone when I was 13 that had seen me, that had flagged that at the very least I should be evaluated to see if I actually had these conditions as opposed to just trusting it. all of the individual points where she said these doctors only none of these doctors evaluated Kyle the only notes they ever have is that the mother said he has these symptoms

and they reported in my record that I had autism based on my mother's reports and she had like she wrote four different five different reports throughout the time and each one it's like every new piece of evidence the mother is giving us

is just a doctor saying the mother reported that Kyle has autism. No matter how deep they dug and there was never a doctor that ever actually made a diagnosis or even suggested it, it was one time when I was nine, she told my pediatrician. She read things online in the groups about the things you need to say to have the doctor say this. Kyle was stunned that someone had seen and understood what was happening to him when so many others had missed it,

or even if they'd suspected, had stayed silent. It had been a tough road for Kyle to separate himself from his mother, even when he'd come of age. After I turned 18, she did, through a whole lot of illegal means, get me on disability payments, which I was, for several months after I had been getting disability payments, I was unaware that it was happening. I, one time when she, I was, this is before I went off to college, so I was still living with her taking occasional classes at the community college, not doing great.

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

for him. So she has to represent him at the hearing. Uh, and then because obviously even I represent at the hearing, there had to be an application with my signature on it. I found a drawer by the desk notepad where she could just practice writing my signature over and over again. Dr. Sally Smith's reports emphasized the harm Kyle was experiencing beyond his diet. The unnecessary medications and treatments, the abuse and restriction he was being subjected to, in the end, Kyle remained in his mother's care, but it was only once he had discovered Sally's reports that Kyle realized that this intervention, limited as it had been, was the reason his mother stopped starving him.

And my mother's response to that, now that I know the timeline, was, okay, you magically are able to eat whatever you want to, you take these enzymes, but she still persisted after that to take me to get speech therapy, physical therapy, special classes for kids with development disabilities, basketball classes, a special helper at school, still forged my signature, falsified testimony to get government benefits sent to her accounts

all on the idea that I was disabled, despite never actually having gotten a diagnosis. And at that point, it was like, okay, you could have made excuses up until I was 13, where it's just she genuinely believed this. She fell into this rabbit hole about different severe developmental disabilities kids could have and the health they need. She thought herself competent to diagnose this and thought, you know, I love the idea of being a mother with a kid of special needs. I want to give all these things he needs.

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

anytime any teacher, anyone, casual comments that I might not be disabled, it would just trigger rage. Like the whatever teacher administrator and my IEP council of Trent's when I was in a public high school suggested that I might not need all these accommodations. Just she was out. I was not, she was not allowed on my IEP plan ever again. The calculus of whether or not to remove a child is fraught in high stakes. But for Kyle at least, he wishes that the intervention had gone further, that he'd gotten some of his childhood back. the assumption that being with the parent is always going to be the best solution and should always be the goal for every situation, no matter what signs you're seeing, it will always feel

wrong to me. I will always grieve that I didn't get those years in a situation away from my parents. And as much as I did love my father for the years we were visiting, he did. several years later, this was a few months after I had found Dr. Sally's reports, Dr. Smith's reports. I did find out that several months after that my father had died of an overdose. Kyle went on to claim a future for himself that defied the bleak and dependent picture his mother had painted. Not only did he attend college, he went on to law school and is now working in a prestigious clerkship for a judge. Kyle shared some recommendation letters that his professors had written for him for the gig.

Just like Sally saw him all those years ago, these professors saw him too. Kyle is a rare talent, one wrote, hands down, the strongest performer in my class. His analytical skills are second to none. The other letters are equally effusive, praising him for not only his intellect, but his diligence, his ambition, and his personable nature. In Kyle's original email to me, he asked me to pass on his gratitude to Dr. Sally Smith, whose report he'd hung on to all these years. I had a better idea.

I thought that he should tell her. Kyle, I mean, honestly, you really should, you know, realize how much credit you need to take yourself for getting yourself to this position because the trauma that you went through, you know, is very difficult for people to overcome. There's a broad range of, you know, manifestations of how these kinds of traumatic experiences in childhood end up just, you know, following people all through their lives and, you know, serving as barriers for them to be successful and things like that. And honestly, especially when, you know, we realize how much of this you've had to do on your own. I'll just say it's very impressive and congratulations on getting yourself where you are.

I'm nothing if not stubborn. I thought of you as my champion even if I don't remember meeting you and that holds true. You're going through notes. Did you have notes about me other than the reports I have or because I was surprised you remember. When I originally got your email, email, I still worked at the Child Protection Team, and so I had access to the file. And I actually pulled the file from the archives to look at the more detailed information. I recognized your name, but I didn't really remember all the details. And so, yeah, we had medical records of yours, and I think like the multidisciplinary staffing report, some things like that. As I mentioned,

And I've gotten more in the habit of speaking to other people who might help as sort of like tiebreakers. You know, when it seems like this is happening. The mother's saying it's something else if you can get some people that can or, you know, some evidence that can, you know, sort of provide support one way or the other. That can be very important. So, yeah, I mean, I did have. some additional things beyond what I don't anymore when I left there I was unable to take that information but I but I did have a little bit of you know sort of background that I had looked at

more recently than 2002 I think was when I originally saw you and Sally anything anything you want to say here at the end um you know I really um am so happy to to see that I'm sure day to day you have issues that you have to deal with and things like that. But overall, I mean, from what you're describing of your life and your path, and especially the last four or five years, I mean, man, I feel like you've got a great life before you, hopefully. And it warms my heart that people who go through trauma like you did as a child overcome it. And, you know, even when people don't help, maybe sometimes, you know, the effort that you make is the thing that makes a difference.

And on the outside chance that you can make a little bit of a difference in one of these children's lives, I think that's that's kind of what I feel like Childebe's pediatricians get out of bed for. As Kyle and I were wrapping up this season, I got another email from Kyle, and attached was a selfie with him and Sally. She'd gone to see him perform in a community theater production of Pride and Prejudice. Kyle was Mr. Darcy. Of all the caps who've gotten dragged through the mud in the last few years, Sally has gotten it the worst. And the damage to her reputation and the target this has put on her fellow caps,

these were not unintended consequences. Back in the summer of 2023, days before the release of Take Care of Maya, Holly Simonton, one of the founders of Fractured Families, posted about the film on the Facebook page, which she notes features many families from their group. It's going to put a huge spotlight on medical kidnapping, she wrote. There are going to be people who watch this who've never heard of a cap or this issue before. She encouraged people who'd received a differential diagnosis to keep sharing their stories. And in the years since the film was released, of course, they have.

And as long as they keep sharing their stories, I'll be here looking for the truth. Because even in this climate of such intense misinformation and disorientation, I think people still care about the truth. I think the truth still matters. I genuinely believe that nothing about take care of Maya is going to stand the test of time. Least of all, it's depiction of Dr. Sally Smith. Ultimately, the measure of how much you care about something isn't how loud you are about it. It's what you're willing to sacrifice for it.

And even after everything she's been through, one of the things I admire the most about Sally is that she hasn't lost her compassion. You might think she'd hold animus for people like John and Viviana who've dedicated their time to trying to make her life miserable. But she really doesn't seem to. She understands, as I do, that what happened in these families was a tragedy, and that everyone involved, however unpleasant they might be, is a human being. We can hold on to our empathy even for those who do monstrous things,

and I would argue that we should. It seems unlikely that there will ever be justice for Nolan Kelly, but that doesn't mean we should forget about him. Abuse can happen for varying reasons. Sometimes it's compulsive, sometimes it happens in a caregiver's worst moment, brought on by exhaustion, frustration, and other circumstances that could have been alleviated before things took a horrible turn. But we can't solve any of these problems

if we insist on keeping horrible things that happen to children in the dark. How best to protect children can and should be a subject of robust, good faith debate. But we have to look at it head on. And all the while, we have to hold on to our humanity. I think you've got to be pretty compassionate for the people who just happened, you know, the bystanders, the non-offending parent. And the idea that, you know, if you're in an intimate relationship with that person, well, you're not going to likely call them liars left and right. And if somebody is insisting that, oh, this is what happened and it's perfectly innocent and,

oh, I would never do such a thing. And that kind of thing, then that's pretty hard for that person to, I mean, you know, ideally, and I saw it a lot, where they would get a little, that non-offending parent would get more information, the medical stuff would be presented in some way to them. And they're just like, wow, I did not think that was even possible. But I'm choosing the child. You know, I thought I knew this guy. I thought I knew this woman. But whatever that's all about, you all take care of. of, you know, the case plan and the law enforcement and stuff, I am doing whatever I have to do

to protect this baby of mine. Those people need and deserve a lot of support. Special thanks to the many experts, thinkers and scientists, especially the many child abuse pediatricians who lent us their wisdom and their voices this season. And to those who bravely shared their personal experiences with our listeners, thank you for trusting us. I could never make this show without my credible team. My co-executive producer and partner in true crime, Mariah Gossett, are incredible researchers and fact-checkers, Erin Ajay and Jessi v. Randall, our superlative story editor, Nicole Hill, our top-notch editor and producer Greta Stromquist, and Robin Edgar, who makes everything sound perfect. Last but not least, our operations manager, Nola Karmouche, who is the only

reason this show makes it onto the air each week, and the only reason I make it anywhere on time. I'm so grateful to be working with such brilliant, intellectually honest, compassionate people. I sleep well at night because this show is in your capable hands. I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this has been Season 7 of Nobody Should Believe Me. And while the season might be ending, the story never does. We'll be here with you each week, watching it all unfold.