Survivors’ Discussion Continued | BONUS | Saskia’s Story

The survivors from the roundtable in Episode 7 continue their conversation. Content Warning for rape, tech-enabled sexual abuse, nonconsensual intimate image distribution, and mental health struggles. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod https://www.instagram.com/betrayalpod/ and @glasspodcasts https://www.instagram.com/glasspodcasts/. Follow our newsletter and join the Betrayal community at betrayal.substack.com. https://betrayal.substack.com/welcome For resources on sexual violence, visit rainn.org/betrayal http://www.rainn.org/Betrayal?utm_source=partner&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=betrayal_2026&utm_content=web_resource&utm_term=general. You can also get free, confidential, 24/7 support through RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline. Text HOPE to 64673 or call 1-800-656-HOPE. Every state has a domestic violence coalition, and many counties also have resources available. If you’re looking for help, go onto your county’s website to see what resources are available locally, or search the web for your state’s domestic violence coalition. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 2:41Speaker 00

  I'm Andrea Gunning and this is a bonus episode of Betrayal. For this bonus episode, we'd like to share more excerpts from the survivors group discussion because these women, Amber, Natalie, Stephanie, and Saskia, had so much more to say than we could fit in one episode. This discussion was moderated by a professional.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  Having conversations with survivors is really near and dear to not just my heart, but to Rain's heart.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Megan Cutter is the chief of Victim Services at Rain, the rape, abuse, and incest national network. Rain has been working with us throughout season five.

• 3:20Speaker 05

  Healing is not a linear journey. It's not a straight line. So I want to talk about that concept with all of you and would love to get a sense of like, how do you define healing for you? And I think this can be a conversation of like, how this feels? How's this show up? So let's talk about healing.

• 3:40Speaker 06

  I think that's the hard part. There's no like arrival.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  That's Amber. It's been two decades since she found out her then fiance was drugging and raping her.

• 3:52Speaker 06

  If you had asked me 20 years ago, I would have been like, yeah, by 20 years in, I'm going to be all better. I'm not even going to think about this anymore. I wish it was something where we could just flip a switch and never think about it again. My capacity has changed though. My ability to not judge myself, that was a huge thing that I had to get over was like, why am I not better? So I went internal with a lot of it for a very long time. I still think of it almost every day, but it doesn't take my feet out from underneath me when I think about it.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Then another survivor, Natalie, jumped in.

• 4:31Speaker 07

  Like you, Amber, I'm going on 12 years.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  That's how long it's been since Natalie found images on her son's iPad of her husband assaulting her.

• 4:42Speaker 07

  I remember there being a time years ago where I'm like, no, I'm fine. Like, I could totally handle this. I can deal with it. I'll just keep this inside and shove it in a little box and it's fine. And no, it's not because days would pop up and I'm like, ugh, I'm really not fine.

• 5:02Speaker 08

  I think, you know, we all share this common feeling that I don't know how to fix my life after it's completely blown up like this.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  That's Stephanie. She shared her story in season one of Betrayal Weekly. After 23 years of marriage, she found intimate photos of herself on her husband's laptop.

• 5:28Speaker 08

  But it was very empowering for me to share my story through the Betrayal podcast. And the best part of what came out of that is that the podcast producers connected me with Saskia, who is my absolute soul sister.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Back when we first met Saskia, we immediately saw the parallels between her and Stephanie's stories. So we connected them via email. Email threads eventually turned into long phone calls, which gave way to a deep friendship. Stephanie even flew out to visit Saskia in Maryland last summer. They watched TV together, went on walks. And when one of them felt overcome with grief or anxiety, they didn't have to explain because they both understood. Here's Saskia.

• 6:23Speaker 09

  You know, to see how strong Stephanie was through this gave me more of the, you know what, I'm gonna see that I can be a survivor, that I am a survivor, and that I can help other people with this. We can make sure that nobody else feels as alone as we did. I feel like I'm in really good company.

• 6:43Speaker 08

  And now to have Natalie and Amber also to join this terrible sisterhood that no one wants to be a part of is just really, really powerful.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Like the other survivors, Saskia's effort to rebuild her life is ongoing.

• 7:03Speaker 09

  One thing that was so hard for me is that this was seven years of my life where I thought that I had a wonderful husband and a wonderful family.

• 7:16Speaker 09

  And I didn't know what to do with those seven years of memories. We had to not only deal with being raped, but also having our whole lives as we knew them fall apart. I wouldn't wish that on anybody, but I think it allows us to kind of build back up and take some of our control back. But I think a necessary part is to gain more confidence, be more aware of our needs and our wants, right? I know I've learned that you do have to be a little bit selfish in life just to survive. I always thought that was a bad word, being selfish, but

• 7:56Speaker 09

  I think being selfless, you know, really enabled me to be taken advantage of.

• 8:03Speaker 08

  I think it's a matter of not selfishness, but self-preservation. I've learned, and I see that in you also, Saskia. We have finally figured out that we need to prioritize ourselves, our feelings, and taking care of ourselves and not just everybody else.

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• 11:06Speaker 00

  Right around the same time Saskia reached out to us, Giselle Pellicoe's story was gaining international attention. Giselle is the woman in France whose husband drugged and raped her over the course of a decade and invited dozens of other men to do the same. Megan Cutter, the facilitator for RAIN, brought up Giselle's case with the group.

• 11:28Speaker 05

  When you see stories in the news, in the media, over the last year or so, we've seen a lot of conversation about Giselle Pellicoe and her story. What's the impact of seeing a story like Giselle's in the media or hearing on the podcast a story similar to your own?

• 11:45Speaker 08

  I felt like the Giselle Pellicoe story has been really important in bringing awareness to the whole world that there is such a thing as marital rape, marital sexual abuse.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  That's Stephanie again.

• 12:02Speaker 08

  Her country gave her the privilege of having her anonymity, but she still went forward to bring this abuse onto a national, international spotlight, which was just amazing.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Here's Amber.

• 12:21Speaker 06

  I go on TikTok, social media, Instagram, and I can come across, just in my scrolling, so many accounts of people talking about sexual abuse. And it's like, okay, people are talking about this in the public square, where that was not the case 20 years ago. But is it where it needs to be? No. Let's not just pat ourselves in the back as a culture and say, look at us. We've become so much better at this. It's like, better doesn't necessarily mean good, you know? And what more do we need to do?

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Then Natalie brought up another high-profile sexual abuse case, one that saw polarizing public reaction.

• 12:59Speaker 07

  When you said in the media, I remember Bill Cosby. And I was listening to that and just listening to commentary from people, just being so angry and wanting to stand up for those victims and trying to educate people on how wrong it is.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Bill Cosby was America's dad. But in 2014 and 2015, more than 60 women came forward accusing him of drugging and raping them. The victims were torn apart in the press and online. Many were accused of making these allegations up for fame or financial gain.

• 13:41Speaker 07

  I didn't realize at that time, but I feel exactly what those other victims were feeling and being labeled as that is just something shameful to carry. People give their opinions and sometimes it would just be really hard because, you know, you just have to sit there and kind of take it.

• 14:05Speaker 05

  We talk a lot at RAIN about the myth of the perfect victim.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  We think a lot about this myth on betrayal, too. How it contributes to some survivors being perceived as more sympathetic, believable, while others are written off.

• 14:20Speaker 05

  The perfect victim, they weren't drinking, they weren't using drugs, they remembered every single moment of their abuse and they remembered it in order and they went right to the police and they said, "I need help right away." And this idea of what someone quote unquote "should do" when they experience sexual violence, which is not at all aligned with how trauma works in the brain, how abusers function, like it's not real. And when someone doesn't match that idea, there can be judgment, there can be shame, there can be a lot of putting something on the survivor. Have there been moments when you all have questioned your own experience because of the expectations put on you by that perfect victim dialogue?

• 15:02Speaker 06

  When you look at like the perfect victim, I was not a partier. I wasn't out drinking regularly. I didn't have a fake ID. I never did drugs. Even with that, I was deemed a non-credible witness by the first two police officers that I spoke to. And they're like, "Yeah, your testimony won't stand, you know, the DA won't pick this up." I don't remember things in a linear way. It's so frustrating. I wasn't somebody of ill repute. It didn't make any difference in my case.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Then Saskia spoke. She knew firsthand what it meant to be held to that perfect victim standard. She lived through it in her divorce case with Mike.

• 15:42Speaker 09

  I feel like he was given every grace.

• 15:48Speaker 09

  Every opportunity to just shit on me, my mental health, my substance use and abuse. We've been so traumatized already to have to then put your life on display and talk about your vulnerabilities and defend them. I couldn't have expected the nightmare.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Saskia did conform to the perfect victim narrative in at least one way. She rushed to report Mike, her abuser, the moment she realized what was happening.

• 16:28Speaker 09

  But I think back and if I had my wits about me, maybe I would have chose more self-preservation. Right? I had two stepdaughters and as soon as I discovered what happened, they were pulled from my lives and the lives of my kids. My kids had to see me falling to my knees. So I have guilt for some of the things that I did too. You know, I don't think that I'm better than anybody because I chose this path. We all have to give ourselves grace for our choices and what we had to do to survive.

• 17:11Speaker 05

  I am sitting with what each of you have shared and talked about. And I think it's reminding me survivorship is not a monolith. Right? And I imagine for people listening to this too, to hear that there are different ways to navigate this will hopefully make them feel like whatever way they're trying to stay safe is okay and is right and is valid. My last question is if there's a survivor listening to this, what is it that you wish for them?

• 17:45Speaker 06

  My wish and desire for you is that you would know that you are loved, that you deserve safety and kindness and compassion exactly as you are right now.

• 17:59Speaker 08

  I want any victim survivor of this to know that she did nothing to cause this. And the shame is 100% on the perpetrator and.

• 18:15Speaker 07

  You're not alone. Carrying that shame is really what kept me from a lot. And it really isn't yours to carry. It's not ours to carry.

• 18:28Speaker 09

  I think I would share that it's not what happens to you. It's what you do with that and how you respond to it. That shows the type of person that you are. And it's possible to have something so tragic happen to you and still have goodness and hope and not let anyone take that away from you.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  For resources on sexual violence, visit rainn.org/betrayal. That's R A I N N dot org slash betrayal. You can also get free confidential 24/7 support through RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline. Just text HOPE to 64673 or call 1-800-656-HOPE. You are not alone. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your story, email us at [email protected]. That is [email protected] or follow us on Instagram at BetrayalPod. To access additional content and to connect with the Betrayal community,

• 19:38Speaker 00

  join our Substack at betrayal.substack.com. We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning. Written and produced by Lea Jablow with additional production by Caitlin Golden. Our supervising producer is Carrie Hartman. Our story editor is Monique LaBord. Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Our associate producer is Olivia Hewitt. Production management by Kristin Melchiori. Additional support by Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team is Ally Perry and Jessica Krychek. Audio editing by Tanner Robbins with additional editing and mixing by Matt Del Vecchio. Special thanks to Saskia, her friends and family. And special thanks to Will Pearson and Carrie Lieberman. The roundtable discussion was led with the help of RAIN, the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network. Thank you to our facilitator, Megan Cutter, and to Angelina Marcano for her support. Additional thanks to Jennifer Simmons Kaliba. The trial's theme is composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MyB Music.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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