Pod Insights Betrayal Tina Maia | Featured on ABC's Betrayal: Secrets & Lies About this episode You can now see Tina's story on TV! Check out Betrayal: Secrets and Lies. Episodes air every Sunday at 10pm EST/9pm CST on ABC.
Tina could have never prepared herself for the elaborate deceptions of her baby’s father.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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1:58 Speaker 04 A friend of mine described it really well. She said, "It's not like he's a catch-me-if-you-can type person. He actually lies to make himself as normal as possible, just like your average bloke." And it's true. His facade was authenticity.
2:32 Speaker 00 I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.
2:43 Speaker 00 Tina Maya is a successful e-commerce consultant in the UK.
2:49 Speaker 00 In 2016, a casual, romantic fling turned her entire world upside down.
2:56 Speaker 00 It showed her a dark side of humanity,
3:00 Speaker 00 one that she'd never seen before.
3:04 Speaker 04 There's definitely an element of control. He can walk away, but he can remotely control the rest of your life.
3:13 Speaker 00 Her story is also one of community. Along the way, she found a group of other women who'd been deceived and betrayed by the same man.
3:24 Speaker 00 Tina's become their spokesperson and the spokesperson for a much larger story.
3:33 Speaker 00 Tina was raised to be opinionated and strong-willed.
3:37 Speaker 04 So I was born in Iran, actually, before the revolution. We came here in 1978. And I grew up in southeast England, so very green, leafy part of the world.
3:52 Speaker 00 When she graduated from university, she traveled and spent years living abroad.
3:58 Speaker 04 I went to Australia and Thailand and India as well, a lot of places, Costa Rica. You know, I spent a lot of time sort of building my career and living life.
4:11 Speaker 00 In the 90s and 2000s, Tina was early to adopt the internet's potential, especially for commerce and online retail. She made a career working in digital sales. That ended up taking her to New York City, where she met her husband. By her mid-30s, he welcomed a son, Leo.
4:29 Speaker 04 He was an incredible baby and I really enjoyed becoming a mother.
4:36 Speaker 00 But her husband, on the other hand, struggled.
4:39 Speaker 04 He wasn't a very hands-on father.
4:43 Speaker 04 It was just Leo when me against the world for a while.
4:47 Speaker 00 When Tina was offered a prestigious job back in the UK, she separated from her husband and made the leap. Now, her daily life was focused on work and raising her son. For Tina, being a single mom to one child felt manageable. She loved that dynamic.
5:04 Speaker 04 I was at a mom's drinks thing. And I remember having a conversation with one of the moms who had a lot of problems with the second child. She said to me, I'm like, oh, you got to write like one child. The dream.
5:21 Speaker 00 When her son started grade school, Tina had more nights to herself.
5:26 Speaker 04 He spends more time with friends. He goes to sleepovers, got a little bit more independence. I wasn't actively going out and dating or anything like that. I was so busy, I wasn't even thinking about dating.
5:40 Speaker 04 It wasn't on the radar.
5:42 Speaker 00 In 2016, she attended a tech conference in London. That day, she must have met and exchanged contact info with at least 30 people, one of them being Neil Lawman.
5:55 Speaker 04 He's a very charismatic person. He's very good looking. I suppose he was a bit flirtatious.
6:04 Speaker 00 Neil was from Essex. To put it in American terms.
6:08 Speaker 04 I guess the American version would be Jersey Shore.
6:13 Speaker 00 Think party culture and spray tans. Tina's interaction with Neil was nothing special, just a friendly exchange of business cards. She assumed it was a professional connection. But soon, Neil began texting her.
6:29 Speaker 04 And then one day he texted me, and I had just closed a very significant deal. So I was in a very good mood. And he said that he was in the area and asked me if I fancied going for a drink.
6:44 Speaker 00 That night, her son was at a sleepover.
6:47 Speaker 04 I said, you know what? Why not?
6:50 Speaker 00 It was perfect timing, so they met at a neighborhood pub.
6:55 Speaker 04 We sat down and started talking. He was very open, asked me about, you know, my life.
7:04 Speaker 00 She talked about her son and her ex-husband in America. And Neil shared details about his past.
7:11 Speaker 04 He told me that his ex-wife, they'd lived together in the US and she had cheated on him. And she'd run off with his best friend.
7:20 Speaker 00 The reason his wife had left was because Neil couldn't have kids.
7:26 Speaker 04 She was very bitter about the fact that he couldn't give her children. And then he went on to tell me about the fact that he'd had cancer and it's testicular cancer. So it was impossible.
7:39 Speaker 00 It was a touchy subject. Neil seemed deeply hurt by his ex-wife. Tina felt for him.
7:47 Speaker 04 He seemed almost a little bit vulnerable. Like he had this sort of emotional vulnerability about him.
7:53 Speaker 00 The night was going well. And before long, they found themselves in another bar, making jokes and inching closer together.
8:03 Speaker 00 She liked him, but she wanted to keep it casual.
8:08 Speaker 04 I didn't see it as being a long-term, serious relationship prospect. That was not where my head was. It's not the sort of time that I had. I wasn't interested in bringing anyone into my son's life. It was just letting my hair down and having a bit of fun, really.
8:28 Speaker 00 And Neil knew how to have a good time.
8:31 Speaker 04 He had that sort of cheeky, chappy, Jack the lad kind of thing about him. It was fun.
8:39 Speaker 00 At the end of their night together.
8:41 Speaker 04 He walked me home in the very early hours of the morning.
8:46 Speaker 00 They kissed goodnight, and Neil said he wanted to see her again. He was often in her area because he owned and managed a few properties there. He promised to text the next time he was in her neighborhood. And he did. So after their first night out together.
9:02 Speaker 04 He continued to text me, and then he would come over once a week or so.
9:08 Speaker 00 Tina couldn't remember the last time she had a fling like this. It had to have been well before her marriage. It was just what she needed. It made her feel sexy and confident. Before they slept together.
9:23 Speaker 04 I said to him that it wasn't on the pill, does he have anything? He said, no, I'm really allergic to latex.
9:32 Speaker 00 Tina was 41, and after his testicular cancer treatments, Neil couldn't have kids. Without the pill or using regular condoms, they settled on another method.
9:45 Speaker 04 I was quite adamant about using withdrawal methods. And I'd asked him, did you withdraw in time? Because I could have gone and got a Plan B. But he was like, no, absolutely.
10:02 Speaker 00 Over the next few months, they saw each other whenever they could. And Tina got to know more about him.
10:08 Speaker 04 He said that he went to the London School of Economics, which is sort of Harvard Business School level.
10:18 Speaker 00 But when Tina tried to talk about the neighborhood where the school's located, Neil seemed confused, like he didn't know the area. But it had been decades since Neil was in school, so Tina didn't think much of it.
10:31 Speaker 04 I didn't really question it too much. I wasn't thinking of him as husband material or something. So things weren't registering too much with me.
10:42 Speaker 00 Eventually, Neil's appeal started to wear off.
10:46 Speaker 04 There was just one too many things that just wasn't adding up or ringing true. Like, he would make a plan and then have some weird excuse. And I'm like, it's starting to be less fun now.
10:59 Speaker 00 She was ready to move on.
11:02 Speaker 00 So she stopped responding promptly to his texts.
11:05 Speaker 04 Kind of wanted to phase it out anyway. So it got a little cold.
11:10 Speaker 00 A few weeks later, she didn't feel quite like herself.
11:14 Speaker 04 I was misplacing things. I was looking for my car keys all over the place and realized that I'd thrown them in the wheelie bin with my rubbish when I threw the rubbish out.
11:27 Speaker 00 This feeling was familiar.
11:31 Speaker 04 Funny thing, I normally only do things like that when I'm pregnant.
11:36 Speaker 04 I don't get morning sickness, I don't get cravings, but I get very forgetful.
11:42 Speaker 00 She confided in a friend about what was going on.
11:46 Speaker 04 She said to me, go and get a pregnancy test. And she said, as soon as you do that and you realize that, you know, you're not pregnant, then the period will come. I'm like, you know, that's a really good idea.
11:58 Speaker 00 So she got the test.
12:00 Speaker 04 So I went to the bathroom and read the instructions. And then, yeah, popped the lid on, you're supposed to wait three minutes.
12:09 Speaker 04 Immediately came up pregnant. Okay, I'll just wait the full three minutes for the knot to come up.
12:19 Speaker 00 She was pregnant at 41. Even though it was unexpected and unplanned, she felt immediately connected to this child.
12:30 Speaker 04 It's hard to describe, but she was very present in me very early on.
12:39 Speaker 04 There was something very, very strong about this presence, and I felt that right away.
12:45 Speaker 00 Even still, it was a massive shock because the baby had to be Neil's.
12:52 Speaker 04 There hadn't been anybody else.
12:55 Speaker 00 But Neil was infertile, so this baby was a medical miracle. Tina turned to her friend who suggested maybe Neil would be happy about the baby.
13:07 Speaker 04 She was like, oh, all these years, he didn't know that he could have children.
13:12 Speaker 00 Miracle baby or not, Tina knew that she and Neil didn't have a future together. Now she had to break up with him and tell him the news.
13:23 Speaker 04 Wow, okay. This is gonna be awkward then.
13:28 Speaker 00 She took a few days to think and finally sent Neil a message.
13:33 Speaker 04 So I said, I need to talk to you, but to meet up tomorrow. I can come and meet you, but need to have a little chat. And then he said something along the lines of, yeah, yeah, sure. I'll send my brother to meet you. And I'm like, no, because we need to talk. And he said, well, I don't see why there's anything you can't tell me here. I was like, really? You want me to tell you what I need to tell you over text?
14:05 Speaker 04 And he's like, yeah. I was like, okay, fine, if you insist. And so I said, I am pregnant. You are the only option of who the father is.
14:18 Speaker 04 And then he answered a little bit strangely. He said, nice try. I had a vasectomy.
14:27 Speaker 04 And I was like, vasectomy? And I sent him a picture of the pregnancy test. I said, well, it didn't work.
14:36 Speaker 00 She wasn't expecting anything from him.
14:40 Speaker 04 One of the things that I immediately said was, I'm not expecting or asking you to be a father to the child. I am letting you know because it's a responsible thing to do. And you can be as uninvolved as you wish.
14:58 Speaker 00 She didn't know how he would react, but she certainly wasn't expecting what happened next.
15:04 Speaker 04 Things turned nasty on his part, which took me aback. He sent me a whole load of nasty voicemails.
15:15 Speaker 05 Hi Tina, let's talk about this baby, okay? Now, there's something very strange about this baby. Let me explain it to you.
15:23 Speaker 04 And you could just hear in his voice that turn and how nasty he became. It was like real visceral.
15:30 Speaker 00 In these messages, Neil doubled down on his story.
15:34 Speaker 05 I have zero sperm. It's medically impossible. If it were, I'd still be living happily with my wife in the USA. We split up because she wanted kids and I couldn't have them.
15:48 Speaker 00 As the messages and calls kept coming, it got more personal.
15:52 Speaker 04 He said, "You'll be a single mom and you won't be able to get a job and you won't be able to work and you'll be poor."
15:59 Speaker 00 Then, meaner.
16:01 Speaker 04 And, "Oh, he accused me of thinking of him as a cash cow."
16:07 Speaker 00 Then, kind of scary.
16:09 Speaker 04 And then he said that he had gone to the police and reported me to the police. First, he said harassment. And then he said that he'd reported me for entrapment.
16:19 Speaker 00 And some of his messages were downright strange.
16:23 Speaker 04 He started to come up with a story. When he was in the hospital with his kidney infection, they found cancer cells. And how selfish I am and what a horrible person I am having told him that I was pregnant and that I'm basically killing him.
16:41 Speaker 00 From her first date with Neil, she knew he wasn't a keeper. But she had no idea he could be this cruel.
16:48 Speaker 04 Whoa, this is not normal. This was really strange.
16:56 Speaker 05 So, I'm gonna tell you something. I will have nothing to do with you. Nothing to do with you claiming I'm the father of your child. You can keep the baby, great for you. But it ain't mine, darling. It seriously, seriously isn't mine.
17:11 Speaker 04 I just thought he was an asshole. My friend, she's kinder than me, thought that he was in some sort of state of shock because he thought he could never have children.
17:21 Speaker 00 But Neil wasn't in shock, and he wasn't in denial. Tina didn't know it at the time, but this was something far more insidious.
17:30 Speaker 04 This is something that he's gone through many, many, many, many times over.
17:51 Speaker 00 When Tina Maya told the man she'd been casually dating she was pregnant, he became a different person. Neil Lawman started sending her callous voice messages about how the baby could not possibly be his. He even accused Tina of harassment. Regardless of his disturbing reaction, Tina wanted to have the baby on her own. She was sure of that. So after his vitriolic messages, she drew a boundary with Neil.
18:21 Speaker 04 I said, yeah, I'll let you know when she's born and you can decide if you want to have a DNA test or not. That's your right. And then he replied, no, thank you. I will not be participating in any DNA test. Okay. No worries.
18:37 Speaker 00 As far as Tina was concerned, Neil was out of the picture.
18:41 Speaker 04 And I went on, obviously I had a lot to deal with.
18:45 Speaker 00 She blocked him and moved forward with the rest of her pregnancy. It wouldn't be her first time as a single mom. Tina's friends and family rallied around her to provide support. And she needed it. Especially when the baby was born.
19:01 Speaker 04 When I went into labor, both she and I got an infection. She went blue and she was there in an incubator. She also had very, very, very bad jaundice.
19:12 Speaker 00 Her newborn baby, Josephine, was in critical condition. She had a severe lung infection. The doctor wanted to prepare for a blood transfusion.
19:23 Speaker 04 He said, so yeah, just in case, the worst case scenario, we're gonna need to get a medical history, blood types for parents in case there's some kind of rarity, genetic rarity or something like that. And I was like, well, I can only give you half.
19:37 Speaker 00 But half wasn't good enough, especially considering Neil's history of cancer.
19:42 Speaker 04 There was probably a complex medical history that we needed to know about before we give this baby a blood transfusion. She was two days old.
19:52 Speaker 00 Instead of reaching out to Neil, she decided to call one of his friends, the only friend of his she knew how to reach.
20:00 Speaker 04 I said, listen, here's my hospital number. And this is the doctor's name. Can you just have him tell them blood type, any kind of medical history, anything like that?
20:12 Speaker 00 Neil's friend tried to get him to go, or at least to call the hospital.
20:17 Speaker 04 And he's like, no, absolutely. I told him he needs to get his house down there right away.
20:23 Speaker 00 But Neil never showed up.
20:26 Speaker 04 No call has come through to reception. So yeah, he's not here and has not been here.
20:31 Speaker 00 And then while Tina was lying in her hospital bed, she got a text from Neil.
20:37 Speaker 04 He sent me long, long, long abusive text messages about, I wouldn't, I wouldn't lift a finger to help your child.
20:47 Speaker 04 Even if she did have my DNA, I'm not giving any information to any doctors. I'm like, oh, okay. You are a psychopath. This is a two day old baby. And all I asked is for you to make a phone call, which anybody would do for a stranger's baby, for a kitten. No human being would refuse to make a phone call to potentially save a baby.
21:20 Speaker 00 But Neil refused. He was not interested in helping the baby. He was more concerned with lashing out at Tina.
21:30 Speaker 04 Like he called me vile tongued foul woman, all sorts of like horror names. So yeah, I'd just given birth.
21:40 Speaker 04 I was in hospital with needles stuck in me for the antibiotics and things. And I was like, this is a really evil person.
21:49 Speaker 00 She was beyond anger.
21:51 Speaker 04 I was disgusted. I was disgusted. I was like, yeah, whatever you are, you, you have no humanity.
22:00 Speaker 00 Up until this moment, she'd planned to raise the baby completely on her own, without asking Neil for a single penny. But after he showed his true colors, she decided.
22:11 Speaker 04 You know what? I'm just going to send the Chelsea Police Agency off to you for the next 18 years. Bye bye.
22:17 Speaker 00 She figured the courts could handle Neil, and she and her family could move on. Luckily, her newborn daughter recovered without needing a blood transfusion.
22:27 Speaker 04 After a week of being in hospital, we were both able to go home.
22:32 Speaker 00 When she got home with Josephine, or Fifi as she calls her, their house was full of joy. Her son, who was eight, became a doting big brother.
22:41 Speaker 04 My son adored her from day one, and she was just the sweetest baby.
22:48 Speaker 00 Now with two children to support, Tina had to return to work just two weeks later.
22:54 Speaker 04 So I took the mandatory two weeks and went back to work. And I was back on a train in London. I had a nanny and a friend helped me out also with her. And yeah, back to work.
23:08 Speaker 00 One day while she was on her way to work, she decided to call the UK's Child Support Agency to get the paperwork started for child support. After they looked into Tina's claim, the agency contacted her with surprising news about Neil.
23:25 Speaker 04 It came back that firstly, it said that he only had to pay £5 a week because he was in receipt of benefits.
23:36 Speaker 00 Meaning that Neil was on unemployment. But that didn't add up to Tina. She met him at a tech conference. He owned his own company. She'd met his coworkers. She tried to explain this to the Child Support Agency.
23:52 Speaker 04 And I said, well, he's not, and if he is, he shouldn't be because he's got a business. I mean, I know he has a functioning business.
24:02 Speaker 00 But the government didn't have records of his businesses or income.
24:07 Speaker 00 And that wasn't all.
24:09 Speaker 04 The other interesting thing was that £5 a week was split between my daughter and three other children. I was like, okay, so here's a news bit.
24:25 Speaker 00 Neil had three other children? What about his story of being infertile? Tina went into investigation mode, searching for business and personal records of Neil Lawman.
24:38 Speaker 04 I went all the way back to one from a number of years ago.
24:43 Speaker 00 In Neil's records, she found the name of a woman, someone who'd changed her last name to Lawman.
24:50 Speaker 04 So I was like, okay, that must be his ex-wife. If she is an ex-wife, it might be his current wife.
24:57 Speaker 00 Maybe this was the woman he'd been married to in the States, but Tina didn't really know what to believe anymore.
25:04 Speaker 04 At this point, I realized that there's a lot of lies. So I go on Facebook and Lawman isn't a common name. I pull it up and there's her Facebook profile.
25:16 Speaker 00 The first thing she noticed about her profile?
25:19 Speaker 04 She was not in America. She's right here in the UK.
25:23 Speaker 00 And the second?
25:24 Speaker 04 Pictures of two girls who are undoubtedly his daughters.
25:31 Speaker 00 Looking at the photos of two little girls clearly related to Neil made Tina's head spin. At the very least, she knew she'd found the right person.
25:43 Speaker 04 So I text her on Facebook. And yeah, obviously I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how she would react, if she would respond at all. I didn't know if they were still married and he'd lied about that. I had no idea what to expect from this, but yeah, what could I do? So I wrote her a message and she immediately responded. The first line of a very long message said, "I'm so, so sorry that you've offended his victim."
26:28 Speaker 00 When Tina applied for child support, she discovered a trove of information about her daughter's biological father, Neil Lawman. First, that he was on unemployment and claimed he was unable to make child support payments. He wasn't the high-flying tech guy he'd pretended to be. Second, that he already owed child support for three other children. The whole story about him being infertile from prostate cancer was a complete lie, an elaborate deception from night one.
27:04 Speaker 00 When Tina began looking into Neil's background, she found the name of his ex-wife. We're going to call her Wendy.
27:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, we start talking and communicating.
27:16 Speaker 00 And his ex-wife had a story to tell. She'd been with him for 10 years. They had two daughters together. Then one day, Neil walked out, leaving her with a significant amount of debt.
27:28 Speaker 04 If she hadn't have been bailed out by her parents, they would have been on the streets or something like that. And yeah, she seemed traumatized.
27:37 Speaker 00 Neil had claimed that his wife cheated on him, that she left him because he was infertile. He said she was still back in America. But it turns out Wendy very much lived in the UK. In fact, she lived in the same neighborhood as Tina.
27:57 Speaker 00 Now Tina could safely assume everything he'd ever told her was a lie.
28:02 Speaker 04 So we now know that the whole America thing was a lie. The cancer thing, well, yeah, even if he'd had cancer, it did not cause infertility. I'm like, wow, okay, great. Now we're down a rabbit hole.
28:19 Speaker 00 Tina and Wendy agreed to meet for dinner, to talk in person.
28:24 Speaker 04 So we met up in London. We both liked sushi, so we went to a very nice sushi restaurant.
28:31 Speaker 00 Right away, Tina was struck by how familiar Wendy seemed. The two women had the same energy: independent, confident, and outgoing. Wendy had some important information for Tina: things she needed to know. You see, after Neil left her, Wendy found out about two more children: two sons he had fathered before her daughters were born. Tina stared at Wendy, processing the reality that her daughter was one of five. How many more kids were out there? And what would that mean for her daughter, for their daughters? It was a reality Wendy had barely begun to confront herself.
29:16 Speaker 04 She'd said that she had never told her daughters about the older voice that she'd found out about.
29:25 Speaker 00 Since Neil left Wendy, he'd barely spoken to their two young daughters.
29:30 Speaker 04 Nothing, absolutely nothing, in all of these years. Except an annual birthday phone call to one of the children, where you would lie about having sent a gift that, you know, never arrived.
29:43 Speaker 00 Tina and Wendy ordered another round of martinis and talked until the restaurant closed. Before they said goodbye, Tina got an idea.
29:52 Speaker 04 Let's do something a little bit funny. So we took a selfie. We were both giving the bird. And we sent him an email with just a picture and entitled "The Other Mother, Mother." Aha.
30:11 Speaker 04 He went ballistic.
30:16 Speaker 00 Neil started sending unhinged emails to Tina, to Wendy, even to his ex-father-in-law.
30:24 Speaker 04 And then he'd also sent a horrific email to my work. A very graphic slut-shaping email addressed to the entire company, including the CEO.
30:42 Speaker 00 She was horrified. This was too far.
30:47 Speaker 04 So I reported this to the police and they did take it quite seriously and they said that it was malicious communication.
30:56 Speaker 00 But this wasn't the first time the cops had investigated Neil.
31:00 Speaker 04 He was also involved in a very high-profile fraud case of the Fimbo Wine Scheme. And his ex-girlfriend actually ended up serving time for that, but he just walked away. He's got free.
31:19 Speaker 00 Allegedly, he'd been implicated in a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme. And there was more. In total, he had 11 offenses and five convictions, but he never served any prison time.
31:32 Speaker 04 Like Teflon, nothing sticks.
31:37 Speaker 00 After Tina reported Neil to the police, she waited for an update. She'd given them all the information she had on him. And the officers said they'd call her when they made an arrest. But months went by without word. When Tina called for an update.
31:52 Speaker 04 Strangely, the police were like, well, we can't find him. He went underground or something. And then after a year, the work was canceled, which I found odd.
32:04 Speaker 00 Tina knew where he was. He wasn't hiding at all.
32:07 Speaker 04 It's like, well, I could find him. Why can't you?
32:11 Speaker 00 This got Tina thinking.
32:14 Speaker 04 It crossed my mind that he might have been an informant and, you know, he got himself out of these things by giving information to throw the people under the bus.
32:26 Speaker 00 Again, that's just a theory. If the police weren't going to give her answers or justice, she was going to find them herself. So she reached out to Wendy and together, they came up with another idea.
32:41 Speaker 04 We said, look, why don't we start a Facebook group that has his name in it? So at least if someone's looking to sort of date him or get into business and they look him up on Facebook, it'll come up, maybe give them a red flag, give them a warning. So we set up this Facebook group called the Neil Roman Victim Support Group. It was a little tongue in cheek, but yeah, the interesting thing was that, you know, one after another, people actually started to join and tell their stories.
33:17 Speaker 00 As the group grew, Neil tried to get it taken down, but Facebook declared it legitimate public interest. Through this page, they discovered that Neil was allegedly running quite a few schemes at the same time. There were lots of posts about his alleged shady business dealings. When it came to starting new businesses, the posts suggested that Neil had an MO.
33:40 Speaker 04 He would befriend somebody, get into their lives, get, understand their business, and then take over the business. He would just make a copy of it and then take all the customers and try and start these businesses that were other people's, and then suddenly he's an expert.
33:59 Speaker 00 And then there were all the women he'd ghosted, women he'd met online and started serious, long-distance relationships with.
34:07 Speaker 04 There was a diplomat he'd had an online relationship with for years.
34:13 Speaker 00 When this woman finally booked a trip to meet him in person, he said he would pick her up at the airport. But when she landed, he wasn't there. She tried to call him and she realized he blocked her. She never heard from him again.
34:29 Speaker 04 He's done that a lot. He's done that a lot. It's been quite a few people that he's had these sort of online, ongoing relationships with.
34:38 Speaker 00 These stories were bizarre. Was he doing it for the money? To resell the expensive hotel room bookings and concert tickets? Or was it all just one big game to him? Whatever the case, in every story, Neil didn't stick around. Instead, his victims were left to deal with the consequences of his actions. And some were never the same. Like one woman.
35:04 Speaker 04 She was only 18 at the time. Thought she was going for a job interview and then he said, oh, there's meetings going on in the office. You have to meet me. There's the restaurant downstairs and bought her a drink.
35:17 Speaker 00 She wrote to Tina. In her Facebook messages, she said that she woke up in a hotel room disoriented. She alleged that she'd been drugged and raped.
35:27 Speaker 04 She didn't go to the police because she felt ashamed.
35:30 Speaker 00 Multiple women shared stories like this one. Their Facebook posts alleged that Neil was not just a con artist, but a violent man.
35:39 Speaker 04 The fact that they have these
35:42 Speaker 04 almost identical stories makes me think that, yes, that's a pattern.
35:48 Speaker 00 As the group grew, Tina continued to wonder, did anyone out there have a story like hers?
35:55 Speaker 04 And then another mother came along.
35:59 Speaker 00 Her son was now an adult, but she knew Neil was the father.
36:03 Speaker 04 And it turned out that her son was only a few weeks older than one of his other sons. And they lived down the road from each other.
36:15 Speaker 00 Their families knew each other. The boys never interacted, but they easily could have.
36:23 Speaker 04 I mean, that's how close they were.
36:27 Speaker 00 Through the group, Tina learned more about Neil's backstory. And it was revealing.
36:33 Speaker 04 As far as I'm aware, he believed that his stepfather was his real father. Until he was about 14 and then the mother told him the truth. But he was rejected by his own father. But he was never in Neil's life.
36:53 Speaker 00 Like his mom, Neil also had his first child in his teens.
36:57 Speaker 04 When Neil was about 18, that's when he got the first mother pregnant. She was only 15 at the time. The baby was born and he ran off.
37:13 Speaker 00 After that, it seemed like this became a pattern of his. And this wasn't just about having unprotected sex or fathering many kids. He was intentionally deceiving women into believing he was infertile. These women who got pregnant would be tied to Neil forever.
37:30 Speaker 04 There's definitely an element of control. Like, he can remotely control the rest of your life. He can walk away, but still keep that control.
37:44 Speaker 00 So how many children does Neil Lawman actually have? Well, four have been confirmed by DNA. But there are many women who believe Neil is the father of their children.
37:57 Speaker 04 From people coming forward and talking to us, there are at least 13 credible children that, yeah, the mothers have said that he's the father.
38:06 Speaker 00 So the scheme clearly didn't end with Tina. The 13 mothers have become a kind of group. They've bonded. Some of them are even friends.
38:18 Speaker 00 Tina admits...
38:19 Speaker 04 He does have good taste in women. This is one deeming quality. And it's interesting because he doesn't tend to go for vulnerable women. He doesn't tend to go for women who he can control financially or who don't have close families and things like that. It's almost like a challenge to him that he will target women who are strong, who have careers, who are accomplished, and break them down.
38:50 Speaker 00 But of course, Neil's victims aren't just the women. Some members of their Facebook group are Neil's now adult children. Many of them haven't been confirmed by DNA. But one of them tried to find Neil. He told Tina about the experience.
39:06 Speaker 04 He told me about when he was a teenager, he'd gone to sort of try and find him. And he'd waited outside his office. He'd spoken to him on the phone and he seemed all right on the phone. But then when he went to meet him, he waited at a coffee shop across from where he worked. And then Neil came down and saw him and just turned the other way and walked away.
39:31 Speaker 04 A lot of these stories are very heartbreaking.
39:34 Speaker 00 Hearing these stories, Tina felt even more certain that justice needed to be served. And in talking to a police officer, she heard something that piqued her interest.
39:45 Speaker 04 This could be considered rape by deception.
39:49 Speaker 00 Rape by deception is a situation in which a perpetrator deceives someone in order to get sexual consent. The victim wouldn't have consented if not for a crucial lie, like one around the perpetrator's STD or fertility status. Rape by deception isn't a specific charge. It's a way of arguing and giving context to a situation as rape, even if it falls outside the typical definition of rape under the law. And it's been used before in cases like Tina's.
40:19 Speaker 04 There was another high profile case whereby someone who is a convicted rapist was taken to court because he'd claimed to have had a vasectomy and got a woman pregnant. And the jury had ruled him guilty.
40:37 Speaker 04 He was given a sentence, however, they appealed it and the Supreme Court overruled the conviction.
40:46 Speaker 00 For Tina, there's still a lot of work to be done around this issue. In the meantime, she's had to move forward with her life and focus on her kids.
40:58 Speaker 04 My daughter is an absolute blessing, a gift. She's a ray of sunshine. Yeah, the irony of this whole thing is that she looks just like him.
41:10 Speaker 00 Tina has learned to navigate some tough questions with care. For instance, her daughter has asked.
41:17 Speaker 04 Is my dad a nice person?
41:21 Speaker 04 I was like, your father, he's not a nice person, but that's nothing to do with you. She's like, oh, okay. She's just very matter of fact and it's, it's just funny how adaptable kids are.
41:37 Speaker 04 Friends of hers very innocently asked, yeah, so where's your dad? And she's like, oh, I don't have one.
41:45 Speaker 04 Just a matter of, I don't have one. When they do Father's Day things at school, she makes things for her brother.
41:52 Speaker 00 Tina and her two children have a strong little family unit. But now that's not their entire family because Tina and Wendy decided to tell their kids about each other.
42:06 Speaker 00 When Wendy told her daughters.
42:09 Speaker 04 One of the things that the older daughter did say was that she wanted to meet her sister.
42:17 Speaker 00 Tina does worry about her daughter and how the situation will impact her as she grows up. But at the end of the day.
42:24 Speaker 04 What hurts and what causes damage is the lies, not the truth. I've seen it over and over again that a lot of the children, the people, the victims have all been impacted so negatively by this trail of lies upon lies upon lies upon lies. And the best way to combat that is by absolute truth.
42:51 Speaker 04 And my daughter will have a source of truth about her situation. She wasn't abandoned and it's not her fault. This is what he does. This is a him problem.
43:07 Speaker 00 We end all of our episodes with the same question. Why did you want to tell your story? Tina has a really specific reason. She wants to warn anyone who's just met Neil Lawman.
43:21 Speaker 04 If I can help one person avoid that pain, avoid going through this situation, or to get out before it's something devastating. If I could help one of the mothers out there to feel not alone, that overcomes all of his darkness, all of his lies.
43:49 Speaker 04 I think that that can only be a positive thing.
43:54 Speaker 00 On the next episode of Betrayal.
43:57 Speaker 06 That evening, one of the strangest things happened. I looked in the mirror and I said out loud, "He's not coming home." And I thought, "My God, am I being dramatic? Of course, he's going to be home." And I dismissed it.
44:23 Speaker 00 If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at [email protected] . That's [email protected] . 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 Monique LaBord, also produced by Ben Fetterman.
45:06 Speaker 00 Associate producers are Kristen Melkury and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ally Perry and Jessica Krychek. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MyB Music. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Previous Introducing: Betrayal Secrets & Lies Next Waking Up | EP 10 | Saskia's Story Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated