Not Alone | EP 7 | Saskia's Story

Four women. Four stories of survival. Saskia finds out she's not the only one. Content Warning for rape, tech-enabled sexual abuse, nonconsensual intimate image distribution, mental health struggles, and chronic illness. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod https://www.instagram.com/betrayalpod/?hl=en 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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  She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding. Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard. But then we found out she had agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult. So we asked her doctor for more help.

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• 2:41Speaker 04

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• 2:47Speaker 00

  If Saskia's story sounds familiar to you, it might be because of another case that's been in the news.

• 2:54Speaker 06

  The mass rape trial, which has stunned France, has ended with 51 men all being found guilty for what they did to Gisele Pellicoe.

• 3:03Speaker 07

  Our top story today is the mass rape trial that has horrified France.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Gisele Pellicoe's story was shared around the world.

• 3:12Speaker 07

  For almost a decade, her husband drugged and raped her and invited dozens of other men to do the same.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  In those years, Gisele thought she was seriously ill. She thought she was blacking out because of a possible brain tumor or maybe early-onset Alzheimer's. She'd been married to her husband for nearly 50 years. She never suspected he had anything to do with her symptoms. Like Saskia, she only learned the truth when she saw videos of herself being raped.

• 3:47Speaker 06

  Ms. Pellicoe chose to have the trial held in an open court and hopes the public trial will help change society.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  When Gisele's story made headlines in December 2024, we were a few months into talking to Saskia. We forwarded her an article about the case. It was the first time she'd ever heard a story like her own. It was empowering. I didn't- Know that there are other people out there like me. But Saskia and Giselle aren't a club of two.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  In the last two years, there have been more and more stories like this of people raping their partners and publishing images and videos of their crimes. For example, German authorities uncovered a group chat on the app Telegram where men were sharing intimate images of their partners. Some were even sharing live videos of sexual assaults. This wasn't a group chat of 10 or even 100 men. There were 70,000 members. The same thing happened in Italy. 32,000 men on Facebook were part of a group called Mia Mogli, My Wife, where they shared non-consensual intimate images.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  It took 3,000 complaints in six years for the group to get shut down.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  People are just waking up to this crime. And as awareness grows, other survivors like Saskia are coming out of the shadows.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  When you go home at the end of the day and you crawl into bed with the man that you love, that should be the safest place you'll ever be in the world. I found out that that was the most dangerous place that I had ever been. And that is a real mind fuck.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, Season 5, Episode 7, Not Alone.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Really quick before we get into the episode, I have a small favor to ask you. If you're enjoying listening to Betrayal, please take a second to hit the follow button on your podcast app and please rate and review. We read all the comments and your voices help our show improve and evolve. I really mean it when I say, "Thank you for listening and helping us grow." Also, if you want behind the scenes content or resources, follow @betrayalpod on Instagram or follow me at it'sandregunning. All right, on to the show.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  We're not finished telling Saskia's story, but before we dive deeper into this season, we need to zoom out a bit because what happened to Saskia wasn't a one-off. There are people all over the world committing these kinds of crimes and there are more survivors who are just now climbing out of the dark. In the past few years, we've heard from other people like Saskia. There are women of different ages and different backgrounds. Their stories unfolded years or even decades apart and they each made different choices in the aftermath of what happened to them. But they've all endured something similar, an unthinkable crime at the hands of someone they loved.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  We want to share the stories of three women who wrote in to us. Let's start with Amber.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Growing up, Amber never imagined she'd be the victim of a crime like this.

• 7:43Speaker 06

  Everyone described me as like just a very strong individual. And I myself thought, "If you're strong, you're not going to fall prey to that kind of thing."

• 7:53Speaker 00

  At 21, Amber was confident, outspoken. She knew who she was and her faith was a big part of that. She's Christian and she drew clear boundaries in accordance with her beliefs.

• 8:05Speaker 06

  I really did not want to engage in intercourse until I was married and I was honest about that with every guy I dated. Like, this is what I believe and if you don't like it, there's the door.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  With her fiance, she found a guy who understood, a man who'd respect her values. His name was John.

• 8:27Speaker 06

  At this point, we had been together for about four years, on and off.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  During those four years, there'd been ups and downs, periods where John's mental health suffered.

• 8:39Speaker 00

  But finally, Amber saw him becoming the man she always knew he could be. He was stable and thoughtful, and he was getting more involved in the church.

• 8:51Speaker 06

  I thought that it was really from a place of him growing and healing and changing.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Everyone around them saw the shift in John. Their friends and family were so excited about the engagement. Even their pastor gave his approval.

• 9:05Speaker 06

  It's like, all relationships go through really hard times. You guys seem like you're really good together, and I think this would be completely okay. And we're like, okay. And I'm sitting there going, if there were red flags, this person would point this out. And nobody pulled a red flag out.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  Their engagement was the start of a new chapter. A beautiful life together. Then, a month into their engagement, Amber got sick.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  It started one night at John's house. She remembers sitting down to study, but after that...

• 9:44Speaker 06

  I don't recall anything that happened, other than I somehow made it home.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  It was like her memory just jumped. One second, she was at John's. The next, she was home. She explained it away. She must have had a long day, dozed off. But nights like this kept happening.

• 10:07Speaker 06

  There were so many occasions where I would fall asleep studying, and he would wake me up and be like, "Oh, my gosh, you fell asleep again. You need to hurry up and get home." And I would be so out of it. I wouldn't know what was happening, and I'd just somehow make my way home.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  Over time, Amber started experiencing other symptoms, like chronic pain, without any clear cause.

• 10:30Speaker 06

  It was a pain that was indescribable. I couldn't sit, I couldn't stand, I just couldn't find any comfortable position, and I couldn't remember anything that had happened.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  And that wasn't all.

• 10:41Speaker 06

  I'm breaking out in hives all over my body, having migraines I've never had before.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Through it all, John was there for Amber.

• 10:50Speaker 06

  I remember him coming over to like comfort me. He just sat with me and like rubbed my back and was like, I'm so sorry, you're not feeling well.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  He supported her as she searched for a diagnosis and went to doctor after doctor. No one could figure out what was going on.

• 11:07Speaker 06

  They were just like, oh, you're probably really stressed out. I was, you know, in the throes of school and working full time and getting married and all that stuff. I was still able to function, but internally I was falling apart.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Things went on like this for a year with Ember at a total loss. Just like Saskia, she wanted a solution, some answer that would tie all her symptoms together. And then, one day, an answer began to emerge.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  During this time, Ember was taking classes to become a massage therapist. On this particular day, her instructor was talking about the psoas muscle.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  The psoas muscle is a highly protective muscle that a lot of people don't even know exists. It attaches on the front of our spine. And if we are in fight or flight, it is engaged instantaneously.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  The instructor asked Ember to come up to the front so she could have someone to demonstrate on. This happened all the time in class, and Ember didn't think anything of it.

• 12:16Speaker 06

  I'm laying on massage therapy table, all of the other students are watching. And she goes to address my psoas muscle and I immediately dissociate.

• 12:28Speaker 06

  I don't remember anything that happened on the table. I don't remember anything that my body did that I said. All I remember is at the end, her saying, okay, that was interesting.

• 12:41Speaker 06

  I get up from the table and she's like, hey, do you have a minute? Can you come outside? And I said, okay, sure. And she's like, do you know what just happened in there? And I was like, no, you were working on my psoas. She's like, you were somewhere else. You were not present. And I really have a strong sense that I need to tell you that something's probably really wrong if your psoas is responding in this way and causing you to go somewhere else.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Somewhere else, lying on the massage table, her mind and body split off into separate directions, just like it did on those nights studying with John. Things were happening around her, but she couldn't remember them. Looking back, Amber now has an explanation for what was going on.

• 13:34Speaker 06

  I was dissociating from my trauma.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  Dissociation occurs when the mind separates from the body as a way of protecting itself from harm. The brain mutes physical sensations, thoughts, and memories, such that many people coming out of dissociative episodes feel like they've just woken up from a dream. But the body stores memories of trauma, even if the brain tries to push them out. That day on the massage table, Amber's body demonstrated that something was wrong.

• 14:06Speaker 06

  It was kind of the beginning of my body and brain saying, "We need to be in this together instead of separating." In fact, it was shortly thereafter that I actually woke up mid-attack.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  The night started the way so many others had. She was hanging out at John's house when her mind went dark. But on this night, in the midst of her dissociation, she woke up and her brain and body snapped back together. When she came to, there was someone on top of her. Her eyes focused, and suddenly, she could see. It was John.

• 14:50Speaker 06

  I freaked out, and I was like, "What is happening?" He's like, "Nothing, nothing, nothing happened." And I'm like, "There's evidence that something happened."

• 15:01Speaker 00

  His pants were pulled down, so were hers. And remember, Amber didn't want to have sex until marriage. Immediately, Amber could tell John had taken that choice away from her. In the moment, she was still groggy.

• 15:19Speaker 06

  I'm still not fully there, but I'm conscious enough to know something is really, really wrong. I lost it.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  In a daze, she threw on her clothes and ran out the door, went home. She called people she could trust, and one of those people notified the church. The next day, a pastor called John and Amber in for a meeting.

• 15:43Speaker 06

  And we sit down with the pastor and he's like, what's going on?

• 15:49Speaker 06

  All I can do is look down at my shoes. All I remember is the floor.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  She was quiet, but to her surprise, John spoke up and he told the pastor everything. John came right out and confessed.

• 16:04Speaker 06

  He was drugging me and raping me.

• 16:07Speaker 06

  The pastor goes, how often has this happened?

• 16:12Speaker 06

  He goes, this has happened probably once a week, almost the whole time we've been engaged.

• 16:19Speaker 06

  That is now almost an entire year. It was so much worse than anything I had ever imagined. And I'm just completely just numb, just numb.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  John and their pastor kept talking, but Amber tuned them out. All of her senses blurred together into one loud hum. Finally, their pastor asked John to leave the room so he could speak to Amber alone.

• 16:50Speaker 06

  So he leaves the room and pastor looks at me and he's like, you need to get out of this relationship. This is not safe. This is not good. This is not going to stop.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  But as shocked as Amber was, she wasn't ready to hear that yet. After all, she loved John and leaving him would mean calling off their wedding.

• 17:13Speaker 06

  We're like three months before our wedding at this point in time. And breaking that off now means I have to tell everyone what has happened. That, to me, was almost as devastating as realizing what had happened. Now everybody's gonna know.

• 17:31Speaker 06

  This intense desire to hide in that amount of pain was just insurmountable.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Amber couldn't allow herself to face the reality of her situation. She was still holding out hope that maybe if John got treatment, it would all be okay. They could forget about this and move ahead with the wedding. So John started going to therapy and so did she.

• 17:55Speaker 06

  I was seeing a therapist that specializes in sexual abuse and he was seeing a therapist that specializes in sexual addiction.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  But therapy gave her different answers than the ones she was seeking.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Amber and John's therapists worked at the same location. One day, while waiting for her session, John's therapist came through the waiting room.

• 18:17Speaker 06

  He walked past me and then he stopped and came back. You could see his wheels turning, like, "I'm not supposed to say this, but I feel like you need to know. We've run through a series of diagnostic tests on your fiance. He's not a safe person. He's officially diagnosed as a sociopath and you should get as far away from him as possible."

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• 20:54Speaker 00

  Amber was waiting for her therapy session when she was approached by John's therapist. He told her that John was a diagnosed sociopath and she needed to protect herself. The therapist had to have felt strongly because he was taking a huge professional risk, telling Amber threatened his license. He violated client confidentiality.

• 21:18Speaker 06

  But it was a godsend because honestly, if I hadn't heard those words, I think I probably would have assumed that everything was going to be okay for a lot longer. I really thought that I was doing the good Christian thing by staying with him, that like I was sacrificing myself so that he could experience love. And that was the point where I was like, I can't marry this man.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  We'll hear more from Amber at the end of the episode. But now, we want to introduce you to another survivor, Natalie. At 23, she started dating a guy we'll call Steven. When she was with him,

• 21:58Speaker 04

  I felt like I was a queen.

• 22:03Speaker 04

  He would make me feel beautiful and smart.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  And he would type up these really nice poems, or just say how he looks forward to spending time together and getting married and having a family.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  Their relationship was a long time coming. He was her best friend's older brother. And in every way, their lives just seemed to fit together. They played on the same softball team. They had a lot of the same friends. And when they talked, the conversation flowed.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  It was very natural and it was just easy. I felt like we had a really strong foundation.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Eventually, they got engaged, then married. But when Natalie got pregnant, that was when Stephen really became her rock. She was nervous about being a mom. In the months leading up to the birth.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  I would rearrange the nursery. I don't know how many times I rearranged it and I'd like vacuum it every day.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Stephen grounded and supported her.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  We had a lot of late nights, setting things up. And I would feel bad because he would have to work in the morning. But he was all about it, all about helping and getting everything ready and being very hands on.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  When their son arrived, Stephen really stepped up. He made everything feel manageable.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  He would get up with him. He would feed him in the middle of the night, even when he had to work the next morning. He would be wanting to help with my son and changing his diaper or just being with him to give me an hour of time for myself.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Stephen was a dream dad. They were in this together. And for a while, they lived a great life as a family. Then came one night when their son was five.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Natalie was helping him get ready for bed. He had his own tablet where he could play games and watch TV. All the family's devices were linked in a cloud.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  And I had his tablet because I was going to put it in on the counter to charge it.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  She was plugging it in when she saw something on the home screen.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  There was like a little window that had a man and you could see a penis on the screen. I'm like, oh, my gosh.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Like horrified that my son could see that. And I'm like, I hope he didn't click on this. Like what? I didn't notice that before.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  Her husband was at work. Natalie messaged him right away. Steven put her at ease. He thought it must be spam. Once her son went to sleep, Natalie went back to the tablet to reset it to factory settings.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  I was looking in the cloud where the photos and images are because I didn't want to delete all of that. And then that's when I saw photos and like videos, dozens of these clips and images.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  It was all graphic sexual material.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  I was like, I gotta get this stuff off of here. But then as I'm looking through, I noticed my bedroom.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  She froze and she zoomed in on the photo.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  You can see his hands, his wedding ring.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  And then I realized that I am in these images.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  I'm just like horrified because I'm not awake. Some of them, I'm like barely conscious. And I'm like, how do I not know what's happening to me? There's no way that he's doing these things to me and I have no idea what's happening. I would have woken up.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  She kept clicking through more photos and videos. And then the images led her to fetish websites. She could see that one of the videos was posted for anyone to see.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  The title of the video that he had posted was something like creeping around without her knowing. And I was nauseous. I was so embarrassed and I was,

• 26:12Speaker 03

  I just like shut down, really.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  The most upsetting part of it all?

• 26:17Speaker 03

  I was pregnant with my daughter when I found this.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  One of the things I remember thinking was, oh, my God, was I an active participant in making my daughter?

• 26:33Speaker 03

  And just remember thinking like, oh my God, okay. I'm this many weeks along. And counting back like, oh my God, okay. And I remember the weekend and I remember like, oh, thank God. Like, okay, yes, I remember this was when it happened.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  When Steven came home, she confronted him.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  I remember us sitting in the back room of the house. And I just gave him the tablet and I had the images pulled up. And I'm like, what is this? And he just kind of looked at it and was like, I have a problem. He was asking me, like, let's go to counseling. Can we do counseling? And I'm thinking, I think you need counseling.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  From the day that I confronted him, I never slept in the same bed as him.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  But leaving altogether didn't feel like an option.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  I remember shutting down and thinking like, what am I supposed to do? Like, I work two days a week. He's a hands-on dad. He's supporting us. I need his help. What am I gonna do?

• 27:48Speaker 00

  So she stayed. She picked up as many shifts at work as she could. And when Steven would come home at the end of his workday, she'd find an excuse to go out.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  I wouldn't want to be home when he was home.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  As the months passed, Natalie began to uncover the full extent of Steven's abuse.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  I found in his bedside table underneath some files, he had a bottle of Tylenol PM. And they were all broken up and they were in pieces. And then there was some other powder stuff in the bottle, too. And I'm like, that is probably what he was using and putting it in my drinks because I was not just asleep. I was literally unconscious.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  It shattered her sense of safety in her own body and in her own home.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  I didn't even want to drink anything that was opened in the house because I was afraid that he would put something in it.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  In the aftermath of her discovery, her friends and family could tell. Something had changed in her. But she kept the truth to herself.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  People would ask me, you know, are you okay? Or, you know, you're quiet. Oh, I'm just tired. Oh, I didn't sleep well last night. Or, oh, I'm just nervous about the baby coming. It was so embarrassing to me. It was like I was trying to avoid really thinking about that. It was just like this deep secret that I had.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  When her daughter was born, she continued to stay silent. Her priority was giving her kids a good life. And for a long time, she thought that meant smiling through the pain. But eventually, she realized she couldn't keep living in that house. She had to leave.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  I remember starting to pay things off that were in my name. And I was starting to try to save a little bit of money, like my own money, because he was in charge of our finances. It took me well over a year, just kind of living in the same house with him and being paranoid and then being just angry and then being bitter.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  Three years after her discovery, she finally saved enough money to move out.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  The new house wasn't much, but it was hers. She was free.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  My realtor unlocked the door and, you know, we had walked in and she's like, here it is. Here's your keys. This is your house. I was like, oh, my gosh, you know, this is great. And then after she left, I sat in there on the floor and I cried and I was excited and scared and just really proud. And thinking like, okay, this is going to be really hard. But I told myself that day, I'm going to do it. This is mine. This is something that he's not going to take from me. I'm going to do it by myself, me and my kids.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  And I'm going to be the best mom that I can be. This is the first day of the rest of my life.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  There's one more woman to introduce you to, or maybe reintroduce you to, because we've told her story before on the first two episodes of Betrayal Weekly. She was the woman who got us thinking about this kind of crime two years ago. When she discovered what her husband did to her...

• 31:39Speaker 03

  I couldn't think. I couldn't function. I mean, the kids had to like, sit me down at the table and force me to eat. And I just laid in bed and cried.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  I didn't just lose my husband. I lost my job. I lost my home. I lost my community. I lost trust. I lost safety. I really had to start over from square one.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  Stephanie was married for 23 years, but then she discovered something horrifying on her husband's laptop.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  He had a Flickr account that was filled with nude photos of me. Hundreds of pictures. He explained that he puts the picture up in a chatroom, and 25 people at a time can be in the chatroom, but people come and go. And so, as they come in and out, these other men are explaining how they would rape me.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  We asked Stephanie, what is it that only people who've experienced this crime can understand?

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Every woman has that fear, that awareness that there could be a stranger that could jump out and assault me, rape me.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  But for her and for women who've been through what she's been through,

• 33:08Speaker 03

  it's this other thing. It's that when you go home at the end of the day and you crawl into bed with the man that you love, that should be the safest place you'll ever be in the world. I found out that that was the most dangerous place that I had ever been. And that is your

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Real mindfuck.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  Amber, Natalie, Stephanie, and Saskia. Four women who wrote into our show with strikingly similar stories. All of these women survived drug facilitated sexual assault. For three of them, non-consensual photos and videos were shared with strangers online. All of these women spent months, even years, in the dark, not knowing what their partners were doing to them. And they all thought they were the only one. Nobody that I knew had been through anything similar, so even though I had all

• 34:13Speaker 03

  these people around, I still felt so alone and like a freak. The shame was really unbearable. Like, who am I gonna tell this to?

• 34:24Speaker 06

  It is such an isolating experience to feel like nobody else can relate to what I've been through.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  So, we decided to bring these four women together.

• 34:35Speaker 03

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• 36:47Speaker 00

  After speaking to these four survivors, we knew we wanted to gather a group together because we're at an inflection point. Like us, the public is just waking up to this crime, opening their eyes to the fact that intimate partners can do things like this and share them on the internet. To get more victims to come forward and to expose how pervasive this crime is, we need to talk about it. So we set aside a Saturday and we gathered Amber, Natalie, Stephanie, and Saskia on a video call. First off, I just want to say I am so grateful that you guys made time today. To make sure this was a safe experience for everyone involved,

• 37:32Speaker 00

  we also invited a facilitator. Hi, everyone. My name is Megan Cutler.

• 37:37Speaker 04

  And I am the Chief of Victim Services at RAIN.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  RAIN, the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  Which is the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, and we operate the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  RAIN has been consulting with us throughout this season.

• 37:55Speaker 04

  And I'm really honored and grateful to facilitate this conversation today.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  For the rest of this episode, we'll be playing you excerpts from our group discussion. And as a note, we'll be sharing more excerpts in a bonus episode.

• 38:11Speaker 04

  I thought we could kick off the conversation talking about this idea of community. What has it been like trying to find community or support groups after what happened to you?

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Saskia jumped in first.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  I hadn't heard about any of this before it happened to me. And when I did try to reach out for help, I felt like because it was such a unique experience, nobody really wanted to touch it with a 10-foot pole. One of my favorite parts of all this is meeting other people who can relate to having these acts done by someone who is dear to you. It's like, wow, you did this to the person you're supposed to love most in the world.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  That's Stephanie, the woman who told her story on Betrayal Weekly.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  I had no bad feelings about my husband. I trusted him 100%. And so what that told me is that my gut for who was good and who was bad was busted.

• 39:21Speaker 06

  I felt a lot like you did, Stephanie, of like, clearly my ability to judge is broken.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  That's Amber, the woman you heard at the top, whose fiance was assaulting her.

• 39:31Speaker 06

  And I'd always prided myself on being a good judge of character and being able to read people. So that was like a hit to my sense of safety, honestly.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  It has been a real journey for me to get to the point of realizing that it's not my gut that's broken.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  It's him that's broken.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  Natalie brought up something we hear about in so many of these stories.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  You know, just talking with my perpetrator. I know that he sort of normalized that, well, I'm not the only one. There's more than just this site, or there's a lot of people doing it like it's normal. My husband actually said to me, you know, otherwise just participate in this and like it. Really? Well, not me.

• 40:27Speaker 06

  It's almost like because you don't want to participate, this is happening to you. I wouldn't have to do this if you were just a willing participant.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  And also that idea, like Natalie said, they're trying to normalize their behavior and make us feel like we're the one that's wrong. I completely get why people don't come forward. Because we've been so traumatized already. And it's so re-traumatizing to have to then put your life on display. Going through the criminal proceedings, I had no idea how shamed I would be in the process or how difficult it would be. Saskia, you are so brave.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  I did look into trying to press charges against my husband. But I didn't have what it takes to sit there and to be shamed and have every decision in my life looked at.

• 41:34Speaker 06

  100%. I think that's one of the hardest parts that I still carry a lot of shame about is that I didn't have what it took to batter back against the justice system.

• 41:48Speaker 06

  I was being drugged and raped and at one point I woke up in attack. And I remember going to law enforcement about two days later when I finally had my head about me. And I tell them what I knew and they're like, well, if it's been two days, the drugs are out of your system. And it's really a he said, she said situation. You guys are in a relationship like we can't prove anything. There's nothing we can do about it.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  I didn't report either and I try to remind myself about that being the best decision at the time that I made. And I just was feeling guilty for not even thinking about being able to file a restraining order because I was financially dependent on him as well.

• 42:42Speaker 06

  And then that's another part where people like diminish what's happened to you because it's like, oh, well, did you press charges? And if your answer is no, automatically you lose credibility. If you really did that to you, you would have pressed charges is essentially what people believe.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  There's no sure thing. So even if you had filed charges, I mean, I think if you look at the statistics of people who do report, how few people that the perpetrator actually is convicted.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Our facilitator from RAIN, Megan Cutter, jumped in to share a statistic.

• 43:19Speaker 06

  Ninety-eight percent of perpetrators walk free. And for every 1,000 sexual assaults, 50 reports lead to arrests, 28 cases lead to felony convictions, and only 25 perpetrators are sentenced to some form of incarceration.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  These numbers shocked us. We knew that few perpetrators ever face justice. But we had no idea it was this few.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  On the next episode of Betrayal, we dig into one reason why.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  I said, that is not allowed. That is illegal. It's a crime. He can't do that. Come to find out, they're married. Come to find out, here we are in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. To 2023, he probably was allowed to do that.

• 44:15Speaker 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 RAIN'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.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  To access additional content and to connect with the Betrayal community, 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 Caitlin Golden, with additional production by Olivia Hewitt. Our supervising producer is Carrie Hartman.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Our story editor is Monique LaBord. Also produced by Ben Fetterman. Our associate producer is Lea Jablow. 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 Delvecchio. 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.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  The trail's theme is 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.

• 46:43Speaker 03

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