Pod Insights Betrayal The Full Picture | EP 4 | Saskia's Story About this episode The extent of Mike’s crimes comes to light. But a legal loophole threatens to turn an open-and-shut case into an uphill battle for justice.
Content Warning for tech-enabled sexual abuse, rape, substance dependence, mental health struggles, nonconsensual intimate image distribution, and chronic illness.
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at [email protected] .
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For resources on sexual violence, visit rainn.org/betrayal https://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.
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Transcript 7,896 words · 20 speakers
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3:06 Speaker 01 Saskia had just learned the unimaginable, that her husband had been secretly streaming videos of her, videos where she was naked and unconscious. Now she was sitting across from a social worker hearing one of the worst things any victim can hear.
3:25 Speaker 05 There's probably nothing that we can do.
3:28 Speaker 01 Saskia only had one thumbnail photo from Mike's webpage. It wasn't enough to prove he had done something wrong. To get a long-term protective order, the social worker said Saskia needed video evidence. But she didn't have that. Saskia was so shocked she couldn't speak. She did the only thing she could do: scream.
3:51 Speaker 05 I just flipped out because of how wrong I knew it was and how traumatized I felt.
3:57 Speaker 01 Her friend Colleen was there.
4:00 Speaker 06 She let out this blood-curdling scream and ran down the hall. And the sheriffs came sprinting. They didn't know what had happened. They just heard this scream and came sprinting down after her.
4:13 Speaker 01 Colleen ran after her, too. She found Saskia in the hall crying, shaking.
4:20 Speaker 06 She was just in shock, like, what is going on?
4:26 Speaker 01 But Megan, Saskia's sister-in-law, stayed in the office with the social worker. She thought, those videos had to be out there, somewhere.
4:37 Speaker 07 Nothing goes away on the internet. Once it's there, it's there.
4:41 Speaker 01 So she took out her phone. She had Mike's username. She scrolled and scrolled through pornographic websites, clicking through pages of graphic videos, until finally, she found clips of Saskia. These were previews, 10-second grabs from Mike's videos. In those short clips, Megan could tell Saskia was passed out, completely unaware, and Mike was violating her.
5:11 Speaker 07 She was being raped by her husband. After seeing that, it made sense why she wasn't functioning. She was being tortured.
5:36 Speaker 01 I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, Season 5. Episode 4, The Full Picture.
5:45 Speaker 01 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'sandreaegunning. All right, on to the show.
6:21 Speaker 01 These videos were the key to getting justice for Saskia. Evidence of what Mike had done. And even in those previews, it was clear. His actions were criminal. The authorities confirmed this was enough for a protective order. And it was enough to launch an investigation. So Meghan went into the hall and told Saskia to come back in.
6:46 Speaker 05 I remember Meghan saying, "Sas, look, they want to talk to you again. If you don't calm down, they're going to admit you to a hospital." And I was like, "I don't care. If they don't do anything about this, I will live in that hospital because I will not be okay."
7:03 Speaker 01 Meghan brought Saskia into the office and started going through the videos with the social worker. Saskia wanted to see for herself, to know the full extent of what Mike had been doing while she was knocked out. She looked over Meghan's shoulder at the screen, and she saw her bedroom walls, her sheets, her own undressed body.
7:27 Speaker 05 I was just comatose, and he was having sex with me.
7:34 Speaker 05 Then I told myself, like, "I can't, I can't watch anymore."
7:43 Speaker 01 With the video previews, Saskia was able to secure the protective order she needed. And the authorities had enough for a warrant to begin investigating. Saskia handed Mike's computer to the police, and then she walked out of the building in a daze.
8:01 Speaker 01 She got in Colleen's car, and they drove back to her house, the home she'd shared with Mike and their kids. On that drive, she reached a new low.
8:14 Speaker 05 I felt like a bag of bones that someone had thrown to the side.
8:20 Speaker 05 He was honestly the only person that I ever thought truly loved me.
8:26 Speaker 05 And so to realize that I wasn't anything more than a toy or a tool to him,
8:39 Speaker 05 it breaks you.
8:42 Speaker 01 Colleen looked over at Saskia, crumpled in the passenger seat. And she could see Saskia was broken.
8:50 Speaker 06 It was a betrayal of everything that she thought was secure. It was sexual trauma and assault.
9:00 Speaker 06 That was one of the most horrific things I could ever imagine for anybody.
9:08 Speaker 05 All I wanted to do is just scream at the top of my lungs. Scream to all of the pain that I felt.
9:14 Speaker 01 As Saskia and her community began to confront what Mike had done, so did the authorities. Detective Sherri Rule was tasked with the investigation. She declined a request for an interview. But around the same time, another key player was brought onto the case.
9:33 Speaker 08 My name is Ashley Inderforth. I am an assistant state's attorney here in Montgomery County. At the time of this, I was a line prosecutor in the special victims division, prosecuting felony special victims cases.
9:48 Speaker 01 Special victims cases are those involving vulnerable victims. They deal with crimes like sexual assault, human trafficking, and child abuse. In these cases, detectives and prosecutors work closely in gathering evidence and figuring out what charges to file. Today, Ashley has spent 14 years as a prosecutor. Of the hundreds of cases she's managed.
10:12 Speaker 08 This is one of the cases that has stuck with me. It was so horrific in this unimaginable way to be living your life and then have everything that you know be different in a minute.
10:27 Speaker 01 Ashley met with Saskia early on in the investigation. It's standard procedure in working with special victims.
10:34 Speaker 08 That first meeting is about explaining our role to them, helping them understand what the court process might look like, and then also getting to know each other a little bit because part of my job as a prosecutor is making credibility determinations and figuring out if I think this is a person who can testify, who can go into court and explain what happened to them. And before I can charge anything, I have to believe it beyond a reasonable doubt. And with Saskia, there was never a doubt in my mind that this happened.
11:07 Speaker 08 She was extremely credible. She was willing to talk about her emotions about this entire thing. And then she also didn't hide anything.
11:20 Speaker 01 Saskia was open about her mental health history, about her prescriptions for psychiatric medications, and her use of alcohol on top of those meds. To Ashley, the prosecutor, these weren't reasons to doubt Saskia's story. They were important details in explaining Saskia's state of mind, how crimes were committed against her own body without her knowledge.
11:46 Speaker 01 Her honesty spoke to her credibility.
11:50 Speaker 08 She never acted like she was a perfect person or a perfect victim.
11:54 Speaker 01 After meeting Saskia and watching the video previews, Ashley was determined to prosecute Mike to the fullest extent of the law.
12:04 Speaker 08 I'm gonna work as hard as I can to charge as many rapes as we can prove.
12:09 Speaker 01 The 10-second previews were enough to kickstart the investigation, but they feared they wouldn't be enough to make the charges stick. In order to have a case, Detective Rule and Ashley had to get a hold of the full-length videos. They had Mike's laptop, but unfortunately, there wasn't much there. Mike was careful to leave no evidence. Detective Rule tried to purchase the videos from the porn sites, but that didn't work either. The purchases led to other random videos.
12:42 Speaker 08 So Detective Rule had to figure out how to access these videos from the dark web.
12:49 Speaker 01 It took weeks and a lot of digging in the darkest corners of the online world. But eventually...
12:56 Speaker 08 She was able to locate a little bit over 30 videos. Some of them were an hour or more in length.
13:05 Speaker 01 There was hours and hours of footage. In most videos, Saskia was completely unconscious. In some of the videos, her eyes appeared to be open. We'll talk about that later in the episode. But in all of them, it was clear to Ashley that Saskia was being recorded, and she had no idea.
13:26 Speaker 08 He did a lot of things to try to hide the camera. He'll cover it over periodically, and sometimes you'll see the computer move quickly.
13:37 Speaker 01 For the most part, though, there was no need to hide the camera. As Megan remembers from the previews... She was just dead, dead weight. Watching these clips, seeing her brother-in-law attack her friend, Megan was horrified. She could see that Saskia was completely gone. The question was, how did she get that way?
14:02 Speaker 01 Keep in mind, Megan's known Saskia since the first grade. She's seen Saskia at all levels of drunk. And in all the years she's known Saskia... I've never seen her like that, except for in those videos. It made Megan wonder, was Mike drugging her friend? When Saskia first saw the thumbnails, she had the same thought. I started to question whether he was drugging me. You see, in the aftermath of her discovery, Saskia did some digging of her own. Her friend Colleen was there. On the day she took Saskia to the Family Justice Center, Colleen remembers going up to Saskia's bedroom.
14:45 Speaker 01 Saskia was opening drawers, looking under the bed, searching for any additional evidence she could. And then...
14:54 Speaker 06 She found phenobarbital in the nightstand.
14:58 Speaker 06 And she's like, "Why is this here?"
15:01 Speaker 01 Remember when Saskia was hospitalized in the midst of her health crisis? The doctors theorized that she could be having bad reactions to certain meds she was on. One of those meds was phenobarbital, a sedative that can cause unconsciousness and amnesia. Her doctors had taken her off of it, but here it was. Is this what was making Saskia sick?
15:26 Speaker 01 That wasn't the only medication Saskia discovered. Mike had a safe in their bedroom.
15:31 Speaker 05 I had no idea what was in the safe. He had told me it's like passports, stuff like that.
15:38 Speaker 01 But when Saskia got a locksmith to open the safe...
15:42 Speaker 05 We found a bottle of my sister's medication and about 10 of my own prescription bottles, a lot of them sedatives.
15:52 Speaker 01 Many of these were medications Saskia's body couldn't tolerate. And her sister's medication? She had no idea why Mike would have that.
16:04 Speaker 01 Saskia turned all this evidence over to the authorities. We asked Ashley, the prosecutor, for her thoughts, having reviewed all of the evidence in the case. Could he have drugged her? Sure. But we'll never know. Mike has denied ever drugging Saskia, and there is no definitive evidence that he did. As part of the investigation, detectives conducted a toxicology test. Saskia gave a hair sample to test for drugs that entered her system in the last 90 days. The results of that test were inconclusive. The only substances identified were the psychiatric medications she knew she was taking.
16:46 Speaker 01 This could mean a few different things. One, that Mike wasn't drugging Saskia. Two, that the levels of drugs still in her system at the time of the test were too low to yield a positive result. Or three, that Mike was drugging her using medications she was already prescribed, double dosing her. For Saskia's sister, Marissa, the inconclusive toxicology results were a blow. They left a big unanswered question. One Marissa has turned over and over in her head.
17:20 Speaker 09 It's one of those things that you just kind of have to answer that for yourself. I'll never know if he were spoon-feeding her extra medication, or if he acquired different medication and added that to the mix, or if he just sat and waited for her to get there herself.
17:42 Speaker 01 After all, over the last three years, Saskia was doing anything she could to get a solid night of sleep.
17:49 Speaker 09 Her goal was to feel better. And sometimes, more often than I would have liked, that included drinking to excess and then taking her medication.
17:58 Speaker 01 What matters to Marissa isn't why Saskia was passed out. It's about what Mike did to her sister while she was in that state. No matter how she became unconscious, this wasn't her fault. Saskia's friend Heather agrees. When she learned about the videos, she remembered all the times Saskia had been blackout drunk at parties, unable to stand by herself.
18:25 Speaker 10 Mike did not seem worried at all, ever. Even when some of our friends approached him with concerns, he was like, "She's fine."
18:33 Speaker 01 Whether or not Mike drugged Saskia...
18:36 Speaker 10 It was to his advantage to keep her in this drunken, drugged-up, bad mental health state because the more vulnerable she became, the easier it became for him to take advantage of her.
18:53 Speaker 01 Saskia's community rallied around her. To them, how she became incapacitated didn't matter. Raping Saskia was a crime. Ashley, the prosecutor, agreed.
19:05 Speaker 08 She could have taken all the drugs she wanted herself voluntarily, or he could have drugged her. It doesn't change our analysis from a legal perspective as to whether she was physically helpless or able to resist any sort of unconsented to sex act.
19:24 Speaker 01 In other words, when it comes to drug facilitated sexual assault in Maryland, it doesn't matter how the drugs enter the victim's system. What matters is the perpetrator's actions when the victim is under the influence.
19:40 Speaker 01 The videos were just one piece of evidence in the case against Mike. But then, there were the chats. Chatterbait, the live streaming website, sent the authorities everything they had on Mike: hundreds of pages of chat logs and thousands of messages and comments from viewers, going back at least a year before Saskia's discovery.
20:03 Speaker 08 The chats, coupled with the videos, really what put this together.
20:07 Speaker 01 From these records, the authorities could tell Mike was on Chatterbait multiple times a week.
20:13 Speaker 08 I can't say he was on that site every time doing things to Saskia. But there were numerous times where people were saying things like, "Is she asleep?" And he would respond, "That's how we like to do it." And somebody said, "When my wife plays asleep like that and then makes a sexual comment about what he does to her."
20:37 Speaker 01 Ashley is paraphrasing the messages here.
20:40 Speaker 08 Somebody said to him, "My girl's passed out, too. PM me." A lot of people telling him what to do to her body. A couple of times, people say, "Hey, even if she's fake asleep, that's against the terms and conditions. You could get in trouble for that." And he just says things like, "She likes it like that."
21:02 Speaker 01 These chats put Mike's crimes in a whole new light. It wasn't just that he was filming what he was doing to Saskia. He was sharing it with thousands of real people, live. When she heard about the chats, Saskia's sister-in-law, Megan, was disgusted.
21:21 Speaker 07 People in the chat, is she alive? Is she OK? People thought she was dead.
21:28 Speaker 01 And the records revealed something else.
21:31 Speaker 07 Not only was she being raped by her husband, people were paying to see this go down.
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25:38 Speaker 01 Chatterbait records showed that this crime went far beyond Mike alone. People were paying to see this go down. Chatterbait has a token system. Users can buy tokens to tip performers or pay for private shows. Based on the records we received, users tipped Mike 347 times. People thought she was dead, and they were watching it and paying for it. It's like, what the hell is going on in society? It was one thing to know these videos existed online, but to read the chats and to see the tokens exchanged was sickening.
26:21 Speaker 01 Mike didn't commit this crime in a vacuum. He was rewarded for it by thousands of viewers, people who got off on watching Saskia suffer.
26:34 Speaker 01 There was one more important thing authorities found in the Chatterbait records. In matching the chats up with the videos, Ashley Enderforth and Detective Rule were able to establish a timeline of Mike's actions. They brought the dates of the videos to Saskia, and...
26:51 Speaker 05 There were many, many dates that lined up with my decline.
26:56 Speaker 01 In the three years leading up to her discovery, Saskia's health had been in freefall. She was passing out, picking at her skin, pulling out her hair, and sometimes she was unable to get out of bed. Saskia, her friends, and family were grasping at straws to figure out why she wasn't getting better. Was she drinking too much? Was she having bad reactions to certain meds? Or was this just a full-on mental breakdown? No matter the intervention, Saskia only seemed to grow worse, and there was no clear cause of any of it. All of the videos that Detective Rule recovered were from the last year, and when Saskia saw the dates of the videos,
27:41 Speaker 01 she wasn't just looking at the dates of Mike's crimes. She was looking at a timeline of the worst year of her life. The first video that was recovered was from October 28, 2017.
27:55 Speaker 05 That date was right around the time that my friends came over with lasagna, because my mom had just died.
28:03 Speaker 01 There was another video on November 10th, 2017.
28:07 Speaker 05 That was the day before my son's birthday party that I had been so excited about, but I couldn't get out of bed.
28:15 Speaker 01 And another on October 13th, 2018.
28:19 Speaker 05 My high school reunion was October 13th. That morning, I had woken up with the worst black eye I'd ever seen, so I couldn't go.
28:28 Speaker 01 These were some of the lowest moments in Saskia's life. She had no idea why she was so sick, why she had to miss these moments. She thought she was failing as a sister, a friend, a wife, a mother. She thought, like her dad, she might never get better.
28:51 Speaker 01 But looking back on those years, knowing what Mike had been doing.
28:56 Speaker 05 It clicked. I was a basket case for those years and crying on the shoulder of the person that was doing all of this to me.
29:06 Speaker 01 Her body knew something her brain didn't. Mike had been using her. In the light of day, he was a loving husband. He wrote her love letters, cared for her children as his own. But when the lights went out, he was someone else entirely.
29:23 Speaker 05 Seven years of my life were with this person who never cared about me and humiliated me and enjoyed it.
29:35 Speaker 01 Saskia only has vague memories of the weeks that followed. She took time off work, so she sat at home on her couch, staring at the wall.
29:47 Speaker 05 I felt like I could not even breathe.
29:51 Speaker 01 People came in and out of the house, trying to comfort her, but no one could really understand what she was going through. Even when she was surrounded by friends and family, she felt alone.
30:06 Speaker 05 I remember.
30:09 Speaker 05 People wanting to bring me dinner, and I didn't want to eat.
30:16 Speaker 01 Mike was gone. She was no longer being abused. But realizing that this abuse had occurred, that she had been blind to crimes happening against her own body, was earth shattering. There were still many mornings when she couldn't get out of bed.
30:32 Speaker 05 I felt like, this is it. You don't move on from this.
30:38 Speaker 01 One of the hardest parts of this reckoning was that the videos remained accessible online. She knew that her sister-in-law Megan had seen the videos. Surely, she thought, other friends would search for them too, and strangers all over the world could access her rape with a few simple clicks.
31:00 Speaker 01 During this time, she got coffee with another coworker, Vera. Like Saskia, Vera had spent years working in child welfare, helping survivors of child abuse. Saskia explained to Vera what Mike had done and walked her through her discovery.
31:18 Speaker 11 And then she says, Vera, have you seen the videos?
31:24 Speaker 01 Vera hadn't.
31:26 Speaker 11 Imagine what she's carrying, thinking that everybody now has seen these videos. She broke my heart.
31:35 Speaker 01 Hearing Saskia's story, pieces started to come together. Over the past three years, Vera had seen Saskia's decline firsthand.
31:45 Speaker 11 The hair picking, the face, the skin picking. She was fidgety, she was anxious, she looked nervous, she lost weight.
31:53 Speaker 01 It wasn't until this moment that Vera realized those symptoms could be signs of abuse. She often saw similar behaviors in the abused children she worked with.
32:03 Speaker 11 Kids sometimes will act out in so many ways, and they don't know why. This is not that uncommon, that people behave or act out because of the trauma that they're dealing with. Her body knows that it was going through trauma. Even though consciously she didn't know, her body knew.
32:24 Speaker 01 The signs of Mike's abuse had been there all along, but no one, not even Saskia, was looking for them. Why would they?
32:34 Speaker 01 A couple of weeks after she reported the crime, Detective Rule contacted Saskia. There was an update in the case against Mike.
32:43 Speaker 05 And she was like, "We've got this son of a bitch, big time."
32:48 Speaker 01 She told Saskia Mike was going to be charged with rape.
32:52 Speaker 05 When I was told that they were going to be able to charge him with crimes against me, I felt relief. I wanted him to be in jail.
33:02 Speaker 01 Ashley, the prosecutor, was ready to get the case going.
33:06 Speaker 08 We have to show that she was substantially cognitively impaired, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless, and that the defendant knew or reasonably should have known of her condition.
33:15 Speaker 01 The authorities had videos of Mike violating Saskia when she was completely unconscious. To Ashley, this would normally be considered rape.
33:25 Speaker 08 Initially, I had been like, "Okay, we're charging all of these."
33:28 Speaker 01 But then, when Ashley and Detective Rule went to file the rape charges, they made a discovery. Detective Rule called Saskia again. It was a call Saskia would never forget.
33:41 Speaker 05 She said, "I can't believe I even have to tell you this. We can't even believe this. We're watching these horrible things that he's doing to you on tape. We all know it's wrong. And now we hear about the marital exemption, and we don't know if we're going to be able to prosecute him for it."
34:01 Speaker 01 Marital exemption. Ashley and Detective Rule learned that in 2018, according to Maryland Criminal Code...
34:09 Speaker 08 At the time, raping your sleeping wife was okay.
34:13 Speaker 01 To Ashley, this was clearly incapacitated rape. But there was a catch. Because in the state of Maryland...
34:22 Speaker 08 You can't rape an incapacitated spouse.
34:26 Speaker 01 You can't rape an incapacitated spouse. Because according to Maryland law, that wasn't rape.
34:35 Speaker 01 This is the marital exemption. If Saskia was dating Mike, or if Mike had been a stranger who'd attacked her while she was sleeping, this would be rape under the law. But because she signed a piece of paper, a marriage certificate, what Mike did wasn't clearly illegal. Here's Debbie Feinstein. She runs the Special Victims Unit of the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office. She supervised Ashley.
35:02 Speaker 12 At the time, the spousal defense to rape was in effect for rapes that occurred when the victim was mentally incapacitated.
35:12 Speaker 01 Legally, that's when someone is unable to make or communicate their decisions.
35:17 Speaker 12 Which was really the primary thing that was happening in Saskia's case.
35:21 Speaker 01 Saskia was knocked out when Mike filmed these videos. She'd consumed alcohol and taken her psychiatric meds. She had no way of knowing what was happening to her, let alone telling Mike to stop. Here's Saskia again.
35:36 Speaker 05 My brain couldn't handle that he would not be punished for what he did or be held accountable.
35:43 Speaker 01 But there was still hope because the authorities kept at it.
35:48 Speaker 08 We could argue that there was force involved.
35:53 Speaker 01 Under the law, it wasn't rape if the wife was unconscious. But if it was clear that the husband was using force on his wife to have sex, that was rape. So Detective Rule and Ashley went back to their strongest evidence, the videos. If they could just find one moment, a time when Saskia tried to shield her body or move away from Mike, maybe they could argue that Mike was using force.
36:18 Speaker 08 We looked at every time you could see Saskia do something that could show that she was not consenting.
36:27 Speaker 01 And they did find moments where Saskia seemed to resist. Sometimes, she'd wake up in a haze, mid-attack. She'd roll over or place her hands over sensitive areas. Then she'd pass back out, and Mike would keep going. He continued to violate Saskia, even as her body said no. There were even a few moments in which, with what little strength Saskia had, she tried to push Mike away.
36:58 Speaker 01 None of this was force exactly, not in the traditional sense of the word. But it was enough to charge Mike with a crime. The authorities brought 31 charges of surveillance in a private area based on the video content. And on top of that...
37:16 Speaker 08 We were able to identify three charges of completed vaginal intercourse and one charge of what was an attempted vaginal intercourse that we felt we could show to a jury and argue that there was force involved.
37:33 Speaker 01 Finally, on December 18, 2018, two months after Saskia's discovery, charges were filed against Mike Levingood. And he was arrested.
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41:19 Speaker 01 Two months after Saskia reported the videos, Mike was arrested. But he didn't spend long behind bars. He was able to get out on $10,000 bail. Based on the sentencing guidelines, Mike was looking at up to nine years in prison for each of the four rape charges, and up to a year for each count of illegal surveillance. He could spend the rest of his life in prison.
41:46 Speaker 01 But first, there would be a trial. Ashley and her team at the state's attorney's office would have to prove that Mike was guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. And that was no easy feat. They'd have to convince a jury this was a crime because of the marital exemption law. And on top of that, they'd be going up against a strong defense team. Ashley, the prosecutor, remembers.
42:13 Speaker 08 He immediately hired a really well-known, high-powered criminal defense attorney in Montgomery County.
42:19 Speaker 01 Mike's legal team knew how to get their clients off. They did it all the time. Before the case even reached the courtroom, they tried to plant doubts about Saskia's story.
42:32 Speaker 08 Even before charges were brought, while the detective was reviewing the case, his attorney sent Detective Rule an email saying that Mike Levin Good is this family man who has a great relationship with his ex-wife and this great career. And then he sent pages of things that are, quote-unquote, "wrong" with Saskia.
42:57 Speaker 01 Mike claimed that Saskia was a willing participant, that she knew about the videos, and consented to them. His attorney ran with it. This wasn't Ashley's first sexual violence case. She'd seen this all before.
43:12 Speaker 08 You get your attorney involved, and you try to get in people's heads about the victim right away.
43:22 Speaker 08 Luckily Detective Rule and I didn't fall for it.
43:25 Speaker 01 Mike's defense team failed to get the charges dismissed. But they weren't going to give up yet. They were going to come at Saskia hard. That's almost always the defense's strategy in a rape case. To put the victim on trial.
43:41 Speaker 01 In the months that followed, there were several pre-trial hearings. That's when both sides go before the judge to argue what evidence should or should not be admitted.
43:51 Speaker 15 Good morning, Your Honor. Rebecca McFitty on behalf of the state.
43:53 Speaker 16 Good morning, Your Honor. Andrew Jessick and Dave Moise on behalf of the defendant.
43:57 Speaker 01 You're listening to real audio from Mike's court proceedings. In these hearings, the lawyers went back and forth about one thing. The video evidence. Here's Rebecca McFitty. She worked with Ashley as one of the prosecutors on the case.
44:12 Speaker 15 Your Honor, the state has a motion in lemonade to exclude any of the, what I would refer to as pornographic images or videos or photographs that were not charged in this case.
44:25 Speaker 01 Rebecca asked the judge to admit only a portion of the Chatterbait videos. The ones where the prosecution could argue force to get around the marital exemption. Mike's attorneys had other ideas. They wanted to show the jury as many videos as possible.
44:42 Speaker 01 Here's one of Mike's attorneys.
44:43 Speaker 16 We don't want the jury to think that she is just somebody who woke up on October 25th, 2018 and realized, oh my God, my husband has been secretly filming me for the last year and streaming me to 10,000 people.
44:59 Speaker 16 Because if we aren't allowed to show the whole picture, they may actually think that. There are a lot of videos where it's very, very clear that she is playing to the screen and playing to the TV and playing to the camera.
45:17 Speaker 01 Mike's attorney pointed to a few moments in the footage where Saskia's eyes were open. He wanted to use those moments to argue to a jury that Saskia was awake, aware, and consenting. Ashley Enderforth has prosecuted dozens of rape cases, and she reviewed these videos. So we asked her for her professional opinion. Did Saskia know what Mike was doing?
45:42 Speaker 08 There is no doubt in my mind that Saskia had absolutely no idea what was happening to her.
45:50 Speaker 01 Ashley was familiar with the meds Saskia was prescribed, and she consulted with medical experts. In our reporting, we did the same. We spoke to psychiatrists who confirmed that Saskia's gaps in memory made sense. Her use of these meds, in combination with alcohol, could explain how she was completely unaware of her surroundings, unconscious, even with her eyes wide open. It's a similar effect to when you get wheeled into the operating room before surgery. You might be awake and talking to nurses while you're going under, but when you wake up, any memory of that is gone. Ashley knew all of this, but more importantly, she knew the facts. This woman
46:33 Speaker 01 was raped and was just finding out about it.
46:37 Speaker 08 I think we all want to believe that things like this can't happen. We could all sleep better at night if Saskia was a crazy person, who, for whatever reason, was out to get her husband and made all this up. But the evidence in this case is so strong, when you have the full picture of what happened, that what we don't want to believe is what we have to believe. So that's what happened. That's the truth. There's absolutely no way that Saskia knew what was going on.
47:09 Speaker 01 Ashley and her team weren't swayed by the defense's arguments, but maybe a jury would be. If they had any doubt in Saskia's story, Mike could walk free. That's how our legal system is designed.
47:23 Speaker 08 The jury has to believe it beyond a reasonable doubt. Even if they are 75% there, their job is to acquit.
47:33 Speaker 01 The defense's strategy is always to make the jury feel uncertain. And they weren't just going to sow doubt using the videos. They were prepared to use every shred of evidence they could find to discredit Saskia. Here's an example. At that same pretrial hearing, Mike's attorney alleged that Saskia fulfilled Chatterbait's consent requirements for performers.
47:57 Speaker 16 In order for her to be seen on the screen as she's having sex with her husband, she needed to sign an agreement and put her passport up on the screen and essentially say, "I know what Chatterbait is. I agreed to be on this portion of the screen, live, being seen by tens of thousands of people worldwide." And she signed that in October of 2017. She agreed in writing and with her passport.
48:29 Speaker 01 The defense attorney had a copy of the written agreement and a picture of Saskia's passport, held up next to her face. "I know Saskia, and I know what she went through. But when I first heard this, there was a moment when I questioned her story." In our culture, that doubt is never far. We are trained to question rape victims. But then, I listened to the rest of the pretrial hearing. Here's Rebecca, one of the prosecutors again.
49:03 Speaker 15 As defense counsel mentioned, Chatterbait requires a photograph picture with your passport visible. That photograph defense counsel mentions is actually a picture of the victim smiling at the camera with the defendant's arm behind her. You can see it's his arm by the watch that he's wearing, holding the passport.
49:27 Speaker 01 It was Mike's hand, not Saskia's, holding up her passport for the camera. And as for that signed user agreement...
49:36 Speaker 15 It is an electronic signature. And the return on that is to the defendant's email address.
49:46 Speaker 01 Mike was holding the passport. The signed agreement could be traced to his email. In other words, all roads point back to Mike Levinggood.
49:58 Speaker 01 Prosecutors worked for months prepping answers to every one of the defense's allegations. They secured experts to speak to Saskia's state of mind. They wrote opening statements. And they prepared to talk about the content where Saskia's eyes were open.
50:15 Speaker 01 After the pre-trial hearings, the judge ruled that Saskia could be asked about the other videos if it came up in her testimony.
50:23 Speaker 01 If the jury found Mike guilty, he could spend decades in prison. But in order for that to happen, the jury would have to believe Saskia.
50:33 Speaker 05 For good, for bad, for ugly, I knew that it would lie on me.
50:38 Speaker 01 The trial was delayed to June, then October. And finally, a date was set for December 2, 2019. A full year after Mike was charged. As the day approached, Saskia was nervous. What if the jury bought Mike's story? What if they couldn't see the truth? But none of those questions changed how she felt about taking the stand. She was ready.
51:04 Speaker 05 I wanted him to be in jail. And I felt like testifying against him and holding him accountable would give me back some of my power.
51:19 Speaker 01 On the next episode of Betrayal.
51:22 Speaker 17 Call 1-800-135-0630. Stand by for Michael Paul Levin. I was very familiar with the statement of charges. But knowing the facts of the case is very different from watching those videos.
51:42 Speaker 01 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. To access additional content and to connect with the Betrayal community,
52:27 Speaker 01 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. Our supervising producer is Carrie Hartman. Our story editor is Monique LaBord,
53:07 Speaker 01 also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Olivia Hewitt and 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 Dalvecchio. Special thanks to Saskia, her friends and family, and special thanks to Will Pearson and Carrie Lieberman. Betrayal'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.
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54:29 Speaker 04 One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Cash back is earned as points. Go to onepay.com/rewards/terms for redemption options and additional details.
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Previous Dead Weight | EP 3 | Saskia's Story Next Tornado | EP 5 | Saskia's Story Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated