EP 5 - Matt and Laura, Part 2

I have to go down there. I have to confront her. I have to see her, and I remember yelling at her like, how could you do this? How could you do this to our family?

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything. This is part two of Matt and Laura's story. If you haven't heard part one, you'll want to go back and listen to that first. Matt and Laura Tread went through years of infertility treatment IVF, miscarriages, and a high risk pregnancy to have their son, Hudson. Soon after they knew they wanted another child, they decided to pursue adoption.

Er, so we went into the hospital room and I remember the curtain was drawn. I can just picture in my mind, like I was there seeing the nurse moved the curtain and there's our Elizabeth sitting there and all of her clothes. So I was so confused. I was like, Elizabeth, Oh my god, are you okay? What's happening? Why are you in your regular clothes? And she just tried to explain it away, you know, like, oh, we brought a

Elizabeth explained that her husband was on his way up to the maternity ward with the baby.

And I was like, I was just up there waiting. We're all waiting. There's a whole team of doctors waiting, and we didn't see the baby. Like I have to go talk to the nurses and try to figure out what's going on. So I was walking away and I remember her calling my name, but I just kept walking.

A horrible truth was setting in for Laura, a truth she couldn't process. She went to the nurses station in a daze.

And I was like, I don't understand what going on. She's supposed to be giving birth to our daughter. Her case manager was like, let me go talk to her. She came back. She was like, she's saying she doesn't even know you. She's saying she has no idea who you are.

Laura fumbled to find her phone to show the nurse photos of them together, photos from as recent as yesterday.

There's even a picture of my son with his hand on her stomach because she had told him, oh, you want to feel your sissy kick.

That's when another nurse stepped in and told Laura the truth, the truth. Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to say.

I just remember the nurse telling me she's not pregnant.

There was no baby. There never had been. Laura walked right back into the exam room to confront her.

I just looked at her and I was like, how could you lie to us like this? How could you do this? How could you do this? To our son. She just looked at me with these blank, dead eyes, no emotion, no remorse, just complete blank expression on her face. At that point, she was silent, and I was like, you know what, Elizabeth, what goes around comes around, and this is going to come back to you, like you're going to get what you give, and I just walked out.

All the while, Matt was still upstairs with Hudson and an empty baby carrier, waiting for an update from Laura.

We're sitting up there and the minutes are just crawling by, and I have no idea what's going on, and I'm texting Laura for information and not hearing anything because she's in the thick of all of this, and just waiting and waiting. I remember Laura coming back up and entering the nicky wait room with no baby, and she just had this look on her face.

I remember saying, there is no baby and she was never pregnant. I remember Matt tearing up at that point and us all embracing as a family.

Matt couldn't leave the hospital without seeing Elizabeth for himself.

I didn't get closure. You know, I wasn't the one down in the er like Laura was, and so I said, I have to go down there. I have to confront her. I have to see her. And so the three of us went down to the er, and it just so happened the right when we got down to the waiting room, she started to come out the door because she was released, and she saw us and looked at us and started to kind of turn the other way. And I remember yelling at her, how could you do this? And how

His family did need him. Hudson, wearing his Big Brother T shirt, seemed confused. Nothing hurt the Traits more than watching their son lose a piece of his innocence in that moment.

You know, it's hard to talk about that because that's six years old. At that moment, you have to explain to him that there are people out there in the world that are not nice, not good people that would hurt others like this. I just I'll never forget Petson with his question like it was a trick. Why would someone trick us just such an innocent question?

It was an innocent question. Won that on some level Matt and Laura had too.

After the fact, she got interviewed by the News. She told them that she wanted us to feel her pain. And I think by that she meant maybe from her own childhood, things that happened to her. You know her people hurt people, but I don't know. She wanted us to feel her pain. That's what she said.

That's the closest the traits would ever come to an answer about why Elizabeth deceived them. She wanted someone else to feel the pain she felt inside. That was the only explanation for why she took it so far.

At any point during this whole thing, she could have ended it. Laura tried so many times to convince her to keep the baby, the baby would be best with her, and she have not shown up to the hospital right.

The extent to which she brought it was just cruel and in my mind, just an evil thing to do.

Almost immediately they started to think back on the last few months and they saw it all in a new horrible light. The woman they'd spent months building a relationship with, expecting to have as a lifelong family member, was faking her pregnancy. The whole time.

She physically looked pregnant. She just had that body type where she looked like she could have been pregnant, and I really thought she was pregnant.

She sent us videos, you know, where she'd looked up her shirt and video what you know, look at babykick.

I actually remember her being like, yeah, feel your baby pick, like, put your hand in my stomach. And I never did feel a baby pick obviously.

But what about the ulder sound photos and the stuffed unicorn with a recording of the baby's heartbeat.

I think it was probably her other kids ultrasounds, and or the heartbeat might have been from one of her other kids.

As for Elizabeth's husband, they can only guess.

I think he honestly had no idea she was doing this. She was not involving him at all.

He traveled a lot for work, so when we were there at their house, we never met him. I don't think he knew that she had reached out to us. I don't think he knew what she was doing.

Did she even have a husband at all. Some parts of the elaborate deception are still a mystery.

I don't know where she got the pictures of the blood. I have no idea where she got those pictures.

Matt and Laura Trait were in the waiting room of the er with their six year old, reeling from the news that the daughter they were expecting to adopt never existed at all. All morning, their phones were blowing up messages from family and friends wanting updates about Noela.

I remember sending a message, you know, there is no baby, and having to sort of explain that, but at the same time not really wanting to talk to anybody about it, and just other shock from everybody. We all just kind of had this moment together. Obviously, there are situations and adoption where you expect, you know, possibly the birth mother to change your mind and you decide to keep the baby.

Leaving the hospital that day, they got into a fender bender in their rental car. It was one of those absurd moments in life. I can't imagine what Matt and Laura were thinking on hold with the insurance company while staring in disbelief at the empty car seat. After what felt like an eternity, they finally got back to their airbnb.

At that point, something switched in us and we immediately went into attack mode. We can't let someone get away with this. You can't let someone emotionally abuse you like that and just lay down and take it. And so back at theirbnb, we started immediately making phone calls to the sheriff's department to I mean, anybody that would listen.

And I remember the sheriff saying, well, it's not a crime to hurt someone's feeling.

That comment sent them over the edge, spurred them into a level of action they didn't even know they were capable of. This was more than a case of hurt feelings, and they were going to prove it.

I think as a lesson to Hudson, He's obviously watching how we're reacting to all of this, and it was so important for us to have him know that we were going to do something about this, that it's important in life to stand up for what's right and to stand up for what you believe in rather than just cowering in a corner and just letting it defeat you. And in a way, I think that was cathartic because it was a.

Way for us to take our power back because it felt like a really powerless situation.

So they just kept making phone calls.

I remember calling Child Protective Services to let them know what was happening. I just felt like she was not mentally stable and I was really concerned about her kids, and we were calling like the district Attorney's office, just anybody that would listen.

Really, I want to credit Laura because she was the one who was at home. Hudson went back to school, I went back to work, and you know, she's at home on the phone every single day. Reaching out to police, reaching out to the Commonwealth Attorney is kind of like trying to see what could happen.

And finally they found someone who would listen, someone who had more information about Elizabeth Jones.

It was discovered through one of the detectives that she was on probation for a credit card fraud and she actually had an ankle bracelet. The problem was every time that we saw her, well at the time Laura visited, in the time that we were all out there, she was wearing big ugg boots and so it wasn't possible

It was only because Elizabeth was on probation that the trades had a chance to pursue criminal charges against.

Her, and it's like, Okay, we have some traction, we have something happening here. We might have an opportunity to be able to hold her accountable for her crimes.

Accountability was important to them. After all, Elizabeth took more than just a few thousand dollars. She took one of their last chances at growing their family.

I had always thought that there was another baby out there is meant to be a part of our family.

After everything they'd been through in their fertility journey. Elizabeth's betrayal fundamentally changed Matt and Laura.

I never knew that people like that were even out there, that could go to those means to hurt someone else. So the impact that the adoption fraud had on me personally was a just really scared me away from pursuing any future opportunities. I was just really afraid to get hurt again.

The trades still believe in adoption. They've heard many success stories, but they were exhausted. They couldn't keep trying. It's still the thing that stings the most.

Maybe we weren't meant to have another child, but maybe we were meant to help others.

And one way they're planning to help others is through building an online community. It's called infertility noow dot com, where they want to host resources, meeting groups, and online courses for people going through infertility.

We're hoping to create a community of people who are going through infertility, and we hope to offer classes to them and kind of give guidance and teach people all the different options there are out there for building a family, and also just to be a support to people who are going through it, because we know what it's like. Infertility is really a lonely place to.

Be against all odds. And despite what the police had initially told them, the Trades were finally able to pursue charges against Elizabeth and find justice.

March third of the following year, twenty nineteen. After months of working, we were able to get nine felony charges of obtaining money on false pretenses. As she was on probation, so all of the times we took her out for dinner or meals, buying her gifts things like that, they were able to make those charge because of her probation.

And remember those professional photos where Laura and Elizabeth are wearing matching shirts. Those photos cost a few hundred dollars and that expense was added to Elizabeth's felony charge.

At first, she had put not guilty.

But before the hearing, Elizabeth changed her plate she was going to plead guilty.

We were going to fly out there for the trial, and we got a call from her lawyer saying, you know, she's going to plead guilty. You don't have to come out now. It's okay, you don't need to come out, and we were like, we're coming, because at the last minute she could change her mind, and we're still in California. We're not there to speak for ourselves. So we're going to make the trip and we're going to be there for the trial. So we flew out there again. We faced her in court.

At the beginning of the hearing. She ended up pleading guilty rather than going to trial. She agreed to a sentence of ten years, eight of which were suspended, so she served two years in state prison, with the remaining eight years to be added if she commits another crime on top of that, and so we really felt like it was a victory. I just remember standing out front of the courthouse, speaking in front of the news conference and just how amazingly empowering it was that we didn't

Felt like we had closure to that part of our life. We had gotten our power back, and so we felt like we could take on the future and we could move on.

After seeing Elizabeth sentenced to two years for the fraud she committed, the traits still weren't done. They knew that they only got justice because their perpetrator happened to be on probation. So they worked with Virginia's Deputy Attorney General to write a new law.

It officially became Senate Bill one zero zero three that made it a crime to lie in electronic communications during a business transaction. So the crime is actually punishable by up to a year in jail and a twenty five hundred dollars fine. So it went into effect in Virginia on July first in twenty twenty, and it was named after US trades law. That sense of pride and accomplishment,

They say that trades Law in Virginia is just the beginning, one small step towards very necessary adoption reform and regulation in the United States.

You know, it's like the wild West out there. It's a multi billion dollar industry. There are so many desperate families as well as desperate birth mothers, and I think the adoption industry as a whole praise on these desperate people who don't know where else to turn to. Costs are through the roof and there needs to be more oversight.

One of the reasons the Traits initially decided to go public with their story was to help educate other adoptive families about their rights. At the time they tried to get pregnancy verification, something signed and dated by a doctor, we.

Were told that there was nothing that could be done on our end until after the baby was born, which we found kind of strange and very frustrating. That led us to reaching out to try to get a hold of someone to get pregnancy verification, and either people wouldn't return our calls or they told us we didn't have the authority to get that information from them.

Since this happened, they've learned adoptive parents do have legal rights to pregnancy verification.

So we want to let families know you have a right to that as an adoptive parent, and that's one of the first things that you should do is try to get a pregnancy verification.

They don't want anyone else to have to learn these lessons the way they did.

And I'd say one of the most important things is to listen to your gut, because if I had listened to my gut instead of giving her the butt, I'm a doubt and just trying to see it from her side, you know, empathetic if you feel like something is off, just trust your intuition.

It's been a few years since the adoption fraud, and since then they've spent the time healing as a family. Matt says that instead of letting this betrayal break them, it's brought their family unit closer together.

One of my biggest takeaways for this is just how strong we are as a family and as a couple. I mean, rates in this country are sky high, especially divorces within the infertility community, because of the emotional toll that it takes on couples. And I just look back at how much Laura and I have been through together and how much we support each other, and just how strong we still are in coming through all of this together.

Hudson was meant to be our son and our one and only child, and that dream of having so going for him is something that I try to filled in other ways. We're always meeting up with friends. He has tons of cousins, so he spends a lot of time with them. He's also very empathetic. He really is aware of other people's feelings and how his words affect other people, and I'm really proud of that part of him. He is a really good person.

On our video call with Laura and Matt, Laura had one of Hudson's drawings up on the wall next to her bed. Our producer Mo asked her about it.

Thank you. It says counting the ways I Love you, and it has like his little handprint on it in blue crayon, and each finger has something, so it says you love me, playing games, going to school with me, family, hugs and snuggling, and then in the center of the little handprint is a little red heart. That's a thank you. I think that helps me too, because I right not to take for granted how lucky I am. That's a good reminder just to like really cherish the things that you do have.

We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question, why did you want to tell your story? This is what Matt says.

I think it's important to share our story because there are a lot of people out there who are victims of emotional abuse. Because that's what our story is, is emotional abuse. And you know, as much as that affects you, it's so important to not take it lying down, you know, to try to stand up for yourself and do something

And for Laura, just that feeling that you're not alone helps so much when you're going through something like this. Infertility is such a lonely journey, and it's important that you surround yourself with other people that are going through the same situation. You can learn from each other. Not everybody wants to share their story, but for us, it's really important that we do something positive with our experience so something good can come of this.

On the next episode of Betrayal, she's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after.

They kill me.

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