Updates from Ember, Natalie, and Stephanie | BONUS | Saskia’s Story

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is a bonus episode of Betrayal. In season five, episode seven, we introduced you to three other survivors of intimate partner violence. Their stories were strikingly similar to Saskia's. Unlike Saskia, they've each rebuilt in the aftermath of what happened to them.

We wanted to give.

You some updates on where these survivors are today, So let's start with Ember. Remember her fiance, John was drugging and raping her. He confessed everything to their pastor.

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

Still, she planned to stay in the relationship to try to make it work. Then she had a chance encounter with John's therapist. He broke a major rule of his profession by telling her.

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. That was kind of the point where I was like, I can't marry this man.

This is the moment where back in episode seven, we pause the story, but we want to tell you what happened next. Even after hearing from John's therapist and ending their relationship, Ember didn't seriously consider going to the police. What mattered to her was ensuring that John didn't hurt other people, and she felt that that was possible without John serving time.

I said, I'm not going to press charges. I'm not going to go to the police as long as you continue getting the help you need heal so you don't do this stuff people, and he said, okay, yeah, of course, obviously I'm going to do that.

But before long Ember heard through mutual friends that John stopped going to therapy and whatever treatment he had received hadn't worked.

A friend of ours observed him drugging somebody else called me and was like, things are not better. This is escalating, and so that's when I went to the police.

But reporting this crime was far from straightforward.

Re traumatizing, I guess would be the best word for it. I was still struggling to put the pieces together. I don't remember everything because I did dissociate, and there are aspects that I don't call as a reminder.

Not only was John drugging Ember she was associating during his attacks, her mind went completely dark as a way of protecting itself from harm. Her memories were cloudy at best. So when she went to the cops, they dismissed her and.

They're like, we can't really use your testimony, like we need this happened at this time and where it happened.

On top of that, Ember didn't have the physical evidence necessary to file charges.

I didn't have a sane exam done right after the attack. I didn't have a drug panel done to prove that there was anything in my system. I just had his words to a pastor in a room that that had taken place. They're like, the best we can do is a temporary order of restraint, and even then, once that's up, you kin't have to reapply for it. In order to reapply for it, you have to prove that he's trying to contact you, and so you can't just have this indefinitely.

Ember's case was at a standstill.

That is the most heartbreaking part of our legal system as it stands. You have real victims being courageous enough to come forward and then nothing can be done, and you're like, well, then what's even the point of being courageous.

John was never brought to justice, But that didn't stop Ember from moving forward with her life today. It's been twenty years since she was raped.

And when I hit that twenty year anniversary, it was very like, whoo, I'm where I wanted to be.

She did finally get married to a man she trusts. They have two sons, and she has a great career.

I've been working with survivors kind of as a direct result of what I've been through.

She supports victims of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation, especially in creating longer term safety plans.

So statistics tell us that eighty percent of survivors of either trafficking or exploitation will be re victimized within a year if they don't have restorative help alongside them. So that isn't just like rescue and hope for the best, or recover and hope for the best. You really do have to walk alongside them and really giving them the tools they need to identify safe and unsafe people, to understand trauma and how that affects us day in and day out.

Assisting other survivors has helped Ember on her own journey.

I've been able to bear witness to so many other amazing stories that have been healing for me and helpful for me too.

She encourages other survivors to reach out to train professionals for this kind of help. No one has to hold this pain alone.

The instinct is to hide, is to run away from anyone who can observe that pain, And in reality, you need to lean in and you need to show what is happening. You need to reveal and drag it into the light so it doesn't keep thriving in the darkness.

Next, we want to share the rest of Natalie's story. She was pregnant when she found graphic sexual material created and posted by her husband, Stephen.

You can see his hands, his wedding ring, and then I realized that I am in these images.

It's been over twelve years since that moment.

For a long.

Time, after she moved out and got a divorce, she mostly kept what she discovered to herself.

The shame was really unbearable, Like, who am I going to tell this to?

On top of the shame, she felt like she had to keep quiet for the sake of her kids. Stephen's voice was still in her head.

He was their dad. I didn't want my kids to grow up in a divorced or like a single family home. I was ashamed of that too, and it was like the stigma of everything. And I look back now and I think it's not silly, but you know, that was my mindset at the time.

So for many years, Stephen's secret was her secret. They continued to co parent, trading off time with their kids, but Stephen would often push the boundaries they'd agreed on.

He would ask me, I know you're not working today and you have the kids, but I'd like to see them. Can we do something together? And I would still agree to it. Sometimes he would even come to my house and just knock on the door and just like come in my house, and I just wanted to see the kids. I'm like, you can't just do that. And my son would be like, oh hey Dad, Hey Mom, can Dad come in? Or can Dad eat with us? And I'm

It took her a while to see she needed to prioritize herself. That was how to be the best mom.

She could be.

He shouldn't be this comfortable. I don't have to let him do that. Eventually, I'm like, no, enough, You're not going to do this anymore.

Over time, Natalie started setting firmer boundaries, gaining confidence, and slowly she began opening up to people about what her ex husband, Stephen did. One of those people was her best friend, who was also her ex sister in law. If you'll recall, Stephen was Natalie's best friend's brother. Back when Stephen and Natalie separated, Natalie protected her friend from the truth.

I didn't want her to know. I didn't want that to change.

Her relationship with her brother.

But years later I ended up telling her.

Sadly, her friend came to Stephen's defense.

She didn't want to believe that I was drugged or that he was doing anything like that. That I was probably misunderstanding. She chose really victim blaming. That's another just big.

Blow to me.

But there were people who were there for her and who continued to be there for Natalie to this day, like her sisters, her friends, and her therapist.

Talking about it and sharing my secret and letting this go and not carrying so much of it really helped.

With the support she's received, She's learned how to trust other people again. She's even had romantic relationships, including a fiance who believed her without hesitation or judgment.

He's been continuously supportive of my process and has helped me feel safe and my trauma.

She's also now in a place where, after twelve years, she's considering reporting Steven to the authorities. Even after all this time, she's held onto all the evidence of what he did.

I have my son's tablet, I have memory cards, and I have old cell phones that I just have saved. They have not gone back and looked at, and I feel like I'm ready to.

Recently, she contacted her local rape crisis center to talk through her options legally.

Just having someone who understands my slow process and can give me legal advice on what I could do about that is helpful.

It's been hard for me to accept, like I don't have to put everybody first all the time. What I feel matters, my struggles matter, and what I'm going through matters, so I have to stop protecting him and follow through with what I've been wanting to do for years.

None of this feels easy, and Natalie still has a lot of hard days, but that's sequet. Steven's secret doesn't weigh on her like it once did.

I remember thinking about it like this huge elephant that I was trying to hide behind me, like by standing in front of it. That's how I felt on the inside. Now it's like the elephant is just further and further and further away from me.

Lastly, I want to give an update on Stephanie. She found something terrifying on her husband's computer.

He had a Flicker account that was filled with nude photos of me, hundreds of pictures.

We first met her in twenty twenty three. My Betrayal Weekly was just an idea. Her story became the show's first two episodes. Back then, she talked about how her discovery affected her relationship with her body.

When I was married, I had longish hair and I wore very feminine clothing. And in the days following finding out, I cut off all my hair and I wore very plain, baggy, nondescript clothing.

Today, a lot has changed. In the few years since we met her, Stephanie's gained a better sense of why she needed to alter her appearance.

I saw so many of the images, the photos that he took, and so my trauma was very rooted in the sight of my face and my body.

And so in.

Those couple of years after I discovered what he was doing, the sight of my own face and my own body was very triggering for me. It was very difficult to even change my clothes or take a shower. By not taking care of myself, cutting my hair short, and by wearing the baggy clothing, I could keep myself safe from seeing myself. And since the podcast and as I have continued with therapy and yoga, I have been able to

Oh, that's actually me. I look like me again.

She's dedicated herself to being an advocate, telling her story and the hopes that new victims will feel less alone.

I strongly believe that this is happening to lots of other women out there and they don't know it yet. And as these women start to discover what's being done to them, I want them to have a softer landing than I had. To have some resources so they don't feel like they are screaming into the void, saying, am I the only person in the world that this ever happened to?

She also wants those people to know that there is life to live after a crime like this.

For a long time, I thought the dirtiest, most foul word in the human language was hope.

Fuck hope. There was no hope, and now yeah, I can be hopeful. For resources on sexual violence, visit RAIN dot org slash betrayal that's our ai n N dot org slash betrayal. You can also get free confidential twenty four seven support through rain's National Sexual Assault Hotline. Just text Hope to six four six seven three or call one eight hundred sixty five six 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