Waking Up | EP 10 | Saskia's Story

Hi everyone, Andre here, I have some exciting news to share. ABC has turned Betrayal Weekly into an eight episode anthology, which means each episode features one of your favorite Betrayal Weekly stories. You'll get to see the people involved, hear from people who have never spoken before, and actually see where the story took place. We are so proud and excited to share it with you all. It's called Betrayal, Secrets and Lies and you can watch it every Sunday

Our life blew up. On April eleventh, April twenty twenty two is when D Day happened and everything this blew up.

All of this blew off our life, our kids' lives, our community.

He completely ruined my family.

For so many people, a Betrayal is an ending, a death of the life they knew. I often get asked if it's depressing working on stories like this, day in, day out, and the truth is a lot of the time it's the opposite, because as much as these are stories about the moment of destruction, they're also about what happens after that moment, help people get up the next day,

I think it would surprise him to see how much stronger I've gotten, even since his attempt to totally destroy me. I was not going to be just a dispensable person, someone that you can use and abuse and then discard. His focus was on my weaknesses and he didn't realize how strong I am.

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, Season five, episode ten, Waking Up. Before we talk about where Saska is today, there's something I want to share. It's a bit of a left turn, but it has a lot to do with why I do this work and why I felt drawn to Saskia's story In college, I was raped. At the time, I was going through a really bad depression, and much in the same way that Saskia did, I drank to cope. One night, when I was drunk, a

He said, I guess we're both a little bit crazy. I said, no, no, I have mental health issues. You're a predator and you're a monster.

This is something that's always struck me about Saskia's story, and it's actually pretty rare. Immediately she knew the gravity of what Mike had done. She went to the authorities to protect herself and to keep others safe. And then she took the stand and stood up to him.

You're a dangerous person who prays on vulnerable and trusting people. You're sexual predator, Michael loving Good. You do have this inner strength that comes out at times.

That's Carrie Hartman, one of Betrayal's producers.

Where did that come from?

I don't know.

I really don't know wherever it came from. I've always admired that strength in Saskia, and back in those early days after her discovery, her bravery was clear to everyone around her. It looked like reporting the crime, taking the stand, seeing her divorce trial through, no matter how many insults she had to face. But there's more than one way

We talked about how brave Soaskia is to have come forward and to have been willing to go through this process. But when you experience something like this, bravery takes different forms. While it is undoubtedly brave to come forward, sometimes bravery is just getting up the next morning and living your life.

This was something I needed to hear and I imagine some listeners out there need to hear it too. Bravery isn't always about pursuing criminal action. I had to understand that after what happened to me, keeping my grades up, graduating and just getting on with my life was the bravest version of myself. And today that form of bravery is what Saskia is practicing too.

Kitties, Chicky, the Rito, Hippie, Pumpkin.

The days of pursuing justice are now behind her. These days, for Saskia, bravery looks like getting out of bed and starting her day, feeding her pets, going to work, taking a walk.

After the discovery, I wasn't able to do anything. I wasn't able to work. I was constantly on hyper alert. It really felt like this is it and that there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

Nowadays, she's not only back to normal routine, she's creating that routine for herself for the first time in her adult life.

Seven years ago, I was like a baby just starting out, just learning to crawl, and learning to crawl was learning what I would choose to do on my own. I had never really been single until a few years ago, and just learning when I'm by myself, what do I choose to do? What do I choose to eat, what do I choose to watch? And to then incorporate that into who I am. For me to get my agency back and be able to do what is good for me is where my power lies now.

Before everything happened, everyone thought Saskia and needed someone like Mike to save her. Here's her sister, Marisa.

I've always viewed her as my baby sister, as a very strong person, but somebody who's vulnerable, and he gave her a sense of stability.

Today Marisa sees all that Saskia is capable of on her own.

She's standing alone, she's doing life, She's creating her own stability.

Now, there's been so much change in the right direction. But there's a flip side to all this growth.

I feel like I've started spending most of my time alone.

It's not just that Saskia is taking time for herself. As Marisa told us.

I would say that she socially isolates more so than she ever did.

Saskia has her kids, but they're older now and most of the time they're out of the house or with their dad. She works from home and stays there through the evening with her pets to keep her company. Since finding out about Mike's crimes, her world's gotten a lot smaller.

I was so devastated and shocked by everything that how and that I had no choice but to start to protect myself a little bit. And that's something that is empowering, right to know that I can make my own choices and I can stay as safe as I need to or want to.

But by putting up these walls, she's not only protecting herself against bad people, she's isolating herself from friends and family. Here's Marisa again.

She's been stuck in that fight mode for so long. I want her to be open to the good in people, and I want her to know what that feels like, and to know that he didn't take it from her.

When my reporting team and I went to Maryland to meet Saskia, we noticed those walls too. We'd spent months talking to her in advance, explaining the production process and what to expect. She was fully on board in all of her inner views. She was open, but whenever we weren't recording, the walls went back up in a way I'd never encountered before with other stories. For instance, during our reporting trips, we usually take our storytellers out to

I stopped doing those things for a long time. It's been really hard for me to get back out there. I don't think that I can ever trust anybody. I don't think that I could ever fully be confident that someone wasn't misleading me or manipulating me because I was so sure that he was a good person and that you love me. How can I ever get to the point where I truly don't fear that?

On this show, we're asking people who've experienced a traumatic betrayal to trust us with their story. It always takes months of building rapport to get to that point. By the time we got to Maryland, Saskia was ready to share her story, but we questioned if she was ready to really put herself out there with this show. So I asked her about that. I said, to you, we don't have to do this.

We don't have to go forward with this.

You can always circle back when you are ready. How did that occur for you?

It made me feel a little bit vulnerable, like they're seeing how hard this is for me, Like what am I doing? This is so difficult.

Part of her thought about ending the whole project right there. Instead, she made a choice, the choice to keep going.

I feel like this was the journey that was put in for me and I was gonna see it through, regardless of how difficult it was.

For years, Saskia has received support from a psychiatrist and other mental health providers, but in choosing to do this podcast, we wanted to ensure she had extra support, so we connected her with Jessica Beaum.

I'm a psychotherapist, a licensed mental health counselor. I'm an author of two books, Anxiously Attached and Safe.

If you've been listening to our show for a while, you might recognize jess from season two where she worked with our subject, Ashley Linton.

I studied interpersonal neural biology, and that is a study of how we form as infants and young beings in relationship with others. That's how we form our attachment patterns, and I work a lot with my clients on getting into their body and starting to be with their nervous system and starting to connect all those dots.

Following our reporting trip, Jess and Saskia started meeting weekly.

And I'm going to continue working with her to the other side of this whenever she gets to the other side.

Often, Jess and Saskia talked about emotions that came up throughout the production process. It took strength to report the crime and get through those early days, but in many ways that strength was a reflex. She saw no other path than to fight this choice, to revisit what happened to her. To trust other people with her story has demanded a different kind of strength. Jess and Saskia agreed

In the beginning, when I met with the producers, it felt profound, but it also was so scary and so uncomfortable that I honestly was like a little kid, like I hid my face in my shirt because it felt so strange receiving compassion and empathy and sympathy about what Mike did.

To me, and you had to start to recognize how bad it was.

Yeah, how hard that was. I never felt important enough to really do the deep diving into me and my story in my life. It feels wrong to me because I'm not used to doing that.

And we have to get in touch with all the pain to do that.

Yeah, that's probably what makes me feel like I want.

To rite one.

I think that being vulnerable like this and feeling it, part of you wants to do the work, and the part of you is so uncomfortable with showing up for it. And I think that's actually a very normal part of this experience, or the re experiencing of it all.

I totally agree. On Sunday night, we had a really difficult recording session for the podcast. I was talking to.

Kitln Caitlyn is one of our producers.

And she saw that I visibly got tearful and then started crying. And Caitlyn's response, of course, was empathy and like, if this is too much for you, let's stop, And I said no, like I need to feel these feelings. It's hard, but I know that this is necessary.

It's harder before it gets easier. Yep, that's what I'm finding, And you know, Soski, some people don't have the capacity. It takes a lot to slow down and feel.

Yeah, it's been really hard a few years. I'm proud of myself for taking the time to be by myself and come to some realizations. But it's a scary thing to do at forty seven years old. I wish that it would have happened to that earlier for me, so I could have avoided some of these consequences.

I don't know how many clients I have that are like forty or fifty or fifty five who say the same thing, like I wish I could have done this sooner. I remember asking my mentor once when I got out of a really unhealthy relationship, I said, did I need to go through this pretty traumatic relationship to have this healing process occur? Like? Was there another path? Sometimes we're just not ready to go there until things get bad enough or we need a wake up call.

Yeah, right, we have no choice but to slow down or stop and deal with things.

In slowing down, Saskia is not only facing these emotions coming up through the podcast or sitting with her trauma from Mike. She's going back further to her childhood to understand why she gravitated towards someone like Mike and to try to break that pattern going forward. Remember, Saskia grew up as the youngest of four. Her father struggled with mental illness, and her mom was busy keeping the family afloat.

Felt so alone and like a freak. In school, I remember crying in the bathrooms and not really knowing why. Looking back, I was really struggling with depression and anxiety.

A big part of why she turned to alcohol.

I remember the first time getting drunk and how good it felt. It helped me cope with a lot of things that I hadn't dealt with yet, were under the surface, stuff from my childhood.

Doesn't it make sense? That's part of the human desires. We go towards what feels good, what releases chemicals, what feels a sense of belonging, And you weren't getting any of that at home, right.

Maybe that's what I did in my relationships too. I didn't get what I needed emotionally, and so that's always what I was searching for, that feeling sure Mike was really the first person that I thought actually loved me and was safe. It would be awful even if it was a stranger who did this to me or someone I had just met, but the fact that this was my partner for seven years.

Supposed to be the safest person to you.

I mean, he was my best friend. With him, I felt really cared for, and I've never felt that before in my life.

When you grow up with childhood neglect and trauma, that very young part of you is looking to be taken care of, yeah, and attracted to someone who appears safe, who appears like they're going to take care of that little girl, and it ends up becoming a nightmare.

Right.

Mike presented as someone different, He presented as someone safer, He presented as not your normal type. And it's almost like a fish on a hook. Your inner child is projecting the perfect parent onto this person. This is going to be the solution, because now this person is safe, They're meeting all your needs. And the truth is your attachment needs were still underneath the surface.

One hundred percent. I mean, you've helped me realize that I was seeking validation and feeling yeah taken care of.

And he was in a position of power because he met those needs so well.

For you, looking at how I got to this place has been really important because I don't need saving.

For the first time in her life, Saskia is not dating through this work in therapy, She's breaking patterns, sitting with her pain, putting herself first.

I feel like I'm giving myself as much space and time as I need to heal. I don't have time or energy to prioritize somebody else over me right now, and that's when the healing has really started. I feel like I need to be able to trust myself before I'll be able to trust anybody else. What I do know now is that I can do it on my own. If somebody makes me uncomfortable or somebody isn't concerned with my feelings, I can walk away and I can still

As I was listening to Saskia and Jess's last recorded session, I heard something that made me smile. Saska was looking back on the early days of working with us and how much has changed since then.

I'm definitely a people pleaser. If other people like me, that makes me happy, and with this podcast, there was a lot of that. Like I didn't know what support to expect, so it was all very kind.

Of scary, but slowly, through lots of interviews, check ins, and visits, our team earned Sask's trust. Today, our conversations are as much about what happened to her as they are about what shows we're watching. But our pets are doing good days and bad days at work. Saska's walls are down, and to me that's an honor. Are really the first new people Saske has let into her world in a long time.

The support that I felt from working on this podcast, it's been something that I've never felt before, the empathy and the understanding. It's crazy how it happened, and I don't really believe in fate, but it was just what I need didn't to deal with it and heal and.

Yeah, do all the hard work. I know it's a reexperiencing, but I think it's the re experiencing with the support that makes the difference.

I totally agree.

Once the project ends, we're not going anywhere, but just want Saska to take this experience of learning to trust us and translate it into trusting others again in her everyday life.

The way to heal this, Saskia, is now through the work with me, but also other people who you can be vulnerable with, who see you, who hold this sadness with you. Instead of finding a new man and a new solution, we need to slow down and start to learn what's going on inside and be with our core wounds. And a way to break this pattern is to lean on other people who don't medicate the trauma, but can be with you in your pain.

I do have people that I knew care about me.

Who's one of those people my sister.

I think I used to feel like she wanted to be there, but it was just one more thing in her life that she felt like she wanted to fix. Now she kind of asks like, do you just want me to be here? So listen.

That is literally the only thing we need is we just need people to be with us.

In addition to Marisa, Saskia has her friends, the ones you've heard from throughout the season, but it hasn't always felt easy to open up to them.

I've always put a lot of pressure on myself not to show how much pain I'm in.

I think there's a piece to trauma survivors where we are not used to people who accept us unconditionally and like us when we're messy and can be with all our parts, so we're like I have to perform.

I would never reach out to a friend event I wouldn't answer my phone unless I was in a good mood. I would look internally and be like, how can I fix myself so I can be okay for other people.

Before Mike, Saskio was the silly, bubbly one in her friend group no matter what she was going through on the inside. But after her discovery.

There was no putting on a happy face. Everything went dark for me and being around people that just had normal lives or happy relationships or we're talking about I don't know what they bought at the store. It was easier for me to stay away.

But connection is a two way street. Sometimes her friends haven't known the best way to show up for Saskia, if they should or could talk about what happened when we were in Maryland. I brought that up with Saski's friend head.

Do you guys as a friend group talk about hard things?

No?

Oh, the move or phrase app not with the person in the room.

Why do you think that is?

I think a lot of us are people pleasers, and so we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings and it's not meant to be like malice or like gossipy or something. It's anyone concern, but not having the confidence to bring it up directly with the person.

There's also the guilt her friends feel about what happened to Saskia. Looking back now knowing what Mike was doing, Heather feels a lot of anger at herself. Remember she was the friend that told Saskia to go through with the wedding after the first time Saskia saw something on Mike's laptop.

I wish I would have given her that out and been the friend that can be like, you don't have to do this if you don't want to, Like, if you don't feel like something's right, you don't have to go through with this.

It's uncomfortable to look back and wonder if you could have done anything to differently. That guilt can make it hard to talk about what happened. But there's one more reason I think these friends don't talk about what Saskia went through. It's the reason why for years there weren't stories like this one out there, and it's a big part of why it took so long for men like Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby to be held accountable.

I've been not dealing with that, not thinking about it.

You feel like trying to block it out of your psyche is how you've been protecting yourself from it.

Yeah, for sure, I don't think I knew how hard it was going to be, how much I had suppressed in this to just.

Get by Maurica can see the effect these images have on Saskia.

She's embarrassed about the idea of her being on display, and that makes her want to shrink. But I think the side of her that wants to stand up for herself and will feel no shame is stronger.

Saskia knows the shame isn't hers to carry. She wants to talk about what happened to her. That's why she's doing this podcast, dragging all this out into the light. Despite how upsetting it can feel, she's being brave. For their part, her friends are starting to do the same. They're showing up for Saskia and talking more about what happened on the podcast, but even more so with each other.

I can't tell you how many good tears I've cried realizing how much people care about me. It's nice, like I'm you know, I'm growing, and also I think my relationships have kind of transformed.

Also, she's finding new stability. But the people who've been there all along. On our last night in Maryland, Saskett invited all her people over for a party. In the days before, she almost canceled the whole thing. It had just been a full week of interviews.

I was so anxious about doing a good job in telling my story that my nervous system was just in overdrive and it felt like too much to go out or entertain.

We assured her she didn't need to throw a party on our account. Her people would understand too, but she wanted to do it.

I want to actually enjoy life, and I don't feel like I always have to show up with a happy face. I can just be me.

So she gathered everyone on her back porch, her siblings, her friends.

I want to hear.

I want to hear what she's saying.

It was a tail end of summer, the sun was setting and the cicadas were in full swing. Everyone sat in a circle of Adirondack chairs, eating cake and trading funny stories from growing up.

We heard Georgetown, so Bridget throw all of us down to Georgetown.

I could tell it was a lot for Soskia. She looked tired and she couldn't seem to sit still in her chair. But in the midst of all of this, I heard something the day so we.

Were like, oh, so, then we had to back down again.

And Soskia is laugh. It was mentioned a lot in interviews with her friends and family. But this was the first time we really heard it for ourselves, and throughout the night we kept hearing it. There's no clean end to the journey Saskia is on. She'll never reach a point when she's fully healed. No one does after betrayal. I think healing is a series of smaller winds. Maybe there will come a day when she'll wake up without her trauma on her mind. Maybe she'll call her sister

Seven years ago, I really thought that my life was over. I felt humiliated, and I still think that that's true. Today I feel exposed, but that, to me is not as important as exposing somebody who thought that they could just operate in the dark for a while. He pulled me into that darkness, and I refuse to live there.

For resources on sexual violence, visit rain dot org slash betrayal. That's r 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 sixty 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 at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That is Betrayal at gmail dot com,

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