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This episode contains strong language and references to baby loss and sexual behavior. That conversation with Shauna when she calls you to tell you what happened, what did she say and how did that go? I know she was really shook up. I think we were both just stunned and I'm like, oh my God. Oh my God.
Terri Murphy lives just north of Toronto in a bucolic setting. Fields, horses, barns. She has five kids, and she's been a doula for decades. So when it comes to birthing, there's not a lot she hasn't seen.
But mentoring Shauna, who had Caitlin Braun as her first client, that really threw her. I think I had more resources because I wasn't there doing what she did to start really... going after it um than shauna did i mean she's really got to be doubting herself and you know really shook up that she didn't see things what shauna didn't see was that Caitlin was faking her pregnancy. Faking her labor. And not until Caitlin finally gets an ultrasound does the truth come out. So we're like... pretty...
freaked out about all of that. While Shauna is still in shock, still unsure what has happened, Terry's instinct is to get to the bottom of this. She wanted answers. And the more she dug, the bigger the story got. I said, you really need to pick up the phone and call me. I need to speak with you. For Terry, there was only one person who really knew what was going on. And that was Caitlin.
And she just said that she was really sorry. She couldn't stop crying. She just kept saying, I don't know why I do it. For CBC and the BBC World Service, I'm Sarah Trelevin. And this is The Con, Caitlyn's baby. Episode 3, 50 Doulas. I'm thinking this woman is in a psychotic episode. Terry says her call with Caitlin was short, and it didn't offer a lot of answers.
She just kept saying, I don't know why I do it, but that she's going for therapy. And like I said, you're causing trauma to these people. You've got to stop doing this. Caitlin promises Terry she'll stop. And Terry is hopeful. But she knows that Caitlin probably can't do it alone. She'll need the people who love her. So her first thought is to find Caitlin's mom. I'm a mom, and I really was feeling for her mom.
You know? With a bit of sleuthing, Terry finds her. I've messaged her mother and said, I really need to speak to you. I'm really concerned about your daughter. Please contact me. Months go by. And then finally, Terry hears back from Caitlin's mom. She says that Caitlin admitted everything. That she was scared. She received a call from the police about possible charges and she is finally realizing...
the scope of what she has done. They said that she will not be charged if she receives the help and that there are no more complaints. Caitlin's mom tells Terry that she thinks this has finally sunk in. That Caitlin finally understands that her actions are hurting other people. And she tells Terry that Caitlin is seeing a psychiatrist. I think that has finally sunk in in this time that she is affecting other people.
But Terry's not sure about that response. To her, it kind of lacks urgency. It doesn't seem like this is going to solve the immediate problem. There's no way for her to know that Caitlin will stop calling doulas. So Terry keeps looking for other people in Caitlin's life. First I go on Facebook and I see her best friend. I saw her best friend had a little baby. And I said, I don't want to freak you out. I have some concerns for your best friend. And I get on the phone and I tell her that.
her friend has just appeared to be pregnant and taken a doula through a long four-day journey to not be pregnant and we're really concerned about her mental health. And she's like, well, I just supported her through a stillbirth in June. And she had a little girl. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this is unresolved trauma from this actual stillbirth she had in June. So Sean and I start, you know, you're feeling a lot of compassion and pity.
Oh, this poor thing, you know, she actually had a stillbirth. Caitlin's best friend tells Terry that there was a doula present for the stillbirth in June. So Terry reaches out to that doula. hoping to clarify what happened. She supported her for four days. She was at home birthing with her, and she was shaking and sweating, and she said it didn't look good. The story is a familiar one.
She was supporting a stillbirth, a 20-week stillbirth through a rape. They go to the hospital for an ultrasound. They get taken in by ambulance. So during the ultrasound, she goes into the room, goes for the ultrasound, comes out with the tech, and the tech says, you need to tell your team what's happening. And she goes, yeah, well, I just have to go to the bathroom. Goes to the bathroom and disappears. This doula never sees Caitlin again. And for Terry, the landscape is changing quickly.
This is starting to feel less like unprocessed trauma and more like another con. Caitlin wasn't just lying to strangers. She was lying to her best friend. I've actually talked to this friend and she is still very much confused and upset about what happened. Until Terry connected with her, she was still under the impression that Caitlin had delivered a stillborn baby. What is now your read on this situation? What do you think is going on here? That she has a fetish. She's manipulating.
Terry and Shauna agree that they need to warn other doulas. They start to post in doula groups on social media and put the word out through the community. Here's Shauna. So we created the group chat in November. And every week or every few days, we would find another victim and add them to the group chat. So it was kind of surreal because the group chat would be...
quiet for a few days and then all of a sudden my phone would start vibrating and I knew what it was. What it was was doula after doula finding out about Caitlin and realizing that they too had been duped. They had same questions over and over. This is Amy, the doula who had been homesick but stuck on the phone with Caitlin for 10 days. She also joined the group chat. How long has she been doing this? Why aren't the police involved? Why, why, why?
But also, there were even people who finished their communication with Caitlin, still believed that there really was a baby, really believed that there was a birth, and didn't know it was fake. And then I had to tell them that it was fake. That they had, you know, put this kind of weird but not harmful situation in a box in their brain up in a way in their memory, and I had to bust it open. One of those people was a doula named Randy.
She was from a different Canadian city, thousands of miles away in Calgary. Like Amy, Randy worked with Caitlin over text for several days in a row. There was a lot of messages. I know at some point their friends joined, and so I would be having dialogue with one friend. After several hours of labor, things started to take a turn.
One of Caitlin's friends texted Randy, telling her that the doctors were panicked and things weren't looking good. So at this point in time, Friend is freaking out. They are... catastrophically going to worst case scenario as as you would like when you see your friend essentially bleeding out you're going to freak out and so they're going well what if
there's hysterectomy my client had wanted more babies how how do they go about that how are they gonna like it's not just like this loss now there's another loss What happens if they're not able to stop the bleeding? What happens if they die? Like, they said that, like, organ failure was happening. And so when that happens, like, I know. I'm like, okay, so my client's essentially dead.
And I've never lost a client before. Randy believed that Caitlin was in a coma. This is a bad one. This is really, really, really bad. I end up driving to my friend's house well on the phone. with one of my friends because I'm hysterically crying at this point. This interaction the loss of her client had a lasting impact on Randy. So much so that she got a tattoo in Caitlin's honor. It's on her left arm below the elbow. It reads, Surrender, with a little blue butterfly.
But then Randy saw the social media posts. You get hit with so many feelings and so many emotions at once. And the dominoes started falling. Because it's like... oh, thank God, like, they're okay, they're alive. But also, what the fuck? And what the hell just happened? It's become clear not only was Caitlin obviously lying about the pregnancy, She clearly had not fallen into a coma either. It had to be Caitlyn herself sending those texts from different cell phone numbers.
Shauna remembers that, at first, the doulas who joined the chat group were mostly Canadian. But soon, it ballooned. We found somebody who was in Florida, I think. At one point, we found somebody... In the States, I think it was in the southern states, I can't remember exactly where, but it was the week before me. While talking to another doula, Shauna says Caitlin turned on her camera and pointed it at her vagina.
Like, called the doula on FaceTime or whatever, set the phone up, went and sat down, and gave herself a cervix check. As more and more of these stories piled up, things began to feel like they were spiraling out of control. The scope of this thing was enormous. The number of doulas in the Caitlyn group chat hit more than 50. 50. And those were just the ones who approached the group. How many other doulas had Caitlyn tricked?
How much damage had she caused? A lot of the doulas didn't charge Caitlyn for helping to deliver a stillborn. But some did charge for their time. And often Caitlyn would just disappear and not pay them. So the doulas were upset about the money she owed some of them, and the emotional toll she took on all of them. But they were now also worried about how far she might go.
We were listening to these stories about how she got into labor and delivery units with doulas and then she would be gone walking around the hospital for an hour or two where no one knew where she was. I was also very scared. that she was going to find a doula who either was pregnant or brought their infant along with them. And I was concerned that she was going to find a new mom working as a doula.
Like, I was really scared she was going to steal a baby. The last straw was when one of the doulas in the group chat says she found an ad Caitlin posted. advertising her services as a nanny. I call the police. I'm David Ridgen, host of the award-winning podcast Someone Knows Something. Each season, I investigate a different unsolved case, from a mysterious bomb hidden in a flashlight to two teenagers killed by the KKK.
The New York Times calls SKS a consistently rigorous, intelligent gem, and Esquire named the series one of the best true crime podcasts of 2021. Find Someone Knows Something wherever you get your podcasts. Canadians have plenty of reasons to pay attention right now, but not everyone has a daily news habit. So if you're hoping to build one, we're here to make that really easy. I'm Marcia Young.
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I sit in my car shaking for hours because all you can do is like leave a message with the switchboard and they say someone will get back to you. When Amy finally gets a call back. She says the detective tells her something she really doesn't expect. And he makes it clear to me that he knows who Caitlin is. The police.
already know Caitlin. I don't know how long ago, but previously that she had actually lied to him and said she was pregnant at that time. He obviously can't tell me a whole lot. She has privacy rights. But in his very like roundabout police officer way, made it clear to me that we were not the first, that he knew who she was, that this has been going on.
The detective offers to go to Caitlin's apartment to check on her. We've confirmed the Brantford police did do a wellness check on Caitlin. He calls me back and he confirms she's in her living room and she's... fine. She was surprised when he showed up. Amy says she was told that Caitlin was at home and that she was fine. Maybe she's gearing up for some more fake contractions.
But despite all that, Amy says the police don't believe any laws have been broken. We can't really help you. This isn't really fraud. There was no money involved. And he told me to start spreading the word. So very specifically in that conversation, he asked me if there was some kind of certifying body, some kind of college that we could go to that could help us spread the word that there was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies.
There is no college or certifying body. It's not like being a nurse. Doulas aren't a regulated profession. So there's no single entity that can send an email blast out to let them know that there's a predator on the loose. I asked very specifically if sharing her name or information could get us in trouble. And he said, no, that if this was something that you really went through, then it is not slander.
This is Amy Silva. She's another doula in London, Ontario, who had a brief experience with Caitlin. Three weeks ago today, I supported somebody through what I was told was a stillbirth. I had somebody reach out to me. I made the TikTok because I wanted to protect other doulas. It was never about naming Keelan or shaming Keelan. Yeah, it was always like, what can we do moving forward? We had...
All of us, we had those conversations very early on about, okay, this is a situation that we never want to happen again. We don't want any other doulas to go through this. Like, what are some safety measures that we could put in place? What could we have done to prevent this? And honestly, there's not a lot that you can do.
Amy's video went viral, and she inspired some other doulas to make their own, including Shauna. I'm feeling a little bit better today, so I'm going to try to do a full story time, and hopefully... shed some light on some questions that a lot of people have. This is going to be in a lot of parts just so you're aware. I'll link in comments and stuff. I was sitting in my car and I said, if you're a doula, please watch this.
And I said, there's a birth fetishist running out of Brantford, Ontario. And I got a DM. But I also accidentally used the hashtag dogs of TikTok. I meant to say doulas of TikTok and I like typoed, I guess. I don't even know how that worked. And I was like, oh, oops. I had 24 followers. I was not expecting. anything to happen with this but i think it was because i used dogs of tiktok i got on the wrong for you page and so then people were hearing this and being like wait what
The next red flag is that she did not want to change her shorts after her water broke. And I thought that that was really gross. Now I think that she was just really lazy and thought I was stupid, which I guess I was. These posts hit big. Tens of thousands of views. Hundreds of comments. Here's Amy Silva again. What I got from my video was a lot of... people reaching out to me that had been impacted by Caitlin. I had multiple doulas from out of province, out of the country. I had...
People that she'd grown up with messaging me. I had a nurse that she had worked with message me. I had a woman who owns a funeral home in the UK who sent my Caitlin money for a funeral. Message me. What were you learning about her from what they were telling you? I had a lot of people that she grew up with. friends from, you know, university. I had family members reach out.
And they were all saying like, she's always done this. She's, she's accused me of X, Y, Z. She's always been unstable or like, I'm not shocked by. This, yeah, it was, it was a lot of that. Like, just not shocked. And in the midst of all this, the doulas sharing their trauma and anger, trying to warn people while absorbing all of the other awful Caitlin Braun stories coming from friends and family members, something else happens.
Someone online with Caitlyn's name and picture starts liking the comments under these videos. We haven't been able to verify whether this was in fact Caitlyn, but to the doulas at the time, they believed it was her. and that she was mocking them. While this is all blowing up online,
Amy Perry is still frustrated that she can't get police interested in this case. But finally, after two months of waiting, she's connected to a victim services worker. And she just sat there the whole time going, oh my god. Oh, my God. No way. This is so traumatic. Oh, my God. Bless this woman. All I needed in that moment was validation that this was real.
And she gave me that validation. She's witnessed home births with somebody in her family. She knew what a doula was. She knew the kind of support, the intimate type of support that we give. And more than anything, what that allowed was the space for me to get more into the details that I couldn't bring up in a 10-minute conversation to just try and give the bullet points to the police officer to even say this is something that's happening.
In her role as a victim services worker, she's not interested in the crime. She was interested in the trauma. And so she listened to my trauma. And I, to this day, wonder. what she did, that all of a sudden, within a couple weeks, Brantford police was calling me and asking to do a video interview. Soon, other doulas are asked to come in for interviews as well.
But Amy is still struggling. I'm in Brantford and I know where she lives. And so I drive past her house. So I pull into the parking lot and I sit there for maybe 10 or 15 minutes and I stare at her house. thinking about knocking on her door and punching her in the face. I mean, really, that's what I'm picturing. And obviously I don't do it.
She's unsafe. I'm not going to put myself in that position. But what I then learned three days later is that there was a doula in that house while I was staring at it. And she was there for five days. All of this simmering starts to feel like it's hitting a boiling point. And then we wake up one March morning and our group doula chat is going bananas. And she's been arrested. We find out that she's been arrested.
And we don't hear from anybody. We have no idea what's going on. Caitlin's story is now being feverishly covered by local and soon national and international media. A Branford woman is being charged for using doula services while falsely claiming to be pregnant and having stillbirths. The woman faked pregnancies and stillbirths to receive treatment. Some doulas say they're relieved.
Caitlin Braun is facing charges ranging from criminal harassment, fraud and sexual assault. She was arrested by Brantford police on Monday. She has like 13 charges and one of them is sexual assault and the rest are like false pretense and harassment and things like that. And then that encourages other doulas to come forward.
The Brantford police tell reporters that they're receiving a flood of calls and emails from potential victims. In an email to our team, they describe this case as an exceptionally unique investigation. The doulas have no idea why the police have finally decided to act. But there's a collective sigh of relief that Caitlin's in jail. Stopped. At least for now. But there are still...
So many unanswered questions. The main ones? Who is Caitlin Braun? And why would she do this? I wish that I knew that, honestly. It's... One part of me feels like, you know, she's sick and she has some sort of like disease or illness or something. And that's why I thought that happened because a normal person just wouldn't do that. That's next time. On the con, Caitlyn's baby.
We made numerous attempts to contact Caitlin Braun, outlining the allegations made through the series and inviting her to respond to what has been said. She made it clear to me that she didn't want to be involved with the podcast. The invitation remains open to Caitlin should she change her mind and wish to respond. None of the sexual allegations against her were proven in court.
This is a CBC and BBC World Service production. The show is written, researched, and produced by me, Sarah Trelevin. It was also written and produced by Kathleen Goldhar. Extra production support from Andrew Friesen and Alexis Green. Sound design and scoring by Mitchell Stewart. Emily Quinnell is our digital coordinating producer. Our senior producer is Veronica Simmons.
The fact checker is Emily Mathieu. Our executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is our senior manager and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. For the BBC World Service, Kat Collins is the senior producer, and John Manel is the podcast commissioning editor. A BBC World Service and CBC Podcast production.