Dismissed True Stories

Betrayal Behind Closed Doors Ep 2

• The Survivor Sisterhood • Season 3 • Episode 2

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A uniform, a cigarette break, and a teenager who just wanted to feel seen—what starts as attention quickly reveals the blueprint of grooming and coercive control. We follow Sarah as a 16-year-old pulled into an adult’s orbit, pressured into marriage through a pregnancy ultimatum, and cut off from school, work, and friends. The twist that lands like a gut punch: the person who should have protected her becomes part of the harm, pushing “practical” choices that deepen dependency and, later, crossing a boundary that shatters trust at its core.

Across the conversation, we map the mechanics of abuse in plain language: how image and authority hide predatory behavior, why gaslighting targets your sense of reality, and how economic abuse traps survivors even when the truth is in their hands. Sarah’s story makes visible the quiet tactics—smear narratives, isolation, financial leverage—that turn a normal request for a break into “proof” of unfitness. When emails expose an affair denied to her face, the denial continues, under the guise of “counseling for the kids.” We talk frankly about why leaving isn’t simple when you have no GED, no savings, and a baby in your arms, and we point to what real support should look like: safe housing, childcare, documentation, and people who believe you before the receipts show up.

You’ll leave with a clearer lens for red flags—age secrecy, ultimatums, control of money and movement, triangulation inside a family—and a renewed respect for survivor instincts. If this story hits close to home, know you’re not alone and that help exists. Share this episode with someone who needs a reality check about coercive control, and if you have thoughts or a story to add, call 1-844-TELL-DTS. Subscribe, leave a review, and help us reach more listeners who might still be searching for the words to name what they’re living.

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SPEAKER_02:

This episode contains discussions of child abuse, grooming, domestic violence, and betrayal within family systems. Some of what you'll hear may be distressing or triggering, especially for survivors. But please take care while listening. Step away if you need to. What you're about to hear is a survivor's account of abuse, told from their perspective. The story reflects one person's lived experience. Dismissed True Stories is not a substitute for professional counseling or emergency services. If you are in immediate danger, please call 911. Or if someone you love is experiencing domestic violence, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text at START at 88-788 for confidential support. Listener discretion is advised. This is season three, episode two. If you haven't listened to episode one yet, I suggest you go back and start there because this season is going to make the most sense when you listen in chronological order. So let's catch you up to speed. Just a quick recap. We began Sarah's story when she was a little girl, right? She was just nine years old. She just lost her dad, who was that one steady and safe person in her world. Then we heard about how her grief was dismissed by her mother, how she was left vulnerable, and how in that time of darkness for Sarah, she was then abused by a family friend. And these experiences didn't just end in childhood. They shaped how Sarah started to understand love, safety, attention. And by her teenage years, she was still being neglected at home and bullied at school. So she says multiple times, like she started looking for love in all the wrong places. And then she started settling for scraps of attention from boys at her school. Um, she was telling herself that even that exploitation from her peers was better than being invisible. And that is where we're gonna pick up today. Sarah is 16 and she is exactly the kind of vulnerable teenager that predators look for. And the man who noticed her?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, so I was working a few different jobs as a teenager because I wanted to escape from my home life, and I had just started a new job at a pizza shop, and I went outside to have a cigarette break, and uh this police officer noticed me because a crackhead had walked by and he was like, Hey, can I bow him a smoke? So I gave him one. He went on about his way, and the police officer approached me, and I was I was like, Oh no, I'm gonna get in trouble for underage smoking again. Here we go. I'm in trouble. And he didn't care at all that I was smoking. He was like, you know, you really should be careful who you talk to. And um, so he just starts flirting with me, and he asked me first my phone number, and I was happy to give it to him. He was attractive, he was older, he was charming, and uh pedophile.

SPEAKER_02:

You were 16.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh yeah, I mean, I didn't see that at the time. All I could see was somebody actually wants to talk to me, somebody actually wants to spend time with me, somebody actually cares what I have to say. So I didn't see any of the predatory behavior, I didn't notice any of the red flags because when you're raised in chaos, I had been absolutely starved for love, starved for attention. And so I clung to anybody who would show me any kind of attention, and I believed that that was love.

SPEAKER_02:

In your story, you said that you moved in with him just two weeks after this conversation.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. I was 16, I dropped out of school, I moved in with him, and I turned 17 shortly after I moved in. He would lie to his mother about my age, try to get me to lie about my age, and he was embarrassed that he was with somebody so young. So his way of getting around that was to just lie to everybody about my age.

SPEAKER_02:

What do you think his reason was for becoming so controlling and manipulative down the line?

SPEAKER_00:

Need for control. Maybe um, maybe he'd noticed the desperation and wanting love, wanting acceptance, wanting stability. I just feel like he really took advantage of that.

SPEAKER_02:

You guys actually had a child together.

SPEAKER_00:

We did. Yep. I got pregnant at 17. When I got pregnant, he asked me to marry him. I told him that I really did want to get married. I was very happy with him, but I also did not want to get married pregnant. I didn't want to get married at a courthouse. I didn't want to wear a used dress or be big and fat and pregnant. Um, I didn't want to get married in the middle of winter and in an ice storm and have to wear tennis shoes underneath my wedding dress. I didn't I didn't want any of that. I wanted what a lot of women want. And I it wasn't necessarily I needed some huge bridezilla wedding or anything like that, but I just I wanted it to be a little more special. I didn't want to feel forced to get married just because I was pregnant. When I told him how I felt about it, and I said, you know, I do want to get married, but can we wait until after the baby's born? Can we plan this out a little bit better? And he said, Well, if you don't want to marry me, then I'm just gonna leave you and you can raise this baby by yourself.

SPEAKER_02:

I just have to call it how it is. He wasn't embarrassed because this was some kind of forbidden romance. I mean, it was, but he was embarrassed because he knew it was wrong. That's why he lied about her age. That's why he asked her to lie too. He wasn't protecting her, he was protecting his image. That's what abusers do. They guard their reputation at all cost, even if that means silencing the people that they claim to love. Later, when Sarah became pregnant, he gave her the the ultimatum either marry me now or I'm gonna leave you to raise this baby all alone. That's not love. That's not partnership, that is control. It's the abuser's playbook. Basically a discard. You need me, I don't need you. So if you've ever been cornered into a decision with a threat of abandonment, please hear me now. That wasn't love. What that was was manipulation.

SPEAKER_00:

And so I went to my mother and I was like, I don't know what to do. I I feel trapped. I I can't be stuck raising this baby by myself. And my mother's response was that she was getting a lot of hospital and doctor bills under my name because I was still a dependent on her insurance because I wasn't even 18 years old yet. Apparently, her insurance does not cover a dependent of a dependent. Therefore, all of my prenatal care visits were uncovered by her insurance, but she was still legally responsible because she was my guardian and she told me that I needed to marry him so that I could have Oh my God. So I could have health insurance and that he was an adult with a good career and he was gonna be able to financially take care of me. And shouldn't I want to have my husband, you know, be the father of my child? She just she thought that that was what was best. And looking back, it felt very selfish. Doctor bills were the motivation for her to tell me that I should get married.

SPEAKER_02:

I feel like you two could have figured that out together.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm so freaking annoyed listening to this part, dude, because Sarah was just a teenager. She was scared and she was pregnant. And then she went to her mom for help, and what she got wasn't support. It wasn't love, it was concern over the bills, which I get. We all have concern over the bills all the time. But her mom pushed her into the arms of a man who he was 27. I just I cannot wrap my brain around this. Sarah thought this is what she wanted, right? But as a parent, I'm gonna put my mom hat on right now. Everything about this to me screams do this because it's easier for me. This is so unsafe. I don't give a shit about the medical bills. That is my child, that is my grandchild, and we're gonna figure it out. So the main question that I have where were the adults in Sarah's life who thought about anybody else besides themselves after your son was born, you said that he would get upset every time that you asked for a break, or every time that you asked to spend some time outside of your home, which is completely normal for a mom to need a break. Yeah, especially a young mom who's still a teenager and and you're navigating all of this on your own, but instead of the people who are supposed to be your support system coming to help, they decided to make things worse. And so he takes your son and moves in with your mom and stepdad.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. That was a really hard time. My husband and my mother continued to say that all I cared about was partying, and all I wanted to do was get drunk with my friends, and obviously I wasn't a fit parent. I continued to plead with them. It's not about drugs or alcohol. Most of my high school or childhood friends, you know, they were experimenting with drugs and alcohol. You know, it wasn't that I wanted to be in that environment. I was actually really uncomfortable in that environment being a young mother, but still wanting to fit in and still wanting to just have some sort of healthy breaks outside of the house and reclaim who I actually was outside of being a mother. You know, I I I didn't want to drink or do drugs. I just, I just wanted a little break outside the house. I didn't ha know anyone else to um confide in or spend time with, or so it was definitely weaponized against me. And they just continued to say that I was not a fit parent. And we split up and he moved in with my parents. He stopped paying the bills at the townhouse that we had previously before he moved in with my parents. And he had only ever wanted me to be a stay-at-home mom. So I was a high school dropout with no real work experience, no real skills. Maybe like a month after he left, I ended up getting a three-day eviction notice at the townhome. So the townhomes, they have a front door, but it also has a garage area in the back. So I typically use the garage, and I didn't even see the three-day notice until the last day to move out. So I had less than 24 hours to try to figure out how to move out, what to take or not take. I lost pretty much everything I owned, um, all my furniture and whatnot, because I just I had I didn't have enough notice or enough resources to be able to do anything about it. So at that point, I was living out of my car and it was the middle of winter, and my husband and my son are sleeping in my parents' house, but they made me sleep in my car. I begged them over and over again, please, it's too cold. I don't have enough gas money to run my car all night to keep it warm.

SPEAKER_02:

It didn't matter what Sarah was trying to do. She was trying to be a mom, she was trying to have the brakes. Um, they just decided who she was. And then they used that story or that narrative to justify taking everything away from her. I think my expectations are way too high for these people to be fucking adults. God, just zero expectations for the rest of the season. Got it? Okay, glad that you're with me on that. Now I realize that she dropped a bomb saying that she was a high school dropout. And I searched through the rest of this conversation to see maybe did she explain why? And she didn't. So I text her and I was like, hey girl, can you clear this up? She let me know that when she met her husband at 16, she moved in with him two weeks later. She turned 17 in those two weeks and dropped out of high school so she could move in with him. Again, expectations. They're in hell. Okay, zero.

SPEAKER_00:

So I had actually started attending college. I was taking college classes and I was taking GED classes at the same time. Eventually I had to drop out of school again because I didn't have the resources to keep driving back and forth. Um, because my mother lived in one suburb and the school I was attending was in another city downtown. So it was about like a 30, 40-minute drive from her house to the school. And I was homeless and living out of my car in the middle of winter. And I'm begging my mom and my husband, please can I just stay in the house? Like, I know that we're split up right now. I know that things are tough, but please don't make me sleep in my car. And they didn't care. So I slept in my car for almost two months. The whole time I'm just begging my husband, please let me see my son. Please let's work on this. I can't be without my child. I'm dying inside. My son was everything to me. My marriage was everything to me outside of just wanting some healthy breaks from motherhood. I was happy. I didn't realize how much I was being controlled and manipulated because I had been controlled and manipulated my whole life. So I didn't see, you know, again, I didn't see the predatory behavior. I didn't see the manipulation or the gaslighting, or I didn't even, I just wanted my son back.

SPEAKER_02:

You really knew, right? And yeah, and of course, of course, you wanted your son back. I mean, it's evident that you were trying to do something good with your life and to make something of yourself. You just did not have the support system in place to really, you know, climb that mountain to success. And you said eventually your mom did say yes to you moving in, but there were terms and conditions. And she said that you were never allowed to be in the same room with your husband with the door shut, which I it's so confusing because she's the one that pushed you to marry him. But wait a second, don't act like you're married.

SPEAKER_00:

She didn't want me to come back. She was very, very reluctant about letting me stay in the house. When she said you can stay here on the condition that you guys are not alone together in the same room with the door shut and that you don't sleep in the same bed. Trying to absorb that, I was I told myself, okay, this is just her trying to avoid drama. She just doesn't want us to fight. It seemed very strange that, you know, I'm married to this man, I have a child with this man, but you don't want me to sleep in the same bed with him. You don't want me to be in the room with the door shut. It was very weird. And it made me question a lot of things, but I just tried to tell myself there's no way that she could really actually be jealous of me and my husband, right? Because she's living with her own husband.

SPEAKER_02:

Um where were you supposed to sleep then?

SPEAKER_00:

In another room.

SPEAKER_02:

Was she jealous? Like, what was your gut saying?

SPEAKER_00:

My gut was saying she was jealous and a little bit obsessive. I asked him about it multiple times, and he was like, I I have no idea what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02:

Gaslighting you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, of course. Made me believe that I was crazy for assuming that, made me believe that I was just trying to start more problems between us by saying that it started to get really tense in that household. My husband's uncle ended up passing away. And when we attended his funeral, my mother admitted to his mother and his aunts that she was in love with him and they had plans of taking my children and moving out of state together and starting a new life without me. And when I confronted him about it, he was like, No, no, no, no, this is 100% one-sided. I have nothing to do with this. It's all her. She's the delusional one. I did absolutely nothing to condone this behavior. I have no idea why she's so obsessed with me. It's all just her. It's not me at all. So we ended up moving out. We moved in with one of his cousins, and I thought we were working on our relationship, making things stronger. We ended up getting a duplex. We decided that we were ready for another baby. I got pregnant, and just months after our second child was born, um, it was at that time that I realized that he actually was having an affair with her before, during, and after my second pregnancy.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my god. Oh my god. Her mom pressured her into marriage, but was secretly in love with her husband. Do you not feel like you're reading some psychological thriller right now? Because I do. And of course, when Sarah started picking up on it, like her gut was telling her there's something fishy going on. She was told that she was crazy because that's what gaslighting is for. That's gaslighting in its purest form. When your instincts are screaming at you that something is wrong, but the people around you convince that you're just imagining it. Survivors or victims, we go through this all the time, don't we? We've started to sense betrayal, but then we're told you're just starting drama or you're crazy. That's a very calculated tactic because that's how abusers keep you doubting yourself. They keep you confused. They need you to be confused to keep doing whatever it is that they're doing. So what's happening here isn't just one person's bad behavior, it's a complete collapse of the support system that Sarah should have had. Instead of protection, she got triangulation. Instead of family, she got betrayal.

SPEAKER_00:

So he was teaching karate classes and he asked me to run a Facebook page for him to try to help promote his karate classes. And so he had given me access to his email account and his Facebook account so that I could help manage promotion of his karate classes. One day I got a notification, you have an email from Facebook. So I went, I checked it, um, I tried to delete it, and the email account told me that the junk folder was full and needed to be emptied. So I opened the junk folder and I'm deleting as much as I can of it, but I'm trying to, you know, kind of look through it and make sure that I don't delete anything important. So I'm going through the emails and deleting anything that's not necessary to keep. And then I notice my mother's name in the emails. I still really wish that I could unsee those emails. I wish that I could explain better how I felt in that moment. The emails between my mom and my husband said that they had been on multiple dates together. They were discussing, well, when is Sarah not going to be home anymore so we can see each other? If you come over while Sarah's home, you can't wear tight pants around her because I'm not going to be able to stop looking at your butt. And just very disgusting, disturbing conversations between them. At that point, my blood was boiling. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt so many different emotions. And I confronted him yet again, and he denied it, but I had all the proof I needed. They they had been going on dates without me. They were coordinating times to spend time together when I wouldn't be home after I had my second child. She was offering constantly to come over and spend the night. And well, it's really hard to have a newborn and a toddler, and you just had a C-section and let me come over and help you and be a support system for you.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh shit. She was trying to get to him through pretending to be a caring mother. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

This makes me mad at my mom and she didn't even do anything. Imagine being a young mother recovering from childbirth, trusting your mom to come over and quote unquote help, only to discover that she's using that to access your husband. Oh my god. This is just shattering on every level.

SPEAKER_00:

The thought of my husband sleeping with my mother and then sleeping with me and getting me pregnant and having an affair with my mother while I'm pregnant with his child is just earth shattering. It's a very sick realization.

SPEAKER_01:

That's maddening. Yeah. That's disgusting.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Once I was aware, I knew that our relationship was done. He continued to beg me, you know, we can go to counseling. We can work this out. We can make this work for the kids.

SPEAKER_02:

And I'm like, You need to go to counseling. He's the one that needs a fucking therapist.

unknown:

Girl.

SPEAKER_02:

What the hell?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So um it was really hard. And um, I think the hardest part was the fact that I couldn't afford to move out because I had only ever been a stay-at-home mom. I had no GED, no work history, no money, nowhere else to go. You know, my only other support system before that was my mother. So, and that really was never a support system. So it was just betrayal on all levels. And I was forced to live with him for about a year after I found out.

SPEAKER_02:

Imagine being a young mother recovering from childbirth, trusting your mom to come over and help, only to discover that she was using that to access your husband. When Sarah confronted her husband with proof, of course he still denied it because that's how gaslighting works. Even when you have evidence in your hand, the abuser's first move is to make you doubt your reality. What Sarah describes here is betrayal on every single level, from a partner to a from a parent, from a family that should have been her safe place. And when you're financially trapped with no work history, no safety net, you don't just get to leave. You're forced into survival. And this is where we're going to leave Sarah for now. Because next week we're gonna step into a part of her life where it looks like she finally gets a break in the form of an inheritance. But it's just for a moment. Because, like so many of Sarah's lifelines, it doesn't last for long. If Sarah's story resonated with you today, please share this episode with someone who may need to hear it. And if you want to add your voice to this conversation, call into the dismissed hotline at 1-844-TELL-DTS. That is T-E-L-L-D-T-S. Your message might be featured in a future episode. And to every survivor listening, the world is a better place because you are in it.

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