Something Was Wrong - S21 E4: (2/2) [Michelle] Loose Lips Sink Ships

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

*Content Warning: child abuse, physical, mental, emotional, and verbal abuse, rape, pregnancy loss, and suicidal ideation. *Resources:State Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Numbers: https://www.childwelfare.gov/state-child-abuse-and-neglect-reporting-numbers/?rt=795Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline: https://www.childhelphotline.org/The Family Gardener: http://thefamilygardener.comFor additional non-profit organizations, please visit: http://somethingwaswrong.com/resourcesFollow Something Was Wrong:Website: somethingwaswrong.com IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastTikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese:Website: tiffanyreese.me IG: instagram.com/lookieboo The SWW theme Song is U Think U, by Glad Rags. The S21 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. I'm Dan Tuberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. What's the answer? And what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head? Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios.

Binge all episodes of Hysterical early and add free on Wondery Plus. Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences, as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder. Content warnings for each episode and confidential resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes. Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes. Pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection.

Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, or Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. for listening. You don't know anybody until you talk to someone. The teachers and principals started to take notice that I was coming in late and that I wasn't dressed properly for the weather. So they started asking around to all my friends. Well, I had sworn them all to secrecy, but one of my friends told them everything. It was at that point they would interview me. They pulled me out of class

and I would go and talk to the school counselor, talk to the principals. Over the course of maybe a week, I just told them everything. They were trying to figure out who I could live with. They were trying to find alternatives for me so I didn't have to go back. I was 14. We had spoken to my grandma. My grandma is my biological mom, Karen's mom. They had spoken to her and she agreed to take me if it came to that. I really started having second thoughts about leaving Keith and Dora's house because I was so afraid to leave my brother and sister behind because I thought maybe it would transfer. Like the crazy has to go somewhere. So I was worried she would start abusing them. to go somewhere. So I was worried she would start abusing them. I'm happy to report that was not the case. The school counselor had a social worker come, she spoke to me and

I told her everything. She was like, okay, I'll be back tomorrow. And I remember thinking, I want it to look really bad and to be really obvious when I talk to the social worker again. So when I got home that night, I purposely didn't clean fast enough so that Dora would cut my hair so it would look really bad. I just wanted people to believe me. So I remember that night sitting in the basement in a chair, she's cutting my hair, and I've had this really big smile on my face and she was like, okay you think it's funny we can do more.

It was just such an empowering moment where I was like, this is the last haircut you're ever gonna give me. I hoped anyway. Like, cut more, you're digging your own grave, cut more, please. The next day, I go back to school. They pull me out of class. I talk to the social worker. This was St. Patrick's Day, by the way. St. Patrick's Day is like my anniversary, I consider it, of my escape. The social worker came the next day. She talked to me. She looked at my hair and she was like, okay, now I have to go talk to them. And like panic struck. I was like, you can't go talk to them because then I have to go home and it's going to get so much worse.

I was like, okay, well, I'm not going home. I freaked out and I talked to my school counselor, who was my guardian angel. She's like, you won't go home. I will take you to my house before you go home. The administrators of this school, looking back, they arrested all. These people essentially kidnapped me in order to get me out. So the social worker goes to the house, nobody answers. She leaves her card. So then she calls back, she tells the school counselor, I went to the house, nobody answered, I left my card. And I just freaked out. They're getting my grandma on the phone, seeing if she can come get me that day.

In the meantime, they are letting all of my friends come in to say goodbye to me. I can't remember if Keith or Dora came to the school, but one of them came to the school and one of them was on the phone. They knew something was up at this point. I remember her talking and she was putting on her best sweet and innocent voice. And they were like, we're trying to find Michelle because she was like, we're going to pick her up from school early. They thought the school didn't know or the school was involved.

I'm not sure. And they were like, well, she's not here. We've tried calling her over the PA. Do you think she would have any reason to have left the premises? And Dora was like, no, absolutely not. She's got to be here. And they were like, oh, well, is there anything going on at home that would give her reason to run away? Again, absolutely not. Everything's great. She has a happy life. Meanwhile, I'm in the back room shaking, listening to her talk, begging them not to believe her. I was so afraid that I had gotten so close and it was all going to fall apart now because she was so good that they were going to believe her and dismiss everything I had told them. My counselor again was like, Michelle, we don't believe

her. We know that you've been telling the truth. We have plenty of proof. We're not going to believe her. While this is going on, my grandma, they have her pull right up to the window and they have me climb out the window, get into my grandma's car and leave because they didn't want Dora or Keith to see me and that was it. I never looked back. You go so many years screaming out like somebody, somebody do something as an adult now and like, wow, they risked so much. They risked their jobs. They saved me. Mind you, Keith and Dora's children that I didn't want to leave don't know anything. I didn't get to say goodbye. I didn't go back to the house. I actually called the school. They actually went to the same Catholic school that I had gone to when I lived there. And

I spoke to the nun who was my teacher and asked if I could set up a time to see them. And she was like, well, we're really not supposed to do that. And I was like, I feel like it's the least you can do for me. So she did. She set up a time. I was allowed to come. I spent like an hour with them. I gave them gifts, told them I'm sorry I left them. I had the option of pressing charges, but I didn't because if she went to jail, it would have taken their mom from them. When I moved in with my grandma, it was her and her partner, Dave, who was amazing. My grandma would say, what kind of clothes do you like? What kind of music do you like?

How do you want to do your hair? And I just didn't know. I never had any options in life. So I didn't know what my favorite color is or what my style is or what music I would like or what TV shows I would like. I had no sense of self. It was like Dora told me who I was. I didn't know anything about myself. It was difficult. I remember my grandma being like, you can decorate the room however you want. And I had my own room. It was beautiful. A hot shower, watching TV, making friends. It was amazing. Luckily, my grandma was young and worked at the mall and she was cool and knew what was cool. So she did all of my shopping and kind of helped me find my style. She like spoiled me so hard.

Everything was like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger and she just wanted me to like be so cool and fit in. And remember at this point my hair was so, so short because I got that final cut to prove a point. My grandma even offered to let me get a wig or extensions. She was so great. She would like make me fancy breakfast every morning like eggs benedict. It was amazing. But I've always been like a realist bordering on a pessimist perhaps. So I remember thinking I'm not going to bother painting the room because I'm not going to be

here for that long because the other shoe is going to drop. It was too good to be true. So I never wanted to make it like home. I lived with my grandma for five months. She got brain cancer. Once she started getting worse and not remembering who I was or what time of day it was, her partner, he was like, you need to go somewhere else. I'm not gonna let you stay here and watch this. She died like five months later. So I then had a choice. I could go live with Karen, my biological mom, or I could move back in with Dad Mark and Mom Sherry. They offered that, which looking back is crazy. We were only seeing each other maybe once or twice a year at this point. So the fact that, like, after all these years, they were still willing, it's incredible. They deserve an award. They

deserve everything. So I had this choice to make. It was the summer. I decided to try living with Karen just to see how that would go. It went about as well as you would expect it to go. She had not changed much. She was waitressing and she had a boyfriend. She always had a boyfriend. She was living in like a one bedroom apartment in a pretty shitty area near Detroit.

I lived with Karen for a summer, I think like two or three months. She bought me booze for my 15th birthday and invited me to smoke a joint with her. Mind you, I've been isolated from the world and living in a basement for the last however many years. So that was very foreign to me. I was not partying or drinking or doing drugs. It was almost like she wanted me to fall in her footsteps is how it felt. She was like the cool mom that was hanging out with a bunch of teenagers, so there were always kids my age around, but gang members who were always doing drugs and drinking. I became fast friends with all of these kids because they were my age. I had so much freedom.

I could do whatever I wanted. So I did. I did like a lot of drinking. I smoked a lot of pot. I started mirroring her behavior because I didn't really know who I was or what to do or how to do life. She left a lot. She would leave for the weekend and go stay with her boyfriend and I was left at the apartment to do whatever I wanted. Maybe like a month and a half into the summer, my wake-up call was we were partying one night at the apartment and it was just me and all of these teenagers. I drank too much and was raped. And I thought, this can't be my life.

I can't end up like her. It didn't feel right either. It didn't feel like me drinking and partying and smoking weed. Like, that wasn't who I was. It was at that point when I was like, I can't live with her. And I made the decision to live with Dad Mark and Mom Sherry. I remember speaking with them and they were like, if you live with us, you're going to have rules and curfews and siblings and you're going to have to be a part of this. You can't do

whatever you want. Which was very different for me because up until this point I had been raising me. Throughout my life with Karen I was raising myself. My life with Keith and Dora I was on my own. With my grandma it was great. It was short-lived. With Karen in my teenage years, it was chaos. So this was a welcomed change. Karen was very upset with me for choosing them over her. So that affected our relationship for maybe a year or two. Our relationship was always kind of off and on, but she was really upset with me. Zero self-awareness. Now I have a routine and a family. It was kind of like being thrown into the deep end

from being just me and my grandma and her partner to them living with Karen for a few months to now like you're part of a family of eight. Here you go. Be normal. It was a really big adjustment with Keith and Dora. I had only seen them once or twice a year, so I wasn't super comfortable with them. I didn't know them that well. And it was also, like, very much an established family. I didn't even know how to react or act.

I even read in some of my old journals, this is too good to be true. There's no way this will last. They'll get rid of me at some point. They're not gonna of me at some point. They're not going to want me forever. Here's Michelle's adoptive mom, Sherry. She kind of had to go through having a relationship with Karen because she was denied it for so long and that is her biological mom.

And then she chose to live with us, which is a very responsible thing to do when you're a young girl and you want to have a relationship with your mom, but she also experienced that. The only thing normal in her life was the weekends that she was allowed to stay with us. Any visitation she got here, it was always the same house, the same daily routine, food on the dinner table for everyone here. I don't care if you just walked in, welcome, sit down, have a plate.

It was just a normal, loving family home. The only sense of family that she had through all those years. Then Michelle, of course, being a normal teenager, she had a lot to act out on. She had so many years of her life that was just dictated to her that she had to find her sense of being.

What was that transition like? Like somebody just got their wings. From personal experience, when you've lived in survival mode for so long, it takes some time to adjust to normalcy and peace and like people who love you. And what do you mean I can leave the house and go see a friend? I can have friends. She didn't have friendships that she cultivated outside school and home because she wasn't allowed to. So you're talking about a child who wasn't allowed to play with her friends unless it

was at school. She embraced it. She made friends and the first year probably was, you know, a little overwhelming for her because she was also getting an identity. She was also trying to figure out who she was or who she could be without someone telling her what to do. I'm sure that was probably a little bit of a crisis for her. She's been here. She knows what the normal routine is here so it wasn't like she was jumping into a situation that she had never been in. She was jumping into something that she

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It went pretty well right off the bat. Sherry becomes my real mom. David and Jo were there, you know, Mark's sons from previous relationship, who I was close with as a child. Michael was now a preteen and Mark and Sherry had had two more children, Kayla and Cody. So those are my youngest siblings. They were one and two when I moved in. They were very young. So they don't know life any different without me. I was just their sibling from day one. When I first moved in with them, I kept a journal, which I'm so glad I did because it was very interesting to go back and read. I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like this is going to fall apart somehow because

I was worthless and unlovable. So I thought, why would these people who already have this family want this messy situation of a teenager moving in. So initially moving in with them it was an adjustment. I remember eating up in my room a lot by myself. I had a really hard time eating in front of people because that had been something I had done in secret for so long that it was uncomfortable almost to like sit at a dinner table with eight people. I would just go up in my room and eat separately. They accommodated that for a little while until I got comfortable. Luckily, my older brother Joe, who is only a year and a half older than me, we were very close as kids when I lived with Mark. He really took me under his wing. He was really popular in high

school. So he took me around. He helped me make friends, immediately introduced me to everyone as his sister, which meant so much. Although I'm sure very confusing for people who had known this family for years that they just suddenly had an extra sibling. I fit right in after a little while and it just became normal. I adjusted to the normalcy of it. I have gone back and read my journals that I kept at the beginning of moving in with them. I actually went through them in preparation for doing this podcast with you and I was hoping I would get a lot of information. I don't mention anything of my former life. Like, it's almost eerie.

I really had high hopes for those high school journals. I was like, I'm going to have so much information. I read through three binders, and I was like, nothing, not a word. It's crazy. I think I just didn't want to think about it anymore. It was like, okay, I'm 15. I have to salvage what I have left of my childhood, so I'll deal with this later." I just repressed it and pretended like it never happened.

The only thing that I wrote about my previous life was how much I missed Megan and Kyle, Keith and Dora's children. I did write about them, just that I miss them, but nothing else. I didn't see them for about 10 years. During this 10 years of not seeing them, I did always send them birthday cards and stuff. I knew that they wouldn't get them, but Sherry had actually encouraged me to do it. Once I left that house, I didn't talk about it again. I just put it behind me. I just wanted to be normal. Talking about it is hard because it's like not even something I think about. After I read that book, A Child

Called It, it was the first thing I read right after I got out and it became my Bible. It was so comforting. I was just shocked by the similarities to the point of where she had to have read it. It was just too spot on. It's so hard to talk about her. But it's so important because for the longest time, I didn't tell anybody any of this. Like there are a lot of people in my life who don't know any of this about me. For the longest time, it felt like this gross secret just between her and I. It felt like dirty almost. It's not your shame, it's her shame, but it feels like yours when it's being done to you and you've been destroyed. And when there's no one else who knows the whole story except her and I. I kept it under

wraps for years and years and years to protect her children. Just recently this has come out and I'm having to face it. There's a lot of different reasons I didn't talk about it. One being that I just wanted to be normal. I didn't want everybody looking at me like a victim. I didn't want people feeling sorry for me and then feeling sorry for myself. It's spiraling. I didn't want to be a perpetual victim. Another reason, especially as I got older, was that I wanted to work with kids, and I have worked with kids for the last 25 years.

And there is the stigma that abused people abuse people. And I thought that wouldn't bode well for my career choices. In high school, when I was 15, I started working at a daycare. And then I ended up working at that daycare for the next seven years. Then I became a nanny. And I love it so much. You just want to give what you didn't get. You want to be the adult you needed as a child.

And kids are the best. Adults are trash. Tiny humans are where it's at. I nanny for a pediatrician. She is actually the one who encouraged me to do this. I met her six years ago. She was pregnant with her first. We hit it off at the interview. We hugged as we left the interview.

I adore her and her husband and their kids. And I've been with them for six years. She's trusted me in raising her kids. I shared my story with her a few years ago, which speaks volumes to who she is because I've never shared my story with an employer, but I trusted her enough, and I shared it with her, and she's helped me work through it

over the last couple years. She trusts my opinion and respects it and to me that means so much coming from what I've come from that there's this person who's a pediatrician who specializes in this who asks me for my advice which to me feels like I've come so far and I just appreciate her and all her support. My name is Lillian and I've known Michelle for six years. When I was pregnant with my son, I was literally sobbing constantly throughout the search of looking for a nanny. Like every nanny interview, I would get the heebie-jeebies and feel so sad that I wasn't

going to be there for every day of his babyhood. Then Michelle reached out on care.com. When I talked to her on the phone, I just felt truly like a wave of peace and then excitement, like this is actually going to be okay. Then in the nanny interview that really proved to be the case. I wasn't sobbing or panicking in the process of imagining her with my baby. I really feel like it was maybe we were soulmates or something. There are very few people I've felt connected to right away. And my husband was one and Michelle was one.

I just felt very safe with her. Michelle's background, was that something she shared with y'all right away? Or is that something you kind of got to know about her as time went on? In her mind, she waited until it had been almost a year working with us when she felt really safe with me but I feel like she was dropping hints where I knew that there was trauma there. I feel like she didn't want me to be surprised by anything and she was alluding to a history of trauma and brought up Karen and then about this awful stepmom.

And then it was one day where she explained everything. One of the reasons that Michelle's story stands out to me, not only because of the level of horrific abuse and nuances within it being different from a lot of the stories that I've reviewed personally is also the fact that it is true that Often people who abuse other people were abused themselves But it's not true that most people who are abused to go on to other people. And I think that's a really common misconception and a stigma that harms survivors in conversations

a lot of the time. Given that you're a pediatrician, I think your insight is especially valuable. When you heard that from her, was there any part of you that had concern? Well, in med school, we used to have patient conferences where patients would come and talk to us about their experience living with whatever disease or surgery. And there was a woman who had been a victim of people know it as Munchausen's Biproxy. Now we call it factitious

disorder by proxy, but her mom was making her ill for whatever secondary gain that brought the mom like attention. And it was horrific. Her mom was putting dirt and poop in her port and like trying to make it look like she had cancer. It was a really, really hard lecture to listen to and to sit through. At the end of the lecture, I went up and talked to the victim slash patient. She said, I live my life in the open so that I can break the pattern. This is how we break the pattern. With Michelle, I've just had the experience over and over and over again that she is loving

and kind with my kids. I feel safe with her and my kids feel safe with her. You can kind of see when people make kids feel comfortable. I feel like a benefit is that she knows that feelings of self-worth matter. She stands up for my kids and teaches them to stand up for themselves like in a fair reasonable way but she's not one of these meek kind of like push over people. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I want my children learning to advocate for themselves and to advocate for justice and not to be naive. I want my kids to love life and to like baseline be happy, but also if they see a warning sign to stop and recognize it and change their behavior accordingly. And I think Michelle has that and is teaching them that. She's smart. So she's not going to just externalize and repeat behaviors.

She's looked at what happened to her and pays attention to how it's affected her and also pays attention to the extreme sense of justice that the heroes in her story have and how they advocated for her and saved her. I've gone to her with patients in situations where you feel powerless because basically the law respects the rights of adults

and then children can be treated kind of like property. She knows a ton about kids, so with certain behavior stuff, I can tell her about a patient and she can give parenting advice that resonates with me and makes a lot of sense. So I've gotten to her with general pediatrician parenting advice. When there are kids that I've been worried about where I can't call CPS because it's something intangible and vague, she's often validated concerns and had me follow up in ways that are more thorough and supportive than I would have ever thought to do if I didn't know her story. About 15 years ago, I was about 25, I found out from my uncle who is Keith's brother,

I randomly bumped into him, I found out that Keith had divorced Dora. So I took that as an opportunity to reach out and see if I could talk to the kids and see the kids again, who were now 18 and 15. It was really awkward at first, but we cultivated a relationship. However, there was always this thing we just didn't talk about. I think they knew that something was wrong, but they didn't know the extent of it. They knew that I had issues with their mom, but I don't think they knew much beyond that. And I don't think they wanted to know, which is fair. So I promised myself that I wouldn't tell them anything unless they asked, because she was an okay mom to them. She was a normal mom to them.

In order to hurt her, I would have had to hurt them. And I wasn't going to do that. I had come too far. It was always top priority to protect them. And I wasn't going to do that. I had come too far. It was always top priority to protect them. So I did. I never told them anything. Throughout this time, I've also maintained a relationship with Keith. Once I got a hold of him to try to get the kids back in my life, we had a conversation. I realized that he didn't know everything. He knew enough. He was obviously remorseful

and upset. He was shocked by a lot of it. He didn't know she didn't let me in the house. He didn't know I was spending hours and hours at the library. He didn't know I was walking to school. He didn't know that she was waking me up in the middle of the night. He just cried and cried and cried and was so apologetic and remorseful and has been since then. I wanted to maintain a relationship with the kids and I just accidentally started having a relationship with him, a friendship. He was not my dad. He isn't my dad. He'll never be my dad. Mark is my dad. Then recently, a few months ago, my sister Megan, Dora's daughter, was getting married. My sister is now 30 and my brother is 33. They're old enough to understand

now. I wasn't ever going to tell them unless they asked, but her wedding was approaching and I had heard from a mutual friend that she wanted me to be her maid of honor in her wedding. And I thought, okay, she really doesn't know anything. Not only could I not be her maid of honor, I couldn't attend her wedding. I can't be in the same room as Dora. I can't be in the same room as Dora. I can't do it." And that's, I think, when it really hit me that after 25 years of convincing myself to not be a victim, that I was a victim of child abuse at the hands of this woman. I felt in order to explain to Megan why I couldn't

be in or attend her wedding, I had to tell her the truth. I don't want to relive this. I don't want to tell them that their mother is a monster. I don't want to do that. Not when I've spent all these years protecting them. A friend of mine said, why do you have to tell them? Why doesn't Keith do it? And I was like, yeah, yep. So I told Keith everything I wanted him to tell them to explain the severity of it and why I couldn't attend her wedding. Because I'm really close to her. So me not attending her wedding is a pretty big deal. I'm so glad you made Keith do it. When you survive raising yourself, you forget in adulthood that you have options because you're just so used to doing everything yourself.

I know. It was the right move. He wasn't one of the people in my life who I was like, oh, I can turn to him to do this for me. That's not who he is to me. So it didn't occur to me. So when it came time for him to have this conversation prior to her wedding. I kind of gave him a list and I said, don't give them all the gory details, but give them enough that they understand the severity of it, that CPS was called multiple times, that child abuse charges were going to be pressed, that it wasn't just like, oh, I was a teenage runaway and I just didn't get along with their mom. So he set it up, he talked to them and their significant others, especially because she's getting married, right? So her soon to be husband is going to be part of this family and he has the right

to know too. So he sat down, had this conversation with them. He called me and let me know how it went. He said he told them some of the stuff, but at one point they were like, okay, that's enough. He was like, do you want me to keep going? And they were like, no, no. And then they brought some stuff up that they had repressed. They were like, oh yeah, Michelle came to our school and brought us gifts and said goodbye. My sister said, I remember hiding my Barbie so mom wouldn't take it. So it was like they understood the dynamic. She understood that if her mother saw a gift from me, she would throw it away. At five or six, she understood this. So these things are coming back to them.

I found out that in later years, like his teenage years, my brother had a very tumultuous relationship with his mom. When they got in fights, he would call her worthless, which is not something a teenager typically calls a parent. So that came from somewhere, right? I think he knows more than he thinks he does. My sister, she was dumbfounded. She was like, I knew that something bad had happened. But I mean, who imagines that? You can't imagine that. Maybe she thought her mom hit me or something, but you don't imagine that your mom tortured someone for eight years. You can't fathom that. My sister reached out to me and was so gracious and kind and wonderful and sweet and could not have handled it better.

I think in my eyes, they were forever children, and I underestimated how they would handle it. And they handled it with grace. She was like, of course I understand. The wedding is not the important part. The marriage is the important part. And you've been there for us and all the things that one is supposed to say. A couple weeks go by, she gets married, we get together afterward, she came over to watch a movie, and we both had some drinks, and we got into it. She was kind of like, tell me, I'm ready. Of course she wanted to know, and she had every right to know, and so did her future husband. Especially if they're considering having children, they should know what she's capable of. So I did. I had the hardest

conversation of my life, and I looked at her and told her what her mother had done. That is one of the hardest things I've ever done. Her face was just shocked and disturbed, and it somehow felt like I was doing this to her. I was hurting her, which I had managed to avoid for 25 years. I was really amazed by her grace and her maturity, and she just kept saying, this was something that was done to you. You're the victim. And I don't know how she's handling this. I talked to her the other day and I told her I hope she's going to therapy or talking to someone about this because this is a bomb that she just had dropped in her lap. I've had 25 years to process this. She's just now finding all of this out at once. I can't imagine what that's like to find out that your mom is capable of these things.

I did make it very clear to her during our conversation that I didn't ever want her to feel pressured that she had to choose one or the other, that I didn't ever want her to feel pressured, that she had to choose one or the other, that I understood that that was still her mother. I don't know how you deal with that. I did tell her that at one point, I unfollowed her on social media because, especially leading up to her wedding, she was posting a lot of stuff with her mom.

And I noticed that every time I would see that, I would have nightmares that night. My nightmares with Dora continued forever. It makes me so angry that what she did to me has stayed with me my whole life and has had lasting impacts on so many different aspects of my life. While she has just been able to continue living her life as if nothing happened. There were no consequences to her actions. She didn't go to jail. She didn't have her kids taken away. And that was all thanks to me. I didn't want to ever retaliate because I didn't want it to affect the kids.

But I realized now that in protecting them all these years, I was also protecting her. And just recently, actually, I went to lunch with a friend and we met in an area that was close to where I lived with Dora and Keith, where all of this took place. I don't know what made me do it, but I drove by the house to validate myself that like, it's still there, she's still there, this happened. And to prove to myself that I could drive by it, that I had that strength to be like, it's just a house with people in it and it can't hurt me anymore.

I saw these flower pots on the front porch with flowers in them. And it just like hit me like a ton of bricks that this woman is still living there in this place that was an actual hellscape for me. And she's just going about her life and she's planting flowers on her porch. And it angered me to my core, which seems so silly that these flower pots made me so angry. I then drove from the house to the school where I walked to make sure it was two miles. And it was two miles. I clocked it on my car.

And then going past the library where I used to have to sometimes sit for five, six, seven hours until I was allowed to come back to the house. I've been so far removed from it and pushed it so far down and just wanted to pretend that it didn't happen and move on with my life. But now I'm having to face it and see like, the school still stands, the library still stands, her house still stands, and she's still in it. The fact that she's just out here doing the same shit every day that I'm doing in my life seems so unfair that I've had to live with this and carry this. The fact that she's not in jail, it angers me to my core.

And the fact that there is a statute of limitations to press charges on child abuse cases should not be because it has been proven through therapy that people repress memories for so long and those memories might not come out for another 20 years. And at that point, you can't do shit about it. So the person just gets away with it. There's nothing you can do. So she'll never get the justice that she deserves and that I deserve. I didn't have a childhood. That was taken from me, and I can't get that back. In my 20s, I used to dread, like, oh god, I'm gonna have to get married and then I'm gonna have to have kids because I didn't want to be responsible for anybody. I

didn't want someone else in my house. I'm very comfortable being alone. I remember coming to that realization, like, I don't have to get married. I don't have to have kids. And maybe someday I will get married. Who knows? But I don't want anyone to depend on me because I think that was all of my childhood. No matter what, somebody was dependent on me. My life with Karen, I was alone. She was sleeping a lot. She was high a lot or drunk a lot. I depended on myself and myself only for entertainment,

feeding myself and clothing myself and bathing myself. And everything was on me. When I moved in with Keith and Dora, same thing, I was always by myself. So of course I'm comfortable by myself. I think had that not been my childhood with who I am now, I think I probably would have kids. But I'm so surrounded by kids and like the joy of kids, that part of me is so fulfilled. I have amazing friends who always go above and beyond and shower me with gifts at my birthday. I just have some lovely people in my life.

Mark, I can't wait for him to hear this. It's gonna be hard, but Mark and Cheri, I mean, they changed the course of my life. And that's why it's hard to feel sorry for myself, because I'm like, I got a second chance that most people don't get. I got nothing but love and guidance. I had like this built-in Brady Bunch family, and that's all I wanted, right?

Was just to be like a part of something. When I was 17, I changed my last name, because I wanted to have the same last name. I actually moved into the house next door to them for like 15 years. Once you find a good thing, you're just like, oh, hold on to this. It was just like a safe space. I have some nephews that I'm very close with. I have nothing bad to say about my family.

I don't know if there's even like a way to ever properly thank them. Like I'm just indebted to them forever. And I hope that they listen to this, realize that. Because it probably wasn't said as much because I was a teenager. I'm Dan Tuberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad.

I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. Like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankenpenn. I'm Peter Frankopen. And in our series Legacy, we look at the lives of some of the most famous people to have ever lived and ask if they have the reputation they deserve. In this series, we look at J. Edgar Hoover.

He was the director of the FBI for half a century, an immensely powerful political figure. He was said to know everything about everyone. He held the ear of eight presidents and terrified them all. When asked why he didn't fire Hoover, JFK replied, you don't fire God. From chasing gangsters to pursuing communists to relentlessly persecuting Dr. Martin Luther King and civil rights activists, Hoover's dirty tricks tactics have been endlessly echoed in the years since his death.

And his political playbook still shapes American politics today. Follow Legacy Now wherever you listen to podcasts. Here's Michelle's adoptive mom, Sherry. She doesn't live next door anymore. My husband was in a really bad auto accident and I needed the help, quite honestly, and she was an adult that could help me maneuver and manipulate through his injuries because it took us a lot of years. We had purchased the house next door and she was in it for a lot of reasons to help us

as well as keeping her clothes. We all have a story right? I mean I grew up with not a lot of food but my parents loved me and I starved like I was hungry and I know what that feeling feels like so I know what Michelle felt like to be hungry. I overcompensated for that now as an adult making sure there was always enough food in my house and I still have a habit of doing that. And it's not necessary, but it's this feeling from when I was a child of not having anything to eat. You know, you open up the cupboard in this place, you could get whatever you wanted.

That being said, like knowing how I have this thing about me to overcompensate with food, Michelle was never given enough love. So she overcompensate with food. Michelle was never given enough love so she overcompensates with love. She gives to these children everything that she never had. That's what I try to do with all of my kids. My step kids, my kids, they're all my kids. They don't define the difference between the two because there's no difference to me. I love them all. I give them everything I have every day. And that's exactly what Michelle does. She's conquered all of this in her life. And she has become this flower that has bloomed for the listeners.

I hope that they have someone they can trust. And if they don't, they just got to keep trying. You can't be scared to reach out for help. It's going to get better. It will get better, but you got to get out of the situation that you're in, you know? She's trying to share with all these younger children who might be hearing this that there's all kinds of abuse and abuse is abuse and you can rise above that. And that's exactly what Michelle has done. And here she is being a better person and loving and giving and partaking in children's

lives daily successfully. It has filled her up in all the empty spaces that she has been left with in her life. And this is who she is. Sometimes the work almost finds you. And I love what you said about like the stigma of survivors, because I think that the majority of the time, people who are abused understand how horrific that felt, and they go on in their lives hoping to not ever make anyone else feel that way.

So that's why we believe so much in sharing stories and destigmatizing that. Being a survivor myself and doing this work, when you work within your passion and your purpose, it can really be healing in a lot of ways. And I'm just so glad that Michelle has that and that she's had y'all's support. Thank you for everything you did for her.

I appreciate you so, so much. Thank you again for your time. Thank you, Tiffany. Thank you for listening to the story and getting it out there. Here's Michelle's boss and friend, Lillian. Michelle identifies with vulnerable kids. She knows how to make kids feel safe and reassured. She knows how to do that for animals and people suffering. There have been times where people could not say the right thing to me. Michelle was there with me through two miscarriages.

And like the second time, it was going for ultrasounds multiple times a week with like a heartbeat, but a heartbeat that was not viable or healthy. People didn't want to hear it. And people didn't want to accept the reality that I knew about that heart rate. And then that would make me feel guilty. And Michelle just knew how to be and process with me and sit with me and not try to like invent a different way to

think of it or talk about it. That was such like a scary, upsetting, tragic experience for me that having her there through that was huge. I don't know how I could have gotten through. We do a lot of life together and lean on each other. Sometimes Nanny feels like it doesn't really capture all the, you know, cause she's my friend and she is like a sister to me. I think that perspective, being able to like see something that sucks ass and weather through

it as it is, not everyone can do that. But she's been to dark places and seen dark shit and knows that it's part of life and it makes her like a very safe person when you're suffering. I think it's a next level virtue to be able to set your own comfort aside and help someone or be there for someone. When I tell people I'm a pediatrician, some people screw up their face and they're like, I could never see kids being sick. I don't know how you do it.

And I'm like, well, I want them to be better. They're the population I care about the most and feel most just driven to help. That's such a place of privilege to be like, I'm filtering out that sad stuff from my existence because I'm better off not knowing it and leaving it to another person to handle process, think through. And no one ever talks about that that depending on the relationship, it can be kind of a betrayal to not listen.

I feel like people telling their stories is really important. She always says, you accepted me despite this abuse. It's really sad that that was even something that had to enter her mind. She chose love and goodness coming out of this. She's become like a Sherry, like a safe saving person, not a criminal instigator torturer. I just think it's absolutely astounding that Michelle has taken her experience and now uses it to teach other people how to be better. Sharing stories is prevention in so many ways. Exactly.

I'm glad I had those med school lectures, seeing victims speak and talk about breaking the cycle because I recognized that in her. Children need to be treated well because that actually has tangible medical effects. Their brains are growing and developing. They're learning to trust people. When children suffer trauma, including emotional trauma, it sets them up for all sorts of worse health outcomes down the road. So we should treat verbal abuse, emotional abuse as abuse that stands up in a court of law. God bless the CPS workers. They have a really hard job,

but a lot of it is making safety plans and getting parents parenting classes or resources, making contracts with goals in terms of if there's medical neglect. But it's just not a system that pays attention to the complete needs of a kid. And they're overworked and underpaid and not treated well. And it just doesn't make sense. Especially children and caring about children to me is a bipartisan issue. So I don't understand how there can be so many flaws in a system that especially take care of our most vulnerable. We need to start from the ground up. But I do feel like if we could just recognize that emotional abuse is abuse and that that matters in a court of law, that would be like a very productive start.

In your professional experience, what are the signs that people can look for and when do you suggest they do take action if they suspect a child is being abused? they do take action if they suspect a child is being abused. Kids usually want to open up. So if you see signs that a kid is not growing, because when they're in periods of extreme stress, they really don't grow. Losing weight, acting scared or furtive, not sleeping, Acting scared or furtive, not sleeping, nightmares, tired all the time, hoarding food, being weird around food, hyper-sexualized random behavior.

There was a patient of mine who asked a random adult if he was getting erect. That's worrisome. That's something to look into. Having weird pains, they can like somaticize where they something hurts like they have headaches or belly aches and there's not a medical cause for it, but it might be that that's the way their body is manifesting the stress, the emotional distress just with that mind-body connection. Dirty, not looking cared for, smelly, inconsistent formal care, you know, like not getting their meds, not going to the dentist, not going to well-child visits. What do you hope that listeners will take from hearing Michelle's story? I wish it could be like a PSA, different childhood abuse stories, so that we could learn to recognize

patterns, learn to like believe children, how to translate what they're trying to tell us, to advocate for them and to help them not let things go on for as long as they can in stories like Michelle's. I hope that pediatricians will hear it. Thank you so much. Here's Michelle. Recently, I wanted to face things with Dora and I wanted to write a letter. My boss was like, no, I think you should do something bigger and make it so it could potentially help more people. She said it's really important as a pediatrician to hear stories like this because it helps them know what to look for. This type of abuse was so different. It wasn't as obvious. She told me that she's called

CPS now for things she wouldn't have in the past. So she's already changed the way she practices medicine, which is amazing for me to hear because again, if anything light can come from this darkness then it won't feel like it was all for nothing. I want her to listen to it and I want her to hear every single thing she did. I will be writing her a note when this airs. Do you know what she used to always say to me whenever I was leaving the house she would say keep your mouth shut what happens in this house stays in this house loose lips sink ships so I'm going to write her a letter that says, loose lips sink ships. And that's it. I'm

not going to let her hatred and disgustingness spread to me. Instead, I'm going to go the other way and I'm going to spend my life nurturing kids. The little boy that I nanny is six years old. And his mom and I were talking about something like a Facebook nanny group, and they were talking about spanking. And I was telling her about it. And he's six and he goes, what's spanking? And she goes, it's when people hit their kids. He looks at me and he goes, people hit kids? And I was like, well, not all kids, just their own kids. And the look on his face, he couldn't believe it. He goes, people hit their own kids? This is the generation of kids we need. That's all I want, spread awareness to people about how it's not necessary to put your hands on your kids ever. I've been doing this for

25 years. I've raised countless children. I've never laid my hand on any of them. They're all well-adjusted adults. They're all amazing kids. There's a mutual respect. And I also stay up to date on the neuroscience of children's brains and how they understand this and they don't understand that. And it completely changes your perspective. When a two-year-old isn't listening to you, instead of getting frustrated, now I know they can't listen to me. They don't have impulse control. I have to help them. Then it becomes about you helping them instead of you punishing them. Your brain makeup completely changes in that regard. And then you parent entirely differently and it becomes so much easier when you put it in that perspective.

I hope that this just shows people that you can take something negative and always have the opportunity to turn it into something positive. Had you seen me as a seven, eight, nine, ten year old child, you would never assume that I would be someone who would grow up and help other people raise their kids. As a nanny, I'm always out at parks and it functions with the kids. And I see so many parents who are defeated and frustrated and they look like they're at their wits end. So if I can help people, that's all I want to do. And to see them come out the other end brings me so much joy to know that now I've changed a family dynamic and potentially someone's

childhood means so much to me. My goal is to spread awareness about how we can parent purposefully. There are ways to keep our homes calm so no one is flying off the handle. And I'm hoping the more I can spread this, the more it will spread to other people. But it's something I'm very, very passionate about. In the pre-interview, I felt so seen by you

because I was like, well, I didn't want to tell people because, you know, and you go, because of the look. And I was like, yes, because of the look, the look people give you when you tell them what you've gone through, there's no going back. They look at you differently now. This is not our shame, but it feels like it is. And when we're conditioned to feel that way, of course. And it just is heartbreaking that you have to navigate this.

Aren't we all lucky that we also have each other now and the space of understanding. And I don't even know how to thank you properly for being willing to, like, walk me through this and what that takes. I'm so honored to be able to do it. So many people failed me, which is essentially my motivation for doing this podcast,

because I want something light to come from the darkness. I don't want it to all have been for nothing. I'm so thankful to be able to do this. I haven't talked about this in 25 years, and now I've talked about it so much in the last three months, but it is healing. Next time on Something Was Wrong. He just started screaming at me. He took both of the cups from the middle

and threw them at my face. I was just frozen there in shock, like, did you just fucking do that? He's like, now I will stop at nothing to destroy you. Your family, your sisters, your friends, your ex-friends, our current friends, your boyfriends, will all know what you're about. When this stuff was happening, I was in a halfway house

and my world just felt so small. There was no vision of having a normal life. I didn't really make goals for myself or anything because I really felt like he was going to find me and kill me. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe, friends. Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle media production

created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram. At Something Was Wrong podcast. Our theme song was composed by Gladrags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much. If you like Something Was Wrong, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery

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