Credibility | EP 6 | Saskia's Story

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. You know the saying, knowledge is power? Well, it's a lot more than that. Knowledge can be growth, security, opportunity. And no one knows that better than Southern New Hampshire University. That's why they offer over 200 online degree programs designed to help you reach your goals. Set yourself up for success or get ready to pivot into something new. No matter your program, you'll learn practical, career-focused skills you can use on the job. And don't worry, getting your degree online doesn't mean doing it alone. Southern New Hampshire University has some of the best student support in online education. From day one to graduation, you'll have friendly, knowledgeable people to help you with everything from applying and financial aid to tutoring and career development. At Southern New Hampshire University, knowledge can be life-changing. Get started at snhu.edu. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free, with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription, exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to iHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today. How do you know that Claude won't become manipulative? This is a constant worry. And you can actually catch the model thinking, I think X is actually true, but I'm going to tell the user why. I'm Walter Isaacson. On my new podcast, The Builder. I'm going inside the minds of the people shaping our future. Listen to The Builders starting October 13th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's all just a joke. What is the value of these women? I'm Bridget Armstrong, back with season two of the podcast, Curse of Miss America. We're talking to participants, whistleblowers, and people who say Miss America didn't live up to their promises. He looks at me and goes, you don't love me. You look like you suffered an eating disorder. I never received scholarship money to pay for my student loans. Maybe this is the meta question for the podcast. What is Miss America at this point? Listen to The Curse of Miss America on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mike Levengood pled guilty to just one count of second-degree rape. He took a plea deal that meant he would only serve 18 years. 16 months in prison. By the time of his sentencing hearing, the one you heard last episode, the judge's hands were tied. But she had watched those chatterbait videos, and she was sure of what she saw. It was clear to me that Ms. Inwood was comatose, not asleep, but comatose, unconscious. Absolutely. Any technicalities in the law didn't matter. The videos spoke for themselves. To Judge Jill Cummins, this was rape. You were a predator to Ms. Inwood. And I completely understand it. The damage done to her is probably irreparable. Do you understand that by pleading guilty this morning, you are waiving or giving up that presumption of innocence? Yes, I do. Do you still wish to plead guilty this morning? I do, Your Honor. Okay, and are you pleading guilty today? Sir, because you are, in fact, guilty? Yes, Your Honor. Of the one count. You'd think that would have been the end of it. But for Saskia, things were about to get much worse. Mike was just getting started. I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal Season 5, Episode 6, Credibility. Mike's guilty plea marked the end of his criminal proceedings. But his sentencing hearing wouldn't be his last time in court. It wouldn't be Saskia's either. For a year, the criminal matter took center stage. But the whole time, there was another case playing out. Saskia and Mike's divorce. We're going to rewind a bit to before Mike's plea deal, before he was even charged with a crime. It was November 1st, 2018, just four days after Saskia discovered the videos of her being sexually assaulted and went to the police. On that day, Saskia was back at the courthouse, finalizing her protective order. But before she could leave the building, I got served the divorce papers. At first, having those papers in hand was a relief. She wanted a divorce as quickly as possible. But as Saskia sat in the courthouse lobby, reading the documents Mike sent, she realized this wasn't just any divorce filing. He was actually saying that I was complicit in all this, and I knew about Chatterbait, and it's pages and pages of allegations that him and I were a team camming together. Just four days after Saskia's divorce, Saskia realized what Mike was doing to her. Four days after Mike left the house, he filed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty. Saskia's cruelty towards him. Mike said that Saskia's allegations, that he raped her, secretly videotaped her, and posted nude images of her without her knowledge, were all false. Saskia was making it all up. The divorce complaint, the parties would spend evening time posting and watching other couples doing the same. This was a regular activity that the parties engaged in openly. These acts were all consensual. To get this divorce complaint just floored me. I knew that this was going to be really ugly. These divorce proceedings were completely different than the criminal case Mike was about to face. That case was the state of the art. It was the state of Maryland versus Mike Levengood. It was the state's job to prove Mike's guilt. This divorce case was Mike Levengood versus Saskia Inwood. It really felt like I was the one on trial. Mike could have gone for a no-fault divorce. Instead, he was determined to take Saskia down. And this path had a lot to offer him. His criminal trial hadn't taken place yet. So, the divorce was a bargain. It was a bargaining chip. Saskia thinks that Mike was using the divorce case to get her to back down and make his criminal troubles disappear. I think that he assumed that I would accept some kind of deal for alimony in exchange for not testifying. It would be easy to throw some cash my way and this would all go away. Saskia could have used that money. She was dipping into her 401k just to pay her divorce attorney. But that kind of deal, she'd never accept. If the condition is that I don't testify, there's no way. I don't care. I'll be destitute. We're going to follow through with this. The criminal proceedings went ahead, with Saskia as an active participant in the case. But even after Mike pled guilty, even after the criminal matter was closed, he charged ahead with the charge. He was charged with the divorce on the grounds of cruelty. Saskia wanted a divorce too. But like I said earlier, this was no typical divorce. Mike was saying Saskia was a liar and there was a lot at stake. If a judge believed him, Saskia could owe Mike, her rapist, tens of thousands of dollars. She could even be charged with false reporting or sued for defamation. In this case, there were lengthy depositions, requests for documents. And then in January of 2021, the divorce actually went to trial. This is extremely rare. Only about 5% of divorce cases make it to trial. It was the middle of COVID, so much of the trial took place over Zoom. Saskia sat at her kitchen table, staring at Mike through her screen. He was sitting there in an orange jumpsuit after pleading guilty to rape. At this point, Mike had been convicted. But in spite of that, at this divorce trial, Mike would claim he was innocent. That's why he was so determined to see this case through. You see, Mike couldn't win his freedom. Through his plea, he'd waived much of his right to an appeal. But convincing this new judge that Saskia was lying could help him clear his name. If he won the divorce, he could have an official document that proved Saskia's guilty. made the whole thing up. A document he could take to employers, friends, and parents. family to say, this is what really happened. The divorce judge saw the truth. On the surface, the divorce trial was all about money, as most divorces are. Who'd get the house, the cars? But really, the trial rested on who the judge believed, Mike or Saskia. Mike looked very arrogant and cocky and had no emotion or feeling. I think he thought that it would be just a wash. When Mike and his attorney opened their case, their strategy was clear. Turn the spotlight off Mike and onto Saskia. Their goal was to undermine Saskia's credibility. But what does that really mean? Well, they would have to prove she wasn't believable. They'd introduce patterns of behavior, aspects of her character that would show she wasn't a reliable narrator. How would they do this? By saying she'd lost her mind. She was very depressed. She was unable to get off of work. I'm depressed. I can't take it. I can't work. Work is stressing me out. The kids are stressing me out. Life is stressing me out. This is the courtroom audio from the divorce trial. That's Mike's real voice you just heard. And calling out Saskia's anxiety and depression wasn't the only way he tried to undermine her credibility. He also talked a lot about the divorce trial. He talked a lot about the divorce trial. He talked a lot about her use of drugs and alcohol. She drank a significant amount. There was drug use on her part, more than mine. It very quickly snowballed into seven, eight, nine drinks. She also received Adderall from a friend. When she starts drinking, she doesn't stop. All of this was to introduce doubt about Saskia. Saskia's lawyer objected to a lot of this testimony, arguing that Mike's side was trying to enter character evidence unfairly. But the judge allowed Mike to continue. I felt like I was on the Twilight Zone. The fact that the judges were even listening to these things was blowing my mind. This is Troy Millings from Earn Your Leisure. If you run a small business, you know how important it is to stay on top of your numbers. That's why I want to tell you about Xero. That's X-E-R-O. Xero brings accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics together in one platform, giving you a clear picture of your business. With reports, visual dashboards, forecasts, and AI insights, Xero can help you better understand your cash flow, and what's coming in and going out. It's a simple but powerful platform built for small business owners and designed to make managing your business finances easier from day one. Join 5 million customers worldwide who use Xero to manage their finances. Learn more at Xero.com. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled. A suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead. Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't believe her. Didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year. Listen to What Happened to Her on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine. Humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Dario Amadei, Alex Carr, Fei-Fei Li, Palmer Luckey. Because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing, about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us. But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans? They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, whose imagination do we want to live in? This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. Listen to The Builders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. And we're the hosts of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know, there's a lot of them to listen to these days. How are you going to get to us? Well, there's a specific reason why you should listen to us. We are the best podcast in the entire world, I swear. I know, bold. But why don't we list some of the things we might talk about on a regular episode? So sometimes we'll talk about, I don't know, the Uber driver we just had. And how nice. And how nice. Or if we tipped them or not. Come and find out. Sometimes we'll talk about that weird news story from last week. It's the one you're thinking about. Trust me. Or maybe we'll talk about music and what's happening in the underground. Or drama and music. Or TV shows. Or the Met Gala and what the actors wore. What we're saying is we're not afraid to talk about everything under the sun. And if you want to see what that's like, come join us. It's a place where everyone can hang out. Anyone. Wherever you're from. Whatever you're like. You're welcome. Listen out of character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. When Saskia and Mike's divorce trial began, he was zooming in from jail. And his legal strategy was to discredit Saskia. There was drug use on her part more than mine. Saskia sat through hours and hours of this testimony. Listening to Mike drag out every time she drank too much. And every time she couldn't get out of bed. It wasn't that these moments hadn't occurred. It was that Mike was using them to say Saskia was responsible for everything that happened to her. He was telling the story of the worst period of her life. But in this story, it was all her fault. She was the one causing chaos. These things were so dehumanizing. And so dismissive. Of what I had been through and my pain. I have to admit, it's hard for me to listen to Mike make this argument without feeling angry. Mike knew her family's mental health history. And how Saskia was determined to remain stable. To not walk the same path as her dad. Saskia thought Mike was on her team. And yet, Mike had been exploiting her mental illness, her use of alcohol and drugs, for years. Saskia's friend Heather put it best. It was to his advantage to keep her in this drunken, drugged-up, bad mental health state. Because the more vulnerable she became, the easier it became for him to take advantage of her. But as Mike testified and his attorney spoke, his culpability faded into the background. He zeroed in on her behaviors. Her imperfections. To show. That she shouldn't be trusted. And even. That she was to blame. I want you to hear Mike's account of October 27th, 2018. The night of the Halloween party. The night Saskia saw what was on Mike's computer screen. The audio isn't perfect. So listen closely. Here's his story of that night. We'd been at the party. In hall. We were all stuck. And. Ended up looking at ChatterBait's website. When they got home, they went on to ChatterBait, the camming website. But just as they were logging on. She got up and wanted it off. So, turned it off. Went to bed. And that was it for the evening. The next morning, she was very, very agitated. Wanted to look at the website. Which, we did. And then became very focused on my use of pornography. Meaning, looking at the website without her. It then became very emotional. And started saying all kinds of things. And that's at the point where she stood there in front of the dresser. And she looked at me and she said, you know, "I now know what you've been doing." And it was just such a shock. In Mike's memory, he and Saskia were at a party. They were both drunk, looked at a website. The next day, Saskia went crazy on him, out of the blue. There could only be one explanation for all of this. Saskia was mentally ill. In court, this strategy is often effective. It plays on misconceptions we all have about what it means to be a rape victim. If you've watched any crime show or any courtroom drama, you're probably familiar with the character of the perfect victim. As sure as I live and breathe, William Harris is the man who raped me in that alley. Think of Law & Order SVU. There's the perpetrator, the bad guy. And then, there's an innocent victim. She's written to be brilliant, beautiful, and beyond reproach. I tried to get away, but I couldn't. He just left me there. Storytellers love this archetype. The protagonist is clear. And audiences love it, too. We know exactly who to root for. There's no room for doubt. The problem is that most victims don't behave the way this imaginary perpetrator, the perfect victim, behaves. That's Debra Turkheimer, a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. I am a former prosecutor, and I handled cases involving special victims. Debra wrote a book called Credible, Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers. She's an expert on sexual violence. She says the perfect victim character doesn't just live on screen. She's the benchmark. The standard that all rape victims are judged against. In the courts, in circles of friends, everywhere. The perfect victim standard includes misconceptions about how victims behave and how they ought to behave before, during, and after the abuse. Before, there ought to be no drinking, no drug use. And Saskia, as we know, was on a lot of substances when she was raped. During the abuse, the perfect victim fights. She fights back. She fights hard. But Saskia was knocked out. And then afterwards, the perfect victim is able to recall with precision every single detail of what happened. Which again, Saskia couldn't. In every way, Saskia failed to rise to the perfect victim standard. The reality is, most victims do. It's unfair to impose a set of rules that, for the most part, can't be followed and aren't followed. And yet, the rules remain. And they serve abusers like Mike. Because when victims aren't perfect victims, we can write them off. And we can turn them into other characters. The regretful woman. So, someone who had consensual sex and then decided it was a mistake. And so is now, quote unquote, crying rape. The gold digger. Someone who is making this up because she wants money. And then, there's the hysterical woman. Someone who just really doesn't know what's going on and doesn't have a firm grasp of reality. It's one of the only women in the world who's been raped. It's one of the oldest and most effective ways to discredit a victim. To make the judge question their sanity and doubt what happened to them. Here's Alice Perret, Mike's attorney, from the divorce trial. What did you see that makes you believe that she was struggling? She was unable to get up from work many, many times. She was struggling to take care of the kids. Ms. Inwood says, I'm feeling like shit. And would she tell you something like that? So many times I could not even count. And were there any particular reasons why she felt like shit? Because of, I'm anxious, I'm depressed, I can't take it, I can't work. Work is stressing me out, the kids are stressing me out, life is stressing me out. By Mike's account, Saskia wasn't composed, or stable, or credible. She was a woman in the midst of all this. She was a woman in the midst of a breakdown. Her word couldn't and shouldn't be trusted. She had to have lost touch with reality. Because, according to Mike, he and Saskia were camming together. Having sex on camera all the time. How many times have the two of you cammed on Chattabay? You know, two to three dozen times. And how many times had you observed? I've observed other people camming on Chattabay. Three to four dozen times. The sex life became extremely adventurous, with not a lot of limits. There was no boundary. That was something that I had not experienced previously in any relationship. But Mike wasn't asking the judge to take his word on all this. His divorce attorney, Alice Perret, said she could prove it. She had a plan. I would like to really admit all of the pictures and all of the videos because I think how much of them is relevant to my client's case. And when Alice said all, she wasn't just talking about the videos from the criminal trial. The ones Detective Rule recovered from 2017 and 2018. There are hundreds of photographs, hundreds of videos, and they take place over the course of years and years, six or seven or more years. There was more evidence. Much more. And Alice claimed it would show Saskia consented to everything. Every sexual act. Every video. What's happened is the defendant has, under oath, in pleadings and requested responses to admissions, just denied everything. They've never posted a picture, never participated in videos. And you say, this never happened, and there is a picture of it in living color or a video of it in moving. Motion. It's relevant. And according to Alice, it would show that Saskia was not to be believed. This is Troy Millings. From Earn Your Leisure. That's X-E-R-O. With reports, visual dashboards, forecasts, and AI insights, Xero can help you better understand your cash flow and what's coming in and going out. It's a simple but powerful platform built for small business owners and designers. Xero is designed to make managing your business finances easier from day one. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. Stories of survival. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. And we were babies. She did all of these brave things. And came out and spoke about it, and he got a year. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. Right now, we're living. To an AI arms race. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Is it 400 people? that you know in Silicon Valley? I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. It's a podcast. I know there's a lot of them going around, but why should you listen to ours? Well, we're only the best podcast in the entire world. And we talk about pretty much everything under the sun. For example, music we're listening to, underground music, trending music, drama in music worlds. Yes, sometimes we even talk about just everyday mundane situations in our lives, like the cool Uber driver we just had. Or the food we just ate that was surprisingly delicious. Or we'll talk about the Met Gala and the looks that they wore. Are they awesome? Are they trendy? Come find out. Because our opinion matters, and so does yours. And this is a place where all of our minds can come together and connect. So what are you waiting for? Come connect with us. Listen to Out of Character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the criminal trial, there were about 30 videos recovered from chatterbait. These videos were the key to their survival. The key to prosecuting and convicting Mike. But in the divorce trial, Mike said he never raped Saskia or took images of her without her consent. She agreed to all of it. And to back that up, he said that he and Saskia often made pornography together. Which was done over the course of seven years to the tune of over 200 photographs and videos. 200 photographs and videos. His divorce attorney, Alice Perret, seemed confident. The evidence will convince the court that she was a willing participant in these matters. While working on this episode, we reached out to Alice Perret. She declined to comment. In these additional images, it wasn't just that Saskia's eyes were open, as we've talked about in previous episodes. Alice claimed that in lots of instances, Saskia was awake. And she was posing for help. Posing and performing for the camera. If Saskia was saying she'd never consented, she was lying. Or she was delusional. From the early days of reporting this season, I knew that there were some pictures Mike took of Saskia consensually. Saskia was open about that with us. And with detectives too. The kids would be out of the house and they'd be drinking, having a good time. Then, Mike would pull out his phone. You heard about one of these incidents in episode one. I remember one time he took a picture of me and showed me how good my butt looked or something like that. And I explicitly asked him, what are you doing with that picture? And he's like, well, of course I'm going to erase it. I would never show it to anybody. But she can only remember this happening a handful of times. Mike said he had 200 photographs and videos. And most of these images I don't remember taking them. And I never knew of their existence. All of this brings up another painful truth about rape cases. No matter the corroboration, no matter the amount of prosecutors, family members, and experts standing behind a victim, there's an initial default to doubt that is sort of culturally ingrained in us. That's law professor Deborah Turkheimer again. She says doubt is built into the crime of rape. It's really difficult in the criminal setting to get past that very high standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And that's true of every crime. But it's especially true of rape. Historically, there were special instructions that were given to juries that said, you should be even more cautious about convicting in this case because accusers, abusers are so untrustworthy. Now those formal instructions aren't given, but we still have a default to doubt when someone comes forward. That's true even in a case like this, where there's so much evidence. Even sometimes when it's on video, right? There are questions of interpretation. No judge or jury can turn back the clock to be in the room at the time a rape happened. And no one can get into the minds or bodies of the people involved. And that's also a challenge for us as reporters. That's my producer, Caitlin Golden. We can't go back in time. And so in understanding this story, the only thing we can do is rely on the evidence that is available to us. When it comes to images like these, attorneys will always make arguments of what was really going on. But our team didn't understand the degree to which these were just arguments. Until we saw the images for ourselves. After months of reporting, we finally got access to the case files from the divorce and the criminal case. We saw the kinds of photos we heard so much about from Mike's attorney. Ones where Saskia's eyes were open. One in particular has stuck with us. I remember the first time I saw that photo and I had to immediately close my laptop because I didn't know what to do with it. I mean, it's so hard to describe as anything other than horrific. Like, she's not there. No, no. She isn't there. I hate even describing it, but the only way I could describe what I saw is it's like a corpse with her eyes open. It's really upsetting. So when I look at that photo, I think, of course she doesn't remember this. Yeah. And the idea that images like this where her eyes are open or being used to say that she was awake and consented to everything is so disturbing. Seeing this image, it felt clearer than ever. What happened to Saskia is real. It matters. And Mike, not Saskia, is to blame. But in the divorce, back in 2021, there was only one person that needed to be convinced of all this. That was the judge. And Saskia was unsure what she'd make of these images. I knew that I wasn't going to be given the benefit of the doubt. Before Mike's attorney could show the videos, the judge asked to review the content herself. She stepped into her chambers to watch in private. As everyone waited for the judge to return, Saskia sat in her room staring at Mike through her screen. The man who'd hurt her was now in jail. He was just a little box on Zoom. And yet, he had the power to make her feel so small. He was the one behind bars. But the judge was deliberating over Saskia's actions. Her character. It felt ridiculous and absurd and dehumanizing that I had to go through that. But I also knew that I just had to get through it. Saskia knew the truth. The truth is always the best defense. She just hoped the judge would see the truth too. After a brief recess, the judge returned. So I have gone through the additional videos and it looks as though Ms. Inwood knows she at points that pictures are being taken and I'm not sure about knowing she's being videotaped because I don't think I saw anything that expressly shows that. So this could very well be a situation where a consenting couple agree to take pictures of each other and I don't think that that is going to challenge Ms. Inwood's credibility. But, I do believe that Mr. Levengood's attorney should have some opportunity to examine her about that. The judge couldn't say for sure that Saskia did or did not know she was being filmed or whether she knew this content was being shared. So she asked the officers of the court to turn around and Mike's attorney, Alice Paray, pulled up the evidence. She wanted to show Saskia the videos and make her answer for them in front of everyone. Saskia looked at the video on her screen. Despite what Alice said, this was a video of her being violent. A video that was now being shown to a room full of strangers. It made me feel like a fool. It made me feel like less than a person. The whole time, she couldn't stop thinking about Mike. It's heartbreaking to think that he put everybody through that just so that he could get away with humiliating me. With Saskia on the stand, the judge let Mike's attorney, Alice Paray, proceed. Then do you recall this video? No, I don't. Do you recall when it was taken? Objection. She just said no, she doesn't recall. Oh, root. Ma'am, do you recall when this video was taken? No, because I don't recall the video. The attorneys fought back and forth on objections and relevance as Saskia just sat there. It was so re-traumatizing to have to defend myself. It's dehumanizing to have your life whittled down to that. And to have people talking about things that are affecting your life and you can't do anything. You're just sitting there helpless, having to listen to it. And it's something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Alice continued cross-examining Saskia for just a couple more minutes. Asking Saskia if she posed for pictures for Mike. And then the judge popped in. You go ahead, Ms. Perrette. Anything else you want to ask? No. No other questions of Ms. Inwood? None. I will save my time for Ms. DeLevitt. All right. All right. Any, she didn't ask much. Any, any redirect? None, Your Honor. All right. Thank you. Okay. Alice spent her remaining time questioning Mike again. Before long, she ran out of time. Both sides closed their cases. In the weeks that followed, Saskia waited and waited for the divorce decision. She wasn't expecting any kind of big win. She just wanted those papers in hand. I had no faith in the justice system anymore. I just wanted it to be over. I was already so disheartened about everything and not hopeful at all. It was like I was waiting for the time to run out. Everything was just getting in the way of me. Just being divorced from this monster. I wanted nothing more than to be divorced and be able to move on. And I could really say that this is not my husband. This is a monster who was posing as my husband. And now he's totally gone. Finally, a few months later, the judge released her decision. We're going to have a producer read part of it for you. And remember, Mike is the plaintiff here. Saskia is the defendant. The judge wrote, This court credits defendant's testimony and expressly discredits plaintiff's testimony. In other words, she didn't believe Mike. She believed Saskia. Plaintiff attempted to convince this court that defendant was aware of the site and aware that she was being sexually penetrated and otherwise manipulated by the plaintiff. The court is unconvinced. The evidence revealed defendant has struggled during the party's marriage and before with addiction and mental health issues, making her particularly vulnerable to mistreatment by someone she trusted. Defendant learned, only after very personal images were broadcast to the world on the Internet, that she was married to someone whom she could not trust. The plaintiff betrayed his spouse in the worst type of way. He then lied about it and continued to lie about it. Another. Another judge saw through Mike's lies and came to the same conclusion. On paper, she won. But in reality, to Saskia? It didn't matter. Of course, yes, she found that he was not credible and that I was credible, but it still didn't take away from what I had been through in this divorce and would have been taken away from me. It was exactly how Saskia felt after Mike's plea, She was told that this was a good outcome for the court system. But it didn't feel that way. Professor Deborah Turkheimer says that's often how these cases go. Even in the end, if the survivor is found credible and there's that vindication that comes along with it, along the way, the process can be enormously difficult, degrading, even traumatic. Saskia was told that she was not credible. Saskia was granted a divorce on the grounds of cruelty. The judge wrote, This court can think of few actions that warrant a divorce on this ground more so than the rape and sexual exploitation that occurred here. But she had to live through two and a half years of proceedings to get there, when he'd already been convicted in criminal court. She spent two and a half years defending herself, having to answer for every, every drink she had, every hospital stay, having all of her vulnerabilities put on display when Mike had raped her. And this crime isn't unique to Saskia. You can see his hands, his wedding ring. And then I realized that I am in these images. On the next episode of Betrayal, we meet other survivors. It has been a real journey for me to get to the point of realizing that it's not my gut that's broken. It's him that's broken. For resources on sexual violence, visit RAINN.org slash betrayal. That's R-A-I-N-N dot org slash betrayal. You can also get free confidential 24-7 support through RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline. Just text HOPE to 64673 or call 1-800-656-HOPE. You are not alone. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team or want to tell us your story, email us at BetrayalPod at gmail.com. That is BetrayalPOD at gmail.com or follow us on Instagram at BetrayalPod.com. At BetrayalPod. To access additional content and to connect with the Betrayal community, join our Substack at Betrayal.Substack.com. We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with Apple Podcasts. and iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning. Written and produced by Caitlin Golden. Our supervising producer is Carrie Hartman. Our story editor is Monique Laborde. Also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Olivia Hewitt and Leah Jablow. Production management by Kristen Melchiorri. Additional support by Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jennifer Fetterman. Audio editing by Tanner Robbins with additional editing and mixing by Matt Dalvecchio. Special thanks to Saskia, her friends and family. And special thanks to Will Pearson and Carrie Lieberman. Betrayal's theme is composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by Myb Music. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. Whether you're leading a big project, planning an elaborate trip, or trying to balance work and life, ChatGPT can help. 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