October 9, 2023 • 18 mins
This week's episode of Podversations features Andrea Gunning and Ashley Lytton. Andrea Gunning is the host and executive producer of the chart-topping podcast, Betrayal, where she explores stories of everyday people who experience the deepest forms of deceptions by those closest to them. After an extremely successful Season 1, Season 2 comes back with the story of Ashley Lytton. After discovering some extremely disturbing information about her husband, Ashley chose to speak out and tell her story on the Betrayal podcast.
The duo joins iHeartPodcasts President, Will Pearson, to talk about the fragility of making true crime shows, how Ashley was inspired to reach out to Andrea to share her story for Season 2, and what they have learned together through this process.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
iHeartRadio presents Conversations, a weekly discussion with the biggest names
and influencers in podcasting. I want to learn the secret
Psycho rituals scrubstars Zach Braff and Donald Beson used before
Every Fake Doctor's Real Friends taping how Vice News parachutes
into war zones to rescue journalists from life threatening situations.
For why Pagan, Michael Key, and Blumhouse believe three D
(00:27):
audio is the future of storytelling. Whether you're a newbie
trying to break into the podcast game or an exec
trying to refine your playbook, Conversations is the easiest way
to keep your pulse on the industry.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hello and welcome back to the iHeart Podcast Speaker series.
I'm Will Pearson, President of iHeart Podcast. As you know,
we like to get together each week and talk about
a different podcast or family of podcasts. Today is going
to be a super interesting one. We are going to
be talking about the show Betrayal, which became a huge
hit for us, and it's in the true crime space,
you know, and it's maybe worth stopping out for just
(01:07):
a second and talking about why we do true crime
or how we think about true crime here at iHeart
you know, when we do shows in this space, maybe
going back to some of our earliest shows in the
true crime space, and you think about shows like Atlanta Monster,
or you think about shows like Happy Face. We often
think before we greenlight a show, you know, why are
(01:29):
we doing this show? And what we never want to
do is produce true crime just for the sake of
talking about crime. Whenever we think about a show that
we want to green light, we think about it through
a lens of what is important to tell about this story.
In the case of Atlanta Monster, with the tragic disappearances
of predominantly young boys, young Black boys in the city
(01:51):
of Atlanta a couple of decades ago, we were trying
to tell this larger social story, this story of relationship
with police department, with the relationship of communities. As we
tell a story like Happy Face, the story of Melissa Moore,
the daughter of the Happy Face serial killer, we want
to tell the stories of those that are victims in
(02:12):
different ways. And today we're talking about the show Betrayal.
We're going to be talking to Andrea Gunning, who was
the host of the first season, and we're talking with
Ashley Litton, who was actually our season two Betrayal Survivor
to talk about each of their seasons. But Andrea Ashley,
thanks for spending.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Some time with us, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yes, thank you. So I'm going to go back to
season one, which which featured, you know, this story of
betrayal about a woman named Jennifer her now ex husband Spencer,
and Andrea, I'll toss to you first and get a
sense what was it that drew you to this story,
and maybe just share a little bit about the story
of what we were trying to do with this first season. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
So, I had first gotten a call from Gen's agent
because she works in the reality TV space, and that's
Glass Entertainment groups Bread and Butter, and he set up
a call and when we spoke to Jennifer for the
first time, what was apparent to me was her pain
was so palpable, like she had just lost what she
thought her life actually was. And I had gone through
(03:16):
like similar infidelity, and I kind of understood, not to
the gravity that she experienced, but I could feel her
pain within myself. It was identifiable, it was relatable, and
I just wanted to help her understand and make sense
of what happened to her and have her try to
figure out who the man she married actually was, and
it just felt so relatable to me and I couldn't
(03:38):
ignore her pain, and that's really why I gravitated to
the story.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Prettyone watching or listening today that has not had a
chance to check out season one, and there probably aren't
that many of them, because again, this podcast hit number one.
It's now searched twice, which is again, as we try
to tell stories like this, it really is nice to
see audiences catching on and wanting to share these stories.
But for those that haven't listened, can you share a
little bit about what that was, what the betrayal was. Yeah,
(04:05):
digging into with the story absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Jen was confronted with the fact that her husband was
being arrested for sexually assaulting a student. He was a
three time teacher of the Year in Georgia. He was
a big person in their community. It's the love of
her life.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
If they were college sweethearts.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
They broke up for a while, then kind of found
each other later in life, and you know, through him
being arrested and then she was like, what's going on?
I need to kind of investigate more and soon found
evidence of like affair after affair people, she knew random
women all over the map. I mean, he basically was
unfaithful to her almost every day of their marriage and
they were married for seven years. And so the podcast
(04:45):
is really her understanding and speaking with the sexual assault victim,
the other women that he had affairs with, and then
also to experts to really get to understand who her
husband actually is and figure out what a perpetrator is
and what their behavior is like. And you know, he
grew a lot of his victims, and so we talk
and explore grooming. So that's essentially what we did with
(05:05):
season one.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And the season, like we said, you know, really took
off and in a lot of ways, this first story
of betrayal became bigger than I think many of us
thought it would. Any thoughts from you on as this
got out into the world and started to build this
audience and again searched to the top of the charts,
I mean, what were your thoughts on all of this?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
You know, I, Jenn and I were like, We're going
to upload to omni and then get out of the country.
It's kind of what was our plan because he didn't
know how it would do. You never know in podcasting,
you just don't know. And so like I think a
week in I had went away with my mom and
she called me and she was just crying, and we just.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Couldn't believe it. We just couldn't believe.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
It was performing so well and people were really resonating
with it. It goes back to my initial phone call
with her. There is just something relatable about her pain. Unfortunately.
I think different people, especially women, can see themselves in Jen.
And I know Ashley, that's certainly.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
How you felt.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And I think that there's something to be said about
exploring difficult conversations. I mean, Jen had to sit down
with the high school student that he really damaged and hurt,
and she gave and provided that space to Jen. And
Jen had conversations with the women he had affairs with
and they carried a lot of shame and she kind
of relieved them of that that shame and that pain.
And so there was something really powerful there. And so
(06:22):
it's complicated. Life isn't black and white, it's gray, and
I think people appreciate when we focus on that gray.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yeah, you talk about a lot of big ideas which
sometimes do sit in that gray space. Concepts like betrayal
(06:53):
trauma as something that we often don't talk a whole
lot about. Do you mind talking about that? And then
would love to hear from Ashlow a bit as well.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
You know, when something like this happens where makes you
fundamentally look at your life, like where you are now
in your past, you're kind of confronted of like what
was real, what wasn't real, and so that makes you
feel extremely unsafe. I never heard of betrayal trauma until
I worked on this show, and I thought it was
such an important thing to talk about because it made
a lot of sense. Of course Jen is afraid. Of
(07:21):
course Jen is scared. Of Course he's gonna have trust issues.
So let's explore that because it's a lot of collateral damage.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I mean, actually you know that better than I do.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, Ashley, I would love to hear what made you
decide to reach out? Because you were one of the
millions of listeners for the first season of Betrayal and
you were compelled to then reach out to Andrea and
sort of share your story and talk about this, which
ultimately ended becoming the subject matter of season two. What
made you decide to reach out?
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Yeah, so going back to the whole betrayal trauma, you know,
part of Jen's story. Andrea's right, there's some type of
camaraderie that I think anyone can phil that's gone through
any type of betrayal there. And initially when I first
listened to the podcast, that's actually what I had searched
up was betrayal and just to see what had come up,
(08:11):
and the betrayal podcast had come up. And so when
I listened to Jen, I felt like she understood me,
you know. So for however long it had been, maybe
a year past what happened to my family, for the
first time, I didn't feel like I was standing alone,
you know, on an island by myself. I was like,
Jen is on this island with me. So I sat
(08:32):
on it for a minute, you know, because someone in
my position, as a wife of somebody who's done something
so terrible and as a mother, you know, to my children,
I felt really powerless, whether it was with the judicial
system or within my community, or emotionally for my children
or for my extended family. And I just knew that
I needed to say something I needed other people to know,
(08:55):
and I wanted to be a part of that. And
so I just emailed in. It was like a maybe
not even a paragraph, it was more bullet points. As
I told him what my name was and I said,
here's my story. My husband was this, this, this, and this,
and he's also this. But I thought in my head,
I was like, Okay, well now I've done what my
conscious is telling me to do. So that's really the
(09:16):
reason why I went on this journey. And I'm so
grateful that they listened and they heard me, because absolutely
I wasn't being heard.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, for those that have not yet had the chance
to hear the second season, do you want to share
a little bit about your story and again, what led
you to reach out there?
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Yeah? Absolutely so. My husband and I lived just a
typical suburban life. He was well known in our community.
He'd raised my older two children. My oldest was two
and my son was five months old, so he has
always been their father. We do have a child together.
I mean, just typical life, soccer mom, dance mom, football mom.
(09:54):
It was just very, very typical. And while starting a business,
I just happened to come across a of child sexual
abuse material in his iCloud account, and season two really
kind of goes over that story. But it's more of
like a lift off for some bigger topics that need
to be talked about, as far as you know, legislation
(10:16):
or sentencing guidelines or just like you said, from a
victim or survivor's perspective, and how the world treats us
versus how a lot of our programming and things like
that are geared towards our perpetrator and where we're left
kind of in the dust to try to figure out
what to do next, and it's very isolating, very very isolating,
(10:38):
And so our season two goes into that, and then
also goes into mental health as well and maybe why
I was able to stay in relationships not just with
my husband, but maybe earlier on and make the decisions
that I had made. And I think that's really where
a lot of our listeners were able to connect with
that as well. So it was fun to kind of
(10:58):
see the podcast take on a mind of its own
and explore some of these really important topics that a
lot of the listeners I know because I've read some
of the emails, which I'm so grateful for, but they've
really connected to Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
You mentioned those and thank you for sharing your story there,
and you mentioned the emails Andrea, you received countless emails
after the first season of the trail and really trying
to decide, you know, how do you process these what
do you do with this? But there was something that
really connected you with Ashley's story, and I'm curious what
was it that allowed you to sort of connect so
(11:32):
deeply to Ashley when you saw her outreach.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I think that she was just radically transparent and honest
and open. And we're never in the business of convincing
anyone to share their story, and it just seemed like
Ashley was just so ready, yeah and listen, and Ashley
knows this. We considered a lot of stories that people
had shared with us, and in this particular.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Case, we struggled with it.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I mean, the crime itself is about child sexual abuse material,
and I give a lot of credit to you. I
give a lot of credit to Ali Perry, who is
our direct report with you guys. We've reached out and said, hey, guys,
this is what this topic is. How do you guys
feel about it? Because the reality is this is a
topic that people are really afraid of. Yeah, and people
(12:18):
are really like, oh, I don't know if I want
to hear about this, this is too much, and instead
of backing off of it, we all leaned in and
you and iHeart were so game for it. And I
just thought that was so so cool. I think in
terms of Ashley, you know, she wrote to us saying,
I too, am a part of a club Noah wants
to be a part of. Yeah, and you know, she
(12:41):
felt so isolated, and I think that she was ready
to like command her voice and it just resonated on paper.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah. You know, this story obviously has now been heard,
your story, Ashley, by millions of people, and I'm curious
what that experience has been like, because I'm sure that
it took a lot of braver read it to reach
out and say I feel like I should tell this story.
I feel like I'm ready to tell the story. I'm
sure it was also in some respects, I'm assuming terrifying
to do that at some level as well. But what
(13:12):
has the experience been like sharing your story with the world.
Are you glad that you made the decision to it?
Sounds like you are, but just curious what that experience
has been like.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Yeah, It's interesting because even when I go back to
when I reported my husband there wasn't even a choice,
like that's just what needed to be done, and there
wasn't a choice, And that's how exactly how I feel
about the podcast, Like I understand that there's always a
choice or whatever, but I just felt like this is
what had to be done. And I still feel that way.
(13:41):
And so for me, I knew when I opened this
that it was going to be something that I did
for the rest of my life, and not necessarily just
because I wanted to share my story, and you know
all that, I knew that my story was more of
like a lift off of more things and bigger things
and things that people read about every day in the
news but nobody really wants to talk about. It's been really,
(14:02):
really relieving to see that I've opened some lines of
communication for even just those around me. But it's also
interesting too, because it is people hear the story through
their headphones or whatever, and then they do feel this
connection with my story, but it's still uncomfortable for some
people to ask me about it. And the way that
I see it is when this happened to my family,
(14:24):
it was in the media, so our whole local community knew,
and I feel like a lot of any type of
pride or ego that I had was brushed away. So
sharing the worst parts of anybody's life, and especially with
it being so traumatic, and not just for me, but
for my children, for my family, and even for my husband.
I knew that there were going to be some people
(14:46):
that would rather just sweep it under the rug and
just move on with life and not talk about it.
But that's the reason why this type of behavior keeps happening. Yeah,
because nobody wants to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, we can pretend that these are super fringe worries,
but in reality and varying levels, this is all too
common of a story. Right Again, that's sort of these
different kinds of levels. And Andrea, before I've let you
to go, I would love to just hear from you,
you know, I guess to back up a little bit.
These these stories are of course shocking and upsetting when
(15:19):
you hear them, but also interestingly inspiring when you listen
to them as well. Like the strength of the subject
matter here and the strength of the women of the survivors,
and where we go from here, I'm curious, what is
your hope for listeners and listening to betrayal? What would
you hope listeners would get out of each season.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
I think the biggest thing is for people that come
to this podcast, like Ashley, that they don't feel alone.
That was the thing that Jen and I talked about
all the time when we first started making season one,
was if this just helps one person feel less alone,
then we did our job.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And so I've watched two.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Women really grow and wrestle with really complicated emotional baggage
and have done a herculean evolution within you know what.
Ashley's been able to overcome and really examine personally. When
I first met Jen, she was really angry and has
gotten to a place of peace, like there is peace
(16:20):
on the other side of this. And so I think
people come to the show for different reasons, and I
think they'll find their own individual thing that makes them
realize why they're listening. But I think really it's to
help people feel less alone and show you that time
does move on and you are capable of growth, and
you are stronger than you think, and you are resilient,
you know. To Ashley's point, like she didn't even want
(16:43):
anything out in the papers, and now she's putting it
out in front of a million people. You know, it's
just having the ability to reclaim what happened to you
and you know, stand in your powers a really powerful thing.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, and you probably won't ever know just how many
people you've had a positive impact on from hearing your
story and that connection that they feel to you. I'm
sure many of them will reach out and many more,
probably many more than that will never reach out, but
there still feel that connection. So we're honored that we've
had the opportunity to work with both of you on
(17:17):
this and I know that, like we said after the
first season, we hear from so many listeners and I
think we'll continue to work with the team to tell
these stories. But really appreciate your spending some time with
us today, and I hope that everybody watching and listening
if you've not yet heard it Betrayal. Like we said before,
it's a difficult podcast at times to listen to, and
(17:38):
these are really difficult stories but also inspiring and really important,
and I hope everybody will check them out. But Andrea Ashley,
thanks for spending some time with us.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Thank you, Will, Yeah, thank you, Will.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
I appreciate you and the whole iHeart team, So thank you,
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Guys are amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Thank you, Thanks everybody for spending some time with us today.
We'll see you again next week.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Conversations is a production of iHeartRadio. You can find more
from the biggest names in podcasting on iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts.
iHeartRadio presents Conversations, a weekly discussion with the biggest names
and influencers in podcasting. I want to learn the secret
Psycho rituals scrubstars Zach Braff and Donald Beson used before
Every Fake Doctor's Real Friends taping how Vice News parachutes
into war zones to rescue journalists from life threatening situations.
For why Pagan, Michael Key, and Blumhouse believe three D
(00:27):
audio is the future of storytelling. Whether you're a newbie
trying to break into the podcast game or an exec
trying to refine your playbook, Conversations is the easiest way
to keep your pulse on the industry.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hello and welcome back to the iHeart Podcast Speaker series.
I'm Will Pearson, President of iHeart Podcast. As you know,
we like to get together each week and talk about
a different podcast or family of podcasts. Today is going
to be a super interesting one. We are going to
be talking about the show Betrayal, which became a huge
hit for us, and it's in the true crime space,
you know, and it's maybe worth stopping out for just
(01:07):
a second and talking about why we do true crime
or how we think about true crime here at iHeart
you know, when we do shows in this space, maybe
going back to some of our earliest shows in the
true crime space, and you think about shows like Atlanta Monster,
or you think about shows like Happy Face. We often
think before we greenlight a show, you know, why are
(01:29):
we doing this show? And what we never want to
do is produce true crime just for the sake of
talking about crime. Whenever we think about a show that
we want to green light, we think about it through
a lens of what is important to tell about this story.
In the case of Atlanta Monster, with the tragic disappearances
of predominantly young boys, young Black boys in the city
(01:51):
of Atlanta a couple of decades ago, we were trying
to tell this larger social story, this story of relationship
with police department, with the relationship of communities. As we
tell a story like Happy Face, the story of Melissa Moore,
the daughter of the Happy Face serial killer, we want
to tell the stories of those that are victims in
(02:12):
different ways. And today we're talking about the show Betrayal.
We're going to be talking to Andrea Gunning, who was
the host of the first season, and we're talking with
Ashley Litton, who was actually our season two Betrayal Survivor
to talk about each of their seasons. But Andrea Ashley,
thanks for spending.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Some time with us, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yes, thank you. So I'm going to go back to
season one, which which featured, you know, this story of
betrayal about a woman named Jennifer her now ex husband Spencer,
and Andrea, I'll toss to you first and get a
sense what was it that drew you to this story,
and maybe just share a little bit about the story
of what we were trying to do with this first season. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
So, I had first gotten a call from Gen's agent
because she works in the reality TV space, and that's
Glass Entertainment groups Bread and Butter, and he set up
a call and when we spoke to Jennifer for the
first time, what was apparent to me was her pain
was so palpable, like she had just lost what she
thought her life actually was. And I had gone through
(03:16):
like similar infidelity, and I kind of understood, not to
the gravity that she experienced, but I could feel her
pain within myself. It was identifiable, it was relatable, and
I just wanted to help her understand and make sense
of what happened to her and have her try to
figure out who the man she married actually was, and
it just felt so relatable to me and I couldn't
(03:38):
ignore her pain, and that's really why I gravitated to
the story.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Prettyone watching or listening today that has not had a
chance to check out season one, and there probably aren't
that many of them, because again, this podcast hit number one.
It's now searched twice, which is again, as we try
to tell stories like this, it really is nice to
see audiences catching on and wanting to share these stories.
But for those that haven't listened, can you share a
little bit about what that was, what the betrayal was. Yeah,
(04:05):
digging into with the story absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Jen was confronted with the fact that her husband was
being arrested for sexually assaulting a student. He was a
three time teacher of the Year in Georgia. He was
a big person in their community. It's the love of
her life.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
If they were college sweethearts.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
They broke up for a while, then kind of found
each other later in life, and you know, through him
being arrested and then she was like, what's going on?
I need to kind of investigate more and soon found
evidence of like affair after affair people, she knew random
women all over the map. I mean, he basically was
unfaithful to her almost every day of their marriage and
they were married for seven years. And so the podcast
(04:45):
is really her understanding and speaking with the sexual assault victim,
the other women that he had affairs with, and then
also to experts to really get to understand who her
husband actually is and figure out what a perpetrator is
and what their behavior is like. And you know, he
grew a lot of his victims, and so we talk
and explore grooming. So that's essentially what we did with
(05:05):
season one.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And the season, like we said, you know, really took
off and in a lot of ways, this first story
of betrayal became bigger than I think many of us
thought it would. Any thoughts from you on as this
got out into the world and started to build this
audience and again searched to the top of the charts,
I mean, what were your thoughts on all of this?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
You know, I, Jenn and I were like, We're going
to upload to omni and then get out of the country.
It's kind of what was our plan because he didn't
know how it would do. You never know in podcasting,
you just don't know. And so like I think a
week in I had went away with my mom and
she called me and she was just crying, and we just.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Couldn't believe it. We just couldn't believe.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
It was performing so well and people were really resonating
with it. It goes back to my initial phone call
with her. There is just something relatable about her pain. Unfortunately.
I think different people, especially women, can see themselves in Jen.
And I know Ashley, that's certainly.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
How you felt.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And I think that there's something to be said about
exploring difficult conversations. I mean, Jen had to sit down
with the high school student that he really damaged and hurt,
and she gave and provided that space to Jen. And
Jen had conversations with the women he had affairs with
and they carried a lot of shame and she kind
of relieved them of that that shame and that pain.
And so there was something really powerful there. And so
(06:22):
it's complicated. Life isn't black and white, it's gray, and
I think people appreciate when we focus on that gray.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yeah, you talk about a lot of big ideas which
sometimes do sit in that gray space. Concepts like betrayal
(06:53):
trauma as something that we often don't talk a whole
lot about. Do you mind talking about that? And then
would love to hear from Ashlow a bit as well.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
You know, when something like this happens where makes you
fundamentally look at your life, like where you are now
in your past, you're kind of confronted of like what
was real, what wasn't real, and so that makes you
feel extremely unsafe. I never heard of betrayal trauma until
I worked on this show, and I thought it was
such an important thing to talk about because it made
a lot of sense. Of course Jen is afraid. Of
(07:21):
course Jen is scared. Of Course he's gonna have trust issues.
So let's explore that because it's a lot of collateral damage.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I mean, actually you know that better than I do.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, Ashley, I would love to hear what made you
decide to reach out? Because you were one of the
millions of listeners for the first season of Betrayal and
you were compelled to then reach out to Andrea and
sort of share your story and talk about this, which
ultimately ended becoming the subject matter of season two. What
made you decide to reach out?
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Yeah, so going back to the whole betrayal trauma, you know,
part of Jen's story. Andrea's right, there's some type of
camaraderie that I think anyone can phil that's gone through
any type of betrayal there. And initially when I first
listened to the podcast, that's actually what I had searched
up was betrayal and just to see what had come up,
(08:11):
and the betrayal podcast had come up. And so when
I listened to Jen, I felt like she understood me,
you know. So for however long it had been, maybe
a year past what happened to my family, for the
first time, I didn't feel like I was standing alone,
you know, on an island by myself. I was like,
Jen is on this island with me. So I sat
(08:32):
on it for a minute, you know, because someone in
my position, as a wife of somebody who's done something
so terrible and as a mother, you know, to my children,
I felt really powerless, whether it was with the judicial
system or within my community, or emotionally for my children
or for my extended family. And I just knew that
I needed to say something I needed other people to know,
(08:55):
and I wanted to be a part of that. And
so I just emailed in. It was like a maybe
not even a paragraph, it was more bullet points. As
I told him what my name was and I said,
here's my story. My husband was this, this, this, and this,
and he's also this. But I thought in my head,
I was like, Okay, well now I've done what my
conscious is telling me to do. So that's really the
(09:16):
reason why I went on this journey. And I'm so
grateful that they listened and they heard me, because absolutely
I wasn't being heard.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, for those that have not yet had the chance
to hear the second season, do you want to share
a little bit about your story and again, what led
you to reach out there?
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Yeah? Absolutely so. My husband and I lived just a
typical suburban life. He was well known in our community.
He'd raised my older two children. My oldest was two
and my son was five months old, so he has
always been their father. We do have a child together.
I mean, just typical life, soccer mom, dance mom, football mom.
(09:54):
It was just very, very typical. And while starting a business,
I just happened to come across a of child sexual
abuse material in his iCloud account, and season two really
kind of goes over that story. But it's more of
like a lift off for some bigger topics that need
to be talked about, as far as you know, legislation
(10:16):
or sentencing guidelines or just like you said, from a
victim or survivor's perspective, and how the world treats us
versus how a lot of our programming and things like
that are geared towards our perpetrator and where we're left
kind of in the dust to try to figure out
what to do next, and it's very isolating, very very isolating,
(10:38):
And so our season two goes into that, and then
also goes into mental health as well and maybe why
I was able to stay in relationships not just with
my husband, but maybe earlier on and make the decisions
that I had made. And I think that's really where
a lot of our listeners were able to connect with
that as well. So it was fun to kind of
(10:58):
see the podcast take on a mind of its own
and explore some of these really important topics that a
lot of the listeners I know because I've read some
of the emails, which I'm so grateful for, but they've
really connected to Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
You mentioned those and thank you for sharing your story there,
and you mentioned the emails Andrea, you received countless emails
after the first season of the trail and really trying
to decide, you know, how do you process these what
do you do with this? But there was something that
really connected you with Ashley's story, and I'm curious what
was it that allowed you to sort of connect so
(11:32):
deeply to Ashley when you saw her outreach.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I think that she was just radically transparent and honest
and open. And we're never in the business of convincing
anyone to share their story, and it just seemed like
Ashley was just so ready, yeah and listen, and Ashley
knows this. We considered a lot of stories that people
had shared with us, and in this particular.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Case, we struggled with it.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I mean, the crime itself is about child sexual abuse material,
and I give a lot of credit to you. I
give a lot of credit to Ali Perry, who is
our direct report with you guys. We've reached out and said, hey, guys,
this is what this topic is. How do you guys
feel about it? Because the reality is this is a
topic that people are really afraid of. Yeah, and people
(12:18):
are really like, oh, I don't know if I want
to hear about this, this is too much, and instead
of backing off of it, we all leaned in and
you and iHeart were so game for it. And I
just thought that was so so cool. I think in
terms of Ashley, you know, she wrote to us saying,
I too, am a part of a club Noah wants
to be a part of. Yeah, and you know, she
(12:41):
felt so isolated, and I think that she was ready
to like command her voice and it just resonated on paper.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah. You know, this story obviously has now been heard,
your story, Ashley, by millions of people, and I'm curious
what that experience has been like, because I'm sure that
it took a lot of braver read it to reach
out and say I feel like I should tell this story.
I feel like I'm ready to tell the story. I'm
sure it was also in some respects, I'm assuming terrifying
to do that at some level as well. But what
(13:12):
has the experience been like sharing your story with the world.
Are you glad that you made the decision to it?
Sounds like you are, but just curious what that experience
has been like.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Yeah, It's interesting because even when I go back to
when I reported my husband there wasn't even a choice,
like that's just what needed to be done, and there
wasn't a choice, And that's how exactly how I feel
about the podcast, Like I understand that there's always a
choice or whatever, but I just felt like this is
what had to be done. And I still feel that way.
(13:41):
And so for me, I knew when I opened this
that it was going to be something that I did
for the rest of my life, and not necessarily just
because I wanted to share my story, and you know
all that, I knew that my story was more of
like a lift off of more things and bigger things
and things that people read about every day in the
news but nobody really wants to talk about. It's been really,
(14:02):
really relieving to see that I've opened some lines of
communication for even just those around me. But it's also
interesting too, because it is people hear the story through
their headphones or whatever, and then they do feel this
connection with my story, but it's still uncomfortable for some
people to ask me about it. And the way that
I see it is when this happened to my family,
(14:24):
it was in the media, so our whole local community knew,
and I feel like a lot of any type of
pride or ego that I had was brushed away. So
sharing the worst parts of anybody's life, and especially with
it being so traumatic, and not just for me, but
for my children, for my family, and even for my husband.
I knew that there were going to be some people
(14:46):
that would rather just sweep it under the rug and
just move on with life and not talk about it.
But that's the reason why this type of behavior keeps happening. Yeah,
because nobody wants to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, we can pretend that these are super fringe worries,
but in reality and varying levels, this is all too
common of a story. Right Again, that's sort of these
different kinds of levels. And Andrea, before I've let you
to go, I would love to just hear from you,
you know, I guess to back up a little bit.
These these stories are of course shocking and upsetting when
(15:19):
you hear them, but also interestingly inspiring when you listen
to them as well. Like the strength of the subject
matter here and the strength of the women of the survivors,
and where we go from here, I'm curious, what is
your hope for listeners and listening to betrayal? What would
you hope listeners would get out of each season.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
I think the biggest thing is for people that come
to this podcast, like Ashley, that they don't feel alone.
That was the thing that Jen and I talked about
all the time when we first started making season one,
was if this just helps one person feel less alone,
then we did our job.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And so I've watched two.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Women really grow and wrestle with really complicated emotional baggage
and have done a herculean evolution within you know what.
Ashley's been able to overcome and really examine personally. When
I first met Jen, she was really angry and has
gotten to a place of peace, like there is peace
(16:20):
on the other side of this. And so I think
people come to the show for different reasons, and I
think they'll find their own individual thing that makes them
realize why they're listening. But I think really it's to
help people feel less alone and show you that time
does move on and you are capable of growth, and
you are stronger than you think, and you are resilient,
you know. To Ashley's point, like she didn't even want
(16:43):
anything out in the papers, and now she's putting it
out in front of a million people. You know, it's
just having the ability to reclaim what happened to you
and you know, stand in your powers a really powerful thing.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, and you probably won't ever know just how many
people you've had a positive impact on from hearing your
story and that connection that they feel to you. I'm
sure many of them will reach out and many more,
probably many more than that will never reach out, but
there still feel that connection. So we're honored that we've
had the opportunity to work with both of you on
(17:17):
this and I know that, like we said after the
first season, we hear from so many listeners and I
think we'll continue to work with the team to tell
these stories. But really appreciate your spending some time with
us today, and I hope that everybody watching and listening
if you've not yet heard it Betrayal. Like we said before,
it's a difficult podcast at times to listen to, and
(17:38):
these are really difficult stories but also inspiring and really important,
and I hope everybody will check them out. But Andrea Ashley,
thanks for spending some time with us.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Thank you, Will, Yeah, thank you, Will.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
I appreciate you and the whole iHeart team, So thank you,
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Guys are amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Thank you, Thanks everybody for spending some time with us today.
We'll see you again next week.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Conversations is a production of iHeartRadio. You can find more
from the biggest names in podcasting on iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Conal Byrne
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