June 11, 2025 • 56 mins
Kaitlyn Braun spun an elaborate web of lies, convincing over 50 doulas she was pregnant after a traumatic assault. Her deception confused and shattered trust in the doula community, leaving many unsure if they could continue their work.
Journalist Sarah Treleaven spent over eighteen months investigating Kaitlyn’s unusual story and the motives behind it. She brought these stories to life in her podcast, The Con: Kaitlyn’s Baby, where she details speaking to the doulas who were tricked, lied to and left disturbed by Kaitlyn's actions.
The question remains: why did Kaitlyn do it — and is her deception finally over?
Listen to The Con: Kaitlyn’s Baby here.
Warning. This story and this opening scene feature descriptions of pregnancy loss and stillbirth.
CREDITS
Guest: Sarah Treleaven
Host: Gemma Bath
Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
True crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Just a warning. This story and this opening scene features
descriptions of pregnancy, loss, and steelberth. If that's triggering for you,
perhaps give this episode a miss. It's November twenty twenty
two in Toronto, Canada, and Amy Perry is on the
phone coaching a woman in labor. She's helping her breathe
through her contractions. She's giving her words of encouragement. She's
(00:36):
talking her through the various positions she can get her
body in to help her manage her pain. As a dueler,
for many years now, Amy has dealt with all sorts
of women from all walks of life, welcoming babies into
the world in all manner of ways. But tonight's client
has a particularly heartbreaking story. Caitlin Brawn is twenty four
(00:58):
and her pregnancy is the result of an assault. She
only recently found out that her baby, a girl, died
in utero at about thirty two weeks gestation. So Amy
is giving her all to Caitlin, being her emotional anchor
through forty hours of labor, barely sleeping or eating, and
(01:19):
she does her best to support the emotional young woman.
As labor intensifies, Amy encourages Caitlin to get into an
uber and get to the hospital. This baby is coming soon.
Caitlyn gives birth to a beautiful, sleeping baby girl called Eden.
Over the phone. The new mum describes holding her, having
(01:41):
skinned to skin with her, meeting her a beautiful but
heartbreaking experience. But Caitlin was never pregnant. She didn't give birth,
and she never went to hospital. She was lying to
Amy the entire time, through days and hours upon hours
of phone calls. And this isn't the first time she's
(02:04):
done this. I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations,
a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
to the people who know the most about them. Caitlyn
Brawn is a repeat offender. As recently as January twenty
(02:25):
twenty five, she pled guilty to fresh charges in court
at the age of twenty six. She has dozens of victims.
She's a serial con woman, and to stick well, she
pretends she's pregnant and in the need of emergency support.
Even with time behind bars and apologies and promises in
(02:47):
court Caitlyn has repeated her crime over and over again.
Sarah Trelevan is a journalist and immersed herself in Caitlyn's
bizarre crimes for more than a year and a half,
trying to make sense of them. This year, she released
a podcast, The con Caitlyn's Baby, which tells those stories.
Sarah joins us, Now, Sarah, can you tell us a
(03:10):
little bit about your background and how you found yourself
investigating the story?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Sure, I mean, this story came my way and it
was sort of both immediately shocking and completely up my
alley and I just saw a headline and I'm paraphrasing,
but it was something along the line of like women
fakes multiple pregnancies, lies to doulas, something like that. It
(03:36):
was just sort of a very small kernel of what
this story is. And my hands, as soon as I
saw that, were like shaking as I went to go
do some more research on what actually had happened, because
I immediately knew that there was like this whole world
there associated with this woman to explore. And part of
(03:56):
how I knew that is that for many years, really
almost a decade, I've had a real fascination I would
say broadly in women who live double lives, but particularly
women who have factitious disorder or related disorders, women who
feign illnesses or crises for emotional gratifications. So not the
go fundme scammers we're all you seeing, but people who
(04:17):
do it to meet an emotional need. It's such an
interesting thing to me, and such an outsize, maladaptive activity,
and so I found it absolutely fascinating, and I immediately
gravitated towards Kitlin's story and wanted to know much as possible.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
What do we know about Kaitlin Braun and her background
and her childhood. Can you set the scene a bit.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
You know, there are parts of Caitlyn's life that we
haven't been able to access yet, but we do know
quite a bit about her through friends, through family members,
through just how public this case became, not just Canada
but globally. And so we know that Caitlyn grew up
in a relatively rural community outside of Toronto. She was
(05:05):
I'm not very happy kid, you know. I mean, when
we start to look at her life trajectory, I don't
think there's any one particular causal reason that she ended
up doing what she did, but from a very early age.
Friends and family members report her having a pretty serious
anxiety her parents' divorce. When she was young, she had
separation anxiety. She reported feeling rejected by her father. You know,
(05:28):
one of the anecdotes that I've heard that has stayed
with me is that when Caitlyn's mother would go to work,
this was after her parents' divorce. Kitlyn's mother would go
to work and Caitlyn, who was quite young at the time,
would repeatedly call her and ask for reassurances that she
was coming home. And so I think you see from
a fairly early age this very profound sense of difference
(05:52):
and alienation and kind of a bottomless pit of need.
You know, she wanted friends to be super affectionate with her.
She wanted physical touch, but she also wanted emotional intimacy.
Time this graduates to fabrications in order to get what
she wants. The compassion she needs, the attention she needs,
(06:14):
the intimacy she needs. But at the same time, Caitlyn
is seemingly a somewhat productive member of society. You know,
she graduates from high school, she graduates from university, she
becomes a social worker. She is working with vulnerable populations,
of people. And it's really interesting to go back and
(06:34):
look at caitlyn social media now, because you know the
media surrounding this case, and also you know just images
that people have grabbed and posts on social media, and
a lot of those images Caitlyn has like what I
would call like crazy eyes, where like you're looking at
this picture of her, yeah, and you're like, well, how
would you not know that this perfect person, you know,
(06:57):
was not a safe person. But you go back and
you look at the breadth of her, her presence online,
how she comported herself who she presented as, and you know,
she was a very young woman in her early twenties,
sort of making her way in the world. She appeared
to be altruistic, she appeared to be a devout Christian.
She had this sort of cover for this double life
(07:18):
that she was living, and it was very convincing.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I need to ask straight up because it was a
question that sat in the back of my head the
entire time I kind of was listening to your podcast
and researching this story. Do we know if Kaitlin has
ever been pregnant?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
We do not know that. As a matter of fact, No,
we don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
That, which is a fascinating question when we stop getting
into it.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I understand from friends of Caitlin's that she did not
have romantic entanglements. Now that doesn't mean she couldn't have
been pregnant, but we do know, for example, she didn't
have romantic entanglements that would have, for example, led to
a pregnancy. Now, people can get pregight in other ways
by choice and not. But I think that that was
(08:05):
sort of one one of the key questions that was
asked very early on when people found out that she
was faking pregnancies, right, Like, maybe she did at some
point legitimately lose a pregnancy and this was part of
how she was coping with it, Like, this was how
the trauma was being expressed. But we don't have any
information about that, and we have no indication that that
(08:27):
is in fact something that.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Happened before she does get into the faking pregnancies world.
I'm going to call it, was she lying about other things,
like as a teenager, as a young adult before she
kind of found this particular area.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Yeah, I mean, the thing about it, a lot of
Caitlin's lies that we know about are nested, So it's
lie nested in a lie nested in another lie, and
you actually see that start to happen pretty early in
her life, like really by her kind of mid to
late teens. You know, a number of friends have told
(09:06):
me that she lied to them that sexually assaulted. Now,
it's really hard to obviously make that assertion period, It's
really hard to say that about anyone, let alone a
good friend. But some of these friends, it got to
the point where she was literally coming to them on
a weekly basis saying she had been sexually assaulted and
by different people in different context to the point where
(09:29):
it did strain curdualy. It just didn't make sense. And
all of these friends I spoke to who reported this
said they tried to believe her, and they wanted to
believe her, and then they got to this unbelievably challenging
position in the friendship where they were like, this is
not plausible, and I don't know what to do with that,
(09:50):
because you're coming to me and you're telling me you
need help for something that is indisputably awful, and I
feel like there's something else going on here. And that's
where it started to tip, and people started to feel
like they're being taken advantage of. But I will say
the allegations of have been reported to US as false allegations,
and Caitlyn has been charged with making false allegations. Those
(10:14):
often were accompanied by lies about being pregnant, and that
started years ago. That did not start with her outreach
to doulas. It started long before. I think she tested
a lot of waters with family members she's now a
strange from, with friends she's now a strange from. But
we do know that those sort of core lies that
she perpetuated with the doulas, lying about being sexually assaulted
(10:36):
and then lying about being pregnant as a result of
that assault, that has been going on for some time,
despite the fact that she's still a very young woman.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
She did start to kind of focusing on duelas as
I guess her victim in this scenario. How would you
describe the kind of contry created there, because it's pretty
similar from victim to victim, but it changes slightly.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, I mean, I'll say stuff taught that Caitlin was
really bit this. I mean, she was really good at
picking a victim and then super capably manipulating them. So
what she would do is reach out to a doula.
We don't know this as a matter of fact, but
the dulas I spoke to have told me that they
(11:27):
got the sense that she kind of investigated them before
she did outreach because sort of magically, you know, dulas
that were queer Caitlin presented as queer doulas who were
Christian Kitla presented as Christian. One doula had a sister
who had fallen into a coma. At the end of
(11:47):
Caitlin's sort of very long protracted con with this doula
where everything went wrong medically, she lapsed into a coma,
And so a lot of these duos felt like this
was an extra layer of manipulation. She would actually find
their individual sort of pressure point and push them to
(12:08):
maximize her ability to create intimacy, almost like an affinity scam. Yeah.
The other thing she did is she just had an
incredibly tragic story that was that all of these dulas
who work with women who have have have been sexually assaulted,
who have experienced stillbirth, who have been mistreated in the
(12:28):
medical health system, Caitlyn used all those things and weaponized
them against these duelas because these dulas were primed to
be on there on her side, because they've seen all
these things before, they knew these things happen. They couldn't
believe that all these things were happening to one person.
But almost immediately, you know, Caitlyn said, I'm experiencing all
(12:49):
these horrific things. I've been sexually assaulted. I'm now pregnant,
the baby is stillborn. My family has rejected me because
either because I wanted to keep the baby, or sometimes
it was because she was queer. I don't want to
go to the hospital because you know, I've been mistreated
at the hospital. The dulas, you know, we're told that
they were the only person that could help her, which
(13:10):
is an enormous responsibility to take on. But all of
these doulas have signed up to take care of people,
even in incredibly rough circumstances. So that additional layer of manipulation,
I think made it very hard for these doulas to
set any boundaries to question her narrative. You know, it's
(13:32):
really easy to listen now and say, well, who would
believe this? But these dulas were you know, Caitlin was
calling them, you know, at three o'clock in the morning,
and then four o'clock in the morning, and then five
point thirty. I mean they were sleep deprived, some of
them were barely eating. You know, when Caitlyn there was
a case involving Caitlyn not too long ago, and part
of the evidence was that she had sent a doula
(13:54):
six hundred text messages in two days. Wow, that is
enormous volume of communication to keep up with, and you
barely have time to think when someone is bombard earning
you with their needs like that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You also don't automatically go to someone he's lying. If
someone is asking for help and telling you all these
horrible things, you're not immediately going to be like, well,
if better investigate them before I help them.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think it's just that's not what
doulas do, right, if you have to build trust almost
immediately in order to do the kind of intimate work
that doulists do, you know. And I think they're also
they deal with women who are not believed in a
lot of different contexts, including you know, in the context
of medicalized pregnancies, in the context of you know, sexual assault. Again,
(14:42):
these things that Caitlin really tend to And so a
doula is someone who's going to be on your side,
and it is not that person's role to doubt what
you're telling them to sort of, you know, to use,
you know, their critical analytical skills to like think back
on whether the timing of your you know, story really
makes sense. That that's not what they're there to do.
(15:04):
They're there to provide support you when you tell them,
they that you need it, and they're there to believe you.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
For those that aren't familiar with the birth world, can
you explain, because adula is very different to a midwife
in terms of the services that they offer.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yes, So this is also where people get confused because
they're kind of like, didn't they notice that, like caitlin
cervix wasn't dilated. That's not what a doula does, you know,
it's not They're not medical professionals, and so they're there
less to help you give birth, like the actual physical
act of giving birth, and more to provide you with
(15:44):
emotional and educational support, and they're very focused on the mother,
Like what does that person need at any given moment,
Like the person who's going to give birth, what did
they need? What kind of reassurance do they need? What
do they need for physical relief? What do they need
for emotional relief. They what information do they need right now?
And you know it can start long for labor and
(16:07):
you know, go beyond the burthen of the baby. You know,
it's very different than a midwife who's like measuring your
belly and checking, you know, and and doing physical checks
and obviously quite different a doctor. So you know, again
it's it's not a trust but verified position. There's there's
not really a verification role involved in being a doula.
(16:28):
It's about trusting the person who's come to you and
said they need help.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I also think something to consider with the role of
a dueler is because they are helping women in you know,
the most vulnerable often the most vulnerable time of their life.
They share a lot of vulnerabilities themselves to kind of
get that trust so they might open up about their
own lives. Like it's a very emotional job. You are
trying to create a very special emotional connection to get
(16:55):
that woman through, which adds a whole other kind of
layer to this.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, I mean, and it's also it's a lot of
time like that you spend with somebody, you know, think
about like some times women are labor for days and
it's literally like you know, a doula. It's like I
you know, we were chatting earlier, I mentioned you know,
this is when Dula I met has a deal in
her contract where she gets to take a break after
twenty four hours. I mean that's twenty four hours of
(17:21):
being with this woman or this person who's in labor
and helping them by like offering them massage or like,
you know, doing things to help induce labor, or like
talking them through things or explaining what's about to happen.
But there's also time between you know, contractions, when things
speed up, when things slow down, where it's just the
two of you sitting on the couch together, or like
(17:44):
take a nap on the bed, you know. I mean,
it's that's the other intimacy of this. It's just and
especially in the context of somebody who's unaccompanied, like Caitlin,
who doesn't have like a partner there for example. Yeah,
it's a very fast bond that I think is established
in that set of circumstances. And yeah, these these dulas
(18:05):
absolutely be came vulnerable with Caitlin in part because Caitlin
was sharing so much and so much heavy, heavy, heavy
trauma that yeah, I mean, I think it's human nature
to want to reciprocate on some level.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me Jemma Bath.
I'm speaking with Sarah trelevan journalist and host of the
podcast The con Caitlin's Baby. Next, we dive into the
stories of Amy and Katie, two duelers who believe Caitlin
had given birth to a stillborn baby, but that was
only the start of the dramatic lies she told them.
(18:46):
I want to tell some of these women's stories just
to give listeners an idea of how deep this con
went and this emotional attachment went. I want to start
with Amy's story, which I kind of told the start
of at the start of this episode. I cut it
right after she gave birth to a stillborn baby called Eden,
(19:07):
whose pregnancy she said was the result of an assault.
But the birth was actually only the start, really of
what she put Amy and her fellow kind of duel
if Katie through. They were kind of tagged teeming through
this situation, weren't they? Can you kind of pick us
up at there were that point because they were providing
her support over the phone. They've already provided days of
(19:29):
support to get her to birth and then it just
keeps going.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yes, so Amy and Katie are they're duelers who are friendly.
They're working together partly because Katie had other job obligations,
and neither of them knowing how traumatic Caitlin's situation was,
how vulnerable she was, wanted her to be alone at
any point, so they really sort of bent over backwards
to accommodate at Caitlin. Caitlyn gives birth to Eden. It
(19:56):
is She describes it as a really beautiful moment that
she finally gets to meet her baby, and you know
it sort of I think Amy describes it as, you know,
as nice as a stillbirth can be, you know, where
she sees her baby, she gets to hold her baby,
and then she has to let her go. This sort
(20:18):
of feels to Katie and Amy, who are who working
to Caitlyn only over the phone because this is in
the thick of COVID and they're not able to get
into the hospital. This feels to them like kind of
the end of a really sad story. But not long
after Caitlyn gives birth, she sort of starts making noises.
(20:42):
It sounds like she's in this comfort and Amy's on
the phone with her, and she says, what's what's happening?
Like described him is going on? So she has to
deliver the placenta, and she's describing the discomfort, which you know,
Amy sort of says is normal, you know, just kind
of let your body do what it needs to do.
But then once she delivers the placenta, there's more bleeding,
and the bleeding won't stop. And then Caitlyn starts to
(21:05):
get very worried because that doctors appear very worried, and
she's telling Amy this over the phone, and so the
doctors do some exploration and eventually what they tell her
is that she has to have a hysterectomy. Now, Caitlin
at this point is, I believe a twenty three year
old woman who has just given birth to a stillborn
(21:26):
baby that was a product of a sexual assault, who
was and it was very much a wanted baby, who
is now being told that she will never have her
own children. And so Amy and then of course Katie
as well, they are absolutely devastated for Caitlin, like they
cannot believe this is happening, and so they all sort
of grieve together and talk it through and you know,
(21:48):
try to provide what emotional support they can for her.
But then the problem is the bleeding still isn't stopping,
even after the emergency has directed me. So the doctors
do more exploration and they find that she actually has
stage four pelvic cancer and her prognosis is extremely dim.
Kitlyn decides she doesn't really want to go through after
(22:12):
everything she's been through, super invasive treatment that's that she's
been told that she's reporting to Amy and Katie is
unlikely to work, so she's just going to go with
hospice care.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
So now she's dying.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So now Caitlyn is dying and looking at palliative care options,
and she's reading from brochures for hospice care places where
she can go into palliative care until the end of
her life, which appears to be soon, And she's reading
from what she says are brochures that the hospital has
given to her so she can look into where she
wants to go. And it's very detailed, like Amy helped
(22:48):
Caitlyn write a will and think about you know, who
should Amy and Katie tell when Caitlyn dies, because Kaitlyn
has very little contact with her family, and like, what
can they do? For her to facilitate, you know, to
facilitate any remaining relationship there, like and who should should
they announce her death on social media? Does Caitlyn want
them to talk to her friends? I mean, all these
(23:09):
things that might come up if you thought someone was
dying and did not have anyone else in the world.
So it's all incredibly sad. And at this point, Amy
and Katie have been kept mostly awake for like a week,
you know that Caitlin is calling them at all times
of the day. So at this point, Caitlyn tells Amy
(23:31):
and Katie that she's being transferred to another hospital, a
hospital that is going to evaluate her cancer and give
her like an updated prognosis. So Amy and Katy hear
her being loaded into an ambulance. In the ambulance, she
starts to describe feeling uncomfortable, and it's not entirely clear
(23:52):
what's going on to Amy, who's on the phone with
her at that time. And basically what Caitlyn goes on
to describe is a doctor coming into the ambulance and
raping her while Katie is on the phone. And at
some point Caitlyn hangs up and Amy is obviously completely
(24:13):
beside herself and she and Katie trying to figure out
what they're supposed to do. Caitlyn calls back, she is,
you know, has already been in touch with the police,
and it's going to be reported. It's all, you know,
it's just a mess basically. So and then Caitlyn reports
(24:34):
that these doctors are are that this doctor and I
think there was another doctor implicated, and like there's going
to be an arrest made, and you're talking about and
oh and Caitlyn gave Amy and Katie the names of
doctors that she'd implicated in her sexual assault and when
when Amy and Katy googled them, they had privileges at
the hospital that Caitlyn said she was at. So the
(24:55):
story sort of checks out.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
So it's all backed up.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
It's yeah, yeah, And so anyways, after this happens and
after these arrests are supposedly made, Amy's girlfriend at the
time says, you know, I am going to reach out
to a journalist I know, and just see if she's
heard anything about this, because it would be pretty big
news if like a doctor at one of you know,
(25:20):
at one of the large hospitals was arrested for raping
a patient in the man ambulance, like that is definitely
something that would be newsworthy.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
A dying woman who's just given birth, Like it doesn't
get more headline worthy exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So she does some poking around and she can't find anything.
She can't find anything, She can't find any signs of
the story. So she finally says to Amy, don't you
think it's a little strange that all of these things
have happened to the same person or the last ten days?
And Amy says, at that point something kind of clicked
(25:57):
for her. It was like, yes, it is actually now
that you mention it through my fog of sleep deprivation
and my desperate efforts too to help this failing woman, Like, yeah,
it is a bit odd that all of these things
have happened to the same person. And that's when Amy
remembers something, which is at some point when Caitlin is
(26:20):
in this hospital bed getting you know which string of
bad news I can't remember, Amy heard a dog bark,
which is not something one normally hears when they're dying
in a hospital room. So so once once that clicked
(26:41):
in her brain, she and Katie went down this rabbit
hole where they just basically were like looking into all
the communications that Caitlyn had sent them. You know, they
were reverse image searching the pictures of the tumors that
come or the big blood clots that had come out
of her body and finding them on Wikipedia. And then
(27:01):
finally I think it was Katie who called the hospital
and said, do you have a patient by the name
of Caitlin Brawn And they said no. So at that
point they knew, they knew, but they also didn't know
right because you then know that this is not true,
which he's been telling you is not true, But there's
still the much bigger mystery of why would someone do
(27:23):
this too? And why would someone do this to you?
For ten days it didn't make any sense. So then
they had a whole new odyssey basically to go on.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Did they confront her, did they talk to her about it,
or did they just kind of disappear.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
I think they just sort of disappeared, And I think,
you know, I don't. I think there are a couple
dulas who confronted Caitlin. But what's interesting is they were
either doulas who were not directly involved with her, or
i'd say had like less traumatic experiences and I think
(27:58):
the instinct of most of the Dulas who felt very
wounded by you know, Caitlyn's deep minute, by basically having
their sense of reality destroyed by her, their first instinct
was just to get as far away from her as possible.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
In Amy and Kitie's story, the pot that baffled me,
a lot of it baffled me. But she was able
to fight a lot of kind of sounds, Like she
got on a helicopter at one point, she was in cars,
she was beeping in hospitals. How did she pull that off?
Do we know?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
No, we don't know. We don't know. I mean people
report her getting into an uber and like hearing her
getting into an uber and talking to the driver, and
they can hear the car is going, you know. So
I wonder if it was a combination of like sound
effects off her computer and a combination of actually doing
some of these things. Like, I mean, she really got
(28:57):
off on pretending to be pregnant, So maybe she also
really got off on pretending to get on really getting
into an uber and going to a hospital to give birth.
You know, maybe she was walking around a hospital and
that's why they heard some of these background noises like
people being paiged or things like you know, buzzing or dinging.
So we don't know, We don't really have an answer
(29:17):
for that. And so far as I know, there's no like,
you know, pregnancy Baker sound effects set you can file
off down to the app store. But many people I
spoke to have told me that they did hear these
things going on in the background, So she was you know,
I think it just sort of speaks to how deeply
committed she was to fooling people.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Just how many victims are we talking about? How many
Dulas have been Kitelin's victim?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
We don't know, and I suspect, as with many of
these sort of crimes that involved intimacy, is probably more
than we know of. What we do know is that
at one point there was a group chat of doulas
who had all had experiences being lied to by Caitlin,
and the last I checked in, there were over fifty
(30:08):
Dulas in that group.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
And we've just heard one of those stories, like one
of like fifty times.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, I mean, they varied, they weren't all you know.
I mean, what's also interesting about Caitlyn is it wasn't
all done virtually or on the phone, like some of
these duelas met her, and you know, sometimes when they
met her, she was giving birth to a live baby.
She was still pregnant as the result of a sexual assault,
she was still struggling with family relationships, but she was
(30:37):
giving birth to a live baby. But she told them.
And so you know, we've seen pictures of Kitlin in labor,
tended over but taken by doulas, and she really appears
to be exhausted and sweaty and going through the motions
of labor.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Well, let's paint that picture a little bit through Kate,
because Kate was a duela that saw her in person
at a house or her house might not have been
her house, who knows.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
She did see some red flags kind of from the beginning.
Didn't she beang in person with her?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
You know, there was something Kate's really interesting because I'm
not sure that there was anything in particular that Caitlyn
did or said, but Kate had a gut feeling that
this something was off about this situation. And you know,
she's going over to Caitlyn's house or you know, I'm
(31:38):
unclear whether it's her house or it was an airbnb
she rented but she's going over to a house where
Kaitlyn says she's going to give birth, and one of
the thoughts that flashes into Kitlyn, that flashes into Kate's
mind is I'm going to be kidnapped. And it may
have been the fact that Caitlyn texted to her some
(31:58):
variation of I hope you don't mind naked or topless
when you get here, And there was something about that
that's seemed to imply a lot of boundaries that judgment.
I don't know exactly how she unpacked it in her,
but there was something about that where Kate just thought,
there's something off here and this this is a bit dangerous,
(32:22):
but she couldn't articulate it. And then, of course, when
she gets there, and Caitlyn is a woman in her
young in her early twenties who desperately needs assistance and
lonely and is in discomfort and has a really sad story,
then Douela Kate, you know, takes over and she tries
to take care of Kitlin the best of her ability.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Can you tell us about the most sexual side of
Kate's experience, because she did that uncomfortableness you mentioned evolved
into some other kind of areas it did.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, and a number of the doulas mentioned that they
felt they feel that there was some form of sexual
gratification wrapped up in Caitlyn's emotivations. Kitlyn really wanted to
talk in graphic detail about her experience of being sexually assaulted,
(33:17):
doula's reported, you know, she really wanted them and encouraged
them very physical aspects of their work, you know, for example,
like massage, and then Caitlyn wanted to be naked while
she was being massaged, and I made a lot of
duelas really uncomfortable. But they also didn't want to make
Caitlyn uncomfortable because she was in labor and you know,
(33:37):
they're trying to make her as comfortable as possible.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
And it's not unusual for laboring women to want to
be naked as well. That's what I wouldn't have questioned
certain parts of it.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
That's right. Yeah, So all of that's and that's one
of the things that's really interesting too about Kaitlyn, Right,
she skirted. She stayed very close to the lines, where
like it was very easy to rationalize anything she was
telling you, even if you sort of felt like something
wasn't right. But other doulas, including Kate, also note that
(34:09):
they felt that Kitlyn was masturbating at the points when
they engaged with her, and most of the dulas that
I spoke to got that impression that she was masturbating
over the phone, especially when they were talking about more
physical aspects of giving birth, things like nipple stimulation and
things like that. Kate was giving Caitlyn a massage. Caitlyn
(34:32):
was undressed. They Kate lying on the bed or sort
of hunched over the bed, Kate was standing on the side.
She was massaging Caitlyn's shoulders, and then Kate believes that
she saw Caitlyn's hand touching her vulva and that she
was masturbating while this was happening, obviously all without Kate's consent,
(34:55):
and so you know, then very very quickly after that,
Caitlyn sort of discovers that Caitlyn is Kate, Caitlyn is
not who she said she was, and this sort of
alarming incident becomes like much more perilous.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
How did she discover that? Was it a Google search?
Was she so uncomfortable that she kind of excused herself
and did a bit of research When.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
She she believes that Caitlin is masturbating, and she's freaked out,
and she sort of walks into the other room like
excuses herself, and it's like her mind is sort of
spinning because she's like, who is this person and what
is she doing? And like what is this situation? You know,
she's trying to process, and then she kind of like
a jolt remember something, which is that on Facebook she
(35:41):
had read that there was a woman who was faking pregnancy.
And when she kind of remembered that, it was like
several pieces fell into place, because she was like, you know,
there were so many things off of this situation and
it seemed like they were conclusive enough for her to
walk away and leave this, you know, this woman with
this terrible story on her own. But once she remembers that,
she goes on Facebook and she does a search into
(36:02):
a group and she finds the post and the posts
that this woman's name is Katelyn Brown, and so at
that moment, Kate knows that's who's in the other room,
that is who she's dealing with, and she basically gets
over the apartment as quickly as she can, gets into
her car and speeds away.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
The post that Kate found was made by another Duela
who was conned, called Shauna. She was kind of not
the first, but one of the first to really kind
of get the message out there, or try and get
the message out there and spread the word that there
was this person out there doing that. Can you tell
us about the community she ended up creating of all
(36:42):
of these women, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
So there were two duelers that really got the word
out that. You know, I think a lot of them posted,
but I would say the two of them had posts
that really really took on. One was another Amy Amy Silva,
who was one of the first duelers who posted on TikTok,
and the other one was Shanna, And I actually really
(37:05):
loved his story because, you know, Shauna was at the point,
as many of these duelas were, where she didn't feel
like police were listening. They told them, They told the
dulas that there wasn't really anything that they could do
and their only recourse was to warn people about Caitlin.
So they decided that's what they were going to do
to the best of their ability, So they take to
social media. Shawna makes this post about this really horrifying
(37:28):
experience she's had with with Caitlin, and you know, her
feelings about being misled, and it's a very very emotional post.
But that's not why it initially got traction. It initially
got traction because she meant to add the hashtag doulas
of TikTok and accidentally add the hash added the hashtag
dogs of TikTok, which I guess is like a very
(37:52):
a very devoted community of people who like immediately saw
this post and started boosting it. So I guess there's
like a lot of crossover in the dog doulah communities
of people who I love stories like this. Yes, so
her post absolutely exploded, and you know, I think within
a day or two of the duelis really starting to
(38:13):
post on TikTok, they had, you know, thousands and thousands
of views and Caitlin was ultimately arrested.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
A lot of these duelis did try and go to
the police. Why couldn't they do anything? Had they exchanged
money in these services? Does that even do anything in
this instance? Why initially did the police site we can't help.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
I think that our system is accustomed to primarily adjudicating
financial crimes and violent crimes and Caitlyn doesn't really fall
under those two categories. You know. What she does is
almost more akin to kind of like personal betrayal.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
What's manipulation.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
It's emotional, Yeah, it's very emotional, But we don't prosecute
emotional crimes in our court. You know, that's that's you know,
otherwise everyone would take their ex boyfriend at court. You know,
it's just not typically how the system is set up. However,
having said that, I think that this was also a
really fundamentally icky case. Like I think people a lot
(39:21):
of people listen to the details and cringe. A lot
of these cops that they were talking to, like, my
guess is, they thought this all sounded pretty gross and
didn't want to get involved. They thought that this was
kind of like bullshit between women, and you know that also,
I think they really underestimated the harm. You know, I
(39:41):
think they thought, Okay, so this woman lied to about
being pregnant, what's the big deal. Obviously they had the
capacity to charge Caitlin, because they ended up charging her,
and she was charged with multiple counts of harassment, fraud,
and ultimately indecent acts. She was originally charged with sexual assault,
which was downgraded and it's not because she took money.
You know, I've seen all of the court documents. This
(40:05):
case was not adjudicated because Caitlin stole people's time, and
time is money and business. That's not what she was
doing in court. It was because of the manipulation, because
of the fraud. It was because she kept emailing these
women with you know, under false pretenses. You know, there
are tools at the disciple of the justice system, but
I think police can be reluctant to use them in
(40:27):
these cases. And I think there's also there are questions,
of course, about Caitlyn's mental health, and she frankly seems
quite pathetic, like she really is, like this all seems
so desperate, and it's sad. I mean, she was arrested,
and she was she was twenty four years old when
she was arrested, and you know, and a registered social
(40:50):
worker and obviously has major mental health challenges. Responsible for
her actions, but has major mental health challenges. And so
I think there was some hope that maybe this could
be dealt with outside of the criminal justice symte. But
the problem is Caitlyn just wouldn't stop. So what do
(41:12):
you do with her?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
And I also want to reiterate how how the affected people,
because we've kind of touched on a few of the stories.
But there was one dueler in there that Kitelin apparently
died and she went and got a tattoo and can
you tell us about the emotional told just how much
(41:33):
they suffected these women.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, it had a huge impact on these women, and
I think it had both personal and professional repercussions. Like
I think, on a personal level, it's really hard to
overstate how devastating it is to have your sense of
reality destroyed, like to have attempted to help someone, to
(41:55):
have given them everything you know, your time, your energy,
all of your compassion over a period of days or longer,
and then find out that not only does this situation
not really exist, but this person that they have forced
you to care about doesn't really exist. I think there's
something there that really shakes What I think people don't
(42:19):
understand is a fairly fragile social trust, the idea that
we can leave people when they when they tell us,
and particularly when they tell us they need help. It's
really devastating. I think there's also I think that a
lot of the Dulas have struggled with Caitlin's treatment of
them as some sort of means to an emotional end.
(42:40):
You know that there were sort of no, we're functionally
dehumanized by her, you know, treated like tools for her
own gratification. That's really really hard for a lot of
these dulas who really pride themselves in their work and
their selflessness and their commitment to women who need them.
And I think it's it's a bit hard for them
(43:01):
to get back on track with that.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Did it follow some of them to live the profession?
Speaker 1 (43:08):
I don't know if anyone has left permanently who wasn't
already considering leaving, Like Katie, who was involved with Amy
in that first story we discussed, shed already had kind
of one foot at the door. She works as a photographer.
You know, I think Caitlyn was probably a final push.
(43:28):
I know a lot of doulas have changed the way
they practice. Doulas have reported to me like a sense
of panic with patients or with clients who have reported
similar narratives to Caitlin's, where they just kind of shut
down and.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Breaking because people who have actually been through that need
someone trust them one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
That's right. Yeah, And now that trust is shattered, and yeah,
it's created this kind of suspicion and self doubt that's
not for anyone.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
After the break, we find out what the courts made
of this case and if any just has been brought
to the victims. So let's get to the court proceedings.
She's arrested early twenty twenty three on multiple charges, as
you mentioned, by early twenty twenty four, and she's been
in prison all this time, so about ten ish months
(44:23):
she's facing sentencing. She's pled guilty. We've talked a little
bit about mental health, but was it properly examined during
that process? What was said about potentially factitious disorder which
you mentioned at the top. What are we dealing with here?
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Well, I mean, what are we dealing with here? I
mean that's hard to say. You know, Caitlin has a
litany of diagnoses, and you know, when the crime attorney
at the prosecutor was reading some of the facts to
the record, I think he said that Kaitlin had like
one hundred and sixty one hundred and eighty court visits
(45:03):
over a very short period of time. You know, she
just kept going going back to the hospital and for
things like you know, I mean, for a tempting suicide,
but also things like swallowing batteries and you know, just
a whole litany of things she was looking for attention
for and that she was struggling with. So it's really
(45:24):
really hard to nail down exactly what you're looking at
in terms of somebody's physical and psychological health when their
whole thing is lying about that, you know. I mean,
she had a court order assessment which rejected a diagnosis
of factitious disorder, which didn't make a ton of sense
to me and doesn't make a ton of sense to
(45:45):
experts that I've spoken to, but they haven't examined her,
nor have I. And factitious disorders you know, when women
fabricate illnesses and crises for attention, which seems to very
much fit what Haitlan does. They said she had orderline
personality disorder. She's also been diagnosed with depressive disorders, anxiety disorders.
I mean, is that actually The thing about Caitlin's discussion,
(46:10):
the discussion of Caitlyn's health in court is it's incredibly sad.
But it's incredibly sad in two ways. One, you look
at this unbelievable volume of paperwork all of the diagnoses
for this. You know, at the time she was I
think when we were discussing this, incredibly she was twenty six,
and that is incredibly sad. But it's additionally sad that
(46:34):
so much of this is likely fabricated. She's a completely
unreliable source. She gets off on being ill. So how
on earth do you actually adjudicate any of this? Where
do you land in terms of an assessment of how
healthy she is, or what her diagnoses are, or what
she needs?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
What was she like? What was Kitelin lock? In the courtroom?
Speaker 1 (46:57):
She was appeared to be very remorseful. I just remember
she was wearing this very thick burgundy sweater roll next sweater.
Made almost no eye contact with the gallery or with
anyone really, in particular, when the duelas were reading their
victim impact statements, a number of them cried, a number
of them were angry. She just looked down at the
(47:17):
ground and she just gradually because it took almost two
hours for all of the duelas to read their victim
impact statements into the record, and as she looked at
the ground, her head just slumped deeper and deeper and
deeper until I could just barely make it like the
ponytail on the top of her head. And she read
a statement where she said that you know, she had
(47:39):
learned and she was very remorseful and she didn't want
to do this again, and she understands that she hurt people.
And you know, she said, for the things that I
might say in that situation if one was remorseful.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
What was the sentence? What did she end up getting?
Speaker 1 (47:55):
The prosecutor this defense attorney agreed on a joint submission,
so they basically had come to a consensus position before
presenting it to the judge. It's very unorthodox in those
circumstances here, according to judicial precedent, for a judge to
reject that, you know, if the Crown and defence have agreed,
unless there's some reason in law that he can't accept it,
(48:19):
he functionally rubber stamps it. In this case, the judge.
So we actually, you know, I remember going in there
with a producer and we knew that there was a
joint submission, and you know, we went in for you know,
I think court started around nine thirty or ten, and
we were like, this is great, we'll be out in
like even with the other cases they had that morning,
they would probably try to get through before Caitlin's We
(48:39):
were like, we're going to be out in an hour
or two. We'll go to the tie place down the street,
Like no problem. We were still in court like six
hours later because the judge looked at what was being presented,
which was the suggestion that she would be in she
would receive a conditional sentence, which is like house arrest basically,
(49:00):
so she would be back at home with her mother,
And the judge said, this woman is an incredibly high
risk to reoffend, Like I have all the reports here
that say she's going to do this again. You know,
we're proposing therapy for her, or at least the Crown
and Defense we're proposing therapy for her, but it's like
really specific, specialized, expensive therapy, Like can she get this
(49:24):
in her small town? Like who who offers this therapy?
Is she on the wait list? You know? So it
became like a whole question of it was it was
sort of an interesting debate that had not transpired to
that point about what the real the real threat of
releasing Caitlin, how likely she was to reoffend, whether you know,
(49:47):
there needed to be a more serious consideration of the
public safety issues in this case. And then also what
do you do with her? Like what kind of therapy
does she need? Will she benefit from that therapy? Like
can't she get that therapy? Is you know, we have
a public system here her she doesn't come from a
super affluent family. Will she be on a weight lift
for a year, and what happens until then? And will
(50:09):
the therapy even work? And these are sort of questions
that hadn't really been considered. And so we sat there
as this like fascinating debate ensued about what exactly to
do with this woman, and the sentencing hearing was a
during that day with no resolution, and we ended up
back a month later to hear the decision.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
The judge ultimately agreed with the sentence because he had
no other tribe. The hands were kind of tied. There
was no other choice. But everything he says is so valid. Yeah,
that's right, because she did reoffend, didn't she She was
let out on house arrest, she was, and she did
it again.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
She was let out on has arrest in welsh on
February fourteenth, and by the end of April she was
back in jail.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah, and how many victims did she have in that time?
Do we know that we know of two. So as
of now we're recording this April twenty twenty five, is
she still in prison.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
She is, so she has now been sentenced on those
new charges. So and this time, you know, it's customary
in Canada that typically are a believer eligible for parole
at just serving a third of your sentence, you're eligible
for early release. I don't think that will happen in
this case, because she's already proven that she'll breach the
terms of per release, as she did with her conditional
(51:28):
sentence when she reoffended when she was on has arrest.
So Caitlin will be sitting in jail, in prison for
almost three years. You know, she'll be released at the
end of twenty twenty seven or early twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
But we've got no kind of guarantee that that's going
to actually do anything. She could just sit in prison
for three years and get out and do this again,
or potentially you know, go to a different column that
doesn't involve Duela's. Yeah, like how do you rehabilitate someone
like this?
Speaker 1 (51:59):
That's one of the core questions here, Like how do
you rehabilitate someone. How do you make someone well who
desperately wants to be sick. It's an incredibly challenging thing.
And you know, I have no doubt she's not getting
particularly sophisticated mental health care in prison, but you know,
(52:21):
she also presents a quandary to treatment. So I mean,
I think I'll be very curious to see what Caitlin
does when she's released. And I would actually be very
curious to know what she's up to in prison, because
she's got to be doing something to meet those emotional needs,
and I would love to know what it is.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
How common is something like this, because it feels like
such a unusual crime to be talking about. Is it
more common than we think? I mean, we do have
something called factitious disorder, which means there are multiple people
that fall into that category. Is it more common?
Speaker 1 (52:58):
It's in the DSM. It's a thing, you know, it's
I mean doctor Mark Feldman, who interviewed the podcasts and
who I've spoken to from multiple stories and have been
contact with for about a decade. You know, he's one
of the world's foremost experts on tacticious disorders, and he
likes to say that it's not common, but it's less
rare than we think, And I think that's really a
good way to look at it. And what's interesting is,
(53:20):
like I hear all the time about people who are
either suspected or or who have been busted for like
faking a little cancer, you know, like it's not nearly
the scale of what Caitlyn did. Caitlyn is absolutely an outlier.
Like her behavior is very unusual, and the fact that
she was that prolific at such an early age very
(53:42):
very unusual. Have never heard another case quite like that.
But you know, I think a lot of us we
don't do this, but we do. What we do understand
is the power of illness and desperation and crisis in
forcing reactions and other people. You know, it's a way
to where it buys us out of responsibility, it buys
(54:04):
us goodwill, and you know, in times when you genuinely
need that, that's very important. But when you fake it
and weaponize it, then it's a really harmful manipulation.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
What are you hoping that people get from hearing this
story in detail, particularly in helping people understand how I'm
going to use quotations, but nonviolent crimes like this, this
emotional kind of manipulation have an effect on victims.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
Yeah, I mean, I hope when people listen to this
they hear the complications in the story. Like I think,
on its face, of course, it's like a super salacious,
outrageous story. It is also full of questions about the
nature of harm and how we judicate things in the
criminal justice system, and what it needs to be responsible
for your actions, and the context of mental illness. I
(54:59):
think it's very interesting these relationships where somebody like Caitlin
manipulates somebody but also make makes them feel amazing about
how they're able to provide these things to someone in need.
And I think that's a really complicated relationship. And I
think it's something, you know, one of our interviewees described
(55:20):
it as betrayal trauma, where you know, you think you're
helping someone and then you find out it was actually
in service to a lie. You know, it's a that's
a really complicated relationship, and I think a much more
intimate form of harm.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Do you think that our courts, I'm saying our in
different countries, but all courts need to.
Speaker 1 (55:42):
Do more.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
I mean here in Australia, for instance, we've recently had
coercive control being brought into our legislation and things like
that that are those more emotional kind of manipulations. Do
we need to be thinking more in this space and
our justice systems?
Speaker 1 (55:59):
I mean, I don't really know whether more in these
cases should be adjudicated in the criminal justice system. But
then I don't know what our alternative is someone like
Caitlin who walks up. You know, I think there are
absolutely people who require resources and patients and assistance to
overcome really, really terrible behavior. And what do we do
(56:21):
with somebody who's not genuinely sorry and will not commit
to ceasing harm. I don't know how we deal with
that outside of the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
Thanks to Sarah for helping us to tell this story.
True Crime Conversations is a podcast hosted and produced by me,
Jimma baff and Tarlie Blackman, with audio design by Jacob Brown.
Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week
with another True Crime Conversation.
True crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Just a warning. This story and this opening scene features
descriptions of pregnancy, loss, and steelberth. If that's triggering for you,
perhaps give this episode a miss. It's November twenty twenty
two in Toronto, Canada, and Amy Perry is on the
phone coaching a woman in labor. She's helping her breathe
through her contractions. She's giving her words of encouragement. She's
(00:36):
talking her through the various positions she can get her
body in to help her manage her pain. As a dueler,
for many years now, Amy has dealt with all sorts
of women from all walks of life, welcoming babies into
the world in all manner of ways. But tonight's client
has a particularly heartbreaking story. Caitlin Brawn is twenty four
(00:58):
and her pregnancy is the result of an assault. She
only recently found out that her baby, a girl, died
in utero at about thirty two weeks gestation. So Amy
is giving her all to Caitlin, being her emotional anchor
through forty hours of labor, barely sleeping or eating, and
(01:19):
she does her best to support the emotional young woman.
As labor intensifies, Amy encourages Caitlin to get into an
uber and get to the hospital. This baby is coming soon.
Caitlyn gives birth to a beautiful, sleeping baby girl called Eden.
Over the phone. The new mum describes holding her, having
(01:41):
skinned to skin with her, meeting her a beautiful but
heartbreaking experience. But Caitlin was never pregnant. She didn't give birth,
and she never went to hospital. She was lying to
Amy the entire time, through days and hours upon hours
of phone calls. And this isn't the first time she's
(02:04):
done this. I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations,
a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
to the people who know the most about them. Caitlyn
Brawn is a repeat offender. As recently as January twenty
(02:25):
twenty five, she pled guilty to fresh charges in court
at the age of twenty six. She has dozens of victims.
She's a serial con woman, and to stick well, she
pretends she's pregnant and in the need of emergency support.
Even with time behind bars and apologies and promises in
(02:47):
court Caitlyn has repeated her crime over and over again.
Sarah Trelevan is a journalist and immersed herself in Caitlyn's
bizarre crimes for more than a year and a half,
trying to make sense of them. This year, she released
a podcast, The con Caitlyn's Baby, which tells those stories.
Sarah joins us, Now, Sarah, can you tell us a
(03:10):
little bit about your background and how you found yourself
investigating the story?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Sure, I mean, this story came my way and it
was sort of both immediately shocking and completely up my
alley and I just saw a headline and I'm paraphrasing,
but it was something along the line of like women
fakes multiple pregnancies, lies to doulas, something like that. It
(03:36):
was just sort of a very small kernel of what
this story is. And my hands, as soon as I
saw that, were like shaking as I went to go
do some more research on what actually had happened, because
I immediately knew that there was like this whole world
there associated with this woman to explore. And part of
(03:56):
how I knew that is that for many years, really
almost a decade, I've had a real fascination I would
say broadly in women who live double lives, but particularly
women who have factitious disorder or related disorders, women who
feign illnesses or crises for emotional gratifications. So not the
go fundme scammers we're all you seeing, but people who
(04:17):
do it to meet an emotional need. It's such an
interesting thing to me, and such an outsize, maladaptive activity,
and so I found it absolutely fascinating, and I immediately
gravitated towards Kitlin's story and wanted to know much as possible.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
What do we know about Kaitlin Braun and her background
and her childhood. Can you set the scene a bit.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
You know, there are parts of Caitlyn's life that we
haven't been able to access yet, but we do know
quite a bit about her through friends, through family members,
through just how public this case became, not just Canada
but globally. And so we know that Caitlyn grew up
in a relatively rural community outside of Toronto. She was
(05:05):
I'm not very happy kid, you know. I mean, when
we start to look at her life trajectory, I don't
think there's any one particular causal reason that she ended
up doing what she did, but from a very early age.
Friends and family members report her having a pretty serious
anxiety her parents' divorce. When she was young, she had
separation anxiety. She reported feeling rejected by her father. You know,
(05:28):
one of the anecdotes that I've heard that has stayed
with me is that when Caitlyn's mother would go to work,
this was after her parents' divorce. Kitlyn's mother would go
to work and Caitlyn, who was quite young at the time,
would repeatedly call her and ask for reassurances that she
was coming home. And so I think you see from
a fairly early age this very profound sense of difference
(05:52):
and alienation and kind of a bottomless pit of need.
You know, she wanted friends to be super affectionate with her.
She wanted physical touch, but she also wanted emotional intimacy.
Time this graduates to fabrications in order to get what
she wants. The compassion she needs, the attention she needs,
(06:14):
the intimacy she needs. But at the same time, Caitlyn
is seemingly a somewhat productive member of society. You know,
she graduates from high school, she graduates from university, she
becomes a social worker. She is working with vulnerable populations,
of people. And it's really interesting to go back and
(06:34):
look at caitlyn social media now, because you know the
media surrounding this case, and also you know just images
that people have grabbed and posts on social media, and
a lot of those images Caitlyn has like what I
would call like crazy eyes, where like you're looking at
this picture of her, yeah, and you're like, well, how
would you not know that this perfect person, you know,
(06:57):
was not a safe person. But you go back and
you look at the breadth of her, her presence online,
how she comported herself who she presented as, and you know,
she was a very young woman in her early twenties,
sort of making her way in the world. She appeared
to be altruistic, she appeared to be a devout Christian.
She had this sort of cover for this double life
(07:18):
that she was living, and it was very convincing.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I need to ask straight up because it was a
question that sat in the back of my head the
entire time I kind of was listening to your podcast
and researching this story. Do we know if Kaitlin has
ever been pregnant?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
We do not know that. As a matter of fact, No,
we don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
That, which is a fascinating question when we stop getting
into it.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I understand from friends of Caitlin's that she did not
have romantic entanglements. Now that doesn't mean she couldn't have
been pregnant, but we do know, for example, she didn't
have romantic entanglements that would have, for example, led to
a pregnancy. Now, people can get pregight in other ways
by choice and not. But I think that that was
(08:05):
sort of one one of the key questions that was
asked very early on when people found out that she
was faking pregnancies, right, Like, maybe she did at some
point legitimately lose a pregnancy and this was part of
how she was coping with it, Like, this was how
the trauma was being expressed. But we don't have any
information about that, and we have no indication that that
(08:27):
is in fact something that.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Happened before she does get into the faking pregnancies world.
I'm going to call it, was she lying about other things,
like as a teenager, as a young adult before she
kind of found this particular area.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Yeah, I mean, the thing about it, a lot of
Caitlin's lies that we know about are nested, So it's
lie nested in a lie nested in another lie, and
you actually see that start to happen pretty early in
her life, like really by her kind of mid to
late teens. You know, a number of friends have told
(09:06):
me that she lied to them that sexually assaulted. Now,
it's really hard to obviously make that assertion period, It's
really hard to say that about anyone, let alone a
good friend. But some of these friends, it got to
the point where she was literally coming to them on
a weekly basis saying she had been sexually assaulted and
by different people in different context to the point where
(09:29):
it did strain curdualy. It just didn't make sense. And
all of these friends I spoke to who reported this
said they tried to believe her, and they wanted to
believe her, and then they got to this unbelievably challenging
position in the friendship where they were like, this is
not plausible, and I don't know what to do with that,
(09:50):
because you're coming to me and you're telling me you
need help for something that is indisputably awful, and I
feel like there's something else going on here. And that's
where it started to tip, and people started to feel
like they're being taken advantage of. But I will say
the allegations of have been reported to US as false allegations,
and Caitlyn has been charged with making false allegations. Those
(10:14):
often were accompanied by lies about being pregnant, and that
started years ago. That did not start with her outreach
to doulas. It started long before. I think she tested
a lot of waters with family members she's now a
strange from, with friends she's now a strange from. But
we do know that those sort of core lies that
she perpetuated with the doulas, lying about being sexually assaulted
(10:36):
and then lying about being pregnant as a result of
that assault, that has been going on for some time,
despite the fact that she's still a very young woman.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
She did start to kind of focusing on duelas as
I guess her victim in this scenario. How would you
describe the kind of contry created there, because it's pretty
similar from victim to victim, but it changes slightly.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, I mean, I'll say stuff taught that Caitlin was
really bit this. I mean, she was really good at
picking a victim and then super capably manipulating them. So
what she would do is reach out to a doula.
We don't know this as a matter of fact, but
the dulas I spoke to have told me that they
(11:27):
got the sense that she kind of investigated them before
she did outreach because sort of magically, you know, dulas
that were queer Caitlin presented as queer doulas who were
Christian Kitla presented as Christian. One doula had a sister
who had fallen into a coma. At the end of
(11:47):
Caitlin's sort of very long protracted con with this doula
where everything went wrong medically, she lapsed into a coma,
And so a lot of these duos felt like this
was an extra layer of manipulation. She would actually find
their individual sort of pressure point and push them to
(12:08):
maximize her ability to create intimacy, almost like an affinity scam. Yeah.
The other thing she did is she just had an
incredibly tragic story that was that all of these dulas
who work with women who have have have been sexually assaulted,
who have experienced stillbirth, who have been mistreated in the
(12:28):
medical health system, Caitlyn used all those things and weaponized
them against these duelas because these dulas were primed to
be on there on her side, because they've seen all
these things before, they knew these things happen. They couldn't
believe that all these things were happening to one person.
But almost immediately, you know, Caitlyn said, I'm experiencing all
(12:49):
these horrific things. I've been sexually assaulted. I'm now pregnant,
the baby is stillborn. My family has rejected me because
either because I wanted to keep the baby, or sometimes
it was because she was queer. I don't want to
go to the hospital because you know, I've been mistreated
at the hospital. The dulas, you know, we're told that
they were the only person that could help her, which
(13:10):
is an enormous responsibility to take on. But all of
these doulas have signed up to take care of people,
even in incredibly rough circumstances. So that additional layer of manipulation,
I think made it very hard for these doulas to
set any boundaries to question her narrative. You know, it's
(13:32):
really easy to listen now and say, well, who would
believe this? But these dulas were you know, Caitlin was
calling them, you know, at three o'clock in the morning,
and then four o'clock in the morning, and then five
point thirty. I mean they were sleep deprived, some of
them were barely eating. You know, when Caitlyn there was
a case involving Caitlyn not too long ago, and part
of the evidence was that she had sent a doula
(13:54):
six hundred text messages in two days. Wow, that is
enormous volume of communication to keep up with, and you
barely have time to think when someone is bombard earning
you with their needs like that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You also don't automatically go to someone he's lying. If
someone is asking for help and telling you all these
horrible things, you're not immediately going to be like, well,
if better investigate them before I help them.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think it's just that's not what
doulas do, right, if you have to build trust almost
immediately in order to do the kind of intimate work
that doulists do, you know. And I think they're also
they deal with women who are not believed in a
lot of different contexts, including you know, in the context
of medicalized pregnancies, in the context of you know, sexual assault. Again,
(14:42):
these things that Caitlin really tend to And so a
doula is someone who's going to be on your side,
and it is not that person's role to doubt what
you're telling them to sort of, you know, to use,
you know, their critical analytical skills to like think back
on whether the timing of your you know, story really
makes sense. That that's not what they're there to do.
(15:04):
They're there to provide support you when you tell them,
they that you need it, and they're there to believe you.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
For those that aren't familiar with the birth world, can
you explain, because adula is very different to a midwife
in terms of the services that they offer.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yes, So this is also where people get confused because
they're kind of like, didn't they notice that, like caitlin
cervix wasn't dilated. That's not what a doula does, you know,
it's not They're not medical professionals, and so they're there
less to help you give birth, like the actual physical
act of giving birth, and more to provide you with
(15:44):
emotional and educational support, and they're very focused on the mother,
Like what does that person need at any given moment,
Like the person who's going to give birth, what did
they need? What kind of reassurance do they need? What
do they need for physical relief? What do they need
for emotional relief. They what information do they need right now?
And you know it can start long for labor and
(16:07):
you know, go beyond the burthen of the baby. You know,
it's very different than a midwife who's like measuring your
belly and checking, you know, and and doing physical checks
and obviously quite different a doctor. So you know, again
it's it's not a trust but verified position. There's there's
not really a verification role involved in being a doula.
(16:28):
It's about trusting the person who's come to you and
said they need help.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I also think something to consider with the role of
a dueler is because they are helping women in you know,
the most vulnerable often the most vulnerable time of their life.
They share a lot of vulnerabilities themselves to kind of
get that trust so they might open up about their
own lives. Like it's a very emotional job. You are
trying to create a very special emotional connection to get
(16:55):
that woman through, which adds a whole other kind of
layer to this.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, I mean, and it's also it's a lot of
time like that you spend with somebody, you know, think
about like some times women are labor for days and
it's literally like you know, a doula. It's like I
you know, we were chatting earlier, I mentioned you know,
this is when Dula I met has a deal in
her contract where she gets to take a break after
twenty four hours. I mean that's twenty four hours of
(17:21):
being with this woman or this person who's in labor
and helping them by like offering them massage or like,
you know, doing things to help induce labor, or like
talking them through things or explaining what's about to happen.
But there's also time between you know, contractions, when things
speed up, when things slow down, where it's just the
two of you sitting on the couch together, or like
(17:44):
take a nap on the bed, you know. I mean,
it's that's the other intimacy of this. It's just and
especially in the context of somebody who's unaccompanied, like Caitlin,
who doesn't have like a partner there for example. Yeah,
it's a very fast bond that I think is established
in that set of circumstances. And yeah, these these dulas
(18:05):
absolutely be came vulnerable with Caitlin in part because Caitlin
was sharing so much and so much heavy, heavy, heavy
trauma that yeah, I mean, I think it's human nature
to want to reciprocate on some level.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me Jemma Bath.
I'm speaking with Sarah trelevan journalist and host of the
podcast The con Caitlin's Baby. Next, we dive into the
stories of Amy and Katie, two duelers who believe Caitlin
had given birth to a stillborn baby, but that was
only the start of the dramatic lies she told them.
(18:46):
I want to tell some of these women's stories just
to give listeners an idea of how deep this con
went and this emotional attachment went. I want to start
with Amy's story, which I kind of told the start
of at the start of this episode. I cut it
right after she gave birth to a stillborn baby called Eden,
(19:07):
whose pregnancy she said was the result of an assault.
But the birth was actually only the start, really of
what she put Amy and her fellow kind of duel
if Katie through. They were kind of tagged teeming through
this situation, weren't they? Can you kind of pick us
up at there were that point because they were providing
her support over the phone. They've already provided days of
(19:29):
support to get her to birth and then it just
keeps going.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yes, so Amy and Katie are they're duelers who are friendly.
They're working together partly because Katie had other job obligations,
and neither of them knowing how traumatic Caitlin's situation was,
how vulnerable she was, wanted her to be alone at
any point, so they really sort of bent over backwards
to accommodate at Caitlin. Caitlyn gives birth to Eden. It
(19:56):
is She describes it as a really beautiful moment that
she finally gets to meet her baby, and you know
it sort of I think Amy describes it as, you know,
as nice as a stillbirth can be, you know, where
she sees her baby, she gets to hold her baby,
and then she has to let her go. This sort
(20:18):
of feels to Katie and Amy, who are who working
to Caitlyn only over the phone because this is in
the thick of COVID and they're not able to get
into the hospital. This feels to them like kind of
the end of a really sad story. But not long
after Caitlyn gives birth, she sort of starts making noises.
(20:42):
It sounds like she's in this comfort and Amy's on
the phone with her, and she says, what's what's happening?
Like described him is going on? So she has to
deliver the placenta, and she's describing the discomfort, which you know,
Amy sort of says is normal, you know, just kind
of let your body do what it needs to do.
But then once she delivers the placenta, there's more bleeding,
and the bleeding won't stop. And then Caitlyn starts to
(21:05):
get very worried because that doctors appear very worried, and
she's telling Amy this over the phone, and so the
doctors do some exploration and eventually what they tell her
is that she has to have a hysterectomy. Now, Caitlin
at this point is, I believe a twenty three year
old woman who has just given birth to a stillborn
(21:26):
baby that was a product of a sexual assault, who
was and it was very much a wanted baby, who
is now being told that she will never have her
own children. And so Amy and then of course Katie
as well, they are absolutely devastated for Caitlin, like they
cannot believe this is happening, and so they all sort
of grieve together and talk it through and you know,
(21:48):
try to provide what emotional support they can for her.
But then the problem is the bleeding still isn't stopping,
even after the emergency has directed me. So the doctors
do more exploration and they find that she actually has
stage four pelvic cancer and her prognosis is extremely dim.
Kitlyn decides she doesn't really want to go through after
(22:12):
everything she's been through, super invasive treatment that's that she's
been told that she's reporting to Amy and Katie is
unlikely to work, so she's just going to go with
hospice care.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
So now she's dying.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So now Caitlyn is dying and looking at palliative care options,
and she's reading from brochures for hospice care places where
she can go into palliative care until the end of
her life, which appears to be soon, And she's reading
from what she says are brochures that the hospital has
given to her so she can look into where she
wants to go. And it's very detailed, like Amy helped
(22:48):
Caitlyn write a will and think about you know, who
should Amy and Katie tell when Caitlyn dies, because Kaitlyn
has very little contact with her family, and like, what
can they do? For her to facilitate, you know, to
facilitate any remaining relationship there, like and who should should
they announce her death on social media? Does Caitlyn want
them to talk to her friends? I mean, all these
(23:09):
things that might come up if you thought someone was
dying and did not have anyone else in the world.
So it's all incredibly sad. And at this point, Amy
and Katie have been kept mostly awake for like a week,
you know that Caitlin is calling them at all times
of the day. So at this point, Caitlyn tells Amy
(23:31):
and Katie that she's being transferred to another hospital, a
hospital that is going to evaluate her cancer and give
her like an updated prognosis. So Amy and Katy hear
her being loaded into an ambulance. In the ambulance, she
starts to describe feeling uncomfortable, and it's not entirely clear
(23:52):
what's going on to Amy, who's on the phone with
her at that time. And basically what Caitlyn goes on
to describe is a doctor coming into the ambulance and
raping her while Katie is on the phone. And at
some point Caitlyn hangs up and Amy is obviously completely
(24:13):
beside herself and she and Katie trying to figure out
what they're supposed to do. Caitlyn calls back, she is,
you know, has already been in touch with the police,
and it's going to be reported. It's all, you know,
it's just a mess basically. So and then Caitlyn reports
(24:34):
that these doctors are are that this doctor and I
think there was another doctor implicated, and like there's going
to be an arrest made, and you're talking about and
oh and Caitlyn gave Amy and Katie the names of
doctors that she'd implicated in her sexual assault and when
when Amy and Katy googled them, they had privileges at
the hospital that Caitlyn said she was at. So the
(24:55):
story sort of checks out.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
So it's all backed up.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
It's yeah, yeah, And so anyways, after this happens and
after these arrests are supposedly made, Amy's girlfriend at the
time says, you know, I am going to reach out
to a journalist I know, and just see if she's
heard anything about this, because it would be pretty big
news if like a doctor at one of you know,
(25:20):
at one of the large hospitals was arrested for raping
a patient in the man ambulance, like that is definitely
something that would be newsworthy.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
A dying woman who's just given birth, Like it doesn't
get more headline worthy exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So she does some poking around and she can't find anything.
She can't find anything, She can't find any signs of
the story. So she finally says to Amy, don't you
think it's a little strange that all of these things
have happened to the same person or the last ten days?
And Amy says, at that point something kind of clicked
(25:57):
for her. It was like, yes, it is actually now
that you mention it through my fog of sleep deprivation
and my desperate efforts too to help this failing woman, Like, yeah,
it is a bit odd that all of these things
have happened to the same person. And that's when Amy
remembers something, which is at some point when Caitlin is
(26:20):
in this hospital bed getting you know which string of
bad news I can't remember, Amy heard a dog bark,
which is not something one normally hears when they're dying
in a hospital room. So so once once that clicked
(26:41):
in her brain, she and Katie went down this rabbit
hole where they just basically were like looking into all
the communications that Caitlyn had sent them. You know, they
were reverse image searching the pictures of the tumors that
come or the big blood clots that had come out
of her body and finding them on Wikipedia. And then
(27:01):
finally I think it was Katie who called the hospital
and said, do you have a patient by the name
of Caitlin Brawn And they said no. So at that
point they knew, they knew, but they also didn't know
right because you then know that this is not true,
which he's been telling you is not true, But there's
still the much bigger mystery of why would someone do
(27:23):
this too? And why would someone do this to you?
For ten days it didn't make any sense. So then
they had a whole new odyssey basically to go on.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Did they confront her, did they talk to her about it,
or did they just kind of disappear.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
I think they just sort of disappeared, And I think,
you know, I don't. I think there are a couple
dulas who confronted Caitlin. But what's interesting is they were
either doulas who were not directly involved with her, or
i'd say had like less traumatic experiences and I think
(27:58):
the instinct of most of the Dulas who felt very
wounded by you know, Caitlyn's deep minute, by basically having
their sense of reality destroyed by her, their first instinct
was just to get as far away from her as possible.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
In Amy and Kitie's story, the pot that baffled me,
a lot of it baffled me. But she was able
to fight a lot of kind of sounds, Like she
got on a helicopter at one point, she was in cars,
she was beeping in hospitals. How did she pull that off?
Do we know?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
No, we don't know. We don't know. I mean people
report her getting into an uber and like hearing her
getting into an uber and talking to the driver, and
they can hear the car is going, you know. So
I wonder if it was a combination of like sound
effects off her computer and a combination of actually doing
some of these things. Like, I mean, she really got
(28:57):
off on pretending to be pregnant, So maybe she also
really got off on pretending to get on really getting
into an uber and going to a hospital to give birth.
You know, maybe she was walking around a hospital and
that's why they heard some of these background noises like
people being paiged or things like you know, buzzing or dinging.
So we don't know, We don't really have an answer
(29:17):
for that. And so far as I know, there's no like,
you know, pregnancy Baker sound effects set you can file
off down to the app store. But many people I
spoke to have told me that they did hear these
things going on in the background, So she was you know,
I think it just sort of speaks to how deeply
committed she was to fooling people.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Just how many victims are we talking about? How many
Dulas have been Kitelin's victim?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
We don't know, and I suspect, as with many of
these sort of crimes that involved intimacy, is probably more
than we know of. What we do know is that
at one point there was a group chat of doulas
who had all had experiences being lied to by Caitlin,
and the last I checked in, there were over fifty
(30:08):
Dulas in that group.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
And we've just heard one of those stories, like one
of like fifty times.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, I mean, they varied, they weren't all you know.
I mean, what's also interesting about Caitlyn is it wasn't
all done virtually or on the phone, like some of
these duelas met her, and you know, sometimes when they
met her, she was giving birth to a live baby.
She was still pregnant as the result of a sexual assault,
she was still struggling with family relationships, but she was
(30:37):
giving birth to a live baby. But she told them.
And so you know, we've seen pictures of Kitlin in labor,
tended over but taken by doulas, and she really appears
to be exhausted and sweaty and going through the motions
of labor.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Well, let's paint that picture a little bit through Kate,
because Kate was a duela that saw her in person
at a house or her house might not have been
her house, who knows.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
She did see some red flags kind of from the beginning.
Didn't she beang in person with her?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
You know, there was something Kate's really interesting because I'm
not sure that there was anything in particular that Caitlyn
did or said, but Kate had a gut feeling that
this something was off about this situation. And you know,
she's going over to Caitlyn's house or you know, I'm
(31:38):
unclear whether it's her house or it was an airbnb
she rented but she's going over to a house where
Kaitlyn says she's going to give birth, and one of
the thoughts that flashes into Kitlyn, that flashes into Kate's
mind is I'm going to be kidnapped. And it may
have been the fact that Caitlyn texted to her some
(31:58):
variation of I hope you don't mind naked or topless
when you get here, And there was something about that
that's seemed to imply a lot of boundaries that judgment.
I don't know exactly how she unpacked it in her,
but there was something about that where Kate just thought,
there's something off here and this this is a bit dangerous,
(32:22):
but she couldn't articulate it. And then, of course, when
she gets there, and Caitlyn is a woman in her
young in her early twenties who desperately needs assistance and
lonely and is in discomfort and has a really sad story,
then Douela Kate, you know, takes over and she tries
to take care of Kitlin the best of her ability.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Can you tell us about the most sexual side of
Kate's experience, because she did that uncomfortableness you mentioned evolved
into some other kind of areas it did.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, and a number of the doulas mentioned that they
felt they feel that there was some form of sexual
gratification wrapped up in Caitlyn's emotivations. Kitlyn really wanted to
talk in graphic detail about her experience of being sexually assaulted,
(33:17):
doula's reported, you know, she really wanted them and encouraged
them very physical aspects of their work, you know, for example,
like massage, and then Caitlyn wanted to be naked while
she was being massaged, and I made a lot of
duelas really uncomfortable. But they also didn't want to make
Caitlyn uncomfortable because she was in labor and you know,
(33:37):
they're trying to make her as comfortable as possible.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
And it's not unusual for laboring women to want to
be naked as well. That's what I wouldn't have questioned
certain parts of it.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
That's right. Yeah, So all of that's and that's one
of the things that's really interesting too about Kaitlyn, Right,
she skirted. She stayed very close to the lines, where
like it was very easy to rationalize anything she was
telling you, even if you sort of felt like something
wasn't right. But other doulas, including Kate, also note that
(34:09):
they felt that Kitlyn was masturbating at the points when
they engaged with her, and most of the dulas that
I spoke to got that impression that she was masturbating
over the phone, especially when they were talking about more
physical aspects of giving birth, things like nipple stimulation and
things like that. Kate was giving Caitlyn a massage. Caitlyn
(34:32):
was undressed. They Kate lying on the bed or sort
of hunched over the bed, Kate was standing on the side.
She was massaging Caitlyn's shoulders, and then Kate believes that
she saw Caitlyn's hand touching her vulva and that she
was masturbating while this was happening, obviously all without Kate's consent,
(34:55):
and so you know, then very very quickly after that,
Caitlyn sort of discovers that Caitlyn is Kate, Caitlyn is
not who she said she was, and this sort of
alarming incident becomes like much more perilous.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
How did she discover that? Was it a Google search?
Was she so uncomfortable that she kind of excused herself
and did a bit of research When.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
She she believes that Caitlin is masturbating, and she's freaked out,
and she sort of walks into the other room like
excuses herself, and it's like her mind is sort of
spinning because she's like, who is this person and what
is she doing? And like what is this situation? You know,
she's trying to process, and then she kind of like
a jolt remember something, which is that on Facebook she
(35:41):
had read that there was a woman who was faking pregnancy.
And when she kind of remembered that, it was like
several pieces fell into place, because she was like, you know,
there were so many things off of this situation and
it seemed like they were conclusive enough for her to
walk away and leave this, you know, this woman with
this terrible story on her own. But once she remembers that,
she goes on Facebook and she does a search into
(36:02):
a group and she finds the post and the posts
that this woman's name is Katelyn Brown, and so at
that moment, Kate knows that's who's in the other room,
that is who she's dealing with, and she basically gets
over the apartment as quickly as she can, gets into
her car and speeds away.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
The post that Kate found was made by another Duela
who was conned, called Shauna. She was kind of not
the first, but one of the first to really kind
of get the message out there, or try and get
the message out there and spread the word that there
was this person out there doing that. Can you tell
us about the community she ended up creating of all
(36:42):
of these women, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
So there were two duelers that really got the word
out that. You know, I think a lot of them posted,
but I would say the two of them had posts
that really really took on. One was another Amy Amy Silva,
who was one of the first duelers who posted on TikTok,
and the other one was Shanna, And I actually really
(37:05):
loved his story because, you know, Shauna was at the point,
as many of these duelas were, where she didn't feel
like police were listening. They told them, They told the
dulas that there wasn't really anything that they could do
and their only recourse was to warn people about Caitlin.
So they decided that's what they were going to do
to the best of their ability, So they take to
social media. Shawna makes this post about this really horrifying
(37:28):
experience she's had with with Caitlin, and you know, her
feelings about being misled, and it's a very very emotional post.
But that's not why it initially got traction. It initially
got traction because she meant to add the hashtag doulas
of TikTok and accidentally add the hash added the hashtag
dogs of TikTok, which I guess is like a very
(37:52):
a very devoted community of people who like immediately saw
this post and started boosting it. So I guess there's
like a lot of crossover in the dog doulah communities
of people who I love stories like this. Yes, so
her post absolutely exploded, and you know, I think within
a day or two of the duelis really starting to
(38:13):
post on TikTok, they had, you know, thousands and thousands
of views and Caitlin was ultimately arrested.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
A lot of these duelis did try and go to
the police. Why couldn't they do anything? Had they exchanged
money in these services? Does that even do anything in
this instance? Why initially did the police site we can't help.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
I think that our system is accustomed to primarily adjudicating
financial crimes and violent crimes and Caitlyn doesn't really fall
under those two categories. You know. What she does is
almost more akin to kind of like personal betrayal.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
What's manipulation.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
It's emotional, Yeah, it's very emotional, But we don't prosecute
emotional crimes in our court. You know, that's that's you know,
otherwise everyone would take their ex boyfriend at court. You know,
it's just not typically how the system is set up. However,
having said that, I think that this was also a
really fundamentally icky case. Like I think people a lot
(39:21):
of people listen to the details and cringe. A lot
of these cops that they were talking to, like, my
guess is, they thought this all sounded pretty gross and
didn't want to get involved. They thought that this was
kind of like bullshit between women, and you know that also,
I think they really underestimated the harm. You know, I
(39:41):
think they thought, Okay, so this woman lied to about
being pregnant, what's the big deal. Obviously they had the
capacity to charge Caitlin, because they ended up charging her,
and she was charged with multiple counts of harassment, fraud,
and ultimately indecent acts. She was originally charged with sexual assault,
which was downgraded and it's not because she took money.
You know, I've seen all of the court documents. This
(40:05):
case was not adjudicated because Caitlin stole people's time, and
time is money and business. That's not what she was
doing in court. It was because of the manipulation, because
of the fraud. It was because she kept emailing these
women with you know, under false pretenses. You know, there
are tools at the disciple of the justice system, but
I think police can be reluctant to use them in
(40:27):
these cases. And I think there's also there are questions,
of course, about Caitlyn's mental health, and she frankly seems
quite pathetic, like she really is, like this all seems
so desperate, and it's sad. I mean, she was arrested,
and she was she was twenty four years old when
she was arrested, and you know, and a registered social
(40:50):
worker and obviously has major mental health challenges. Responsible for
her actions, but has major mental health challenges. And so
I think there was some hope that maybe this could
be dealt with outside of the criminal justice symte. But
the problem is Caitlyn just wouldn't stop. So what do
(41:12):
you do with her?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
And I also want to reiterate how how the affected people,
because we've kind of touched on a few of the stories.
But there was one dueler in there that Kitelin apparently
died and she went and got a tattoo and can
you tell us about the emotional told just how much
(41:33):
they suffected these women.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, it had a huge impact on these women, and
I think it had both personal and professional repercussions. Like
I think, on a personal level, it's really hard to
overstate how devastating it is to have your sense of
reality destroyed, like to have attempted to help someone, to
(41:55):
have given them everything you know, your time, your energy,
all of your compassion over a period of days or longer,
and then find out that not only does this situation
not really exist, but this person that they have forced
you to care about doesn't really exist. I think there's
something there that really shakes What I think people don't
(42:19):
understand is a fairly fragile social trust, the idea that
we can leave people when they when they tell us,
and particularly when they tell us they need help. It's
really devastating. I think there's also I think that a
lot of the Dulas have struggled with Caitlin's treatment of
them as some sort of means to an emotional end.
(42:40):
You know that there were sort of no, we're functionally
dehumanized by her, you know, treated like tools for her
own gratification. That's really really hard for a lot of
these dulas who really pride themselves in their work and
their selflessness and their commitment to women who need them.
And I think it's it's a bit hard for them
(43:01):
to get back on track with that.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Did it follow some of them to live the profession?
Speaker 1 (43:08):
I don't know if anyone has left permanently who wasn't
already considering leaving, Like Katie, who was involved with Amy
in that first story we discussed, shed already had kind
of one foot at the door. She works as a photographer.
You know, I think Caitlyn was probably a final push.
(43:28):
I know a lot of doulas have changed the way
they practice. Doulas have reported to me like a sense
of panic with patients or with clients who have reported
similar narratives to Caitlin's, where they just kind of shut
down and.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Breaking because people who have actually been through that need
someone trust them one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
That's right. Yeah, And now that trust is shattered, and yeah,
it's created this kind of suspicion and self doubt that's
not for anyone.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
After the break, we find out what the courts made
of this case and if any just has been brought
to the victims. So let's get to the court proceedings.
She's arrested early twenty twenty three on multiple charges, as
you mentioned, by early twenty twenty four, and she's been
in prison all this time, so about ten ish months
(44:23):
she's facing sentencing. She's pled guilty. We've talked a little
bit about mental health, but was it properly examined during
that process? What was said about potentially factitious disorder which
you mentioned at the top. What are we dealing with here?
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Well, I mean, what are we dealing with here? I
mean that's hard to say. You know, Caitlin has a
litany of diagnoses, and you know, when the crime attorney
at the prosecutor was reading some of the facts to
the record, I think he said that Kaitlin had like
one hundred and sixty one hundred and eighty court visits
(45:03):
over a very short period of time. You know, she
just kept going going back to the hospital and for
things like you know, I mean, for a tempting suicide,
but also things like swallowing batteries and you know, just
a whole litany of things she was looking for attention
for and that she was struggling with. So it's really
(45:24):
really hard to nail down exactly what you're looking at
in terms of somebody's physical and psychological health when their
whole thing is lying about that, you know. I mean,
she had a court order assessment which rejected a diagnosis
of factitious disorder, which didn't make a ton of sense
to me and doesn't make a ton of sense to
(45:45):
experts that I've spoken to, but they haven't examined her,
nor have I. And factitious disorders you know, when women
fabricate illnesses and crises for attention, which seems to very
much fit what Haitlan does. They said she had orderline
personality disorder. She's also been diagnosed with depressive disorders, anxiety disorders.
I mean, is that actually The thing about Caitlin's discussion,
(46:10):
the discussion of Caitlyn's health in court is it's incredibly sad.
But it's incredibly sad in two ways. One, you look
at this unbelievable volume of paperwork all of the diagnoses
for this. You know, at the time she was I
think when we were discussing this, incredibly she was twenty six,
and that is incredibly sad. But it's additionally sad that
(46:34):
so much of this is likely fabricated. She's a completely
unreliable source. She gets off on being ill. So how
on earth do you actually adjudicate any of this? Where
do you land in terms of an assessment of how
healthy she is, or what her diagnoses are, or what
she needs?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
What was she like? What was Kitelin lock? In the courtroom?
Speaker 1 (46:57):
She was appeared to be very remorseful. I just remember
she was wearing this very thick burgundy sweater roll next sweater.
Made almost no eye contact with the gallery or with
anyone really, in particular, when the duelas were reading their
victim impact statements, a number of them cried, a number
of them were angry. She just looked down at the
(47:17):
ground and she just gradually because it took almost two
hours for all of the duelas to read their victim
impact statements into the record, and as she looked at
the ground, her head just slumped deeper and deeper and
deeper until I could just barely make it like the
ponytail on the top of her head. And she read
a statement where she said that you know, she had
(47:39):
learned and she was very remorseful and she didn't want
to do this again, and she understands that she hurt people.
And you know, she said, for the things that I
might say in that situation if one was remorseful.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
What was the sentence? What did she end up getting?
Speaker 1 (47:55):
The prosecutor this defense attorney agreed on a joint submission,
so they basically had come to a consensus position before
presenting it to the judge. It's very unorthodox in those
circumstances here, according to judicial precedent, for a judge to
reject that, you know, if the Crown and defence have agreed,
unless there's some reason in law that he can't accept it,
(48:19):
he functionally rubber stamps it. In this case, the judge.
So we actually, you know, I remember going in there
with a producer and we knew that there was a
joint submission, and you know, we went in for you know,
I think court started around nine thirty or ten, and
we were like, this is great, we'll be out in
like even with the other cases they had that morning,
they would probably try to get through before Caitlin's We
(48:39):
were like, we're going to be out in an hour
or two. We'll go to the tie place down the street,
Like no problem. We were still in court like six
hours later because the judge looked at what was being presented,
which was the suggestion that she would be in she
would receive a conditional sentence, which is like house arrest basically,
(49:00):
so she would be back at home with her mother,
And the judge said, this woman is an incredibly high
risk to reoffend, Like I have all the reports here
that say she's going to do this again. You know,
we're proposing therapy for her, or at least the Crown
and Defense we're proposing therapy for her, but it's like
really specific, specialized, expensive therapy, Like can she get this
(49:24):
in her small town? Like who who offers this therapy?
Is she on the wait list? You know? So it
became like a whole question of it was it was
sort of an interesting debate that had not transpired to
that point about what the real the real threat of
releasing Caitlin, how likely she was to reoffend, whether you know,
(49:47):
there needed to be a more serious consideration of the
public safety issues in this case. And then also what
do you do with her? Like what kind of therapy
does she need? Will she benefit from that therapy? Like
can't she get that therapy? Is you know, we have
a public system here her she doesn't come from a
super affluent family. Will she be on a weight lift
for a year, and what happens until then? And will
(50:09):
the therapy even work? And these are sort of questions
that hadn't really been considered. And so we sat there
as this like fascinating debate ensued about what exactly to
do with this woman, and the sentencing hearing was a
during that day with no resolution, and we ended up
back a month later to hear the decision.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
The judge ultimately agreed with the sentence because he had
no other tribe. The hands were kind of tied. There
was no other choice. But everything he says is so valid. Yeah,
that's right, because she did reoffend, didn't she She was
let out on house arrest, she was, and she did
it again.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
She was let out on has arrest in welsh on
February fourteenth, and by the end of April she was
back in jail.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah, and how many victims did she have in that time?
Do we know that we know of two. So as
of now we're recording this April twenty twenty five, is
she still in prison.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
She is, so she has now been sentenced on those
new charges. So and this time, you know, it's customary
in Canada that typically are a believer eligible for parole
at just serving a third of your sentence, you're eligible
for early release. I don't think that will happen in
this case, because she's already proven that she'll breach the
terms of per release, as she did with her conditional
(51:28):
sentence when she reoffended when she was on has arrest.
So Caitlin will be sitting in jail, in prison for
almost three years. You know, she'll be released at the
end of twenty twenty seven or early twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
But we've got no kind of guarantee that that's going
to actually do anything. She could just sit in prison
for three years and get out and do this again,
or potentially you know, go to a different column that
doesn't involve Duela's. Yeah, like how do you rehabilitate someone
like this?
Speaker 1 (51:59):
That's one of the core questions here, Like how do
you rehabilitate someone. How do you make someone well who
desperately wants to be sick. It's an incredibly challenging thing.
And you know, I have no doubt she's not getting
particularly sophisticated mental health care in prison, but you know,
(52:21):
she also presents a quandary to treatment. So I mean,
I think I'll be very curious to see what Caitlin
does when she's released. And I would actually be very
curious to know what she's up to in prison, because
she's got to be doing something to meet those emotional needs,
and I would love to know what it is.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
How common is something like this, because it feels like
such a unusual crime to be talking about. Is it
more common than we think? I mean, we do have
something called factitious disorder, which means there are multiple people
that fall into that category. Is it more common?
Speaker 1 (52:58):
It's in the DSM. It's a thing, you know, it's
I mean doctor Mark Feldman, who interviewed the podcasts and
who I've spoken to from multiple stories and have been
contact with for about a decade. You know, he's one
of the world's foremost experts on tacticious disorders, and he
likes to say that it's not common, but it's less
rare than we think, And I think that's really a
good way to look at it. And what's interesting is,
(53:20):
like I hear all the time about people who are
either suspected or or who have been busted for like
faking a little cancer, you know, like it's not nearly
the scale of what Caitlyn did. Caitlyn is absolutely an outlier.
Like her behavior is very unusual, and the fact that
she was that prolific at such an early age very
(53:42):
very unusual. Have never heard another case quite like that.
But you know, I think a lot of us we
don't do this, but we do. What we do understand
is the power of illness and desperation and crisis in
forcing reactions and other people. You know, it's a way
to where it buys us out of responsibility, it buys
(54:04):
us goodwill, and you know, in times when you genuinely
need that, that's very important. But when you fake it
and weaponize it, then it's a really harmful manipulation.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
What are you hoping that people get from hearing this
story in detail, particularly in helping people understand how I'm
going to use quotations, but nonviolent crimes like this, this
emotional kind of manipulation have an effect on victims.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
Yeah, I mean, I hope when people listen to this
they hear the complications in the story. Like I think,
on its face, of course, it's like a super salacious,
outrageous story. It is also full of questions about the
nature of harm and how we judicate things in the
criminal justice system, and what it needs to be responsible
for your actions, and the context of mental illness. I
(54:59):
think it's very interesting these relationships where somebody like Caitlin
manipulates somebody but also make makes them feel amazing about
how they're able to provide these things to someone in need.
And I think that's a really complicated relationship. And I
think it's something, you know, one of our interviewees described
(55:20):
it as betrayal trauma, where you know, you think you're
helping someone and then you find out it was actually
in service to a lie. You know, it's a that's
a really complicated relationship, and I think a much more
intimate form of harm.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Do you think that our courts, I'm saying our in
different countries, but all courts need to.
Speaker 1 (55:42):
Do more.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
I mean here in Australia, for instance, we've recently had
coercive control being brought into our legislation and things like
that that are those more emotional kind of manipulations. Do
we need to be thinking more in this space and
our justice systems?
Speaker 1 (55:59):
I mean, I don't really know whether more in these
cases should be adjudicated in the criminal justice system. But
then I don't know what our alternative is someone like
Caitlin who walks up. You know, I think there are
absolutely people who require resources and patients and assistance to
overcome really, really terrible behavior. And what do we do
(56:21):
with somebody who's not genuinely sorry and will not commit
to ceasing harm. I don't know how we deal with
that outside of the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
Thanks to Sarah for helping us to tell this story.
True Crime Conversations is a podcast hosted and produced by me,
Jimma baff and Tarlie Blackman, with audio design by Jacob Brown.
Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week
with another True Crime Conversation.
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