October 21, 2025 • 51 mins
When Orlaith met John on Tinder, he seemed like the perfect match for her - funny, thoughtful and kind. But soon the cracks began to show. Unlike the other women, Orlaith didn’t have a child for him to use as a prop. Instead, he tried to isolate her, invaded her privacy and stole from her. Living with a chronic health condition that sometimes affected her memory, John twisted this and used it against her. Orlaith is the fifth woman to come forward with her experience of John, and her story shows just how many ways he could manipulate, deceive and take advantage of the women who trusted him.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You meet a man. He's funny, attentive, he actually listens
to you. You go on a date and you get
home with sore cheeks from laughing. He says all the
right things, wants the same things. It feels easy and rare.
Dates turn into a relationship and you think this is
exactly what you've been looking for. Now imagine discovering everything
(00:22):
he told you was a lie, and you're only one
of many women he has on the go. This is
a story of Filthy John, a compulsive liar, a manipulator,
a man with a serious drug problem, a habit of stealing,
and a dangerous temper. On the surface, he was hilarious, affectionate,
the perfect man. But behind the scenes, he was creating
(00:44):
chaos in multiple women's lives, lying to them, mirroring their personalities,
love bombing, stealing, vanishing, reappearing, and slowly wrecking their sense
of reality. These women didn't just overlap, their lives became
tangled in the most bizarre ways. In this podcast, you'll
(01:05):
hear from five of them, five women brave enough to
sit down and tell their story. There are more, but
some of them are too scared to speak. This is
a story about manipulation, survival, and the power that comes
when women start comparing notes. I was at home one
evening in mid August when I checked my email and
(01:26):
saw a message from a woman named Orla. Her subject
line caught my eye, and when I opened it, my
stomach dropped. She wrote, I just came across the podcast
and I've been a victim of this guy. We met
in March and broke up just two weeks ago. I
think I'm going to be sick. I don't even know
what to say or think right now. I'm listening to
Monica's episode. I know all about Monica and Anya and
(01:49):
others I thought were just his friend's apologies for the
word vomit. After a few messages back and forth, I
put Orla in touch with Monica so they could talk directly.
As it turned out, Monica already knew of Orla. John's
daughter had mentioned her dad's new friend to her own mother,
who passed the name on to Monica, and Monica had
been trying to find her online ever since, hoping to
(02:12):
warn her about John, but couldn't track her down. So
when I connected them, Monica was relieved, finally a face
to the name, and Orla Brave as our other ladies,
agreed to share her story on the podcast in order
to help other women in a similar situation.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Can I say first that I just want to say
thank you. I want to say thank you to you
for recording with the girls. I want to say thank
you for replying to my email when I came across
the podcast, and then for touch and base with the
girls so that I could link in with them, and
I have done since, and I think that that has
(02:49):
made such a difference in terms of me looking after
myself and knowing that I have done nothing wrong. I
think one of the reasons as well that I wanted
to come on and talk to you was one because
he needs to be stopped. There's no question about that
that that his behavior is not okay. But I think
(03:10):
that there's a there's a wider part to this as well,
And I think that that wider bit is trying to
teach other not just women, because it's men as well,
and whatever gender you are, like, it's it's irrelevant. Gender
is irrelevant when it comes to this. But there are
people out there in general that are such master manipulators
(03:32):
and have practiced their skill for so long that we
don't actually realize it even when we're in it, like
when these things are happening to us, Like I'm educated.
You know, all the girls are educated. We're all smart women,
but we were all sucked in by it, by the behaviors,
by the actions, by the by the words. And I
think that by coming here and being able to talk
(03:56):
to you, it's it's helping not only stop him, but
also for those people out there listening who might feel
that they're they're in some form of a similar situation,
to realize that you know this, you know it's it's
not your fault, and that you can slowly start to
(04:16):
take yourself away and to look at other ways of
getting support and figuring a way out if it's getting
to a point where you know you're in danger.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
At the start or the thought. John was amazing, funny, charming,
and so attentive. He seemed genuinely interested in her, always
saying the right thing, always there when she needed him.
It felt easy, natural, like she had just met somebody
who truly saw her.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
The same as the same as the other girls met.
We matched on Tinder. I don't remember what his profile
was like now anymore, but I remember we matched and
I he messaged me almost straight away when we matched,
and the message I got was really really funny. So
straight away he had me engaged, like do you know
(05:04):
anybody who goes on dating apps nowadays knows it's well, Hi,
how are you? Are you having a good evening? What
did you do? Do you know? You have all these
really boring start off messages? So straight away he has
you captivated. So straight away you're just like, oh, this
is like And I was actually laughing at the very
first message, and I was like, I'll have to apply
to this guy. We were chatting over and back on
(05:27):
Tinder for a while and then he was like, oh,
could we have a chat like do you know I
really like it? And I was like yeah, sure. It's
like I kind of I'm not a type of person
who says, oh I wouldn't give my mobile number out.
I think if there's ever any issues with your mobile number,
you can just block Them's that's kind of my feeling
on it. So I was like, yeah, sure, so and
again I know that the girls would have said this
(05:48):
as well, that like some of them would have been
talking to him on into the night for you know,
night after night, whereas I actually have IVO chronic health condition,
so I get very tired, very easily. I live with
chronic pain all the time. So for me, I think
that first conversation, yeah, it was well over an hour,
(06:09):
probably too, and I think it came to about eleven
o'clock at night, and nor I would be well asleep
by eleven o'clock at night, and I was just yawning
down the phone, going, look, I have to go. I'll
talk to you tomorrow and straight away, like I fell
asleep and I got up then you know, the next morning,
and there was loads of messages say, you know, I
really enjoyed talking to you, oh, like I miss you
(06:30):
already and stuff that I was kind of going, you
can't miss me already, do you know what I mean?
But I was kind of go, oh, yeah, it's kind
of nice and kind of just just dragging you in
like little by little. And do you know he had
told me obviously that he had full custody of his
daughter and that, you know, so that would might make
(06:52):
things difficult. We worked out that I lived about an
hour away from where he was. Compared to the other girls,
I'm very lucky in that it's it's been a very
short period of time for me. I know the other
girls would have been in, you know, much longer relationships
with him. I think I think for me it was
(07:16):
just he and the girls would have said this like
to say that he would have you crying with laughter,
like he is one really really funny man and part
of you. Afterwards, when when when you're reflecting on the
relationship afterwards, you're going like, was that real? You know,
was that part of it real? But then he's such
(07:37):
a good liar that it's very hard when you do
look back and you go, Okay, maybe it wasn't or
maybe it was. I don't know, but he would have
been asking all of these questions at the very start.
I'm quite I wouldn't be hugely open when it comes
to a lot of things. So but he kept asking questions.
So he keeps learning more and more about you, and
(07:59):
he keeps asking and he'll ask the same questions again,
so you're getting he's reminding himself all the time about
the things that you like and the things that are
important to you. And then, as one of the girls said,
he basically morphs himself into the man that you want.
That as the kind of a couple of weeks went by.
I think the first the first week that we matched
(08:20):
was the start of March, and he was he was
going away for the weekend just before Paddy's. I was like, oh,
you know, that's fine. Like, I'm also not the type
of person if I'm on a dating app when I'm
chatting to somebody, I'm kind of like, you know, yeah,
is there a little bit of a spark when we're
texting over and back? Like me for coffee, Let's get
(08:40):
it over and done with kind of thing. So it
kind of got pushed away, pushed out a little bit
longer than I would normally like. And then when when
we did meet, we were supposed to be kind of
meeting halfway. Supposedly his daughter was sick and he couldn't
meet halfway and would I mind going up to him?
And I was kind of going that point. I knew
I liked him. We you know, we had loads of conversations,
(09:03):
loads texts, like we were always laughing on the phone,
and I was like, yeah, Beckett, I would. So I
drove up. It's not far, it's not it wasn't like
I was traveling two hours. It was like a bare
hour up the road. So that was fine, and we
met and we got on really well. Probably not the
type of guy that I would normally go for looks wise,
(09:24):
but you know, we got on well. We you know,
we seem to have the same type of sense of humor,
We had all of that kind of seemed to be,
you know, going well. So I was like, yeah, I
don't think he's the He's not the type of man
that you would look at and go, oh my god,
he's dropped a gorgeous But then I think because he's
so good at making you laugh and having things in common,
(09:46):
that they're all the types of things that make people
attracted to other people. Yeah, so I drove up and
we got on really well. We had a coffee for
a walk, and because of the condition that I have,
as I was saying, I would get very tired, I
get very dizzy and I can faint, he started to
make this big deal about saying, oh, you know, are
you okay? You look pretty tired. You're looking a little
(10:08):
bit gray. And I was like, no, no, I'm fine.
You know, like I've had coffee, grand I'll you know,
I'll get another coffee halfway down. If i'm tired, I'll
take a break for whatever, which is what I would
often do if I'm driving. But he made a big
point about going and getting me a bar of chocolate.
And I wasn't hungry, but he was like he made
me eat the bar of chocolate and that yeah, because
(10:30):
he was like, oh, I'm really worried you're going to
faint on the way down. And I was kind of going,
I'm not hungry, I don't want to eat this fucking
bar chocolate, but I ate the bar chocolate just to
show I think. I eat half the bar chocolate to
shut up. But I was like in my head, going,
you're annoying the hell out of me. But oh my god,
this is so sweet. I'm like, oh, you know, he's
really worried about me, and all of this. I left
and I was I was driving home, and I'd say
(10:51):
I was twenty minutes in the car and then he
rang and he was like, are you okay, Like I'm so,
I'm just home now, and you know, my daughter's okay,
she's you know, she's not too on well, and but
I'm really worried about Jen, Like, will you talk to
me for the rest of the journey home. So I
was like, I can talk to you for ten minutes,
(11:12):
but I have to ring somebody else, So like, do
you know, I'll talk to you for a white So
that was fine, and then almost straight away it was
just that it was just constant. It was like, you know,
when can I see you again? And then it was like, oh,
I really really like you. And you know, after about
three or four weeks of like after the first day,
say three or four weeks after that, like we were
(11:33):
spending a little bit more time together, and then he
starts going on saying, oh, like I started to fall
in love with you from the minute we had our
first phone call. I knew that you were going to
be the one for me. And like when I when
I think about it now and I'm talking to you now,
I'm like, you dope, Like you're you know, you're an
absolute dope. But at the same time, all of the
(11:55):
all of that that love bombing was, it was wrapped
up been actions. So so like say, for example, one
obviously that you know, I'm worried about each of our
topic before you go home. But then when like the
first time that he came to my house, I've only
I had my house rented out for a long number
of years, so I'm not back in at that long.
So there's loads of work that needs to be done
(12:16):
around my house. So the very first time he was here,
he went around and he fixed some of the windows
weren't closing properly, and I was like, it's going to
cost me fortune to get somebody into to fix my
windows and everything. So we went around the house and
he fixed the doors, he fixed the windows. So there
was all of this like, yes, okay, it was a
little bit hot and heavy, but then it was all
(12:37):
wrapped up in actions that were proving to me that
this is actually how he feels, like that he is
concerned about me and he wants me to have, you know,
things working properly in my house. And you know, similar
like if he was coming down, say today, when I
was finished working, he'd drive in and he'd be like,
oh no, no, no, I'll I cook dinner. So like I'd
(12:58):
arrive in from work, he or ive in and he'd
start cooking dinner straight away, because like, I hate cooking.
It's fine to say somebody is love bombing you, and
can you not realize that somebody is love bombing you.
But when you're having all of these like you know,
somebody saying like, oh, they're falling in love with you,
like very early, or you know, I really miss you,
or I really care for you, or you know, saying
(13:21):
all of these things, but then when they're actually combined
with actions, it's very difficult to distinguish that, you know, actually,
you know, this isn't real. Even meeting like he met
my parents, he sucked my parents in, like to say that,
(13:41):
you know, he was all about like being you know,
part of my family, you know, wanting to meet my
parents and you know, to tell them and show them
that you know, oh, you know that I care about
you so much.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
From chatting and cross referencing with the other women on
the podcast, or realizes that none of them were seeing
John during the time that she was with him from
March to July twenty twenty five. But as we revealed
at the end of episode four, John already has a
steady girlfriend now, the one who earlier this year got
his name tattooed on the back of her neck. What
(14:15):
Orla didn't know then was that John was still with
that same woman when he met her on Tinder and
he's still with her now.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
When I think back on it now, I was like,
I don't know how many other people he was dating
while he was dating me. I have no idea. I
know definitely one other. I know that the other girls
wouldn't have been at the time, But how he was
managing that, I have no idea, because he was always
on the phone to me. If he wasn't here, he
was on the phone to me. And then like there'd
(14:43):
be times where he could be here for like four
or five days in a row and you're just kind
of gone, like do you know, and even a space
like would you go home kind of thing. One of
the other things as well, I suppose that the girls
would have said is that like they would have had
say like money would have gone missing. That was never
really any I did have a money box go missing,
all right, do you know, like you know, like a
(15:03):
money box that you would you know, you have to
open with a tin opener that I put all my
like chopnel in, so like my five and ten cents
and stuff. One of those went missing in my utility room.
He would have known, he would have seen it there,
but there was nothing like it's all five ten twenty cent.
It's all that rubbish that you don't want to keep
in your purse that I just throw into the money box.
I said it to him. I was like, John, did
(15:26):
you say that much the money box that I have
in the because I have like my purse is full
of like five cents and I want to get rid
of them, like I don't know where I'm after putting it.
And one with my condition, I do get a lot
of brain flog and I can move things and put
things in certain places and then completely forget about them.
But even then, like I know some of the girls
would have said that they would have given him money
for other for different things and like on dates and
(15:49):
stuff that they would have ended up having to pay
things like that. That was never something that happened for me.
So that was never a big red flag. So again,
you know, it was something that I didn't experience. And
I don't know whether that was because it was relatively
new and I now, I didn't get to the point where,
(16:11):
you know, it was nine months down the line or
a year down the line, where things would have like
he would have been looking for money or saying he'd
forgotten his wallet or whatever. There was once or twice
over the few months, but I think again like there
was I didn't really think anything of it at the time.
I think there was twice in the whole the whole
time where he was like, oh, after my my wallet
(16:33):
at home. But because other than that, if we went
to the shop, he bought the ingredients for the dinner,
or if we were going to the pub, he bought
the drink. But I do know that it's very different
to what the others experienced. The other thing that I
did find and I know that they would have said
in you know, when they were telling their stories, gifts
got kind of passed around the only thing. So I
(16:55):
didn't get anything like gifts wise or anything like that,
but I did so part of my condition, I would
have a lot of medication that I would take on
a daily basis, and then I have other medications that
I would take kind of haphazardly around the month or whatever,
depending on what my symptoms are.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Orla has always tried to be upfront about her chronic
health condition with the men that she meets. In the past,
she would wait until things felt serious before mentioning it,
only to be ghosted by men she really liked, so
she decided to be honest from the start. She told
John early on about the realities of her condition, the fatigue,
the memory lapses, the occasional fuzzy brain, and while he
(17:32):
seemed understanding at first, looking back orla and see how
he sometimes used that knowledge to his advantage, subtly twisting situations,
making her second guess herself.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
I have a condition called Errs down loss, so it's
hypermobility ERRS and loss. Basically, it's a collagen dysfunction disorder,
so collagen that my body produces is faulty. Practically everything
in your body needs collagen. So like I would have had,
like my first back surgery when I was in my twenties,
a lot of arthritis. I've got chronic pain. It comes
(18:04):
with mental health issues, it comes with organ issues, sleep problems.
So yeah, it's it's full on genetic condition. Like it's genetics,
so's there's nothing you can do really about it. So
I would have obviously different medications then, and I would
have a lot of one of like when a term
comes to mental health, you would get a lot of anxiety.
(18:26):
So I would have some xenics that I always get,
and I don't have to use them all the time,
but I, you know, I do need them depending on
what's happening in work or in life or whatever. And
I went to go and find to get some one
day and they were gone, and I turn around and
I was like, done, did you take some of my xenics?
(18:49):
I was like, if you did, like, just let me know.
That's fine. Knowing that he would have told me he
was a drug addict, that he was no longer using drugs.
He would have told me at the start, Yeah, that
he would have. You know, we had full custody of
his daughter. He hadn't taken any drugs since she was born.
The exact same story is as what the girls had.
That he didn't really drink. Now, that wouldn't have been
(19:13):
my experience of him. He did like a drink, and
I wouldn't be a huge drinker, so I'd be kind
of like trying to sip away on a drink while
he was drinking. But again, it wasn't every single night
he was here. You know, there was lots of nights
where we didn't drink because again, it's not something that's
good for my body, so I don't like to do it.
(19:33):
Very often. So yeah, I was a little bit suspicious
over that because I was, like, my meds are kept
in the same place. I'm very particular about my medication
because I need to take medication at certain Like if
I don't take certain medications in the morning, I can
easily pass out when I stand up. I'll stand up
my blood pressure with oh, my heart rate goes all
(19:54):
over place, and I can get really dizzy and a confined.
So he knew all this about me because I I
would have told them at the start. Again, when it
comes to that, for me, if I was, you know,
talking to people online, I've often found that it's actually
easier to let people know, like I do have this condition,
and it does mean that I tend to go to
sleep early. But I do work. You know, I live.
(20:17):
I do work. I live on my own. I like
to swim, I go to the gym. I do all
of these things to keep myself healthy. So he would
have said to me after I had asked him about
like the zana, he was like, Oh, no, that must
be the brain fog. That must be your head. You
must have put it somewhere else. And I was kind
of gone, No, I've checked the places where I put
my mets, and then the following month, when I collected
(20:37):
my prescriptions, I actually hid them in a different place
just in case. I'm just going to put these aside
because I need to know where they are and that
I have them. After about two months, I started to
get suspicious because this had happened around the same time
the money box had gone missing. But other than that,
(20:59):
every thing was really good. You know, we ate dinner together,
we cooked together, we cleaned together, we did things around
the house, we went for walks. It was like a
really normal relationship. But just pull on very fast. He
had said to me at one point, Oh, I'm gonna
have to apologize to my daughter's mother because I thought
(21:22):
I was in love, but I wasn't really in love
until I met you.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Early in the relationship, John began name dropping his two
best female friends, Monica and Anya. What Ora didn't know
was that these were his ex girlfriends, women he had
wronged yet couldn't let go of. He kept reaching out,
always hoping to maintain some kind of connection despite the
damage he had caused.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
There were things like say, Monica was his best friend
and Anya was one of his best friends, but Anya
lived further away. I can't remember where he told me
where she lived, but I knew that Monica wasn't too
far away. And he was like, oh, they're like herself
and her husband are my best friends. And I was like,
oh sure, Like you know, why don't we get them
(22:04):
to come down or we could meet them somewhere, you know,
we meet for coffee or whatever. And then the more
I kept kind of saying, well, like when am I
going to meet Monica and her husband? Then all of
a sudden he was like, Oh, I think they're getting separated.
There's a new manager and work, and now she's going
to work called Although it turns out it turns out
she was married to her brother there, she wasn't. He
(22:29):
was using her brother's name. He hasn't worked out so
well that he keeps his stories close together, so that
if he happened to mention Monica and so and so,
he could say, oh, well that's because you know that way,
instead of like making things up and that he might
(22:50):
forget this way. He was always using names that could
possibly pop up in a relationship. You know, we're in
a conversation. The other thing that he says, and I
don't know whether it's true or whether it's not. Is
that what he told me? I don't actually know if
he said it to the girls either, that he has
(23:11):
this memory, this memory condition, and that basically he remembers everything.
Not necessarily photogenic, but the type of oh my god,
what's the movie? I think is of the rain Man?
Do you know that movie? I think it's The rain Man.
He has a type of autism where he basically remembers
(23:32):
all of his conversations and remember what he wore in
a certain day. So he tells you this at the
more or less at the very start of the relationship.
So straight away he's making you think, okay, well, I
can never lie or I can never tell a white
lie or a little bib because he's going to remember.
Whether or not that's true, I don't know. I have
(23:55):
no idea, but I definitely believe that because he has
been practicing this art, and it is an art. There's
no way, and I'm not saying that in a positive thing.
This is an art that he has gotten down to
a t. So that whether he's using one of those
you know, those memory things, those memory there's loads of
(24:16):
different there's loads of different techniques that you can use
to remember practically everything. So for me when when we
met and we were talking, so this was almost nearly
straight away, this was like, oh, well, I have this
memory thing and I remember everything. And he was explaining
that his memory is like a tree, and he'll tell
(24:38):
you the same stories over and over again because if
he wants to tell you something that's at the end
of the branch, he has to go through every story
that's on that branch in order to get to the
one bit that he wants to actually tell you. So
and it is there. It is a type of memory
I can't remember. I remember googling it at the time
because he gave me the name of the actual condition,
(25:00):
and I remember looking it up and I was like,
oh my god, this makes so much sense that, like
he just remembers everything.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
It was fine for John to have an array of friendships,
always female, but he tried hard to isolate Orla from
her own family and friends. He sees on small comments
or moments something someone in her life had said and
twist them, bringing them up over and over. He would
say things like I just know me and them aren't
going to get along, planting tension before there was any
(25:30):
He asked repeatedly if she'd been talking to people, and
if Orla mentioned even the smallest disagreement, he would fixate
on that. It was a constant effort to drive a
wedge between her and the people closest to her, slowly
chipping away at her support system. But Orla didn't let him.
She would push back, saying, you don't have to get
on with them, as long as you treat me well,
that's what matters. Still, he persisted, repeating the same tactics,
(25:54):
hoping to wear her down. Looking back, Orla recognizes this
as his particular form of Unlike the other women, he
didn't use her for money or childcare. With her, it
was about control through isolation. He would even say things like,
we can never go out with your friends or family
because I'll just tell them how badly they treat you.
It's better if it's just us two. Or Will never
(26:17):
allowed herself to be fully isolated, but the pressure made
life extremely difficult. His need for control didn't stop there.
It extended further, invading her privacy by reading her diary
and trying to completely stop her male friendships.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
He was starting to make me question my friendships with
men and then like, oh, they're just after one pain
and I'm like, well, no, I've been friends with these
guys my whole life and nothing has ever happened, So
where is the issue with that? And then there was
one time and this was a big thing for me,
(26:54):
and this is, I think, is really where it started
to come to a point where he was really getting suspicious.
He came to me and he said I read your
journal and I was like, what the book were you
but I only read it from where when we started dating.
And I was like, well, what the fuck were you
(27:14):
doing looking at my journal? Like how first point? Why
why were you opening the drawer that my journal is
peped in? And he said, oh, I was looking for
your passport because I wanted to bring you away. We
had a huge blair, like a huge row over it.
I was like, how dare you invade my space? But
he managed to even turn that around and he was like, well,
you you wrote about like this guy that that that
(27:37):
you had. You had this conversation with this guy since
we since we started dating. And I was like, hey,
he's a friend of mine and he was looking he
wanted to talk, So I didn't know at the time,
what what advice he was looking for? So I was
thinking about about myself and I used my journal as
a way of you know, just going through life and
and helping helping me with my condition. So he then
(28:00):
then started to question my relationship with that particular friend.
And then but he does it so well because it's
wrapped up in this concern that you know, I'm really
concerned for you, and he's really only looking for one pain.
He just wants sex from you. That's all he wants
in your Like you really need to use You seem
(28:22):
to think that you can have friendships with men, or like,
you don't just have friendships with men, they like they
all want something. I was so upset that my my
privacy had been invaded. But then it was like, well,
you know, why were you writing about a conversation that
you'd had with this male friend. And then it was like,
(28:45):
you know, you really need to reevaluate your friendships. And
I'm only doing this because I'm concerned for you and
I want to be your journal. I don't want you
to need to write in a journal. I want you
to be able to tell me everything. And I was
kind of going, but I'm not going to tell you everything.
I'm not going to tell anybody everything, Like there's a
reason why I have my journal, John, and this is
(29:07):
what it's about. So and then it was kind of like, oh,
have you written in your journal? Have you written it?
Like afterwards, have you written in your journal? Have you
written in your journal? And I was like, no, no,
I haven't, I haven't. So I left the journal in
the same place, with the same note, with the same pens,
exact same thing, didn't write in it, but a new
journal and hit it in a different place. Part of
it as well was I don't know whether it goes
(29:27):
on to the term of gas writing or control or
whatever it is, but he obviously read in my journal
about me saying like at the start kind of going
you know, I like the fact that he's an hour
away from me. It gives me my space. And then
as it kind of like say two or three weeks in,
it was like, you know, he's saying, you know that
(29:48):
he really likes me, that he's falling in it and
over with me, and it's like, this is very early.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. And that's
how I would process a lot of my emotions so
obviously when he read my journal, he was like, Okay, well,
if I don't stop this, this girl isn't going to lie,
isn't going to be around because she's going to see
through all of the things that I'm doing, because she's
going to reflect on her journal. Then, so there were
(30:09):
all these these things at the start where you know,
it was all the like the actions were meeting the words,
and then you know, some of my meds went missing,
the money box went missing. Then he found my journal.
But then there were big things were happening. So we
were supposed to go to this really nice restaurant in town,
and that got canceled because his daughter was sick. My
(30:33):
friend was getting married and supposedly he had his suit
and he had like the back of his waistcoat was
the same color. It was going to match my dress,
and he couldn't wait to go. And then like the
night before, his dad was dying in hospital, so he
couldn't he couldn't go to the wedding. And at this
(30:55):
point I was like, this, this is this isn't how
relationships work.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
A couple of months into the relationship, Orla was keen
to meet John's family, but as always he fobbed her off.
She knew his father had been unwell and would ask
about meeting his mother for lunch, only to be met
with excuses. Eventually, to shut her down completely, he told
her that his father was dying and that any family
meetings were completely off the cards for the time being.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
He had told me that his dad had gone into
hospital in Wexford and I was dying. They'd all been
called in so and I think this would have been
he was possibly starting to date somebody else, so he
needed a way of not spending all of his time
with me. So or maybe it was the other girl
(31:44):
who was looking for more attention, I don't know. So
all of a sudden then that after like a week
or so, the dad ended up going from Wexford up
to a specialist hospital in Dublin. Was on life support
at one point then wasn't on life support, had a
brain tumor, was dying basically right, So this is what
I was led to believe. But at the same time,
(32:05):
it's like these where the big things. So the big
words weren't meeting the big actions, if that makes sense.
So like at the start, it was the smaller things,
like you know, you know, fixing doors, things like that.
But then it was the big things like going you know,
going out for a really nice fancy meal, going to
my friend's wedding, a couple of other things that didn't happen.
(32:26):
But at the same time, and this is something that
I think is really important to point out for anybody
who's in this type of a relationship, smaller actions were happening.
So my house, again, because of my condition, I keep
a really try deep clean house because if it gets messy,
I get overwhelmed. I can't spend I don't have the
(32:48):
energy that other people would have two hours to just
clean a house top to bottom. I have to do
with twenty minutes and then stop twenty minutes, stop twenty minutes,
take an hour, break, lie down. Rex Everything has its place,
and everything goes into its place. From the very start,
when he would arrive in the house, he would leave
his shoes just inside the front door, whereas when I
take my shoes off when I come in, they get
(33:09):
put on at the stairs. But I never said anything.
I just was kind of going, yeah, like he'll cop
on and eventually they will go in onder the stairs.
Same similarly with you know, you know, your your plastic
bottles that you now return, it would stay on the
counter and not go into the bag in the utility
room where they then get brought. Same thing with the
(33:30):
glass bottles, they wouldn't go into the container in the
utility room. So then when I started saying, like, you
know why, you know this was supposed to happen, and
this was supposed to happen, and we haven't done any
of this. When I started questioning him on where those
big words weren't meeting with big actions, those little smaller
actions started happening. Now when I came in, his shoes
(33:52):
were under the stairs. Now when he finished a bottle,
it went into the correct bag, or the glass went
to the glass set in the utility room. So that
or if we were going for a walk, because like
literally you walk out of my house, they're like five
hundred minutes down the road as a bottle dine. So
then say we were walking down to the shop, he'd say, oh,
there's two bottles there, let's bring them down. But the
(34:15):
smaller things were happening to take away from the big
things because there was less to necessarily I suppose nag
or give, you know, there'll be types of things that
that I think boyfriends would often say, oh my god,
all she does is nagne because I don't put my
shoes in the right place sor And I think that's
a really important thing to point out as well to
women that like the big things are women and men
(34:36):
anybody that like to take away from the big actions
not happening, the smaller things were happening just to deflect
your brain. And it was only afterwards when I looked
back on it and I was trying to put a
time in and again with my memory, it's not fantastic,
but trying to put a timeline in place for myself.
I was like, yeah, because I questioned him on that,
(34:57):
and then the next day he was like, oh, just
see where I put my shoes. So he knew exactly
what he was doing. Like he's been doing this for
twenty years, if not longer. He has this down to
a fine art. He knows his stories and like some
of the stories are mad, like I don't know to
have the timper girls tell you about him being friends
with the DJ Denny Green on two FM, Like you know,
(35:19):
those stories are crazy, Like I wonder if he actually,
like truly believes some of them because he's been using
the same stories for so long. For me, it was
it was getting to that point where I was like,
this is I'm getting to point now where I've had enough.
I don't care if I love him, and I don't
care if he loves me. If you're going to say
(35:40):
things and then not do them, well, then clearly you
don't really love me. And that's where I was going
in my head. And then there was a day I
was getting my car ncted and I was talking to him.
So the car was in getting mc teed and I
was talking to him on the phone and he was hyper.
(36:00):
Without a doubt, he was on affeterans. There is no
question about it. He was hyper. He was talking really
really fast. He asking him to slow down his voice.
The tone of his voice was higher, and I and
I was like, are you okay? You know you're sounding
a bit weird. Are you okay? And he was like yeah, no, no, no,
I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm fine. And then I was like, oh,
(36:21):
I think car should be nearly finished now, I'll talked
to you later. I got off the phone from him
and I texted him. I was like, sure, you're okay.
That was brand Anyway, my car failed, right, the NCT
got into the car and took picture of the faults
that had to be fixed, and I text him and
I was like, oh my god, I think I want
to cry. And that was it. The tick never went blue.
(36:42):
So he basically I questioned him because I was one
hundred pcentury, he was on afeterons, there was no question.
I was like, are you sure you're okay, sent him
a photograph. So within twenty minutes of getting off the phone,
he had gasted me that whole evening. I remember coming
home that whole evening, you know, I left him alone,
and then I texted him like an hour and a
(37:02):
half later, like are you okay. I'm really worried. You know,
if you've taken drugs, it's fine, you know, we can
talk about it whatever, and nothing, absolutely nothing. And remember
at this point I was really suspicious anyway, I just
was not sure what was going on, and I didn't
believe a lot of what he was saying to me.
(37:24):
So following morning, still you know, not answering. So I
went to affect this and I hopped in the car
and I was like, all right, I'm gonna drive up,
so hopped in the car oil.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I had had enough. She wasn't going to be ghosted
by her boyfriend now ex boyfriend of four months just
because he had gone on a bender. She decided it
was time to talk to him face to face to
sort things out or put it to bed properly like adults.
So she set off for John's house, or at least
what she thought was his house.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
So I got up to the heart, drove down the
lane and knocked on the door. Who opened the door?
His dad? How I was able to keep it straight?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I don't know, like I can still. I can still
see it, like I can see him and I opened
opening the door. I can see him coming through the window.
In my head going what the ok.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
It's all been a big, huge, like in my head
going this is it? Like it's all been a big,
huge life. And his dad answers the door. I was like,
it's John here, and he was like no, no, no,
oh jeez. I actually thought that was his car coming
in there now. And I was like, no, no, that's
my car. And who are you? I was like, oh,
(38:45):
just a friend and where are you from? Oh, I'm
just from over the road. Do you want to come in? No, No,
that's fine, Sure, he said you'd be here. But I
send him a text, and I got back in the
car and I drove home and I sent him a
text go on your one fucking lion piece shit got home.
(39:06):
I think I sent him a few very on nice
messages with a lot of not nice wording. And then
at that point then I remembered somebody telling me before
that day. When I got home, I remember somebody telling
me before about those groups on Facebook are dating. So
(39:27):
I was like, right, I'm just going to see because
I can't. I can't. I can't just because like at
this point, I didn't know. I just thought he just
lied to me about everything, or did he like to
me about everything? I have no idea what's going on?
And what the hell is wrong with me? What have
I done?
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Why?
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Why? Why? Why? Like what's wrong with me? So yeah,
I got home and I remember somebody telling me about
these sites before, or these pages on Facebook before. So
I started googling or searching on Facebook, and I found
like in Ireland, won the Southeast one and another one,
and I just basically went to join, join and join,
and then I think a couple of days later, I
(40:08):
got approved for the Southeast one, and the first thing
I did was start searching his name, and Filthy John
came up and I knew without even looking any further
or anything. I knew because of his sexual desires and everything.
(40:31):
I just knew Filthy John. I went, that's him. There's
no question about it. That's him. So I clicked on
the link and it brought me to your podcast. It
was so weird because I started to listen to Monica
and I was like, I know this woman. I know
so much about this woman because he was her best friend,
didn't spoke a better all the time, or she was
(40:52):
his best friend and he spoke a better all the time.
And here she is talking about the fact that she
had been in a relationship with him. I'm like, oh
my god. And I stopped the podcast or so I
press pause and I emailed you straight away and I went,
I think I'm I'm another victim, And you know you
(41:14):
replied that evening and straight away, you know you would said, look,
I've touched base with Monica, and if he you know,
she's there if you want to talk to her. So
straight away again, I was listening and I'd stopped listening,
and then I was listening and I was stopped listening,
and I was like, oh my god, I've heard this.
This is exactly I know this. I know this story.
And the same with Anya. Anya was another one of
(41:36):
his best friends. So there were two like I was like,
I know these women. This is really weird. And then
I was like, I know that story. I know that story.
Oh that's I know that I heard that, and even
the whole thing I think he told He told one
of the other girls that he was the one with
the brain tumor, and I was like, oh, well, his
dad has it now. And the more that I listened,
I was like, oh my god, I am so lucky
(41:59):
that I actually listened to my gut that day, and
I got in the car and I drove up, because
if I hadn't gotten in my car and driven up,
I don't know what would have happened a week or
two weeks later, because if I had just left him,
he could have easily just come back in and said, oh,
I'm so sorry, you know, I just there was it
(42:21):
was too much. Life was too much, and I needed
to break away from everybody. And so he had done
something like that before where he had kind of been
become very quiet, and he was like, oh, I just
want to spend as much time as I can with
my daughter this weekend. Because I caught him out, so obviously,
I think that that saved me from possibly going down
(42:41):
the route and taking him back, or you know, him
coming back into my life and wheedling his way back
into my life in two weeks after that, so I
had said to him like, at one point, I was like, look,
can you at least give me back my key? Just
like throwing in the in the post. When I realized everything,
I was like I kind of wanted answers or and
(43:03):
I know I'll never get answers. And for me, you know,
talking to you is part of taking back the control
from him. At one point, they went they did the
ticks went blue about two weeks ago, three weeks ago,
and I just got a message back saying I'm really
really sorry, I'll drop back your key, and I just replied, Now,
(43:24):
I had met the girls at this point, so knew
everything had, you know, was like Yeah, I'm I'm gonna
I'm gonna talk to dating Iran. I'm gonna I'm not
gonna leave this ruin my life. So I had replied
and I just said, you know, oh, I'm really really
worried about I hope you're okay, and like you can
just put the key in the post. And that hasn't
(43:45):
that hasn't gone blue yet. No, but I'm not blocked
because I actually I accidentally rang him from my watch.
I was doing something. I don't know how I manage it,
but I was actually like accidentally rang him from my
smart watch and I was I wouldn't mind, but it
was about half six in the morning, like because I
get up really really early, and it rang through. So
(44:06):
I'm not blocked. I'm not blocked yet. He has this
he uses the term the term cunt all the time,
so he'll call he'd call you a cunt. But he
he starts off very very like from the very start
of the relationship. He says that, oh, I use the
term cunt, but it's I use it all the time,
but it's just a curse word, and it's a really
good curse word, and it's but I only use it
(44:28):
as a term of endearment. So it's only the people
that are really important in my life that I'll actually
call a cunt. So I was like, to me, I
know some people absolutely hate the word. Now to me,
I don't really care. It's a curse word if you
use it to use it. But he makes such a
big deal over it that when he does call you it,
you're just like, oh, yeah, whatever, Like every now and
(44:48):
then I call it to you know, I call him
a come back or whatever. But afterwards, when I thought
about it, and when I realized, like what he had
been doing for all the months and all the years
that he's been doing it to all the other women,
that he's actually using it as a way of reinforcing
what he's doing in his own brain. So he's instead
(45:10):
of him calling me like, you know, me telling a
joke and him laughing and him going, ah, that was funny, Hunt,
he's actually going you're a stupid fucking hunt, and I
have you caught, and I am going to do whatever
I fucking want to you because you think I love
you and you think that I'm going to give you
all of these things that I've promised. So it's actually
(45:31):
his way of calling it out to you in your
face without you realizing it, because he has wrapped up
in this beautiful term of endearment. And that's one of
the other things as well. With John was like, so
because I don't have or I have problems sleeping, I
will I wake up very early, so I do tend
to go better early. So I could be here like
(45:54):
on a work night and I would It could be
like nine o'clock is at one TV and I'd be
on and I'm like, I have to bed. And then
that kind of the last two months of it, it
was like, oh, what are you ninety And I was like, no,
you know, this is part of my condition, Like I
(46:16):
need to sleep. I have had a long day, I
worked all day, I am in pain. I need to
lie down on my bed. But there were other times
where he'd look at me and he'd go, oh, my god,
you're exhausted. Why don't He'd bring the TV upstairs, only
one TV and as so we'd bring the TV upstairs
and he'd be like, I'll bring the TV upstairs so
you can lie down in the bed and rest. So
there were there were all of these kind gestures and
(46:40):
small things that happened that did show you care, well,
showed you he was pretending to care. And I think
that's the hardest part of coming to terms with everything
as well. Even before I met them. Actually, there was
one day I was in work and I was really
really struggling, and I just text Monic in the middle
(47:02):
of the day and I was like, Monica, I'm really struggling.
And then she was like, look, I'm in I'm I'll
be free in a couple of hours or whatever, and
I said I won't be home until half eight, and
we were kind of texting or not, and then I
actually rang her that evening. We were on the phone
for about forty minutes, and I just felt so much
better afterwards, you know, or when I met the girls,
Like I was worried like that that was going to
(47:23):
be really difficult. I was worried that I was going
to be really emotional and upset afterwards. But I actually
felt supported and empowered leaving and driving home, you know,
and even your your podcast, the trailer for your podcast.
One of my friends, she volunteers with the sexual assault
unit here in the city, and I kind of I
(47:43):
just told everybody that I had Cotton cheating on me.
That was what I told people, and that it was
over and I needed space or whatever, which my friend
came in and I actually played her the trailer for
your for the Filthy John podcast and she just sat
there and looked at me and she was like, oh
my god. She was like, do you mind if I
(48:04):
go often listen to the rest of it? And I
said no. But so she's she's the she's she's my
friend who knows everything. So my family I would have
told that he was cheating on me. My parents would
know a little bit more, and that I found a
group of girls, that he's a serial teater, a serial
teater manipulator, that I've been really really lucky in terms
(48:27):
of you know, that there was no physical violent breadth.
There was all those other kind of threats and gas
lighting and stuff that the girls would have spoken about.
My mum even said to She said to me, she
was like, you tell the girls. I said thanks, And
I was like why and she said, because you can
tell me what you want to tell me. But I'll
never understand. And I think this is something that people
(48:49):
need to to understand. People who are listening who've never
been in this type of a relationship. You never truly
understand what it's like unless you have been there, and
even unless you've in with that particular person, Like these
girls knew exactly what I was talking about. They knew
about the laughter, they knew about the fun, and then
(49:09):
they knew about the lies and the stories in the
same way that he worked with them, that he was
that he was working on me, and these women knew that.
And I think it's.
Speaker 4 (49:18):
Important that that as women and as victims of this,
these types of behaviors, that we stand together and that
we don't victim blame and that we don't put comments
about say, like I saw a comment recently I am
saying that, like, oh, I listened to the podcast, so
I had to go and find him on one of
the groups, and I thought he was.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Going to be drafted a gorgeous but she must have
a magic really walk of fook. Girls like talk about
impounding and like making us feel bad when we did
nothing wrong, Like we are victims of such a well tuned, manipulated,
(50:00):
sure sociopath, you know, Like I'm not a mental health professional,
but like there's no question about the fact that he
has no remorse because he just keeps doing it over
and over again, and he's using the same stories, and
I'm sure he's not the only one. And nail or female,
and I think it's really important that anybody listening to
your podcast understands that we need to support victims to
(50:25):
come forward for four things like this. I don't know
where I would be if it wasn't for being able
to find your podcast and to listen to the story
and to touch base with the girls. And it has
made such a difference to me in looking after myself
since and realizing that actually, you know orally, you did
(50:46):
nothing wrong.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Thank you for listening to part five of Filthy John.
Please like, subscribe, and share. In our next episode, we
will meet Linda again. If you've been affected by any
of the issues mentioned, please know that you're not alone.
Support is available. Reach out to Women's Aid or the
Dublin Rape Crisis Center for help and guidance.
You meet a man. He's funny, attentive, he actually listens
to you. You go on a date and you get
home with sore cheeks from laughing. He says all the
right things, wants the same things. It feels easy and rare.
Dates turn into a relationship and you think this is
exactly what you've been looking for. Now imagine discovering everything
(00:22):
he told you was a lie, and you're only one
of many women he has on the go. This is
a story of Filthy John, a compulsive liar, a manipulator,
a man with a serious drug problem, a habit of stealing,
and a dangerous temper. On the surface, he was hilarious, affectionate,
the perfect man. But behind the scenes, he was creating
(00:44):
chaos in multiple women's lives, lying to them, mirroring their personalities,
love bombing, stealing, vanishing, reappearing, and slowly wrecking their sense
of reality. These women didn't just overlap, their lives became
tangled in the most bizarre ways. In this podcast, you'll
(01:05):
hear from five of them, five women brave enough to
sit down and tell their story. There are more, but
some of them are too scared to speak. This is
a story about manipulation, survival, and the power that comes
when women start comparing notes. I was at home one
evening in mid August when I checked my email and
(01:26):
saw a message from a woman named Orla. Her subject
line caught my eye, and when I opened it, my
stomach dropped. She wrote, I just came across the podcast
and I've been a victim of this guy. We met
in March and broke up just two weeks ago. I
think I'm going to be sick. I don't even know
what to say or think right now. I'm listening to
Monica's episode. I know all about Monica and Anya and
(01:49):
others I thought were just his friend's apologies for the
word vomit. After a few messages back and forth, I
put Orla in touch with Monica so they could talk directly.
As it turned out, Monica already knew of Orla. John's
daughter had mentioned her dad's new friend to her own mother,
who passed the name on to Monica, and Monica had
been trying to find her online ever since, hoping to
(02:12):
warn her about John, but couldn't track her down. So
when I connected them, Monica was relieved, finally a face
to the name, and Orla Brave as our other ladies,
agreed to share her story on the podcast in order
to help other women in a similar situation.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Can I say first that I just want to say
thank you. I want to say thank you to you
for recording with the girls. I want to say thank
you for replying to my email when I came across
the podcast, and then for touch and base with the
girls so that I could link in with them, and
I have done since, and I think that that has
(02:49):
made such a difference in terms of me looking after
myself and knowing that I have done nothing wrong. I
think one of the reasons as well that I wanted
to come on and talk to you was one because
he needs to be stopped. There's no question about that
that that his behavior is not okay. But I think
(03:10):
that there's a there's a wider part to this as well,
And I think that that wider bit is trying to
teach other not just women, because it's men as well,
and whatever gender you are, like, it's it's irrelevant. Gender
is irrelevant when it comes to this. But there are
people out there in general that are such master manipulators
(03:32):
and have practiced their skill for so long that we
don't actually realize it even when we're in it, like
when these things are happening to us, Like I'm educated.
You know, all the girls are educated. We're all smart women,
but we were all sucked in by it, by the behaviors,
by the actions, by the by the words. And I
think that by coming here and being able to talk
(03:56):
to you, it's it's helping not only stop him, but
also for those people out there listening who might feel
that they're they're in some form of a similar situation,
to realize that you know this, you know it's it's
not your fault, and that you can slowly start to
(04:16):
take yourself away and to look at other ways of
getting support and figuring a way out if it's getting
to a point where you know you're in danger.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
At the start or the thought. John was amazing, funny, charming,
and so attentive. He seemed genuinely interested in her, always
saying the right thing, always there when she needed him.
It felt easy, natural, like she had just met somebody
who truly saw her.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
The same as the same as the other girls met.
We matched on Tinder. I don't remember what his profile
was like now anymore, but I remember we matched and
I he messaged me almost straight away when we matched,
and the message I got was really really funny. So
straight away he had me engaged, like do you know
(05:04):
anybody who goes on dating apps nowadays knows it's well, Hi,
how are you? Are you having a good evening? What
did you do? Do you know? You have all these
really boring start off messages? So straight away he has
you captivated. So straight away you're just like, oh, this
is like And I was actually laughing at the very
first message, and I was like, I'll have to apply
to this guy. We were chatting over and back on
(05:27):
Tinder for a while and then he was like, oh,
could we have a chat like do you know I
really like it? And I was like yeah, sure. It's
like I kind of I'm not a type of person
who says, oh I wouldn't give my mobile number out.
I think if there's ever any issues with your mobile number,
you can just block Them's that's kind of my feeling
on it. So I was like, yeah, sure, so and
again I know that the girls would have said this
(05:48):
as well, that like some of them would have been
talking to him on into the night for you know,
night after night, whereas I actually have IVO chronic health condition,
so I get very tired, very easily. I live with
chronic pain all the time. So for me, I think
that first conversation, yeah, it was well over an hour,
(06:09):
probably too, and I think it came to about eleven
o'clock at night, and nor I would be well asleep
by eleven o'clock at night, and I was just yawning
down the phone, going, look, I have to go. I'll
talk to you tomorrow and straight away, like I fell
asleep and I got up then you know, the next morning,
and there was loads of messages say, you know, I
really enjoyed talking to you, oh, like I miss you
(06:30):
already and stuff that I was kind of going, you
can't miss me already, do you know what I mean?
But I was kind of go, oh, yeah, it's kind
of nice and kind of just just dragging you in
like little by little. And do you know he had
told me obviously that he had full custody of his
daughter and that, you know, so that would might make
(06:52):
things difficult. We worked out that I lived about an
hour away from where he was. Compared to the other girls,
I'm very lucky in that it's it's been a very
short period of time for me. I know the other
girls would have been in, you know, much longer relationships
with him. I think I think for me it was
(07:16):
just he and the girls would have said this like
to say that he would have you crying with laughter,
like he is one really really funny man and part
of you. Afterwards, when when when you're reflecting on the
relationship afterwards, you're going like, was that real? You know,
was that part of it real? But then he's such
(07:37):
a good liar that it's very hard when you do
look back and you go, Okay, maybe it wasn't or
maybe it was. I don't know, but he would have
been asking all of these questions at the very start.
I'm quite I wouldn't be hugely open when it comes
to a lot of things. So but he kept asking questions.
So he keeps learning more and more about you, and
(07:59):
he keeps asking and he'll ask the same questions again,
so you're getting he's reminding himself all the time about
the things that you like and the things that are
important to you. And then, as one of the girls said,
he basically morphs himself into the man that you want.
That as the kind of a couple of weeks went by.
I think the first the first week that we matched
(08:20):
was the start of March, and he was he was
going away for the weekend just before Paddy's. I was like, oh,
you know, that's fine. Like, I'm also not the type
of person if I'm on a dating app when I'm
chatting to somebody, I'm kind of like, you know, yeah,
is there a little bit of a spark when we're
texting over and back? Like me for coffee, Let's get
(08:40):
it over and done with kind of thing. So it
kind of got pushed away, pushed out a little bit
longer than I would normally like. And then when when
we did meet, we were supposed to be kind of
meeting halfway. Supposedly his daughter was sick and he couldn't
meet halfway and would I mind going up to him?
And I was kind of going that point. I knew
I liked him. We you know, we had loads of conversations,
(09:03):
loads texts, like we were always laughing on the phone,
and I was like, yeah, Beckett, I would. So I
drove up. It's not far, it's not it wasn't like
I was traveling two hours. It was like a bare
hour up the road. So that was fine, and we
met and we got on really well. Probably not the
type of guy that I would normally go for looks wise,
(09:24):
but you know, we got on well. We you know,
we seem to have the same type of sense of humor,
We had all of that kind of seemed to be,
you know, going well. So I was like, yeah, I
don't think he's the He's not the type of man
that you would look at and go, oh my god,
he's dropped a gorgeous But then I think because he's
so good at making you laugh and having things in common,
(09:46):
that they're all the types of things that make people
attracted to other people. Yeah, so I drove up and
we got on really well. We had a coffee for
a walk, and because of the condition that I have,
as I was saying, I would get very tired, I
get very dizzy and I can faint, he started to
make this big deal about saying, oh, you know, are
you okay? You look pretty tired. You're looking a little
(10:08):
bit gray. And I was like, no, no, I'm fine.
You know, like I've had coffee, grand I'll you know,
I'll get another coffee halfway down. If i'm tired, I'll
take a break for whatever, which is what I would
often do if I'm driving. But he made a big
point about going and getting me a bar of chocolate.
And I wasn't hungry, but he was like he made
me eat the bar of chocolate and that yeah, because
(10:30):
he was like, oh, I'm really worried you're going to
faint on the way down. And I was kind of going,
I'm not hungry, I don't want to eat this fucking
bar chocolate, but I ate the bar chocolate just to
show I think. I eat half the bar chocolate to
shut up. But I was like in my head, going,
you're annoying the hell out of me. But oh my god,
this is so sweet. I'm like, oh, you know, he's
really worried about me, and all of this. I left
and I was I was driving home, and I'd say
(10:51):
I was twenty minutes in the car and then he
rang and he was like, are you okay, Like I'm so,
I'm just home now, and you know, my daughter's okay,
she's you know, she's not too on well, and but
I'm really worried about Jen, Like, will you talk to
me for the rest of the journey home. So I
was like, I can talk to you for ten minutes,
(11:12):
but I have to ring somebody else, So like, do
you know, I'll talk to you for a white So
that was fine, and then almost straight away it was
just that it was just constant. It was like, you know,
when can I see you again? And then it was like, oh,
I really really like you. And you know, after about
three or four weeks of like after the first day,
say three or four weeks after that, like we were
(11:33):
spending a little bit more time together, and then he
starts going on saying, oh, like I started to fall
in love with you from the minute we had our
first phone call. I knew that you were going to
be the one for me. And like when I when
I think about it now and I'm talking to you now,
I'm like, you dope, Like you're you know, you're an
absolute dope. But at the same time, all of the
(11:55):
all of that that love bombing was, it was wrapped
up been actions. So so like say, for example, one
obviously that you know, I'm worried about each of our
topic before you go home. But then when like the
first time that he came to my house, I've only
I had my house rented out for a long number
of years, so I'm not back in at that long.
So there's loads of work that needs to be done
(12:16):
around my house. So the very first time he was here,
he went around and he fixed some of the windows
weren't closing properly, and I was like, it's going to
cost me fortune to get somebody into to fix my
windows and everything. So we went around the house and
he fixed the doors, he fixed the windows. So there
was all of this like, yes, okay, it was a
little bit hot and heavy, but then it was all
(12:37):
wrapped up in actions that were proving to me that
this is actually how he feels, like that he is
concerned about me and he wants me to have, you know,
things working properly in my house. And you know, similar
like if he was coming down, say today, when I
was finished working, he'd drive in and he'd be like,
oh no, no, no, I'll I cook dinner. So like I'd
(12:58):
arrive in from work, he or ive in and he'd
start cooking dinner straight away, because like, I hate cooking.
It's fine to say somebody is love bombing you, and
can you not realize that somebody is love bombing you.
But when you're having all of these like you know,
somebody saying like, oh, they're falling in love with you,
like very early, or you know, I really miss you,
or I really care for you, or you know, saying
(13:21):
all of these things, but then when they're actually combined
with actions, it's very difficult to distinguish that, you know, actually,
you know, this isn't real. Even meeting like he met
my parents, he sucked my parents in, like to say that,
(13:41):
you know, he was all about like being you know,
part of my family, you know, wanting to meet my
parents and you know, to tell them and show them
that you know, oh, you know that I care about
you so much.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
From chatting and cross referencing with the other women on
the podcast, or realizes that none of them were seeing
John during the time that she was with him from
March to July twenty twenty five. But as we revealed
at the end of episode four, John already has a
steady girlfriend now, the one who earlier this year got
his name tattooed on the back of her neck. What
(14:15):
Orla didn't know then was that John was still with
that same woman when he met her on Tinder and
he's still with her now.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
When I think back on it now, I was like,
I don't know how many other people he was dating
while he was dating me. I have no idea. I
know definitely one other. I know that the other girls
wouldn't have been at the time, But how he was
managing that, I have no idea, because he was always
on the phone to me. If he wasn't here, he
was on the phone to me. And then like there'd
(14:43):
be times where he could be here for like four
or five days in a row and you're just kind
of gone, like do you know, and even a space
like would you go home kind of thing. One of
the other things as well, I suppose that the girls
would have said is that like they would have had
say like money would have gone missing. That was never
really any I did have a money box go missing,
all right, do you know, like you know, like a
(15:03):
money box that you would you know, you have to
open with a tin opener that I put all my
like chopnel in, so like my five and ten cents
and stuff. One of those went missing in my utility room.
He would have known, he would have seen it there,
but there was nothing like it's all five ten twenty cent.
It's all that rubbish that you don't want to keep
in your purse that I just throw into the money box.
I said it to him. I was like, John, did
(15:26):
you say that much the money box that I have
in the because I have like my purse is full
of like five cents and I want to get rid
of them, like I don't know where I'm after putting it.
And one with my condition, I do get a lot
of brain flog and I can move things and put
things in certain places and then completely forget about them.
But even then, like I know some of the girls
would have said that they would have given him money
for other for different things and like on dates and
(15:49):
stuff that they would have ended up having to pay
things like that. That was never something that happened for me.
So that was never a big red flag. So again,
you know, it was something that I didn't experience. And
I don't know whether that was because it was relatively
new and I now, I didn't get to the point where,
(16:11):
you know, it was nine months down the line or
a year down the line, where things would have like
he would have been looking for money or saying he'd
forgotten his wallet or whatever. There was once or twice
over the few months, but I think again like there
was I didn't really think anything of it at the time.
I think there was twice in the whole the whole
time where he was like, oh, after my my wallet
(16:33):
at home. But because other than that, if we went
to the shop, he bought the ingredients for the dinner,
or if we were going to the pub, he bought
the drink. But I do know that it's very different
to what the others experienced. The other thing that I
did find and I know that they would have said
in you know, when they were telling their stories, gifts
got kind of passed around the only thing. So I
(16:55):
didn't get anything like gifts wise or anything like that,
but I did so part of my condition, I would
have a lot of medication that I would take on
a daily basis, and then I have other medications that
I would take kind of haphazardly around the month or whatever,
depending on what my symptoms are.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Orla has always tried to be upfront about her chronic
health condition with the men that she meets. In the past,
she would wait until things felt serious before mentioning it,
only to be ghosted by men she really liked, so
she decided to be honest from the start. She told
John early on about the realities of her condition, the fatigue,
the memory lapses, the occasional fuzzy brain, and while he
(17:32):
seemed understanding at first, looking back orla and see how
he sometimes used that knowledge to his advantage, subtly twisting situations,
making her second guess herself.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
I have a condition called Errs down loss, so it's
hypermobility ERRS and loss. Basically, it's a collagen dysfunction disorder,
so collagen that my body produces is faulty. Practically everything
in your body needs collagen. So like I would have had,
like my first back surgery when I was in my twenties,
a lot of arthritis. I've got chronic pain. It comes
(18:04):
with mental health issues, it comes with organ issues, sleep problems.
So yeah, it's it's full on genetic condition. Like it's genetics,
so's there's nothing you can do really about it. So
I would have obviously different medications then, and I would
have a lot of one of like when a term
comes to mental health, you would get a lot of anxiety.
(18:26):
So I would have some xenics that I always get,
and I don't have to use them all the time,
but I, you know, I do need them depending on
what's happening in work or in life or whatever. And
I went to go and find to get some one
day and they were gone, and I turn around and
I was like, done, did you take some of my xenics?
(18:49):
I was like, if you did, like, just let me know.
That's fine. Knowing that he would have told me he
was a drug addict, that he was no longer using drugs.
He would have told me at the start, Yeah, that
he would have. You know, we had full custody of
his daughter. He hadn't taken any drugs since she was born.
The exact same story is as what the girls had.
That he didn't really drink. Now, that wouldn't have been
(19:13):
my experience of him. He did like a drink, and
I wouldn't be a huge drinker, so I'd be kind
of like trying to sip away on a drink while
he was drinking. But again, it wasn't every single night
he was here. You know, there was lots of nights
where we didn't drink because again, it's not something that's
good for my body, so I don't like to do it.
(19:33):
Very often. So yeah, I was a little bit suspicious
over that because I was, like, my meds are kept
in the same place. I'm very particular about my medication
because I need to take medication at certain Like if
I don't take certain medications in the morning, I can
easily pass out when I stand up. I'll stand up
my blood pressure with oh, my heart rate goes all
(19:54):
over place, and I can get really dizzy and a confined.
So he knew all this about me because I I
would have told them at the start. Again, when it
comes to that, for me, if I was, you know,
talking to people online, I've often found that it's actually
easier to let people know, like I do have this condition,
and it does mean that I tend to go to
sleep early. But I do work. You know, I live.
(20:17):
I do work. I live on my own. I like
to swim, I go to the gym. I do all
of these things to keep myself healthy. So he would
have said to me after I had asked him about
like the zana, he was like, Oh, no, that must
be the brain fog. That must be your head. You
must have put it somewhere else. And I was kind
of gone, No, I've checked the places where I put
my mets, and then the following month, when I collected
(20:37):
my prescriptions, I actually hid them in a different place
just in case. I'm just going to put these aside
because I need to know where they are and that
I have them. After about two months, I started to
get suspicious because this had happened around the same time
the money box had gone missing. But other than that,
(20:59):
every thing was really good. You know, we ate dinner together,
we cooked together, we cleaned together, we did things around
the house, we went for walks. It was like a
really normal relationship. But just pull on very fast. He
had said to me at one point, Oh, I'm gonna
have to apologize to my daughter's mother because I thought
(21:22):
I was in love, but I wasn't really in love
until I met you.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Early in the relationship, John began name dropping his two
best female friends, Monica and Anya. What Ora didn't know
was that these were his ex girlfriends, women he had
wronged yet couldn't let go of. He kept reaching out,
always hoping to maintain some kind of connection despite the
damage he had caused.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
There were things like say, Monica was his best friend
and Anya was one of his best friends, but Anya
lived further away. I can't remember where he told me
where she lived, but I knew that Monica wasn't too
far away. And he was like, oh, they're like herself
and her husband are my best friends. And I was like,
oh sure, Like you know, why don't we get them
(22:04):
to come down or we could meet them somewhere, you know,
we meet for coffee or whatever. And then the more
I kept kind of saying, well, like when am I
going to meet Monica and her husband? Then all of
a sudden he was like, Oh, I think they're getting separated.
There's a new manager and work, and now she's going
to work called Although it turns out it turns out
she was married to her brother there, she wasn't. He
(22:29):
was using her brother's name. He hasn't worked out so
well that he keeps his stories close together, so that
if he happened to mention Monica and so and so,
he could say, oh, well that's because you know that way,
instead of like making things up and that he might
(22:50):
forget this way. He was always using names that could
possibly pop up in a relationship. You know, we're in
a conversation. The other thing that he says, and I
don't know whether it's true or whether it's not. Is
that what he told me? I don't actually know if
he said it to the girls either, that he has
(23:11):
this memory, this memory condition, and that basically he remembers everything.
Not necessarily photogenic, but the type of oh my god,
what's the movie? I think is of the rain Man?
Do you know that movie? I think it's The rain Man.
He has a type of autism where he basically remembers
(23:32):
all of his conversations and remember what he wore in
a certain day. So he tells you this at the
more or less at the very start of the relationship.
So straight away he's making you think, okay, well, I
can never lie or I can never tell a white
lie or a little bib because he's going to remember.
Whether or not that's true, I don't know. I have
(23:55):
no idea, but I definitely believe that because he has
been practicing this art, and it is an art. There's
no way, and I'm not saying that in a positive thing.
This is an art that he has gotten down to
a t. So that whether he's using one of those
you know, those memory things, those memory there's loads of
(24:16):
different there's loads of different techniques that you can use
to remember practically everything. So for me when when we
met and we were talking, so this was almost nearly
straight away, this was like, oh, well, I have this
memory thing and I remember everything. And he was explaining
that his memory is like a tree, and he'll tell
(24:38):
you the same stories over and over again because if
he wants to tell you something that's at the end
of the branch, he has to go through every story
that's on that branch in order to get to the
one bit that he wants to actually tell you. So
and it is there. It is a type of memory
I can't remember. I remember googling it at the time
because he gave me the name of the actual condition,
(25:00):
and I remember looking it up and I was like,
oh my god, this makes so much sense that, like
he just remembers everything.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
It was fine for John to have an array of friendships,
always female, but he tried hard to isolate Orla from
her own family and friends. He sees on small comments
or moments something someone in her life had said and
twist them, bringing them up over and over. He would
say things like I just know me and them aren't
going to get along, planting tension before there was any
(25:30):
He asked repeatedly if she'd been talking to people, and
if Orla mentioned even the smallest disagreement, he would fixate
on that. It was a constant effort to drive a
wedge between her and the people closest to her, slowly
chipping away at her support system. But Orla didn't let him.
She would push back, saying, you don't have to get
on with them, as long as you treat me well,
that's what matters. Still, he persisted, repeating the same tactics,
(25:54):
hoping to wear her down. Looking back, Orla recognizes this
as his particular form of Unlike the other women, he
didn't use her for money or childcare. With her, it
was about control through isolation. He would even say things like,
we can never go out with your friends or family
because I'll just tell them how badly they treat you.
It's better if it's just us two. Or Will never
(26:17):
allowed herself to be fully isolated, but the pressure made
life extremely difficult. His need for control didn't stop there.
It extended further, invading her privacy by reading her diary
and trying to completely stop her male friendships.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
He was starting to make me question my friendships with
men and then like, oh, they're just after one pain
and I'm like, well, no, I've been friends with these
guys my whole life and nothing has ever happened, So
where is the issue with that? And then there was
one time and this was a big thing for me,
(26:54):
and this is, I think, is really where it started
to come to a point where he was really getting suspicious.
He came to me and he said I read your
journal and I was like, what the book were you
but I only read it from where when we started dating.
And I was like, well, what the fuck were you
(27:14):
doing looking at my journal? Like how first point? Why
why were you opening the drawer that my journal is
peped in? And he said, oh, I was looking for
your passport because I wanted to bring you away. We
had a huge blair, like a huge row over it.
I was like, how dare you invade my space? But
he managed to even turn that around and he was like, well,
you you wrote about like this guy that that that
(27:37):
you had. You had this conversation with this guy since
we since we started dating. And I was like, hey,
he's a friend of mine and he was looking he
wanted to talk, So I didn't know at the time,
what what advice he was looking for? So I was
thinking about about myself and I used my journal as
a way of you know, just going through life and
and helping helping me with my condition. So he then
(28:00):
then started to question my relationship with that particular friend.
And then but he does it so well because it's
wrapped up in this concern that you know, I'm really
concerned for you, and he's really only looking for one pain.
He just wants sex from you. That's all he wants
in your Like you really need to use You seem
(28:22):
to think that you can have friendships with men, or like,
you don't just have friendships with men, they like they
all want something. I was so upset that my my
privacy had been invaded. But then it was like, well,
you know, why were you writing about a conversation that
you'd had with this male friend. And then it was like,
(28:45):
you know, you really need to reevaluate your friendships. And
I'm only doing this because I'm concerned for you and
I want to be your journal. I don't want you
to need to write in a journal. I want you
to be able to tell me everything. And I was
kind of going, but I'm not going to tell you everything.
I'm not going to tell anybody everything, Like there's a
reason why I have my journal, John, and this is
(29:07):
what it's about. So and then it was kind of like, oh,
have you written in your journal? Have you written it?
Like afterwards, have you written in your journal? Have you
written in your journal? And I was like, no, no,
I haven't, I haven't. So I left the journal in
the same place, with the same note, with the same pens,
exact same thing, didn't write in it, but a new
journal and hit it in a different place. Part of
it as well was I don't know whether it goes
(29:27):
on to the term of gas writing or control or
whatever it is, but he obviously read in my journal
about me saying like at the start kind of going
you know, I like the fact that he's an hour
away from me. It gives me my space. And then
as it kind of like say two or three weeks in,
it was like, you know, he's saying, you know that
(29:48):
he really likes me, that he's falling in it and
over with me, and it's like, this is very early.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. And that's
how I would process a lot of my emotions so
obviously when he read my journal, he was like, Okay, well,
if I don't stop this, this girl isn't going to lie,
isn't going to be around because she's going to see
through all of the things that I'm doing, because she's
going to reflect on her journal. Then, so there were
(30:09):
all these these things at the start where you know,
it was all the like the actions were meeting the words,
and then you know, some of my meds went missing,
the money box went missing. Then he found my journal.
But then there were big things were happening. So we
were supposed to go to this really nice restaurant in town,
and that got canceled because his daughter was sick. My
(30:33):
friend was getting married and supposedly he had his suit
and he had like the back of his waistcoat was
the same color. It was going to match my dress,
and he couldn't wait to go. And then like the
night before, his dad was dying in hospital, so he
couldn't he couldn't go to the wedding. And at this
(30:55):
point I was like, this, this is this isn't how
relationships work.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
A couple of months into the relationship, Orla was keen
to meet John's family, but as always he fobbed her off.
She knew his father had been unwell and would ask
about meeting his mother for lunch, only to be met
with excuses. Eventually, to shut her down completely, he told
her that his father was dying and that any family
meetings were completely off the cards for the time being.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
He had told me that his dad had gone into
hospital in Wexford and I was dying. They'd all been
called in so and I think this would have been
he was possibly starting to date somebody else, so he
needed a way of not spending all of his time
with me. So or maybe it was the other girl
(31:44):
who was looking for more attention, I don't know. So
all of a sudden then that after like a week
or so, the dad ended up going from Wexford up
to a specialist hospital in Dublin. Was on life support
at one point then wasn't on life support, had a
brain tumor, was dying basically right, So this is what
I was led to believe. But at the same time,
(32:05):
it's like these where the big things. So the big
words weren't meeting the big actions, if that makes sense.
So like at the start, it was the smaller things,
like you know, you know, fixing doors, things like that.
But then it was the big things like going you know,
going out for a really nice fancy meal, going to
my friend's wedding, a couple of other things that didn't happen.
(32:26):
But at the same time, and this is something that
I think is really important to point out for anybody
who's in this type of a relationship, smaller actions were happening.
So my house, again, because of my condition, I keep
a really try deep clean house because if it gets messy,
I get overwhelmed. I can't spend I don't have the
(32:48):
energy that other people would have two hours to just
clean a house top to bottom. I have to do
with twenty minutes and then stop twenty minutes, stop twenty minutes,
take an hour, break, lie down. Rex Everything has its place,
and everything goes into its place. From the very start,
when he would arrive in the house, he would leave
his shoes just inside the front door, whereas when I
take my shoes off when I come in, they get
(33:09):
put on at the stairs. But I never said anything.
I just was kind of going, yeah, like he'll cop
on and eventually they will go in onder the stairs.
Same similarly with you know, you know, your your plastic
bottles that you now return, it would stay on the
counter and not go into the bag in the utility
room where they then get brought. Same thing with the
(33:30):
glass bottles, they wouldn't go into the container in the
utility room. So then when I started saying, like, you
know why, you know this was supposed to happen, and
this was supposed to happen, and we haven't done any
of this. When I started questioning him on where those
big words weren't meeting with big actions, those little smaller
actions started happening. Now when I came in, his shoes
(33:52):
were under the stairs. Now when he finished a bottle,
it went into the correct bag, or the glass went
to the glass set in the utility room. So that
or if we were going for a walk, because like
literally you walk out of my house, they're like five
hundred minutes down the road as a bottle dine. So
then say we were walking down to the shop, he'd say, oh,
there's two bottles there, let's bring them down. But the
(34:15):
smaller things were happening to take away from the big
things because there was less to necessarily I suppose nag
or give, you know, there'll be types of things that
that I think boyfriends would often say, oh my god,
all she does is nagne because I don't put my
shoes in the right place sor And I think that's
a really important thing to point out as well to
women that like the big things are women and men
(34:36):
anybody that like to take away from the big actions
not happening, the smaller things were happening just to deflect
your brain. And it was only afterwards when I looked
back on it and I was trying to put a
time in and again with my memory, it's not fantastic,
but trying to put a timeline in place for myself.
I was like, yeah, because I questioned him on that,
(34:57):
and then the next day he was like, oh, just
see where I put my shoes. So he knew exactly
what he was doing. Like he's been doing this for
twenty years, if not longer. He has this down to
a fine art. He knows his stories and like some
of the stories are mad, like I don't know to
have the timper girls tell you about him being friends
with the DJ Denny Green on two FM, Like you know,
(35:19):
those stories are crazy, Like I wonder if he actually,
like truly believes some of them because he's been using
the same stories for so long. For me, it was
it was getting to that point where I was like,
this is I'm getting to point now where I've had enough.
I don't care if I love him, and I don't
care if he loves me. If you're going to say
(35:40):
things and then not do them, well, then clearly you
don't really love me. And that's where I was going
in my head. And then there was a day I
was getting my car ncted and I was talking to him.
So the car was in getting mc teed and I
was talking to him on the phone and he was hyper.
(36:00):
Without a doubt, he was on affeterans. There is no
question about it. He was hyper. He was talking really
really fast. He asking him to slow down his voice.
The tone of his voice was higher, and I and
I was like, are you okay? You know you're sounding
a bit weird. Are you okay? And he was like yeah, no, no, no,
I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm fine. And then I was like, oh,
(36:21):
I think car should be nearly finished now, I'll talked
to you later. I got off the phone from him
and I texted him. I was like, sure, you're okay.
That was brand Anyway, my car failed, right, the NCT
got into the car and took picture of the faults
that had to be fixed, and I text him and
I was like, oh my god, I think I want
to cry. And that was it. The tick never went blue.
(36:42):
So he basically I questioned him because I was one
hundred pcentury, he was on afeterons, there was no question.
I was like, are you sure you're okay, sent him
a photograph. So within twenty minutes of getting off the phone,
he had gasted me that whole evening. I remember coming
home that whole evening, you know, I left him alone,
and then I texted him like an hour and a
(37:02):
half later, like are you okay. I'm really worried. You know,
if you've taken drugs, it's fine, you know, we can
talk about it whatever, and nothing, absolutely nothing. And remember
at this point I was really suspicious anyway, I just
was not sure what was going on, and I didn't
believe a lot of what he was saying to me.
(37:24):
So following morning, still you know, not answering. So I
went to affect this and I hopped in the car
and I was like, all right, I'm gonna drive up,
so hopped in the car oil.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I had had enough. She wasn't going to be ghosted
by her boyfriend now ex boyfriend of four months just
because he had gone on a bender. She decided it
was time to talk to him face to face to
sort things out or put it to bed properly like adults.
So she set off for John's house, or at least
what she thought was his house.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
So I got up to the heart, drove down the
lane and knocked on the door. Who opened the door?
His dad? How I was able to keep it straight?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I don't know, like I can still. I can still
see it, like I can see him and I opened
opening the door. I can see him coming through the window.
In my head going what the ok.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
It's all been a big, huge, like in my head
going this is it? Like it's all been a big,
huge life. And his dad answers the door. I was like,
it's John here, and he was like no, no, no,
oh jeez. I actually thought that was his car coming
in there now. And I was like, no, no, that's
my car. And who are you? I was like, oh,
(38:45):
just a friend and where are you from? Oh, I'm
just from over the road. Do you want to come in? No, No,
that's fine, Sure, he said you'd be here. But I
send him a text, and I got back in the
car and I drove home and I sent him a
text go on your one fucking lion piece shit got home.
(39:06):
I think I sent him a few very on nice
messages with a lot of not nice wording. And then
at that point then I remembered somebody telling me before
that day. When I got home, I remember somebody telling
me before about those groups on Facebook are dating. So
(39:27):
I was like, right, I'm just going to see because
I can't. I can't. I can't just because like at
this point, I didn't know. I just thought he just
lied to me about everything, or did he like to
me about everything? I have no idea what's going on?
And what the hell is wrong with me? What have
I done?
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Why?
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Why? Why? Why? Like what's wrong with me? So yeah,
I got home and I remember somebody telling me about
these sites before, or these pages on Facebook before. So
I started googling or searching on Facebook, and I found
like in Ireland, won the Southeast one and another one,
and I just basically went to join, join and join,
and then I think a couple of days later, I
(40:08):
got approved for the Southeast one, and the first thing
I did was start searching his name, and Filthy John
came up and I knew without even looking any further
or anything. I knew because of his sexual desires and everything.
(40:31):
I just knew Filthy John. I went, that's him. There's
no question about it. That's him. So I clicked on
the link and it brought me to your podcast. It
was so weird because I started to listen to Monica
and I was like, I know this woman. I know
so much about this woman because he was her best friend,
didn't spoke a better all the time, or she was
(40:52):
his best friend and he spoke a better all the time.
And here she is talking about the fact that she
had been in a relationship with him. I'm like, oh
my god. And I stopped the podcast or so I
press pause and I emailed you straight away and I went,
I think I'm I'm another victim, And you know you
(41:14):
replied that evening and straight away, you know you would said, look,
I've touched base with Monica, and if he you know,
she's there if you want to talk to her. So
straight away again, I was listening and I'd stopped listening,
and then I was listening and I was stopped listening,
and I was like, oh my god, I've heard this.
This is exactly I know this. I know this story.
And the same with Anya. Anya was another one of
(41:36):
his best friends. So there were two like I was like,
I know these women. This is really weird. And then
I was like, I know that story. I know that story.
Oh that's I know that I heard that, and even
the whole thing I think he told He told one
of the other girls that he was the one with
the brain tumor, and I was like, oh, well, his
dad has it now. And the more that I listened,
I was like, oh my god, I am so lucky
(41:59):
that I actually listened to my gut that day, and
I got in the car and I drove up, because
if I hadn't gotten in my car and driven up,
I don't know what would have happened a week or
two weeks later, because if I had just left him,
he could have easily just come back in and said, oh,
I'm so sorry, you know, I just there was it
(42:21):
was too much. Life was too much, and I needed
to break away from everybody. And so he had done
something like that before where he had kind of been
become very quiet, and he was like, oh, I just
want to spend as much time as I can with
my daughter this weekend. Because I caught him out, so obviously,
I think that that saved me from possibly going down
(42:41):
the route and taking him back, or you know, him
coming back into my life and wheedling his way back
into my life in two weeks after that, so I
had said to him like, at one point, I was like, look,
can you at least give me back my key? Just
like throwing in the in the post. When I realized everything,
I was like I kind of wanted answers or and
(43:03):
I know I'll never get answers. And for me, you know,
talking to you is part of taking back the control
from him. At one point, they went they did the
ticks went blue about two weeks ago, three weeks ago,
and I just got a message back saying I'm really
really sorry, I'll drop back your key, and I just replied, Now,
(43:24):
I had met the girls at this point, so knew
everything had, you know, was like Yeah, I'm I'm gonna
I'm gonna talk to dating Iran. I'm gonna I'm not
gonna leave this ruin my life. So I had replied
and I just said, you know, oh, I'm really really
worried about I hope you're okay, and like you can
just put the key in the post. And that hasn't
(43:45):
that hasn't gone blue yet. No, but I'm not blocked
because I actually I accidentally rang him from my watch.
I was doing something. I don't know how I manage it,
but I was actually like accidentally rang him from my
smart watch and I was I wouldn't mind, but it
was about half six in the morning, like because I
get up really really early, and it rang through. So
(44:06):
I'm not blocked. I'm not blocked yet. He has this
he uses the term the term cunt all the time,
so he'll call he'd call you a cunt. But he
he starts off very very like from the very start
of the relationship. He says that, oh, I use the
term cunt, but it's I use it all the time,
but it's just a curse word, and it's a really
good curse word, and it's but I only use it
(44:28):
as a term of endearment. So it's only the people
that are really important in my life that I'll actually
call a cunt. So I was like, to me, I
know some people absolutely hate the word. Now to me,
I don't really care. It's a curse word if you
use it to use it. But he makes such a
big deal over it that when he does call you it,
you're just like, oh, yeah, whatever, Like every now and
(44:48):
then I call it to you know, I call him
a come back or whatever. But afterwards, when I thought
about it, and when I realized, like what he had
been doing for all the months and all the years
that he's been doing it to all the other women,
that he's actually using it as a way of reinforcing
what he's doing in his own brain. So he's instead
(45:10):
of him calling me like, you know, me telling a
joke and him laughing and him going, ah, that was funny, Hunt,
he's actually going you're a stupid fucking hunt, and I
have you caught, and I am going to do whatever
I fucking want to you because you think I love
you and you think that I'm going to give you
all of these things that I've promised. So it's actually
(45:31):
his way of calling it out to you in your
face without you realizing it, because he has wrapped up
in this beautiful term of endearment. And that's one of
the other things as well. With John was like, so
because I don't have or I have problems sleeping, I
will I wake up very early, so I do tend
to go better early. So I could be here like
(45:54):
on a work night and I would It could be
like nine o'clock is at one TV and I'd be
on and I'm like, I have to bed. And then
that kind of the last two months of it, it
was like, oh, what are you ninety And I was like, no,
you know, this is part of my condition, Like I
(46:16):
need to sleep. I have had a long day, I
worked all day, I am in pain. I need to
lie down on my bed. But there were other times
where he'd look at me and he'd go, oh, my god,
you're exhausted. Why don't He'd bring the TV upstairs, only
one TV and as so we'd bring the TV upstairs
and he'd be like, I'll bring the TV upstairs so
you can lie down in the bed and rest. So
there were there were all of these kind gestures and
(46:40):
small things that happened that did show you care, well,
showed you he was pretending to care. And I think
that's the hardest part of coming to terms with everything
as well. Even before I met them. Actually, there was
one day I was in work and I was really
really struggling, and I just text Monic in the middle
(47:02):
of the day and I was like, Monica, I'm really struggling.
And then she was like, look, I'm in I'm I'll
be free in a couple of hours or whatever, and
I said I won't be home until half eight, and
we were kind of texting or not, and then I
actually rang her that evening. We were on the phone
for about forty minutes, and I just felt so much
better afterwards, you know, or when I met the girls,
Like I was worried like that that was going to
(47:23):
be really difficult. I was worried that I was going
to be really emotional and upset afterwards. But I actually
felt supported and empowered leaving and driving home, you know,
and even your your podcast, the trailer for your podcast.
One of my friends, she volunteers with the sexual assault
unit here in the city, and I kind of I
(47:43):
just told everybody that I had Cotton cheating on me.
That was what I told people, and that it was
over and I needed space or whatever, which my friend
came in and I actually played her the trailer for
your for the Filthy John podcast and she just sat
there and looked at me and she was like, oh
my god. She was like, do you mind if I
(48:04):
go often listen to the rest of it? And I
said no. But so she's she's the she's she's my
friend who knows everything. So my family I would have
told that he was cheating on me. My parents would
know a little bit more, and that I found a
group of girls, that he's a serial teater, a serial
teater manipulator, that I've been really really lucky in terms
(48:27):
of you know, that there was no physical violent breadth.
There was all those other kind of threats and gas
lighting and stuff that the girls would have spoken about.
My mum even said to She said to me, she
was like, you tell the girls. I said thanks, And
I was like why and she said, because you can
tell me what you want to tell me. But I'll
never understand. And I think this is something that people
(48:49):
need to to understand. People who are listening who've never
been in this type of a relationship. You never truly
understand what it's like unless you have been there, and
even unless you've in with that particular person, Like these
girls knew exactly what I was talking about. They knew
about the laughter, they knew about the fun, and then
(49:09):
they knew about the lies and the stories in the
same way that he worked with them, that he was
that he was working on me, and these women knew that.
And I think it's.
Speaker 4 (49:18):
Important that that as women and as victims of this,
these types of behaviors, that we stand together and that
we don't victim blame and that we don't put comments
about say, like I saw a comment recently I am
saying that, like, oh, I listened to the podcast, so
I had to go and find him on one of
the groups, and I thought he was.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Going to be drafted a gorgeous but she must have
a magic really walk of fook. Girls like talk about
impounding and like making us feel bad when we did
nothing wrong, Like we are victims of such a well tuned, manipulated,
(50:00):
sure sociopath, you know, Like I'm not a mental health professional,
but like there's no question about the fact that he
has no remorse because he just keeps doing it over
and over again, and he's using the same stories, and
I'm sure he's not the only one. And nail or female,
and I think it's really important that anybody listening to
your podcast understands that we need to support victims to
(50:25):
come forward for four things like this. I don't know
where I would be if it wasn't for being able
to find your podcast and to listen to the story
and to touch base with the girls. And it has
made such a difference to me in looking after myself
since and realizing that actually, you know orally, you did
(50:46):
nothing wrong.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Thank you for listening to part five of Filthy John.
Please like, subscribe, and share. In our next episode, we
will meet Linda again. If you've been affected by any
of the issues mentioned, please know that you're not alone.
Support is available. Reach out to Women's Aid or the
Dublin Rape Crisis Center for help and guidance.
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