S05 Ep03: Constant Crisis
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True Story Media. Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show, we discuss child abuse, and this content may be difficult for some listeners. If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to MunchausenSupport.com to connect with professionals who can help. With the elements of evangelical missionary work and transracial adoption in this season's case, I've gone into some unfamiliar territory.

But one thing about this story that feels very familiar is the way that Sophie Hartman appears to forever be in some kind of crisis.

She seemed to move from one big drama to the next. This was one of the primary things we heard from the numerous folks we spoke to on background for this story, whether it was people who knew Sophie in high school or over the last few years here in Seattle. They told us there always seemed to be something, whether it was Sophie's own health issues or dramas, this big adoption saga, or something having to do with one of her daughters. Sophie was constantly mired in some kind of battle.

And this is something I remember so vividly with my sister Megan, her constant dramas and our attempts to explain them away. So yes, okay, Megan shaved off her hair in high school and pretended to be losing it. But you know, teenage girls go through stuff. Okay, so she cashed all those bad checks, but she was really embarrassed about it and she probably learned her lesson, right? Nobody's perfect.

Okay, so she did fake a whole pregnancy, but you know, we didn't like that boyfriend she was with. Maybe this is his fault somehow. And now she's got this new boyfriend and he seems so nice. And maybe he'll help even her out. Maybe this is all behind us now.

But it was never behind us. And what was coming was always worse than the last thing. It wasn't until I started talking to experts that I understood how compulsive Megan's behavior had really become. She had this need to keep upping the ante, like she was an addict whose tolerance was increasing. And it seemed to destroy everything in her path. So we kept waiting for the crisis to be over.

But the truth was, we could patch the holes. My parents could bail her out one more time. We could make excuses for her once again. But it would never, ever be over. ♪

We have plenty of evidence, both from Sophie's own journals and from the recollections of folks we spoke to on background, that Sophie's pattern of constant crisis began long before Zambia, but certainly it escalated once she went abroad. In her memoir, Sophie tells this heroic story of emerging victorious after an agonizing battle to adopt her daughters. So okay, the battle is won. Smooth sailing now, right?

But in a pattern that would ratchet up dramatically over the next several years, for Sophie and her girls, the minute one crisis faded, the next was just beginning. People believe their eyes. That's something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something. If we didn't, you could never make it through your day. I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this is Nobody Should Believe Me.

Well friends, it's 2025. It's here. This year is going to be, well, one thing it won't be is boring. And that's about the only prediction I'm going to make right now. But one piece of news that I am excited to share is that the wait for my new book, The Mother Next Door, is almost over. It is coming at you on February 4th from St. Martin's Press. So soon!

I co-authored this book with friend and beloved contributor of this show, Detective Mike Weber, about three of the most impactful cases of his career. Even if you are one of the OG-est of OG listeners to this show, I promise you are going to learn so many new and shocking details about the three cases we cover. We just go into so much more depth on these stories. And you're also going to learn a ton about Mike's story. Now, I know y'all love Detective Mike.

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There are conflicting accounts of what brought Sophie to the Pacific Northwest in 2015 after C's adoption was finalized. She told church friends she'd been called there by God. To others, as in this part of her police interview, she offered a more secular explanation.

- Can I ask where your family is? - My family's in Michigan. - What brought you out to Washington? - We had friends out here from Kirkland and I had come out to visit. When I moved back from Zambia, I knew I didn't really want to live in Michigan because it's freezing. And after living in Zambia, also you have no tolerance. But I loved it out here. I knew that Seattle Children's was this renowned hospital.

She's right, by the way. Seattle Children's is a renowned pediatric hospital. They are consistently ranked one of the best children's hospitals in the U.S. News & World Report and have never been off that list since they started it 30 years ago.

I can tell you from growing up here and spending most of my adult life here that Seattle Children's is a singularly beloved institution. However, it's worth noting that luckily there are many great pediatric hospitals around the country, including places like Mott Hospital in Michigan or Lurie Children's in Chicago or any number of other places that would have been closer to where Sophie grew up and where her family was.

So again, while the Pacific Northwest is a lovely place to live, it just seems strange to move so far away from your family when you've just become a very young single mom of two. Even this explanation about the cold just feels weird. It's true that Seattle doesn't get extreme weather in the winters, but our winters are not warm. In fact, they're pretty notoriously dreary. As a reminder, we are referring to Sophie's youngest daughter as C and her eldest daughter as M.

Sophie recounts serious concerns about C's health going back to her birth in June of 2014. In one of C's first doctor visits in the U.S., a checkup at the University of Washington's Center for Adoptive Medicine, Sophie tells them that C suffered from such severe withdrawal symptoms due to in utero drug exposure that the orphanage didn't know if she'd survive. It's impossible to know for sure what kind of shape C and M were really in when they moved to the States.

Sophie describes the conditions in Zambia as dire, though photos of the girls from this time show them looking happy and healthy, and I have to say, very adorable.

It's important to say, of course, that you can never judge someone's health by looking at them. But given Sophie's account of the orphanage, the absence of outward signs of distress or malnourishment are notable. And it was nice in these photos, honestly, to just see the girls as little humans. You know, the more we dug into this case and talked to people who'd known them, the more C&M started to come into focus.

People remembered Em as being this very quiet, self-sufficient, talented, disciplined kid, while C was really more on the bubbly side and very outgoing and fun to be around. As Sophie and her daughters settle into life in the Pacific Northwest after their move in 2015, their lives become dominated by two things. The first is C's medical appointments. Almost immediately upon arriving, C is going to the doctor constantly for myriad issues.

C's health appears to dominate much of Sophie's time right from the jump. From the records we have, we know that when Sophie originally brought C to the States, she was treated for Giardia. This is a very common parasitic infection that is fortunately easily treatable. In the first few years of her life, Sophie reported C having a variety of vomiting spells, constipation, and other gastrointestinal issues.

This ultimately resulted in the placement of a G-tube — this is a surgically placed feeding tube — in 2017, and a psychostomy tube, which is used to flush a child's bowels, in 2018. Sophie also reported frequent seizures and episodes of full-body paralysis. C used a number of different mobility aids during this time, including leg braces and a wheelchair.

And three days after her third birthday, C was given a devastating diagnosis of a rare neurological condition called AHC, alternating hemiplegia of childhood, that causes paralysis and weakness on one or both sides of the body. The instance of this disease? One in a million.

Over the next five years, C was seen at various hospitals as Sophie tried to get answers about her daughter's complex health issues. During her 2021 interview with Renton PD's Detective Adela Rourke and Detective Jason Wrengley, Sophie describes this medical odyssey. We moved back to the States basically because I knew—because I was living overseas in Zambia. Oh, okay. Oh, wow. That's incredible. And I knew that there was something medical going on, and we just don't have access to care.

We immediately were seen at Seattle Children's. So basically we started at Seattle Children's and kind of the first diagnostic that they did was a brain MRI and that indicated some brain damage that they likened thinking it's like due to drug and alcohol exposures. Okay, okay.

Yes. Okay. So that was initial like, okay. Then I was still noticing a very like episodic, like she's not herself. Like she's still so young, but she's not herself. She's not okay. But then the next day she's okay. The next day she's kind of not.

So we started going through like EEG tests. What? I'm sorry, I don't know anything medical. EEG is where they like put up like stickers on your head and it kind of reads your brain activity like epilepsy or like an episodic disorder. Okay, okay, that makes sense. So we went through a few of those. Nothing really came of it, but I just kind of kept pushing. I'm like, nope, something's going on here.

Don't know what this is, but it's like one day. She's paralyzed one day. Oh my god. Not what is what is the paralyzed look like? That's so scary to me So she will be like

- Oh my God. - Like out of nowhere, like a slow progression. - Yeah. - Or it'll be like one side and then it kind of goes to the other side. - Oh my God. - Anyways. - How does that, is it something like she's kind of playing like walking and then it hits her or is it something-- - It's usually like trigger. It's usually like a trigger. - Okay, tell us about that.

Sometimes like cold weather or exposure to water or high emotion. So like if she's super excited like Christmas morning. Yeah. Almost always she goes into episode because she's so excited. Yeah. And then it's like, you know, so I have to like, okay, let's put the presents out all through the month of December so you can see. So it's not this like explosive excitement. Yeah.

C did have an abnormal MRI when she first arrived in the U.S., which could, as Sophie alludes to here, indicate some damage that was done in utero. This piece about the MRI, at least, is verifiable, and we'll come back to it as we dig more into the medical history.

Based on the list of visits and procedures we've been able to put together, which is by no means a complete list, as well as Sophie's own description of the care that she required, it's hard to imagine that the family had time for much else. And yet, it's during this time that Sophie jumps in to one of the most demanding roles imaginable, being the mom of a young gymnast on the Olympic track. Sophie's older daughter, Em, started gymnastics when the family moved to Washington, when Em was about six.

So my daughter Fiona is six right now, and already many of my fellow kindergarten parents are getting pulled into aggressive sports scheduling.

I, myself, was a serious athlete growing up and I went on to play tennis in college, but honestly, it was nothing like these kids have going on today. And I could go on a whole tangent here about this relentless drive to optimize our children, but needless to say, I see a lot of my fellow parents basically taking on their kids' sports lives as a whole second job. So I have pretty immediate context for this. This made me very curious about these two sides of Sophie's life.

where one daughter is in a constant state of crisis with her health and the other one is pursuing elite gymnastics. So we spoke to someone who knew the family during this time. I know Sophie through a gym that we both attended for our children. And she was a parent there, obviously. We did all of our meets together, all parents usually from gym to gym hang out together. So I know her just through communications and interactions at Metropolitan.

Michelle was a fellow gymnastics parent at the gym in Kent, Washington, located about an hour south of Seattle. And this gym wasn't little kids bopping around doing cartwheels. It was serious business.

In the program that our daughters were in, they were working towards a TOPS program, which is working towards the National Olympic Team for juniors. So they were doing online school, homeschooling. And so they were there when the gym was empty every day. So it's a lot more interaction when you're dropping kids off and picking kids up because you're not dealing with a lot of other parents that are doing rec gym or evening practices. So a little more intense interaction.

In general, Michelle said the parents got along. So it sounds like when you first met Sophie, she seemed nice, she seemed sweet, kind of sounds like she wanted to be, like, really involved and was, like, kind of looking to connect with the other families. Yep.

What were your impressions of her daughters? Because I assume like, I assume, I assume the youngest was there with her quite a bit as well. Yeah. Everywhere she went. Yeah. Never, never alone ever. Always had the youngest daughter with, with her. Um, the oldest daughter it was, is, was, could still be a fantastic gymnast.

Very naturally talented, very great at it, had the drive, had the strength, had the right attitude, honestly, like really just all around. Everybody loved watching at meets and every like the judges were always looking for her. And which is great. That's what you want. Judges are waiting to see your kids perform and really fantastic athlete all around.

And having the youngest daughter with her always, sometimes in a wheelchair walking around, sometimes with leg braces on walking around. Always had a class me bag on her, always was wearing a diaper, said she wasn't potty trained. Would have like good days where, like I said, she was walking around and was able to get into the gym and stuff. And then really bad days where, you know, she's been hospitalized for the last week and then in a wheelchair for the next month and all those things. But everybody just kind of learned to go with those ebb and flows of that. And it was awesome.

always something going on there. There was always like some, something going on, always a story to talk, always about like how the youngest always had an issue and how we had to miss practice because of this or some reason or whatever for not being able to attend a meet or to be at practice or something like that, because it was always something with the youngest child.

Throughout the first six years of her life, she is at the doctor all the time for testing, evaluations, ER visits, and those gastrointestinal surgeries.

And this is all happening while Sophie is keeping up with her older daughter Em's demanding gymnastic schedule. And it doesn't appear that Sophie had much help, if any, on the childcare front. So she took C along with her. Another mom from the gym, who asked not to be identified by name, recalled the little girl's constant presence. So the younger daughter was often there all the time. Okay. Because when...

She started, she was living in Bellingham. Okay. So she was driving to Kent every day. That's a long drive. Every day. I mean how long would you say that drive is? It's at least two hours. It's at least two hours. Yeah, it's two hours. And when I heard that I was like, what? Like that's crazy to do with two kids in the car. I couldn't even. To me, I'm like, there's so many gyms along. Anyways, that was just like, why? Why?

I did not understand why somebody would do that because practice is four to five hours. There's no time for school. There's no time for anything, no social life, no home life, no anything. And practice didn't get over until 8.30 at night.

So they were often like staying in hotels or like random... I don't know where they were staying but they would stay overnight because we'd have practice Friday night and then we'd have practice Saturday morning. So to go home and then come back made no sense. So they a lot of times Friday nights they would stay in a hotel. That's intense. And then yeah, besides the cost of it, the gas, the... I mean and all of that.

So that's how I knew, I knew of her that way. Like, oh, she's the person that drives down from Bellingham literally every day. And is there something special about, so this is that Metro, right? Like, is there something special about Metro where like, this is the only gym that has that level of program in the year? No.

We've all seen the interview clips with parents that they trot out in the feel-good stories during the Olympics about all the sacrifices that the athletes' families made so that they could pursue their Olympic dreams. But while every person we spoke to said that Em was indeed a talented gymnast and was in a serious gymnastics program, this gym isn't some one-of-a-kind Olympian factory.

In fact, there's a different gym, incidentally about an hour closer to where Sophie lived at the time, that is a U.S. national training center. And again, Em was six when they started this program. And kids that age don't decide to drive four hours round trip to do gymnastics all day every day. That's on the parents.

And as you can probably hear in this audio, I am absolutely baffled by this detail. I have two young kids and long car trips with them are generally not a good time. You basically pack snacks, charge up the tablets and pray.

I just truly cannot wrap my head around this commute, especially for a single mom with a medically fragile child who needs the level of care that Sophie said she needed. Also, interestingly, Sophie isn't working throughout this time. From what we could gather, she appeared to be living on a combination of state benefits and likely some financial assistance from her family.

So while I understand wanting to support your kids' hobbies, this is just so extreme. And the moms we spoke to remember Sophie constantly talking about the hardships of caring for C. She would show everybody her braces. And then Sophie would talk about, you know, where they went to get them and what they had to do to get them and the person who had made them specially for her. I remember she talked about how they had ponies on them.

pink, purple ponies, I think. And there was somebody, there was a guy there that was a really tall, big guy, and she would always jump up on him, like jump up, like play, you know, like jump on him. She loved to do that, like jump up on him all the time when she was running around and happy and playing. But then some days she'd come in and she would just be covered in a blanket and...

You know, she'd have like band-aids on her hand, you know, and Sophie would tell us, "Oh, she had a really bad night. "It was a really bad night. "It was a really bad night." But then she wouldn't say anything.

Okay. So she wanted you to like, what did, what happened? It was sort of a bid for... What happened? Yeah. But she wouldn't tell anybody what, like, she wouldn't embellish on what the bad night was. What were your impressions of the older daughter? Just, obviously she's a super talented gymnast. Yes, very. Yeah. Yeah. She seemed very, I mean, very self-sufficient, very, you know, she...

took care of herself, basically. I mean, she did everything herself. She was nice, she was quiet, she was just, you know, she didn't really talk about much. I mean, I wasn't around her a ton, but when I was, she was just very quiet and well-mannered and calm.

Kind of reserved one about her business? Yes, yeah. Okay. When you say she took care of, like, everything herself, do you mean, like... I mean, you said, like, self-sufficient, but did you see the older daughter having to be kind of, like, caretaker-y in a way of, like, her mom and younger sibling? Well, she would... I mean...

you know, they would have, they always had, like the gymnasts, they have all of their stuff in a backpack. They have their grips, they have, you know, all of their stuff. And a lot of the moms would have, because they were there for so long, they would have snacks, they would have, you know, all this stuff. And a lot of the moms would make sure that, you know, do you have this, do you have this, do you have, you don't want to leave that stuff at the gym because it gets expensive if you lose it every time. And, you know, she never asked her if she had any of that. She, I think, you know,

she knew she had to have it with her. I mean, obviously they're going back to Bellingham, she's not gonna leave it there. But she always made sure, you know, she, if the younger one was starting to run out into the gym, she grabbed her. She didn't, you know, it was never Sophie who went after her, it was always her. - Interesting. - So, you know, on the mats, 'cause you can't, there's a spot where it's like, you know, only gymnasts pass this point. And-- - And what would Sophie be doing when that happened?

She wouldn't do anything. She was just standing there. These small details of the family's dynamic are really striking to me, partly because I have kids almost the exact ages of M, who is around six at this time, and C, who was a toddler during this period.

I'm just thinking about the struggle of getting my two out the door to kindergarten and preschool each day, and this is just that times a million. And listen, I'm not saying that Em didn't enjoy gymnastics, but with kids this age, the parents are the drivers, especially with a training program so intense that the girls participating can't even attend normal school. Since she began her motherhood journey in Zambia, Sophie just seems to make choice after choice that pile on this self-imposed hardship.

beginning with the decision to push through a transracial foreign adoption as a single woman with no job whose own frontal lobe was barely fully developed.

then choosing to move many states away from her entire support system, then putting her daughter in an all-consuming sports program a two-hour drive from home, while caring with a younger child with a debilitating condition. And setting aside the piece about C's medical issues, and we'll get into all of that, none of these circumstances befell Sophie. She chose all of this. I just can't square it.

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Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. As C got older, her condition appeared to worsen. And as part of her treatment, she enrolled in various therapies to help with her challenges with cognition and movement. From her speech pathologist to her occupational therapist to the instructor at her horse riding school, everyone seemed charmed by C, who is constantly smiling in pictures and videos from this time and is just generally pretty darn cute. Sure.

She was more able to kind of get jokes and engage. She was always very, very polite, always thank you, please, super sweet. I really enjoyed her. You know, she could read stories with me and was understanding them well enough, could retell them pretty well, you know, with some visual support, but she's also five and

You know, five-year-olds need that kind of stuff. She was a sweet little girl. A lot of the time, she was talkative and excited to do the activities that I had sent home. Yeah, yeah. She was really into horses, and so a lot of the activities that I sent home were, you know, about that. And she was lovely to work with.

She talks about her dog, ponies, her sister, and donuts mainly. She talks about food all the time. Yeah, it's one of her favorite subjects. She's like, oh, we're going to go and get donuts after this. So eventually, Sophie moves to the south end of Seattle. We couldn't confirm the reason for this move, but the family landed in Renton, putting them within five miles of the gym where Em was still training for hours each day.

While the move makes their daily commute less cumbersome, C's condition, according to Sophie, continues to baffle doctors. It would be like you could watch it on one side of her body, be like all the way limp.

And then, so, and if she could crawl, she would be like crawling with that one side and then dragging the other side. Oh my God. And then it would switch, you know, go to the other side. And I'm like, I'm a crazy person. I'm like, what is happening? And every time I go in like to the doctor, she wouldn't be exhibiting those symptoms. I'm like, I know this sounds crazy, but I'm not making this up. This is not, this is not. Yeah. Well, you're the mom. Yeah.

So anyways, we decided I would, we started with the neurologist at Seattle children's to pursue genetic testing. Cause we're like, and the, the neurologist had seen. So we decided to do genetic testing at that time. Then the neurologist was like right before she was putting in the order or she put in the order, she went on emergency maternity leave. Oh,

So when a provider has put in the order, if they're not there, then you have to either get approval from someone else on their team or you have to wait until they're back. Well, I think she went into labor really early or something because it was an emergency. It wasn't planned. Like we, I knew she was pregnant or whatever. Yeah. But so then once she went on emergency maternity leave, I was like, okay, we can't wait like the three, four months. Yeah. What other provider can we, you know,

I'm like, these are the things that are going on. I don't want to wait. There's more GI stuff. Nothing that they're doing is working. We're just trying medicine, medicine, medicine, and it's not working. So can we have a referral to go to Mary Bridge Children's for a second opinion? So we got that. And is that Mary Bridge in Tacoma? Okay. So we got that, and I...

Got on the phone with them and I was like, "Hey, I'm not super happy with our care at Seattle Children's. We are struggling because I just don't feel like they take things seriously. Also because my daughter appears to have a pretty severe but episodic condition and the problem is that if I can't get her in that day,

Then they don't see what I'm talking about. And I'm taking videos. I'm sending them videos. And they're like, oh, you know. What did they say about the videos? They were just like, oh, that's odd. Or, oh, that does look like dystonia. But then nothing would ever happen. Dystonia, sorry. Dystonia is like abnormal positioning. So that's another type of episode. Which is like, so you see like kids who have really severe like cerebral palsy. Their body position gets locked. That's from like high muscle tone.

As you heard, Sophie seems to move from doctor to doctor seeking answers. And you also may be thinking, with all this caretaking of C and M's gymnastics stuff, this must be getting expensive. And again, no one we spoke to or who the police spoke to had any recollection of Sophie having a job.

This quandary of how she was participating in one of the most expensive youth sports also confused her fellow gymnastics moms. There was one mom who really helped a lot with them, and this mom, like, picked up, dropped off. They traveled with—when Sophie couldn't travel because of her youngest daughter, they took her on travel meets. They—

I don't honestly know how gymnastics was paid for. It must have been a scholarship situation. I mean, gymnastics is an expensive sport. Just tuition and assessment fees alone, you're at like almost 12 grand a year. That's outside of...

airfare, hotels, food, all the things that it takes place to travel for gymnastics. I mean, I don't know. Like, I know that Metropolitan has a huge booster club and, like, people donate to it and businesses donate to it and you have to volunteer in order to, you have to be a part of the booster club, you have to register, and you have to do so many volunteer hours in order to get, like, things paid for. Unclear whether Sophie did any volunteer work at the gym, but hard to see where she would have found the time.

But this whole situation just felt off to many of the parents at the gym. I remember talking about it with another mom. I just thought it was, I just thought it was the whole, I thought the whole situation was strange in that she has a very sick kid. You know, when we knew how sick she was. And she has to go to all of these doctor's appointments.

She would start to talk about money and how, you know, she doesn't have any money and she needs fundraisers and all this stuff. And then she picks the, not picks, but her daughter is in the most, one of the most expensive sports. I would also think like, where does she get her money from? Like she does not seem to have a job. So, cause she's here all the time. She's with, you know, and money is always going out. So where is the money coming in from?

I mean, I know she wrote a book, but that could not be that much. That can't bring in that much profit. I figured that she was getting money from her church and

I was guessing, but I don't know. I have to break in here as an author who has worked in and around book publishing for 20 years to let you know that Sophie's book was not a source of income. Book advances can vary widely, but for a first-time author, a typical advance is somewhere between $5,000 and $50,000, and that's if you sell your book to a publisher. Now, Sophie's memoir is self-published, meaning she had to front all of the costs for production—

And I will say, this book looks pretty professionally produced, as does the sweeping cinematic book trailer she made to market it.

None of this looks DIY. This could easily have been a $10,000 investment on Sophie's part. So frankly, I'd be shocked if Sophie came anywhere near to breaking even on this project. And I'm not saying this to be mean about Sophie's author career. This book is just another thing that begs the question, where did all this money come from? The money for the adoptions, the money to go to Zambia in the first place, the money for gymnastics, and all of C's treatments and therapies.

Hell, their daily living expenses. Who is paying for all of this? So the fundraiser that your church did, were you a part of that? My husband's a senior pastor. We planted six years ago. Oh, okay. And so I was there, yes. And he just felt like he was supposed to take like a love offering, you know? Mm-hmm.

and invited the church to, you know, give whatever they wanted towards the vehicle that Sophie needed for...

This is from a police interview with a friend from Pursuit Northwest, the church that Sophie joined after moving to Seattle.

As she says, the church helped raise over $30,000 to help Sophie purchase a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. This brings us back to that feel-good story we heard at the top of episode one about fundraising for the special van for C. So family friends are banding together. They're trying to raise money. And this is something that is, you know, no little ask.

The fundraiser came about a year after Sophie started taking C to Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina to visit their renowned AHC clinic. AHC, or alternating hemiplegia of childhood, is a rare and potentially debilitating neurological condition. We're going to bring in an expert in an upcoming episode to help us better understand AHC, but this was the diagnosis Sophie reported to friends, family, and the news media during this time.

By the time she was fundraising for C's van, Sophie was well-versed in asking for money. From Em's adoption in 2014 onward, there were frequent asks for money. These came from GoFundMes, marathon beneficiaries, and even a Catholic school that raised money for children with disabilities.

Sophie, a single unemployed mother of two, was always raising money. And there was often a particular emphasis on leaning on her community's sense of Christian charity. You mentioned that you thought she was getting some money from the church. Is that something that she talked about? Or like, is that on social media? Like, how did you get that impression? Just she talked about she was very into her church. And the fundraisers seemed to go through the church.

from what I noticed from like they were posted on her church, the church sites a lot I think. She had sort of a social media account that was dedicated to her younger daughter and that was about raising money or raising awareness or following her journey or all of that? A bit of both. Everything. So she had a huge fundraiser at one point to raise money to get a

like a handicap accessible like car, vehicle, like a pilot. I think it was a Honda Pilot that she got. I mean, that's expensive. Those are not cheap cars. And she got it. So she raised enough money. I mean, she sold sweatshirts. I don't know how that much could go to selling a sweatshirt from sweatshirts to get a car, but...

Yeah, sounds like maybe there was a couple of different sources that were contributing. I'm sure that, probably, yeah, I'm sure. So, and that, I'm pretty sure, I mean, again, I'm not positive, but I think that was sponsored by the church. It went through the church, and then the dealership did something with it, too. Got it. So, because the younger one was getting a new wheelchair,

that was going to, that had like, that was bigger because she was getting bigger and she couldn't lift her anymore. And did you, did you see the younger one in her wheelchair? I never saw her in a wheelchair. I saw her in a stroller, but never a wheelchair.

The fundraisers, which we heard about earlier in this series, for this wheelchair-accessible car, went on to raise just over $45,000, which got them the car, along with a discount from the dealership. And from the schedule she was keeping with the girls alone, which included homeschooling, gymnastics, equine therapy, and all the doctor's appointments, there seemed to be no time for a job. And another thing that stands out to me, no partner. ♪

We've talked quite a bit about dads in these cases in previous seasons, and they really run the gamut. From dads like George Honeycutt and Ryan Crawford, who move heaven and earth to protect their kids, to dads like Lou Pelletier and Jack Kowalski, who not only enable this abuse, but take a pretty active role in it. But in this case, there were no partners in Sophie's life at all. This is not a group that loves to go to work.

With the exception of Hope Ybarra, building a career is just not the central focus of most of these women's lives. And there is often confusion in these cases about the difference between Munchausen behaviors and what are known as malingering behaviors, where someone engages in medical deception for a tangible benefit, like money or in order to evade something like military service or going to work. And while Sophie was raising a lot of money during this time, it seemingly wasn't the only motivator.

These fundraisers were incredibly public, with Sophie and the girls appearing in commercials, Sophie speaking at benefit galas, and lots and lots of social media activity, in addition to coverage on the local news. Here again is that news report we heard at the top of the series. We just wanted to put their positive energy out there, and I can't tell you how fun it is to be around her smile. It's just so inspiring and just amazing. So I hope that, you know, they get the help that they need.

So while the spotlight was on Sophie for her heroic mothering, when the cameras were gone, Sophie's behavior around the girls seemed off. Here's a neighbor who spent a lot of time with the family. She's just an all-powerful, very powerful force over there. Very mistrustful of, you know, she keeps the kids away from school. She keeps the kids away from other kids. I'm really kind of against home violence.

What was clear from all of the interviews is that C and M were rarely alone with other adults. Their world was very narrow, and Sophie was omnipresent.

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Between recorded interviews with people who knew her and the folks we spoke to, a clearer picture of Sophie was really starting to emerge. Everyone spoke about how fixated she seemed on C's health issues. And another thing that she brought up a lot was her daughter's race. Here we are again with one of the gymnastics moms. I remember specifically we were on at a team, at a meet in like, I don't remember where we were. I would say like Arizona or somewhere. But we were at a meet and we were talking about how we were going to be able to do this.

but we were at the table and we were getting up, I don't remember what we were doing, we were at a separate table and the kids were all sitting at one table. And we were trying to tell the server who our kids were. And so I was pointing out, oh those are mine. And she's like, oh it's really easy to find mine, mine's the black one over there. It's kind of uncomfortable for anybody.

for a kid, for all of us. Like we're just like, but that's basically how she, she was very, you know,

Or she would make a big deal about chalk getting in her hair. Or if somebody, 'cause I mean chalk is everywhere in the gym, everywhere. You cannot, if somebody happened to walk by and clap their hands near her hair, it was a huge deal because nobody understood how hard it was to do her hair.

I don't, I know, I understand that. But it didn't need to be like, you didn't need to make kids feel bad about being near her. You're in a gym with chalk. It's gonna happen. So don't make them feel bad about it. - Would she kind of like get on other kids' case? - Oh yeah, absolutely, yes.

- So like-- - She would make them feel bad. - So she would like scold a kid for like, "Don't clap near my daughter's hair because my daughter's hair, you don't understand." And how would her daughter react in these moments? - I feel like she was embarrassed, you know?

We heard of other incidents from parents at the same gym about how Sophie would often make a point to bring up the girls' race. And like at every meet, it was like, oh, look, I have the only Black daughter out there on the gym in the meet. And oh, look, she's the only Black person. Like, I can remember being at a meet specifically with another family at Metro, and she walked up and she was like, yet again, the only Black athlete that's out there. And it's like, okay, well, not really. Maybe in this session, yes. But like in general, not the only one.

Now, a big note that I want to make here is that the moms we spoke to about these incidents at the gym are white. And I say this as a fellow white mom of white children. There might be dynamics here that we, as white moms of white children, are not especially attuned to. And lack of diversity in sports like gymnastics is a very real thing. It's also true that the mention of the existence of race can make people extremely reactive. ♪

I am in the same basic demographic as these moms, and I was raised in the Pacific Northwest in the 80s and 90s. The vibe around this was very much, we don't see color, so there's that. And while any individual anecdote about how Sophie discussed the race of her girls might be brushed off as a mom doing her best with the tools she has, this came up again and again with people we spoke to.

And many folks had the distinct impression that Sophie was using her daughter's race as a way to get attention for herself and also to give her a kind of upper hand in a given situation. Now, I don't feel entirely equipped to handle this discussion. So we asked Chad Goeller-Sogener, artist, educator, and transracial adoption consultant, for his take on all of this. Whether good or bad, you're drawing attention. I'm sure I can imagine a world where her daughter appreciates that happening. So, I mean, I think her daughter...

wouldn't appreciate that. And I think that's when it becomes more performative. Sometimes that something is interesting because even in spaces where they want to celebrate blackness, they still have to be the main person. So that wasn't really about the kid. First of all, you're in a gym. Don't take your kid to a gym. That's gymnastics. That's what they do. They chop their hands.

you're telling other kids first of all why are you rebuking other people's children i mean there's so much yeah there's a lot of layers there's a lot of layers there you're laying track uh but yeah i just think that based on what you just said i think what they call that unnecessary and it'd be um when we put over there doesn't really do anything it seems like it's one of those false like oh look i'm you know i'm being a sensitive mother or something like right you know

And there it is. This is the through line. Sophie forever at the center of the story. Her daughter's challenges, the harrowing situation in their homeland that Sophie describes herself rescuing them from, her plight to snatch them from the jaws of the corrupt adoption system, sees interminable health troubles, the racism they encounter as Black children. It's all about Sophie.

But Sophie's carefully crafted narrative of her heroism in the face of suffering was about to start coming undone. Next time. But my observation, I've never seen a more normal kid in my life. You know, I haven't. Nobody Should Believe Me is written, hosted, and executive produced by me, Andrea Dunlop.

Our senior producer is Mariah Gossett. Story editing by Nicole Hill. Research and fact-checking by Erin Ajayi. And our associate producer is Greta Stromquist. Mixing and engineering by Robin Edgar. Administrative support from Nola Karmouche. If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to MunchHouseAndSupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.