AD.DraftVOS4Ep1

In season four, episode one of "Nobody Should Believe Me," Jordan Hope returns to their hometown in Minnesota to say goodbye to their mother, Donna, who is in a coma. Joe and Donna have a complicated relationship due to their mother's abuse. Joe's childhood memories are distorted by their mother's manipulations. They visit their elementary school and reconnect with their first-grade teacher, Mrs. Becker. Joe also meets up with their childhood friend, Bree, who witnessed the dark side of their home life. Despite Donna's struggles with addiction and mental health, someone should have protected Joe. The community in Hutchinson didn't intervene, possibly due to Donna's ability to elicit sympathy. Joe's journey aims to uncover the truth about their childhood and reconcile their feelings about their mother and the community. Okay, this is the voiceover draft recording for season four, episode one. In the spring of 2022, Jordan Hope made the long trip from Missouri to Minnesota to say goodbye to their mother, who will be calling Donna. Donna's health had been declining, and it had taken a sharp turn when she lapsed into a coma. Joe's sister called them and told them that this was it. It had been many months since Joe had spoken to their mother, who'd spent their childhood subjecting them to a variety of horrors, but even after everything, Joe still wanted to be by their mother's side at the end. To say that Joe and Donna have a complicated relationship is an understatement. Pulling away from her as an adult has been one of many steps that Joe has taken to attempt to save themselves from the lasting psychological torment of their mother's abuse, and yet, to be here at the end, this was also a step, a reckoning for Joe, that even the truth about their mom, as bad as it was, didn't extinguish, didn't extinguish the love. But like everything with Donna, even her death was not what it seemed. I'm Andrea Dunlop, welcome to season four of Nobody Should Believe Me. This season, we will be following Joe as they unravel the many mysteries of their childhood and attempt to reconcile their complex feelings about not only their mother, but everyone from their childhood, and the community where they spent their younger years. If you are a long-time listener of our show, you'll likely recognize Jordan, who's done several previous interviews with us. Joe is not only a friend of the show, they are my dear friend in real life. We serve together on the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's Munchausen by Proxy Committee, and Joe and I also work together for Munchausen Support, which is the only nonprofit organization in the country dedicated to helping Munchausen by Proxy survivors and families. Like all of the stories that we tell in this show, Joe's story is harrowing, complex, and compelling, but one of the biggest reasons I wanted to tell this story is because in looking at everything about this issue as we've unpacked it over the last few seasons, from the failures of the various systems that are meant to protect kids from abuse, to the media's frankly laudatory coverage of abusers, it can be easy to fall into despair. I'll be honest, sometimes covering this topic really wears on me, but what keeps me coming back is the extraordinary humanity that exists within these stories. It's the bravery and resilience of people like Joe. Joe's story is ultimately, fittingly, one of hope. A note about Joe at the top, they are trans and non-binary. Joe interchanges what pronouns they use, but primarily prefers they-them pronouns, so that's what we'll use, but just as a heads up, some of our interview subjects use she-her pronouns when discussing their relationship to Joe or when they're talking about Joe's childhood. We begin our story in Hutchinson, Minnesota, where Joe grew up. On a chilly February day where it is mercifully not dumping snow, Joe and I, along with my producer, Mariah, drive out to Hutchinson, a small rural town outside Minneapolis. The streets are lined with tall, barren trees that you can imagine providing a leafy canopy in the warmer months. There are rows and rows of small craftsman houses and, yes, a lot of churches. Joe has come along with us, very bravely, to do something that you mostly see people doing in movies, returning to their hometown to try to get to the bottom of their often confusing childhood memories, to return, literally, in Joe's case, to the scene of the crime. We all misremember our childhoods to one degree or another, but Joe's is a different story. Their history is so obscured by their mother's manipulations, her interconnected webs of deceit, not only around Joe's health but around every facet of their lives together, that the idea of unraveling it all is beyond daunting. So we've come to their hometown to round up some witnesses. And, yes, that was me having a little fish out of water moment in the Midwest. I do feel compelled to share with you that when the three of us had dinner at a diner in Hutchinson that night, we got a full-on, earnest, don't you know, from the waitress. It was delightful. It was perfect. The drive from the city to Hutchinson is pretty sparse. There were lakes splittering under the winter sun and lots of barren cornfields. Very few signs of life. This is really the middle of nowhere. Not exaggerating, as we drove around, there was a church on almost every corner. Joe lived in Hutchinson for their entire childhood, and driving through the place, it looks like a sweet, nice place to raise kids, honestly. You know, we have a strong archetype of what places like this are supposed to mean in America. These are supposed to be places where people look out for each other. Or, alternatively, some see these as places that are not so tolerant of outsiders. Our first stop is the elementary school that Joe went to as a kid. We pull up outside a few minutes early to a very chaotic and familiar scene as school lets out and a long line of SUVs and sedans snakes around the block as parents wait to pick up their kids. Jen Becker, or Mrs. Becker, as Joe remembers her, was then and is still a first grade teacher in Hutchinson. The two hadn't spoken in well over a decade, but their reunion was warm. What Mrs. Becker said to Joe about her memories of Joe sounds extremely familiar to me. A bad feeling that she just can't quite put her finger on. Mom seems involved, loving even, but something is just off. One of Joe's earliest memories really belies the distance between their mother as they experienced her and what she tried to present herself as to the outside world. In Joe's memory, their mom successfully fooled everyone as thoroughly as she'd fooled those pageant judges, and until seeing Mrs. Becker, Joe believed that no one had any idea how bad things were in their house. Joe and Mrs. Becker share goodbyes and we walk back out into the empty hallways of the elementary school. They're full of adorable, wonky artwork and kid-sized chairs and sinks. For Joe, remembering their childhood can feel like putting together a puzzle that's constantly rearranging itself. Joe thought their mom had everyone fooled, in part because plenty of other adults seemed to trust her. One of the people who spent a lot of time around Joe and their mom as a kid was Joe's friend, Bree. We pull up to a house with a red barn next to it and a frozen lake behind it. Walking in the house, it feels like a Minnesota Pinterest board come to life. There are little signs everywhere with funny sayings, many involving puns. There's a cookbook on display with hotdish recipes, and there's a picture of Joe's cookbook on display with hotdish recipes, kid paraphernalia everywhere, and a very sweet sleepy dog who curls in his bed after giving Joe, Mariah, and I a thorough inspection. Bree and Joe met as kids at their church confirmation, but didn't really become friends until middle school. Bree would eventually go on to marry her high school sweetheart, and she still lives in Hutchinson. Watching Joe with Bree is incredibly sweet because, like we all do around people we grew up with, I watch them morph back into the teenagers they once were as they giggle and reminisce. Bree knew Donna well because in addition to being her best friend's mom, she was also the high school's cheerleading coach. Bree pulls up a photo, and these uniforms are exactly as spectacular as they sound. Bree and Joe clearly had a lot of fun together growing up, but Bree glimpsed the dark side of Joe's home life, too. There were other signs that something was amiss in Joe's house. Joe thought her mom was better at disguising her many issues than she actually was, but the fact that she was pretty much constantly intoxicated was an oh, sorry, say that again, but the fact is, wait, okay, I messed up twice. I'm just going to start at the beginning of that. Joe thought that their mom was much better at disguising her many issues than she actually was. Joe thought that her mom was better at disguising her many issues than she actually was. The fact that she was pretty much constantly intoxicated appears to have been an open secret. These strange elements of Joe's life look different to Bree once she heard more about Joe's story later on. I'm hesitant to judge the adults surrounding Joe too harshly, but what the hell? What the hell? This lady was just constantly drunk at cheer practice and no one intervened? You know, the comfort of living in a small town, which, by the way, I also do, although certainly it's not one as isolated as Hutchinson, is that people are supposed to look out for each other. Why didn't someone do something about Donna? But then again, as is mostly the case with these offenders, Donna was skilled at eliciting sympathy. What Bree says about Joe here really hits me because Joe is the best. They are always looking after everyone around them. It is not a surprise to me to hear that everybody actually loved Joe growing up. Joe and I know a lot of folks in common and everyone loves them now, but before this trip, I know that Joe believes the opposite. Their mom told them over and over again they were a bad kid, so they thought everyone else must think so too. That's the influence that our parents have on us. The things they tell us about ourselves, for better or worse, bury themselves pretty deep. Joe's mom Donna was clearly struggling with addiction and with her own mental health issues, but it doesn't excuse her actions. Someone should have protected Joe and held Donna accountable, and yet when adults in Joe's life did try to help, they met with dead ends, and those times when Joe attempted to reach out for help on their own, it often backfired. You can tell even from a quick drive through town that in terms of community spaces in Hutchinson that one might go to for support, the choices were going to be a church or the church across the street, and Joe quickly realized any help those institutions might offer came with big strings attached. I kept thinking as we were driving around this town about that country song that came out last year, Try That in a Small Town by Jason Aldean, how this song sounded to some people like a patriotic love letter to tight-knit communities where people take care of each other, and it sounded to others like a sinister warning to people who might try and stand up for themselves in a place where they're not welcome. The truth is small towns can be both. We saw this in the story that we covered in Season 2, how it was in part, I believe, the tight-knit nature of the community surrounding Alyssa Weyburn, the victim in that case, that finally brought her abuse to justice and landed Alyssa ultimately in a safe and loving home. You would hope that people in a place where everyone knows each other would really look out for one another, but maybe it can make the problems like the ones happening under Joe's roof worse. Like, maybe it's easier to report on a person you suspect is abusing their child if you're not going to see that person every single day at the grocery store for the rest of your life. Maybe insularity breeds its own kind of silence. Or maybe a small town of any size—sorry, say that again—or maybe a town of any size is only as good as the people in it. Next time, we'll take a closer look at Joe's home life from the person who lived it alongside them.