BetrayalHer sister became someone unrecognizable.
You can find Andrea Dunlop’s podcast, Nobody Should Believe Me, on all platforms. Her first nonfiction book, The Mother Next Door, is available now.
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I really think of this as like this moment that like sort of split my life in half. Like there's a very very distinct sort of before and after, and I remember thinking like, oh my my family, as I know it is over.
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is a special bonus episode of Betrayal. Recently we've connected with the host of another popular podcast about betrayal and deception. It's called Nobody Should Believe Me, hosted by Andrea Dunlop. Every season covers a case of factitious disorder, also known as Munchausen's and for Andrea, the story is personal. We're going to be hearing more from her over the next few weeks, so we wanted to start by telling Andrea's It starts in childhood and involves some of her earliest memories of her sister, Megan.
My sister and I are less than two years apart. She was born in eighty I was born in eighty two. Right, so I feel like we had this very happy childhood. It feels like a real bigone era now, right.
They grew up in an affluent Seattle suburb.
You know, we were friends with all the other kids on our block, and there was like not busy streets, like a lot of like riding bikes. We played outdoors a lot, built a lot of forts, climbed a lot of trees, just just like such a dream, such a dream childhood.
Her sister, Megan was a social butterfly.
But when I was a kid, I was not really the kid that would just like go up to a person and be like hello. And my sister always was that person. Right. She's always seemed to have a really easy time connecting with people. She seemed like especially good at relationships.
She always felt cool when she got to spend time with her older sister and her friends because Andrea looked up to Meghan. By the time they were teenagers, they had each other's backs.
It's like you have the sibling code, this code of like nobody's snitching to mom and dad, so like if your sneaking out or like pretending you were somewhere else when you're your boyfriend's house. A lot of like gurly secret keeping stuff and just kind of like a sibling co conspirator.
Both girls loved sports like tennis and swimming, but in high school, Megan started having problems with her back.
My memory of it was that it was sports injuries. I have really strong memory of this, like weird plastic back brace that she had that she would wear.
And then Andrea told us that Megan began having knee pain.
She was saying she was having all this pain in her knee and they went in and did a surgery and they couldn't find anything.
But Andrea recalls what was most alarming of all, there.
Was an incident in high school where she was losing her hair all of a sudden, and that was very memorable because it's like a big deal in your teenage girl and like losing your hair just like such a nightmare. So I remember hearing conversations about that and thinking like, oh wow, my sister's just really unlucky that she has all these things happen. And there was certainly I remember in our teenage years kind of a feeling of like, oh, there's always something like, oh, it doesn't get better, and then it's this, and then it's that.
Andrea said that Megan always needed to go to the doctor to get something examined or to have X rays done, but she said Megan had a good attitude about it.
Oh yeah, like she's brave, she's stoic. She has this tough thing, but she's just like kind of persevering.
Andrea, on the other hand, was perfectly healthy, so whenever her mom and sister went to doctor's appointments, she got to stay at home reading teen magazines.
I was obsessed with magazines when I was a teenager. I was just like young people today could never imagine like the hole that magazines had on some teenagers, because you know, I was like living in this very like sleepy suburb, which is like, again, a very nice childhood experience to have, but very you know, it's just like, oh, I'm gonna get out of this small town.
The magazines made her feel mature. They gave her a peek into adulthood. And when Megan went off to college, Andrea got to visit there, she could put all of her teen magazine knowledge to good use.
Yeah, this was a time where I was just like, oh my god, my sister is a college girl, and so like I would go to parties with them, and I have my little fake ID, so we would go to the clubs in Canada where they could get in when they were at nineteen. So yeah, sorry mom and dad, but yeah, we had a great time, and it just seemed like the coolest thing ever. I think those are some of like the easiest years of our relationship.
Megan didn't seem too concerned about her classes or grades, so it was a surprise to the family when she announced.
That she wanted to do pre med as a major and really started talking about getting into a medical field. But you know, given that my sister was not a big school person, obviously becoming a doctor involves a lot of school. So I think it was a little bit like, well, all right, like it's okay, better start, maybe, you know, studying a bit more. And then eventually she dropped out of college and went to get her nursing degree, and I remember thinking, oh, this seems like a really good field for her.
Megan had always been drawn to medical stuff, so it felt like a natural fit. Around the same time, their cousin was diagnosed with leukemia. The disease was progressing.
Rapidly horrible, and Megan started going to see him a lot. I remember thinking like, oh, I feel very scared of this, and it doesn't seem like my sister feels scared of it. And I remember just admiring that about her.
Eventually, Megan earned her nursing degree and got a job working at an obgyn clinic in their hometown.
She seemed to be like really thriving in her job. You know, this is an office that I would go to. I knew a bunch of people from the office, so I knew she was like very well liked in an office. She had a lot of friends, Like people seemed to really respect her. I would get in the habit of very much of like asking my sister, you know whatever, like medical questions.
As Megan's career took off, Andreas did too. When Andrea graduated college, she moved to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming a magazine writer or maybe a novelist.
You know, it was twenty one twenty two. That was very much the era of the Ten Things I Hate About You, Devilwar's product. It was like, you're gonna move to the big city and you're gonna work for a magazine. So that's what that's what I want to do. It's like, Okay, I'm gonna go be like a magazine journalist. And then yeah, I look back and I just have to laugh at myself. I'm like, oh boy, what a case of main character syndrome.
She landed a job at the book publisher Random House.
I had like all my delusions intact about becoming a published novelist, and so I was like, well, shortly now, like I know all these people in publishing, and that will be easy. No, that is not quite how it worked out.
New York was a grind. Andrea worked long days and often forgot to call back home to check on her parents and her sister.
You know, in terms of what was going on with her life at this time, there was a bunch of stuff that I didn't know about what was happening.
Andrea alleges that at one point Megan got evicted from her apartment, but Andrea was far removed from the family drama back and see it.
Certainly, I think my parents were having some bigger concerns because they were sort of actively bailing her out of these situations, and sort of that was kind of my understanding of a lot of this, right as like, oh, you know, they're gonna have to like swooping again. So I was aware of that and sort of aware of their relationship becoming more difficult.
But she and her sister still had that sibling code. They were on each other's team.
I was pretty defensive of her with my mom and dad right of just like, oh, you guys are just like so hard on her or whatever. I mean. They may even have tried to sort of like talk to me more about it, and I don't know that I was super like accepting of it because I didn't want that to split up my sister and I.
Soon her parents' concerns became hard to ignore.
This is where stuff like really took a turn again. My sister was working Stills a nurse, and she had met this boyfriend and who had a son, I think he was five at the time. They seemed like a strange fit, like he worked at this pawn shop and the fact that he had a kid was like an extra sort of attraction that she could just be an immediate mom, and she seemed to slip into that role really fast, and so we were sort of like concerned about that situation.
Megan always wanted to be a mom, but taking to the role so quickly for a child she just meant seemed troubling and maybe irresponsible. When Andrea tried to talk to Megan about her decisions, they got into a big fight, she says. Megan cut her off for months, but then Meghan came to the family with big news.
She called me to tell me that she was pregnant.
With the announcement, Andrea and her family were ready to embrace Meghan to start a new chapter.
Someone tells you they're pregnant, it's like, all right, well, we're gonna move past this whatever thing, and at least for me, like that's what I did. I was like, oh, who cares about that stupid fight we had, you know. And then the story that I heard and that my parents heard, was that her boyfriend was going back to Tennessee, where he was from, because he had to go there for work, and so he was going to be there temporarily, but like he was going to come back and this whole thing.
So with her boyfriend and his son out of town, the family rallied around Megan. After her first pregnancy scan, she called Andrea with more good news.
She's pregnant with twins, twin girls, So we're excited. I was thrilled about being an aunt.
During Megan's pregnancy with the twins. Andrea felt far away, so she made trips home to Seattle as much as she could.
She you know, had a belly. She was wearing maternity clothes. We got presents for the babies. I remember getting like children's books from the publisher I was working with, and she had a bunch of baby stuff in her apartment because it was happening.
And then on one visit home, Andrea told us about one particular moment. It's a memory she's replayed in her mind a thousand times, a moment where she trusted her sister so much that the lines of her own reality blurred.
My very weirdest memory was sitting with her at my arm at my aunt's house for Thanksgiving, and she was like, oh, my gosh, put your hand on my belly. The baby's kicking. And I was like, oh my god, that's so cool. And I felt a baby kick.
That year, Andrew spent New Year's Eve in Las Vegas. She said that in the middle of the celebration, she got a panicked phone call from her parents.
And they said that Megan was in the hospital and that she had gone into labor early and she was about six months a long, so you know, that's scary early. And she said, yeah, my water broke, and then they took me to the hospital and she, yeah, I was just like really telling us this really dramatic situation.
With the rest of her family and her boyfriend out of town, Megan was alone dealing with this crisis on her own, and.
So my parents, you know, started scrambling to get flights back. I had to go back to New York because I was like, you know, some brand new job and like was very junior, so I couldn't take any more time off. I remember talking to her like in the airport. I was just sort of like get on a flight and then called her as soon as I got off and just was for updates, you know. And then she ended up losing the babies.
Their entire family was crushed. By the time their parents got home, Megan had been discharged from the hospital, and.
I was heartbroken, like six months in, just devastating, and I knew how much she wanted to be a mom, and like, yeah, it was just really really really sad for her.
And then Andrea alleges that I think it was.
Probably about a week after I got back in New York, my dad called me and said something to the effect of the story of Megan's about these babies. Is not adding up.
A few weeks after her sister lost the babies, Andrea Dunlop got another emergency call, this time from her dad. He was claiming that something was wrong with Megan's story. He told her that earlier that week, their mom had been over at Megan's apartment.
Which thinks she was getting evicted from. Electricity had been shut off and it was just like in a bad state.
Andrea's mom alleged that.
She saw some paperwork for hospital admission that was on the date that she had said she was in the hospital and she had been seen for dehydration. There was nothing else in the paperwork.
It was an alarming discovery. So Andrea called her sister's best friend, the one who drove Megan to the hospital.
She and I started talking and she told me, well, Megan told me that her fiance made it back in time, and that he was the one who took her to the hospital, and that they said goodbye to the babies and took pictures. Its detailed, like really detailed versions, and so obviously like those are two completely separate stories.
Andrea needed to talk with Megan's fiance. When she tracked him down, She says, he told her an entirely different story. He said they were no longer together and that he'd left Meghan a few months prior.
He had witnessed some behavior with my sister and his son that had alarmed him and that had crossed the line for him, and broke up with her. And then the next day she came home from work with a positive pregnancy test. Now, my sister worked for an obgyn clinic. And then she brought home the ultrasounds which I had seen, also ultrasound photos, and she had torn a piece of it off. And he found the piece and it had someone else's name on it, and she gave him this explanation of like, oh, well, I just did this skin on myself and I had to enter someone else's name so that it would end. I mean, it's just like completely nonsense. Callt.
So the family went to Meghan to ask what was really going on, and according to Andrea, Megan confessed that she had lied. She admitted that she'd actually lost the babies earlier in the pregnancy, right after her fiance broke up with her, but she was too distraught and embarrassed to tell anyone. With so many different versions of the story. It was hard to know what was true.
The most likely outcome is that she had never been pregnant, you know, and this was not ever a real pregnancy. So that was a big deal because then this was a family crisis.
Andrea struggled to accept that her own sister could have lied to her like this.
I think I was in such shock and scared, honestly, like it's a scary thing to go down this road and start thinking about like, what do you mean? It wasn't real? Like I just saw her. She looked pregnant. I felt baby's kick, Like what are you talking about?
Plus, Andrea had spent hours on the phone consoling her sister while she was in crisis.
I knew she was capable of being deceptive. I had seen that, but this was just such, uh, a deeper level, and it was so dramatic. Thinking about her sitting on the phone just like in her apartment narrating this whole thing to me was really really disturbing.
It was an unthinkable situation, and everyone in the family was handling it differently.
My dad was obviously upset, but I think he was much more straightforward now he's the British, like stiff upper lip and sort of like we're just gonna like fix it, and like we had to just get in there and just get Megan shaped up, you know kind of so I think that was kind of his approach.
And Andrew was still trying to find any other possible explanation. As for Megan, Andrea says, she was acting like the whole thing never happened.
She had this incredible ability to just sort of like turn the page. It was just kind of like this fever dream, right, like you're just like, oh, oh, that like weird thing happened. But it's just like, Okay, we're all just gonna like put it in the corner, and maybe if we never talk about it again, like maybe we don't have to like think too hard about it.
The last time Andrea tried to approach her sister about her behavior, they got in a fight.
She had stopped talking to me for months. So it's like, I think we all knew by that point that we will lose her if we try and hold her accountable, Like if we push her on this pregnancy thing, she's gonna stop talking to us.
The family was frozen, unsure about the next move. That's when Megan introduced them to a new guy in her life, Andy, and we.
Thought he was such a stand up guy, and then she just seemed better. And then again there was just this like pretty quick like turning of the page. You know, she was still at her job. She's got this boyfriend, and then they got engaged, and then it was like they had this like very big, you know, fancy wedding, and we were just like okay, like a new chapter.
Andrea was the maid of honor and Megan's childhood best friend was in the wedding too.
The night before the wedding, we stayed at this beautiful hotel, the Fairmont and Seattle, and her friend brought like a photo album and we were like looking at all these photos from growing up with each other and was like laughing. And then you know, the next day we were like all getting ready and the bridal suite together and it was just like such a happy moment, and I remember thinking, oh, my sister is back, Like this is the version of her that I love and the version of her that I remember. She's so happy and look at her. Everything's gonna be fine now, and like that is my last is my last happy memory. It's Meghan, because it was not very long after that she got pregnant.
This time it seemed different. Megan was married, the family liked her husband. She even let Andrea come with her to the my first oulder sound appointment.
There was at tech in there and I saw the images of it, and I remember thinking like, but is she really pregnant?
Andrea was guarded.
And then on New Year's Eve again New Year's Eve, so anniversary, I had stayed home. My parents went to their house in California, so they were out of town again, and she went into labor early.
The baby wasn't due for another month.
So I went to the hospital again. It was sort of this thing of like, Okay, well I'm here, I'm seeing it. It is really happening. But I remember, until I saw the baby, I was like, I don't know, like I don't like, I don't I cannot cannot be sure.
When the baby was finally born, everyone in the room breathed a sigh of relief. The baby was healthy and he was real as he was born over a month early. They kept him in the NICU for a few weeks.
And you know, when he left the hospital, his prognosis was good.
But within the first few months at home, the baby's health took a turn.
He immediately started having all these issues and he was having issues around his feeding and developmental milestones. And my sister was talking about it a lot. And it was definitely during this period that like something really started to feel like off off and like scary off. You know. I have a really vivid memory of being at my parents' house with Megan and my nephew and just looking at her and having this really strong feeling of like she's not there.
Andrew decided to leave New York and move back home. She was working on a novel and she wanted to write it in a quiet, familiar environment. But whenever she saw her sister and her new nephew, Megan only wanted to talk about one thing, her son's health problems.
He wasn't gaining weight and he was diagnosed failure to thrive. He had a nasal feeding too, which goes you know, natal gastric which goes in through the nose down to the stomach.
It felt like almost every week there was another crisis with her son's health.
My sister was telling us that the next sort of step in this intervention was to have a surgically implanted feeding tube a gastric tube in his stomach.
A surgery like this could be scary in any circumstance. The baby was an infant only one year old, but considering all of Megan's alleged lies, the Dunlop family was on high alert.
By this point, my parents and I had been discussing our concerns.
Meghan had quit her job at the obgyn clinic. She wanted to spend every day, all day with her sick baby. He was never out of her sight.
For the most part, she would not let people come to the doctor with her, but for some reason, she let my mom come to his gastroentrology appointment.
It was the first time anyone in their family had been allowed to meet the baby's doctor.
At the appointment, they discussed this feeding tube intervention and the doctor said, no, we want to hold off on that for now. Let's wait and see. Let's try and keep him on the nasal tube. And obviously this's like surgical intervention, it's not unseerious.
Andrea's mom was relieved to hear that her infant grandson didn't need surgery, and she relayed the good news but then Megan called Andrea with a different story and she.
Said, yeah, the doctor said, you know, they're really pushing me. They really saying he needs this surgery. And I knew it was a lie. Why would you want your baby to have surgery if they didn't need it.
The next day, Andrew's parents wanted to come over and talk in person. That was out of the norm.
What I was like, it's the middle of the day, like why is my dad not in the office, and just being like this is very weird. And then they came in and they sat down with me and they said, we talked to our family doctor about these concerns, and she said that this sounds like Munchausen by proxy.
Munchausens, it's a very serious pattern of behavior where someone pretends to be sick, even intentionally makes themselves sick. But most dangerous of all, in Munchausen's by proxy, they might make someone else sick, often their own children. They might withhold food, drug their child with dangerous medications they aren't prescribed, or even poison them anything to get medical attention. Because people with Munchausen's have a pathological need for attention and sympathy.
It really felt like this moment that sort of split my life in half. I remember thinking like, oh, my family, like, as I know, it is over.
As a Dunlap family read about Munchausen's and Munchausen's by proxy, it all sounded so familiar, going all the way back to when Meghan was a teenager constantly having knee pain and back pain. Andrea's parents even alleged that back then, when Meghan claimed to be losing her hair.
My mom took her to the dermatologist and found out that she was actually shaving it off and lying about it.
It was hard to accept, and Meghan had not been formally assessed for Munchausen's. But after decades of witnessing this pattern, Andrea says, the family came to their own conclusion they believed Megan had Munchausen's.
I mean, there's just so much had piled up, and then we had seen her tell this just like very direct lie about the gastric too.
This time around, there was a baby involved, an innocent child who depended on Megan. Andrea says that changed everything.
You have to reframe a person once you realize that they're capable of harming a child. That's a vulnerable little person and I loved that baby.
The family felt like they could no longer sit back and ignore Meghan's behavior, so they decided to intervene.
We had to. I mean, it's just like it didn't seem like there was another option. And my mom, very brave of her, called a gastrentrologist to a the point and she'd been in, went in and she told him are concerns. She told him the history of Megan lying about her own stuff, of the pregnancy, fake pregnancy, and he said, oh, do do you feel like it's time for an intervention? And she said yes, And she was imagining like, Okay, we're all going to get together in like a hospital conference room and talk about it and try and get you know, Megan on the straight and narrow, and that's not what he was talking about.
Instead, her report was elevated to the Child Abused Team at the Children's Hospital, and when doctors reviewed Megan's files, they were alarmed and they called CPS.
And then they ended up doing an emergency removal.
But according to Andrea, the Dunlap family didn't know the hospital brought in CPS until they got a call from Megan's husband.
He called us and was hysterical and distraught. CPS just came and took their son. We were shocked. We did not know that was going to happen. And Megan and Andy very quickly found out that my mother had made that call and were very angry with her.
The whole family was reeling. Did they do the right thing? Well, for context, it took much more than their mom's report to get an emergency removal approved. This action is always a last resort, something that's only done if multiple experts agree that the child is in immediate danger. Even though Andrea and her parents hated this outcome, they said they were acting out of concern for Megan's baby, and finally it seemed like someone was paying attention.
You know, I think we like really naively thought like, well, they're involved, like the doctors reported, right, the doctors understand this is happening. Someone's going to do something.
But from the very beginning, Andrea says, the emergency removal was mishandled.
The placement was a disaster. They placed the baby with my sister's in laws, who did not believe that she was abusing him, so they let her see him all the time, and it's very important to keep child separated so that you can see what their health is without the influence of the parent.
And according to Andrea, that wasn't the only mistake.
There was no police investigation. There should have been, There should always be.
Instead, CPS investigated the case. When it finally came to the hearing and family court, Meghan arrived with an entourage of character witnesses. This is what Andrea remembers from that day.
My mom and I went and it was my sister and her husband and his parents and like four of his aunties, and his best friend and his best friend's wife. I mean, just this like mob of people in this little room in like the courthouse. Everybody got their chance to talk about how my sister was the most wonderful mother in the world and how could my mother and I ever accuse her, Just like the meanest looks I've ever gotten in my life, just people looking at us like we were just the scum of the area. It was so awful. I remember really looking at my brother in law's mom like, come on, you have to see this. Why would we be doing this. We have known her all our lives and she has this like long history, and you know, my sister's just shaking her head, and I was just like, oh my god, she's like a cull leader.
At the end of the family court hearing, the judge ruled with Megan. According to the court documents, the case was closed with an unfounded finding, meaning that quote available information indicates that more likely than not, child abuse or neglect did not occur, or there's insufficient evidence for the department to determine whether the alleged child abuse did or did not occur. And with that, Megan's son was returned to her care.
They basically told her like, ma'am, you need to get some therapy, and just this sort of soft so it seemed like there was like some acknowledgment that things have been happening, but she's like no understanding of what was actually happening, and like not a solution.
According to Andrea, Meghan cut off the family. She says, Megan wouldn't return their text or calls, and.
I remember, like the first Christmas without her was horrible, and you just think, like could this really be permanent.
Andrea focused on managing her own mental health and writing her novel. A few months later, her father got a call from Meghan's husband Andy. According to their father, Andy wanted to talk about how he'd caught Meghan in a lie. Andy said it was over something interpersonal, nothing medical or to do with their kid. But nevertheless, Andy's call was an opening for the Dunlops.
And we felt so much relief because he got in touch with my dad. He wanted to talk about this what had happened. We were like, Okay, now he's seen it for his own eyes.
Maybe Andy would see the Dunlop side of things.
And he was expressing to us like, oh, I really want to you know, I know Meghan misses you guys. I want you guys to reconcile. I'm working on it. I'm talking to her. She's just so sad, she feels betrayed. Blah blah blah. But he was still saying like, oh, she never her her child, She'd never hear her child. And this was this back and forth with my dad.
Over time, it became clear that Andy was standing by Meghan Today. Andrea believes the real reason he reached out to their dad was for money.
He had also realized, as they'd been married for a little bit, the extent of my sister's financial troubles, and so he was also trying to get my dad to help them out financially. And you know, my dad was like, yes, I want to help, but you need to send me my grandson's medical records, which seems like a fair direct, and he just absolutely refused to do it. He's like, that's not appropriate. It's not appropriate for you to ask for that.
With that, talks between Andy and the Dunlops fell apart. The door to Meghan's life closed again, and it stayed closed for years. In that time, Andrea published her first novel, and she got married herself, without her sister at her wedding.
I think a lot about like, if I had stayed in my sister's life and sort of stayed wrapped up in all of this, if I would have been able to have any of those things, because it had taken quite a bit of work to get back to like a healthy place after all that happened.
After years of silence from Megan, a mutual friend reached out to Andrea. She shared the shocking news that Megan had another preach delivery.
She went into labor at like twenty four weeks. That baby died and she posted a picture of herself with that baby on her social media. So I found out about that. I got back to us, and I remember, like my mother looked up the death certificate because we weren't really sure whether to believe that, but that that was true, that happened.
Now the family was more concerned than ever, but they were still cut off from Megan. Through acquaintances, bits and pieces of information filtered back to the Dunlops. They learned that after she lost the baby.
Right after that, she got pregnant with my niece. So seven months after losing the baby, she has another baby again at twenty four weeks. This baby, my niece survives, but is in the hospital. You know, obviously a baby born that early is going to be in the hospital for a while.
After that, the Dunlops didn't hear anything about Meghan or her children for several years.
That was until a family member reaches out to us because my niece is on the like you know, hospitals fundraising pages have like stories of kids that are sick and are at the hospital a lot, and my niece was on that page.
According to the fundraiser page, Meghan's daughter had been in and out of the hospital for her entire life. It was now her second child with severe health complications, and it.
Was like this, you know, laundry list of like all the things all the time. You know, she spent most of her life in the hospital. She's had you know this, she has have these many pokes a day, blah blah blah blah.
Then they found out that Megan had been going public with her story.
She'd like been in the news, been doing some fundraising here and there, you know, like he's been a couple of articles about oh, this mom that has these two children, you know, all these issues. At that point, my dad sent a letter to the hospital letting them know about like the history, because this was like at a different hospital than had treated my nephew.
After that, it was silent for a few months. Andrea had just had a baby of her own, and she drew a boundary with her family.
And at this point I really told my parents. I was like, you know, I don't want to hear updates anymore. Like there's nothing I can do about any of this. It's so upsetting to learn about these things and to see you know, her in the news and all this stuff. And I was like, I don't want to know and tell something major happens, Like I just I don't want to know anymore.
Soon, something major did happen.
Not long after that, I got a phone call from my dad saying that he had heard from a police detective and that Megan was being investigated, this time for her younger daughter.
The whole family was relieved. It felt like their nightmare was about to finally come to an end, especially when the police shared that they had video evidence of Megan in a hospital room with her daughter.
They caught her disposing of antiquagulant medication that her daughter was supposed to get, like covering it on the bed sheets, and then her daughter got a life threatening blood clot and ended up in the pice. I think at that point we thought, okay, like not in a vindictive way, but they're going to get her. Like they've got it. There's such strong evidence.
We've seen a copy of this police report. And the investigation went on for two years. During this time, Megan did not have custody of the children. The whole family waited anxiously for updates on the case. Meanwhile, Andrea focused on her career.
My third novel. We came here to forget published, and that novel is based very heavily on my experiences with my sister. And so I did press around the book, like before the book came out. So this is the first time that I'd ever publicly talked about my sister. You know, I was very careful and guarded sort of with what I said, you know. So I was talking about that family connection and the lead up to this book. And four days before the publication of that book, I was on my way to a friend's wedding, was in the car with my husband and one of my best friends, and I got an email from my sister's attorney. It was a cease and assist asking me to retract my statements to Vanity Fair, canceled the publication of my book, canceled my book to or ablah blah blah blah.
Meghan's lawyers called Andrea's work textbook defamation and alleged that Andrea has a bizarre obsession with Megan. They said that if Andrea insinuates in any way that her sister committed Munchausen syndrome by proxy or medical child abuse, those statements are false and they are defamatory, and at the end of the season desist, Meghan's lawyer dropped a bombshell.
He included an excerpt from the family court judge who had just returned custody of my sister's children to her. So that is how I found out that information charges were never filed against her. My later followed up with that office to find out why in the face of such strong evidence, including you know, like a medical record review of these seventy three thousand pages of medical records that my five year old niece had at.
That time, the deputy prosecuting attorney on the case concluded that, quote, we could not envision a way to prevail on criminal charges at trial to the point where we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Meghan went on to reach out to local and national news outlets. She wanted to share her side of the story, where, according to her, she's repeatedly being falsely accused of medical child abuse. In one interview, Meghan said, quote, I've always done everything in my power to take care of my children, yet now I was being treated with suspicion. Megan cease and to assist didn't silence Andrea. Instead, it lit a fire under her because she believes what her sister is doing is medical child abuse.
And yeah, that is how I got here.
She started seeking out a community of people who understand Munchausen's.
During that time, I met doctor Mark Feldman, who is this tremendous expert who had become very close with who is a psychiatrist who's been studying Munchausen by proxy for decades. And then I became interested in how I could be useful to this cause.
She went to a conference on Munchausen's hosted by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, and there, for the first time, she met other people who had the same story as her family.
That was the first time I'd ever heard from another family member who'd been through a case, and it's just like completely changed the direction of my life and my career.
And the way she wanted to help was to tell their stories.
I'm a storyteller. That's what I have skill set in. Obviously, at that time, I was writing, but it's getting interested in podcasting and just thought because I'm a big podcast listener and loved the medium and was like, oh, this is a true crime podcast.
So in twenty twenty, she started developing a show of her own.
By and large, like people don't know what this is. They don't understand it. There's a lot of misconceptions. I was like, well, this is something like I can be helpful with. I know the media because I'm a publicist or a writer. I can tell these stories. Didn't want to present myself as some kind of like objective journalists that's just like found this topic interesting, right, this'd be totally disingenuous.
She started with one case that struck a chord.
One of the stories I really connected with as I was learning that there were other stories right about this was a Hope you Barra case because it had all of these similarities to my family's case. In that Hope you Bora had been this very intelligent, very promising woman, and she also had this family that had been very close and really took the same series of events where like they you know, uncovered some of Hope's very large deceptions. And then her mother became concerned about her granddaughter and called one of the granddaughter's doctors.
Andrea saw strong parallels between Hope's case and Megan's.
Hope had also had a fake pregnancy. It had also been twin girls. It was just these things where I was like, are they talking to each other? I mean, like just where you feel And I get this feeling all the time lo gate cases where you feel like there is this just playbook, right. The pattern of abuse is so strong, the premature verse, the feeding interventions like this, this strong, strong pattern. And so I felt so drawn to this story.
And Hope's family was ready to tell their story too.
So I ended up interviewing, you know, her husband, Fabian, and then her father Paul, her sister, her younger sister Robin was the very very first interview I ever did, and then her brother Nick. You know, we ended up going down to Fort Worth to meet with their family, and I just loved them so much. I mean, they were just the sweetest people, and they clearly had really loved Hope, and especially I mean, you know, talking to Robin, who was the younger sister, just like that we'd had such a similar experience. It was just an extraordinary kind of journey to go on because you're just like, oh my god, I've never talked to another person that's ever been through anything like this, and then you're talking to a person who's had the exact same experience. It's profound.
In twenty twenty two, Andrea launched her podcast Nobody Should Believe Me.
Yeah, and then the show, to a hugely unexpected degree, took off.
Andrea just finished her fifth season. Each season features a different family like hers, and her work didn't start there.
I founded Manchausen Support, which is the only nonprofit in the country that is dedicated specifically to supporting families and survivors who are dealing with this abuse and also helping professionals.
After all the work she's done and the many years that have gone by, she still hasn't reconnected with her sister, Meghan declined to comment for Andrea's podcast. In fact, Megan is still talking to the media claiming that she's being falsely accused of medical child abuse, and Andy is still sticking by Megan's side. He says she does not have Munchausen's by proxy. Andy regularly posts comments online dating that Andrea is just playing the victim. He said that she's making false claims and allegations for profit. But for Andrea, her work was never about making a prophet. More than anything, Andrea wants her work to reach her niece and nephew.
I think a lot about what my sister's future might look like if her kids grew up leave, and certainly I hope that someday I will hear from her children. I really did all of this because of them, And part of what we're up to at Munchausen support and building some kind of resources for survivors and really thinking about ways in which we can help survivors is also like I built that for them.
In February twenty twenty five, Andrea published her first nonfiction book. It's called The Mother next Door. She wrote it with Detective Mike Weber, a police investigator who spent his career working on medical child abuse cases.
The book, I mean that actually is a more natural medium for me because I am a writer written for novels, and I loved being able to put the cases so in context, put them in some cultural context, put them in the context of like, this is a pattern, this is a you know, this is a crime that like you can recognize and name and teach people how to deal with and just being able to give some kind of sort of proactive advice. And I think my message I always want people to take ways that This can happen to anyone. This is not race specific, this is not class specific. This is something that happens, you know, in other countries, and it oftentimes, you know, some of the perpetrators seem like weirdos, but a lot of them seem like really nice, normal moms. It's like the mom on the PTA.
All of Andrea's work is guided by her understanding of her sister and the impact she says it's had on their family. After two investigations into Megan yielded no convictions, that Dunlops are left only with their truth. There isn't a clear next step for justice or action, So instead Andrea is sharing the signs, exposing the patterns, and building a community in hopes of making a change.
I have some sympathy for family members that get caught up in this and end up supporting the perpetrators because I've been there. I know how hard that is to accept that someone you love is capable of this. Just saying to accept that anybody is capable of this, I think is so so hard. We're just all trying to like chip away until there's like a sort of breaking the damn moment, and so that's sort of how I think about it, And just like every win, you hold on to every win. If the show reaches someone that needed to hear it that day, you know which I know these things have happened because I just hear from so many people and then they end up reporting or trying to intervene, and it's not acceptable to remain in denial because the person who suffers for that as the child who has no voice, who has no say, who is depending on those family members to recognize it and to intervene.
We end all of our episodes with the same question, why do you want to tell your story?
I have a really strong core belief that stories are the best way to learn and to move people on an issue. There's so much noise and so much distraction, and people are not convinced by evidence, they're not convinced by facts, and we live in this time of too much information. So I think like the human element of a story is like, that's where we connect to things, That's what cuts out the noise, and I think that stories can help us feel less alone, and especially if there's something whereas incredibly high taboo, there's a high degree of shame where it's this thing that's just in the darkness. I think the only antidote to that is bringing it to light.
Next week, we're bringing you another bonus episode with Andrea Dunlop. This time it's a conversation between her and I about true crime podcasting. It's a deep dive and I think you're gonna like it. As you know, we're finished with this season of Betrayal Weekly. We'll be back on May twenty second with season four of Betrayal. It's a whole new story told over a few weeks, just like Ashley's, Jen and Stacy's. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email us at Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, Hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bain's music library provided by Mob Music and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,
