SEASON 05 | EPISODE 02

In the second episode of season 5, Andrea dives into how Sophie’s Evangelical Christian beliefs colored her worldview. From claiming that adopting a child from Zambia was God’s path for her life to allegedly performing an exorcism, Sophie’s faith is an integral part of this case. We hear from Dr. Lauren Turek, an Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX and author of To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations, gives us a context about Evangelical Christianity in the US and abroad and helps us understand Sophie’s religious upbringing and worldview. Andrea is then joined by some of the Nobody Should Believe Me team: Senior Producer Myrriah Gossett and Lead Researcher/Producer Erin Ajayi to attempt to fill in the many blanks left by Sophie’s memoir about her time in Zambia. The three of them lay out a timeline leading up to Sophie’s adoptions of M and C, while at the same time examining the series of omissions and half-truths riddling Sophie’s story.

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[00:00:00] Andrea VO: 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.

[00:00:17] Andrea VO: Media stories about Munchausen by proxy [00:00:20] often only scratch the surface of the complicated tangle of deceptions and manipulations that exist. that underpin them. And the media coverage of the Hartman case is no exception. These stories tend to get fixated on details like the number of times the kid was taken to the doctor or the gruesome surgeries that they endured, possibly under false pretenses.[00:00:40]

[00:00:40] Andrea VO: And in doing so, they really miss the central question. Why did this happen? You either have to determine why a mother would ever do the unthinkable things she’s being accused of, or if she didn’t do those things, why doctors and others would conspire against her to say that she did. When attempting to unravel a story like [00:01:00] Sophie Hartman’s, it can be hard to know just how far back to go.

[00:01:04] Andrea VO: I remember this feeling in the years after I became estranged from my sister Megan, following the first investigation into her for medical child abuse almost 14 years ago now. It was impossible to know where to begin, because it wasn’t just that Megan lied about her son’s [00:01:20] medical issues, or that she lied about her own.

[00:01:22] Andrea VO: The more those of us who loved her started to pull on the threads, the more the entire fabric of who I thought I knew just came completely undone. Megan lied about finances, about work, and just about all these little incidental things. It was really everything, everywhere, all at once. And what I’ve [00:01:40] learned in the years that I’ve been covering these cases is that it’s always like this.

[00:01:44] Andrea VO: Perpetrators lie about everything. And being around one of them just leaves you constantly on your back foot. As these cases play out in court, they often become hyper fixated on a single piece of the puzzle. Perhaps an event that was captured on video surveillance. [00:02:00] Or they go on a fool’s errand to prove or disprove a single rare diagnosis.

[00:02:04] Andrea VO: And in doing so, they completely miss the forest for the trees. Because the lying isn’t just a feature of this abuse, it is the abuse. There may be physical abuse or poisoning as well, but the deception is always the primary weapon. And while there [00:02:20] are many mysteries around what really happened with Sophie Hartman, one thing we can be sure of is that she is an unreliable narrator of her own story.

[00:02:29] Andrea VO: We know this because she tells us so in the pages of her very own journal, entries of which were included in the case files. She writes, When it comes to suffering, [00:02:40] I am a compulsive liar. As we covered last time, much of Sophie’s memoir sounds implausible on its face, but just because this book is not a truthful representation of Zambia, or even of Sophie’s time there, it doesn’t mean that it’s not extraordinarily telling.

[00:02:57] Andrea VO: Munchausen by proxy cases typically begin while the [00:03:00] mother is pregnant. This pattern, as we’ve talked about in previous seasons, usually begins with obstetrical complications, followed by a preterm birth. And, as I’ve said before, I strongly believe that this is no coincidence. But for Sophie, there was no pregnancy.

[00:03:14] Andrea VO: According to sources we’ve spoken to on background, there was never even a serious partner in the mix. This is a [00:03:20] notable piece in this case. So Sophie’s less conventional path to motherhood is interesting, and it’s one that she positions. Many women dream of becoming mothers. But Sophie, again in her own words, had a very specific vision of motherhood in mind.

[00:03:36] Sophie: It didn’t come easy. I kind of had made a commitment [00:03:40] that I was going to adopt. A child who no one was waiting in line for. Remember saying, like, give me a child who’s blind or with severe cerebral palsy.

[00:03:51] Andrea VO: 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.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Andrea VO: If we didn’t, you could never make it through your day. I’m Andrea Dunlop, and this is Nobody Should Believe Me.

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[00:04:19] Andrea VO: If you’d like to support [00:04:20] the show, the best way to do that is to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or on Patreon. You get all episodes early and ad free, along with extended cuts and deleted scenes from the season. You also get two exclusive bonus episodes every month. And for the first time ever, we have the entire season ready for you to [00:04:40] binge right now on the subscriber feed.

[00:04:42] Andrea VO: That’s right, you can listen to every episode of Season 5 right this minute if you subscribe to the show. And as always, if monetary support is not an option for you right now, rating and reviewing the show wherever you listen also helps us a great deal. And if there’s someone you feel needs to hear this show, [00:05:00] please do share it with them.

[00:05:01] Andrea VO: Word of mouth is so important for independent podcasts. For even more, you can also find us on YouTube where we have every episode as well as bonus video content.

Act 1 

[00:05:15] Andrea VO: In the last episode, we traced Sophie’s account of how she came to adopt her [00:05:20] daughters, C and M, from Zambia. After reading her book, I had a lot of questions. One place I really needed some help. Understanding and contextualizing was Sophie’s deeply religious perspective and framing of both her time in Zambia and her place in the world.

[00:05:38] Andrea VO: Now, I’m not religious and I wasn’t [00:05:40] raised in the church. There were a few sporadic attempts by my granny to try and get me and my sister Megan into Sunday school, and my family went to church on Christmas Eve and Easter as a kid. I consider myself a sort of culturally Christian agnostic. I do find religion pretty fascinating.

[00:05:56] Andrea VO: And I also find that many religious folks are extremely thoughtful in their [00:06:00] views on God and the world. Frankly, I’m even often a little jealous of people of faith. it seems nice to have such an organized worldview and to operate from the idea that there’s a deeper meaning for everything.

[00:06:13] Andrea VO: That we’re not just all in this whirlwind of earthly chaos. I also really get the appeal of going to [00:06:20] church, just going somewhere to be with other people in your community, talk about life every week, listen to music. Seems nice. And with all that said, you can’t have listened to as many cult podcasts as I have without understanding exactly how all of these wonderful things about religion can be exploited and weaponized.[00:06:40]

[00:06:40] Andrea VO: And the connection between cults and this abuse is not a casual one. Perpetrators of MBP are typified by the coercive control that they hold over both their children, and often their family and their community. All the more reason I wanted to understand specifically how Sophie’s evangelical background and outlook came to bear in this [00:07:00] story, especially because it’s so inextricable with her journey to becoming a mother.

[00:07:04] Andrea VO: So we brought in an expert.

[00:07:07] Dr. T.: Um, I’m Dr. Lauren Turek. I am an associate professor of history at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. My expertise is in U. S. foreign relations, and I particularly look at the role of religious [00:07:20] groups, and especially conservative religious groups, in shaping U. S. foreign policy.

[00:07:25] Andrea VO: Dr. Turek’s first book, To Bring the Good News to All Nations, Evangelical Influence of Human Rights and U. S. Foreign Relations, examines the growth and influence of Christian foreign policy lobbying groups in the United States. Dr. Turek focuses on how the [00:07:40] evangelical movement that Sophie is so deeply tied to became what it is today.

[00:07:44] Andrea VO: So I was hoping we could start off with just a working definition of what that is.

[00:07:53] Dr. T.: A great place to start and a place that is often fraught because of course scholars of religion have debates about [00:08:00] this. In my own work, because I’m a historian of U. S. foreign relations, I have tended to look for really what is a practical definition of this something useful. So I’m really interested in what are their beliefs and what do they do with those beliefs.

[00:08:13] Dr. T.: So beliefs and actions. So generally when we’re looking at those things we think of evangelicals as being Protestant [00:08:20] Christians. who believe that the Bible is authoritative, that it’s the inerrant word of God. Now, some subgroups, like fundamentalists, believe that the Bible is literal, that it’s in every way sort of literal exactly as it was.

[00:08:36] Dr. T.: Not all evangelicals share that belief, but all [00:08:40] evangelicals do believe that the Bible is the authoritative word of God. Evangelicals also believe that in order to be saved and to have eternal life in heaven, they have to have a salvation experience where they are saved through their faith in Jesus Christ.

[00:08:57] Dr. T.: And it’s typically a very personal [00:09:00] experience where they have a personal relationship with Jesus. Um, and then they also believe in addition to that, that they have a responsibility from God, a biblical responsibility. To go out and spread the gospel to the entire world, to evangelize everyone, everywhere.

[00:09:18] Andrea VO: Now obviously, there are [00:09:20] numerous, very different denominations within the Christian faith. In my small town alone, we’ve got Lutherans, Methodists, Unitarians, Baptists, you name it. So I wanted to know which of these fit within the definition of evangelicals. The answer is not black and white.

[00:09:36] Dr. T.: We sometimes think of there being a distinction between [00:09:40] maybe mainline Protestant churches, and that’s often Lutherans, Methodists, Congregationalists.

[00:09:46] Dr. T.: Although there, of course, are Evangelical Lutherans and others, so it’s a little bit fuzzier than we sometimes think. But there are these mainline Protestant churches, and then there are Evangelicals, who are also Protestants, of course. [00:10:00] Some of them are in denominations. Right? Some of them are Baptists.

[00:10:03] Dr. T.: Sometimes we count Seventh day Adventists as evangelicals. So there’s, there’s, as always, there’s some debate over who fits in. Um, and then there’s this huge group of what we call non denominational Christians. And non denominational just means they don’t belong to a specific [00:10:20] denomination, but many of them are still evangelical.

[00:10:22] Dr. T.: And so they share beliefs. And what’s very interesting is that they will borrow certain beliefs from other denominations. certain denominations, but they’re kind of a patchwork that they’re putting together themselves. And what I thought was very interesting about Sophie is that she, the progress in the churches that she went to, they go from [00:10:40] being something that started as a somewhat mainline church, and then one that is a non denominational that’s very Pentecostal.

[00:10:46] Dr. T.: And then to a non denominational church that is maybe having some flavor of that, but is perhaps less specific about where it’s borrowing its beliefs from.

[00:10:54] Andrea VO: We will get into each church as we go through this case, but we wanted to start at the beginning with the [00:11:00] church that Sophie grew up in.

[00:11:01] Haven Pastor: This is her first time back at Haven Church for many years, and she just wanted to, uh, thank you.

[00:11:09] Haven Pastor: So, here’s Sophie.

[00:11:10] Andrea VO: This audio is from a telecast of a Sunday service that was posted to Haven’s Facebook page. The vibe of this church, at least from what I can see online, looks [00:11:20] welcoming. Lots of posts about prayer meetings, ice cream socials, and food pantries. Much of it with kind of a 2010s Instagram vibe.

[00:11:27] Andrea VO: Interestingly, there are also several posts about upcoming missions to African nations. Now, we don’t see the congregation in any of these videos, but folks I’ve spoken to from Sophie’s hometown said that this is a very white [00:11:40] church in a very white town. The video Sophie appears in is from just this past summer.

[00:11:45] Andrea VO: She walks up to join the pastor at the modest podium on the stage and looks right at home as she speaks to the congregation.

[00:11:51] Sophie: This is so cool to be here today. This is the house of my youth. Um, so many of you I’ve seen [00:12:00] from my vantage point over there and I am just so deeply encouraged, uh, to be with you today, uh, to see these pews full, um, to see some wears and tears in the pews.

[00:12:15] Sophie: Both

[00:12:16] Andrea VO: Sophie and the pastor are casually dressed. She in a t shirt and [00:12:20] linen pants, and the pastor in jeans and sneakers. From what we can see of the church, it looks wholesome and neighborhood y. 

[00:12:26] Haven Pastor: Reach out, and we’re going to pray for Sophie. Lord God, we just thank you so much for what you have done in the life of Sophie.

[00:12:36] Haven Pastor: God, sometimes we cry out and we say, why? [00:12:40] We don’t always understand why things happen. We don’t understand why situations occur. We don’t understand why things have to be so hard. But Lord God, we know that you know why.

[00:12:54] Andrea VO: Listening to this, I’m struck by how faith intersects with this particular case. Again, [00:13:00] it speaks to the why of it all, and I wanted to know a bit more about how the church fit in Sophie’s worldview.

[00:13:06] Andrea VO: So we asked Dr. Turk.

[00:13:08] Dr. T.: So Haven Church was originally part of the reformed church in America. And what’s interesting about her church is her church is now part of a group of those reformed churches [00:13:20] that actually. Split off from the reformed church in America to form a new umbrella organization. So they’re now part of something called the Alliance of Reformed Churches.

[00:13:29] Andrea VO: Sophie’s Home Church ended up splitting off to be part of the Alliance of Reformed Churches in 2021. This followed division within the denomination over whether to perform [00:13:40] same sex marriages after the Oberfeld decision in 2015 that made equal marriage the law of the land. And Haven moved to the more conservative end of the spectrum.

[00:13:49] Dr. T.: Many of the churches in the Alliance of Reformed Churches, so the ones that Haven belongs to now, they were much more politically conservative. And so they are really [00:14:00] uncomfortable with the changes happening in the RCA and they broke off. So they make their own more conservative reform church organization.

[00:14:07] Dr. T.: Very interestingly, their organization, in addition to being opposed to to same sex marriage and opposed to, um, abortion and being very supportive of Israel. They also, [00:14:20] they don’t disallow women from being pastors, but they leave it up to the individual churches to decide if they want to allow it, and the majority of the churches in the Alliance of Reformed Churches do not accept women as pastors.

[00:14:35] Dr. T.: So this is a pretty conservative church.

[00:14:39] Andrea VO: So while this church [00:14:40] doesn’t necessarily welcome women at the head of its leadership, Sophie appears to have established some real influence here, as seen in the sermon she gives, which we shared with Dr. Turek.

[00:14:50] Dr. T.: It really emphasizes evangelism. You shared with me a sermon that she gave when she went back to Haven, and I was really, I was listening to what she was saying, and she [00:15:00] was using a lot of language that is speaks to that evangelicalism.

[00:15:04] Dr. T.: For

[00:15:04] Sophie: those of you who have been here and saw me grow, you knew that I was a spitfire from the start and that God was going to do something kind of wild in my life. 

[00:15:16] Dr. T.: She talks a lot about how, you know, God was going to do something in my life is something she said, which suggests [00:15:20] that. God is speaking to her, maybe not speaking to her, but it has a message for her specifically that she has this personal relationship that she has a task to do.

[00:15:30] Dr. T.: And she also uses the phrase that a waging war on the kingdom of evil. 

[00:15:36] Sophie: Uh, firmly believing, um, the call on my [00:15:40] life, the character, um, and the godliness of my family. I cannot thank you enough. Because it’s a reminder that yes, we may just be this church in Kalamazoo, but this is the house that is waging war on the kingdom of evil.

[00:15:59] Dr. T.: So the [00:16:00] other thing that came from that for me is that she’s somebody who really embraces this idea of spiritual warfare, which is something where there’s a sense that Satan is a real entity. This isn’t just like a metaphorical evil, it’s somebody real. Who is trying to stop God’s mission on Earth and needs to be fought.[00:16:20]

[00:16:20] Andrea VO: A lightbulb really went off for me hearing Dr. Turek explain this piece. Sophie routinely describes herself as being in this literal battle between good and evil, fighting a righteous fight. Like this passage from her 2016 memoir.

[00:16:36] Book read: [00:16:40] In that moment, I became certain that she was under a demonic influence, and I immediately felt a generous boldness to share the gospel completely unhindered.

[00:16:44] Andrea VO: it would be unwise to take anything that Sophie Hartman says or writes at face value, but given the context, we also can’t just chalk passages like this up to her tendency towards purple prose.

[00:16:55] Dr. T.: My sense is that many of these evangelicals are in fact true [00:17:00] believers, that this isn’t necessarily a kind of cynical ploy for, you know, their own ends, although I’m sure people can make arguments about that. But there’s, there’s a sense of true belief that they have had this incredible, emotional, ecstatic experience through their, their salvation, and that they now are on a walk [00:17:20] with Christ, that they are literally together, that he is with them and guiding them.

[00:17:25] Dr. T.: And it does feel, and sometimes that is, it does come with this romantic language or this really It’s often, I often think of it as just being very emotional language. This isn’t like imaginary. It is a genuine deep feeling [00:17:40] that Christ is with them, that he’s somebody that they can talk to for guidance, that he’ll pick them up when they have a problem.

[00:17:45] Dr. T.: 

[00:17:48] Andrea VO: Now, I am wholly unready to assign any purity to Sophie’s motives or to the work of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who go abroad on missions each year. But, I can certainly appreciate that [00:18:00] the work of saving souls may emanate from a sincerely held belief, and in some denominations, as Dr. Turek explains, this work takes on a particular urgency, because time, as they see it, is running out.

[00:18:14] Dr. T.: So different evangelicals and different, um, [00:18:20] different Protestant groups, there are a few different types in terms of their beliefs about the end of the world, what we think of as eschatology. Um, there are some that believe that it is, you know, there’s going to be a period of trial and tribulation and things are going to be very bad and then there will be the second coming of Christ and then everybody will be [00:18:40] in the kingdom of heaven on earth.

[00:18:42] Dr. T.: And so some believe that, that that sort of trial and tribulation has to come first, and some of them think that world evangelization, world evangelization has to precede that. And so some of them will read, like, the book of Matthew, like Matthew 24, 14. And this good news of the [00:19:00] kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

[00:19:05] Dr. T.: Um, and so it’s like, is there a sequence there? That we have to do this and then this? Um, you know, they read the book of Mark, and the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. And so there’s that sense that we have to evangelize everybody, and then the second [00:19:20] coming will happen. Got

[00:19:22] Andrea VO: it. So, the idea being that like, if you, if you, If someone lived in a foreign nation where there wasn’t, where Christianity wasn’t a major religion, and they just didn’t know about Jesus and hadn’t had the chance to accept Jesus as their personal savior, then they are sort of a lost [00:19:40] soul.

[00:19:40] Andrea VO: Is that, do I have that kind of right?

[00:19:41] Dr. T.: Yeah, and they’ll be, you know, they’ll be damned to hell. And so this is a very I mean, this is a horrible thought to someone who believes this, that there are all of these innocent people who’ve never had the chance to hear the gospel. And, you know, it’s, it’s billions of people, right?

[00:19:55] Dr. T.: They’ve never had the chance to hear the gospel and have the opportunity to experience [00:20:00] salvation through Christ. And so they’re just going to die. And. Go to hell and live in eternal suffering because Christians have not been able to reach them. Whereas if you can reach them, and not that you would convert everybody, but that you would at least give everybody the opportunity to be saved and then have the [00:20:20] possibility for eternal life and salvation with Jesus, right?

[00:20:24] Dr. T.: What a, what a beautiful gift.

[00:20:27] Andrea VO: This idea of quote saving people is really at the core of the work championed by churches like Haven. And it provides a handy framing for all that Sophie does in Zambia. Who in this community would ever question a [00:20:40] young woman who gives up her comfortable life to go and save people from eternal damnation?

[00:20:44] Andrea VO: And it’s hard to overstate just how primary this goal of soul saving is to the evangelical movement. This is a duty that takes primacy even over basic earthly needs like food and shelter. Sharing the word is priority number [00:21:00] one. You know, we can never say what’s in someone else’s heart. But with this understanding of her religious context, it’s certainly possible that Sophie felt genuinely called by God to go to Zambia.

[00:21:11] Andrea VO: It’s also evident that this was a decision that her community not only accepted, but celebrated her for. This is not, of course, how Sophie [00:21:20] describes it. If you’ll recall from the last episode, She describes being practically persecuted for deciding to go on her mission trip. But this discrepancy would turn out to be the tip of the iceberg when it came to the distance between Sophie’s account of her life in Zambia and the truth.[00:21:40]

Act 2 – Ad Break

[00:21:44] Andrea VO: As we talked about in the last episode, it was hard to keep track of people, places, locations, or any details at all beyond the proselytizing Sophie was doing during her time in Zambia. But given that this is Sophie’s motherhood origin story, [00:22:00] we needed to try to get to the bottom of it. So, thank goodness I had my talented team on board to help with sleuthing.

[00:22:07] Andrea VO: First of all, we’re here with our lead producer, Mariah Gossett. Hello, Mariah. Hi. First time on the mic, Erin Ajayi. Thank you so much for joining us. Erin, you are our [00:22:20] super talented researcher and I have to say you’re also doing some producing this season. Uh, easily, I would say, on, on several of these episodes.

[00:22:30] Andrea VO: So you are doing so much work behind the scenes this season, and there’s so much work to do. Thank you so much for being with us, Erin.

[00:22:37] Erin: Thank you. Yeah, I’m really excited to dive in today. [00:22:40]

[00:22:41] Andrea VO: Erin, Mariah, and I sat down to walk through the timeline of Sophie’s adoptions of C and M.

[00:22:48] Erin: As important as trying to figure out what is there, what is present, the information that, that Sophie does share in the memoir, I also found it difficult and confusing when I was going back to try to put [00:23:00] together a timeline.

[00:23:00] Erin: to see all the things that she left out.

[00:23:03] Andrea VO: Our conversation with Dr. Turek really started to turn on some lights for me as we got into Sophie’s framing of herself as being on a mission from God, with anyone who pushes back on her work or her desire to adopt C& M being, essentially, on a mission from Satan.

[00:23:19] Andrea VO: This idea that she’s [00:23:20] not only doing God’s work, but being persecuted for it, is central to Sophie’s narrative.

[00:23:26] Erin: She does talk about facing resistance. She talks about actually being called a Satanist by people in Zambia. And in that she doesn’t really extrapolate on. [00:23:40] The, the reasons that they might’ve come to that conclusion, right?

[00:23:44] Erin: But I, I recall one of the passages where she writes, I think it’s in her journal or it’s a conversation that she’s having with Jesus. And she said, maybe it’s just that because they don’t understand me and they don’t understand my call to be here and they don’t understand the work [00:24:00] that, that Jesus has sent me to do in this place that they just can’t imagine or envision why I would leave.

[00:24:07] Erin: My comfortable, uh, place in, in, in America to come here. And so it’s very much a me against the world, me and Jesus against the world, uh, kind of [00:24:20] mentality that I think she brings into this. It’s like, well, I don’t have to explain it or I don’t have to give too many details because this is the assignment that I got from Jesus.

[00:24:30] Andrea VO: Back to establishing a timeline.

[00:24:32] Erin: So in the course of my research from her memoir, uh, her blog that we, that we discovered it’s, it’s called crowns of beauty. [00:24:40] Um, and we were able to pull that at the archives from our blog up, um, even high school yearbooks, um, and news articles from her at the college that she went to.

[00:24:49] Erin: Um, I used all of these things to try to come up with some kind of timeline and. The best conclusion that I could come to based on the dates [00:25:00] that she cited in her books is that there were actually two trips. That Sophie took to Zambia prior to committing to leave college early and, and move there. Um, so the first one is, um, she talks about in her memoir, uh, going in the summer of 2008.[00:25:20]

[00:25:20] Erin: To Zambia, after she completed her freshman year of college, that’s when she went on this month long mission trip. Then the following year, as early as April, 2009, she’s actually back in Zambia, at least for a few months doing an orphan ministry internship. And it’s here where her [00:25:40] memoir actually begins.

[00:25:41] Erin: And it’s on this trip that she, um, decides that she hears this call that she’s being led to move to Zambia and be a missionary. And so the game plan is to go back home, announce this to her family. Parents and family, um, kind of a wrap things up and [00:26:00] then move, um, back to Zambia. And so based on the timeline that, um, that I could, you know, decipher and research.

[00:26:08] Erin: And, um, and also I know Mariah as well, as we were pulling different things together. It’s by December, 2009, she’s back in Zambia. Um, for a nonprofit organization.

[00:26:19] Myrriah: [00:26:20] And while, um, the nonprofit organization that we are able to sort of, um, find verification for, and we did reach out to them, I will read their words.

[00:26:28] Myrriah: Exactly. Just says we do not have any records. to check Sophie’s exact dates for when she was in Zambia. Sorry we’re not able to help more. Um, so they just said we don’t have any records to check. Not that we don’t have any [00:26:40] records of Sophie. Um, and they did not deny that Sophie worked there.

[00:26:47] Andrea VO: This organization GEMS, which stands for Girls Everywhere Meeting the Savior, states their mission this way. Our vision is to see girls around the world actively and enthusiastically expressing love for God and [00:27:00] others. Girls equipped, motivated, and passionately engaged in living out their faith. Our mission is to bring girls everywhere into a living, dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ.

[00:27:11] Andrea VO: This organization was founded in 1958 as part of the Reformed Church in Wyoming, as a sister program to the Young Calvinist [00:27:20] Federation. The original name was the Calvinist. The descriptions of their work on their website really speak to the evangelical mandate to bring Jesus first and worry about the rest later.

[00:27:31] Andrea VO: This organization has grown and changed over the years, and it has roots specifically in Zambia going back to 2006. In 2009, they [00:27:40] began construction on a school in Zambia, and the following year, adapted the GEMS Zambian curriculum for use in all developing countries. So this is what’s going on within this organization when Sophie is working with them.

[00:27:52] Andrea VO: But again, with the haziness of Sophie’s writing, we don’t know exactly what she did while she was there. We reached out to multiple [00:28:00] other organizations that Sophie seems to have ties with that did work in orphanages, and they all had similar answers. Basically that they don’t have records for anyone they do work with on the ground, which frankly is worrisome, especially considering that these are people working with vulnerable children.

[00:28:17] Andrea VO: So that was a dead end. However, we did [00:28:20] find plenty of evidence of Sophie’s time in Zambia, including a presentation some kids in her hometown made about her work there and a blog post about her from a college friend. These portraits of Sophie are great. Glowing framing her as a sort of mother Theresa figure, like this blog post that Erin shares from a friend that includes a letter written by Sophie [00:28:40]

[00:28:40] Erin: by November, 2011.

[00:28:42] Erin: She’s posting this letter on her friend’s blog. In it, she writes that she’s currently serving under an organization called gems, which works with vulnerable women and girls Here. And she says, though, my position allows some outreach with orphans. I plan to spend the next few [00:29:00] years, um, here in Zambia. And she talks about her process of adopting.

[00:29:03] Erin: Um, so that’s all that we really know from how she describes it. from her friend’s blog and what she’s doing. Her memoir is a little or a lot more obscure about the work that that she’s doing. [00:29:20] She talks about living in a three room house with another missionary. Um, that house was a service center for women and children.

[00:29:28] Erin: That tracks with serving vulnerable, you know, women and children. Um, but then she also talks about teaching English and going to the compounds to evangelize and visit homes, [00:29:40] cooking and cleaning and singing and dancing and going to prayer meetings. But she doesn’t really get into kind of the brass tacks of what she’s actually doing on a day to day, uh, with this organization.

[00:29:52] Erin: And certainly nothing alluding to the fact that she’s kind of helping to construct this. It’s day school.

[00:29:58] Andrea VO: Yeah, it’s just, it’s [00:30:00] so, it’s so scant on details. I have almost no idea after reading this what her day to day life was like, what the day to day lives of any of the people she interacted with were like.

[00:30:13] Andrea VO: And it’s just, it’s so extraordinary to have someone in such a like fish out of water [00:30:20] context and just not

[00:30:20] Erin: get any of those details. And I think at this point one might be questioning, okay, so how does she get involved with kind Orphans and orphanages. And it’s during the time that I believe that she was working at GEMS, that she writes in her memoir, she feels led to go to a crisis [00:30:40] orphanage that she had only been to once before, so that’s all we get.

[00:30:46] Erin: From how she started visiting orphanages and, and so much of her memoir focuses on the sick children that she met either [00:31:00] primarily in the orphanage, but also in the community. But because her story starts to shift so much again, talking about these orphanage settings and even how she met her, her first daughter.

[00:31:12] Erin: And so, I don’t know, just. It’s something feels, um, unsettling and certainly left out to just say, yes, one day I felt led to go to a [00:31:20] crisis orphanage out of all the different places that you could have gone to explore in Zambia if you wanted to give back in a different way. Um, that’s kind of all that we get.

[00:31:31] Erin: Um,

[00:31:32] Andrea VO: and I, to your point about like, what’s unsettling about some of this, like, I think for [00:31:40] me, it was. The juxtaposition of the vivid details about the children in states of various duress, the kids with wounds, or the orphan, the orphans that she describes as being very maltreated by the people who are working [00:32:00] there, juxtaposed with the utter lack of detail about anything else having to do with the

[00:32:05] Erin: people in particular.

[00:32:07] Erin: This is also, uh, an important time to talk about. The fact of I think Sophie paints herself as kind of this in isolation. I think she she mentions Fellowship with other missionaries was [00:32:20] rare. I was unsure how to cultivate cross cultural friendships. And so She kind of positions herself as like, no, yeah, there were other missionaries there, but I, I was really just by myself or like really just ingrained in Zambian culture, even as I’m doing these prayer meetings and these Bible studies.

[00:32:39] Erin: But, [00:32:40] uh, the one thing that’s not mentioned in her memoir that was very interesting though, and we found it, uh, from a random presentation online, but there are photos of her father. Visiting her in Zambia, there are photos of her father cooking with local Zambian women, and [00:33:00] also photos of him, Sophie, and her oldest daughter, Em.

[00:33:04] Erin: And so, None of this, right, my family visiting me, none of this is mentioned in the memoir. And I think when you are so far from home, like having pieces from home is just so important. Yeah, it was just, it was just a very interesting [00:33:20] omission.

[00:33:20] Andrea VO: It was, and she just, you know, even further than not mentioning that they visited, she certainly gives the impression, and the only time she really talks much about her family back home is in the beginning parts of the book, to my memory, she describes it as, as something, like, that her family had a lot of resistance to, and, like, to be frank, if that were the case, like, that’s [00:33:40] something that was pretty understandable to me, like, if my 20 year old daughter was, like, I’m gonna drop out of college and move to this country that I know nothing about, um, I, I would also have Questions and concerns, but she certainly sets it up is that she like did not have support.

[00:33:54] Andrea VO: Now, practically, we know she must have because how otherwise is she [00:34:00] affording to live? Because importantly, we don’t have any reason to believe that she had any paid employment during this time, right?

[00:34:08] Myrriah: That’s really hard to, because none of these outlets were willing to, or like, gave us any information about whether or not she was employed with them, or what the situation was with GEMS.

[00:34:18] Myrriah: The reason

[00:34:19] Andrea VO: we went on such a [00:34:20] massive deep dive about this piece of Sophie’s story was because this period of time sets the stage for everything to come. When looking at the patterns in these cases, we normally start with the pregnancy. And since Sophie wasn’t present for that in this case, this period of time is really crucial.

[00:34:35] Andrea VO: And while we were able to get a much better picture of Sophie’s work in Zambia, we’re [00:34:40] still left with so many questions. Most of all, how did this young woman come home with two vulnerable girls in her care?

Act 3 – Ad Break

[00:34:58] Andrea VO: Sophie’s description of her journey [00:35:00] to adopt her daughters is of a harrowing and lonely fight, where she battles a corrupt system all by herself in order to snatch these children from the clutches of their desolate fate in filthy orphanages. On top of this, I found the ultimate The overall way that Sophie describes the Zambian people in her book to be pretty troubling.[00:35:20]

[00:35:20] Andrea VO: One of the things that most disturbed me was Sophie’s account of the way that Zambian children were being treated in the hospitals and orphanages. She describes the Zambian workers as being careless and harsh with them. It was frankly tough to get any information about what happened on the ground with these various organizations, but we were able to find the [00:35:40] orphanage that Sophie worked with.

[00:35:41] Andrea VO: This is also potentially where she adopted C and M from.

[00:35:44] Myrriah: I was able to. Find people who work there, find photos. I’ve gone back on all of their social media pages and granted, they only go back to 2015 and the wider organization that runs these, they call them crisis nurseries instead of orphanages, which is also really [00:36:00] interesting that they, I don’t, that could also be a new phrasing that they’ve adopted recently, but they, you know, really state that their mission is to.

[00:36:07] Myrriah: put these kids with families and keep them with families so much so that they provide like, uh, career coaching and farm training and like all these things for mothers to be able to get the, um, services that [00:36:20] they need and income that they need to keep their children. Um, so it seems like they’re really focused on trying to do, you know, bigger scope work.

[00:36:27] Myrriah: Um, and from all of the photos we could gather one, it’s large staffs that are working there. I’m sure like any. Nonprofit, it’s never enough, you know, or, uh, or school systems in [00:36:40] general. Like my mom’s a teacher. I know she’s like too many kids, not enough adults, um, and not enough funding. And I’m sure that’s true across the board.

[00:36:46] Myrriah: Um, but these look like standup institutions. They’ve got funding. They’ve got like a bunch of incredible stories of the work that they’re doing. And it doesn’t seem as doom and gloom. gloom as the book made [00:37:00] it out to be.

[00:37:01] Andrea VO: Yeah, for sure. I think when we did find pictures of the organization again with the caveat that like, we don’t know exactly when these photos are from and it could have looked different during the time that she was there and with all that.

[00:37:12] Andrea VO: But I mean, I think, you know, yeah, it looks, it looks sort of, you know, Clean and safe and newer, and it’s not, it’s not the image that They’re [00:37:20] keeping up

[00:37:20] Myrriah: facilities, yeah.

[00:37:21] Andrea VO: Right, it’s not this sort of just, I mean, every description that Sophie includes in this book, really, of Zambia just presents the most sort of crushing scene of poverty.

[00:37:33] Andrea VO: And, you know, She might have seen some of that, that exists everywhere. I mean, I live in [00:37:40] Seattle. I could go find that this afternoon if, if that’s what I was Mm-Hmm. , you know, if that’s what I was sort of, that the work that I was doing. So it’s not to say that that’s not accurate at all, but like it, it is, it is notable.

[00:37:51] Andrea VO: And I think also just like I, I think there’s something that really struck me about, um, the, the sort of her being alone and being a [00:38:00] singular figure. One of, one of the interesting things about having a memoir. a person like this, is that there’s only so much you can hide when you’re writing a memoir, right, about the way that you see the world, like, it will come through whether you want it to or not, when you are writing about your own life, because, like, listen, and I think memoir is an interesting genre, [00:38:20] because, you know, some people Sometimes people will say like, I remember when the James Fry scandal happened with Oprah, like, why don’t people fact check memoirs?

[00:38:26] Andrea VO: And like, on some level, it’s kind of a good question. On the other level, because it’s impossible. Someone’s telling you a story of their own life, like nobody tells a perfect version of the story of their own life, right? So there is, there is like, That caveat, but I, I do think [00:38:40] what I read as being a very narcissistic worldview comes through in this book, right?

[00:38:46] Andrea VO: Sophie makes quite a hullabaloo about the resistance that she encounters when she decides to go to Zambia, but she clearly received quite a lot of support. It’s also during this time that she seemed to hone her talents for fundraising. [00:39:00]

[00:39:00] Erin: So for her first, the first organization that she was at, so GEMS, which we’ve talked about at length.

[00:39:05] Erin: So, um, she does. In that, in that friend’s blog, the letter that she posts, she, um, says this is my address and where I’m at. You can send the money to, um, the kind of North American GEMS head [00:39:20] HQ location. They’ll route it to me and my name. And she specifically says that she needs 8, 000 for a car and 3, 000 for, for M’s.

[00:39:33] Erin: Schooling for a year now from what I do know is for a lot of these organizations is you can actually [00:39:40] send Funding to missionaries to support them. The ticket items are just interesting. I certainly understand education and from the pictures that we saw, it did look like M went to a very, very good school.

[00:39:53] Erin: It looks much like the, you know, preschools and early, early schools that you would see here in the U S. The 8, [00:40:00] 000 for a car is just a little suspicious for me because I also think, you know, this is, this is back in, um, uh, 2011. Right. And so even a used car, that it’s just, it’s a lot, that’s a lot. And so I think even if you wanted to kind of blend in a little bit, so as not to draw attention to yourself [00:40:20] in a country where Sophie says that she is being so blatantly harassed.

[00:40:24] Erin: Is maybe you don’t go for high end and eight thousand dollars It just seems like a higher end ticket item to me personally So in her blog post sophie mentions that in um, september 2012 She shares that [00:40:40] um, she’s going to be leaving gems and she has a new job at special hope network And in that she actually tells people okay starting on this date.

[00:40:49] Erin: You can send me money to This organization and they’ll, you know, go on and send it to me. So again, they looked on their website [00:41:00] and even today they have, you can go online and make a gift, but then you can also designate it for specific missionaries. And from what I understand too, is that a lot of times you can, you know, home church, you can kind of send money to support missionaries.

[00:41:16] Erin: But it is interesting that in the, These [00:41:20] days when, when, you know, she, she was in Zambia, the fundraising was second nature to her. And it’s certainly something that we do see throughout. the entirety of this case as more and more fundraisers, um, start to emerge.

[00:41:38] Andrea VO: In Sophie’s memoir, she talks a [00:41:40] lot about the challenges she encountered trying to adopt her daughters C and M.

[00:41:44] Andrea VO: In particular, she talks about the social worker who attempted to stop the adoptions. Here’s and her ultimate victory in adopting the girls. But once again, you’d think she was all on her own in this fight. Now in reality, many of the fundraisers that we found from this time [00:42:00] relate to the adoptions of CNM.

[00:42:01] Andrea VO: Sophie links to the fundraising pages on her own blog, her friend posts an appeal to her followers, and Sophie’s sister Sam even ran a half marathon to help raise funds. And throughout this, there’s a depiction of Sophie as being up against the quote, corrupt adoption system of Zambia.

[00:42:19] Erin: It’s [00:42:20] important to note that Sophie began the adoption process prior to Zambia joining the Hague Convention, which puts in, um, into place kind of stricter standards around inter country adoptions.

[00:42:32] Erin: But prior to the Hague Convention, here are, um, just a few things that, that needed to be in place and [00:42:40] in requirements. So the first is that the child has to be fostered for three, for three months. The second is that the adopting parent has to be 25 years old and at least 21 years old older than the child.

[00:42:56] Erin: Another criteria is demonstrating adequate [00:43:00] finances. So think if you’re a missionary, right? That could be a little hard. Finally, there has to be an acceptable home study. So the other thing that was really interesting to note from the guidelines are, um, that, um, and it says perspective adopted parents should be aware that not all children in orphanages or [00:43:20] children’s homes are adoptable.

[00:43:22] Erin: In many countries, birth parents place their children temporarily in an orphanage or children’s home due to financial or other hardship, intending that the child returns home. When it becomes possible in such cases, the birth parents have rarely relinquished their parental rights or [00:43:40] consented to their children’s adoption.

[00:43:42] Erin: And I make note of this because In the memoir, Sophie talks about needing to wait for paperwork and, and there was a twin girls that she thought that she was going to be able to adopt, but lo and behold, they didn’t have the file. [00:44:00] Um, and the file got lost. And Sophie goes into kind of this tailspin of questioning the Zambian, uh, social workers and administrators, the veracity of their claim, and also pondered at some point if they, you know, if the file was really lost or if they just were trying to bribe her for more money.[00:44:20]

[00:44:20] Erin: So from what it sounds like is in this case, it could have been that, yeah, there wasn’t paperwork to actually determine whether or not they’re, they’re true orphan status. It could have been a situation where the parents had, um, put the child in, in a children’s home temporarily in the hopes of, of taking them [00:44:40] back.

[00:44:40] Erin: So I just think it’s important, especially when we think of orphanages, we think of a hundred percent all total abandonment, but in this case, It really, I think it points to the fact that, um, it’s more of a, what we understand perhaps as a foster care system.

[00:44:54] Myrriah: Yeah. And that checks out based on like the mission statements from these particular organizations [00:45:00] where C and M seemingly were adopted from, is they have a ton of programming to help foster care.

[00:45:05] Myrriah: mothers get back on their feet or to help parents get back on their feet so that they’re able to keep families united. So it seems like that is definitely a key focus to these organizations.

[00:45:15] Andrea VO: According to Sophie’s memoir, C was surrendered by her grandmother. [00:45:20] So we don’t know what the intentions of the birth parents were at that time.

[00:45:24] Andrea VO: And we were unable to confirm any of the details of how C and M came to the crisis nursery. From what we’ve been able to confirm, it seems M was being fostered by Sophie for a period of time while Sophie was battling the courts in Zambia to officially adopt her. During this back and forth, [00:45:40] M’s younger sister C was born and brought to a crisis orphanage.

[00:45:43] Andrea VO: And based on these confirmed details, Mariah has a pretty educated guess on what happened next.

[00:45:49] Myrriah: I think Sophie posed to these adoption agencies. At the time that Em’s adoption, uh, was approved, Sophie was now over the age of 25, uh, was [00:46:00] exactly 25. And I think Because she was 21 years older than C, was able to say, can I adopt these two sisters to keep them together?

[00:46:08] Myrriah: That is my working theory, not able to confirm. We did reach out to officials with the, like, the ministry who oversees adoption in Zambia currently, but we did not hear back for [00:46:20] comment, so.

[00:46:21] Andrea VO: I think that’s a really solid theory. And I think to, you know, something that really tracks throughout the rest of this story, and indeed that is a very strong parallel with other stories that we cover on this show, is that, um, We underestimate what a [00:46:40] completely relentless person can accomplish, right?

[00:46:44] Andrea VO: Like, if you are so singularly focused on something, um, the way she even self described, you know, was on these, on these adopt, on making these adoptions go through. But

[00:46:54] Erin: she gives a very Interesting, um, summary of how it [00:47:00] happened. But she said, uh, this case was an incredibly unique situation due to my age and to the Zambian adoption laws, requiring a prospective adoptive parent to be 25 years old and 21 years older than the child being adopted after eight favorable, unfavorable court hearings and an agonizing battle of four [00:47:20] years with an absolute determination to uphold proper ethics.

[00:47:24] Erin: While fighting for the best interests of my daughter, on May 7th, 2015, the law was legally bypassed. F k Hella’s adoption was finalized.

[00:47:35] Andrea VO: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just like, just illegally and [00:47:40] ethically, I just waited until I was 25.

[00:47:44] Erin: Right. I was like, that’s just an interesting way to summarize

[00:47:48] Andrea VO: it. Now look, maybe it just seems like we are nosy weirdos who have too much time on our hands to pick apart someone’s self published memoir.

[00:47:58] Andrea VO: But the dissonance between [00:48:00] Sophie’s account of her time in Zambia and these other artifacts we unearthed is at the root of Sophie’s picture of herself as a mother. Sophie’s entire world appears to be built on omissions and half truths constructed to make her an unimpeachable savior, and reading her work gave me a too familiar [00:48:20] disorienting feeling.

[00:48:21] Andrea VO: A feeling of never quite having my feet on the ground. Because the medical deception in these cases may pose the biggest threat, but it never occurs in a vacuum. And the ability to build a narrative where you are the lone savior with anyone who questions you as the enemy is something Sophie appears to have been honing during this [00:48:40] formative time.

[00:48:40] Andrea VO: Setting the stage for everything that was yet to come.

[00:48:47] Andrea VO: Next time, we dig into what life was like for C and M once they were in Seattle.

[00:48:53] Preview: I thought the whole situation was strange in that she has a very sick kid and she has to go to [00:49:00] all of these doctor’s appointments and she doesn’t have any money. But her daughter is in the most, one of the most expensive sports.

[00:49:08] Andrea VO: 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. [00:49:20] Research and producing by Erin Ajayi. And our associate producer is Greta Stromquist. Mixing and Engineering by Robin Edgar. Book passages were performed by Ilana Michelle Rubin.

[00:49:31] Andrea VO: 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 [00:49:40] help.