Credibility | EP 6 | Saskia's Story

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Plus, it's allergy friendly, which we know is clutch.

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Mike Levengood pled guilty to just one count of second-degree rape.

He took a plea deal that meant he would only serve 18 months in prison.

By the time of his sentencing hearing, the one you heard last episode, the judge's hands were tied.

But she had watched those chatterbait videos, and she was sure of what she saw.

It was clear to me that Ms. Inwood was comatose, not asleep, but comatose, unconscious, absolutely.

Any technicalities in the law didn't matter.

The videos spoke for themselves. To judge Jill Cummins, this was rape.

You were a predator to Ms. Inwood, and I completely understand it.

The damage done to her is probably irreparable.

Do you understand that by pleading guilty this morning, you are waving or giving out that presumption of innocence?

Yes, I do.

Do you still wish to plead guilty this morning?

I do, Your Honor.

Are you pleading guilty today, sir, because you are in fact guilty?

Yes, Your Honor. Of the one count.

You'd think that would have been the end of it.

But for Sascha, things were about to get much worse.

Mike was just getting started.

I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal Season 5.

Episode 6. Credibility.

Mike's guilty plea marked the end of his criminal proceedings.

But his sentencing hearing wouldn't be his last time in court.

It wouldn't be Sascha, either.

For a year, the criminal matter took center stage.

But the whole time, there was another case playing out.

Sascha and Mike's divorce.

We're going to rewind a bit to before Mike's plea deal, before he was even charged with a crime.

It was November 1, 2018.

Just four days after Sascha discovered the videos of her being sexually assaulted and went to the police.

On that day, Sascha was back at the courthouse, finalizing her protective order.

But before she could leave the building.

I got served the divorce papers.

At first, having those papers in hand was a relief.

She wanted a divorce as quickly as possible.

But as Sascha sat in the courthouse lobby, reading the documents Mike sent,

she realized this wasn't just any divorce filing.

He was actually saying that I was complicit in all this, and I knew about chatterbait.

And it's pages and pages of allegations that him and I were a team coming together.

Just four days after Sascha realized what Mike was doing to her.

Four days after Mike left the house, he filed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty.

Sascha's cruelty towards him.

Mike said that Sascha's allegations that he raped her, secretly videotaped her,

and posted nude images of her without her knowledge were all false.

Sascha was making it all up.

The divorce complaint reads, the parties would spend evening time posting and watching other couples doing the same.

This was a regular activity that the parties engaged in openly.

These acts were all consensual.

To get this divorce complaint just floored me.

I knew that this was going to be really ugly.

These divorce proceedings were completely different than the criminal case Mike was about to face.

That case was the state of Maryland versus Mike Levin Good.

It was the state's job to prove Mike's guilt.

This divorce case was Mike Levin Good versus Sascha Inwood.

It really felt like I was the one on trial.

Mike could have gone for a no fault divorce.

Instead, he was determined to take Sascha down.

And this path had a lot to offer him.

His criminal trial hadn't taken place yet.

So, the divorce was a bargaining chip.

Sascha thinks that Mike was using the divorce case to get her to back down

and make his criminal troubles disappear.

I think that he assumed that I would accept some kind of deal for alimony and exchange for not testifying.

It would be easy to throw some cash my way and this would all go away.

Sascha could have used that money.

She was dipping into her 401k just to pay her divorce attorney.

But that kind of deal, she'd never accept.

If the condition is that I don't testify, there's no way.

I don't care, I'll be destitute.

We're going to follow through with this.

The criminal proceedings went ahead with Sascha as an active participant in the case.

But even after Mike pled guilty, even after the criminal matter was closed,

he charged ahead with the divorce on the grounds of cruelty.

Sascha wanted a divorce too.

But like I said earlier, this was no typical divorce.

Mike was saying Sascha was a liar and there was a lot at stake.

If a judge believed him, Sascha could owe Mike her rapist tens of thousands of dollars.

She could even be charged with false reporting or sued for defamation.

In this case, there were lengthy depositions, requests for documents.

And then in January of 2021, the divorce actually went to trial.

This is extremely rare.

Only about 5% of divorce cases make it to trial.

It was the middle of COVID, so much of the trial took place over Zoom.

Sascha sat at her kitchen table, staring at Mike through her screen.

He was sitting there in an orange jumpsuit after pleading guilty to rape.

At this point, Mike had been convicted.

But in spite of that, at this divorce trial, Mike would claim he was innocent.

That's why he was so determined to see this case through.

You see, Mike couldn't win his freedom.

Through his plea, he had waived much of his right to an appeal.

But convincing this new judge that Sascha was lying could help him clear his name.

If he won the divorce, he could have an official document that proved Sascha made the whole thing up.

A document he could take to employers, friends, and family to say,

this is what really happened.

The divorce judge saw the truth.

On the surface, the divorce trial was all about money.

As most divorces are, who'd get the house, the cars.

But really, the trial rested on who the judge believed.

Mike or Sascha?

Mike looked very arrogant and cocky and had no emotion or feeling.

I think he thought that it would be just a wash.

When Mike and his attorney opened their case, their strategy was clear.

Turn the spotlight off Mike and on to Sascha.

Their goal was to undermine Sascha's credibility.

But what does that really mean?

Well, they would have to prove she wasn't believable.

They'd introduce patterns of behavior, aspects of her character that would show

she wasn't a reliable narrator.

How would they do this?

By saying she'd lost her mind.

This is the courtroom audio from the divorce trial.

That's Mike's real voice you just heard.

And calling out Sascha's anxiety and depression wasn't the only way he tried to undermine her credibility.

He also talked a lot about her use of drugs and alcohol.

All of this was to introduce doubt about Sascha.

Sascha's lawyer objected to a lot of this testimony.

Arguing that Mike's side was trying to enter character evidence unfairly.

But the judge allowed Mike to continue.

I felt like I was on the Twilight Zone.

The fact that the judges were even listening to these things was blowing my mind.

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When Sasuke and Mike's divorced trial began, he was zooming in from jail. And his legal strategy was to discredit Sasuke.

He was very repracted with drug use on her part. More than mine, she starts drinking. He doesn't stop.

Sasuke sat through hours and hours of this testimony, listening to Mike drag out every time she drank too much, and every time she couldn't get out of bed.

It wasn't that these moments hadn't occurred. It was that Mike was using them to say Sasuke was responsible for everything that happened to her.

He was telling the story of the worst period of her life. But in this story, it was all her fault. She was the one causing chaos.

These things were so dehumanizing and so dismissive of what I had been through in my pain.

I have to admit, it's hard for me to listen to Mike make this argument without feeling angry.

Mike knew her family's mental health history, and how Sasuke was determined to remain stable, to not walk the same path as her dad.

Sasuke thought Mike was on her team, and yet Mike had been exploiting her mental illness, her use of alcohol and drugs for years.

Sasuke's friend Heather put it best.

It was to his advantage to keep her in this drunken, drugged up bad mental health state, because the more vulnerable she became, the easier it became for him to take advantage of her.

But as Mike testified and his attorney spoke, his culpability faded into the background.

He zeroed in on her behaviors, her imperfections, to show that she shouldn't be trusted, and even that she was to blame.

I want you to hear Mike's account of October 27th, 2018, the night of the Halloween party, the night Sasuke saw what was on Mike's computer screen.

The audio isn't perfect, so listen closely. Here's his story of that night.

We've been on the fight, in call for those drugs, and ended up looking at categories for what's right.

When they got home, they went on to chatterbait, the camming website. But just as they were logging on,

they got up and wanted it off, so they turned it off, went to bed, and that was it for the evening.

Next morning, he was very, very educated, wanted to look at the website, which we did, and then he can very focus on my use of pornography.

We were looking at the website without her, and then we became very emotional, but it's having all kinds of things.

And that's at the point where she stood there in part of the dresser, and she looked at how she said,

I don't know what to be doing, and it was just such a shock and out of nowhere, it's just completely bored.

That moment when I realized that the mental illness was going on here.

In Mike's memory, he and Sasuke were at a party. They were both drunk, looked at a website.

The next day, Sasuke went crazy on him, out of the blue. There could only be one explanation for all of this.

Sasuke was mentally ill.

In court, this strategy is often effective. It plays on misconceptions we all have about what it means to be a rape victim.

If you've watched any crime show or any courtroom drama, you're probably familiar with the character of the perfect victim.

Think of Law and Order SVU. There's the perpetrator, the bad guy, and then there's an innocent victim. She's written to be brilliant, beautiful, and beyond reproach.

Storytellers love this archetype. The protagonist is clear, and audiences love it too.

We know exactly who to root for. There's no room for doubt.

The problem is that most victims don't behave the way this imaginary perfect victim behaves.

That's Deborah Turkheimer, a professor at Northwestern University, Pritzker School of Law.

I am a former prosecutor, and I handled cases involving special victims.

Deborah wrote a book called Credible. Why we doubt accusers and protective users? She's an expert on sexual violence.

She says the perfect victim character doesn't just live on screen.

She's the benchmark, the standard that all rape victims are judged against.

In the courts and circles of friends everywhere.

The perfect victim standard includes misconceptions about how victims behave and how they ought to behave before, during, and after the abuse.

Before, they're ought to be no drinking, no drug use.

And Sasuke, as we know, was on a lot of substances when she was raped.

During the abuse, the perfect victim fights. She fights back. She fights hard.

But Sasuke was knocked out.

And then afterwards, the perfect victim is able to recall with precision every single detail of what happened.

Which again, Sasuke couldn't.

In every way, Sasuke failed to rise to the perfect victim standard. The reality is, most victims do.

It's unfair to impose a set of rules that, for the most part, can't be followed and aren't followed.

And yet, the rules remain. And they serve abusers like Mike.

Because when victims aren't perfect victims, we can write them off. And we can turn them into other characters.

The regretful woman. So someone who had consensual sex and then decided it was a mistake. And so is now, quote unquote, crying rape.

The gold digger. Someone who is making this up because she wants money.

And then there's the hysterical woman.

Someone who just really doesn't know what's going on and doesn't have a firm grasp of reality.

It's one of the oldest and most effective ways to discredit a victim.

To make the judge question their sanity and doubt what happened to them.

Here's Alice Paray, Mike's attorney from The Divorce Trial.

What did you see that makes you believe that she was struggling?

He was very impressed. He was unable to go for work many, many times.

He was struggling to take care of the kids.

He's in which, as I'm feeling like shit.

How often would she tell you something like that?

So many times I could not even count.

And with any particular reasons why she felt like shit?

Because of her intentions, I'm depressed. I can't take it. I can't work.

Work is threatening me out. The kids are threatening me out. Life is threatening me out.

In Mike's account, Sasuke wasn't composed or stable or credible.

She was a woman in the midst of a breakdown.

Her word couldn't and shouldn't be trusted.

She had to have lost touch with reality because according to Mike,

he and Sasuke were camming together, having sex on camera all the time.

How many times have had the two of you cammed on Chateau?

Two to three dozen times.

And how many times have you observed other people camming on Chateau?

Really poor. There was a darn, with sex like it came with extremely adventurous,

with not a lot of limits.

There was a boundary that was something that had not experienced previously,

any relationship.

But Mike wasn't asking the judge to take his word on all this.

His divorce attorney, Alice Paray, said she could prove it. She had a plan.

I would like to really admit all of the pictures and all of the videos

because I think how much of them is relevant to my client's case.

And when Alice said all, she wasn't just talking about the videos from the criminal trial.

The one's detective rule recovered from 2017 and 2018.

There are hundreds of photographs, hundreds of videos,

and they take place over the course of years and years, six or seven or four years.

There was more evidence, much more.

An Alice claimed it would show Sasuke consented to everything.

Every sexual act, every video.

What's happened is the defendant has under oath in pleadings and requests

that responses to admissions just denied everything.

Never post a picture, never participated in videos.

And you say, this never happened.

And there is a picture of the living color or video of it moving mostly.

It's relevant.

And according to Alice, it would show that Sasuke was not to be believed.

This podcast is sponsored by Nurture Life.

Hey, it's Danielle Fischel from Podmeetsworld.

And as a mom to two growing boys, I know how chaotic meal time can get.

No matter how confident I am with what I'm serving them,

my kids will always find a way to call the meal gross or stinky or yuck.

It's true, they can be wildly picky about new foods.

And with my busy schedule, I don't have the time to become America's next top chef.

And so that's why I love Nurture Life.

It's a meal delivery service that actually caters to kids.

Ideal for ages eight months to eight years.

Fully cooked and ready to serve in just one minute.

It's the problem solver I've been praying for.

It's the top meal delivery service for babies, toddlers, and kids.

And everything is designed by registered dieticians.

So you can sleep safe knowing your kids are getting the protein, veggies, and nutrients they need.

While still eating favorites like mac and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, and so much more.

Plus, it's allergy friendly, which we know is clutch.

And when it comes to options, Nurture Life has you covered.

There's more than 50 nutritious meals and snacks on their menu,

from soft finger foods for babies and toddlers, to balanced kids meals for when they get older.

Nurture Life does the cooking, they deliver it straight to your door,

and then you might even have time to eat something for yourself.

So now is the time to head to NurtureLife.com slash P-O-D,

and use code pod for 50% off your first order, plus free shipping.

That's right, 50% off plus free shipping.

Once again, that's NurtureLife.com slash pod,

and make sure you use promo code P-O-D.

Even if you aren't a parent with young kids, you might have parent friends who struggle with meal time.

Make sure to share our code P-O-D with them.

Remember, put your little ones first with healthy meals from Nurture Life.

That website one more time is NurtureLife.com slash P-O-D pod.

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In the criminal trial, there were about 30 videos recovered from chatterbait.

These videos were the key to prosecuting and convicting Mike.

But in the divorce trial, Mike said he never raped Sasuke or took images of her without her consent.

She agreed to all of it and to back that up.

He said that he and Sasuke often made pornography together.

Which was done over the course of seven years to the tune of over 200 photographs and videos.

200 photographs and videos.

His divorce attorney, Alice Paray, seemed confident.

The evidence will convince the court that she was a willing participant in these matters.

While working on this episode, we reached out to Alice Paray.

She declined to comment.

In these additional images, it wasn't just that Sasuke's eyes were open,

as we've talked about in previous episodes.

Alice claimed that in lots of instances, Sasuke was awake.

And she was posing and performing for the camera.

If Sasuke was saying she'd never consented, she was lying.

Or, she was delusional.

From the early days of reporting this season, I knew that there were some pictures Mike took of Sasuke consensually.

Sasuke was open about that with us, and with detectives too.

My kids would be out of the house, and they'd be drinking, having a good time.

Then Mike would pull out his phone.

You heard about one of these incidents in episode one.

I remember one time he took a picture of me and showed me how good my butt looked or something like that.

And I explicitly asked him, what are you doing with that picture?

And he's like, well, of course I'm going to erase it. I would never show it to anybody.

But you can only remember this happening a handful of times.

Mike said he had 200 photographs and videos.

And most of these images, I don't remember taking them, I never knew of their existence.

All of this brings up another painful truth about rape cases.

No matter the corroboration, no matter the amount of prosecutors, family members, and experts standing behind a victim.

There's an initial default doubt that is sort of culturally ingrained in us.

That's law professor Deborah Turkheimer again.

She says, doubt is built into the crime of rape.

It's really difficult in the criminal setting to get past that very high standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

And that's true of every crime, but it's especially true of rape.

Historically, there were special instructions that were given to juries that said, you should be even more cautious about convicting in this case.

Because accusers are so untrustworthy.

Now those formal instructions aren't given, but we still have a default to doubt when someone comes forward.

That's true, even in a case like this, where there's so much evidence.

Even sometimes when it's on video, right? There are questions of interpretation.

No judge or jury can turn back the clock to be in the room at the time a rape happened.

And no one can get into the minds or bodies of the people involved.

And that's also a challenge for us as reporters.

That's my producer, Caitlin Golden.

We can't go back in time.

And so in understanding this story, the only thing we can do is rely on the evidence that is available to us.

When it comes to images like these, attorneys will always make arguments of what was really going on.

But our team didn't understand the degree to which these were just arguments until we saw the images for ourselves.

After months of reporting, we finally got access to the case files from the divorce and the criminal case.

We saw the kinds of photos we heard so much about from Mike's attorney.

One's where Sasuke's eyes were open.

One in particular has stuck with us.

I remember the first time I saw that photo and I had to immediately close my laptop.

Because I mean, it's so hard to describe as anything other than horrific.

Yeah.

She's not there.

No, no.

She isn't there.

I hate even just describing it.

But the only way I could describe what I saw is it's like a corpse with her eyes open.

It's really upsetting.

So when I look at that photo, I think of course she doesn't remember this.

Yeah.

And the idea that images like this where her eyes are open or being used to say that she was awake and consented to everything is so disturbing.

Seeing this image, it felt clearer than ever.

What happened to Sasuke is real.

And Mike, not Sasuke, is to blame.

But in the divorce trial, back in 2021, there was only one person that needed to be convinced of all this.

That was the judge.

And Sasuke was unsure what she'd make of these images.

I knew that I wasn't going to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Before Mike's attorney could show the videos, the judge asked to review the content herself.

She stepped into her chambers to watch and private.

As everyone waited for the judge to return, Sasuke sat in her kitchen, staring at Mike through her screen.

The man who'd heard her was now in jail.

He was just a little box on Zoom.

And yet, he had the power to make her feel so small.

He was the one behind bars.

But the judge was deliberating over Sasuke's actions, her character.

It felt ridiculous and absurd, and dehumanizing that I had to go through that.

But I also knew that I just had to get through it.

Sasuke knew the truth.

The truth is always the best defense.

She just hoped the judge would see the truth too.

After a brief recess, the judge returned.

So I have gone through the additional videos.

And it looks as though Ms. Inwood knows she at points that pictures are being taken.

And I'm not sure about knowing she's being videotaped because I don't think I saw anything that expressly shows that.

So this could very well be a situation where you're, you know,

a couple of retotaped pictures of each other.

And I don't think that that is going to challenge Ms. Inwood's credibility.

But I do believe that Mr. Levin Goods attorney should have some opportunity to examine her about that.

The judge couldn't say for sure that Sasuke did or did not know she was being filmed.

Or whether she knew this content was being shared.

So she asked the officers of the court to turn around.

And Mike's attorney, Alice Paray, pulled up the evidence.

She wanted to show Sasuke the videos and make her answer for them in front of everyone.

Sasuke looked at the video on her screen.

Despite what Alice said, this was a video of her being violated.

A video that was now being shown to a room full of strangers.

And when we feel like a fool, and when we feel like less than a person.

The whole time she couldn't stop thinking about Mike.

It's heartbreaking to think that he put everybody through that just so that he could get away with humiliating me.

With Sasuke on the stand, the judge let Mike's attorney Alice Paray proceed.

And then what do you recall this video?

No, I don't.

Do you recall when it was fake?

The objection, she just said no, she doesn't recall.

How rude.

Man, do you recall when this video was taken?

No, because I don't recall the video.

The attorney's fought back and forth on objections and relevance as Sasuke just sat there.

It was so retraumatizing to have to defend myself.

That's dehumanizing to have your life whittled down to that.

And to have people talking about things that are affecting your life.

And you can't do anything. You're just sitting there helpless having to listen to it.

And it's something I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Alice continued cross-examining Sasuke for just a couple more minutes.

Asking Sasuke if she posed for pictures for Mike.

And then the judge popped in.

Can you go ahead, Ms. Paray, anything else you want to ask?

No.

No other questions of Ms. Inwood?

No, I will save my time for Ms. Inwood.

All right. All right.

Any, she didn't ask much. Any, any, any, read the right?

No, we got her.

All right. Thank you.

Okay.

Alice spent her remaining time questioning Mike again.

Before long, she ran out of time.

Both sides closed their cases.

In the weeks that followed, Sasuke waited and waited for the divorce decision.

She wasn't expecting any kind of big win.

She just wanted those papers in hand.

I had no faith in the justice system anymore.

I just wanted it to be over.

I was already so disheartened about everything and not hopeful at all.

It was like I was waiting for the time to run out.

Everything was just getting in the way of me just being divorced from this monster.

I wanted nothing more than to be divorced and be able to move on.

And I could really say that this is not my husband.

This is a monster who was posing as my husband.

And now he's totally gone.

Finally, a few months later, the judge released her decision.

We're going to have a producer read part of it for you.

And remember, Mike is the plaintiff here.

Sasuke is the defendant.

The judge wrote,

This court credits defendant's testimony and expressly discredits plaintiffs testimony.

In other words, she didn't believe Mike.

She believed Sasuke.

Plaintiff attempted to convince this court that defendant was aware of the site

and aware that she was being sexually penetrated and otherwise manipulated by the plaintiff.

The court is unconvinced.

The evidence revealed defendant has struggled during the party's marriage

and before with addiction and mental health issues,

making her particularly vulnerable to mistreatment by someone she trusted.

Defended learned only after very personal images were broadcast to the world on the internet

that she was married to someone whom she could not trust.

The plaintiff betrayed his spouse in the worst type of way.

He then lied about it and continued to lie about it.

Another judge saw through Mike's lies and came to the same conclusion.

On paper, she won.

But in reality, Sasuke?

It didn't matter.

Of course, yes, she found that he was not credible and that I was credible.

But it still didn't take away from what I had been through in this divorce

and what had been taken away from me.

It was exactly how Sasuke felt after Mike's plea deal.

She was told that this was a good outcome for the court system.

But it didn't feel that way.

Professor Deborah Turkheimer says that's often how these cases go.

Even in the end, if the survivor is found credible

and there's that vindication that comes along with it,

along the way the process can be enormously difficult, degrading, even traumatic.

Sasuke was granted a divorce on the grounds of cruelty.

The judge wrote,

the court can think of few actions that warrant a divorce on this ground,

more so than the rape and sexual exploitation that occurred here.

But she had to live through two and a half years of proceedings to get there,

when he'd already been convicted in criminal court.

She's spent two and a half years defending herself,

having to answer for every drink she had, every hospital stay,

having all of her vulnerabilities put on display when Mike had raped her.

And this crime isn't unique to Sasuke.

You can see his hands, his wedding ring,

and then I realize that I am in these images.

On the next episode of Betrayal, we meet other survivors.

It has been a real journey for me to get to the point of realizing

that it's not my gut that's broken.

It's him that's broken.

For resources on sexual violence, visit rain.org slash betrayal.

That's r-a-i-n-n.org slash betrayal.

You can also get free confidential 24-7 support through Rain's National Sexual Assault Hotline.

Just text Hope to 64673 or call 1-800-656 Hope.

You are not alone.

If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your story,

email us at BetrayalPod at gmail.com.

That is Betrayal-P-O-D at gmail.com or follow us on Instagram at BetrayalPod.

To access additional content and to connect with the Betrayal community,

join our substack at betrayal.substack.com.

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A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts,

a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faisen,

hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning,

written and produced by Caitlin Golden.

Our supervising producer is Carrie Hartman.

Our story editor is Monique LeBord, also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Associate producers are Olivia Hewitt and Leah Jablow,

production management by Kristen Melcuri,

additional support by Curry Richman.

Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Crine Check,

audio editing by Tanner Robbins,

with additional editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.

Special thanks to Saskia, her friends and family,

and special thanks to Will Pearson and Carrie Lieberman.

Betrayal's theme is composed by Oliver Baines,

music library provided by my music.

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