She Helped a Survivor. Now She Is One.

Hurt people hurt people. Now what?

Photo by Le Vu on Unsplash

This is part of an ongoing series on harm in the survivor advocacy community. If you’d like to share your story or get in touch, please reach out at lauranotpeerreviewed @gmail.com.

I kept thinking one of you eagle-eyed readers might realize that my blog about Lauren Stratford was, in fact, not quite about Lauren Stratford.

To be fair, it was. Everything I wrote in there, to the best of my ability to research, was true of Stratford. But it was also about a larger story about what it means to care for someone who’s hurting and hurts you in turn. This impacts a lot more people than Stratford and her associates. If you read the blog about Stratford, you’d have no trouble seeing that Stratford was a deeply troubled woman. And, you’d also see that in the process of working out her pain, Stratford created no shortage of victims of her own. 

I saw a number of similarities between Stratford’s story and one I’d come across recently myself. This is the story of Abby Osborne and Hannah-Kate Williams. If these names mean nothing to you, and you don’t know what’s coming, buckle up and start here. As a quick introduction for those of you who aren’t online (hi, Mom and Dad, thanks for reading as always, and welcome to hell) Williams has been a public-facing activist against the Southern Baptist Convention calling for abuse reform. This was inspired by her reported experience as an abuse survivor at the hands of her parents, particularly her father who was for a time a Southern Baptist pastor and (eventually) Southern Baptist supply preacher. Abby Osborne is the woman she lived with for about two and a half years.

Now, let me be clear about the similarities and differences. Where the similarities between Stratford and Williams stop are the absolute basis of their claims. Stratford was demonstrably not a survivor of ritual abuse or the Holocaust. But despite other things Williams has claimed that are likely untrue, Williams¹ may be a survivor of childhood abuse. Satanic ritual abuse is a crime with no known verifiable victims; child abuse is very common. Stratford was certainly not born to a Jewish family in Poland and was never in Auschwitz; Williams’s story of her childhood in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana is at least geographically plausible and elements of her story have been corroborated. I make no claims here that Williams was not a survivor of childhood sexual, emotional, or spiritual abuse, or of child neglect. I am utterly unable to speak to that though it is certainly much, much more plausible than Stratford’s claims. 

And Abby herself says:

Before I go any further, I want to state as clearly as possible that I fully believe she experienced childhood abuse and neglect. Even some of her worst critics have admitted that she very clearly seems to have suffered life-altering trauma. Her siblings’ correlating testimonies also boost my confidence that they all suffered as children.

It is not stupid to believe that Williams was abused. “On the testimony of two or three witnesses” is the standard for capital crimes in Deuteronomy 17:6, and in this case, we do have four of the six Williams children saying they were abused – all four siblings who have reached the age of majority.² I am not a judge and it is not my job to say exactly what happened. I don’t know. But I can say that no force on earth or heaven could make all my siblings say my parents abused us, because they didn’t. If you have good parents, the same is probably true of you and your siblings.

Where I see similarities is the way in which Stratford’s search for validation and support created new victims as Stratford worked her way from family to family, leaving a line of confused, hurt people behind her. And, I believe that at least one of the claims that Williams made is like Stratford’s claims regarding severe illnesses: there’s good reason to suppose it’s not true. Williams has publicly and privately claimed to have cancer during the summer and fall of 2023, and Abby has come to the conclusion that she didn’t.³

I got a chance to talk to Abby about her statement in a little more detail, and the interview I did with her makes up the bulk of this blog. You might be wondering why I would publish this interview, or whether it’s even acceptable to do so in light of the fact that Williams is allegedly a survivor of severe abuse and is campaigning in court against an organization with a troubled history regarding abusive leaders and complicit institutions. Aren’t I hindering important work by publishing this? By smearing someone who is doing such good work, holding abusers to account? 

First: the idea that a person who does important work can’t be challenged for things they themselves say and do, because that would stop the important work – this is the same logic that incentivizes covering up church abuse in the first place. A core component of Williams’s story has been that for years, she suffered because the Southern Baptist Convention (hereafter SBC) believed her father and others in the church were too important to hold accountable. It does not benefit us to replicate the exact same norms among abuse survivors and their allies – that Abby and other people like her should suffer in silence because Williams is too important to hold accountable. The only reason Abby should not share her story, or that other people shouldn’t use their platforms to share it, is if compelling evidence emerges that Abby is not telling the truth. I haven’t seen any evidence that Abby is lying and I’ve ripped my brain in half trying to think why someone would lie about this, and I’ve come up empty. I’ve also seen evidence that Abby is telling the truth.

In the field in which she operates – namely, sexual abuse survivor advocacy – Williams is undeniably a public figure. This isn’t stupid internet slapfighting between private individuals. Williams is a public figure because she has sought to be one, doing public work, on behalf of sexual abuse survivors. Any good work Williams has done or contributed to is not inherently invalidated by anything harmful she may have done. If she’s done something that personally helped you or helped a cause you care about, that’s still true, this story doesn’t erase that, and you don’t have to pretend that didn’t happen. Yet, I don’t feel out of line allowing Abby to tell her story about her here because I think this story is in the public interest of Christians who are concerned about abuse and would be motivated to provide extended support to survivor advocates in the way Abby has done.

Second: this is Abby’s story. Not Williams’s story. Abby does not lose her right to tell her story about what happened to her simply on the grounds that something awful also happened to the person who did it to her. It doesn’t always happen that we are harmed by those who had only the sunniest of childhoods. Abby is under no obligation to keep her silence because the person who hurt her is also hurting. Abby’s story left a long, long paper trail — hundreds and hundreds of photos, text messages, voice calls, paperwork, etc. that corroborate her story. I wasn’t able to corroborate the details with Williams, so I won’t be the final judge between them. But I can say this: if Abby’s story isn’t true, after the documentation and texts she’s shown me, this is both an incredibly elaborate and entirely unmotivated fraud that she’d already put the finishing touches on before I’d asked her for a single piece of evidence.⁴

I didn’t meet Abby that long ago outside passing chats on social media. But I reached out to Abby after being deeply troubled by her story, and I asked if I could help her talk through some things. She took me up on it and since then I’ve gotten to know her a lot better. In the last month I have come to feel as though Abby is my friend. I hope she’d say the same thing about me. 

Let me tell you a little bit about Abby. I have a lot to learn from her. Abby is kind. Abby is patient. Abby is funny. Abby has a lot on her plate. Abby is ambitious, and has big goals and plans beyond this experience. Abby understands my foibles and my desire for knowledge and information. She’s always reasonable about it. Abby tells me when to stop. Abby is charitable, and generous, and gracious. She has a lot of traits I wish I had. While talking to Abby I often realized that Abby is someone who I wish I was more like. Abby is understanding when I am angry. Abby is curious where I am closed-minded. Abby is trusting where I am suspicious. To say that we connected because we’re alike would be to flatter myself unjustly. We connected because I had the capacity to do work where Abby was tired. I want to help Abby because I like her. 

And Abby is hurt, and frustrated, and justifiably wanting to understand what happened to her. On these points, I understand Abby. 

This article is not about Williams. I am not going to speak to any of the issues regarding her ongoing litigation or her story here beyond what I have to say to contextualize Abby’s story and to defend against possible counternarratives regarding Abby’s supposed motivations for lying (which, having looked at a lot of evidence, I don’t believe she has). I don’t want to distract from the reason why I want to use this space – and that’s for Abby to share her story, and specifically to elaborate on and explain the events she outlined in her statement. 

I can’t independently verify many of the details here outside the documentation Abby gave me– these claims are mostly between herself, her husband, and Williams. But, I can tell you I have not yet been able to find evidence that Abby was misrepresenting, confused, or lying about anything in her story. I was not able to find a reasonable avenue to reach out to Williams for comment while working on this, though I did try. As I’ve said before on this blog: this is not reporting. I am not a journalist. I’m not an investigator and I’m not building legal cases or acting as an advocate. My goal here is only to provide a space for people who have not been able to share their experiences to a larger platform – especially when they are up against larger platforms. Throughout this I have made notes to indicate where Abby showed me texts or other artifacts to explain why I believed what she was telling me. I am not putting them in the body of the blog out of respect for privacy for all the individuals involved (and there are many), but I want you to know why I believed it.

When I spoke to Katie Fetzer months ago on survivor stories, she told me that survivor stories are pearls and they must be handled with care. I feel somewhat unequal to this task that includes the story of more than one survivor, and yet, I feel compelled by the fear that one story has come to swallow up another. I also want to contextualize Abby’s story and one way I’ve seen people respond to her story who do believe her: “why would you have moved someone in and spent all this money on her? Why weren’t you more careful, and why didn’t you have more boundaries?” I would not have done what Abby did – and that’s in large part a thing I say in praise of Abby, because I am cynical and selfish, I don’t like people being in my house, and I like being alone with my husband and cats. And, I understand why Abby did it, after hearing her story.

One last point of throat clearing: bullying and harassment are always wrong, and no one deserves it. Please do not attack, cyberbully, harass, or threaten anyone on the basis of what you read here. I have only contempt for anyone who harasses Williams, or any survivor of church abuse, on account of this story. Don’t do it.

The Interview

Hi Abby, thanks for talking about this. I was really upset to hear about what happened to you and I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk some more about it. Can you give a quick summary of your story so people at home know what they’re reading?

Hannah-Kate, aka @ freedomsbride on X/Twitter, lived with me from November 29^th, 2021 until February 29^th, 2024. Hannah-Kate was, I believed – and still believe – a survivor of severe childhood abuse, who was also publicly vocal and active about calling out the Southern Baptist Convention regarding abuse and inaction. She filed a lawsuit against the SBC Executive Committee, Lifeway Christian Resources, and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary regarding her experiences in 2021. She withdrew and refiled the lawsuit in 2022 with new attorneys. 

During the time that she lived with us, my husband and I supported her financially, emotionally, and physically. In those two years, we traveled with her multiple times as a support person and advocate, attended doctors’ appointments with her, and paid for her education and living expenses. She told us that nobody in her life beforehand had ever provided her with the opportunities that we did. And boy, did I buy it.  

Okay, let’s wind back the clock and go into detail. How did you meet Williams? 

Hannah-Kate and I met through Twitter. I first heard her story and followed her when Rachael Denhollander shared her and her siblings’ statements back in 2019. My heart absolutely broke for the four of them, and I wanted to support them however possible. For a while, that support came just through distant following and prayers. Then in mid-2021, Hannah-Kate connected with my brother–an SBC survivor himself–who then got us connected. We became pals instantly, and she came to visit my family in the fall of that year.

It’s a big jump from meeting someone and hearing their story to having them move in with you. How did you decide to do that? 

There are so many factors that all converged at once, to be honest, which makes it hard to even pinpoint a decision. For one, this was not the first time my husband and I had let someone stay with us on a snap decision. In early 2020 just after everything shut down because of Covid, a longtime friend of mine moved in with about 48 hours’ notice in order to get away from the tension of an impending divorce. She lived with us for about two months and was a wonderful housemate. We never once regretted opening up our space to her.

Another reason was simply our upbringing. I was raised in a home that valued hospitality and generosity highly. My parents taught me from an early age that the love of Christ is exemplified by sharing what we have been given. My husband was raised in a similar household that also taught him the value of putting in work and making sacrifices even when it’s difficult. That framework for viewing duty and love for others opened us up to these kinds of opportunities.

Finally, we made this decision because it was an urgent need that showed up on our doorstep, and it was one that we could fill. Hannah-Kate told me that she fled Kentucky out of fear for her safety and that she was no longer able to stay with the family she had previously spent a few months with. We saw this as a Good Samaritan-esque moment; one where our neighbor was quite literally the woman dropped onto our doorstep. It to us seemed like an opportunity that had been given to us from God.

Did you have a background in Southern Baptist churches and with church abuse? Can you tell us more about that?

Yes, kind of. I was raised in the metro Atlanta area and attended a number of SBC churches. Even the ones that weren’t affiliated with the Convention itself were culturally and theologically similar to an SBC church. I later attended college in a similar environment and worked at a school that would’ve probably been funded by the International Missions Board itself if it hadn’t been in China. My life experience was all in this general Southern Baptist-ish environment until I was 24.

I didn’t experience abuse within an SBC church personally, nor was I privy to any stories if it was happening in real-time to my peers. Since my adolescent years, though, I have supported friends who were abused as small children. A heartbreaking number of those friends were abused in some kind of church environment.

Additionally, my brother himself is a survivor of abuse by one of the Convention’s most prominent figureheads in recent years, Paul Pressler. (You can read more about his story here.) He and I have an almost-17-year age gap between us, so our church experiences varied somewhat. He grew up almost exclusively in Southern Baptist churches, attended Samford University (a longtime SBC-affiliated college), spent a few years serving at a rural SBC church, and–after diverting for a while to the Reformed Bible church world–pastored an SBC church. Chris and I share the same passion for justice, and that has manifested heavily for us both in trying to bring it about in the religious environment of our upbringing.

What were Williams’ plans when she moved in? Was she continuing her education? Working? What? How long did you anticipate she’d stay? Did you and your husband make a plan for how this would look? Did you stick with the plan?

Honestly, the only plans I picked up on were her survival. Between all that she said she was juggling–lawsuits, attending SBC leadership meetings, college, threats, etc–Hannah-Kate seemed like she just wanted to get to the next day. 

She was continuing her education at the University of Kentucky and briefly worked for a local victim advocate. We expected and had offered for her to stay with us for a few months and offered to help her get established here in the D.C. metro area. She told us that nobody had ever given her help financially or practically, only in “thoughts and prayers.” We wanted to give her some tangible support for what we thought would be the first time.

Those plans changed one late night as she wept on our couch, exhausted from work, mentally drained from school, and unsure how she would manage everything and be able to pay rent. At that moment, I offered for her to stay with us until her lawsuit was over in order to relieve one of those burdens. I believed, and later confirmed, that my husband would be on the same page had he been part of the conversation.

How did your life change after Williams moved in?

I mean, it was two years, so it’s hard to know where to even begin. To try and sum it up, though, I would say the very center of gravity in our home shifted. At this point, we had a 1-year-old who I stayed home with full time. My attention naturally shifted from primarily focused on him to sharing it between him and Hannah-Kate. I spent many nights up late getting through flashbacks and suicidal ideation with her, at the ER for all manner of symptoms, and trying to put together meals that she would eat, among a whole slew of other needs we met. All of our decisions and actions had to factor in how they would affect her. In many ways, caring for her was itself a full-time job.

Was there anyone you were able to talk to about this experience while it was going on?

Not really, outside of my husband. Hannah-Kate acted triggered if she knew anyone was talking about her life or details of her situation in any way not explicitly approved by her. It was to the point that she made a joke once in a text, I shared it with my husband, and when he referenced it later she was incensed that I’d shared her personal texts. I felt like I had to keep everything related to her and her life, even in my home, a secret for her own safety. 

I understand you had a baby while this was going on. How was that? 

Well, let me put it this way: the entire time period when Hannah-Kate was with us was lived in survival mode. Having a newborn is its own version of survival mode. On top of all of that still, she had her double mastectomy about four weeks after my daughter was born, and surgery recovery is a beast in its own right. The result was my nervous system revolting on me multiple times from the stress.

I’ve looked at your credit card statements that you provided in pretty significant detail. It looks like you paid for a lot of travel and hotel stays for Williams? Was this difficult for you to take on? Why did you feel it was necessary? Did you feel like you were supporting important work? Do you now?

It was for sure a financial strain, in no small part because I had just lost the full time job that I got after she moved in. The primary travel and hotel stays we covered were when she was traveling out of state to get medical care near trusted mentors. It was at that point that I ran a GoFundMe. We simply were drowning under the expenses but were under the impression that we alone were her financial support system.

We felt at the time like we had no option. It wasn’t about moral imperatives or the greater good at that point: it was about what we believed was a near-death abuse survivor who had nobody else to keep her going. Knowing now what I was in too much of a fog to see then, I absolutely do not think it was important for her survival that we paid thousands for a hotel room for six weeks, Doordash/Instacart deliveries, and plane tickets in order to be near medical care in another state that was readily available to her down the road in DC.

Clarifying note from Laura: Williams’s doctors and medical care was centered in a state that Williams had not lived in previously nor that she lived in at the time, a plane ride or very, very long car trip from Abby’s home. When she was meeting with her doctors she stayed in a hotel nearby and was cared for by a different family. 

How else did you support Williams during this time?

Hannah-Kate told us pretty early into living with us that she was unable to obtain student loans, a credit card, or a bank account because her father had allegedly used her social security number to rack up loads of debt. We never saw anything to prove or disprove this, but that was in part because any request to see any verification of her claims would lead to a spiral full of self-harm language and accusations that we didn’t trust her. Nothing could have been further from the truth at the time, but it put us in the position of having to either put full faith into whatever she told us or be accused of thinking she was as bad as her abusers. And again, we were told along with this that nobody had financially offered her support before us.  

Because of this alleged abuse of her SSN, we decided to offer her membership on one of our credit cards. At this point, she was living with us for free—which we had offered to her so she could focus on finishing her lawsuit and/or classes—and primarily lived off our resources. Putting her on a card had the advantage of giving her credit score a boost, since we were stable enough to pay it off every month, as well as giving her a direct method of paying for her basic needs. We added her to a second card later to continue widening her debt-to-credit usage ratio and improving her score. She got several jobs very briefly over the years she was living with us, but something always led to her needing to quit within a few weeks. 

One important contextual note is that I was in and out of employment for much of this time, and that we live in a high cost of living area (the DC metro region). I got a job working remotely with a fintech startup in early 2022, having recognized that housing and feeding and clothing an additional person who seemed wholly dependent on us would add up quickly. I then lost my job in the Fall of that same year due to mass layoffs in the tech field. I had just enrolled for my first term of classes at LSU online for a master’s program, and I had found out days beforehand that I was pregnant with our second child. I had a few short jobs, but overall, I didn’t have a steady income until the next Fall of 2023.

Over time, Hannah-Kate's spending got more out of control. This put us in a tremendously difficult position because we wanted to support her self-discovery and freedom. Admittedly, this in part was difficult because we knew that any kind of boundary could—and did—lead to a spiral and suicidal ideation. But we also, to put it bluntly, were buried in debt. This couldn’t continue.

Around the same time that we first offered for her to jump on our credit card, in early 2022, we offered to take out a private “parent loan” for Hannah-Kate to cover tuition at the University of Kentucky. This came in the context of her claiming that she couldn’t get approved for any loans herself, again because of her information being compromised and misused. She promised to pay the loan back herself either once she graduated and could get a job, or once she got a settlement from her lawsuit that allegedly would be worth many millions of dollars. We ended up taking out three loans in our name that went to UKY and University of Maryland. We are currently paying about $550 a month on these. The last time I spoke to Hannah-Kate was on March 17^th, 2024, when I asked her to take over the payments (around $400/mo at that time), since she now had a job with steady salaried income. She accused me and my husband of being toxic and hurtful, which I pushed back on by setting some boundaries, and we have been blocked from all means of communication since.⁵ 

In total, between spending on the two credit cards we gave her access to and all of her student loans, we racked up approximately $100,000.00 of debt because of her, and conservatively another $100,000 in other charges.

How did supporting Williams change other relationships in your life? Did people understand what you were doing? 

To be perfectly honest, it was disastrous for most of the relationships in our lives. From our immediate family to our friends, she somehow found a way to drive a wedge between us and them. If she didn’t do that, or it seemed too difficult, she would insert herself into the relationship wherever possible. 

Yes and no to loved ones' understanding, I think. Largely what I’ve heard from my closest friends coming out of all this is that they were worried about us, and they didn’t have a clue how deep it all went, but that they knew we were capable and smart. And to a certain degree, they have expressed that they admire the heart behind everything we did, even if things ended badly.

There’s been a lot of stories about people stalking Williams at your house and trying to have her killed. I know in the past you’ve voiced belief in these things, but I wonder if you have a different perspective on it now. Did you ever see someone at your house who shouldn’t be? How did it feel to live in a home where someone was telling you someone was coming to hurt you all?

The only thing I ever saw was someone idling outside our house for a long time. And it was the same day that someone who had been trolling Hannah-Kate on Twitter and saying he was a detective was tweeting about being on an 80-hour stakeout. It was definitely very odd but it could have been a coincidence. 

Williams had been on the road that day and told me that someone had been following her and approached her at a Starbucks. I don’t know if I believe that now. But I definitely did at the time.

For a little while, yes. I was at least suspicious that people might actually be stalking us. Hannah-Kate insisted we were. But even then stuff stopped adding up, like when she saw our neighbor walking his dog and told me that he was the guy who’d been taking pictures of her window when we were out of town. But I knew him, and he was our neighbor and I knew he wasn’t taking pictures through our window. I told her it was our neighbor and she insisted he’d been taking pictures through the window. It always got worse when we weren’t around. This was also right when she started seeming much, much sicker, so I didn’t really have the capacity to engage it more because I was spending so much time taking care of her.

She had left Kentucky to stay with us because she said people were harassing her at her apartment, so when she first came to stay with us I thought it was plausible that some of these things might be happening. I can’t say she wasn’t harassed in Kentucky. But I’m skeptical she was followed the whole way to DC.  

How did you come to the conclusion that Williams was not a cancer patient? Did you believe it for a time?

Oh, I definitely believed it for a while. I honestly didn’t consider that it wasn’t true until she had left and cut us off. At that point, friends began asking questions, and that was another layer (or really, the tip of the iceberg) of claims that no longer made any sense. 

I want to tread carefully when talking about Hannah-Kate’s medical situation for the sake of respecting her rights to privacy and safety. However, there are a few things that happened where it would be helpful to clarify what was true and what was not. However, I do not have any reason to believe she was ever diagnosed with cancer. 

Starting in early October 2022, Hannah-Kate was showing symptoms of some kind of illness. The symptoms ranged from fainting, vomiting, and seizures – all seeming to be related to pain from sores on her breast. By Christmas time, she was traveling out of state every month or so for doctor’s appointments. Things came to a head in January of 2023, when she was unable to stay conscious without falling into seizures. I—in my second trimester of pregnancy—pulled two all-nighters in the emergency room with her, neither proving fruitful. We ended up flying the next day to where her doctors were located so she could see them, in an almost-comical series of events that had me pushing her through security unconscious and holding up her arms for scans. Once we landed, her friends in that area took one look at her and determined that we needed to go straight to the ER. This led to my third hospital all-nighter that week with her.  Between chronic sleep loss and my pregnancy, I was delirious and it was difficult for me to think through what was happening and whether it made sense.

Over the ensuing months of the winter and early spring, Hannah-Kate stayed at a hotel out of state where her doctors were. (And yes, we were footing the bill; that is when I started a GoFundMe to try and offset some of the cost.)⁶

Once she returned to our house and moved her care more locally, I continued going to doctor’s appointments with her up until and pretty immediately after delivering my daughter. We continued trying to find a breast surgeon who would perform a double mastectomy for her, because by this point, Hannah-Kate was determined this surgery was the only way to relieve her pain.⁷ 

Most refused to consider it, but we finally found one who told her that it was ultimately her choice if she wanted to deal with the pain that way. They offered different surgical options for both removal and reconstruction, but she elected to have both removed without any reconstructive surgery for the time being. 

Her mastectomy was in June, about a month postpartum for me, and launched us into a new phase of care-taking. At this point, we had to manage a busy toddler, a newborn, and an adult woman who was in a state of severe pain and delirium for a few weeks, plus constantly in and out of the hospital between then and late September. 

It was a doctor’s visit a few weeks after her surgery that I should have paid the closest attention to. During a follow-up with the surgeon, the provider came in and told us that she had good news: the pathology performed on her breast tissue came back clear! I immediately texted the good news to a close friend of hers who had been anxiously awaiting the results. This friend had also helped us significantly navigate the healing process from her own medical background and experience.  

Not long after sending this positive report over, Hannah-Kate caught wind that I had told someone about her pathology results and launched into a rage. I was told that both this friend and I weren’t respecting her privacy, that we should know better, and that this could be damaging to her lawsuit. I was bewildered since we had just a few days prior sent photos of her surgical site to this same friend, and none of it had to do with her legal claims. But we were also sitting in the ER, where she had been sent during the follow-up due to a new round of seizures and passing out. That was simply something I did not have the bandwidth to process and didn’t think about again until much later.  

A few weeks after her pathology report, she first told me she got a patient message that her oncologist (who I had never seen her meet with) told her that she was recommended for radiation because she had deep melanoma spots in her chest cavity. She went on a trip after this and a week later, August 9, she said she received a phone to say that she had Stage III metastasized cancer that was overlooked on her initial pathology.⁸ She said they were going to let her do chemo with at-home treatments, but that she would have to take daily doses for 4 weeks. My mind was reeling and we went into crisis mode once more.  

Here is what I know from observation: she did have a PICC line put in place. She did have medications delivered to our home once a week and kept in a fridge, and she did inject them daily – my husband and her boyfriend at the time both did it for her in a few instances. She did have a nurse come to our house about once a week to clean and inspect the PICC line insertion site.  

What I did not ever see, however, was a diagnosis of cancer, an appointment with an oncologist, a PET scan, or any kind of markings to indicate that the medication coming in was hazardous. As I thought it through further, I realized that we and the nurse all regularly disposed of the syringes that contained the medication into a small, open trash can on the floor. That alone would be malpractice on the part of the nurse, but she also saw our infant and toddler every time she came, and she never indicated any possible danger that these empty syringes could pose.  

Hannah-Kate completed the course of the drugs, after which time it was “unknown” or “inconclusive” whether she had cancer still because she was never able to get in to see an oncologist. In early 2024 she told me that she had gone to the ER where they had done an MRI that she “wasn’t aware of at the time”⁹ and found that the cancer returned, but by then we were much more skeptical of these claims. I was still struggling to confront the possibility that she hadn’t had cancer at all.

Did Williams ever pay rent or work as a nanny with the kids? Did you ever leave the kids with her? How did she contribute to the household?

No, she didn’t pay rent. We created a lease early on for the sole purpose of getting her car registered, and her “rent” was a whopping $5/month. Hannah-Kate was never expected to pay us any rent - that was the point of us giving her space in our home to begin with. 

We left one of the kids with her a handful of times for a few hours to run errands, take the other to an appointment, do school drop off, and the like. She also looked after our dogs a few times when we left town and cooked dinner when she was missing a certain nostalgic meal. That was roughly the extent of what she brought to the home economy. And that was okay. We really meant it when we said we wanted to support her and let her have a safe haven with us. 

At what point did you start to consider asking Williams to move out? What changed?

To untangle the unbelievable chaos of the weekend of September 23^rd, 2023 would take a dozen more lengthy posts. In a nutshell, Hannah-Kate had been in and out of the hospital with complaints of severe pain for the two weeks leading up to that point. We were leaving town that weekend for a close college friend’s wedding. Several people told me during those hospital stays that she was either feeling suicidal or intended to commit suicide once we were out of town. After breaking up with her boyfriend, she texted me and several other friends that she wanted to die and that she had overdosed.¹⁰

Since we were out of town, there wasn’t much we could do. We reached out to a few local people, and then she asked me to call my brother, Chris, and have him come over. After taking her over to spend time with his family, it became evident to him and his wife that she needed to be evaluated at the hospital.

She was admitted, and I wasn’t able to do much else in the interim. I spoke the next day to the evaluating psychiatrist, to her ex-boyfriend, and to whoever I could get a hold of at her attorneys’ offices. She called me repeatedly and we spoke several times, but I had to decline most of the calls due to being at the wedding.  

Monday morning rolled around, and I was able to get on the Zoom-based hearing with a special justice to determine if she was going to be involuntarily committed or discharged. I testified on her behalf, under oath, making the case that we had supported her through moments of suicidal ideation before, and that it would be better for her to recover in our care than at the hospital. The justice decided to order court-mandated outpatient therapy in lieu of a hospitalization.  

This would have been a huge win, except that I strongly suspected that Hannah-Kate was not being honest in her testimony regarding a range of subjects from the past weekend. It was at that point that any benefit of the doubt was utterly lost from me and Daniel. Hannah-Kate, who had repeated constantly over the years how she couldn’t wait to get people under oath so they’d have to be truthful about their covering up of sexual abuse, was not telling the truth.¹¹ 

A few more months passed before we began understanding how fragile and easily disprovable the stories were that she was rotating through. What more than anything brought it back to the surface was her repeated claims that Chris had contacted Bart Barber,¹² and that Bart and/or the SBC Executive Committee were petitioning the courts to have her involuntarily committed. She also told me that her attorneys had gotten a nearly $10,000.00 fine levied against Chris for witness tampering, since he was an SBC pastor and the denomination was a defendant in her Kentucky lawsuit. I initially believed these claims. But Chris was not fined. This never happened.

I found out almost accidentally that Chris had never contacted anyone nor been contacted by her attorneys. She was in a panic the week before Thanksgiving, because she claimed that the local social services were going to send police to my home to arrest and hospitalize her if she didn’t start cooperating with her court-ordered therapy. I contacted Chris to ask him to call off the hounds as it were, and that it was evident Bart Barber would not do so. He confusedly asked, “Why would Bart be involved?” That was another record scratch moment for me where everything froze and I saw the situation more clearly. Our conversation from there spelled out just how many lies Hannah-Kate had told me and others close to her about the situation. Then when a follow-up petition from the county regarding the court order for therapy was served at our home, Chris’s claim was confirmed because only his and Hannah-Kate's names were on it as petitioner and defendant.  

At this point it was late November, so we decided to finish out the holidays and come up with next steps in the early new year. Mercifully, that part happened as smoothly as anyone could hope for: we got lunch with her on February 13 and asked her to move out by the end of the month because we just didn’t have the physical space or time for supporting her like we had two years prior. Which was true: we had two small children and two full-time jobs that demanded more than we could give while also caring for her. We emphasized, and meant it, that we did not intend to cut her off relationally or financially – again, both came about a month later after I asked her to start repaying her loans. And we gave this to her in writing to ensure that she could refer back to something if she didn’t remember the details. 

Not until she moved out and cut us off did we have the chance to start comparing notes with others and realize just how deep her lies and manipulation ran. If you know her and are struggling to believe me, that these things could be the truth, I mean this sincerely: ask me what she’s told me about you, or tell me what she has told you about me. I’m willing to bet it’s either fabricated or the actual opposite of what was true.

How did you feel when Williams moved out? 

I’ve gotten some clarity on what happened, and I’ve been able to think critically about my experience. This is what so much of what my experience with Hannah-Kate over these two years comes down to: Hannah-Kate keeps those close to her in a constant state of elevated tension, crisis, and silence in order to isolate and manipulate them. She did this often through lies, and even worse, half-truths. I do not know if it is intentional manipulation or if she sincerely believes everything she says. But regardless of intention, she cost me and my husband: financially, of course; relationally, in isolation from friends and multiple family members on both sides; mentally, in a burnout so bad that I lost my job; and physically, in never-ending illness and chronic pain. 

What made you decide to write your public statement? Can you tell me more about this?

It took me a year from the first time I saw a crack in the facade of Hannah-Kate to when I finally clicked “publish” on my statement. I didn’t talk about this with anyone besides my husband and therapist for six of those months. This was a decision that was made with lots of input and advice from peers and those wiser than myself. And not all of those voices were in favor of me taking this public. But something I’ve learned about myself in this whole experience is that I really, really value honesty and integrity over just about anything else. I knew that I would never be comfortable moving forward in life just pretending that none of this happened when I sank years of my life and any credibility I’d earned into this person. I needed to amend the narrative that I had given to the world, because I had learned that what I was parroting was untrue.

I’ve spent years supporting survivors of sexual abuse. This has ranged from support over text or phone calls to housing and feeding them. I know how deeply sexual abuse harms a person. I was floored by how #MeToo revolutionized the narrative and empowered survivors to speak up, when I watched the opposite play out during my high school years not even a decade prior. 

Saying this has eaten me alive, because it goes against every instinct I have cultivated over these years. But I also believe in the power of the truth, and that speaking it will never, ever go to waste. My intention is to bring no harm here—not to a person, not to a group of people, and not to a movement that is acting for good. My goal is only to reclaim my voice and to speak the truth. 

I also recognized the role I played in propping up Hannah-Kates’s credibility online over the past few years. I fought tooth and nail for this woman every way I knew how.

My passion for justice really does bend towards the truth, no matter whose “side” that truth is on. I want to see survivors and their communities supported, and I fear she may have done more damage than good to hers. I also believe that staying silent will allow her to continue sabotaging her own life and the lives of those around her. Despite how this may seem, I still care deeply about her, and I actually want to use the truth to help her. 

How are you guys doing now? 

We’re taking it one day at a time. But we’re okay. 

I’ve learned from you you’re not the only person who’s put a lot of effort into taking care of Williams. Were you aware of others at the time? Is there anything you wish someone had told you?

No, I was not aware of other helpers before me at all, except for perhaps Rachael Denhollander. But even her role and motivations were horribly twisted by Hannah-Kate. Hannah-Kate very clearly and deliberately told me over the years that nobody before us had ever given her help with finances, education, credit recovery, housing, and such. I’ve obviously learned since then that I was only one in a long line of others who have poured heart and soul into helping her and then were burned when she didn’t like something they asked or said. 

I frankly wish that anyone would have told me anything. I wish one of the many who had walked this road with her would have seen me become the new “favorite person” and reached out. I wish someone else would have been bold enough to face the lies that harmed them or those around them instead of running away from their complicity in letting this continue. Maybe my young family wouldn’t be in so much debt. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost my job. Who knows. But I’m trying to be present and bold so that future people in her path do know; so that I can look Christ in the eye at the final judgment and know that with all of my heart, I tried to do the right thing.

I understand that your brother Chris Davis is himself a survivor of SBC church abuse. I think we can all agree that supporting abuse survivors is a good cause, as well as holding abusers accountable. What would you say to other people who want to take practical steps to help survivors in their own lives about how to protect themselves?

Absolutely. My desire for abuse survivors to get justice and for abusers to be held accountable is, if anything, only stronger since this experience. I have no less disdain for the Southern Baptist Convention and its ilk than I did before. None of that has changed about me. And I would feel horrible if my story turned others off from helping survivors in real ways.

I’m not sure I’m qualified to give practical tips, especially since I’m barely out of a rough situation now. Heaven forbid I follow the six-month “deconstructed-pastor-turned-life-coach” model. But what I can say is this, and it applies to all relationships: love, even sacrificial love, does not mean a lack of accountability. Invite survivors to dinner, to crash if they need a safe haven, to participate in your life and you in theirs. But set firm boundaries for yourself and the other person in the process. As Brene Brown puts it, “Clear is kind.” Figure out where you are at and what you can do without harming yourself or your family, and make that clear. Enmeshment is not help. Some of us can only learn this the hard way, but hopefully someday, someone out there will learn from my mistakes.

What do you want to tell the larger community of concerned Christians? 

I know that we are far from the only individuals who she has directly or indirectly harmed and taken from. So many of you have given to her, whether in money, resources, time, friendship, or credibility. I can’t give you those things back—I can’t even get them back for myself—but if you have been harmed by Hannah-Kate, I hope that you feel a little less alone or isolated after reading this. I am here to be an ear if you need one and a voice if you’d like it. I believe we are past time for honesty about this, and that everyone can learn and grow from this situation about how to care for people in our midst without destroying ourselves.

I would also want to say this to Hannah-Kate: if you’re reading this, you will never find what you are looking for as long as you continue to use people, lie to them, and discard them when they no longer serve your desires. I said it in March when we last spoke, and I mean it with my whole heart: I want you to find the healing, peace, and justice that you so desperately deserved as a child. But I cannot want those things for you while pretending that you aren’t causing great destruction to others and to yourself.

You and I daydreamed many times of the day when I could give a victim impact statement before a judge about your abuse and your character. You challenged me more than anyone else to see the value of brutal honesty. You spoke often about how you see holding others accountable as a way of showing them that you love them. 

In the most insane twist of the story, the perspectives I gained from you are why I am coming forward with this now. This is my victim impact statement – only it is how I have been impacted as your victim. This is my brutal honesty – breaking the silence of what you have done to me. And this is my demonstration of sincere love for you – holding up a light to the truth.  

Conclusion, and Laura’s Thoughts

While we spoke extensively over this, I prompted Abby a lot to explore why she did or believed something in the moment. This was obviously difficult for Abby to do, but I wanted you all to be able to understand why Abby did what she did. This was something I wanted to do after seeing how Abby’s story was received by some and after thinking a lot about how stories are told and how we hear them. I wanted Abby to be able to answer, in her own words, one thing I’ve heard many people say in response to those who were deceived at great cost to themselves: how did you get tricked? 

I think after talking to Abby, that I understand what happened. First, there’s significant parts of the story that I don’t think you have to be gullible to believe, because I’m still baffled by them. There’s still a part of me that looks at the components of this story (double mastectomy? PICC line?) and thinks “Maybe Williams actually did have cancer.” Does the story make any sense if she did? No, because I don’t see how she could have had metastatic melanoma, treat it with at-home chemo, keep her hair, and be alive today. It doesn’t make sense. But nothing else makes sense either. I don’t blame someone for being tricked by a set of circumstances when no viable alternative presents itself. You can go crazy trying to figure this stuff out at home.

Second, I noticed a pattern of ways in which Abby’s situation was like the proverbial frog in boiling water – a practical, good-faith decision is made, which spirals with the onset of sleep deprivation and living in a high-conflict, high-stress environment. Stress profoundly damages our ability to make decisions. You might think it’s foolish to help put someone on a plane to fly them to a doctor in a different state when you live in a metro area where care is at hand, but you might not feel the same way if you are pregnant, not sleeping, and trying to help someone you love who insists they absolutely need this. You wouldn’t put someone else on your credit card? Well, you might if it was the only way to help them build a credit score and achieve the independence you want for them. Then, you might not be able to take it back or control how it’s used once that person makes it clear that you’ll live to regret it if you try.

None of this requires a criminal mastermind to pull off. No one is arguing that Abby lived with Bernie Madoff. You probably know someone who could get you to do the same things. You may have experienced something like this. One thing that struck me repeatedly in this is that some level of fact-checking would have debunked some of these claims much earlier, if someone had had the presence of mind to attend to them (I dearly wish Abby had simply taken a medicine vial out of the trash and photographed the label — Abby does too). But these claims weren’t fact-checked, because to investigate the belief that someone you love isn’t telling you the truth is incredibly frightening. They weren’t fact-checked because the people who knew the facts were exhausted, caring for a newborn, toddler, and adult. They weren’t sleeping. They were largely isolated from others and had been pressured by someone they cared about deeply not to tell anyone what was happening in their home. They didn’t just do it out of fear of the next blow-up, and exhaustion. They did it out of love. They wanted this woman who they cared about to be happy and safe.

While I want to devote as little writing as possible to Williams and keep the focus on Abby, I do want to say this: my goal here is not to assign blame for all components of this story. I will not excuse any of the actions of this story nor will I minimize the harm done. And, I can also see how some events in this story might not be entirely Williams’s fault. This does not make her actions okay – but may make them at least not malicious. For instance, some things Abby told me that Williams experienced sound like they might be delusions. (Emphasis on “might.” I’m not a physician. The details of Abby’s story point both ways to me– sometimes at deliberate manipulation and planning, sometimes at a genuine detachment from reality.) 

For instance, the idea that the Executive Committee and then-SBC president Bart Barber was conspiring to have Williams committed — which those of you who are very online on Christian Twitter might remember reading about in the fall of 2023. By far the simplest explanation of these events, which are covered in the above story, is that Williams was behaving as though she was a danger to herself in the presence of someone who happened to be a then-SBC pastor. He didn’t solve the problem the way she wanted him to (make Abby come home immediately), instead petitioned for her to receive psychiatric care and protection he couldn’t provide in his house, and so got himself folded into Williams’ massive nation-wide conspiracy against her. This could plausibly be a paranoid delusion. Or it could be manipulation. Did Williams plan to fake cancer and arrange to have drugs in the house to bolster the story? Or did she have a genuine need for intravenous drugs and fall into a delusion they were chemotherapy? (Or were they actually chemotherapy — which based on the evidence I’ve seen, seems by far the least likely explanation?) I don’t know. We probably never will. 

But here’s what I do know, for anyone who wants to be contentious about Abby’s story. I remember one particular story all going down very publicly on Twitter: the story that the SBC Executive Committee and then-SBC president Bart Barber had sued to become Williams’s conservators and have her committed to prevent her from testifying in her own court case. I read this, I read many of your shocked, horrified, outraged reactions to it – and I knew it wasn’t true. I knew this couldn’t possibly be what was happening, because it didn’t make any sense. How could Williams, a public-facing adult woman who also had full-time caregivers, be remanded to the custody of men she was in active litigation with, whom she had no personal relationship with and perhaps had never even met in person, through the power of the state — and this wasn’t in the news? What kind of massive inter-state conspiracy would be necessary for this to happen, and why was there only one witness and no available documentation? Guardianship fraud is a thing but Williams surely had no significant assets to seize that would make this desirable or affordable for the one doing it (in this case, Bart Barber or Chris Davis — the Executive Committee as an entity cannot have a ward for the same reason Chase Bank can’t adopt children). According to Williams she didn’t even have a birth certificate until late 2021-22. So she can’t have had property or a lot of money in a bank account that would make this viable fraud. That’s why she moved in with Abby in the first place. 

Think about this with me. Let’s look at Bart Barber’s supposed role in this. Would Bart Barber really take on the lifelong work of being Williams’s legal guardian (which, as you can see in the above story, seems to be very difficult!) just to prevent a lawsuit from going forward against an organization he worked for? Why wouldn’t the SBC’s attorneys just settle the lawsuit instead of assigning Bart Barber the Herculean task of taking care of Williams forever? This isn’t the 1840s, and there are no long term state psychiatric hospitals in Kentucky where Barber could simply lock away his new ward and throw away the key. Inpatient care can cost as much as $60,000 per month. This would have been financially devastating for the Barber family. Why would Bart Barber agree to a legal strategy that put him at massive financial and personal liability for the sake of the institution he works for? Does Bart Barber love the institution of the SBC more than he loves having money and free time? Does anyone love the SBC that much? Would he really be so eager to fall on his sword? Suppose the Executive Committee was going to commit federal fraud and funnel money to Barber to pay for the institutionalization themselves. How could this possibly be cheaper than settling the actual lawsuit – before the inevitable federal fraud trial when the scheme became public? Does everyone at the SBC want to be broke, and also in prison? Why has the Catholic Church never attempted this in any of their abuse cases if this is so easy? Why doesn’t the SBC do this all the time, if you can simply throw a lawsuit by becoming the legal guardian of the person suing you? Could the SBC really not find a better candidate to spring the trap than Chris Davis, a man who was testifying against them in a lawsuit? Why were they so sure such a vocal critic of the convention would go along with a wildly underhanded plan, rather than broadcast and expose it?

Suppose this was all a very baroque scheme to wait for Williams to win her lawsuit and then have the money put into an account that Bart Barber controls. First, this is all starting to sound very gothic, but second, why strike now? Wouldn’t Williams’s attorneys argue in court that, since they filed the suit, Williams has become the guardian of a defendant who now controls all her assets and that the case of who awards damages to whom is now hopelessly convoluted? Even unethical or illegal? Were Williams’s attorneys also in on it, if this is the theory? Surely not, right? If this really was a scheme for Bart Barber to essentially sue his own organization and make off with the kitty, wouldn’t someone from the SBC – who probably would not want Bart Barber to make off with millions of church dollars through a plot that sounds like Crimson Peak in Kentucky – have thrown a flag by now? Would there even be millions of dollars awarded, seeing as the average damages in the Catholic Church scandal are usually around $3-400,000? Would Williams’s case really pay out three, four, five times as much just to her? Why? Was all this scheming done to save the SBC $400,000, or to earn Barber $400,000, which would be eaten up by his new ward’s needs almost immediately? And anyway, since this hearing would have been public, why haven’t we seen any documentation that the hearing occurred, on any date, in any particular county, in front of any particular judge? Why are the details of this supposedly true event so murky? Doesn’t it seem like no one has ever seen the petition, including — given the total absence of any news coverage of these shocking events regarding a highly public lawsuit, whose original filing was announced in a press conference — even Williams’s own lawyers? Why does this improbable, boneheaded, public, pulpy, newsworthy event, which would involve a lot of court documents, court appearances, press releases, public figures, and a ready-made audience have only one witness?¹³ Why does all publicly information about these implausible events that I’ve been able to find since come from that one witness?

When you start to think about it — doesn’t this story sound pretty stupid? And unlikely? Doesn’t it sound like it didn’t happen?

I knew it wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t. 

But I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t think it was my business. I knew what would happen if I tried. Now, I wish I had.

I’m not going to name names, but some of you reading this did believe it. Some of you probably believed it until three sentences ago. Some of you might even believe it right now. And some of you who believed that weren’t taking care of toddlers. You weren’t sleep-deprived. You weren’t under extreme, years-long stress. You weren’t deeply, personally attached to the person telling you the story. Yes, trust in the SBC was at an all-time low for a range of reasons, and yes, people do horrible and outrageous things for the sake of money and power. But that’s why you believed it. Even if this particular story didn’t make any sense and itself could not possible be true, it fit with things you already believed. And, it was coming from someone you had come to believe.

So before any of you want to come at me and tell me how stupid Abby was, how preventable this all was, that even if Abby’s story is true that she totally deserves it because she was so gullible and irresponsible –

What did you believe? Why did you believe it? What evidence did you have? Do you think it’s true now?

Or did you trust the wrong person, too?

This is part of an ongoing series on harm in the survivor advocacy community. If you’d like to share your story or get in touch, please reach out at lauranotpeerreviewed @gmail.com.

1. I thought a lot about how to use Williams’s name in this piece. I felt it was ridiculous to use a pseudonym for her since it was obvious who I was talking about. But, I also didn’t want this Substack to be a first Google hit for her name, because I am deeply skeptical of people who will use this story to discredit church abuse survivors as a class. I eventually settled on using “Williams” when it’s my words, but didn’t stop Abby from using her first name in her own words. I also elected to not use her full first and last name in the title or subtitle, and to only use her full name once in the body of the article.

2. If anyone absolutely has to see it, I do have screenshots of all four siblings’ testimony on their social media pages, which I’m leaving out here because three of the Williams siblings are quite private. I don’t want anyone going to their social media pages and acting like jackasses. They didn’t ask for this. They have nothing to do with this. They’re not part of this. Leave them alone. This is Abby’s story.

3. Edit to be completely fair: I am not an oncologist and it is possible that this is a very rare and strange form of cancer and treatment and an unusual treatment protocol. But the operative word here is “unusual.” The reasons Abby has for disbelieving Williams had cancer are pretty compelling. Abby showed me texts showing that different people had been told by Williams she had different kinds of cancer (the roster includes stage 3 melanoma, and stages 3-4 of breast cancer. It also seems like the melanoma disclosures track most closely with people who were aware of the initial clear pathology report, and breast cancer claims track most strongly with people who weren’t aware of it). It also appears (comparing different individuals’ correspondence) that different people were given different dates of the diagnosis. Abby’s messages and records show Williams being diagnosed with cancer several weeks after her surgery and pathology report. But two other people I spoke with had records showing that Williams saying she was diagnosed before the surgery and pathology report. It certainly could be true that Williams had cancer but also told people she had different kinds. But is it most likely?

Abby showed me multiple text messages with individuals present at screenings who clearly understood a doctor to be telling them that Williams did not have cancer, including Williams herself. Abby also told me she was at an appointment after Williams’ mastectomy when a pathologist confirmed Williams did not have breast cancer, and that some time later Williams told Abby she received a phone call that she had stage 3 melanoma. Abby was very, very involved in William’s’s medical care, so it’s even unusual in itself that all cancer related appointments and calls occurred when Abby wasn’t around — but she or other caregivers were present for most other appointments and hospitalizations. Again, it could be true that Williams was diagnosed with cancer after an initial clear pathology report, and informed about her catastrophic diagnosis over the phone — apparently without intervening screening or tests, which Abby didn’t recall occurring. And then, it seems, Williams may not have met with the oncologist again, or even in person at all. But is it most likely?

Abby also said that Williams said she had to start immediate, at-home injections of daily chemotherapy (her texts corroborate this), and showed me texts corroborating this. These drugs were administered at home, sometimes by a home healthcare worker, who disposed of all related trash in an open kitchen trash can. Chemotherapy drugs are quite toxic and an actual RN (editor’s note: I don’t love how I phrased this, I have no reason to think the nurse wasn’t a real nurse but a nurse would know which drugs were toxic, and she may have known these were not) would usually not throw trash containing chemotherapy residue directly into kitchen trash cans, nor did the home health care worker ever provide Abby or her husband with any information about how to protect themselves from the toxins that would be present in Williams’ blood, sweat, vomit, urine, and stool if she was in fact on chemotherapy. None of these precautions were taken during the course of Williams’s treatment. Whatever was in the syringes seems to have been much less toxic than chemotherapy drugs. Abby also said that sometimes Williams’s drugs were self-administered at home with a syringe, or given by a friend or family member. Williams said this was chemotherapy. Abby’s text messages about the drugs in the home corroborate this. I talked to three physicians while interviewing Abby and no one was familiar with self-administered at-home chemotherapy by syringe through a PICC line. It seems to be pretty uncommon even if it does exist, but this still can’t explain why no one who ever administered it at home wore PPE or disposed of the trash carefully — including the nurse. Immunosuppressants can be disposed of at home without attention to toxicity, but no one in Abby’s text record ever calls the drugs this, including Williams. Perhaps Abby was witnessing a highly rare form of chemotherapy — one that also, as photos indicate, did not cause Williams to lose her hair. But is that most likely? 

Abby also gave me a recording of a conversation between Williams and an associate who, after seeing some medical information and seeing the manner in which her drugs were administered, became suspicious that Williams did not have cancer. So I was able to get an artifact corroborating these details, and that other people involved in the situation were coming to the conclusion that Williams’s treatments did not seem to involve chemotherapy. It’s possible Abby fabricated the conversation with someone pretending to be Williams and imitating her voice. But is it most likely? 

I was not able to corroborate any of this with Williams. Her phone number no longer works and she’s blocked me on social media. I don’t know where she lives or works so I’m really out of options for how to talk to her. So there’s a real extent to which I am only repeating what I’m told, however well corroborated it is by Abby’s own data. I cannot confirm that Williams definitely doesn’t have cancer — only her physician can do that. And it sounds like several of them did for months, until the last oncologist on the phone who Abby never knew the name of. But I also think Abby is giving a good-faith interpretation of the facts that were available to her, and that she provided to me. The details of the story as I have them do not seem to cluster around “chemotherapy treatments for cancer.” They may cluster around some other form of treatment but I don’t know what it is. A possible candidate is antibiotics for post-surgery infections. However, I will of course amend or retract this blog, depending on what is appropriate, if I’m contacted with relevant documentation that complicates the narrative. 

Now, one of you will tell me “but the gag order!” on her suit, to which I can only say – no, that makes no sense, and you are wrong. “Gag order” is dramatic, easy-to-twist language that just means in this context “a lawsuit is under seal and its contents cannot be discussed.” The defendant does not roll up to circuit court every few weeks and provide a new list of words Williams can’t say. The court case, filed in the spring of 2022, cannot be related to cancer treatments in fall 2023. Nor do I see any conceivable way in which a lawsuit regarding the Southern Baptist Church has had new damages added alleging that the Executive Committee harmed Williams by causing her to have cancer. I struggle to believe that a lawyer who wants to end this suit with any credibility has added a cause of action in an extent, sealed suit in the last year maintaining that the Southern Baptist Convention gave a woman cancer (is this a mesothelioma case? First I’ve heard), nor that the defendant could plausibly argue that they were not responsible for neglect or infliction of emotional distress (off the top of my head, those sound like plausible causes of action) because the defendant has cancer. If the specific kind of cancer, staging of cancer, treatment protocol, attending oncologist, etc. are not named in the lawsuit, they can be publicly discussed by people with knowledge of the content of the lawsuit. And I know that Williams knows this, because she’s tweeted about her cancer before. Surely it can’t be true that it IS legal for Williams to tweet that Chris Davis is implicated in her suit, but it is NOT legal for her to clarify details regarding the cancer she’s already publicly discussed. If Abby’s claims can be refuted, there’s no court case to my knowledge that prevents this refutation from happening. If I get more information I will absolutely retract blog with apologies, and I will have some very tough questions for Abby. But until that day – miss me with this argument.

I’ve aggressively dodged issues that I think can be plausibly discussed in Williams’s sealed lawsuit – particularly, claims of abuse, the conspiracy to defame that was originally addressed in the 2021 suit (for instance, I don’t engage here with the SBC twitterverse and what different pastors have said about her), or failure to report neglect or abuse during her childhood. I encouraged Abby to avoid these subjects in her interview and focus on Abby’s story, and we’ve mentioned these other details only to say that I understand why people believe Williams is an abuse survivor in the first place. Everything else concerns events that occurred much later, which, to Abby’s knowledge and mine, are in no way being litigated. The major figures I mention in this story – Abby, Daniel her husband, and Chris her brother, have not been served notice for any suits of any kind. You can look at the court dockets in Franklin County, KY and Fairfax County, VA if you think I’m lying. I did this to be as fair as possible to Williams, to stick close to the material already covered in Abby’s statement, and cover only material that she can also discuss in public if she wishes, and of course because I have no desire to interfere in active litigation.

I know some of you will say that I am interfering with active litigation simply by allowing Abby to tell her story on my blog that concerns such an unflattering story about Williams that might make her a less credible witness. Again, I’m not persuaded that Abby’s story will cause Williams to lose a suit she would have otherwise won, because I don’t see evidence that these lawsuits hang on the personal credibility of one individual. Gerald Rollins was incarcerated in 2015 and struggling with addiction and alcoholism, and his attorneys argued in court he was of “unsound mind” to make allegations public until 2015 owing precisely to the after-effects of his trauma. Rollins still secured a settlement. Rollins as a person wasn’t on trial, the evidence his attorneys prepared was — and apparently the evidence was compelling. A conspiracy of silence and intimidation of the scale Williams has mentioned in her media appearances would leave evidence and witnesses reaching far beyond one individual. I would assume this material evidence would be included in a case to bolster any one person’s claims — and if it’s not, that’s the attorney’s fault, not mine.

For full disclosure and because I know what naysayers will say: no, I have no affiliation with the SBC or any affiliate universities, publishing companies, etc. in any way. I briefly attended an SBC church between maybe 2009-2010, but I wasn’t a member and I haven’t been back since. I would not attend an SBC church today, and on the whole I neither share their theology nor their cultural practices. The same is true of my husband and my family members on both sides. I have no affection for the SBC as an institution whatsoever and I’ve never gotten a cent from them. If anyone tells you otherwise, ask for evidence, because they are wrong.

With the story I have, and having checked these claims with medical doctors, I am compelled by the evidence supporting Abby’s story well enough to feel justified in posting it here. However, I am open to more information coming out that changes my perspective. This interview also only expands upon events that were either described or alluded to in Abby’s original statement.

EDIT: 6:31 PM on publication day: it might also be appropriate to note here that the main reason why Abby came to question if her friend had cancer was not because of unusual or apparently stalled treatment. It was the fact that she caught her friend out in different, serious lies. Some are included in this interview — that Abby’s brother colluded with a church leader to call the police, that he was fined for witness tampering, etc. There was a credibility gap that emerged here. This isn’t as simple as Abby failing to see extensive documentation from a cancer patient. But she did see less than I would expect from someone whose medical care she was so, so involved in, and who lived in her house, and the details of the story certainly make it sound like Williams was not on chemotherapy (a contender that a doctor raised is that the drugs were antibiotics), and the person in question was clearly misrepresenting other matters.

4. The only counter-narrative I have seen for Abby’s story is that Abby is not telling the truth about these events to protect her brother Chris Davis who is (so the argument goes) implicated in Williams’s suit. I am utterly uncompelled by this argument and have never seen any evidence this is the case. Chris Davis himself can’t be named in the 2022 suit – his biography makes it clear that he and Williams probably didn’t cross paths until she was an adult. It’s also weird that Davis would be spending friendly time with Williams, calling her one of the bravest people he knows, and going to conventions with her only a few short months after she had him served for active litigation. This photo sure looks friendly if these people are on opposite sides of an active lawsuit.

For the “Williams is suing Davis, therefore Abby is lying to protect him” theory to work, you must believe that the woman on the right just sued the man on the left, the man on the left knows that, the woman on the right knows that, and the man on the left wrote the above caption about a woman who is suing him. 

Nor does it make sense that Davis would be included in any of the parties named in such a suit. Chris Davis sure didn’t seem happy about his newfound legal invulnerability after the 2023 amicus brief that made it harder for third parties to be held responsible in child abuse cases. In fact, this incident seems to have caused Davis to raise the prospect of having his church leave the denomination entirely. A lawsuit against the SBC Executive Committee, Lifeway, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary would in no way implicate every single pastor employed by a Southern Baptist church in the country, everyone who has ever worked for or published books with Lifeway, or everyone who has ever attended or taught at SBTS. The business entities are distinct from the individuals associated. Nor would individuals affiliated in some way with the SBC uniformly be legally or financially liable for such a suit. If Duke gets sued for events that happened while I was a student and teacher there, I don’t get out my checkbook – Duke does. I am not implicated or liable simply because I am somehow affiliated with the institution. Davis would not owe money for events he wasn’t present for nor involved in, nor did he seem to be in any kind of conspiring mood to assist the Executive Committee with their own lawsuits in September 2023 (these events will be discussed in more detail as we go). Davis had absolutely no motivation to throw a lawsuit on behalf of the Executive Committee, except for perhaps sudden, spontaneous, martyr-like devotion to the organization, which I don’t believe he has, seeing as he was a witness in a lawsuit against the Southern Baptist Convention and its administrative wing concerning his own abuse in December of 2023. Either Davis’s loyalty is hopelessly mercurial and he’s the Larys Strong of the Southern Baptist Convention – at once engaging in shady backroom deals with Executive Committee members to protect them from lawsuits, then turning and implicating them in different lawsuits – or this counternarrative hypothesis is ridiculous and need not concern us. The idea that Chris Davis is implicated in any lawsuits Williams has filed to date is absurd. There is no evidence it is true, and excellent evidence it is not. Abby is not protecting Chris Davis from any lawsuits. Therefore, Abby has no motive to lie on her brother’s behalf. I suppose some other motive might exist, but I don’t know what it could be.

5. Abby showed me screenshots of these texts. My read of them is that, in the text, Williams is not surprised she is being asked to pay these, which I would expect she would be if she thought this was a gift or that Abby was reneging on an understanding. 

6. Abby has shown me the hotel bills for this period and corresponding dated text messages that show that these hotel rooms were apparently indeed booked for this purpose.

7. Abby’s texts with several parties corroborate this. You can see some of them at statementbyabby.com

8. While this could be a garbled pronouncement from a terrified patient, I will note that this peculiar language around staging never seems to be cleared up in any further correspondence. The kind of cancer Williams seems to be describing (a melanoma that has spread to the interior of her chest cavity from the skin) sounds more like stage 4 than stage 3. If Williams really had stage 4 melanoma, her oncologist sent her home with 28 doses of chemo, and then ghosted her (which seems to be the events narrated here), then 1) it’s absolutely incredible she’s still alive and 2) in light of this, Williams should really be suing this doctor.

9. According to the doctors I consulted for this blog, it is exceedingly uncommon for an ER to order an MRI.

10. Abby kept screenshots of those texts and the dates match texts clearly regarding subsequent events.

11. I took a really, really light hand with this section to protect Williams’s privacy and because I can’t prove Abby is right about this. It’s Abby’s perception she was.

12. Bart Barber was president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2022-24.

13. If anyone wants to tell me this happened, please send me a copy of the petition clearly showing that Chris Davis and/or Bart Barber had petitioned a court to become legal guardians of Williams. I have scoured local court dockets to find any such petitions and I have come up empty. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the theory that Chris Davis and/or Bart Barber petitioned to become legal guardians or conservators of Williams is one of the most extraordinary claims I have ever heard. It would leave a paper trail, but a paper trail doesn’t seem to exist.