The Second Story: A Something Was Wrong Epilogue
I talked to the sister of a podcast antagonist. Here’s what she had to say.
After I did a podcast and some extended writing about Something Was Wrong, the problematic podcast about stories of abuse, I still had a lot of questions about how the show was made. I was pretty sure that claims on the show were generally not fact checked or that insight into these stories beyond the narrator’s testimony was not sought or investigated. I didn’t have proof, but I felt like supportive if indecisive evidence was there.
And then I got vindicated because someone who is in an actual episode of Something Was Wrong contacted me.1
If you listen to Season 21 of Something Was Wrong, you won’t hear the name “Sandra.” You won’t because her real name isn’t used in the show, and it’s not being used here either, per Sandra’s request. (I was able to confirm Sandra’s real name and used photos to confirm that she was who she said she was). But you will hear Sandra’s text messages read out loud, and hear descriptions of her.
Sandra is the sister of Josh, the primary antagonist of Season 21’s Annie/Rachael/Lauren series, episodes 13-16, and a “character” (so to speak) in the story itself.
The problem with writing about a podcast like this is that it’s very difficult to walk the thorny line between taking sides in someone else’s personal dispute as opposed to writing about public reporting on a podcast. I have neither the ability nor the interest to adjudicate between Josh, his family, and his ex-girlfriends. What I can speak to is public broadcasting about this story to return to some of the questions I have asked repeatedly about this podcast: what is this show for? What does it do? Who does it help?
The four episodes that cover the story of Sandra’s brother are cluttered, to say the least. Most of what happens in the show is not within the realm of subject matter that calls out for audio documentation. The bulk of the run time is spent on the ways in which Josh is a bad boyfriend. The structure justifies this content by framing it as part of the way in which Josh has a pattern of being a coercive and controlling abuser, but I personally don’t think it ever hangs together. We’ll talk about why. The third quarter of the podcast – basically between the back half of the third episode and the first half of the fourth – is where the relevant content is contained. Allegedly, Josh, while being financially supported by his girlfriend, was spending a significant portion of his income on cam girls, and Josh had allegedly (I can’t independently verify this but Sandra, Annie, Rachael, and Lauren all agree it happened) had made pornographic deep fakes of a number of his female friends and exes. And maybe some other people.
I should say here that I am not seeking to report on this story and I can’t independently verify Sandra’s testimony. A lot of it involves events that were either never documented or could only be corroborated by access to social media accounts that I can’t access. More to the point, my interest here is not in what actually happened between Josh and Annie. My interest is in how Something Was Wrong covered this story.
To that end, Sandra’s story is no more “what really happened” than Annie’s is. It’s another piece of raw material from which a journalist might arrive at the truth, and it provides insight into how these stories might look different if more perspectives were sought. Sandra’s story is not the picture, it is simply another piece of the puzzle. I didn’t write this to determine what “really happened.”
What I can demonstrate is that: 1) Sandra’s statement that she was not sought for comment or permission to have statements read seems to be corroborated by the show’s disclaimer and 2) that I looked for criminal allegations and court cases involving Josh and did not find allegations pertaining to the events of the show (I could have missed something but I think Sandra is telling the truth that there were no charges). Beyond this, this is Sandra’s testimony only.
I want to use Sandra’s testimony in conjunction with a close reading of the podcast episodes to demonstrate what I think is the problem with them, and how they demonstrate the larger problems with the podcast I have been insisting on all along. For those of you who haven’t listened to the show, I’ll start with a summary of the episodes. Then I’ll include Sandra’s story. Then I’ll do my analysis.
Summary of Annie/Rachael/Lauren Season 21
Rachael is a friend of Josh from high school. She knows Lauren from graduate school, and sets Lauren up with Josh. Lauren and Josh dated long-distance for a year before he moved to her city. When Josh moved, things went south. The two primary reasons why were 1) Josh’s graveyard shift hours at the butcher counter at a grocery store and 2) Josh’s apparent drinking problem, in which he would drink excessively and then argue with Lauren or be unable/reluctant to solve problems through clear communication. In addition to this Josh struggled with hygiene and cleaning and seems as though he may have had a hoarding disorder. This relationship went on for about a year.
Josh then started dating Annie. In the show, Rachael reports that Josh told her that the first time he went to Annie’s house, Annie poured him a large amount of tequila and sexually assaulted him. I cannot speak to the veracity of these claims or even how seriously Josh meant them in the moment, given that this is third-hand information and no one expounds upon these claims in any detail. However, I do bring it up to flag the first of many upcoming ethical problems. The show accuses Annie of sexual assault and Annie is never invited to comment on this allegation. And, of course, any incidents of sexual violence that Josh has survived are not Rachael’s to tell, nor are they the podcast’s to broadcast without his input. It’s my impression the show treats the allegations as self-evidently not credible and thus Annie is not prompted to respond to them, a position that is frankly astonishing given the fact that believing victims is apparently the whole point of the show.
Annie and Josh were together for three years. Their relationship was contentious from the beginning. Josh began to stay with Annie more frequently until he was finally at her house full-time, though at some point he was apparently no longer renting this apartment and (allegedly) concealed this information. Annie and Josh argued, Annie did not get along with Josh’s parents, Josh continued to have poor hygiene and housekeeping skills, and finally Annie discovered that Josh talked to cam girls. According to Annie Josh had an unknown income stream, and had spent up to $150k on cam girls in three years.
The most salacious part of the claims was that Josh may have made pornographic deep fakes of his sister Sandra and his minor niece, Sandra’s daughter.
I need to note here that these claims about the victimization of Sandra and her daughter were made without Sandra or her daughter’s input, as far as Sandra knows and as far as the show tells us. There is no indication on the show itself that Sandra was sought for comment.
The next most salacious claim is that Josh had made pornographic deep fakes of other women in his life, mostly his friends. When Annie confronted Josh about this Josh (according to Annie) took a knife from the kitchen, pointed it at her, and left the house. Annie then made an Instagram post recounting all these events. After friends and relatives began to contact Josh about this post, Josh apparently threatened suicide. Josh’s mother and sister reached out to her saying that they were unable to find Josh and asking him to remove the Instagram posts owing to their fears of suicide. Annie, and the police, finally discovered Josh at a motel, where he went home.
So here’s our figures:
Josh (ex boyfriend of Annie and Lauren, subject of allegations)
Sandra (his sister)
Annie (current ex-girlfriend of Josh, dated Josh for three years)
Lauren (ex girlfriend of Josh before Annie)
Rachael (friend of Josh)
My point with this interview is not to determine what actually happened between Annie and Josh, which is not my business and not something I have access to. It is definitely not to absolve Josh.
Interview with Sandra
Q: Did anyone from the show ever try to contact you about the presentation of your own statements/texts/actions that were depicted in the show? To your knowledge, did anyone contact your brother or parents? They’re also in the show.
A: No one ever contacted me about anything, nor anyone else in my family. I found out about the podcast through social media.
Q: What’s your relationship with Josh like?
A: We’ve never been close. I’ve struggled to have empathy for him. I want him to accept what he did and move on. He’s been in a deep depression, but he won’t talk to us or get help.
Q: So you wouldn’t say this isn’t a “my golden brother can do no wrong” situation?
A: Not at all.
Q: In the show you’re described as an anti-masker/vaxxer during COVID. Would you say that’s accurate or was during the events recounted in the show? What about the show’s characterization of your mom generally?
A: Ha. No. I’m not an anti-masker. I wore a mask to work. In the show, Annie says that my mom called her by the wrong name when she visited. I think there’s important information missing there. My mom has a neurological disorder and forgets things. This is mentioned in the show. She wasn’t trying to be rude. My mom bought her birthday gifts and sent her a frame when her dog died. She babysat Annie’s dogs when her mom couldn’t. When Annie found the first photo (Editor’s note: of the cam girl) she reached out to my mom, and my mom wasn’t playing sides and tried to help her through it.
Q: Related to the characterization of your mom: Annie says that Josh encouraged her to bring Jagermeister on a visit to his mom because she loved it. Apparently in Annie’s telling your mom was miffed and put it in the freezer. Any idea why?
A: I don’t know. My mom likes Jagermeister! I wasn’t there when that happened but I don’t think my mom was ever unkind to her.
Q: Lauren’s story of their relationship includes repeated references to Josh using alcohol excessively and having hoarding tendencies. Can you speak to either of those things?
A: I don’t think the hoarding was ever as bad when he lived with his friends. Growing up my mom was really anal about the house and his room was visible from the downstairs so she would pick up his stuff. I don’t know when that started. I think it’s probably a combination of hoarding and lack of care. I did know him to drink a lot in our hometown, but probably not every day like you would expect from an alcoholic. But I’d definitely say he drank consistently. I do think Josh is depressed, among other things, but I can’t diagnose him.
Q: Rachel suggests that at the beginning of Josh’s relationship with Annie, Josh was very public about not liking Annie, being annoyed when she would show up at things, saying her house was creepy, etc. Can you provide any insight into this? Did you and your brother ever discuss his early misgivings with Annie?
A: If you knew Josh you’d be surprised if he was dating Annie. They really seemed like total opposites. You can look at these photos–
(I did, Sandra showed me some photos of Josh and Annie together, which I’m not going to include. Without giving excessive details about the appearance of either person, I think that between personal dress, house decor, and evident preferred activities, the two are clearly very different people. I say this with no judgment for either party but am loathe to say more. For the purposes of this blog, pretend with Avril Lavigne that he was a punk, she did ballet.)
I think Josh liked her. But I also think he didn’t want to own up to it around Rachael or his other high school friends (Note: having also seen photos of Rachael, Rachael also falls on the Josh side of “he was a punk, she did ballet). If I had to play it out in my head, I think that he went on a few dates with her, COVID happened, she let him stay over, basically move in, and he took advantage of that.
Q: In the show it’s framed as him trying to keep Annie isolated to make her easier to control. You think that has another explanation?
A: I can’t speak to if he was trying to keep her isolated, but I do think he was worried about what his high school friends would think.
Q: Do you think that this dynamic – that Annie wasn’t normally Josh’s type and wouldn’t seem like Rachael’s – is why Josh was reluctant to bring her around Rachael and his other high school friends?
A: Probably.
Q: How did you find out about Annie’s instagram posts the night Annie found the deepfake photos?
A: Josh had called my mom to say goodbye because he was planning to commit suicide. I was concerned for his safety and felt this was adding fuel to the fire. That night Annie posted dozens of videos and photographs about Josh. I didn’t defend Josh making the deep fakes, and I never have. I just didn’t want him to get hurt.
There were a lot of allegations in those Instagram posts, and eventually those that came later, that I don’t think were true. For instance, one of the posts said that Annie’s car battery died because Josh had come over and turned on all the lights. I know that didn’t happen. He was staying in a different town and would have had to pay tolls to get to her house, which he didn’t do. Also at that point my family was tracking his phone because we thought he was a danger to himself, so I know he didn’t do that.
At some point someone suggested that he got the money for the cam girls from embezzling money at work. There were a lot of comments flying around on social media that he was fired from his job. But that didn’t happen.
Q: I was actually going to ask about the money. The embezzling story probably came from the fact that she thought he spent $150k on cam girls, right? Where did Josh get that money?
A: So you have to remember – the data she was using to do that math didn’t have time stamps. That money could have been spent over the course of five years. He lived with Annie for three years, at least one of them he had no apartment, and he was working the entire time. When my mom was able to she would send money for things like being short on rent, car payments, and so forth. We didn’t know it was going to cam girls, of course.
Q: So between no rent, no bills, full-time job, and family help, he would have had a lot of disposable income.
A: Yeah. So I don’t know if he needed another income stream to spend that kind of money. (Note: On the show Annie says that Josh’s phone showed traces of him receiving payments online but there’s no information about what this might have been or other evidence to substantiate if this information is accurate. Sandra supposes this was from Josh’s family.)
Q: Do you think Josh was actually suicidal? The show frames it as manipulation.
A: On one hand, he only had a knife with him. But on the other hand, having talked to him, yes, I think he wanted to die. We took the threats seriously. When we brought him home we made sure he didn’t have access to firearms.
Q: When Annie goes back to the motel after the police leave Josh there, she says that she saw at a distance some friends with Josh. Why did she go back to the hotel? Did she approach any of you? The show characterizes these people as defending Josh. Were they?
A: So there was more than one motel. There was the motel where Josh went after the breakup, where the cops found him. Then he moved to a different one closer to his work. We saw Annie at both motels. Josh saw her another time when she put his things in his car. I don’t know anyone who defended Josh against the allegation he had made deepfakes of women, but I can’t say that no one did. As far as I was concerned, there was proof and that was all there was to it. We did try to talk him into going back home and to try to get help. But that was to help him, not to excuse him.
Q: So according to you and Annie in the show, Annie did try to keep eyes on him after the fact?
A: Yes. And I think she kept tabs on him online, too. She’d send him Venmo requests and post about him on Instagram. She posted about him leaving his job on Facebook.
Q: Why do you think she did that?
A: What I was seeing was that she and her friends said they were worried about their safety.
Q: How much insight do you have into the deepfakes themselves? Do you know if Josh distributed them? Sold them? Were any of minors or family members?
A: I have never heard anyone say or anyone claim that Josh distributed them at all. (Laura’s note: I haven’t either, it is not in the show). The only evidence of the deepfakes I have ever seen was the first Instagram video she posted which was deleted quickly because of nudity. I know they were real but I don’t know anything about them except for that post. I have no idea if I was one of them. Annie said on the show there was one of me but I have never seen it. Annie also said that there was evidence he was making one of my daughter. Annie did not contact me about this, nor did Lauren or Rachael, nor did anyone from the police or FBI. The deepfakes did exist, but I don’t know anything about them in detail. When Annie texted us after the breakup, she didn’t mention either a deepfake of me or my daughter. She also didn’t say this to my mother.
Note: There’s a discrepancy here between Annie’s story and Sandra’s here. Annie’s version is below:
Sandra did send me the screenshots between her mom and Annie, and herself and Annie. I’m not including them here out of an abundance of caution that I don’t incompletely black something out and doxx one of them. It’s possible texts were deleted but those screenshots don’t mention the photos of Sandra or her daughter.
Q: To your knowledge, who did Josh talk to from law enforcement? He’s held for 24 hours according to the show. Any charges? What for?
A: I don’t know where they got the information that Josh was held for 24 hours but it’s not accurate. The FBI came to pick up Josh and they talked and he came back. I don’t remember it taking long. At the time the reports were that he had made deepfakes of women, that he had sexual photos of minors, and that he was embezzling funds from his work. Josh talked to them and they closed the case. There were no charges filed against him.
Q: What was your biggest concern about the podcast as you heard it recorded?
A: The show was the first time I’d heard the allegation that Josh made deep fakes of me or my daughter. I’ve reached out to Rachael about whether this was true and why she’d never told me but I haven’t heard anything. The show makes it sound as though this was all done because they strongly believed that Josh was a threat to children and to his family. But if that’s the case, I don’t understand why none of them ever tried to warn me.
Q: Is there anything you’d like to say to Tiffany Reese?
A: I think she needs to look into the stories that are told on her podcast and think more about who is on it.
My Takeaways After Hearing the Second Story
1. The deepfakes of adult women Josh knew is substantiated and inexcusable.
Making deepfakes of people is wrong. At the time that Josh apparently did it it was not illegal, but there should be federal protections of people and more controls of this and similar software. I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that this was wrong. The act itself is personally violating even if no one finds out about them — and worse yet if they do. If Josh himself didn’t distribute the photos (to date I’ve never seen any evidence or allegation that he did) he still could have had his phone hacked or his data breached and they would be out in the world. This could have had catastrophic implications for the women involved.
2. The allegation that Josh made a deepfake of his minor niece, and thus had committed a crime, is unsubstantiated.
To me, the single most compelling piece of evidence that this didn’t happen is that Josh faced no charges relating to the contents of his phone. This fits with Josh’s primary villainy being making pornographic deepfakes of adult women – which is wrong but not illegal. This would change if Josh had done the same thing with a photo of a minor. I have expressed skepticism on this podcast before about the FBI getting involved in cases reported on Something Was Wrong. I don’t think it is likely that the FBI would have questioned but not prosecuted someone with credible allegations of CSAM material, since federal support is often sought in such cases.
The second most compelling evidence is that neither Rachael nor Lauren mention a pornographic deepfake of the niece. Lauren reads from a text she sent to one of Josh’s friends in the podcast, and while this may have been edited for the show, in the text of the note itself Lauren doesn’t mention CSAM. The text mentions only the women. If this was the actual complete text that Lauren sent to one of Josh’s friends after, it strains credulity that she believed that Josh had CSAM on his phone but did not mention it. Either this is not the complete text, I think, or (more likely, given the editing style of the show) it is and Lauren hadn’t heard or seen evidence of this allegation.
(It may merit comment here that Rachael and Lauren are both professional therapists. In context, Lauren is reading a text that she sent a friend, but when it’s broadcasted to the public an editor should have stepped in here to note that this is in fact, not Lauren speaking in a clinical capacity and should not have been called upon in the show to do so. Josh is Lauren’s ex-boyfriend, not her patient. If the goal of the show is to educate and inform, which we’ve been repeatedly told that it is, this portion in which Lauren’s private communication is turned into public, professionally-informed data should have been omitted. I don’t think this was Lauren’s error to catch since Lauren didn’t edit the show, but the production should have).
Rachael mentions that there were photos on his phone of his niece, but makes no claims about what kind of photos they were – just that it upset her that she had photos of his niece on his phone.
However, Rachael then says that when she started looking into legal action that could be taken against Josh, she determined that the most likely avenue to get a conviction against Josh regarding deepfakes was CSAM charges. This is apparently CSAM which, as near as I can tell, two of the three women don’t clearly affirm the existence of, and which Annie only vaguely alludes to.
So the allegation is most plainly stated only in reference to the calls that Rachael made to the FBI. But, then, the FBI did not hand over evidence to a prosecutor to indict Josh. Why is that? It seems that all parties are agreed that Josh never faced charges and I can’t find any evidence he did. Even if Rachael was correct that the FBI held Josh for 24 hours of interrogation (and Sandra says she’s not), that doesn’t say anything about Josh’s culpability relative to this specific charge.
The third most compelling piece of evidence is that none of the women who were most privy to the content of Josh’s phone, according to Sandra, made an effort to contact Sandra and alert her to this. It’s possible Sandra is wrong, I suppose, but it seems unlikely. In Annie’s testimony on the show, she says that she blocked both Sandra and her mother the night of the breakup, so that’s two statements pointing in the same direction – Annie doesn’t say that she told Sandra and she went out of her way to prevent contact between herself and Sandra. Likewise, neither Rachael nor Lauren say they told Sandra and neither of them even seem to suggest they are even aware of such photos. The majority of Episode 16 centers on what happened after the discovery of the deepfakes, up to and including extended text conversations with the sex workers. If the narrators believed Josh’s niece was in danger, why is alerting her family not part of the story?
Now – it’s possible that Annie was under the impression that, if the deepfake of Sandra’s daughter existed (and with the evidence in front of me being only Annie’s unclear statement regarding it, I don’t believe it existed), that Annie thought that after she posted it on Instagram that Sandra must have known about it. But on this front Annie would be obviously mistaken. Annie could not have even posted a deepfake of her boyfriend’s niece on Instagram without running the risk of legal trouble herself, so I’m sure she didn’t do that. The deepfakes generally couldn’t remain on Instagram for more than a few minutes without violating terms of service. And, of course, all this information was posted and (allegedly, but also likely) removed during a time in which Sandra was trying to figure out where her brother was and if his life was in danger. If Annie actually thought that Sandra’s daughter was in danger, this was information that, if Annie wanted Sandra to receive this information, Annie should have been delivered directly. It could not have been delivered reliably over Instagram to a general audience while Sandra was dealing with a different crisis. This seems like evidence that Annie did not think Josh’s niece was in serious danger.
It’s also possible that all three women thought that contacting the police was sufficient, and that Sandra herself did not need to be contacted. But for this to be true, then it would also need to be true that they believed that was released that all three agreed that Josh was not a danger to a child. They clearly are aware Josh is not in prison and faced no charges. But this contradicts both Annie and Rachael’s statements on the show.
I think the simplest explanation is just this: there’s no evidence Josh had CSAM on his phone, that neither Lauren nor Rachael saw it, that whatever Annie saw on Josh’s phone (a photo of his niece with some unspecified cropping having happened, at most) did not inspire the FBI to act, and that no one responded with the urgency one might expect when they thought a child was in danger. This is the only explanation I can think of that explains everyone’s actions between the FBI and all the women involved.
So why was this information included in the show at all, given that there is so much unclarity about it in the text of the show itself and so much data that seems to contradict this story? I want to make one thing very plain here: making the claim that Sandra and her daughter were victimized by Josh, with no input from Sandra or her daughter during show production, is itself a violating, victimizing act. There is absolutely no excuse for Tiffany Reese doing this. As soon as someone made claims about Sandra and her daughter, Sandra and her daughter should have been contacted for permission to share this story. Failing to do this is a gross dereliction of duty and professional ethics and is enough cause in itself for Reese to retract this podcast for re-editing. As I also noted, Rachael also reports that Josh accused Annie of sexual assault. This is, in the show, a second-hand report, but it is still an allegation that Josh should have been sought for comment and permission to share. I can only assume that Tiffany Reese did not think Sandra, her daughter, or Josh merited such consideration, because they are on Team Bad to the narrators’ Team Good.
I would argue that by nodding in the direction of a major federal crime without expanding upon this allegation – and by including information that seems to contradict it – makes the narrative as a whole less credible. A little yeast works through the whole dough, and one severe and apparently unfounded accusation casts doubt on accusations that are otherwise well sourced. But the editor and producers of the podcast, I think, had an obligation to present the most credible version of this story. Anything less does a serious disservice primarily to the narrators, but of course also to other parties.
3. A coercive control story is, once again, incompletely or inadequately expressed in the show. This is a problem because…
There’s two major clusters of Josh-behavior in the story. The first is behavior that would be difficult to live with if you were his friend or girlfriend but is plausibly explained by some kind of health problem. These are cases where, as a person who struggles with depression and ADHD myself, it was hard for me to not empathize with Josh. The second cluster is behavior that is morally wrong, destructive, not symptomatic of health issues, and emotionally abusive, where I do not empathize with Josh. The show tries to make both clusters into the same, second cluster, which distorts the narrative and the presentation.
I’ve said before that the show struggles to slot women’s narratives into narratives where the story does not really fit. This is another such example.
Lauren’s summary statement of her own romantic relationship with Josh at the end sounds like it fits this model certainly well enough. Lauren does not use the language of coercive control, but she does use words like “abusive” and “predatory.” However, the bulk of the narrative is actually not spent on this sort of material. Again, this is something an editor should have caught.
The banner story here, and the story that makes this story actually worth telling on a podcast, isn’t even Josh being a coercive and controlling boyfriend. It’s definitely not Josh having a lot of trash in his car. It’s Josh making pornographic deepfakes of women. Again, this isn’t illegal, but it is immoral. However, the show loses focus and fails to make a consistent, compelling case that all three narratives are necessary to tell a story of coercive control, when most of the data is extraneous, detracting, or distracting. Worse, it trivializes the serious allegations in the show by putting them alongside stories where it’s not even clear Josh is in the wrong.
Why does this matter? It matters because we still live in a patriarchal society where the idea that abuse happens and it’s not the abused person’s fault is still a controversial idea, and the draw to not believing people about real cases of abuse remains a powerful one. In this environment, the narrative that vindictive, irrational, and credulous people round up all behavior to “abuse” remains a powerful incentive to ignore very real abuse claims. I think the show plays into this impulse, however unintentionally.
Lauren’s narrative should have been dramatically trimmed to emphasize only those behaviors that can reasonably be called abuse if the show wanted to make the case that Josh abused her. Rachael’s narrative absolutely did not need to be there at all. The end product is a bizarre tapestry where Josh’s abuse is evidenced by
The allegation that he works first shift at a deli
The allegation that he didn’t go to a Cubs game
The allegation that he picked up his ex-girlfriend in an Uber because his car was messy, and lied about it
And the allegation that he threatened his girlfriend with a knife
One of these things is not the other.
The thing is, there’s definitely concerning behavior in all these stories – like yelling, and excessive drinking. But the fact that these are the bulk of the show runtime in a story that ends with Josh allegedly pointing a knife at someone has the effect of both trivializing actual abusive behavior and making the larger narrative sound ridiculous. Why is there so much focus on Josh’s housekeeping and hygiene, which has nothing to do with Josh being abusive or not? Or Josh not going to things or answering texts? Or Josh not inviting his girlfriend out? Are these supposed to be understood as signs of coercive control? They aren’t! And if they aren’t signs of abuse or a sign of danger to come, why are they in this podcast?
Shouldn’t the emphasis have been on behavior that was a danger to people around Josh, rather than the things that made him an unreliable friend and partner? Wouldn’t this have avoided the very real problem of trivializing serious allegations by putting them in the same conversation as non-abusive, frustrating behaviors? Shouldn’t an editor have attended to this? Between this and the unsubstantiated criminal allegations, the show creates credibility problems where they don’t need to exist. This doesn’t serve the narrators, it doesn’t serve the show, and it doesn’t serve the ends of anti-abuse activism.
4. Annie and Sandra both agree Annie did not leave Josh alone after the breakup. This is a problem because…
The fact that Annie, by her own admission and confirmed by Sandra, drove to where Josh was at least once and possibly two or three times is hard to square with the claim that Annie was terrified of Josh and trying to get away from him. I don’t think by saying this I am insisting that Annie conform to a Perfect Victim narrative. I am saying that, if the point of the show was to reveal that Josh was a dangerous predator, particularly against children, that no one in the story acts as though this was the case.
Here is where I want to express unqualified empathy for Annie. Annie was justifiably angry about Josh’s frequenting of online sex workers and of Josh’s creation of pornographic deepfakes. However, Annie’s response looks less like someone who is afraid of Josh and more like someone who wants Josh to pay a high social price for lying to her, virtually cheating on her, and creating deepfakes. I am not saying it was Annie’s responsibility to protect Josh’s reputation. It wasn’t. Annie was free to tell as many people as she wanted about why she was breaking up with Josh.
But with the addition of the podcast we’ve moved from the level of Annie’s in-person and virtual social circle to Tiffany Reese’s sphere of reporting and journalism. And in this sphere, Annie’s (and Rachael’s and Lauren’s) motives and trustworthiness become really freaking important.
This is not a situation where an abused woman returns to her partner an average of seven times before she successfully leaves. No one is alleging that Annie was contacting Josh or driving to where he was because of a trauma-bonded instinct to save the relationship. The relationship was over. Something else was going on. Continuing to contact your ex and go to where he is, while assuming he is your ex, not out of grief or a desire to try to fix things or because you’re angry, is a very different kind of reaction. That’s not a fear response. That’s not a response to danger or threats – no one, between Sandra or Annie, alleges that Josh was contacting Annie and trying to drag her back into the relationship. Per Rachael, Josh never contacted her, and per Lauren, Josh never contacted her either. In fact, Sandra says, and her texts show, that Josh wanted Annie to stop trying to get in touch. That’s not a fear response on Annie’s part. So what was it?
We can even leave Sandra’s story out of this. Between the paucity of evidence that any of the women believed Sandra’s daughter was in danger, and Annie’s own admission that she went out of her way to lay eyes on Josh well after his location and survival had been ascertained, there’s enough red flags here that a journalist should attend to that this story could have the hallmarks of one that’s been goosed with time to make it more shocking and dramatic. When we discussed Erdely and “A Rape on Campus,” we discussed the details that Erdely missed that should have raised enough hints that the story was not credible in the way it was initially told. Erdely didn’t resolve these, and the anti-campus sexual assault movement was basically crippled forever. The stakes aren’t as high in this story, but they are still present. We still live in a patriarchal society where the idea that abuse happens and it’s not the abused person’s fault is still a controversial idea, and the draw to not believing people about real cases of abuse remains a powerful one. This means that whenever a journalist or documentarian is reporting about assault, these red flags must be attended to to prevent another “A Rape On Campus.” And I don’t think they were attended to. There is something wrong with the end of this story, and how the narrators themselves say they reacted.
Even if we want to insist that Annie was severely traumatized by the realization her boyfriend was withholding money, cheating on her, and making deepfakes of his friends, and thus we can’t assume that her behavior should conform to any standard we would describe as reasonable or rational, there’s still one massive problem. This is the single best piece of evidence for the “goosed with time” narrative. And that’s the insinuation that Josh committed a federal crime, that he was investigated by federal police, and released. This podcast maintains, or gets extremely close to maintaining, that Josh had CSAM on his phone and had online sexual encounters with minors. If that’s not true, or no one can prove it, it should not have been on the show. What it actually sounds like is that the narrators, at an uneven level between themselves, tentatively want Josh to be treated as though he committed sexual violence against children, but none of them can quite bring themselves to clearly say that he did commit sexual violence against children. Instead, they make insinuating comments that are technically true (“the cam girls looked really young,” “he had a photo of his niece on his phone”) but imply something they actually can’t defend with evidence.
These insinuations didn’t belong on the show. Reese had no business broadcasting them. On the micro level, this is true for the sake of Josh, because even when people do bad things they shouldn’t be accused of crimes without evidence. But on the macro level, this is true for the sake of a larger movement where survivors of abuse are regularly not believed and false allegations do catastrophic damage to the larger movement.
5. The role of Sandra in the show as recorded is to show Josh as surrounded by enablers and silencers.
The show’s presentation of Sandra and her mother seems to be to present Sandra and her mother as difficult, unhelpful people who were profoundly unconcerned with the well-being of victims like Annie and who tried to defend and support an abuser at her expense. The claims made on this show do not support this narrative.
The presentation of Sandra and her mother as impolite and difficult (which Sandra contests) ultimately leads towards the reveal of Sandra and her mother’s actions on the night of the breakup. Sandra and her mother’s texts are read in a snide, condescending tone, clearly intended to communicate how irrational they’re being. The contexts of the texts are that they don’t know where Josh is, that they are trying to find him, that he has communicated his intention to commit suicide, that they are sorry Annie is hurting, and could Annie stop posting about him on social media because people are contacting Josh about them and he is planning to kill himself now that it is all out there.
Was Josh being manipulative to prevent Annie from spilling his secrets? Maybe. But to his mother and sister, should that have mattered in the moment? Why did Annie expect it to? It seems that Annie’s evident disgust for their actions is that they have the audacity to ask her to stop posting about Josh while he is missing. I’ve read Annie’s Instagram posts, which Sandra sent me, and Annie references some on the show. I am willing to grade Annie’s immediate actions on a generous curve here given that she’d just found out she’d been severely betrayed by her boyfriend, and I don’t expect her to attend to her ex boyfriend’s reputation.
What I do expect, after a year to cool down, is this. First and foremost, that according to Annie’s own testimony, Sandra and her minor daughter were allegedly victims of sexual misconduct and the show expresses absolutely no empathy whatsoever for Sandra anyway. She was apparently not sought for permission to share this information, the show displays no evidence that they sought her for comment, the show should not have proceeded without her comment, and it is immoral that the show did not secure her comment regarding this. If Tiffany Reese believed the allegation, she should have asked Sandra. Sandra has told me that the allegations are unsubstantiated, but Something Was Wrong should have sought this input from Sandra herself.
The second thing I expect is that Annie (and more to the point, the editors and producers of the podcast) would express less shock and disgust that Sandra and her mother wanted their brother and son, respectively, to survive this. Even if Sandra and her mother had the presence of mind to digest the content Annie was producing, is it really surprising that their focus was on Josh’s life? Or, that their focus was on stopping the thing they saw to be threatening Josh’s life – which was social media posts about him and, more to the point, friends and relatives texting and calling Josh to express their disgust (which Rachael says her mother did in the show itself?). Even if we agree with Annie that this was information that needed to be put on a public social media platform, is it really objectionable that as it was being posted and as Josh was calling to say goodbye, that Sandra and her mother didn’t agree?
Unfortunately, I think this sort of black-and-white, you’re-with-us-or-against-us thinking is the kind of thinking the show generally rewards. Sandra either had to be on Team Abuser or Team Abused, and the only way she could be on Team Abused was to not object to her brother’s ex-girlfriend making Instagram posts about her brother while he was missing and after he had called his mother to tell her he intended to end his life. This had to be done immediately without any regard for competing priorities involving Josh himself (which, I cannot overstate enough, is their son and brother, respectively). The idea that Sandra and her mother should have been able to go through a significant amount of video and audio content (at least some of which likely would have been fleeting, given Instagram’s terms of service), assess the veracity of Annie’s claims, and affirm her rightness in posting them while their son and brother was missing and presumed imperiled is, frankly, insane. The least surprising thing in the world is that in the midst of this, and while Josh and his family members were being contacted about these social media posts, and while Josh’s whereabouts were unknown and while he was planning a suicide attempt, is that Josh’s mother and sister would ask the poster to stop.
This is the version of Sandra’s that is read in the show. It’s word for word the text Sandra showed me from her own phone. I honestly struggle to see, given the context, what Sandra should have said differently. This request is not indicative of Sandra failing to believe Annie or to empathize with her. It’s Sandra trying to deal with the crisis directly in front of her, which is her brother’s life.
Having talked to Sandra, I know for a fact Sandra believes that the deepfakes of the women were real. The issue at hand is not whether or not Sandra believes women. It’s that Sandra responded in a moment where immediate stressor on her brother’s safety was Annie’s social media posts. Even if we agree Annie was within her right to post them – is it somehow immoral for Sandra to ask her to do otherwise? If it wasn’t, why does the show try to build the case that it was? It is the show’s affirmation, in repeating the claims of Annie, Lauren, and Rachael, that Sandra is as much of a victim of the deepfakes as they are. Why is there no empathy for Sandra as victim?
6. The story worth telling here is the one that gets the least attention.
So from my perspective, I would be asking myself this question as a reporter: is this a story that needed to be told? What is the story here that needs to be told, and why? Not every relationship story – not even every bad relationship story – is in itself something that lends itself to compelling reporting or storytelling. Why should I believe that this story is one of them?
I can explain a lot of this reporting on the grounds that drawing attention to deepfakes and AI pornography is worth doing. The way to tell this story, I would argue, is as a straightforward narrative about realizing one’s boyfriend made deepfakes of a number of women and how this was violating, but legal. I would also bolster this story with other stories of women who discovered the same things, with variations of experience to explore the dangers of deepfake technology and why this needs to be regulated. Another option would be to explore the way in which the consumption of online sex work impacts relationships financially and emotionally, with Annie telling one story of several.
Instead, the field of the story is made messy by being almost entirely about Josh, and long reports of Josh being more or less a disappointing boyfriend. This does not build the case that Josh was a danger to people around him, which is the ultimate point of the story. It definitely doesn’t provide insight into the phenomenon of AI pornography and how it harms people.
You could even make the same case for the details of Josh’s cam girl addiction, which dovetails well with the theme of toxic relationships and internet use but is confusingly explained. For one thing, the app in question, Woohoo, is not itself an app that is marketed as a cam girl site but going off of reviews it clearly is. How is this app regulated? Where? What are the laws in place that prevent people from using it towards exploitative ends? Any? Surely there’s a story worth telling here. Annie suggests at one point in the podcast that the girls may have been underaged but provides no evidence this is the case. This is another serious ethical problem in the show. What makes this part of the story worth telling? Why? What should listeners at home get out of this besides “Josh is a bad boyfriend?” It hardly seems purposeful in itself to listen to independent reporting that requires nothing of me other than to take a stand on a random man who lives in Michigan.
The meat of the story, and the thing that makes this worth talking about at all, is the deepfakes. But it’s the part of the show that gets the least attention, and when the show moves to more serious allegations regarding them (namely, material involving a minor) the show becomes incredibly unclear and evasive. Likewise, the claim that Josh was specifically soliciting underage online sex workers is claimed based on their appearances alone and then abandoned.
Reese says that the importance of an independent podcast like hers is that some of these stories would never be reported on if not for podcasts. That may be true, but in at least some cases, the reason why these aren’t reported on is because the story in itself, or the way Reese tells it, doesn’t seem to justify itself as a piece of reporting. This podcast is ultimately not about a current event, a pressing modern issue, an illuminating example of how abuse goes by unchecked, or anything that is universal or relatable to a general audience. It’s about Josh, a private individual who lives with his parents in Michigan. Why do we need to know about Josh?
7. The narrative, and what it leaves out, clusters around motives that don’t look like they are intended to educate, hold accountable, or protect. So what is this for?
So I’m seeing some concerning clusters of data points here. They are:
In terms of run time and presentation, an emphasis less on patterns of abuse (even when they are allegedly present) and more on clusters of frustrating behavior centered on one person
In terms of criminal allegations, a lack of evidence to support the most severe and legally actionable ones
Passing interest and advocacy concerning subjects that are universal and applicable to a general audience
Vilifying of peripheral figures whose wrongdoing is unclear at best and absent at worst
The disregard of permission or input from alleged victims of sexual violence
A noticeable disregard for steps that could have or should have been taken to protect an extremely vulnerable figure, which has come up before on this show
Given this, it is hard to make the case that the purpose of this content is to educate, inform, advocate, or protect – or even to elucidate or understand. So what is it for? Why are there four episodes about Josh?
I mean, it’s obvious. Right?
It’s revenge.
That’s the goal of the show. The goal is revenge.
I don’t even blame Annie for wanting revenge against Josh. I understand why Annie is angry. What I don’t understand is a podcast that frames itself as serving the lofty goals of advocacy and education, while serving no clear purpose besides enacting revenge. And if I can take a macro approach to this, is this what we want advocacy to look like?
Who gets lost in the crosshairs? Certainly Sandra and her daughter who are outed – against their wills, against their testimony, and without evidence – as victims themselves. Why were they not consulted? Why was their permission not sought? Trauma-informed and victim-centered, my ass, Tiffany.
I have read and listened to a lot of sharp allegations about abusers and their enablers that don’t spare a person’s reputation, and towards ends that I affirm. These goals are to force accountability, to require organizations to examine who they hire, to demonstrate where coverups have happened, and to insist on investigation into abusive structures. These are stories worth telling, however pointed, however difficult. It’s hard to make the case Something Was Wrong has done such a thing.
Something Was Wrong and Broken Cycle Media generally present themselves as tools for getting justice in an unjust world and to draw attentions to the ways in society fails people who are victims of abuse. This is not justice. Raising accusations that cannot be substantiated is not justice. Vilifying people for acting in non-abusive, completely understandable ways that you personally don’t appreciate is not justice. Naming people as victims of sexual violence without their consent is not justice. Reporting on stories without fact-checking them and exploring the content further is not justice.
What this is is a pastiche of the worst slanders people make against abuse survivors, and the people who seek to support them, made real and deliberately enacted in the face of all those survivors and all those reporters who try to counter these insults, for no discernible end except for the bottom line of Broken Cycle Media.
I am not okay with this. You should not be okay with this. This is irresponsible reporting. This is terrible journalism. This is detrimental to the people and the advocacy that Reese says she is a part of. She is not part of it. She is not doing this work. And these episodes are a perfect example why.
An edit:
My original version of this blog contained a line that an interview on Cup of Justice with Reese “clarified she doesn’t fact check most stories.” This was what I was hearing when listening to the podcast, but having compared my listening experience to the transcripts, I want to clarify my statement to be as clear, critical, and charitable as I mean to be.
There’s no legal definition of fact-checking. But, in the case of journalistic ethics, it certainly does include checking with people about whom allegations are made. This has been my primary concern with elements of fact checking pertaining to this show – talking to parties against whom allegations are made or people around them. I think the evidence suggests that this occurs in a minority of episodes.
This kind of investigative work is, ultimately, what I think it means to “believe survivors” – to take their claims seriously enough to bring them to the proper authorities to investigate them, whether that’s legal, institutional, or in the media. In the interview, Reese apparently uses the language of fact-checking to describe how she relates to the narrator’s side of the story, and most explicitly, in stories where she’s using a subject’s first and last name.
This doesn’t characterize many, many episodes of the show. So what Reese doesn’t speak to is fact-checking in the more common format of the show – when one person or a few people tell a story about a person using only his first name. The use of first and last names happens overwhelmingly in seasons where the subject of the allegations is famous (Jim Jones) or in seasons where a person has been convicted (Cody Sartin). The exceptions to this norm are Jake Gravbrot and Jessica Polly.
There’s no obligation to tell that person’s side of the story in as much detail as the other side, of course. Nonetheless, as I understand it, an effort to seek comment is still normal in most reporting situations. This is the just thing to do on behalf of the one being accused of something, but it’s also the just thing to do on behalf of the survivor and the audience. Presenting the strongest version of the case protects the one making the allegations, and presenting the strongest version of the story is most compelling to the audience.
More often, the show seems to favor the anonymizing approach of using first names, alongside the disclaimer that the testimony belongs to the speaker. There are a few exceptions, but on the whole there isn’t much indication in the shows that the subjects of the allegations are sought for comment. This is not usually how investigative journalism proceeds, per the linked article above. I am not hearing in this discussion on Cup of Justice giving any details about the way Reese approaches people who are alleged to be abusers or their enablers. This is still part of the story. Reese says in the interview that she “digs into the evidence,” but on the frequent occasions where that doesn’t include legal documents (which aren’t relevant to many episodes) or speaking to the abuser (which again, there’s no indication in a lot of these episodes that happens) I don’t know what that evidence could pertain to. It could be limited to evidence the potential narrator provides. As Reese herself notes in this interview, a lot of these stories involve private experiences between two individuals. So if the other party isn’t consulted, then it’s hard to know what the “evidence” in question could be. It seems like many of these could easily be situations where the narrator and the narrators’ defenders provide all relevant information.
If this is the case, and I think there are many episodes where this is, I can’t call this “fact checking,” even if that’s the language Reese uses. This is concerning. As we’ve already noted, this is the situation that created “A Rape on Campus,” which was bad for survivors of sexual assault. As I note in this article, there’s even an incident in Season 21 where one narrator accuses another narrator of sexual assault, and in that instance the accused protagonist is nowhere prompted to speak to this allegation. If that’s the treatment the narrators get, I can’t imagine that objectivity of process is pursued much more vigorously regarding people not on the show.
The best piece of evidence I have that this is the norm — that when first names only are used, the subject of allegations is not consulted — is Sandra’s testimony that it didn’t happen in her case, and the contents of the show itself. Between Sandra saying that no one in her family was contacted for the story, and the absence of any indication on the show that Reese attempted and failed to contact Sandra, I think I am more than reasonable in supposing that Reese, in fact, did not attempt to reach out to Sandra. I would suspect there are other episodes like this, since there are only a few episodes where a mention of the alleged abuser’s testimony is included in the disclaimer at the beginning – which I already argued extensively about in the blog series.
However, Tiffany, Amy, everyone else at Broken Cycle: if you’re reading this, and I think you are: if you’d like to dispute this, please feel free to send me all the evidence you have that you called Sandra and asked for permission to describe her alleged experiences of victimization, and that of her daughter. I’ll gladly append it to this article and apologize.
Edit Edit: In an Oct 1,2024 AMA on Reddit, Jubilee from Season 21 clarified that to her knowledge, no one from Bethel or her ex was interviewed or contacted about the podcast.
I appreciate the desire for survivors to feel safe during the interview. And, as I have said, these are the same steps that Sabrina Erdely took while writing “A Rape on Campus,” which is one of the most infamous modern examples of failure to fact-check in journalism history.
Reese and I are clearly using very different definitions of “looking at evidence” and “fact checking” if in these two cases she did not seek comment from the subject of the allegations, OR Sandra and Jubilee both are wrong. Which sounds more likely?