Ashley Trujillo
Appearances
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
It's really hard to hear because it doesn't feel like being a wonderful friend.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
So it's a choice for you to be where you're at. I can't lie and say it's not a choice, especially right now, that I'm really struggling with. I understand that, you know, my reaction to her when she was saying, I don't need to explain myself to you. You know, I just need you to respect me. I understand that it's not about me. It's never been about me. Her world is blown up right now.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
And she has no space in it for one more person's problems and how they're feeling about the situation, which is absolutely true. And to me, you know, when he did what he did to her daughter, that can't be overcome.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
One of the last things I said to her was, when you go into that courtroom, you have to pick a side to sit on. You can sit with your daughter or you can sit with your husband. And I hope that you're able to make the right choice.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
even when Sarah and I weren't talking, I stayed in contact with her daughter because it was really important for her to know, you know, if I do not speak to your mother again ever, which we didn't say that to her, I would tell her your mom and I are having a hard time right now, but no matter what, that doesn't affect you and me, like our relationship, you have your circle, you have this support no matter what.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
And her daughter really kind of broke my heart and explained to me that she All of these reactions that we're all having don't necessarily mean anything to her because this happened so long ago that this is not new for her. She's like, you guys are having big reactions because this is brand new information for you. This is not brand new for me.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
So she said that all she had wanted was for somebody to believe her, to be able to say it and for somebody to believe her, which, of course, everybody did instantly. And she's finally in therapy and everything, which her mother helped her get. And all she would tell me was, I don't understand what's going on. I don't understand. But she never seemed to be mad.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
To me, she never said, I feel like she's choosing him. I feel abandoned. I feel left out. They are so very, very close, which was one of the questions that I wanted to come in with today, which is if I do not continue a relationship with her mother. And to be really honest, at this point, I don't know if I can. I don't know yet. But if I don't, how would I explain to her daughter?
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
Just because you're close with your mom doesn't mean you need to follow what she's doing. Doesn't mean it's okay. And how do I continue to support her and say those things without her daughter pushing me away? Just because we're disagreeing with her mother who she's so loyal to.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
That does help a lot because that was a big question I had. You know, what do we say?
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
Yeah, and that makes perfect sense. And I remember one of the last things I said to Sarah was, when you go into that courtroom, you have to pick a side to sit on. You can sit with your daughter or you can sit with your husband. And I hope that you're able to make the right choice. And I didn't tell her what I thought the right choice was.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
But I told her, you can choose whatever you want, but there are consequences to your choices. And this is a consequence because there was no way to continue forward with him in her life still in that way, in my opinion. I didn't do it as a punishment. This is not a it's him or me situation. It was never that. So Jess, was drawing that boundary at that time the right thing to do?
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
I was so looking forward to talking to both of you today, but I love hearing that from a therapist point of view, from a licensed therapist point of view, because I never thought about that. You know, like I said, I went with my husband literally saying the same things over and over, begging him, pretend I'm not an adult and tell me exactly step by step, what do I do?
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
That's all I want right now is for somebody to tell me exactly what to do. Pretend I'm a child, give me the next steps because I don't know anymore. But I kind of landed on it with, I guess now it is about me at this point. And whether is that moral issue that I have a problem with, even though I understand that it is a moral issue that I have within myself. Do I now continue the friendship?
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
When I feel like the foundation of who we are as people, to me, her foundation has shifted. And who I thought she was is not who she was. And when the dust settles, it is who she has changed for me. And the answer is yes. So what do I do with that now?
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
I appreciate that. And, you know, it's interesting to me that you don't remember if anybody has said anything in the moment. And I wonder if Sarah will get there, you know, in a couple of years, if she'll forget everything that was said. And I'm okay. It's fine if she does. But I just hope that she felt loved and supported through it all the way that you did.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
You know, I think that you telling your story just in this podcast period is incredibly brave and amazing and so helpful to people, obviously to complete strangers, you know, somewhere that you don't even know in the world because it's a ripple effect. you know, apart from the core people who this immediately affects. It affects everybody around you as well. It affects you.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
It affects your daily life. And her sister and brother-in-law and I and my husband, kind of formed our support group so that we could say the things we wanted to say without hurting Sarah, which I would highly recommend to any friend or family member in this situation. Get your own support group with other people who are trying to navigate exactly like you.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
And I love that we were able to do this today because if I had questions, other people have questions.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
She basically just started sobbing and told me everything. She had been in the car with her daughter that day and she had said something about her husband breaking a pattern of abuse because he was abused, sexually abused as a child. And she was so glad he was breaking the pattern of abuse. And that was when her daughter decided she couldn't take it anymore. And she had to tell her.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
Sarah's daughter shared that her stepfather had sexually abused her. It started in 2016 for her, so she was 11 years old.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
Yes, I did this. Yes, I did that. She had already packed a bag for him and told him that he needed to go and stay with his mother, which was in a house about half hour from them. And that he had a week's worth of clothes and she would talk to him later. So he didn't argue. He left immediately. And then the daughter wanted to go and report it to the police.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
She would ask me, you know, what do I do? And I basically told her, well, you kind of have to pretend in your mind like he's dead. You need to grieve it like a loss because the person you knew and the relationship you had and the future that you were planning is gone. We talked about that a lot. How do I do that? And I said, I can't tell you how to do that. I don't know how to do that.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
That's something you're going to have to figure out. But that's what I think that you should do at this point. That message wasn't getting through to Sarah. My friend was and is very attached to him and very much in love with him.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
I texted Sarah and I said, listen, if this is the route that you're going to go down, I can't be a part of this. I can't understand how you could do this. And if you want to explain it to me, I'm willing to listen, but I can't support this. And she said, I don't need to explain my feelings to anybody. I am doing what I'm doing and it's not my responsibility to make sure that you understand.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
I just want everybody to let me do what I want to do. And I said, well, I respect your decision to have a choice, but I don't respect your choice. And I'm not going to be a part of this any longer. And she said, that's all I'm asking for is a little bit of respect, not understanding. But I will live with my choices for the rest of my life. And those are my choices.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
I'm so glad to talk to you specifically because actually you were the one I wanted to talk to when I first emailed in to the podcast. It was, does Ashley have any advice for, you know, the friends and the family when you first went back to Jason, when you first did that? And I'm certain everybody around you was like, why, why are you doing that? And for me, even now with Sarah and,
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
Do I yell these things at her? Or should I have just shut up? Should I have just said what she wanted, which was I'm here to support you no matter what, even when I didn't agree? What would you have wanted?
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
Yeah. You don't know if you would have heard it no matter what anybody had said. And that's, I think that's how I felt with Sarah. I've always had a very open, honest relationship with her because that's just how I am personally. I don't tend to keep things in. If I want to say something, I say it. So it was really hard. The way I described everything was just walking on eggshells.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
When we left her house that weekend that we were there right after it happened, we went to her sister and brother-in-law's house. And I remember just sitting at the table and just crying because it felt like a release just to talk to people normally, just to say what I wanted to say. Because you have to be very careful, especially we don't have to be, but I felt like I needed to be very careful.
Betrayal: Season 4
Betrayal Weekly: Listener Mail - How Do I Help My Friend?
Sarah and I talked about your story, Ashley, because your season was the one that she had told me about and that I had watched at the beginning of January. And, you know, she said, this is just like that Hulu episode. And I said, yeah, it's exactly like that.