Andrea Dunlop, Part 1 - Being Related to a Perpetrator of Medical Child Abuse

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Today our guest is Andrea Dunlop, novelist and host of the podcast Nobody Should Believe Me, which is all about Munchausen by Proxy. She’s going to talk to us about Munchausen by Proxy, or medical child abuse, from a new point of view: what it’s like being related to the perpetrator. She’ll tell us about what her sister was like growing up, how she had exhibited Munchausen behaviors from a very young age, making herself seem to be sick before she had children, and how common that and other forms of deception are among people who later develop Munchausen by Proxy. We’ll talk about how her sister faked a pregnancy and miscarriage and how the discovery of that messed with Andrea’s reality, the overlap of characteristics with people who exhibit signs of narcissism and psychopathy, and how actual medical misogyny complicates the whole thing. And next week, we’ll talk about what her sister started doing to her children, what her family tried to do about it, and why they weren’t able to stop her.