Transcript of Kaitlyn's Baby | Episode 4: Down the rabbit hole

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of a deceased.

He's one of the most wanted men in the world.

This isn't really happening.

Officers finding large sums of money.

It's a tale of murder, scullduggery, and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover.

Available A BBC World Service and CBC podcast production. This episode contains strong language and references to baby loss and sexual assault.

A Branford woman is being charged for using doula services while falsely claiming to be pregnant and having stillbirths. 24-year-old Kaitlyn Braun is facing- The woman faked pregnancies and stillbirths to receive treatment. Some doulas say- She would contact doulas who provide support before, during, and after childbirth, pretending to be pregnant.

In March 2023, 24-year-old Kaitlyn Braun is arrested. She says Braun's lies have violated the very nature of the job and has forced many doulas to leave the profession altogether. She's facing 52 counts of fraud, harassment, and sexual assault. 17 victims. Kaitlyn is taken to the Vanier Center for Women, a Canadian jail Southwestern Ontario. Finally, the doulas who had been manipulated, used, and victimized by her feel a general sense of relief. The police are taking this seriously, and while she's in jail, she can't hurt anyone else. People are shocked, and everyone has the same questions. Why? How? But at the same time, as Caitlin's name goes public, people who knew her start to come forward.

I met Caitlin when we were three. We did ballet together. There's going to be some lies that she's always going to tell or some manipulation or control she's going to want to have over people, no matter how big or small it is. I feel like it's like a game How far can I go and what can I get away with?

For CBC and the BBC World Service, I'm Sara Treleven, and this is The Con, Caitlin's Baby. Episode 4, Down the Rabbit Hole.

She's always lived with her mom and her sister, so it was always the three of them.

This is Caitlin's childhood friend, Ezea.

She had a brother I never met. I don't know where he was, maybe living with her dad. Then her dad and her mom had been split for time.

Ezea and Caitlin went to school together.

We were friends on and off for years. We would be super close, and then we weren't, and then we would be close again, and then we weren't, and we would go for lunch and whatever. That's how our friendship was from a really long time.

Whenever they were in the close phase of their friendship, Asia and Kaitlyn spent a lot of time together. They only lived 10 minutes apart and would sleep over at each other's houses. They also attended the same Christian camp in the summers. Asia got to know and like Kaitlyn's family. But Kaitlyn wasn't always a happy kid.

I remember that from so young. She'd be very sad or she would be very needy. She had a lot of anxiety. When I was a kid, I couldn't relate to that. I would want to play barbies or whatever. She just had so much anxiety. She couldn't do anything. I don't want to say she would freeze up, but she just wouldn't want to participate. She would just sit there and, I don't know, she looked scared all the time.

And did she have a lot of other friends? Was she very social?

No, she was very introverted. I do know she had other friends, and she would bounce around between them. She would be close to me, and then we We would distance ourselves a little bit, and then it was almost like she would come back around.

When Kaitlyn was in Asia's life, Kaitlyn showed signs of being a really good friend.

She just always knew what to say when you were down or was upset. She was always there. She was always like, I'll come pick you up, or I'll bring you snacks or ice cream or whatever.

As they grew older, it went beyond the offer of ice cream on a bad day.

I remember we were sitting in English class, and she was like, I I just want to feed you. So she would feed me goldfish.

Just to be clear, Asia is talking about a cracker here, one that's shaped like a fish.

It's so weird. You can remember. I remember sitting there and I was like, This is so strange, but whatever. I just rolled with it.

And she's physically taking the goldfish out of the bag and putting them into your mouth. Yeah.

Another thing, she was a really big hand holder. Everywhere we would go, she would want to hold my hand. She was always wanting to be held and cuddled, which for me, I'm not like that. I'm not a physical touch person. I don't know. When I get like that, I feel very claustrophobic. I just want to be left alone.

Caitlin's overt affection started to feel off-putting, and Asia started to see that Caitlin's kindness came with strengths.

When she needed, she really needed you. I feel like it was a wind up to, This is what I would do for you. And so then when she needed it, it was almost like you needed a little bit, and then she would need a mile. So I hadn't talked to Kaitlyn in probably a year, at least. And I had gotten an Instagram message. Hey, I don't know if you've seen this, but you follow her on Instagram, Kaitlyn Braun, and then there was a link. And I was like, that's weird. And I just left it. I didn't even open the link. And then maybe not even an hour later, one of my good friends called and was like, did Do you hear about Caitlin? And so she literally took all the highlights and sent it to me, and I just was like, What? I was so confused on what is happening right now.

And what were you seeing? What did she send you?

It was the initial report of she had frauded a bunch of doulas, and that basically all of her charges, I don't know, frauding, the sexual assault. It just was so crazy that someone that you're so close to would do something like that. I was shocked. I just was like, I didn't know what to do with that information.

How did you respond? What went through your head?

I just was like... And then I was googling because I'm like, What's going on? I wanted to read the full story. So then I'm trying to figure it out. And then I went on TikTok because that's just where all the information is. And it just was story after story after story. Okay, so this video might be long and all over the place, but this is my experience with this whole doula scam thing that you may have heard of. There's at least 50 of us that we know of right now, primarily in Southern Ontario and across Canada. We also have a couple that are in the stage. Now I think that she was just really lazy and thought I was stupid, which I guess I was. And I literally went a rabbit hole. I spent so many hours. I listened to all of them. I watched every single part. There was 27 parts to someone's story, 13 parts to another person's story, and I listened to them all. She DMed me in November of 2022 asking for lost support through Stillbur. So we proceeded to go to the Airbnb that she had booked. I spent the next two days trying to convince her that she needs to go to the hospital.

I was alone with her in that Airbnb.

We know now that she changes details of her stories to match with the personalities or the backgrounds of the doulas that she's working with.

Asia was shocked. She was confused, even horrified. But as she headed further down the Caitlin Rabbit hole, she was struck by another feeling. This was all very familiar.

My heart was pounding because a lot of what she was saying, I was like, That happened to me. Those exact things, I was like, Yes, I can relate to everything you're saying. A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot.

There's something on this boat.

A ton of cocaine. There was a lot of adrenaline. I couldn't believe what was happening.

And the man, Brazilian police, believed to at its center. Fox.

Fox. Fox got the shots.

From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, Season 5, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs, and this time it's going to get personal.

I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Over the years, Ezea told me a pattern started to emerge. With Kaitlyn Pulling her into a seemingly never-ending list of tragedies. Tragedies that just kept getting bigger and bigger.

She had said that she had cancer and that the doctors had missed it. I was scared. I was like, Oh, my God. You're so young. I think we were 20 at the time.

At first, Caitlin told Asia it was stage one. There was hope. But a few weeks later, that would change.

Oh, they were wrong about the test, and it's actually stage three or stage four. So then I'm like, What the hell is going on? And so I'm literally sobbing. I was so upset.

And then Caitlin told Asia about an attack she claimed happened while she was away at another Christian youth camp.

And the pastor had finished preaching and had went into the bathroom and basically raped her while everyone was there, and then had went back and just resumed like everything was fine.

Just went out into a crowd of people after raping her in the bathroom. Right.

And so for the rest of the week, it just was like, brushed under the rug or whatever. She had told me and one of our other friends that I remember being like, What? Like, what?

Asia wanted to help. She encouraged Caitlin to say something to someone, but Caitlin wouldn't.

She said it as like, I'm processing this trauma, and this is what happened to me. And so I was like, Oh, my God. I was there. I was like, I'm so sorry this happened to you.

Other friends who also heard this story from Caitlin didn't believe her and cut ties. But not Asia.

I was like, I can't leave somebody who has just opened up about a trauma like that and just let her process it on her. I would feel so guilty. So I literally was like, Oh, my God, what can I do?

I spoke with another friend of Caitlin's who said that Caitlin told her about dozens of sexual assaults. At one point, it was almost every week. It was confusing and horrifying lying, and she felt like it was impossible to be a good friend without ignoring the doubts that bubbled up every time she talked to Caitlin. I just want to stop here and say what I think is obvious but important. It's well-established that the vast majority of people who claim to have been sexually assaulted are telling a very difficult truth. Even including this part of Asia's experience with Caitlin was debated by our team. What if this story was then used to undermine other sexual assault victims coming forward? But in the end, we decided it was important to share because it's this exact grappling that was going on with people in Caitlin's orbit.

You know what's funny is a lot of this is not even said in person. A lot of this is either over a text or a phone call. She would always message me and say, Hi, Bay, how are you? Because that's what she would call me. And I would be like, I'm good. How are you? And then she would say, not well, or I'm going through this, or blah, blah, blah. And so every time I got that text of, Hi, Bay, how are you? I was like, eventually I got, Oh, my God, here we go. What's happening now? I actually put her on a specific… Her phone would vibrate a specific time so that I would know if she texted me because it just was so constant that she would always reach out only when she really needed something.

And your sense of your role in the other half of this conversation was to provide support to her, reassure her, those kinds of things?

Yeah, because that's what she would do for me, and she would support me, and she would send me such long long messages of like, You're great and wonderful and blah, blah, blah, you're going to do great things in your life. And it would always make me feel so much better. So I would try and do that back, but it was always small things of I'm feeling a little bit depressed or I'm feeling a bit of an outcast or whatever. And so then it would start like that. And then it got to the point of, okay, well, I'm reprocessing this trauma. I'm reliving this from when I was a kid. And that's super heavy to put on somebody. So it just It really escalated to the point where it was like, I don't even really know how to help you or what to say. So I started trying to distance myself back. But it was like the more I retreated, it was the heavier the trauma that was coming up for her. I feel like towards the end, it was always sexual violence. Sexual violence. Yeah, or just reliving the same trauma that she had told me before, whatever.

Do you know if she ever went to the police about these things? Do you know if any of these people ever found out about these allegations?

Well, the posture, one that I had said, she had reached out to his wife and text messaged his wife or whatever. I don't know. She messaged his wife and said, Your husband did this to me, and this is what happened, and I just thought you should know.

According to Asia, Kaitlyn showed her a screenshot of the message.

I, at that time, again, was like, Oh, my God, I'm so sorry that they're not believing you. That's such a big part of, especially when you're a sexual assault victim that nobody believes you. So that really tugged at me where I was like, They're not believing you. You just came forward. That's crazy. So I really felt bad for her in that moment.

On another occasion, Kaitlyn told Asia about being sexually assaulted again.

We went to dinner, and after dinner, we were leaving, and she goes, This traumatic thing just happened to me. I was raped. I don't really know what to do about it. And so I was like, Okay, well, I don't really know what to do, to be honest. I can be there for you and be supportive. I was like, I didn't know what to do. I was just like, And so she's like, Well, I can go get a rape kit, but I don't know if I can do it alone or something like that. So I was like, Okay, I can go to the hospital with you. So I wasn't allowed to go in because it was COVID, so I dropped her off. Later, a couple of days later, I guess it had happened again. So then I'm like, Oh, my God. Okay, well, this is crazy because it's the same person.

Again, Eitlin wants Asia to go with her to get a rape kit done.

I wasn't even supposed to be in the hospital waiting room with her, but they had allowed me to do that. So I stayed and I waited there with her for hours.

As you're describing this, I'm hearing a relationship with an old friend who you really want the best for and who you want to help, but you're getting to a point where this is exhausting.

Yeah.

She's just taking too much from you. Yeah. And you're starting to see that.

Yeah.

Asia might be tiring of her friend Caitlin, but Caitlin is not done with Asia. The next alleged rape happened with a guy that Caitlin said she met on a Christian dating app.

Yeah, I guess they went out and she was like, he just was not who he said he was, and he ended up raping me, basically. Mind you, again, this is in a month span, this is the umptenth time. It's just at this point, unrealistic.

The umptenth time that she's reporting to you that she's been assaulted? Yeah. Okay.

This was when I really was pulling back.

Caitlin tells her that she's blocked him.

Anyway, she messages me not even an hour or two after it, and she's like, He found me. That's what he said. He found me. I'm like, Well, how did he find you if you blocked him on all social media? Well, I forgot to block him on Snapchat. I'm like, Okay. Then she's freaking out. She literally drove. She met me and my boyfriend's mom. I didn't even ask her what happened. I just was like, Come to the store, just come shopping with us, whatever. I remember my boyfriend's mom was like, Hi. What's going on? I just was like, Honestly, just keep shopping. Let's just keep it moving here.

I mean, you're in a pet store with your boyfriend's mother, and she's shown up. What is her vibe? Is she frantic? Is she sad?

So quiet.

So quiet.

So quiet. And that's just when she was a kid and she just sits there and she looked scared. She just sits scrunched up. That She just comes in and she is behind you and she's holding my hand. Do you know a little kid meeting someone and they're hiding behind their mom's leg? That's the same energy. She would be behind me. She was just holding my hand the whole time. I didn't even say anything to her. But literally, again, holding my hand, dragging her through the store. I'm like, Whatever, dude. This is just what it is.

Eventually, Kaitlyn leaves Asia.

I think she was sensing that she wasn't getting the energy that she wanted from me. And so she texted me super late at night, and it was like, Are you ready to be an Auntie? And that's all it said. So I'm like, What? She's like, Yeah, it's that guy. Well, actually, I am pregnant from the first time he had raped me. So I'm like, Oh, shit. So I was like, Okay, so what are we doing? What do you need from me? Are you going to, I don't know, keep it? What's happening?

Back and forth, the friends went. What will Kaitlyn do? Will she keep the baby? Kaitlyn doesn't know until one day she texts Asia a picture.

I don't know. She sent me pictures. She had bought baby clothes and all this stuff. It was maybe a week after she had told me, she's like, The baby is actually farther along than what I thought it was, but it's measuring super small, so it's not looking good. So I was like, Okay, what What does that mean? Basically, she was like, I'm almost 30 weeks, but it's measuring at eight weeks.

Most of these messages are coming in very late at night or even early morning, so Asia doesn't always see them until the next day.

She messages me. She's going into delivery. The baby's going to be born still birth.

Kaitlyn is now telling Asia that her baby has died, and it's this tragedy, this terrible horrible situation that feels like just one too many.

I was like, No, this is not true. So I was trying to get her to send me some proof, without being like, Send me proof. So I was like, Did you get any pictures with the stillborn baby? I have had people that are close to me that have stillbirth, and that's something sometimes people want, and sometimes people don't. So she's like, Yeah, I got pictures of the baby.

Kaitlyn never sent Asia the picture she was asking for. But someone both Kaitlyn and Asia knew had actually lost a baby and had posted photos of the child on their social media.

She was very open on social media about it, and she would post a lot of pictures. That's just how she was grieving. We all really felt for her.

But then Asia heard that Kaitlyn was sharing those baby pictures and claiming it was her baby. In fact, court records show that Kaitlyn did this with multiple people, including doulas. She sent photos of stillborn babies claiming they were hers.

That was heartbreaking. That, even for me, felt like a huge betrayal. So I can't even imagine how the mom would have felt. After that, I literally stopped talking to her. She would message me for weeks and months after. Like, randomly, she'd pop in and be like, Hey, I hope you're okay, or, Hey, did I do anything? Or whatever. And in my heart, I had no way of cutting her off like that because if I did reach out, she would just find a way to bring me back in. So I literally just stopped answering everything altogether.

Looking back now, because you have so much more context and you've heard about an even wider spectrum of behavior, and of course, crucially, you know you're not the only one, what do you think she wanted from you? What do you think she was trying to get out of you?

I genuinely think she just wanted someone to take care of her. I think she just wanted to be coddled and hugged and nurtured. I think she just liked being helped. I think she liked being defenseless like this, Oh, I need help, and I don't have anything to… I think she just liked that somebody would step up and go to bat for her and be there with her.

This is the $10 million question. But do you have any sense of why she went about getting her needs met through such incredibly unhealthy means?

I wish that I knew that, honestly. The one part of me feels like she's sick and she has some disease or illness or something. That's why I thought that happened, because a normal person just I wouldn't do that.

This is the question I keep coming back to. With everything we now know about Caitlin, what else don't we know? And what is she truly capable of?

I was like, How does this even work here? How do you guys hire someone like that?

That's next time on The Con, Caitlin's Baby. We made numerous attempts to contact Caitlin Braun, outlining the allegations made through this series and inviting her to respond to what has been said. She made it clear to me that she didn't want to be involved with the podcast. The invitation remains open to Caitlin, should she change her mind and wish to respond. This is a BBC and BBC World Service production. The show is written, researched, and produced by me, Sarah Treleven. It was also written and produced by Kathleen Goldhar. Extra production support from Andrew Friesen and Alexis Green. Sound design and scoring by Mitchell Stewart. Emily Quinnell is our digital coordinating producer. Our senior producer is Veronica Simmons. The fact checker is Emily Matieu. Our executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is our Senior Manager, and Arif Noorani is the Director of CBC Podcasts. For the BBC World Service, Kat Collins is the Senior Producer, and John Manell is the podcast commissioning editor. Ing Editor. A BBC World Service and CBC podcast production.